El-Obeid

El-Obeid is a city of 450,000 inhabitants in Kurdufan.

Understand
Founded by the pashas of Ottoman Egypt in 1821, the city was sacked by the Mahdists in September 1883. It was then rebuilt on a modern plan in 1898, following the fall of the Mahdist empire. The population of El-Obeid today is majority Muslim, with a small Christian presence. The town is the site of an airport and an oil refinery. El-Obeid is home to the University of Kordofan, one of the largest universities in Sudan, established in 1990. Since 1989, the city also has been home to a French Association that serves as a Sudanese-French cultural centre in cooperation with the university's French language department