Patterns of conquest & occupation, North & South

The Anglo-Egyptian Reconquest of the Sudan beginning in the 1890s followed distinctly different patterns in the North and in the South. In the North, Egypt was able to make use of large sections of a disaffected Muslim Sudanese population. Around Suakin and Kassala, Egypt was allied to the religious family of the Mirghanis, founders of the Khatmiyya sect, who had been supported by the Egyptian government before the Mahdiyya, and who subsequently maintained a strong opposition to the Mahdi and his Khalifa as rivals to the Ansar (followers of the Mahdi). In Dongola there were many Nubian dissidents against the Khalifa Abdallahi's Baqqara autocracy, such as the Ja‘aliyyin, who became military allies of the Anglo-Egyptian forces. Thus the demise of Mahdism at the Battle of Omdurman on 2 September 1898 was assisted by both old and new allies of Egypt.

The new Anglo-Egyptian Condominium government secured itself from any threat of resurgent Mahdism in the North by reinstating tribal leaders where they had been replaced by Mahdist agents, by supporting orthodoxy against ‘fanaticism’ in the constitution of a board of ulama, and by subsidising the Mahdiyya's religious rivals, such as the Mirghani family and its Khatmiyya order. There was a fairly quick transition from military occupation to civil administration in the North before World War One: civilian British officials replaced all military governors in the northern provinces, and the police took over responsibility for rural security from the army. Northern Sudanese began to be recruited into the police and even some army units, replacing Egyptian and Sudanese (i.e., former slave soldier) troops.

‘But not in the South.’ The political pattern in the South was different as the Mahdist state had had virtually no control over the region outside its few main garrisons at Fashoda, Bor and Rejaf; therefore there was no need to wean people away from Mahdism by offering them rewards for renewing their loyalty to the government. The small Mahdist garrisons were evacuated and their withdrawal left the land open to Anglo-Egyptian, French, Ethiopian and Belgian imperial competition.