Editing Muhammad Ahmad (section)

==Khartoum==
{{Main|Mahdist War}}
After much debate the British decided to abandon Sudan in December 1883, holding only several northern towns and Red Sea ports, such as [[Khartoum]], [[Kassala]], [[Sannar]], and [[Sawakin]]. The evacuation of Egyptian troops and officials, and other foreigners from Sudan was assigned to General [[Charles George Gordon]], who had been reappointed governor general with orders to return to Khartoum and organize a withdrawal of the Egyptian garrisons there.

===Arrival of Gordon===
Gordon reached Khartoum in February 1884. At first he was greeted with jubilation, as many of the tribes in the immediate area were at odds with the Mahdists. Transportation northward was still open and the telegraph lines intact. But the uprising of the Beja soon after his arrival changed things considerably, reducing communications to runners.

Gordon considered the routes northward to be too dangerous to extricate the garrisons and so pressed for reinforcements to be sent from [[Cairo]] to help with the withdrawal. He also suggested that his old enemy [[Al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur]], a fine military commander, be given tacit control of the Sudan in order to provide a counter to the Ansār. London rejected both proposals, and so Gordon prepared for a fight.

In March 1884, Gordon tried to stage an offensive to clear the road northward to Egypt, but a number of the officers in the Egyptian force went over to the enemy and their forces fled the field after firing a single salvo. This convinced him that he could carry out only defensive operations, and he returned to Khartoum to construct defensive works.

By April 1884, Gordon had managed to evacuate some 2,500 of the foreign population who had been able to make the trek northwards. His mobile force under [[John Donald Hamill Stewart|Colonel Stewart]] returned to Khartoum after repeated incidents when the 200 or so Egyptian forces under his command would turn and run at the slightest provocation.

===Siege===
{{main|Siege of Khartoum}}
[[File:Battle of Abu Klea, William Barnes Wollen.jpg|thumb|260px|A depiction of the British square at the [[Battle of Abu Klea]], during the [[Mahdist War]], 1885]]
That month the Ansār besieged Khartoum, and Gordon was completely cut off. But his defensive works, consisting mainly of [[land mine|mines]], proved so frightening to the Ansār that they were unable to penetrate the city. Once the waters rose, Stewart used [[gunboat]]s on the Nile to conduct several small skirmishes and in August managed to recapture [[Berber, Sudan|Berber]] for a short time. But Stewart was killed soon after in another foray from Berber to Dongola, a fact Gordon learned only in a letter from the Mahdi himself.

Under increasing pressure from the public to support Gordon, the British Government under [[William Ewart Gladstone|Prime Minister Gladstone]] eventually had ordered [[Garnet Wolseley, 1st Viscount Wolseley|Lord Garnet Joseph Wolseley]] to relieve Gordon. He was already deployed in Egypt due to the attempted coup there earlier, and organized a large force of infantry, but advanced at an extremely slow rate. Realizing they would take some time to arrive, Gordon pressed Wolseley to send forward a "[[flying column]]" of camel-borne troops across the [[Bayuda Desert|Bayyudah Desert]] from [[Wadi Halfa]] under the command of Brigadier-General [[Herbert Stewart|Sir Herbert Stewart]]. This force was attacked by the Hadendoa [[Beja people|Beja]], or "[[Fuzzy-Wuzzy|Fuzzy Wuzzies]]", twice, first at the [[Battle of Abu Klea]] and two days later closer to Metemma. Twice the British square held and the Mahdists were repelled with high losses.

At Metemma, {{convert|100|mi|km}} north of Khartoum, Wolseley's advance guard met four of Gordon's steamers, sent downriver to provide speedy transport for the first relieving troops. They gave Wolseley a dispatch from Gordon claiming that the city was about to fall. Moments later a runner brought in another message, claiming the city could hold out for a year. Deciding to believe the latter, the force stopped while they refit the steamers to hold more troops.

===Fall of Khartoum===
They finally reached Khartoum on 28 January 1885, to find the town had fallen two days earlier during the [[siege of Khartoum]]. After the [[Nile]] had receded from flood stage, one of Gordon's [[pasha]]s (officers), Faraz Pasha, had opened the river gates and let the Ansār in. The garrison was slaughtered, the male population massacred, and the women and children enslaved. Gordon was killed fighting the Mahdi's warriors on the steps of the palace, where he was hacked to pieces and beheaded. When Gordon's head was unwrapped at the Mahdi's feet, he ordered the head to be fixed between the branches of a tree "where all who passed it could look in disdain, children could throw stones at it and the hawks of the desert could sweep and circle above." When Wolseley's force arrived in Khartoum, they retreated after attempting to force their way to the center of the town on ships, where they were met by a hail of gunfire.<ref>{{cite book |last=Pakenham |first=T. |url=https://archive.org/details/scrambleforafric00pake |title=The Scramble for Africa 1876–1912 |publisher=Random House |year=1991 |isbn=978-0-349-10449-2 |page=[https://archive.org/details/scrambleforafric00pake/page/272 272] |url-access=registration}}</ref>

The Mahdi Army continued its sweep of victories. [[Kassala]] and [[Sannar]] fell soon after and, by the end of 1885, the Ansār had begun to move into the southern regions of Sudan. In all of Sudan, only [[Suakin]], reinforced by [[British Indian Army|Indian]] troops, and [[Wadi Halfa]] on the northern frontier remained in Anglo-Egyptian hands.

===Death and succession===
[[File:Mahdi Grave in Omdurman.jpg|thumb|The rebuilt [[The Mahdi's tomb|tomb of Muhammad Ahmad]] in Omdurman]]
Five months after the capture of Khartoum, Muhammad Ahmad died of [[typhus]]. He was buried in Omdurman near the ruins of Khartoum. The Mahdi had planned for this eventuality and had chosen three deputies to replace him.

After the final defeat of the Khalifa by the British under [[Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener|General Kitchener]] in 1898, [[The Mahdi's tomb|Muhammad Ahmad's tomb]] was destroyed to prevent it from becoming a rallying point for his supporters. His bones were thrown into the Nile. Kitchener was said to have retained his skull<ref>''[http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/052004/commentary.shtml Undoing the Mahdiyya: British Colonialism as Religious Reform in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1898–1914] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130526042006/http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/052004/commentary.shtml |date=26 May 2013 }}'' by Noah Salomon (University of Chicago Divinity School)</ref> and, in the words of [[Winston Churchill]], "carried off the Mahdi's head in a kerosene can as a trophy".<ref>{{Cite book|title = Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World|last = Ferguson|first = Niall|publisher = Penguin Books|year = 2003|isbn = 978-0-141-00754-0|location = London |pages = 267–272}}</ref> Allegedly the skull was later buried at [[Wadi Halfa]]. The tomb was eventually rebuilt.