It was the burial place of Muhammad Ahmad, the leader of an Islamic revolt against Turco-Egyptian Sudan in the late 19th century.

The fact that many of these were Christian, like General Charles Gordon, threw the religious status of the occupation into question for Sudanese Muslims.

[5] Galvanised by widespread resentment for Ottoman-Egyptian rule, discontented members of Sudanese tribes and Sufi orders joined the Mahdist army.

The Mahdist state was established after four years of fighting, ending in the 1885 Siege of Khartoum where the British governor-general of Sudan, General Gordon, was killed and decapitated.

[8] After the Battle of Omdurman, the dome of the qubba was destroyed by gunboat fire from Kitchener's small Nile fleet.

The success by the anṣār in breaking the British military square was famously remembered in Rudyard Kipling's poem ‘Fuzzy-Wuzzy’ (a derogatory term for the people of the Beja tribe, many of whom fought in the Mahdist army).

[16] Eventually Lord Kitchener was required to write a letter of apology to Queen Victoria for the actions of his troops after the Battle of Omdurman, particularly in relation to the desecration of the Mahdi's tomb and the treatment of his body.