[376] The reader should consult for full details Sir A. Milner, England in Egypt (1892); Sir D.M. Wallace, The Egyptian Question (1883), especially chaps, xi.-xiii.; and A. Silva White, The Expansion of Egypt (1899), the best account of the Anglo-Egyptian administration, with valuable Appendices on the "Caisse," etc.
A far more favourable light is thrown on the conduct of Arabi and his partisans by Mr. A.M. Broadley in his work How We Defended Arabi (1884).
CHAPTER XVI
GORDON AND THE SUDAN
What were my ideas in coming out? They were these: Agreed abandonment of Sudan, but extricate the garrisons; and these were the instructions of the Government (Gordon's Journal, October 8, 1885).
It is one of the peculiarities of the Moslem faith that any time of revival is apt to be accompanied by warlike fervour somewhat like that which enabled its early votaries to sweep over half of the known world in a single generation. This militant creed becomes dangerous when it personifies itself in a holy man who can make good his claim to be received as a successor of the Prophet. Such a man had recently appeared in the Sudan. It is doubtful whether Mohammed Ahmed was a genuine believer in his own extravagant claims, or whether he adopted them in order to wreak revenge on Rauf Pasha, the Egyptian Governor of the Sudan, for an insult inflicted by one of his underlings. In May 1881, while living near the island of Abba in the Nile, he put forward his claim to be the Messiah or Prophet, foretold by the founder of that creed. Retiring with some disciples to that island, he gained fame by his fervour and asceticism. His followers named him "El Mahdi," the leader, but his claims were scouted by the Ulemas of Khartum, Cairo, and Constantinople, on the ground that the Messiah of the Moslems was to arise in the East. Nevertheless, while the British were crushing Arabi's movement, the Mahdi stirred the Sudan to its depths, and speedily shook the Egyptian rule to its base[377].
There was every reason to fear a speedy collapse. In the years 1874-76 the Province of the White Nile had known the benefits of just and tactful rule under that born leader of men, Colonel Gordon; and in the three following years, as Governor-General of the Sudan, he gained greater powers, which he felt to be needful for the suppression of the slave-trade and other evils. Ill-health and underhand opposition of various kinds caused him to resign his post in 1879. Then, to the disgust of all, the Khedive named as his successor Rauf Pasha, whom Gordon had recently dismissed for maladministration of the Province of Harrar, on the borders of Abyssinia[378]. Thus the Sudan, after experiencing the benefits of a just and able government, reeled back into the bad old condition, at the time when the Mahdi was becoming a power in the land. No help was forthcoming from Egypt in the summer of 1882, and the Mahdi's revolt rapidly made headway even despite several checks from the Egyptian troops.
Possibly, if Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues had decided to crush it in that autumn, the task might have been easy. But, far from doing so, they sought to dissuade the Khedive from attempting to hold the most disturbed districts, those of Kordofan and Darfur, beyond Khartum. This might have been the best course, if the evacuation could have been followed at once and without risk of disaster at the hands of the fanatics. But Tewfik willed otherwise. Against the advice of Lord Dufferin, he sought to reconquer the Sudan, and that, too, by wholly insufficient forces. The result was a series of disasters, culminating in the extermination of Hicks Pasha's Egyptian force by the Mahdi's followers near El Obeid, the capital of Kordofan (November 5, 1883).