Turkiyah
Encyclopedia
The History of Sudan under Muhammad Ali and his successors traces the period from Muhammad Ali Pasha
's invasion of Sudan in 1820 until the fall of Khartoum
in 1885 to Muhammad Ahmad
, the self-proclaimed Mahdi
. This era of Ottoman control is commonly known as the Turkiyah.
was nominally an Egyptian dependency, both during the Mamluk
and Ottoman
periods, previous Egyptian rulers had demanded little more from the Sudanese Kashif
than the regular remittance of tribute. However, after Muhammad Ali crushed the Mamluks in Egypt, a party of them had escaped and fled south. In 1811 these Mamluks established a state at Dunqulah as a base for their slave trading. In 1820 the Sultan of Sennar informed Muhammad Ali that he was unable to comply with the demand to expel the Mamluks. In response Muhammad Ali sent 4,000 troops to invade Sudan, clear it of Mamluks, and incorporate it into Egypt. His forces received the submission of the Kashif, dispersed the Dunqulah Mamluks, conquered Kurdufan
, and accepted Sannar's surrender from the last Funj sultan, Badi VII
. However, the Arab Ja'alin tribe
s offered stiff resistance.
pyramid
s searching for hidden gold. Furthermore, slave trading increased, causing many of the inhabitants of the fertile Al Jazirah
, heartland of Funj, to flee to escape the slave traders. Within a year of Muhammad Ali's victory, 30,000 Sudanese were conscripted and sent to Egypt for training and induction into the army. However, so many perished from disease and the unfamiliar climate that the survivors could be used only in garrisons in Sudan.
As Egyptian rule became more secure, the government became less harsh. Egypt saddled Sudan with a burdensome bureaucracy, however, and expected the country to be self-supporting. Nevertheless, farmers and herders gradually returned to Al Jazirah. Muhammad Ali also won the allegiance of some tribal and religious leaders by granting them a tax exemption. Egyptian soldiers and Sudanese jahidiyah (conscripted soldiers), supplemented by mercenaries, manned garrisons in Khartoum
, Kassala
, and Al Ubayyid
and at several smaller outposts. The Shaiqiyah, Arabic speakers who had resisted Egyptian occupation, were defeated and allowed to serve the Egyptian rulers as tax collectors and irregular cavalry under their own shaykhs. The Egyptians divided Sudan into provinces, which they then subdivided into smaller administrative units that usually corresponded to tribal territories. In 1835 Khartoum became the seat of the Hakimadar (governor general); many garrison towns also developed into administrative centers in their respective regions. At the local level, shaykhs and traditional tribal chieftains assumed administrative responsibilities.
In the 1850s, the Egyptians revised the legal system in both Egypt and Sudan, introducing a commercial code
and a criminal code
administered in secular courts. The change reduced the prestige of the qadis (Islamic judges) whose sharia courts were confined to dealing with matters of personal status. Even in this area, the courts lacked credibility in the eyes of Sudanese Muslims because they conducted hearings according to the Hanafi
school of law rather than the stricter Maliki
school traditional in the area.
The Egyptians also undertook a mosque-building program and staffed religious schools and courts with teachers and judges trained at Cairo
's Al Azhar University. The government favored the Khatmiyyah, a traditional religious order, because its leaders preached cooperation with the regime. But Sudanese Muslims condemned the official orthodoxy as decadent because it had rejected many popular beliefs and practices.
Until its gradual suppression in the 1860s, the slave trade was the most profitable undertaking in Sudan and was the focus of Egyptian interests in the country. The government encouraged economic development through state monopolies that had exported slaves, ivory, and gum arabic
. In some areas, tribal land, which had been held in common, became the private property of the sheikh
s and was sometimes sold to buyers outside the tribe.
