CHAPTER XXIII OMDURMAN, STRONGHOLD OF THE MAHDI ONE of the queerest cities I have ever visited is Omdurman, once the capital of the Mahdi and to-day the great native commercial centre of the Sudan. Omdurman stretches for more than six miles along the Nile at the point where the Blue Nile flows in from the distant Abyssinian hills. Opposite the city is Tuti Island, while beyond the island on the far¬ ther bank of the White Nile is Khartum. Founded by the Mahdi, or the Mohammedan Messiah, and the scene of the most atrocious cruelties and extravagances of the Khalifa who succeeded him, Omdurman once contained about one million of African Sudanese. It was then a great military camp, composed of one hundred thousand mud houses and inhabited by tribes from all parts of the million square miles embraced in the realm of that savage ruler. The Khalifa forced the people to come here to live that he might have their services in time of war, allowing them to go home only to cultivate and harvest their crops, which they were obliged to bring back for sale. He made Omdur¬ man his seat of government, and he had his own residence here inside a great wall of sun-dried brick which enclosed about sixty acres, and in which was an open-air mosque of ten acres or more. Here he had his palace and here he kept his four hundred wives. Just outside the city he •87