Sennar

Town in Sennar State, about 260 km/160 mi southeast of Khartoum, on the left bank of the Blue Nile, Sudan; population about 10,000. Nearby is the Sennar Dam (1926), part of the Gezira irrigation scheme, which provides water for over 4,000 sq km/1,540 sq mi of the El Gezira Plain.

The town is connected by rail with Khartoum, Wad Medani, El Obeid, and Port Sudan via Kassala. The Sennar Dam, as well as being part of the Gezira irrigation scheme, serves as a railway bridge across the Blue Nile.

History Within a century and a half of the consolidation (1504) of their power by the Fung dynasty, a people of mixed Ethiopian and Arab origin, Sennar became a centre of African civilization. This dynasty endured until the time of Mehmet Ali, whose son, Ismail, sent to deal with the Fung kingdom, defeated Sennar in 1822. Sennar, together with Khartoum and Gallabat, was among the last places to hold out against the Mahdi's followers; it fell in August 1885.