THE SUDAN PAST AND PRESENT. 
681 
Levant and Asia Minor, who wrung money, women, and drink from a 
miserable population. 
Then there is another section of society which has also played an 
important part in the Sudan, this was the Coptic clerk ; whole families 
of these Bannias of Africa kept the accounts of Bashi-Bazuk plundering 
raids supported by Egyptian soldiers, and this constituted a government 
collecting its taxes. 
Thus it will be observed that the principal elements of former 
Egyptian rule in the Sudan consisted of venality, oppression, and 
military weakness ; but there was yet another factor, perhaps more 
important than all the rest, which may be classed among the principal 
causes of the revolt—this was the suppression of the slave trade, to 
which here a mere passing reference is necessary. 
Sir Samuel Baker, and after him General Gordon, occupied them¬ 
selves with the suppression of this traffic, but when one considers the 
material—in the shape of Egyptian troops—with which they were 
to suppress a custom innate and inbred in the people, one can readily 
understand that it was entirely through the individuality and life-giving 
energy of these two men that a measure of success attended their 
noble efforts. But once they had left the country, back fell the Egyp¬ 
tians, an inert mass, and then followed the reaction. 
The wild Baggara tribes, to whom reference has already been made, 
suffered most from this suppression ; they were the warm allies of the 
Danagla slave traders and merchants, and it was against the latter 
that Gessi’s campaign in the Bahr el Ghazal had been more or less 
successfully waged; but they had been dispersed, not destroyed, and 
when Mohammed Ahmed, the Dongola carpenter and fanatical fiki, 
began to disclaim against the oppression of the foreign rulers, these 
slave traders were amongst the first to flock to him. 
Thus it was that with a little band of some 150 slave traders and 
religious devotees, this, itinerant preacher, in May, 1881, suddenly 
declared himself to be the long-expected Mahdi, divinely sent to rid 
the country of its hated oppressors, and establish once more the true 
religion of the Prophet, purged from the pollution into which its 
renegade adherents had dragged it. 
The early life of Mohammed Ahmed, the so-called Mahdi, is so well 
known that I do not propose to repeat it here. I will, therefore, pass 
rapidly on to a brief account of the principal events by which he so 
quickly rose to be ruler of the whole Sudan, and to be credited by 
almost the entire population as the true Mahdi : a position which was 
not without its effect on European—and certainly on English—politics 
and military operations. 
It is supposed by certain people that the Arabi and Mahdi revolts 
being to some extent simultaneous as to their origin, they were, there¬ 
fore, dependent the one on the other, and that Arabi was, in some 
remote manner, connected with the creation of the situation in the 
Sudan—but this is not the case. It is true that the existing conditions 
in both Egypt and the Sudan lent themselves to national movements. 
Both countries were under the same nominal sway, and no doubt 
much the same abuses existed in Egypt which existed in the Sudan, 
