# Mahdi's Tomb Destroyed and Gordon Remembered (2-5 September 1898)

URL: https://allhistories.com/sudan/timeline/1898-mahdi-s-tomb-destroyed-and-gordon-remembered
Location: Omdurman and Khartoum, Sudan
Themes: main-event

After Omdurman, Kitchener ordered the Mahdi's domed tomb to be demolished, and his remains were removed and, according to commonly told accounts, thrown into the Nile. On 4 September a memorial service for Gordon was held at the ruins of the Khartoum palace. Many British critics, including parliamentary opponents, deplored the desecration. Some accounts say the skull was kept as a trophy. The destruction was meant to remove a pilgrimage site and show that the Mahdi's movement was over, but it left resentment. The tomb was rebuilt only in 1947. The Gordon service also inaugurated Khartoum as a British-planned administrative capital, soon laid out around the Nile with streets in the pattern of a Union Jack, as popular accounts say. Public indignation in Britain forced the government to ask Kitchener for explanations, and the reburial of the remains was ordered; the story is disputed and was debated by historians. At the date of this event the principal authority over the largest part of historic Sudan, by the convention of this dataset, lay with Herbert Kitchener, Governor-General of Sudan (1898–1899). The act illustrates the colonial wish to rewrite Sudan's past and shows how memories of the Mahdi persisted despite it. The tomb was rebuilt by Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi in the 1940s, and it remained a place of pilgrimage for supporters of the Mahdist tradition in Sudan.

## Why it matters
The destruction of the Mahdi's tomb symbolised conquest and left lasting resentment.

Ruler at the Time: [Herbert Kitchener](https://allhistories.com/sudan/rulers/herbert-kitchener)

## Sources
- [Mahdist War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdist_War)
- [319651](https://www.britannica.com/print/article/319651)
- [Anglo-Egyptian Sudan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Egyptian_Sudan)