Mahdi
Uprising 1882-1885
Of the causes which
led to the reconquest of the Sudan �
the natural desire of the Egyptian government to recover lost territory, the
equally natural desire in Great Britain to "avenge" the death of
Gordon were among them �
the most weighty was the necessity of securing for Egypt the control of the
Upper Nile, Egypt being wholly dependent on the waters of the river for its
prosperity. That control would have been lost had a European power other than
Great Britain obtained possession of any part of the Nile valley; and at the
time the Sudan was reconquered (1896-98) France was endeavouring to establish
her authority on the river between Khartum and Gondokoro, as the Marchand
expedition from the Congo to Fashoda demonstrated. The Nile constituted, in the
words of Lord Cromer, the true justification of the policy of re-occupation,
and made the Sudan a priceless possession for Egypt.
In 1869 the Suez
Canal had opened and quickly became Britain's economic lifeline to India and
the Far East. To defend this waterway, Britain sought a greater role in
Egyptian affairs. In 1873 the British government therefore supported a program
whereby an Anglo-French debt commission assumed responsibility for managing
Egypt's fiscal affairs. This commission eventually forced Khedive Ismail to
abdicate in favor of his more politically acceptable son, Tawfiq (1877-92).
In the 1850s, the
legal systems in Egypt and Sudan was revised, introducing a commercial code and
a criminal code administered in secular courts. The change reduced the prestige
of the qadis (Islamic judges) whose sharia courts were confined to dealing with
matters of personal status. Even in this area, the courts lacked credibility in
the eyes of Sudanese Muslims because they conducted hearings according to the
Ottoman Empire's Hanafi school of law rather than the stricter Maliki school
traditional in the area. The Turkiyah also encouraged a religious orthodoxy
favored in the Ottoman Empire. The government undertook a mosque-building
program and staffed religious schools and courts with teachers and judges
trained at Cairo's Al Azhar University. The government favored the Khatmiyyah,
a traditional religious order, because its leaders preached cooperation with
the regime. But Sudanese Muslims condemned the official orthodoxy as decadent
because it had rejected many popular beliefs and practices.
The Mahdist movement,
which was utterly to overthrow Egyptian rule, derived its strength from two
different causes: the oppression under which the people suffered, and the
measures taken to prevent the Baggara (cattle-owning Arabs) from slave trading.
Venality and the extortion of the tax-gatherer flourished anew after the
departure of Gordon, while the feebleness of his successors inspired in the
Baggara a contempt for the authority which prohibited them pursuing their most
lucrative traffic. When Mahommed Ahmed, a Dongolese, proclaimed himself the
long-lookcd-for Mahdi (guide) of Islam, he found most of his original followers
among the grossly superstitious villagers of Kordofan, to whom he preached
universal equality and a community of goods, while denouncing the Turks as
unworthy Moslems on whom God would execute judgment.
The Baggara perceived
in this Mahdi one who could be used to shake off Egyptian rule, and their
adhesion to him first gave importance to his "mission." Mahommed
Ahmed became at once the leader and the agent of the Baggara. He married the
daughters of their sheikhs and found in Abdullah, a member of the Taaisha
section of the tribe, his chief supporter. The first armed conflict between the
Egyptian troops and the Mahdi's followers occurred in August 1881. In June 1882
the Mahdi gained his first considerable success. The capture of El Obeid on 17
January 1883 and the annihilation in the November of an army of over 10,000 men
commanded by Hicks Pasha (Colonel William Hicks, formerly of the Bombay army),
made the Mahdi undisputed master of Kordofan and Sennar. The next month,
December 1883, saw the surrender of Slatin in Darfur, while in February 1884
Osman Digna, his amir in the Red Sea regions, inflicted a crushing defeat on
some 4,000 Egyptians at El Teh near Suakin. In April following Lupton Bey,
governor of Bahr-el-Ghazal, whose troops and officials had embraced the Mahdist
cause, surrendered and was sent captive to Omdurman, where he died on the 8th
of May 1888.
On learning of the
disaster to Hicks Pasha's army, the British government (Great Britain having
been since 1882 in military occupation of Egypt) insisted that the Egyptian
government should evacuate such parts of the Sudan as they still held, and
General Gordon was despatched, with Lieut.-Colonel Donald H. Stewart, to
Khartum to arrange the withdrawal of the Egyptian civil and military
population. Gordon's instructions, based largely on his own suggestions, were
not wholly consistent; they contemplated vaguely the establishment of some form
of stable government on the surrende, and among the documents with which he was
furnished was a firman creating him governor-general of the Sudan.
General Charles
"Chinese" Gordon, a soldier who had success in dealing with the Chinese
and so was of renown for his abilities, was sent to lead the Egyptian forces
against the Sudanese dervishes. The British had ignored the training of the
Egyptian forces andwhile the Gladstone administration made a symbolic gesture
of sending a leader of somerenown and experience against third world forces,
General Gordon was left to his own devices. Since he was leading an army that
was largely untrained and pressed into service against a motivated religious
movement, Gordon, despite his extraordinary personal efforts, was doomed. His
repeated requests for resupply and reinforcements were ignored.
