5 Piastres Siege of Khartoum

Issued during the siege of Khartoum in 1884, this is among the rarest emergency issues in African numismatics. General Charles Gordon, commanding the besieged city, authorized the printing of paper currency to pay his garrison and sustain commerce inside the walls — a stop-gap measure as the siege tightened through the second half of the year. The Mahdist attribution is a cataloguing convention; these notes were actually issued under Gordon's authority, not Muhammad Ahmad's forces surrounding the city.

Khartoum fell on 26 January 1885. Survivors were few, and paper currency was not among the things anyone carried out.