Sultan Ali Dinar Palace in Darfur to be Restored with Turkish Efforts

The Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Sudan to restore the Sultan Ali Dinar Palace in Al Fashir city.
TIKA also adopted a campaign for restoring the Ottoman era antiquities on the Sudanese territories.
Sudan’s ambassador to Turkey Yousif Al-Kurdufani has outlined that TIKA has started restoration of the Ottoman antiquities in Swakin city east of Sudan and the Palace of Sultan Ali Dinar in Al Fashir the center of North Darfur State western Sudan in the light of the progress of the Sudanese-Turkish relations as part of the Turkish attention to reviving the Ottoman heritage.
Palace of Pride
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), enlisted the palace of Ali Dinar-the last Sultan of Darfur as World Heritage Site.
The palace of the Sultan-who had ruled between 1891 and 1916- is located in the city of El Fasher, the capital of the state of North Darfur.
The palace of the Darfur’s last sultan has become a focus of pride, 100 years after his death.
Silver swords, antique rifles, richly coloured robes and the throne from which autocrat Sultan Ali Dinar ruled Darfur’s vast expanses between 1891 and 1916 line the walls of the palace museum.
Dinar was the last of the Keira dynasty of sultans to rule the region as absolute monarchs, controlling their subjects and raising revenue through an elaborate feudal system.
Hailing from the Fur ethnic group (Darfur means “domain of the Fur” in Arabic), Sultan Ali Dinar’s reign came to an end in 1916 when he backed the Ottoman empire at the height of the First World War.
Sudan’s British and Egyptian rulers sent troops to crush his rebellion, chancing on his camp in November that year and shooting him dead in the ensuing melee, before absorbing Darfur into Sudan.
Sultan Ali Dinar was pious and used to send an annual load of gifts to the holy shrines in Mecca and Medina for 20 years. The famous wells in Mecca which named “Abar Ali” have been dug by the Sultan to secure water for the pilgrims.
Throughout his reign, Sultan Ali Dinar, who died about a century ago, was known to have an army of followers, make a covering known as the kiswa, for the holy kaaba in Saudi Arabia. The followers would then carry this kiswa all the way to Saudi Arabia.
He also dug wells in the holy sites, known as Aabar Ali-or Ali’s wells- on the outskirts of Medina in Saudi Arabi