Does Liberation of Khartoum in 1885 have anything to do with its war in 2023?

By: Ahmed Ibrahim Abu Shouk

View and Counter-view
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Introduction
I received “reported texts” entitled “What is happening now happened one hundred and thirty-eight years ago [and so] in the fall of Khartoum at the hands of the Mahdi’s supporters. Indeed, we are a nation that does not learn from history,” a number of friends, inquiring about the accuracy of the information contained in it. It seems that the thing that prompted them to make that inquiry is that the “Transmitter of Texts” mentioned among his sources “Youssef Mikhail’s Memoirs,” which I investigated, and whose first edition was published by the Abdul Karim Mirghani Cultural Center in Omdurman in 2004. However, the reader who is insightful into the context of the reported texts will notice the following:
First: All the information mentioned by “the Reporter” was taken verbatim from Ibrahim Fawzi Pasha’s book, “Sudan in the hands of Gordon and Kitchener,” not a single text of which was included in the sources he placed at the end. It seems that he intended to camouflage the reader and give some kind of credibility to his distorted texts. Such an approach to blogging is considered a form of belittlement because it strips texts of their credibility.
Second: There are errors in the titles of some of the sources mentioned by “The Reporter,” including, but exclusively, “Memoirs of Mohammad Abdul-Rahim.” Mohammad Abdul-Rahim did not write memoirs, but rather wrote a number of books, including: “The Call to Refute Slander.” “The armed struggle for unity in Sudan or the truth about the incidents of 1924”; “A lecture on Arabism in Sudan.” The Reporter also mentioned “Babekir Badri’s Memoirs,” noting that Brigadier General Babiker did not issue a book with this title, but rather his memoirs came under the title “History of My Life” in three volumes, the only volume of which talks about the Mahdist period is the first volume. However, nothing of what was mentioned in the apocryphal texts was mentioned. The Reporter also mentioned the publications of Imam Mahdi, which were verified by Mohammad Ibrahim Abu Salim. However, its correct title is “The Complete Works of Imam Mahdi,” and the seven volumes of the Complete Works differ from the “Mahdiya Publications” that Abu Salim completed.
Third: In the following paragraph, I will mention the entire apocryphal texts, as I received them from a friend, without deleting, modifying, or correcting the stylistic and linguistic errors contained in them, most of which are attributed to the scourge of hasty reporting. Rather, I will content myself with placing the texts reported from Ibrahim Fawzi Pasha’s book between the marks, and I refer to the pages mentioned in it at the end of each paragraph, according to the edition issued by the Sudanese Book House in the year 2010, for the sake of documentation and maintaining scientific integrity.
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Full text of the article
What is happening now happened one hundred and thirty-eight years ago in the fall of Khartoum at the hands of the Mahdi’s supporters. Truly, we are a nation that does not learn from history!
On January 26, 1885, “the number of people killed in Khartoum on the day it fell reached twenty-four thousand men. Children and every male, even an infant, were killed, but women were not killed.” This massacre began at dawn and between sunrise. The Caliph issued an order to stop killing and the residents were removed from their homes in their nightclothes. The Treasurer of the Treasury issued an order to Hajj Khaled Al-Omrabi to stand at the door of the trench to search every resident of the city who left. They were ordered to remain in a spot between the trench and Ibn Al-Omrabi’s camp. Al-Nujumi and the dervishes took over the houses (it happened and is happening now). The next day, the torture of people began. They summoned the owner of the house and the senior members of his family to Al-Amin’s house and began their call to him by saying to him, “Since you disbelieved in God and His Messenger and fought the Mahdi, God and His Messenger have shed your blood and deprived you of your wealth and made it truly the Mahdi’s, and the Mahdi will pardon you.” For your blood, there is no peace for you in this world and the hereafter except by handing over all your wealth, even the thread and needle. Whether he submits to these lies and surrenders his money or not, he must be beaten with a thousand lashes, and the woman half of them, and his hands and feet tied, and he is thrown on the ground and cold water is poured over him at night. The residents remained in this state of torment until the money and belongings were collected in the treasury.” (Ibrahim Fawzi, Part Two, pp. 5-6(.
