of brave men until after eight hours of combat. 22 April 1900, he
was beaten at Kusseri by Major Lamy and killed at the end of the
battle, which also cost the life of his conqueror. His extraordinary
adventure lasted twenty-two years and ruined one part of Sudan.
MMaahhddiissmm
Like Rabah, the mahdi and his khalifewere Sudanese. Mohammed-
Ahmed, a native of Dongola, belonged to a Nuba family. He
proclaimed himself mahdi in 1881, after having defeated Rachid-
Bey, governor of Fashoda, in the mountains of southern Kurdufan,
where his family had come from and where he had established his
residence. In 1882, he won a new victory over an important
Egyptian column, and then seized all of Kurdufan, whose capital,
EI-Obeid, fell to his power in February, 1883. He drove into
ambush the army of Hicks-Pasha, 10,000 men strong, which was
entirely massacred in Chekan (Kurdufan), 4 November 1883.
Slatin-Pasha, governor of Darfur, and Lupton-Bey, governor of Bahr-
el-Ghazal, capitulated in 1884. Alone, Emin Pasha in Equatoria
(Upper Nile) and Mustafa-Bey in Dongola continued to hold out;
Berber and the Sennar were in the hands of the “Dervishes”, as the
partisans of the mahdi were called. On 15 January 1885, the latter
seized Omdurman, a suburb of Khartoum, and on 26 January he
entered the citadel of Khartoum as conqueror and put Gordon
Pasha to death. From then on he was the actual master of four-fifths
of what, five years before, had been Egyptian Sudan. Shortly after-
wards he died of typhoid fever in Omdurman.
As for Abdullah, he belonged to a Baggara tribe (cow-herders) of
Darfur, who were a cross between Arabs and Negroes. He was bound
by friendship to the mahdi, whose principal advisor he became and
who, at the moment of dying, designated him as his khalife, that is
Male figure on stool (Utongwe).
Western Tanzania.
Wood, height: 78.5 cm.
Bareiss Family collection.
There is next to no art from the Tongwe, a small group which live in the eastern
area of Lake Tanganyika, except for this object. The carving on this figure bears
stylistic similarities to the Jiji of the north. The male figure here beautifully
expresses the qualities of dignity and leadership. The elaborate coiffure and
facial features of this figure exhibit strong Tabwa influence, along with the
convention of the human figure standing on a stool, which signifies rank and
status. This figure, based on its attributes, likely represents a chief.