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Updated: May 19, 2025
Although the beginning of a campaign often drags, the ending is usually abrupt. With the defeat and flight of Abdullah, Mahdism became a thing of the past. True, there were several minor engagements fought later against isolated recalcitrant bodies of dervishes who were too loyal to their old leaders. But these affairs in no way affected the result achieved upon the battle-field of Omdurman.
His joy at the extraordinary find which he has been so fortunate as to make has been greatly marred by the terrible fate of his comrade and fellow-worker. It was in the days when the tide of Mahdism, which had swept in such a flood from the great Lakes and Darfur to the confines of Egypt, had at last come to its full, and even begun, as some hoped, to show signs of a turn.
In the heaped dead about the Khalifa's flag he had seen Yacoub, Abdullah's brother, and many more leaders, but the arch head of Mahdism, the Sheikh Ed Din and Osman Digna were nowhere to be found.
After fifteen vexatious years spent in trying to get here, an Anglo-Egyptian army has recovered Khartoum and occupied Omdurman. Gordon has been avenged and justified. The dervishes have been overwhelmingly routed, Mahdism has been "smashed," whilst the Khalifa's capital of Omdurman has been stripped of its barbaric halo of sanctity and invulnerability.
Indeed, it appeared that numbers of the runaways had settled down at New Hilgi, and were attempting to cultivate. As for the four or five thousand dervish cavalry that Mahmoud had with him, they also never returned to Omdurman. Quite probably they made their way back to their original homes in small bands, rightly believing that Mahdism was doomed.
Notables and dervishes who came in to us were freely used by the staff to run hither and thither conveying intimation to all their friends, that the war being over they should lay down their arms. In that way the news of the collapse of Mahdism was widely spread, and bands of thirty and forty of the Jehadieh and even of the Baggara surrendered.
The whole situation became greatly simplified the moment the line reached Abu Hamid. From the first, the question of dealing a death-blow to Mahdism with British-led troops had turned upon the solution of the transport problem.
Besides the regular army which was to proceed up the left or west bank and attack Omdurman, there was a column of armed friendlies who were to operate against the dervishes quartered between Shendy and Khartoum, by the east or right bank of the Nile. Nor were the bands of tribesmen upon that shore the only auxiliaries who had volunteered to assist in overthrowing Mahdism.
Abdullah was an ignorant and wholly abominable person, and by his unspeakable cruelty and rapacity soon alienated vast numbers of the followers of his predecessor, and by 1889 Mahdism could no longer be looked upon as an aggressive but as a decaying force; yet, though dwindling, it still existed as a strong military power, with its headquarters at Omdurman.
These risings were all spontaneous outbursts of local populations; animated, to be sure, by the same spirit of fear and hatred, and inflamed by the same fanatical hopes, but with no evidence of a central authority laying settled plans and moving in accordance with a definite programme. The risings were inspired largely by the mystical doctrine known as "Mahdism."
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