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The Three-Dome Problem: the Syncretic Architecture of Healing in Sudan
Abstract
In Khartoum, Sudan – just south of the old city center – is a large cemetery dotted with the built legacies of the country’s layered past: headstones mark the resting place of Egyptian colonial officials and plaques identify influential Sudanese nationalists, but one mausoleum, with a small neoclassical dome and ionic pillars, stands out from the others. This tomb is a small-scale replica of the Kitchener School of Medicine, the grave of a Persian businessman who made his fortune in Sudan and upon his death in 1933 left a waqf to the school. Even today, people leave coins, food, and other tributes at this miniature medical school. Understanding the social practices and materiality of this tomb-cum-colonial monument illustrates the challenges and opportunities of placing the study of Islamic Art and Architecture in conversation with material culture studies through an analysis of this and two earlier domes. Between 1885 and 1924 two domes dominated the skyline of the capital of Sudan: the tomb of Muhammad Ahmed al-Mahdi (built 1885; destroyed 1898) and the Kitchener School of Medicine (opened in 1924). At first glance, it appears as though these two physical structures fall into distinct analytical frameworks: the tomb is easily included into the long tradition of the study of Islamic Art and Architecture, while the dome of the medical school lends itself to enquiry through material culture and science and technology studies. However, these structures are intimately connected through histories of violence, and this paper argues that local populations understood the neoclassical dome of the imperial medical school – which signified the advent of modern medical training through a memorial for the slain Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener to colonial health officials – as a successor to the dome of Muhammad Ahmed’s tomb that was destroyed on Kitchener’s orders in 1898. These two structures – and the practices surrounding them are part of the same genealogy of Sufi tombs, which mark the place of the dead as well as being a space of healing and regeneration for the living. Thus, considering the three domes together as syncretic architecture of healing also illuminates the generative opportunities for new material culture studies of the Middle East.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Sudan
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries