Mohamed Osman al-Mirghani

Mohamed Osman al-Mirghani was born in 1936 into the al-Mirghani family, the hereditary leaders of the Khatmiyya, one of the largest and most influential Sufi orders in Sudan. His father, Sayyid Ali al-Mirghani, was among the dominant religious and political figures of twentieth century Sudan and the patron of the unionist movement. A 1960s photograph shows the young Mohamed Osman and his brother Ahmed being received by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, reflecting the family's close historic ties with Egypt.

On the death of his father in 1968, al-Mirghani became leader of the Khatmiyya and of the People's Democratic Party. In December 1967, in the presence of King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, the PDP and Ismail al-Azhari's National Unionist Party had reunited as the Democratic Unionist Party, led first by al-Azhari and then by Sharif Hussein al-Hindi. Al-Mirghani took over the DUP leadership after al-Hindi's death in 1982.

After the 1985 coup the DUP governed in coalition with the National Umma Party, and his brother Ahmed al-Mirghani served as head of state. In November 1988 al-Mirghani met John Garang of the SPLM in Addis Ababa and agreed a peace initiative to end the Second Sudanese Civil War, but it was overtaken by the June 1989 coup of Omar al-Bashir and Hassan al-Turabi. He was placed under house arrest in November 1989 and released by February 1990, and he then headed the National Democratic Alliance, the coalition of parties and armed movements opposed to the new regime.

After a later reconciliation his party, the DUP (Original), took part in government, and in 2014 he received the Order of the Republic from President al-Bashir. He left Sudan in 2013 amid divisions in the party, settling in London and then Cairo, and continued to run party affairs from abroad. In November 2022 he returned to Khartoum aboard a plane arranged by President el-Sisi of Egypt and was greeted by vast crowds of Khatmiyya followers. After war broke out in April 2023 he went back to Cairo and called on Sudanese to rally behind the army against the Rapid Support Forces.

Al-Mirghani combined the roles of hereditary religious guide and party leader, and for his followers he was simply Mawlana. His younger brother, Ahmed al-Mirghani, was Sudan's head of state from 1986 to 1989 and died in 2008. In his final years he lived at the family villa in the Heliopolis district of Cairo, where his sons received condolences after his death.

Mohamed Osman al-Mirghani died in Cairo on Friday 13 November 2026, aged about 90. Sudan Tribune reported that his death was announced at Cleopatra Hospital, where he had been admitted, while other outlets said he died at his home in Heliopolis. The Khatmiyya authority instructed its mosques and lodges in Sudan and abroad to open for condolences, and party officials said he would be laid to rest on Monday at the mosque of Sayyid Ali al-Mirghani in Khartoum North, so that followers could take part in the funeral in the capital.

Al-Mirghani is remembered as the last of the founding generation of leaders of Sudan's traditional parties, a figure whose name was bound up with both the Khatmiyya order and the unionist movement for more than fifty years. His 1988 accord with John Garang remains one of the most cited attempts to end Sudan's long civil war, and his leadership of the National Democratic Alliance made him a central figure of the opposition in the 1990s. His death came as Sudan faced continuing war and a deep humanitarian crisis.