“Among the events that took place on the day of the fall of Khartoum was that a man named (Kuraib), a relative of the Mahdi, and one of Caliph Sharif’s guards, who were called (Al-Mulazimiya) (RSFmilitia), and with him about ten of his relatives, entered the house of an Egyptian man named (Ibrahim), who had seven brothers, so they killed the eight and searched. They did not find any money in the house. Ibrahim was a nine-year-old boy, so his mother and his uncles hid him in the middle of the luggage, fearing that he would be killed. However, they found him during the search and took him out. His mother and his uncles appeared at the feet of (Kuraib) and his companions, and they told him that his father and his seven uncles had been killed, so we ask you for the Mahdi to leave this boy to us. So he turned to them and said, “How can we leave him when we have not found any gold or silver in your house, and all of you are old women, and there is no one among you who can one make love with?” Then he shouted to his companions and said, “Cut the boy into eight pieces, and leave a piece for each one of them.” He did not complete this phrase until his companions took the boy and cut him into eight pieces. They cut and threw a piece to each woman, and such an incident is numbered in the thousands. We mentioned this one to indicate her sisters.” (Ibrahim Fawzi, Part Two, 6)
“The women were taken as captives, and the treasurer of the treasury sent about a thousand virgins from the daughters of Egyptian notables. Al-Mahdi chose from them thirty beautiful girls whose fathers were among the Egyptian notables residing in the city, and distributed the rest to his guards and his relatives, all of them as “slaved-wives”. (Ibrahim Fawzi, Part Two, 6)
“The Treasurer of the Treasury sent a large number of women to Abdullah Al-Taayshi, so he kept the virgins among them and distributed the rest among his guards and his relatives as well. Whenever he was satisfied, he gave one woman to one of the men in his entourage. The Treasurer of the Treasury also sent hundreds of women to the two caliphs, Ali Wad Helu and Mohammad Sharif, and their work with them was similar to that of Abdullah Al-Taayshi. Many of these women abstained from immorality and debauchery, so they were subjected to a painful torment, severely beaten, and their hair was shaved off. Many of them preferred death to life. I saw the woman of one of Sanjak, who was Turkish on her father’s side and Sudanese on her mother’s side, who committed suicide to escape the torment that befell her as a result of her refusal to surrender herself to Abdullah Al-Taayshi. The wife of Sheikh Mohammad al-Saqqa, the sheikh of the Quran readers in Khartoum, was beaten and tortured for six months because she refused to surrender herself to Abdullah Al-Taayshi” (Ibrahim Fawzi, Part Two, 7)
“The bottom line is that the number of women who were taken captive was no less than thirty-five thousand girls. This is evidenced by the fact that you find twenty girls with the youngest prince among the Mahdi’s princes. As for the older princes and relatives of the Mahdi, the number of those taken by each one of them exceeds twenty virgins. The reader should not think that they are embezzling these girls, but rather they are taking them.” By order of the Mahdi, one of the caliphs, or the treasurer of the treasury, stating in each order the name of the girl, the name of her father, her grandfather, and her description, and that she was given to so-and-so as his spoils, and it is permissible for him to have intercourse with her as slaved- wife” and it is permissible for him to sell her unless she becomes a mother of a child. Whoever among the Mahdi’s followers that a woman is found with him does not have an order with the information we mentioned, his money will be confiscated, he will be arrested, and he will be treated like a thief.” (Ibrahim Fawzi, Part Two, 7)
“Al-Mahdi had issued an order prohibiting the captivity of every woman who had a husband, but this order was not to be implemented unless the woman was old or ugly in appearance and had no sexual desire for her. The treasurer of the treasury would catch the women and search them after taking off their clothes. So whoever was found free of defects was taken, and whoever was found with defects is cast out. This is the entirety of what the Mahdi did to the residents of Khartoum in terms of money and honor. I mentioned it very briefly, because if I traced the details, I would consume the years…” (Ibrahim Fawzi, Part Two, 7)
“Al-Mahdi issued a circular in which he said that all those who left the Khartoum area, i.e. (the Khartoum Trench), would not have their marriage considered legitimate because it occurred during the period that was before his mission. He ordered the marriage of every couple of those prisoners to be concluded, and if there was any beauty in the woman or any remaining youth, it would not be resumed. Her marriage contract is taken as spoils. The Treasurer of the Treasury wrote to Al-Mahdi to ask him about the fact that he had found in Khartoum freedmen who had been freed by their masters long before the conquest of the city. Should they be treated like free men or slaves? He replied to him that those who had been freed were infidels and their emancipation should not be considered, and he ordered him to treat those freed people as slaves. (Ibrahim Fawzi, Part Two(,
These correspondences are located in the National Archives Office in the complete works of Imam Mahdi.(
“I mentioned that I surrendered myself and the soldiers with me in the middle of the day, and they arrested me, bound me with shoulder straps, and took me to the treasurer of the treasury, surrounded by about two hundred men of dervishes, brandishing their swords, and all of them shouting at me and saying, ‘You infidel, you enemy of God.’ So I found him in the house of Abu Bakr Al-Jarkuk, one of the notables of the city, and I found the house full of women, and he was busy sorting them, and when she was stopped in front of him, he was busy looking at a beautiful girl, stripped of her clothes, with a rag in her hand to cover her feminine parts, as he turned her right and left while tears fell from her eyelids as she said, “We are satisfied with your judgment, O God.” (Ibrahim Fawzi, Part Two (.
