Qualla: Siege of Khartoum https://qualla.com/siege-of-khartoum en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:29 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/d/z/0/siege-of-khartoum-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Siege of Khartoum https://qualla.com/siege-of-khartoum Siege of Khartoum: Introduction https://qualla.com/siege-of-khartoum/ Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Inside Khartoum, the food ran out long before the rescuers arrived. By January 1885, after ten months of siege, the 27,000 mostly Sudanese civilians trapped alongside Gordon's Egyptian garrison were eating leather, gum, and the bones of animals. The wheat that had been rationed to last six months had run out in month seven. Mothers watched their children sicken. And beyond the walls, across the Nile's seasonally low waters, 50,000 Mahdist soldiers waited for the night the river would finally let them walk across.

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/d/z/0/siege-of-khartoum-wp/sdz0-siege-of-khartoum-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Siege of Khartoum: The Mahdi's Rising https://qualla.com/siege-of-khartoum/ Photo credit Public domain. The war that ended at Khartoum had begun in 1881, 600 kilometers to the southwest, when a boat-builder's son named Muhammad Ahmad declared himself the Mahdi - the prophesied redeemer of Islam. For sixty years Sudan had been ruled from Cairo by a Turco-Egyptian administration whos...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/d/z/0/siege-of-khartoum-wp/sdz0-siege-of-khartoum-the-mahdis-rising.mp3 0:06 2 full Siege of Khartoum: Inside the Ring https://qualla.com/siege-of-khartoum/ Photo credit Charles George, Public domain. Gordon arrived on 18 February 1884 to find the city already cut off in all but name. Rather than evacuate, he fortified. He laid mines, strung barbed wire, issued his own paper currency from personal credit, and fired telegrams at Cairo demanding reinforcements that never came. B...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/d/z/0/siege-of-khartoum-wp/sdz0-siege-of-khartoum-inside-the-ring.mp3 0:06 3 full Siege of Khartoum: The Relief That Was Too Late https://qualla.com/siege-of-khartoum/ Photo credit Talp, Public domain. Gladstone's government delayed for months. Queen Victoria wrote furious letters. The British press lionized Gordon as a Christian martyr held hostage to political cowardice. In July 1884 the expedition was finally authorized, 9,000 troops under Sir Garnet Wolseley, but the logist...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/d/z/0/siege-of-khartoum-wp/sdz0-siege-of-khartoum-the-relief-that-was-too-late.mp3 0:06 4 full Siege of Khartoum: The Night of 26 January https://qualla.com/siege-of-khartoum/ Photo credit Charles George, Public domain. Just before midnight, the Nile betrayed the city. The seasonal low had exposed a stretch of riverbed where the wall met the water, and 50,000 Mahdists forded across on foot. Another column under Al Nujumi broke the Massalamieh Gate, taking casualties on Gordon's mines and wire. T...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/d/z/0/siege-of-khartoum-wp/sdz0-siege-of-khartoum-the-night-of-26-january.mp3 0:06 5 full Siege of Khartoum: What the Mahdi Built, What Kitchener Tore Down https://qualla.com/siege-of-khartoum/ Photo credit Petr Adam Dohnálek, CC BY-SA 3.0 cz. Muhammad Ahmad ruled only six months more, dying in June 1885 of typhus. His successor Abdallahi ibn Muhammad inherited a state - the Mahdiyah - that controlled most of what is now Sudan and South Sudan. It lasted fourteen years. In September 1898, Herbert Kitchener returned with...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/d/z/0/siege-of-khartoum-wp/sdz0-siege-of-khartoum-what-the-mahdi-built-what-kitchener-tore-down.mp3 0:06 6 full