 |
The law against the slave trade promulgated by the British colonel (later General) Charles Gordon when Governor of the Sudan, led to social unrest in the province of Darfur in 1877. This disturbance spread in 1878 to Kordofan Province. There, Muhammad Ahmed ibn Seyyid Abdullah proclaimed himself as being the Mahdi (meaning The Saviour) and in 1881 and 1882 the Sudanese, under his inspired leadership, succeeded on two occasions in destroying a small Egyptian army unit. Schuver, who quite by accident had met two of the Mahdi's envoys during his journey to the border with Ethiopia, wanted nothing to do with the movement. He predicted, correctly, that the Mahdi's supporters were doomed to defeat, considering the fact that their patriotic-religious movement was extremely isolated. At that moment, however, the movement's defeat was still over the horizon, and when the city of El Obeid fell to the Mahdi in 1883, and an Egyptian relief force ten thousand strong was defeated, the Bejas of the Red Sea also rebelled. After Darfur and Kordofan had fallen into the Mahdi's hands, Gordon was given the task in 1884 of preparing to evacuate Khartoum. A British fleet occupied the Red Sea port of Suakin, but the British did not march inland from there. The British public and press demanded that Gordon, confined to Khartoum, be rescued. On 22 January 1885 the city fell to the Mahdi, and Gordon was killed. A British relieving army arrived two days too late, but the Mahdi himself also died that year from smallpox, and an invasion of Egypt by his son and successor, Abdullah el Taaishi, failed miserably. Nevertheless the Sudan remained under control of the Mahdi's followers until the British defeated Abdullah in 1898 at Omdurman. In 1899 the Sudan was placed under Anglo-Egyptian rule. |
|
