The binding of the Nile and the new Soudan

by Sidney Cornwallis Peel

Gordon’s successor at Khartoum was Raouf Pasha, the very man whom he had dismissed from his post as Governor of Harrar two years before for oppression and other malpractices. The appointment was not of good augury, and the improvements which had been made in the administration fell rapidly to pieces. The slave-traders began to lift their heads; once more the caravans, with their miserable human freight, began to journey towards Egypt or the Red Sea; once more the horde of tax-collectors felt themselves set free to levy their exactions at their will. The critical position of affairs in Egypt itself was reflected in the Soudan. Economy and retrenchment were the order of the day; under such a Government they were not likely to mean anything else than an increase in the burden on the provinces. Colonel Stewart, in his report on the Soudan, published in 1883, graphically describes the character of the irregular Bashi-Bazouks who were employed to collect the taxes.

‘Many, if not most of these men,’ he says, ‘are very indifferent characters. They are mostly swaggering bullies, robbing, plundering, and ill-treating the people with impunity. Probably for every pound that reaches the Treasury they rob an equal amount from the people. They are a constant menace to public tranquillity, and before any amelioration can be expected they must be got rid of. As soldiers they are valueless, having no discipline, nor, except in talk, do they exhibit any extraordinary courage. Compared with that of negroes and Egyptians their pay is high.’

A last paper reorganization took place in 1882. Schools were to be set up, a proper system of justice established, the slave-trade was to be again suppressed. A capable Governor-General, Abd-el-Kader, who might have made a great mark in happier times, was appointed to supersede Raouf. But it was too late. The promised reforms could be no more than acknowledgments of past deficiencies. Egypt had wasted the golden opportunities created for her by Baker and Gordon. The day of retribution was at hand. From every quarter of the horizon the clouds had long been gathering, and the tempest was now to burst. In August, 1881, the Mahdi had proclaimed himself publicly during the Feast of Ramadan as the prophet foretold by Mahomet.

Sheikh Mohammed Ahmed, strangely enough the son of a carpenter, and a little over thirty years of age, was a native of Dongola, but had been living for some time in the neighbourhood of Khartoum, where he had acquired a great reputation for sanctity. The Soudan was then, and still is, a soil peculiarly suitable for the growth of prophets. The creed of Islam, as is well known, has a peculiar fascination for the natives of Africa, owing, perhaps, to the simplicity and directness of its essential formula. But it has generally only overlaid, and not displaced, the old superstitions of pagan days. The people are naturally credulous and excitable, and in the entire absence of any education or learning there has been nothing to restrain them. Almost any holy man can gain some kind of a following—at any rate for a time. But the Mahdi was more than an ordinary prophet, and the times were ripe for rebellion.

The venality and corruption of the Egyptian officials had produced widespread discontent among the agricultural and trading classes. The oppressive exactions of the tax-collectors had reduced many to ruin and beggary. It seemed that any change of rulers must be a relief. The spasmodic efforts to suppress the slave-trade had seriously alarmed the nomad tribes, whose chief source of wealth it was. The one thing wanted was some strong influence to bind together the discordant elements of revolt. It was found in the idea preached by the Mahdi of the regeneration of Islam by force of arms. After the long years of wrong and oppression the promise of universal equality, with one law and one religion for all, was sweet to hear. To the people that sat in darkness it seemed that a great light had indeed arisen. The four great sects of the Mohammedan Soudan sank their differences in favour of the Prophet of the new dispensation. The stern character of his teaching, his earnest denunciation of earthly vanities and pleasures, his prohibition of the use of intoxicants and smoking, did much at the outset to rouse the fanatical fervour of his adherents. It was a social as well as a religious revolution. The simple jibbeh, or cotton shirt, became the badge of his followers and the emblem of his doctrine.

The course adopted by the Egyptian authorities was well calculated to increase his prestige. First they ignored, then they underrated, his power. Feeble attempts were made to seize him, which failed utterly. At first Sennar was the centre of disturbance; a little later the Mahdi appeared in Southern Kordofan. A small force of regulars was sent against him in December, 1881; they fell into an ambush and were utterly destroyed. In June, 1882, Yusuf Pasha, Governor of Fashoda, with several thousand men, set out to crush him finally. Yusuf had distinguished himself in Gessi’s famous campaign. That an experienced leader of disciplined troops could have anything to fear from a crowd of half-naked Arabs seemed to him utterly impossible; so he neglected every precaution, with the inevitable result of annihilation. Throughout the Soudan it was regarded as little less than a miracle. The warlike tribes of the west began to flock to the Mahdi’s standard. His fame spread to the farthest extremities of Darfur. By the end of 1882 he had three armies in the field. Everywhere the Egyptian garrisons were beleaguered. The hated tax-collectors and outlying bodies of troops were the first to feel the vengeance of the rebels. Early in 1883 came the fall of El Obeid, after a most gallant resistance under Mohamed Pasha Said. The Egyptian Government made a desperate attempt to regain their position. Hicks Pasha arrived at Khartoum with 10,000 men, mostly raw recruits, and advanced into Kordofan. Betrayed by their guides, suffering terribly from heat and thirst, deficient alike in courage and discipline, the expedition was beaten before it set out. On November 5 the massacre, for it was nothing else, took place, and only 300 survivors were left. The effect was tremendous. On the one side it was decided to abandon the Soudan and withdraw all the garrisons, and Gordon was sent to carry out this task; on the other, a gigantic impulse was given to the cause of Mahdism.

