(Excerpt from the book’ The Greek community in Sudan’)
In 1884, Khartoum was under siege by the Mahdi forces. Almost seventy Greeks were among the defenders of the city. In September of 1884, General Gordon sent the riverboat “Abbas” to sail through the Nile in order to reach the British forces which were sent to reinforce the defence of Khartoum. Colonel Stewart, the British and French ambassador, a few Egyptian and Syrian sailors and sixteen Greeks were boarded on the ship. The ship drifted off its route near Abu Hamid and all the passengers were arrested and massacred by the army of Mahdi. Gordon noted in his diary the names of the Greeks. These were Dimitris Kapnoulas, George Kepetzakos, Elias Volonakis, Alexander Gerakaris, Dimitris Perdikakis, Michael Nomikos, Stavros Papadakis, Demosthenes Kapilos, Dimitris Georgopoulos, George Kontis, Xenophon Apostolidis, George Tantzos, Ioannis Stergiou, Nicholas Kouvaras, John Dermitzakis and Michael Hadjichristodoulou.
