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Updated: June 2, 2025
The Sirdar also manoeuvred so as to bring on an attack. He sent out the Egyptian cavalry and camel corps soon after dawn to the plain lying between Gebel Surgham and Omdurman to lure on the Khalifa's men. The device was completely successful.
Although Gordon may be considered to have more than held his own against all the power of the Mahdi down to the capture of Omdurman Fort on 15th January, the Mahdi knew that his straits must be desperate, and that unless the expedition arrived he could not hold out much longer.
As there was no further danger, the Soudanese marched back again and joined the other battalions, the garrisons on the river were re-established, and part of the force returned to Omdurman. The Sirdar had returned from Fashoda before Gregory came back, and had left almost immediately for Cairo.
The news of the fall of Dongola created a panic in Omdurman. Great numbers of Arabs, believing that the Khalifa's power was about to collapse, fled from the city. All business was at a standstill. For several days there were no executions. Abdullah himself kept his house, and thus doubtfully concealed his vexation and alarm from his subjects.
The city was a pit of infamy, where struggled, or wallowed, or died to the bellowing of the Khalifa's drum and the hideous mirth of his Baggaras, the victims of Abdullah. But out in the desert the Bayuda desert between Omdurman and Old Dongola, there was only peace.
When Durrance had suggested that Harry might be taken to Omdurman, Ethne had at once replied, "Colonel Trench is in Omdurman." She needed no explanation of Harry's disappearance from Wadi Halfa into the southern Soudan. It was deliberate; he had gone out to be captured, to be taken to Omdurman.
Had they employed these in "sniping" as at Abu Kru, the Sirdar would have had to march out and attack them. The victory of Omdurman owed much to the masterly serving of the artillery. Even in Macdonald's severely contested action, the three batteries of Maxim-Nordenfeldt 12½-pounders did much to save the situation.
After he had made good his escape from the battlefield of Omdurman, Abdullah had hurried in the direction of El Obeid, moving by the wells of Shat and Zeregia, which at that season of the year were full of water after the rains. At Abu Sherai, having shaken off the pursuit of the friendlies, he halted, encamped, and busily set to work to reorganise his shattered forces.
Whether Farag Pasha was guilty or not is not definitely known, but it is certain that he was taken prisoner, and three days after the fall of the town was brought up to show where the wealth was hidden. As there was none he could not reveal it, so he was killed in the market-place at Omdurman.
It had, therefore, become an almost holy place to the Mahdists, and was called the death place of all the infidels; and, once a year, the Khalifa and his followers made a pilgrimage to it. A few shots were fired during the night, and fires blazed on the hills to notify, to Omdurman, our precise position.
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