MULLAHS AND MACHINE GUNS 161Muhammad Ahmad, henceforth referred to asthe Mahdi, declared him-
self in June 1881 and began preaching for the overthrow of the govern-
ment, or “Turks.” It is useful to note that the Sudanese considered the
Egyptians as outsiders and considered them “Turks” in the same way that
many Muslim peoples often refer to Europeans as “Franks.” After a polite
exchange of letters, the current governor-general, RaÛuf Pasha, sent a gun-
boat and a small company of soldiers to Aba, south of Khartoum, to arrest
this new threat to whatever civil order existed in the Sudan. That the
Mahdi was not taken seriously is evident by the weak force sent to collect
him.
In his fight at Aba, in August 1881, the Mahdi deployed his 300 fol-
lowers in squads of 10 or so men between two separate commands. These
waited outside the village, and as soon as the government soldiers marched
out and opened fire on one group, the second swarmed in on their flank
and slaughtered them. It was a good tactic—one that allowed men armed
only with swords and spears to oppose riflemen. The Mahdi would use it
again to good effect.
The victory at Aba established the Mahdi’s credentials as a true
prophet,^2 and the oppressed people of the Sudan flocked to his standard,
but the new leader prudently moved south to Kordofan, near the fortress
of Fashoda. The Mahdi, a genuinely capable military leader, knew that he
would have to fight again but preferred to do so away from the main center
of the government’s power at Khartoum. On December 28, 1881, his force
of 5,000 poorly armed men ambushed a punitive column sent out by the
fortress commander. The troops were again massacred, and for the first
time the rebel forces began to acquire enough firearms to arm significant
numbers of mahdist followers. Another government column was anni-
hilated on May 28, in their zariba—or thorn-enclosed camp—at Jabal
Jarrada. This emboldened the Mahdi to take the offensive, and in Sep-
tember he moved his forces west and attacked the fortified city at El
Obeid. The fortifications were too much for the fanatical spearmen to
overcome, and many of the Mahdi’s followers were shot down by the
riflemen of the garrison, in a defeat that dampened the rebel cause but
did not extinguish it.^3
El Obeid aside, the government’s failure to crush the rebels resulted in
ever-larger numbers of adherents flocking to the Mahdi. By 1883, the
Cairo government was determined to contain the revolt before it could
spread. Their solution was to hire a British officer, Colonel William
Hicks,^4 to lead a large Egyptian field force against the main rebel concen-
tration. This force of 10,000 men, many of them regular soldiers, was at
least well armed, but their poor morale and inadequate discipline doomed