“And after he had finished with the girl, he turned to me and said, ‘I seek refuge in God from this white face.’ Then he turned to the guards around me and said to them, ‘Who is this infidel?’ They said, ‘He is Ibrahim Pasha Fawzi.’ He said, ‘Why did you not kill him?’ They said, ‘We left him until he revealed his money, Gordon’s money, and the government.’ Then he shouted at me and said, ‘Lead us.’” O infidel, for this money, I said, “My money was taken from my house, and as for the money of Gordon and the government, I am not entrusted with keeping it.” Then he drew his sword from its sheath and came to me and said, “This infidel does not reveal this money. It is better to kill him than to make him alive.” Those around him grabbed him and said to him, “Wait him until we torture him or show us the money.” Then he shouted at the slaves, so they threw me away. On the ground, one of them sat on my head, and two of them held the whips and beat me until their arms were exhausted. Then they were replaced by two others until blood flowed from my body. After my body was torn apart, they threw me in prison, and I remained there for three days, taking me for investigation and beatings every morning and the next.” (Ibrahim Fawzi, Part Two, 8-9)
“On the third day, they took me out of prison with my shoulders tied, surrounded by guards, and they sent me to my house, and I found there one of the princes. He collected my luggage and wrote it on a piece of paper. He showed it to me, but I did not find anything missing from it. Then he told me that all the apparent money had been seized and all that was left was what was hidden in the depths of the earth. So I said that I had not hidden something in the depths of the earth, and he started admonishing me at times and threatening me at other times. I told him that I did not hide anything, and I did not have any money other than what you had seized. So he took me and with me a load of gold and silver luggage, money, and some of his jewelry, to the treasurer of the Treasury. When he looked at me, he said: How did you keep this infidel alive? Now the prince said to him: We are postponing his killing until he shows us his money and the money of Gordon and the government. Then the treasurer of the treasury said to that prince: Did he not have any women? He said to him: He has two Abyssinian ladies that I took for myself. The treasurer of the treasury said: How do you take them before presenting them to me and taking permission for them from me? The prince answered him: I took them with my sword. I do not ask for anything else from the treasury. He said to him, “I have blessed you with them and I have given you possession of them.” He thanked him while I was standing with my forearms clasped.” (Ibrahim Fawzi, Part Two, 9(
Sources:
• Babakir Badri’s memoirs (three parts).
• Youssef Mikhayel’s memoirs (investigated by Professor Ahmed Ibrahim Abu Shouk).
• Memoirs of Mohammad Abdul-Rahim.
• Ibrahim Fawzi (Sudan in the hands of Gordon and Kitchener).
• Publications of Imam Mahdi, Professor Mohammad Ibrahim Abu Salim.
Written by: M. Bashir Abdul Rahman”
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Conclusion
Based on the above introduction and the texts quoted verbatim from Ibrahim Fawzi Pasha’s book, “Sudan in the Hands of Gordon and Kitchener,” I can make the following observations:
First: The title of the reported texts, “What is happening now happened one hundred and thirty-eight [thirty] years ago in the fall of Khartoum at the hands of the Mahdi’s supporters. Indeed, we are a nation that does not learn from history!”, indicates that the “reporter” wanted to make a comparison between the first invasion of Khartoum on January 26, 1885 and its second invasion on April 15, 2023; However, the comparison is flawed on both sides because the first permissibility occurred at the hands of the supporters of Imam Mahdi, who were fighting against a colonial regime, at the top of which was the British Charles Gordon, and the people of the city supported him in defense of their interests. The second violation occurred at the hands of the Rapid Support Forces, rebelling against the armed forces, which occupied the homes of defenseless citizens, looted their property, and forced them to migrate or seek refuge, and their situation says: The lack of money and fruits is easier for them than the lack of lives.
