Note 50 — Chapter XI · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN AFRICA.

A few years before this missionary tour of Muḥammad ʻUt͟hmān, the troops of Muḥammad ʻAlī, the founder of the present dynasty of Egypt, had begun to extend their conquests into the Eastern Sudan, and the emissaries of the various religious orders in Egypt were encouraged by the Egyptian government, in the hope that their labours would assist in the pacification of the country, to carry on a propaganda in this newly-acquired territory, where they laboured with so much success, that the recent insurrection in the Sudan under the Mahdī has been attributed to the religious fervour their preaching excited.50