Gordon reached
Khartum on the 18th of February 1884 and at first his mission, which had
aroused great enthusiasm in England, promised success. To smooth the way for
the retreat of the Egyptian garrisons and civilians he issued proclamations
announcing that the suppression of the slave trade was abandoned, that the
Mahdi was sultan of Kordofan, and that the Sudan was independent of Egypt. He
enabled some thousands of refugees to make their escape to Aswan and collected
at Khartum troops from some of the outlying stations.
By this time the
situation had altered for the worse and Mahdism was gaining strength among
tribes in the Nile valley at first hostile to its propaganda. As the only means
of preserving authority at Khartum (and thus securing the peaceful withdrawal
of the garrison) Gordon repeatedly telegraphed to Cairo asking that Zobeir
Pasha might be sent to him, his intention being to hand over to Zobeir the
government of the country. Zobeir, a Sudanese Arab, was probably the one man
who could have withstood successfully the Mahdi. Owing to Zobeir's notoriety as
a slave-raider Gordon's request was refused. All hope of a peaceful retreat of
the Egyptians was thus rendered impossible.
The Mahdist movement
now swept northward and on the 20th of May Berber was captured by the dervishes
and Khartum isolated. From this time the energies of Gordon were devoted to the
defence of that town. After months of delay due to the vacillation of the
British government a relief expedition was sent up the Nile under the command
of Lord Wolseley. It started too late to achieve its object, and on the 25th of
January 1885 Khartum was captured by the Mahdi and Gordon killed.
Colonel Stewart,
Frank Power (British consul at Khartum) and M. Herbin (French consul), who
(accompanied by nineteen Greeks) had been sent down the Nile by Gordon in the
previous September to give news to the relief force, had been decoyed ashore
and murdered (Sept. 18, 1884). The fall of Khartum was followed by the
withdrawal of the British expedition, Dongola being evacuated in June 1885. In
the same month Kassala capitulated, but just as the Mahdi had practically
completed the destruction of the Egyptian power, he died, in this same month of
June 1885. He was at once succeeded by the khalifa Abdullah, whose rule
continued until 1898, when his army was completely overthrown by an
Anglo-Egyptian force under Sir H. (afterwards Lord) Kitchener.
The Mahdi had been
regarded by his adherents as the only true commander of the faithful, endowed
with divine power to conquer the whole world. He had at first styled his
followers dervishes (i.e. religious mendicants) and given them the jibba as
their characteristic garment or uniform. Later on he commanded the faithful to
call themselves ansar (helpers), a reference to the part they were to play in
his career of conquest, and at the time of his death he was planning an
invasion of Egypt.
He had liberated the
Sudanese from the extortions of the Egyptians, but the people soon found that
the Mahdi's rule was even more oppressive than had been that of their former
masters, and after the Mahdi's death the situation of the peasantry in
particular grew rapidly worse, neither life nor property being safe. Abdullah
set himself steadily to crush all opposition to his own power.
Mahommed Ahmed had,
In accordance with the traditions which required the Mahdi to have four
khalifas (lieutenants), nominated, besides Abdullah, Ali wad Helu, a sheikh of
the Dogheim and Kenana Arabs, and Mahommed esh Sherif, his son-in-law, as
khalifas. (The other khalifaship was vacant having been declined by the sheikh
es Senussi. Wad Helu and Shcrif were stripped of their power and gradually all
chiefs and amirs not of the Baggara tribe were got rid of except Osman Digna,
whose sphere of operations was on the Red Sea coast. Abdullah's rule was a pure
military despotism which brought the country to a state of almost complete
agricultural and commercial ruin. He was also almost constantly in conflict
either with the Shilluks, Nuers and other tribes of the south; with the peoples
of Darfur, where at one time an anti-Mahdi gained a great following; with the
Abyssinians; with the Kabbabish and other Arab tribes.
In the country under
his dominion the khalifa's government was carried on after the manner of other
Mahommedan states, but pilgrimages to the Mahdi's tomb at Omdurman were
substituted for pilgrimages to Mecca. The arsenal and dockyard and the
printing-press at Khartum were kept busy (the workmen being Egyptians who had
escaped massacre). Otherwise Khartum was deserted, the khalifa making, Omdurman
his capital and compelling disaffected tribes to dwell in it so as to be under
better control. While Omdurman grew to a huge size the populatioa of the
country generally dwindled enormously from constant warfare and the ravages of
disease, small-pox being endemic. The fanaticism with which the Mahdi had
inspired his followers remained almost unbroken to the end. Mahdism as a vital
force in the old Egyptian Sudan ceased, however, with the Anglo-Egyptian
victory at Omdurman.
