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Updated: May 2, 2025
For the moment it suited Zebehr to accept this proposal, and the two armies combined and conquered the province of Darfour; but directly the pasha wished to turn into a governor-general the khedive grew frightened, and declared that he was now convinced that the trade in slaves was wicked and must be put down.
On the very night of his interview with Zebehr, and within forty-eight hours of his arrival in Cairo, General Gordon and his English companion, with four Egyptian officers, left by train for Assiout, en route to Khartoum.
We have seen that Gordon made several specific demands in the first six weeks of his stay at Khartoum that is, in the short period before communication was cut off. He wanted Zebehr, 200 troops at Berber, or even at Wady Halfa, and the opening of the route from Souakim to the Nile.
Zebehr has a capacity of government far beyond any statesman in the Soudan. All the followers of the Mahdi would, I believe, leave the Mahdi on Zebehr's approach, for they are ex-chiefs of Zebehr.
It is highly probable, from the air of confidence with which Zebehr called for the production of the letter, that, either during the Arabi rising or in some other way, he had recovered possession of the original; but Gordon had had all the documents copied in 1879, and bound in the little volume mentioned in the preceding Memorandum, as well as in several of his letters, and the evidence as to Zebehr's complicity and guilt seems quite conclusive.
Zebehr Rahama knew this, but he fell on leaving his boat at this isle, and so, though the Soudan people looked on him as a likely saviour, this omen shook their confidence in him. Zebehr will most probably be taken prisoner by the Mahdi, and will then take the command of the Mahdi's forces.
Thus he took the wind out of the sails of the Mahdi and his party, who could not say that they were fighting on behalf of one of their religious institutions. The proposal to the English Government that Zebehr should be made ruler of the Soudan, was, as Mr. Hake truly says, "one of those daring strokes of policy which made his tactics unlike those of other men."
The enemies with whom General Gordon had to deal were two. There was first Haroun, who claimed, as the principal survivor after Zebehr's invasion of Darfour, already described, to be the true Sultan of that State; and secondly, Suleiman, the son of Zebehr, and the nominal leader of the slave-dealers.
But while Sir Evelyn Baring would not have Gordon and the British Cabinet withheld its approval from Zebehr, it was felt that the situation required that something should be done as soon as possible, for the Mahdi was master of the Soudan, and at any moment tidings might come of his advance on Khartoum, where there was only a small and disheartened garrison, and a considerable defenceless population.
But surely no man was ever charged with duties so complex and contradictory. The qualities of Nestor, Ulysses, and Achilles combined in one mortal could scarcely have availed to untie or sever that knot. The first sharp collision between Gordon and the Home Government resulted from his urgent request for the employment of Zebehr Pasha as the future ruler of the Sudan.
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