Mahdist War
| Mahdist War | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Major events of the Mahdist War. From clockwise left: the Battle of Abu Klea, the Battle of El Teb, Death of Charles Gordon at Khartoum, Charge of the 21st Lancers at Omdurman, the Battle of Ferkeh, and the Battle of Rejaf | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||||
| Mahdist State | |||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
|
Charles Gordon † William Hicks † Garnet Wolseley Herbert Kitchener Tewfik Pasha Rauf Pasha Hassan Ismail Pasha Yohannes IV † Alula Engida Tekle Haimanot Oreste Baratieri Giuseppe Arimondi Louis-Napoléon Chaltin |
Muhammad Ahmad (WIA) Abdallahi ibn Muhammad † Othman Digna (WIA) | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| Sudan's population was reduced by more than half during the period of Mahdist rule. | |||||||||
The Mahdist War (Arabic: الثورة المهدية, romanized: ath-Thawra al-Mahdiyya; 1881–1899) was fought between the Mahdist Sudanese, led by Muhammad Ahmad bin Abdullah, who had proclaimed himself the "Mahdi" of Islam (the "Guided One"), and the forces of the Khedivate of Egypt, initially, and later the forces of Britain. After four years, the Mahdist rebels overthrew the Ottoman-Egyptian administration with the fall of Khartoum and gained control over Sudan. The Mahdist State launched several unsuccessful invasions of their neighbours, expanding the scale of the conflict to also include the Italian Empire, the Congo Free State and the Ethiopian Empire. They also faced significant internal rebellion. Anglo-Egyptian forces reconquered Sudan in 1898 and the Mahdist state collapsed following defeat at the battle of Omdurman. The last organised resistance from the Mahdists ended the next year, leading to the creation of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (1899–1956), a de jure condominium of the British Empire, and the Kingdom of Egypt, in which Britain had de facto control over Sudan.