Gondokoro
Coordinates: 4 ° 54 ' N , 31 ° 40' E
Gondokoro , also Ismailia , is a place in the state of Jubek (until 2015 in Central Equatoria ) in South Sudan .
location
The place is located on the upper reaches of the Nile , more precisely on the eastern bank of the Bahr al-Jabal around 10 km northeast of Juba .
history
From ancient times, Gondokoro was a main market for ivory and slaves in the Bari sphere of influence , who were transported from there to Khartoum.
The area was first visited by Europeans in 1841 when an expedition sent by Muhammad Ali Pasha reached Gondokoro.
At the beginning of 1853 an Austrian station was built in Gondokoro under Provikar Ignaz Knoblecher , which was abandoned in the following year because of the very poor climate after his death on April 13, 1858.
On February 15, 1863, after their discovery of the Nile springs in Gondokoro , the Africa explorers John Hanning Speke and James Augustus Grant met Samuel White Baker and his future wife Barbara Maria Szasz , who were traveling the upper reaches of the Nile.
In order to end the slave trade, Ismail Pasha , the Khedive of Egypt , equipped an expedition under Baker in 1871, who annexed the surrounding area and named the place Ismailia in honor of the Khedive. He fortified the place and put on a garrison . Gordon Pascha , who became governor of Equatoria in 1873, relocated the station to Lado in 1875 for climatic reasons .
During the Mahdi uprising in 1885, Gondokoro fell into the hands of the insurgents. After the defeat of the Mahdi state in 1898, the area fell back into the hands of the British. It became the northernmost fortified point of the Uganda Protectorate . Later it belonged to the province of Equatoria within the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan .
The special importance of Gondokoro was that the Nile from Khartoum to Gondokoro was navigable since a fairway through the Sudd was cleared between 1899 and 1903 . A steamer ran once a month between Khartoum and Gondokoro, which in 1905, for example, took 13 days upriver and 11 days downriver and could be booked with the tour operator Thomas Cook and Son .
Gondokoro lost its importance after Juba was founded in 1922 and the ship connection was extended to there. The connection was interrupted by the civil war in South Sudan .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Egypt and the Nile, Program of Cook's Arrangements for Visiting Egypt ... 1904-1905 . PDF file; 11 MB