In 1891 Darfur and Kordofan were again disturbed, and Sultan Abbas succeeded in turning the dervishes out of the Jebel Marra district. Two years later a saint of Sokoto, Abu Naal Muzil el Muhan, collected many followers and for a time threatened the khalifa’s power, but the revolt gradually died out.
The Bahr-el-Ghazal.—The first outbreak in favour of Mahdism in the Bahr-el-Ghazal took place at Liffi in August 1882, when the Dinka tribe, under Jango, revolted and was defeated by Lupton Bey with considerable slaughter at Tel Gauna, and again in 1883 near Liffi. In September of that year Lupton’s captain, Rufai Aga, was massacred with all his men at Dembo, and Lupton, short of ammunition, was forced to retire to Dem Suliman, where he was completely cut off from Khartum. After gallantly fighting for eighteen months he was compelled by the defection of his troops to surrender on the 21st of April 1884 to Karamalla, the dervish amir of the province. He died at Omdurman in 1888.
In 1890 the Shilluks in the neighbourhood of Fashoda rose against the khalifa, and the dervish amir of Gallabat, Zeki Tumal, was engaged for two years in suppressing the rebellion. He got the upper hand in 1892, and was recalled to oppose an Italian force said to be advancing from Massawa; but on reporting that it was impossible to invade Eritrea, as the khalifa wished him to do, he was summoned to Omdurman and put to death. The country then relapsed into its original barbarous condition, and dervish influence was nominal only. In 1892 the Congo State expedition established posts up to the seventh parallel of north latitude. In 1893 the dervish amir, Abu Mariam, fought with the Dinka tribe and was killed and his force destroyed, the fugitives taking refuge in Shakka. In the following year the Congo expedition established further posts, and in consequence the khalifa sent 3000 men, under the amir Khatem Musa, from Shakka to reoccupy the Bahr-el-Ghazal. The Belgians at Liffi retired before him, and he entered Faroga. Famine and disease broke out in Khatem Musa’s camp in 1895, and a retreat was made towards Kordofan.
Equatoria.—In the Equatorial Province, which extended from the Albert Nyanza to Lado, Emin Bey, who had a force of 1300 Egyptian troops and 3000 irregulars, distributed among many stations, held out, hoping for reinforcements. In March 1885, however, Amadi fell to the dervishes, and on the 18th of April Karamalla arrived near Lado, the capital, and sent to inform Emin of the fall of Khartum. Emin and Captain Casati, an Italian, moved south to Wadelai, giving up the northern posts, and opened friendly relations with Kabarega, king of Unyoro. On the 26th of February 1886 Emin received despatches from Cairo via Zanzibar, from which he learned all that had occurred during the previous three years, and that “he might take any step he liked, should he decide to leave the country.” He determined to remain where he was and “hold together, as long as possible, the remnant of the last ten years.” His troops were in a mutinous state, wishing to go north rather than south, as Emin had ordered them to do, and unsuccessfully endeavoured to carry him with them by force.
His communications to Europe through Zanzibar led to the relief expedition under H. M. Stanley, which went to his rescue by way of the Congo in 1887, and after encountering incredible dangers and experiencing innumerable sufferings, met with Emin and Casati at Nsabé, on the Albert Nyanza, on the 29th of April 1888. Stanley went back in May to pick up his belated rearguard, leaving Mounteney Jephson and a small escort to accompany Emin round his province. The southern garrisons decided to go with Emin, but the troops at Labore mutinied, and a general revolt broke out, headed by Fadl-el-Maula, governor of Fabbo. On arriving at Dufile in August 1888, Emin and Jephson were made prisoners by the Egyptian mutineers. In the meantime the arrival of Stanley at Lake Albert had caused rumours, which quickly spread to Omdurman, of a great invading white pasha, with the result that in July the khalifa sent up the river three steamers and six barges, containing 4000 troops, to oppose this new-comer. In October Omar-Saleh, the Mahdist commander, took Rejaf and sent messengers to Dufile to summon Emin to surrender; but on the 15th of November the mutineers released both Emin and Jephson, who returned to Lake Albert with some 600 refugees, and joined Stanley in February 1889. The expedition arrived at Zanzibar at the end of the year.
Emin’s mutinous troops kept the dervishes at bay between Wadelai and Rejaf, and eventually severely defeated them, driving them back to Rejaf. They did not, however, follow up their victory, and under the leadership of Fadl-el-Maula Bey remained about Wadelai, while the dervishes strengthened their post at Rejaf. In 1893 Fadl-el-Maula Bey and many of his men took service with Baert of the Congo State expedition. The bey was killed fighting the dervishes at Wandi in January 1894, and the remnant of his men eventually were found by Captain Thruston from Uganda on the 23rd of March 1894 at Mahagi, on the Albert Nyanza, whither they had drifted from Wadelai in search of supplies. They were enlisted by Thruston and brought back under the British flag to Uganda.
In consequence of the Franco-Congolese Treaty of 1894, Major Cunningham and Lieutenant Vandeleur were sent from Uganda to Dufile, where they planted the British flag on the 15th of January 1895.
Sudan Operations, 1896-1900
The wonderful progress—political, economical and social—which Egypt had made during British occupation, so ably set forth in Sir Alfred Milner’s England in Egypt (published in 1892), 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, as detailed in the accounts of their captivity at Omdurman by Father Ohrwalder and Slatin Bey (published in 1892 and 1896), stirred public opinion in Great Dongola campaign, 1896. 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 the 1st of 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.