675 
THE SUDAN PAST AND PRESENT. 
BY 
MAJOR F. R. WINGATE, D.S.O., R.A. 
The writer greatly regrets that circumstances prevented him from fulfilling his 
engagement to read a paper on this subject at the Royal Artillery Institution, 
and begs to acknowledge the kindness of Messrs. Macmillan & Co., and Messrs. 
Sampson, Low, Marston & Co., in permitting the reproduction of the Map of 
Egypt and the Plan of Omdurman, for the purpose of illustrating this article. 
In a paper contributed to the recent Congress of Orientalists, I dealt 
with “ the rise and wane of the Mahdi religion in the Sudan,” and 
throughout I endeavoured to treat with the great revolt in the Sudan, 
as far as possible, from its religious aspect. In the following pages, 
however, I propose to deal with the same subject from a military point 
of view, and in so doing I will presume that my readers are generally 
cognisant of the religous side of this gigantic revolt against Egyptian 
authority and the orthodox Moslem faith. I do not, therefore, intend 
to repeat here—except where it is necessary to do so for a correct 
understanding of the subject—the curious condition of Islamism in 
the Sudan which allowed of the creation of a situation warranting the 
appearance of a Mahdi; suffice it to say it should always be remem¬ 
bered that in the various military operations which took place, the 
wildest religious fanaticism existed. It is the existence of this element 
which gives such a lurid glow to all those dark episodes of Sudan 
history with which the past ten years have been replete. Without 
fanaticism the revolt could never have been successful, while with it, 
one is brought face to face with a condition of warfare and religious 
enthusiasm to which one must go back to mediaeval history and to the 
crusading times to find a parallel. 
In assuming, therefore, that the religious aspect is understood, the 
subject is, perhaps, shorn of some of its most interesting features, and 
standing thus alone in its military aspect this paper cannot pretend to 
be in any degree a complete resume of the history of “The Sudan 
Past and Present.” All it can aspire to is a brief and incomplete 
summary of military events in the Sudan and of the various opera¬ 
tions which have, from time to time, been undertaken to check the 
progress of a revolt, which at one period seriously threatened to disturb 
the peace not only of the Sudan and Egypt, but also of a large portion 
14. VOL. XIX. 90 
