1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Shendi

SHENDI, a town in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in the mudiria (province) of Berber, on the right bank of the Nile in 18° 1' N ., 33° 59' E., and 104 m. N.N.W. of Khartum by rail. Shendi possesses small manufactories of leather, iron and cotton; extensive railway workshops and a government experimental farm. It is the headquarters of the cavalry of the Egyptian army stationed in the Sudan. Shendi lies within the “Island of Meroë” and is a town of great antiquity. Thirty miles north are the pyramids of Meroë. On the opposite (west) bank of the Nile is the village of Metemma, whence there is a caravan route across the Bayuda Desert to the Merawi (Merowe) by Tebel Barkal; this was the route followed by the desert column under Sir Herbert Stewart in 1884 in the Gordon relief expedition. In 1772 James Bruce stayed some time at Shendi—then governed by a woman—on his way to Egypt after visiting the source of the Blue Nile. When the Egyptians invaded the Sudan in 1820 Shendi, then a place of considerable size, submitted to Ismail Pasha, son of Mehemet Ali, the pasha of Egypt. In 1822, however, Ismail and his chief followers were treacherously burnt to death at Shendi by order of the mek (ruler) of the town, in revenge for the cruelties committed by the Egyptians. Later in the same year an Egyptian army from Kordofan razed the town to the ground, most of the inhabitants being massacred. From that period until the establishment of Anglo-Egyptian rule in 1898 Shendi was but a poor village. Its subsequent growth has been comparatively rapid. There is a considerable area of fertile land on either side of the Nile in the neighbourhood.