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Updated: May 23, 2025
The casualties suffered by the Kassala column in the action were severe in proportion to their numbers and the duration of the fight. The seven British officers escaped untouched; but of the 1,400 soldiers and irregulars engaged, 51 were killed and 80 wounded a total of 131. The Dervishes left 500 dead on the field, including four Emirs of rank.
The new Cabinet at Rome resolved to withdraw from the districts around Kassala. On this news being communicated to the British Ministers, they sent a request to Rome that the evacuation of Kassala might be delayed until Anglo-Egyptian troops could be despatched to occupy that important station.
The memoirs, which were written down in 1895 and published in 1896, contained the following prophecy: I remember the great Sayid Hassan el Morghani of Kassala uttering the prophecies which were generally ridiculed then, but which are rapidly being justified as events go on.
This situation might have remained unaltered until after the battle of Omdurman if the Dervishes had been content with the possession of Kassala. But in 1893 the Emir in command of the garrison, being anxious to distinguish himself, disobeyed the Khalifa's instructions to remain on the defensive and attacked the Europeans at Agordat.
They pay a nominal tribute to the Egyptian Government, and the reason we could not obtain camels was that, troops being moved about, they feared that on their arrival at Kassala they would be pressed into the Government service, and not only receive no pay, but most likely in the end lose the greater number of their camels. This tribe roams along the banks of the Barka and its many tributaries.
Those who attempted to reach the fertile country round Kassala were there hunted down or captured by the Egyptian garrison that lately had arrived there. As on previous occasions, the Sirdar now waited some time until the railway could be brought up to the points lately conquered. More gunboats were also constructed for the final stage of the expedition.
There was an old-time prophecy of the Persian Sheikh Morghani, whose tomb is near Kassala, that the English soldiers would one day fight at Kerreri. Mahomed Achmed and Abdullah had further added to the prediction that there they were to be attacked and defeated by the dervishes under the Khalifa. Kerreri plain, therefore, had become a sort of holy place of pilgrimage to the Mahdists.
After waiting in intense heat for about a fortnight, the Egyptian thirty-two-gun steam frigate Ibrahimeya arrived with a regiment of Egyptian troops, under Giaffer Pacha, to quell the mutiny of the black troops at Kassala, twenty days' march in the interior. Giaffer Pacha most kindly placed the frigate at our disposal to convey us to Suez.
Lieut.-Colonel C. S. B. Parsons, R.A., Governor of Kassala and the Red Sea littoral, to whom I have previously referred when we were advancing against Omdurman, was menacing the dervish outpost of Gedarif.
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