Not a few impostors had exploited this doctrine to their own advantage, and some of the Arabian tribes were firmly convinced that the Mahdi had come, and that the Mahdis who had appeared to their kinsmen elsewhere were merely clever charlatans.  In the year 1881 Muhammed Ahmet, a religious leader among the Moslem Arabs in the Central African provinces of Kordofan and Darfur, proclaimed himself as the Mahdi, and called upon the Muhammedans to initiate a holy war.

The Mahdi’s continued advances were rendered possible by the precarious state of affairs in Egypt.  After a settlement was effected in 1883, Hicks Pasha, an officer of courage and ability, who had retired from the Indian army, gathered 11,000 men at Omdurman to quell the Mahdist insurrection.  With this force he started up the Nile and struck across the desert to El-Obeid, where his troops were decoyed into a ravine, and after three days’ fighting his whole army was annihilated by the Mahdist army numbering about 300,000 men.  The entire Sudan then revolted against Egypt.  The redoubtable Osman Digna appeared with the Hadendowa Arabs off the coast of the Red Sea, and harassed the Egyptian garrison.  Osman defeated Captain Moncrieff and an army of 3,000 Bashi-Bazouks led by Baker Pasha.  Egypt, under the advisement of the British government, then attempted to withdraw from the Sudan.  It was decided that the western provinces of Kordofan and Dafur should be abandoned, but that important centres like Khartum on the Nile should be preserved, at least for a time.  Here all the Egyptian colonists were to congregate.  If the revolting Arab tribes, called by the general name of Dervishes, would not come to friendly terms with the settlers, then, in time, it was decided that Khartum itself, and every other locality in the Sudan, should be entirely relinquished, except the ports of the Red Sea.

General Gordon was sent to Khartum to make terms with the Mahdi and prepare for eventualities.  The evacuation of this place was almost immediately decided upon by the British Cabinet, and Gordon arrived on February 18, 1884, but, being unsupported by European troops, he found the position an exceedingly difficult one to maintain.  The Mahdi scorned his overtures, and Osman Digna was daily closing in upon the Egyptian port of Suakin.

[Illustration:  204.jpg OSMAN DIGNA]

The British then determined to act with vigour.  Sinkitat had fallen on February 8th, and to protect Tokar and Suakin they landed four thousand men and fought a fierce battle with nine thousand Hadendowas at El — Teb February 28, 1884.  The Egyptian garrison of Tokar, when the British army arrived, was found to have compromised with the Mahdists.  Later on was fought the battle of Tamai against Osman Digna, during which a body of Arabs rushed the British guns and broke up the formation of their square.  The British were on the point of defeat, but they managed to recover the lost guns, and scatter the Hadendowas.