Mahdist War

Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most... populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Djibouti and Somalia to the east, Sudan and South Sudan to the west, and Kenya to the south. With its capital at Addis Ababa, it is also the most populous landlocked nation in the world. Ethiopia was a monarchy for most of its history, and the Ethiopian dynasty traces its roots to the 2nd century BC. Ethiopia is also one of the oldest sites of human existence known to scientists today, having yielded some of humanity's oldest traces. It may be the region from which Homo sapiens first set out for the Middle East and points beyond. Alongside Rome, China and Persia, the Ethiopian Aksum Empire was considered one of the four great world powers of the 3rd century.
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Egypt /ˈiːdʒɪpt/ , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic:  جمهوريّة... مصر العربيّة , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world. Covering an area of about 1,010,000 square kilometers , Egypt is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west. Egypt is one of the most populous countries in Africa and the Middle East. The great majority of its over 81 million people live near the banks of the Nile River, in an area of about 40,000 square kilometers , where the only arable land is found. The large areas of the Sahara Desert are sparsely inhabited. About half of Egypt's residents live in urban areas, with most spread across the densely populated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria and other major cities in the Nile Delta.
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Eritrea , officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea is the Italian form of the Greek name... Ἐρυθραίᾱ , meaning "red [land]". The capital is Asmara. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast. The northeast and east of the country has an extensive coastline on the Red Sea, directly across from Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The Dahlak Archipelago and several of the Hanish Islands are part of Eritrea. Eritrea's size is approximately 117,600 km with an estimated population of 6 million. Together with northern Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and the Red Sea coast of Sudan, Eritrea is considered the most likely location of the land known to the ancient Egyptians as Punt , whose first mention dates to the 25th century BC. The ancient Puntites were a nation of people that had close relations with Pharaonic Egypt during the times of Pharaoh Sahure and Queen Hatshepsut. D'mt was a kingdom located in Eritrea and northern Ethiopia that existed during the 8th and 7th centuries BC.
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Uganda , officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South... Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by Tanzania. The southern part of the country includes a substantial portion of Lake Victoria, which is also shared by Kenya and Tanzania. Uganda takes its name from the Buganda kingdom, which encompasses a large portion of the south of the country including the capital Kampala. The people of Uganda were hunter-gatherers until 1,700 to 2,300 years ago, when Bantu-speaking populations migrated to the southern parts of the country. Uganda gained independence from Britain on 9 October 1962. The official languages are English and Swahili, although multiple other languages are spoken in the country. The Ugandans were hunter-gatherers until 1,700 to 2,300 years ago. Bantu-speaking populations, who were probably from central Africa, migrated to the southern parts of the country. These groups brought and developed ironworking skills and new ideas of social and political organization.
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The Battle of Umm Diwaykarat on November 25, 1899 marked the final obliteration of Muhammad Ahmad's short-lived Sudanese empire, when Anglo-Egyptian... forces under the command of Lord Kitchener wiped out what was left of the Mahdist armies under the command of the Abdallahi ibn Muhammad, known as the Khalifa, after the equally disastrous Battle of Omdurman a year earlier. After Omdurman, the defeated Mahdist forces, still 25,000 strong, moved southward from Khartoum to Kordofan. The Mahdists still controlled the territory of Kordofan, Darfur, and lands bordering Ethiopia. In October 1899 the British obtained information that the Khalifa and his forces were among his native Baqqara to the west of Kusti in Kordofan. Kitchener dispatched 8,000 Sudanese and Egyptian soldiers under command of General F.R. Wingate to intercept him. Wingate marched from Kusti to the mountains of Kordofan, destroyed a Mahdist supply unit, and soon located the Khalifa's camp. By this time, the Khalifa's Sudanese forces had retained at least 10,000 people. The Khalifa decided to make a stand against the British rather than to retreat further.
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The Battle of Abu Klea took place between the dates of 16 and 18 January 1885, at Abu Klea, Sudan, between the British Desert Column and Mahdist... forces encamped near Abu Klea. The Desert Column, a force of approximately 1,400 soldiers, started from Korti, Sudan on 30 December 1884; the Desert Column's mission, in a joint effort titled "The Gordon Relief Expedition", was to march across the desert to the aid of General Charles George Gordon at Khartoum, Sudan, who was besieged there by Mahdist forces. The place is generally known in British military records as Abu Klea, which arose as a contemporary British attempt at spelling its Arabic name, 'Abu Tͅuleiħ . The British forces consisted of the 1,100 British of the Desert Column under Sir Herbert Stewart, against a Sudanese force of approximately 12,000 fighters. While the main British force , led by General Sir Garnet Wolseley travelled by river from Korti to Khartoum, Stewart's column was to cut across country by column directly for Khartoum, since time was running short according to what little information was available from the garrison.
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The Battle of El Obeid was fought between Anglo-Egyptian forces under the command of Hicks Pasha and forces of Mohammed Ahmed, the self-proclaimed... Mahdi, on a plain near the town of Al Ubayyid on November 3rd-5th, 1883. After the Mahdi retreated into Kordofan in 1881 he started to raise an army there and in Darfur. A force of 4,000 was sent to capture him, but it was ambushed near El Obeid and destroyed, and all of its equipment captured. The Mahdi's forces had grown spectacularly, and by 1883 British sources placed their size at 200,000, although that is almost certainly an overestimate. The Egyptian Governor, Raouf Pasha, decided that the only solution to the growing rebellion was a fight, and against the advice of his British advisors started to raise an army of his own. He hired a number of European officers to lead his force, placing them under the command of William "Billy" Hicks, a retired Colonel who had experience in India and Abyssinia. Hicks' force was composed mostly of Egyptian soldiers who had been imprisoned after fighting in the Urabi Revolt. They were released for service in Sudan and accordingly showed little inclination to fight.
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The Battle of Khartoum or Siege of Khartoum lasted from March 13, 1884 to January 26, 1885. It was fought in and around Khartoum between Egyptian... forces led by British General Charles George Gordon and a Mahdist Sudanese army led by the self-proclaimed Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad. Khartoum was besieged by the Mahdists and defended by a garrison of 7,000 Egyptian and loyal Sudanese troops. After a ten-month siege, the Mahdists finally broke into the city and the entire garrison was killed. Since the 1882 Anglo-Egyptian War, the British military presence ensured that Egypt remained a de facto British protectorate. However, the administration of Sudan was considered a domestic matter, and left to the Khedive's government. As a result, the suppression of the Mahdist revolt was left to the Egyptian army, who suffered a bloody defeat at the hands of the Mahdist rebels at El Obeid, in November 1883. The Mahdi's forces captured huge amounts of equipment and overran large parts of Sudan, including Darfur and Kordofan. These events brought Sudan to the attention of the British government, and of the British public.
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