In earlier chapters we noted that the revolution in army organization and warfare that occurred in the emerging emirates of the caliphate during the jihad period actually involved the adoption of traditional Sudanic military institutions and practices. Despite the general increase in the availability and use of firearms in the late nineteenth century, these traditional modes of warfare and military organization remained remarkably intact until the European conquest of the Sudan. Recalling the similar transient appearance of guns in sixteenth-century Bornu, Fisher and Rowland have contended that the limited effect of firearms in the late nineteenth century represented merely the recurrence of a cyclical historical pattern that periodically manifested itself in the Sudan: a sudden impact of firearms that was sustained nowhere, whose potential significance faded quickly into history without a trace. In their own words, “Had the imposition of European rule not radically altered the position, it is possible to imagine that firearms, even on Rabin's scale, would not have altered the longstanding central Sudan pattern, of dramatic impact followed by rapid decline into nearly total ineffectiveness.”

As we observed in the last chapter, a combination of factors, particularly the nature and volume of the firearms trade, precluded the occurrence of a fundamental transformation in Sudanic military organization and warfare. Nevertheless the attribution by Fisher and Rowland of only a marginal and transitory impact to firearms has obscured the potential significance of these weapons. It is our contention that the introduction and use of an increasing number of firearms did in fact produce an incipient revolution in Central Sudan.