NOTE ABOUT THE MAHDI’S DEATH
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THE policy finally decided on by Lord Salisbury in July, 1885, of completing the evacuation of the Soudan and leaving it to “stew in its own juice” till such time as it could be reconquered in English interests, was a Macchiavellian one, and resulted successfully from the point of view of imperial ambition. The decision was come to simultaneously with Mohammed Ahmed’s death, which I thought at the time, and still think, was not wholly a natural one. His death was due, according to the official account, to small-pox, but there were too many interests engaged at Cairo and Constantinople just then not to make it extremely probable that there was another agency at work to procure a solution so simple and so timely. The Mahdi’s was a great personality, commanding unbounded respect in the Soudan, and inspiring the religious hopes of Mohammedan Egypt as that of a possible deliverer from Christian domination, while beyond Egypt it had become a rival influence obnoxious to the Ottoman Caliphate. There are too many examples of such deaths procured for political ends in the time of Sultan Abdul Hamid and of the Khedivate to make the suspicion in the present instance unreasonable; and it must be remembered that with the Drummond Wolff mission a new opportunity was presenting itself at Constantinople, to which the life of the Mahdi was a chief obstacle. Be this as it may, it is certain that the blow dealt by Mohammed Ahmed’s death was fatal to the future of the Soudan as that of a permanently powerful theocracy. The Khalifa Abdallah el Taishi, who succeeded him in supreme rule, was a man wholly inferior intellectually and politically to his master, and under him religious enthusiasm waned and tribal rivalries took the place of a united front against the enemy, while also the wisdom was lacking for the conclusion of an effective peace on lines of commercial intercourse with Egypt. There was always the excuse at Cairo that the Khalifa was impracticable to treat with. The story, however, of the reconquest of Khartoum twelve years later is beyond the scope of the present volume, as is any appreciation of the actual condition of the Soudan under English rule, and I leave both reluctantly for another occasion.
W. S. B.
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