The wonderful
progress � political,
economical, and social �
which Egypt had made during British occupation, together with the revelation in
so strong a light of the character of the Khalifa's despotism in the Sudan and
the miserable condition of his misgoverned people, stirred public opinion in
Great Britain, and brought the question of the recovery of the Sudan into
prominence.
A change of ministry
took place in 1895, and Lord Salisbury's Cabinet, which had consistently
assailed the Egyptian policy of the old, was not unwilling to consider whether
the flourishing condition of Egyptian finance, the prosperity of the country
and the settled state of its affairs, with a capable and proved little army
ready to hand, did not warrant an attempt being made to recover gradually the
Sudan provinces abandoned by Egypt in 1885 on the advice of Mr Gladstone's
Government. Such being the condition of public and official sentiment, the
crushing defeat of the Italians by the Abyssinians at the battle of Adowa on
1st March 1896, and the critical state of Kassala � held by Italy at British suggestion, and now closely
invested by the dervishes�made
it not only desirable but necessary to take immediate action.
On 14 March 1896
Major-General Sir H. Kitchener, who succeeded Sir Francis Grenfell as Sirdar of
the Egyptian army in 1892, received orders to reoccupy Akasheh, 50 miles south
of Sarras, and to carry the railway on from Sarras. The railway reconstruction,
under Lieutenant E.P. Girouard, RE., pushed southward; and a telegraph line
followed the advance. At the commencement of the campaign the Egyptian army,
including reserves, consisted of 16 battalions of infantry, of which 6 were
Sudanese, 10 squadrons of cavalry, 5 batteries of artillery, 3 companies of
garrison artillery, and 8 companies of camel corps, and it possessed 13
gunboats for river work.
By the end of June the railway was
advanced beyond Akasheh, and headquarters were at Kosheh, 10 miles farther
south. Cholera and fever were busy both with the North Staffordshire Begiment
at Gemai, whither they had been moved on its approach, and with the Egyptian
troops at the front, and carried off many officers and men. The railway reached
Kosheh early in August; the cholera disappeared, and stores were collected and
arrangements steadily made for a farther advance. Dongola was bombarded by the
gunboats and captured by the army on 23 September 1896. The dervish Dongola
army practically ceased to exist, and the principal sheiks came in and
submitted to the Sirdar. The Dongola campaign was over, and the province
recovered to Egypt.
The railway up the right bank of the
Nile was continued to Kermah, in order to evade the difficulties of the 3rd
Cataract; but the Sirdar had conceived the bold project of cutting off the
great angle of the Nile from Wadi Haifa to Abu Hamed, involving nearly 600
miles of navigation and including the Fourth Cataract, by Tae Sudan
constructing a railway across the Nubian desert, and so bringing his base at
Wadi Haifa within a few hours of his force. The railway reached Abu Hamed on
the 4th November, and was pushed rapidly forward along the right bank of the
Nile towards Berber.
The dervish army reached Nakheila on 20
March 1896, and entrenched themselves there. After several reconnaissances, in
which fighting took place with Mahmud's outposts, it was ascertained from
prisoners that their army was short of provisions and that great leakage was going
on. Kitchener, therefore, did not hurry. Mahmud's camp, after an hour's
bombardment on the morning of 08 April, was stormed with complete success.
Mahmud and several hundred dervishes were captured, 40 emirs and 3000 Arabs
killed, and many more wounded; the rest escaped to Gedaref. The Sirdar's
casualties were 80 killed and 472 wounded. Preparations were now made for the
attack on the Khalifa's force at Omdurman.
On the 1st September the army
bivouacked at Egeiga, on the west bank of the Nile, within 4 miles of Omdurman.
Here, on the morning of the 2nd September, the Khalifa's army, 40,000 strong,
attacked, but was repulsed with slaughter. Kitchener then moved out and marched
towards Omdurman, when he was again twice fiercely attacked on the right flank and
rear. The 21st Lancers gallantly charged a body of 2000 dervishes which was
unexpectedly met, and drove them westward, the Lancers losing a fifth of their
number in killed and wounded. The Khalifa was now in full retreat, and the
Sirdar, sending his cavalry in pursuit, marched into Omdurman. The dervish loss
was over 10,000 killed, as many wounded, and 5000 prisoners. The British and
Egyptian casualties together were under 500. The Khalifa's black flag was
captured and sent home to the Queen. The power of modern armies had been
demonstrated.
The reconquest of Dongola and the Sudan
provinces during the three years from March 1896 to December 1898, considering
the enormous extent and difficulties of the country, was achieved at an
unprecedentedly small cost, while the main item of expenditure�the railway�remains a permanent
benefit to the country. The railway, delayed by the construction of the big
bridge over the Atbara, was opened to the Blue Nile opposite Khartum, 187 miles
from the Atbara, at the end of 1899.
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