Kassala

Kassala began as a garrison. Egyptian forces under Ottoman authority established a camp here in 1834, on the Gash where the plain meets the granite domes, to control the eastern trade routes and the herding tribes around them. A town grew around the fort, drawing traders from the Nile valley, the Beja hills and across what is now the Eritrean border.

It was fought over repeatedly. The Egyptian garrison surrendered to Mahdist forces in 1886, and in 1894 Italy annexed the town to its colony in Eritrea, holding it until the Italians withdrew after their defeat at Adwa and Anglo-Egyptian forces re-occupied it at the end of the decade. Under British administration the railway arrived, cotton was grown in the Gash delta under an irrigation scheme, and Kassala became the market and administrative centre of the east.

Since independence in 1956 its story has been shaped by the border. The Eritrean war of independence and later the Ethiopian–Eritrean war of 1998–2000 pushed waves of refugees into the city and the camps around it — an estimated 110,000 people came after the fighting at Barentu and Teseney alone — and many have never left. Eastern grievances against Khartoum produced an armed rebellion in the 1990s, ended by a peace agreement in 2006, and the city has since seen protests, tribal disputes over the east's status, and the closing and reopening of the border. The railway fell out of use; by 2006 the station had stopped working and much of the track had been lifted. War reached Kassala directly in May 2025.

Kassala is a meeting place. Many of its people are Hadendoa and other Beja, who speak Beja, a Cushitic language, and have herded camels and goats in these hills for millennia; Arab tribes of the plain, Nile valley traders, and Eritreans and Ethiopians settled here for generations live alongside them. The Rashaida, Arab camel herders whose ancestors crossed from Arabia in the 19th century, are the most visible of all, the women in long embroidered dresses and heavy face veils, and their camels and silverwork are part of the city's trade.

It is also a religious centre. The Khatmiyya, the largest Sufi order in Sudan, was founded in the early 19th century by Mohammed Uthman al-Mirghani al-Khatim, and the family's seat beneath the Taka mountains draws visitors from across the country for prayer, dhikr and the tombs of its sheikhs. Religious festivals and pilgrimages fill the quarter, and the order's political weight has long been felt in national politics.

Coffee is the social ritual that binds all of this: roasted, pounded with ginger, brewed in a clay jebena and poured in small cups, refused by nobody. Weddings are long and public, with drumming and dancing, and the Beja sword dance and the camel races of the plains belong to the same world. The mountains themselves are part of local identity, and climbing them at the end of the day is an old habit of the city.

The 2003 count put Kassala's population at about 530,000, and the city has grown since, both from natural increase and from people displaced by war and drought. Life is organised around the market: fruit and vegetables from the gardens along the Gash, livestock brought in by herders, grain from Gedaref, and goods that arrive over the border or down the highway from Port Sudan.

The Gash sets the year. It floods in the rains, spreading silt across the delta and sometimes threatening the city itself, then dries to a sand bed that people cross on foot and dig into for water. The irrigation scheme in the delta grows cotton, sorghum and fodder, and the orchards closer to town grow the citrus and mangoes that Kassala is known for across Sudan. Gold mining in the hills and cross-border trade — some of it informal — add to incomes.

Days begin early and pause in the heat of the afternoon, resuming with tea stalls and street life after dusk. Long-standing refugee camps stand outside the city, and since 2023 schools, mosques and families have taken in people from Khartoum and the Gezira. Water, power and health services are stretched, prices are high, and employment is uncertain.

Kassala is known first for its fruit. Grapefruit, oranges, mangoes, guavas and bananas from the gardens along the Gash are sold in the market, eaten fresh and pressed into juice, and sent to Khartoum and Port Sudan. Onions and vegetables from the same fields reach kitchens across the east.

Everyday cooking is Sudanese. Ful medames, fava beans stewed with oil and cumin, is breakfast, eaten with bread; kisra, a thin fermented sorghum flatbread, and asida, a stiff porridge, are eaten with mullah stews thickened with dried okra (waika), peanut butter or dried meat (sharmout). Goat and lamb are grilled over charcoal, and camel meat and milk are part of the diet in a city where herders come to trade.

The border shows on the plate. Injera, the sour Ethiopian and Eritrean pancake, is easy to find with spiced stews in the households and small kitchens of families who came in earlier decades, and their coffee ceremony sits alongside the Beja one. Sweet tea with milk, mint or cinnamon, karkade made from dried hibiscus flowers, and tamarind juice are the everyday drinks; strong spiced coffee from the jebena is the formal one. Alcohol was prohibited under the sharia laws of 1983, and the ban was lifted for non-Muslims in 2020.