Su-an Kim Net Worth

In 1517, the Ottoman Sultan Selim I conquered the port, and after a brief occupation by the Funj, it was thereafter the residence of the pasha of the Ottoman province of Habeş. Under the Turks, Suakin declined sharply, as the Portuguese explorers discovered and perfected the sea route around Africa: when the Ottomans were unable to stop this trade, the local merchants began to abandon the town.

Some trade was kept up with the Sultanate of Sennar, but by the 18th and 19th centuries, the Swiss traveler Johann Ludwig Burckhardt found two-thirds of the homes in ruin. The Khedive Isma'il received Suakin from the Ottomans in 1865 and attempted to revitalize it: Egypt built new houses, mills, mosques, hospitals, even a church for immigrant Copts.

The British Army was involved at Suakin in 1883-85 and Lord Kitchener was there in this period leading the Egyptian Army contingent. Suakin was his headquarters and his force survived a lengthy siege there.

The Australian colonial forces of Victoria offered their torpedo boat HMVS Childers, and gunboats HMVS Victoria and HMVS Albert, which arrived in Suakin on 19 March 1884 on their delivery voyage from Britain, only to be released as fighting had moved inland. They departed on 23 March, arriving in Melbourne on 25 June 1884. An essentially civilian military force of 770 men from New South Wales, including some of the Naval Brigade, arrived in Suakin in March 1885 and served until mid-May.

After the Mahdi's defeat, the British preferred to develop the new Port Sudan rather than engage in the extensive rebuilding and expansion that would be necessary to make Suakin comparable. By 1922, the last of the British had left.

Suakin has a very hot desert climate (Köppen BWh) with brutally hot and humid, though dry, summers and very warm winters. Rainfall is minimal except in November, when easterly winds can give occasional downpours: in November 1965 as much as 445 millimetres (17.5 in) fell, but in the whole year from July 1981 to June 1982 no more than 3 millimetres (0.1 in) was recorded.

A detailed description of the buildings of Suakin, including measured plans and detailed sketches, can be found in The Coral Buildings of Suakin: Islamic Architecture, Planning, Design and Domestic Arrangements in a Red Sea Port by Jeanne-Pierre Greenlaw, Kegan Paul International, 1995, ISBN 0-7103-0489-7.

The collapse of the Abbasids and growth of Fatimid Egypt changed this and Al-Qusayr and Aydhab became important emporia, trading with India and ferrying African pilgrims to Mecca. Suakin was first mentioned by name in the 10th century by al-Hamdani, who says it was already an ancient town. At that time, Suakin was a small Beja settlement, but it began to expand after the abandonment of the port of Badi to its south. The Crusades and Mongol invasions drove more trade into the region: there are a number of references to Venetian merchants residing at Suakin and Massawa as early as the 14th century.

At the end of 2017, Sudan government agreed to lease Suakin Island to the Republic of Turkey for 99 years.

The Beja name for Suakin was U Suk, possibly from the Arabic word suq, meaning market. In Beja, the locative case for this is isukib, whence Suakin might have derived. The spelling on Admiralty charts in the late 19th century was "Sauakin" but in the popular press "Suakim" was predominant.