What is "battle of omdurman"

n. a battle (1898) in which an English and Egyptian army under Kitchener defeated the Sudanese [syn: Omdurman]

At the Battle of Omdurman (2 September 1898), an army commanded by the British General Sir Herbert Kitchener defeated the army of Abdullah al-Taashi, the successor to the self-proclaimed Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad. Kitchener was seeking revenge for the death of General Gordon in 1884. It was a demonstration of the superiority of a highly disciplined army equipped with modern rifles, machine guns and artillery over a force twice their size armed with older weapons, and marked the success of British efforts to re-conquer the Sudan. However, it was not until the 1899 Battle of Umm Diwaykarat that the final Mahdist forces were defeated.

Omdurman is today a suburb of Khartoum in central Sudan, with a population of some 1.5 million. The village of Omdurman was chosen in 1884 as the base of operations by the Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad. After his death in 1885, following the successful siege of Khartoum, his successor ( Khalifa) Abdullah retained it as his capital.