Muhammad Ali's immediate successors, Abbas I
(1849–54) and Said
(1854–63), lacked leadership qualities and paid little attention to Sudan, but the reign of Ismail I
(1863–79) revitalized Egyptian interest in the country. In 1865 the Ottoman Empire ceded the Red Sea
coast and its ports to Egypt. Two years later, the Ottoman Sultan formally recognized Ismail as Khedive
of Egypt and Sudan, a title Muhammad Ali had previously used without Ottoman sanction. Egypt organized and garrisoned the new provinces of Upper Nile, Bahr al Ghazal, and Equatoria
and, in 1874, conquered and annexed Darfur
. Ismail named Europeans to provincial governorships and appointed Sudanese to more responsible government positions. Under prodding from Britain, Ismail took steps to complete the elimination of the slave trade in the north of present-day Sudan. He also tried to build a new army on the European model that no longer would depend on slaves to provide manpower. However, this modernization process caused unrest. Army units mutinied, and many Sudanese resented the quartering of troops among the civilian population and the use of Sudanese forced labor on public projects. Efforts to suppress the slave trade angered the urban merchant class and the Baqqara Arabs, who had grown prosperous by selling slaves.
Muhammad Ali of Egypt
Muhammad Ali Pasha al-Mas'ud ibn Agha was a commander in the Ottoman army, who became Wāli, and self-declared Khedive of Egypt and Sudan...
's invasion of Sudan in 1820 until the fall of Khartoum
Khartoum
Khartoum is the capital and largest city of Sudan and of Khartoum State. It is located at the confluence of the White Nile flowing north from Lake Victoria, and the Blue Nile flowing west from Ethiopia. The location where the two Niles meet is known as "al-Mogran"...
in 1885 to Muhammad Ahmad
Muhammad Ahmad
Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah was a religious leader of the Samaniyya order in Sudan who, on June 29, 1881, proclaimed himself as the Mahdi or messianic redeemer of the Islamic faith...
, the self-proclaimed Mahdi
Mahdi
In Islamic eschatology, the Mahdi is the prophesied redeemer of Islam who will stay on Earth for seven, nine or nineteen years- before the Day of Judgment and, alongside Jesus, will rid the world of wrongdoing, injustice and tyranny.In Shia Islam, the belief in the Mahdi is a "central religious...
. This era of Ottoman control is commonly known as the Turkiyah.
Background
Although a part of present-day northern SudanSudan
Sudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...
was nominally an Egyptian dependency, both during the Mamluk
Mamluk
A Mamluk was a soldier of slave origin, who were predominantly Cumans/Kipchaks The "mamluk phenomenon", as David Ayalon dubbed the creation of the specific warrior...
and Ottoman
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
periods, previous Egyptian rulers had demanded little more from the Sudanese Kashif
Kashif
Kashif is an Arabic word, commonly used as a male given name in the Muslim world. Its meaning is close to the English words 'revealer', 'discoverer', 'uncoverer' or 'pioneer'....
than the regular remittance of tribute. However, after Muhammad Ali crushed the Mamluks in Egypt, a party of them had escaped and fled south. In 1811 these Mamluks established a state at Dunqulah as a base for their slave trading. In 1820 the Sultan of Sennar informed Muhammad Ali that he was unable to comply with the demand to expel the Mamluks. In response Muhammad Ali sent 4,000 troops to invade Sudan, clear it of Mamluks, and incorporate it into Egypt. His forces received the submission of the Kashif, dispersed the Dunqulah Mamluks, conquered Kurdufan
Kurdufan
Kurdufan , also spelled Kordofan, is a former province of central Sudan. In 1994 it was divided into three new federal states: North Kurdufan, South Kurdufan, and West Kurdufan...
, and accepted Sannar's surrender from the last Funj sultan, Badi VII
Badi VII
Badi VII 1805 - 1821 was the last ruler of the Kingdom of Sennar.Badi offered no resistance to Ismail Pasha, who had led the khedive army of his father up the Nile to his capital at Sennar...
. However, the Arab Ja'alin tribe
Ja'alin tribe
Ja'alin are an Arab, Semitic tribe. They formerly occupied the country on both banks of the Nile from Khartoum to Abu Hamad. They trace their lineage to Abbas, uncle of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. They are of Arab origin, but now of mixed blood mostly with upper Egyptians and nubians. They...
s offered stiff resistance.