Second: The “reporter” of the apocryphal texts was not scientifically honest; Because he concealed from the honorable reader the source of his texts, which were reported in a frank and flawless manner, which is the book of Ibrahim Fawzi Pasha, “Sudan in the Hands of Gordon and Katshar,” Part Two. The texts referred to were contained in pages 5 to 9, according to the edition issued by the Sudanese House of Books in 2010, and have no relation at all to the sources mentioned at the end.
Third: The above two observations lead us to ask a fundamental question: Is Ibrahim Fawzi Pasha a fair narrator according to the criteria of critique and amendment? The answer will be no if we look at his professional background and the difficult circumstances he lived in Mahdia as a humiliated prisoner in Al-Sayer prison in Omdurman. Therefore, he is not expected to be sympathetic to the Mahdiyya (and the eye of contentment with every defect is dull*** but the eye of discontent shows the defects). Biographies describe him as an Egyptian officer who worked in the Egyptian army in southern Sudan. When Gordon returned as governor-general (1877-1879) of Sudan, he appointed him as director of the Equator. However, he was accused of lack of administrative discipline, so he was summoned to Khartoum and then deported to Cairo. He returned again to Sudan during the reign of the Second Gordon Dynasty (1884-1885), and worked as his advisor until he was arrested after the liberation of Khartoum in 1885. He remained in Mahdi detention until he was released in 1898, when he returned to Egypt and wrote the book referred to above, in which Its first edition was published by Al-Muayyad newspaper presses in 1902. The book is divided into two main parts. The first part deals with the history of Turkish-Egyptian rule in Sudan, with a focus on the last Gordon dynasty (1884-1885), and the siege of Khartoum and its fall into the hands of the Mahdi and his supporters, while the second part talks about the Mahdist period, which the author describes as barbaric and savage, and details its political, social, and economic repercussions on Sudanese society in the period he metaphorically calls “Sudan in the hands of Gordon and Kitchener.” It then provides a brief reading of the establishment of condominium governance institutions, and how they were able to restore security and stability to Sudan and the Nile Valley. The thoughtful reader will notice throughout the book that much of the information reported by Ibrahim Fawzi Pasha is subject to consideration, when compared to similar information from other sources.
Fourth: Criticizing the texts taken from the book of Ibrahim Fawzi Pasha does not deny that the Mahdi’s supporters invaded the city of Khartoum on January 26, 1885, killed large numbers of its people, and captured a number of its women. The evidence for this is the words of Ismail Bin Abdul-Qadir Al-Kordfani, author of the book “His Excellency the Guided by Biography of Imam Al-Mahdi,”: “The killing of the enemies continued from the break of dawn until near noon, until the carpet of the ground was red with the blood of men, and the paths and streets were filled with the corpses of the dead. The Turks and others who joined them were killed in this incident, the number of which no one knows except God Almighty. (Ismail Bin Abdul Qadir Al-Kordfani, “His Excellency the Guided by Biography of Imam Mahdi,” edited by Mohammad Ibrahim Abu Salim, Beirut: Dar Al-Jeel, 1982, pp. 350-351).
Fifth: The objective historical narrative of the events of killing, captivity, and destruction that the city of Khartoum witnessed after its liberation on January 26, 1885 is presented by Mohammad Ibrahim Abu Salim in his book on “The History of Khartoum,” the first edition of which was issued by the University Press of Khartoum in 1970. Abu Salim’s objectivity is represented in knowing how much an extensive collection of primary sources, based on the testimonies of Mahdist supporters and their enemies who lived through the period of liberation. As a result, his narrative is the closest to reality.
Sixth: Whenever mentioned above, it leads us to the conclusion that historical events must be analyzed within the framework of their political, economic, social and cultural contexts. Taking it out of these foundational contexts and analyzing it in the space of other contexts loses the objective aspect. It also contributes to blurring the vision of readers who are not specialists in history, and prompts some of them to exploit misleading narratives to serve a contemporary political agenda, and accordingly, historical knowledge loses its credibility and documentary intuition. In summary, documented historical knowledge helps readers, regardless of their intellectual orientations and political affiliations, understand the past, comprehend the present, and anticipate the future better.