Al Ubayyid
bäyĭd´) or El Obeid(ĕl ōbād´), city (1993 pop. 229,425), central Sudan. It is a rail terminus, a road and camel caravan junction, and the end of a pilgrim road from Nigeria. Al Ubayyid is also a trade and transshipment point. Founded by the Turko-Egyptian pashas in 1821, it fell to the Mahdists in 1883 and was destroyed. Its reconstruction followed the fall of the Mahdist empire in 1898.