city and capital of North Kurdufan, Sudan
El-Obeid is a city of 450,000 inhabitants in Kurdufan.
Founded by the pashas of Ottoman Egypt in 1821, the city was sacked by the Mahdists in September 1883. It was then rebuilt on a modern plan in 1898, following the fall of the Mahdist empire. The population of El-Obeid today is majority Muslim, with a small Christian presence. The town is the site of an airport and an oil refinery. El-Obeid is home to the University of Kordofan, one of the largest universities in Sudan, established in 1990. Since 1989, the city also has been home to a French Association that serves as a Sudanese-French cultural centre in cooperation with the university's French language department