[Footnote 376:  The reader should consult for full details Sir A. Milner, England in Egypt (1892); Sir D.M.  Wallace, The Egyptian Question (1883), especially chaps, xi.-xiii.; and A. Silva White, The Expansion of Egypt (1899), the best account of the Anglo-Egyptian administration, with valuable Appendices on the “Caisse,” etc.

A far more favourable light is thrown on the conduct of Arabi and his partisans by Mr. A.M.  Broadley in his work How We Defended Arabi (1884).]

But above and beyond these administrative details, there was one all-compelling cause, the war-cloud that now threatened the land of the Pharaohs from that home of savagery and fanaticism, the Sudan.

NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION

For new light on the nationalist movement in Egypt and the part which Arabi played in it, the reader should consult How we defended Arabi, by A.M.  Broadley (London, 1884).  The same writer in his Tunis, Past and Present (2 vols. 1882) has thrown much light on the Tunis Question and on the Pan-Islamic movement in North Africa.

CHAPTER XVI

GORDON AND THE SUDAN

What were my ideas in coming out?  They were these:  Agreed abandonment of Sudan, but extricate the garrisons; and these were the instructions of the Government (Gordon’s Journal, October 8, 1885).

It is one of the peculiarities of the Moslem faith that any time of revival is apt to be accompanied by warlike fervour somewhat like that which enabled its early votaries to sweep over half of the known world in a single generation.  This militant creed becomes dangerous when it personifies itself in a holy man who can make good his claim to be received as a successor of the Prophet.  Such a man had recently appeared in the Sudan.  It is doubtful whether Mohammed Ahmed was a genuine believer in his own extravagant claims, or whether he adopted them in order to wreak revenge on Rauf Pasha, the Egyptian Governor of the Sudan, for an insult inflicted by one of his underlings.  In May 1881, while living near the island of Abba in the Nile, he put forward his claim to be the Messiah or Prophet, foretold by the founder of that creed.  Retiring with some disciples to that island, he gained fame by his fervour and asceticism.  His followers named him “El Mahdi,” the leader, but his claims were scouted by the Ulemas of Khartum, Cairo, and Constantinople, on the ground that the Messiah of the Moslems was to arise in the East.  Nevertheless, while the British were crushing Arabi’s movement, the Mahdi stirred the Sudan to its depths, and speedily shook the Egyptian rule to its base[377].

[Footnote 377:  See the Report of the Intelligence Department of the War Office, printed in The Journals of Major-General C.G.  Gordon at Khartum, Appendix to Bk. iv.]