Mawlid al-Nabi Celebrations in Sudan

Mawlid al-Nabi, the observance of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday, is a major date on Sudan's Islamic calendar, historically marked in Omdurman and Khartoum with Sufi processions, communal recitation and sweets. Since the April 2023 outbreak of war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, organized public celebration in these two conflict-affected cities has been severely disrupted.

Omdurman's status as a center of Sudanese Sufism dates back to the nineteenth-century Mahdist state, when the city served as the capital of a religious-political movement led by Muhammad Ahmad, who declared himself the Mahdi and built a following that combined Sufi devotional practice with anti-colonial resistance against Ottoman-Egyptian and later British rule.