168 ISLAM AT WAR
Azraq advanced his 10,000 spearmen in a wide arc against the center of
the enemy front. It was hoped that the covering fire of the riflemen might
allow the spearmen the chance to close the enemy without too heavy a
loss. At night, this plan might well have succeeded, but by day the quick-
firing artillery and maxim guns slaughtered Khalil’s men so quickly that
their threat evaporated before Uthman Azraq’s attack was fairly begun.
Worse was to follow as the Anglo-Egyptian cavalry moved to the north
to scout, and to keep the front of Kitchener’s force clear. In doing so they
ran across the Red and Green Standards under Abu Siwar and Shaykh al-
Din, with about 15,000 men, including the elitemulazimin.In a scram-
bling battle the allied cavalry engaged and pulled the two Sudanese corps
after them. Thus, when the crux of the battle came, at about ten in the
morning, those Sudanese forces were too far north to participate. The
Khalifa’s one chance to win the day came when the Anglo-Egyptian army
had broken camp and was marching to the south. As their forward ele-
ments moved past the mass of the Surkab Hills, under the khalifa’s per-
sonal orders the great mass of the Black Standard, with nearly 15,000
troops, lunged out at the isolated right flank of Kitchener’s army. The
disciplined troops quickly reformed and shot the Black Standard to pieces.
Had Abu Siwar and Shaykh al-Din not left their position, they could have
easily cut behind Kitchener’s exposed flank and massacred his army. As
it was, the Battle of Karari, or Omdurman, had taken only part of the
morning and had decisively broken Mahdist power in the Sudan. The
Khalifa fled with a few loyal adherents, and avoided his fate until Novem-
ber 1899, when he was surrounded with his tattered followers and shot
down.
The destruction of the Sudan put an end to the strongest and best-
organized Muslim state in Africa, and nearly the only independent nation
that had not yet been absorbed by colonial powers. The real battle between
Britain and the Sudan had not been decided at Omdurman. It was decided
in the university cities of England that produced the knowledge to build
weapons, by the arms factories that produced those weapons, and by the
parliamentary system of government that kept the soldiers loyal. The
Khalifa’s Sudan had enjoyed none of these advantages, and like every
other backward state, it had collapsed under the weight of the modern
world. In the defense of the Khalifa, though, his government was at least
moderately stable and for fourteen years the Sudanese people were free
from foreign oppression—although not from the domestic variety. If his
state was tyrannical, it should be remembered that he governed in much
the same manner as virtually every nation on earth at the time, save for a
dozen or so European and American states. Likewise, he prepared the