Abdelkarim Mirghani Cultural Centre

The Centre was inaugurated in May 1998, with the aim of being a lending Library, a research resource, a lecture and performance arts venue and a publishing house for Sudan's written culture and history.

Objective The Centre aims to co-operate closely with similar centres both locally and abroad and to provide students and researchers in all social and culture fields with all assistance possible such as computer and internet facilities, printing, photo copying and the like. The Centre reaches out to the whole of the community embracing everybody without prejudice or favour, irrespective of religion, custom, politics or locality. "Unity through Diversity" was the late Abdelkarim Merghani's slogan extolling acceptance of each other's views and principles and belief in peaceful democratic co-existence and shunning partisanship and extremism. May the Lord Bless this Institution and guide it in the right path to achieve its aims in advancing knowledge and enrich the life of the people in Sudan.

Facilities The Centre presently compromises two libraries one for children and the other for adults stocked with the cream of books on all subjects from Abbasids to Zoology. It has a respectable hall for lectures, debates, exhibitions, and theatrical and musical shows.

About Abdelkarim Mirghani

Sudan is a sprawling country made up of distinct parts different in race, language, religion, culture, colour and environment. Omdurman is the crucible where these attributes mixed and inter married to mould and shape the Sudanese identity. The mushrooming of reading, literacy, social and philosophical societies in Omdurman of the 1930's and 1940's created the socio-political forces which fashioned the National Spirit.

Many Omdurmanese personified that spirit; ABDELKARIM MIRGHANI was at their forefront. He was a political thinker, rather than a politician. He was a successful administrator, teacher, diplomat and minister in two governments in the 1960's; yet his real interest lay in history, philosophy, literature, herbal medicine, gardening and yoga. He was staunchly nationalistic and fought hard with his contemporaries to expel the British from Sudan, yet his literature was that of Shakespeare and Shaw his philosophy was that of Locke and Hume his economics was that of Adam Smith, and the Queen's portrait adorned the wall of his drawing room. He was a socialist who believed in parliamentary democracy, free trade and social justice. He was vehemently anti-American towards their foreign policy, yet his idol was Thomas Jefferson.

This Centre, the subject of this Website, which bears his name, is but a continuation to his Salon gatherings. since his retirement till his departure, attended daily by all shades of Sudanese forever discussing and debating endeavouring to shape and reshape that national spirit.

Like Sudan he was a man of many qualities; sharp intellect tempered with tolerance, wit, kindness and generosity. Like Omdurman he managed to bond and fuse all these qualities in a beautiful spirit, good and true.