al-Fashir
Arabic الفاشر al-Fashir |
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Coordinates | 13 ° 37 ′ N , 25 ° 21 ′ E | |
Basic data | ||
Country | Sudan | |
Shamal Darfur | ||
ISO 3166-2 | SD-DN | |
Residents | 286,277 (calculation 2009) | |
Al-Faschir is taken from the helicopter
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Al-Fashir ( Arabic الفاشر al-Fāshir , DMG al-Fāšir ; alternative spellings El Fasher or al-Fashir ) is the capital of the Sudanese state of Shamal Darfur (North Darfur).
location
The city is located around 800 km west of Khartoum and almost 200 km north of Nyala at an altitude of 700 m in the Marra mountain range. An unpaved road continues west to El Geneina .
population
Al-Faschir has a population of 286,277 (2009 calculation).
Population development:
year | Residents |
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1973 (census) | 51,932 |
1983 (census) | 84,298 |
1993 (census) | 141,884 |
2009 (calculation) | 286.277 |
history
From the 16th to the 18th century, al-Fashir was the center of the Keira Sultanate of the Fur . The city was the starting point for an important camel caravan route, the Darb el-arba'in ( Arabic : "Forty-Day Road"), which led north through Darfur to Aswan and Asyut . It was used to bring ebony , ivory and slaves from the Central African forest areas to the Egyptian markets. In 1821 Muhammad Ali conquered the Funj Sultanate and the Kurdufan Province of Darfur. For the sultanate in al-Fashir, a difficult coexistence began with the new rulers who controlled the traditional slave routes south to the Bahr al-Ghazal region . In 1874 the leader of the largest slave empire, Zubayr Pasha Rahma Mansur, invaded Darfur with his well-equipped slave army, they won rule and killed Sultan Ibrahim Qarad in the battle of al-Manawashi. Darfur was now officially under the rule of the Turkish-Egyptian Sudan . On the other hand, there was a revolt from January 1877 onwards by Harun ibn Sayf ad-Din, one of the sultans who opposed Egyptian sovereignty. The Harun uprising could only be put down in the summer of 1879 by Rudolf Slatin, who had been sent to Darfur by Governor Gordon shortly before . In December 1883, Rudolf Slatin had to surrender to the Mahdi's army . On January 15, 1884, al-Fashir fell to the Mahdists after a one-week siege .
On February 22, 1889, the Fur-Sultan Abu Kairat and his allied Muhammad Zayn, known as Abu Jummayza , a preacher of the Sanussiya order, were defeated in the battle of al- Faschir against an army of Mahdists under Osman Adam, the governor of Kurdufan . With the battle of Umm Diwaykarat in Kurdufan on November 24, 1899, the Mahdists were expelled from Darfur. The Fur had always resisted the Mahdists, most recently under their leader Ali Dinar Zakariya. After the end of the Mahdi rule, Ali Dinar restored the sultanate. In 1909, the Wadai region in the west was conquered by the French. Ali Dinar ruled Khartoum relatively independently from the British until he was killed in 1916 when Anglo-Egyptian troops conquered Darfur .
The Sultan's palace has been preserved to this day and houses a museum that can be visited.
Current situation
With the storming of the garrison of al-Faschir, the rebel groups achieved their first major military victory in the ongoing Darfur conflict in June 2003. There had already been attacks on localities in the area beforehand. Al-Fashir is the main hub for the region's agricultural products: millet , peanuts and sesame . Since the civil war, al-Fashir has been the basis for humanitarian aid from the United Nations and various NGOs . The city benefits from this “war economy” and has since experienced an enormous economic boom and a building boom. There are around 500 international helpers on site and around 3,000 jobs have been created for locals. The headquarters of the UNAMID peacekeeping force has been in al-Fashir since 2008 . Refugee camps and the city hospital are located in the Gubba district.
Al-Fashir belonged several times to the contested area between government troops and Janjawid on the one hand and rebels (especially the JEM ) on the other. Due to the tense security situation, some of the foreign aid workers were temporarily evacuated in December 2006. In January 2008, the government repelled an attack by the JEM with air strikes in the area. With the civil war, crime and gangs have increased. Aid organizations and even UNAMID complain of vehicle theft.
Infrastructure
Climate table
al-Fashir | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Average monthly temperatures and precipitation for al-Fashir
Source: wetterkontor.de
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Individual evidence
- ↑ Population statistics ( Memento from September 30, 2007 in the web archive archive.today )
- ↑ Martin W. Daly: Darfur's Sorrow. A History of Destruction and Genocide. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 2007, ISBN 978-0-521-87618-6 , pp. 75 f.
- ↑ Kevin Shillington: Encyclopedia of African History. Volume 1: A - G. Taylor & Francis, London 2004, ISBN 1-280-28968-6 , p. 120.
- ↑ Edmund Sanders: A Darfur capital is a humanitarian boomtown. ( Memento from July 20, 2008 on the Internet Archive ) In: Los Angeles Times , April 30, 2008.
- ^ UN pulls out non-essential staff from Darfur town. In: Sudan Tribune , December 6, 2006
- ↑ Sudan army continues to bomb rebels around Darfur's El-Fasher. In: Sudan Tribune , January 27, 2008.
- ^ Vehicle stolen in second attack on UNAMID in two days. In: Sudan Tribune , March 22, 2009.
Web links
- City map from unosat.org ( Memento from June 23, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- Northern Darfur: El Fasher Town Plan. ( Memento of October 16, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) City map with an entry by the aid organizations (PDF; 489 kB)