page_title: Greeks in Sudan
section_title: Turkiya (1821–1885)
hierarchical_section_title: Greeks in Sudan / History / Modern times / Turkiya (1821–1885)
caption_attribution_description: English: George Ntouloglou Bey, the chief of the Ottoman military service in Sudan, photographed in Khartoum by the French diplomat Louis Vossion in 1882. He was of Greek origin.
context_page_description: The Greek diaspora in Sudan is small in the number of its members, but still a very prominent community in the country. Historically, the diverse group has played a significant role in the political, economic, cultural, and sporting life of Sudan as the only European settler community of considerable size and economic power.
  The Greek anthropologist Gerasimos Makris, who is related to the Greeks of Sudan through marriage, stresses that "neutrality and a 'clean hands' ideology has always been central to the Greek settlers' self-image, though it is difficult to be reconciled with political developments". While "Greeks in Sudan have been proud for being themselves Greeks ‘more than the Greeks of Greece'", he concedes at the same time a hybrid identity, because they, "in the long run, have proved to be culturally and sentimentally surprisingly close to the Sudanese".
context_section_description: When the Turkish-Egyptian forces of the Ottoman Khedive Mohamed Ali conquered the Funj kingdom in 1821, the invading army reportedly included Greek mercenaries of Arvanite origin. The chief military doctor was a Greek named Dimitrios Botsaris. In 1822, he was killed along with the Khedive's son Ismail in an ambush by Mek Nimr. Ali himself is reported to have taken some of his Greek business partners to Sudan, for instance in 1838 a certain MichalisTossitsas on a mission in search of gold mines, as well as his personal physician Spiros Laskaris Bey.
  More Greeks followed in subsequent years from Egypt, not only as military officers and soldiers, but also as interpreters, some of whom guided expeditions further southward, as well as medical doctors and pharmacists, who opened several drug stores. However, it was especially Greek merchants who came through Egypt with its established Greek trading-houses to trade in ivory, leather, ostrich feathers, and Gum Arabic.
  Their commercial activity and the number of merchants greatly increased after the monopoly of trade was abolished in 1849 and the White Nile was opened for navigation. Some also became involved in the trade of slaves from what was to become Southern Sudan. The Greek historian Antonios Chaldeos, who has written his PhD thesis about the history of the Greek communities in Sudan, strongly suggested from the local histories of Omdurman residents that one of those slave-traders was George Averoff, who is still widely considered a "philanthropist" and "one of the great national benefactors of Greece". The Omdurman quarter of Abu Ruf is still today named after Averoff. Moreover, Greek entrepreneurs in Kassala and Gedaref used slaves on their cotton plantations in the 1870s.
  
  While for the first five decades of the Turkiya most of the Greeks settled in Omdurman, the port town of Suakin became another favourite destination after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. El-Obeid and Bara in Kordofan also had large and stable Greek communities. In 1871, the Kingdom of Greece apparently established a consulate in Suakin (see illustration) and a vice-consulate in Khartoum, mainly to cater to the needs of Greek merchants They were amongst the very first diplomatic representations in Sudan. According to the written account by one of the Greek settlers, there were 193 Greeks in Sudan in 1881, of whom 132 were based in Khartoum.
  Other Greeks did not come to Sudan for commercial reasons though. For instance, Panayotis Potagos, a Greek traveller and physician, explored southern Darfur and Bahr El Ghazal in 1876–77.
  The indigenous Mahdist insurrection against the colonial rule of the Turkiya was apparently also sparked by Marcopoli Bey, the Greek private secretary to the Governor General Raouf Pasha: according to Reginald Wingate, Marcopoli – also known as Marcopoulis – advocated for bringing Muhammad Ahmad, the self-proclaimed redeemer (Mahdi) of the Islamic world, to Khartoum for an investigation into his intentions. As a result of the failed expedition, Ahmad went into open rebellion. Marcopoli went on to become sub-governor of Massawa.
  
  His fellow country-men and -women were soon affected by the uprising as well. In early 1883, five Greeks took part in the defense of El Obeid. After the fall of the city, ten Greeks were taken captives by the insurgents and forced to convert to Islam, but got altogether treated in a rather "friendly" manner. Three Greeks agreed to marry Catholic nuns pro forma in order to protect them. The newly appointed Governor-General Charles Gordon later ironically wrote in his diary:
  "The union of the Greek and Latin Church came true through these marriages".
  At least five Greeks, who fought on the side of the Ottoman forces, were killed in various battles against the Mahdists. One of them was the Ottoman surgeon-general of Sudan Georgios Douloghlu, a Greek born in Egypt. He died when a Turco-Egyptian force was annihilated by the rebels in November 1883. A Greek trader reportedly played a key role in this crucial event as a guide of this ill-fated expedition le
caption: George Douloglou Bey, 1882
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