Great as Gordon’s influence had once been, it was impossible for it to outweigh the religious fervour of the Mahdists. His position was immensely weakened when it became known that his final object was the evacuation of the Soudan. Many waverers felt that they must in the end be left at the mercy of the Mahdi, and wavered no more. Gordon’s view was that the only way to evacuate the Soudan with honour and safety was to hold on to Khartoum, crush the enemy if possible, and then to retire, leaving behind some form of government capable of maintaining order. The only man, in his opinion, capable of such a position was Zubehr. But his views were not shared, perhaps hardly understood, by the authorities at home. The British Government, committed sorely against their will to a military occupation of Egypt, and earnestly desiring to make it as short as possible, were most unwilling to undertake further responsibilities in the Soudan. The conflict of opinion produced paralysis. Neither policy was completely adopted. British troops moved up to Assouan. In the Eastern Soudan the disaster of El Teb, where once more the Egyptian troops under Valentine Baker allowed themselves to be slaughtered like sheep, and the fall of Sinkat, forced the Government to take military action. General Graham, starting from Suakin, won brilliant victories at El Teb and Tamai, and relieved the garrison at Tokar. But the proposal to make a dash on Berber, now in the hands of the Mahdists, was vetoed, and Graham’s troops retired. Meanwhile in the Nile Valley the golden hours were flying fast. Gordon stood firmly by his policy of holding Khartoum, partly in the hope, growing daily fainter, of being able to turn the scale by his own personal exertions and influence, partly with the intention of forcing the British Government to change what seemed to him their disastrous and dishonourable policy of abandoning the Soudan to the rebels. On their side, the Government drifted, hesitating and temporizing, reluctant to reverse their settled policy of peace. And so the tragic game was played. Month by month the investment of Khartoum grew closer. Slatin Bey in Darfur, after fighting twenty-seven battles in the course of 1883, was deserted by his troops and forced to surrender. El Fasher was reduced in the following January. In the Bahr el Ghazal, Lupton Bey, the successor of Gessi, after holding out for eighteen months, shared the same fate, and was brought in a prisoner to Omdurman. In the east the garrison of Gedaref made terms with the enemy. The Mahdi was able to concentrate his forces at the important point.

Only in August, 1884, a relief expedition was decided on, and at the end of December two columns started from Korti, one along the Nile towards Abu Hamed, the other across the desert by Gakdul Wells to Metemmeh and Khartoum. But the effort that might have succeeded six months earlier was too late. Two days before the relieving steamers arrived the weak defences of Khartoum had been stormed, and Gordon had fallen.

For the moment it seemed that Gordon’s death would do what he himself could not do when alive. Great preparations were made for a new campaign in the autumn. The columns, which had drawn back to Merowe after much severe fighting, were quartered for the summer along the river. General Graham was again despatched to Suakin with orders to crush Osman Digna, and a railway from that place to Berber was begun. For two months there was hard fighting at Hashin, at McNeill’s Zeriba, and at Tamai. But the hot fit passed. The railway, which had been begun without any survey, quite in the familiar Egyptian fashion, was given up. The whole Nile Valley was left unoccupied as far as Kosheh. The dervishes pushed on, and occupied Dongola, and, though decisively beaten at Ginnis at the end of the year, they continued to maintain a harassing border warfare.

The Mahdi died in June, 1885, carried off by a malignant fever, or, as some say, poisoned by a woman, whilst in the middle of his preparations for the invasion of Egypt. His successor, the Khalifa Abdullahi, a Baggara of the Taaisha tribe from Darfur, took up his plans. To the children of the desert Egypt might well seem an easy and attractive field for plunder. They had had a rough experience of the quality of British troops in action, but these new antagonists had always followed up their victories by retreat and evacuation. They had no reason to doubt the continuation of the same nerveless policy. The British Government talked loudly of abandoning Egypt itself. Any resistance by Egyptian troops unsupported seemed an absurdity. But unexpected obstacles arose. A revolt in Darfur, war with Abyssinia, and the opposition of the great Kabbabish tribe, combined to delay the Khalifa’s advance. Not until 1889 did he send his best general, Wad el Nejumi, forward. Nejumi pressed on without misgivings. Only Egyptian troops were guarding the frontier. But the Egyptian battalions, trained and led by British officers, were no longer mere droves of frightened sheep. Under Wodehouse at Argin, and under Grenfell at Toski, they first checked, and then annihilated, Nejumi’s army. Thenceforward the dervish power steadily declined. The recapture in 1891 of Tokar, Osman Digna’s chief base of supplies, put an end to his influence in the Suakin district. Raiding and frontier warfare continued till 1896, but there was no serious fighting, until the Dongola Expedition in 1896 marked the opening of the well-prepared campaign which ended in the complete overthrow of the Khalifa’s power.