Siege of Khartoum Siege of Khartoum The Battle of Khartoum, Siege of Khartoum or Fall of Khartoum was the conquest of Egyptian-held Khartoum by the Mahdist forces led by Muhammad Ahmad. Egypt had held the city for some time prior, but the siege that the Mahdists engineered and carried out from 13 March 1884 to 26 January 1885 was enough to wrest control away from the Egyptian administration. After a ten-month siege, when the Mahdists finally broke into the city, the entire garrison of Egyptian soldiers was killed along with 4,000 Sudanese civilians. Since the 1882 Anglo-Egyptian War, the British military presence had
Siege of Khartoum to the north by the Blue Nile and to the west by the White Nile. To defend the river banks, he created a flotilla of gunboats from nine small paddle-wheel steamers, until then used for communication purposes, which were fitted with guns and protected by metal plates. In the southern part of the town, which faced the open desert, he prepared an elaborate system of trenches, makeshift Fougasse-type land mines, and wire entanglements. Also, the surrounding country was controlled by the Shagia tribe, which was hostile to the Mahdi. By early April 1884, the tribes north of Khartoum rose in