ABSTRACT
I t was not until May, 1889, that an invasion of Egypt on a large scale was attempted. The power and prestige of the Khalifa were then at their height. The rebellions in Darfur and Kordofan had been crushed. The Anti-Mahdi was dead. Even the defeat of the Ansars by the Abyssinians had been turned into a victory when a stray bullet killed King Johannes and permitted the Arabs to seize the body of that monarch and convert a rout into a triumph. The ideal hour had sounded for the attempt to drive the Egyptians and the English-the “ Turks ”— into the sea. And the Arabs had at their head their most incorrigible leader, the incorruptible Abderrahman Wad En Nejumi, the man whom Lord Milner calls the Gordon of Mahdiism.