Egyptian Rule
Under the new government established in 1821, Egyptian soldiers lived off the land and exacted exorbitant taxes from the population. They also destroyed many ancient MeroiticMeroitic
Meroitic is an adjective referring to things related to the kingdom of Meroë in pre-Islamic Sudan.* The Meroitic period was approximately 300 BC to 400 AD.* The Meroitic script was their writing system....
pyramid
Pyramid
A pyramid is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge at a single point. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilateral, or any polygon shape, meaning that a pyramid has at least three triangular surfaces...
s searching for hidden gold. Furthermore, slave trading increased, causing many of the inhabitants of the fertile Al Jazirah
Al Jazirah (state)
Al Jazirah , also spelled Gezira, is one of the 15 states of Sudan. The state lies between the Blue Nile and the White Nile in the east-central region of the country. It has an area of 27,549 km². The name comes from the Arabic word for peninsula. Wad Madani is the capital of the state.It is...
, heartland of Funj, to flee to escape the slave traders. Within a year of Muhammad Ali's victory, 30,000 Sudanese were conscripted and sent to Egypt for training and induction into the army. However, so many perished from disease and the unfamiliar climate that the survivors could be used only in garrisons in Sudan.
As Egyptian rule became more secure, the government became less harsh. Egypt saddled Sudan with a burdensome bureaucracy, however, and expected the country to be self-supporting. Nevertheless, farmers and herders gradually returned to Al Jazirah. Muhammad Ali also won the allegiance of some tribal and religious leaders by granting them a tax exemption. Egyptian soldiers and Sudanese jahidiyah (conscripted soldiers), supplemented by mercenaries, manned garrisons in Khartoum
Khartoum
Khartoum is the capital and largest city of Sudan and of Khartoum State. It is located at the confluence of the White Nile flowing north from Lake Victoria, and the Blue Nile flowing west from Ethiopia. The location where the two Niles meet is known as "al-Mogran"...
, Kassala
Kassala
Kassala is the capital of the state of Kassala in eastern Sudan. Its 2008 population was recorded to be 419,030. It is a market town and is famous for its fruit gardens. It was formerly a railroad hub, however, as of 2006 there was no operational railway station in Kassala and much of the track...
, and Al Ubayyid
Al-Ubayyid
Al-Ubayyid , also spelled El Obeid, is the capital of the state of North Kurdufan in central Sudan. In 2008, its population was 340,940. It is an important transportation hub: the terminus of a rail line, the junction of various roads and camel caravan routes, and the end of a pilgrim route from...
and at several smaller outposts. The Shaiqiyah, Arabic speakers who had resisted Egyptian occupation, were defeated and allowed to serve the Egyptian rulers as tax collectors and irregular cavalry under their own shaykhs. The Egyptians divided Sudan into provinces, which they then subdivided into smaller administrative units that usually corresponded to tribal territories. In 1835 Khartoum became the seat of the Hakimadar (governor general); many garrison towns also developed into administrative centers in their respective regions. At the local level, shaykhs and traditional tribal chieftains assumed administrative responsibilities.
In the 1850s, the Egyptians revised the legal system in both Egypt and Sudan, introducing a commercial code
Commercial code
Commercial code might refer to:*Commercial code , a set of laws designed to regulate comemrce*Commercial code , a code used in telegraph and telex messages....
and a criminal code
Criminal Code
A criminal code is a document which compiles all, or a significant amount of, a particular jurisdiction's criminal law...
administered in secular courts. The change reduced the prestige of the qadis (Islamic judges) whose sharia courts were confined to dealing with matters of personal status. Even in this area, the courts lacked credibility in the eyes of Sudanese Muslims because they conducted hearings according to the Hanafi
Hanafi
The Hanafi school is one of the four Madhhab in jurisprudence within Sunni Islam. The Hanafi madhhab is named after the Persian scholar Abu Hanifa an-Nu‘man ibn Thābit , a Tabi‘i whose legal views were preserved primarily by his two most important disciples, Abu Yusuf and Muhammad al-Shaybani...
school of law rather than the stricter Maliki
Maliki
The ' madhhab is one of the schools of Fiqh or religious law within Sunni Islam. It is the second-largest of the four schools, followed by approximately 25% of Muslims, mostly in North Africa, West Africa, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and in some parts of Saudi Arabia...
school traditional in the area.
The Egyptians also undertook a mosque-building program and staffed religious schools and courts with teachers and judges trained at Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
's Al Azhar University. The government favored the Khatmiyyah, a traditional religious order, because its leaders preached cooperation with the regime. But Sudanese Muslims condemned the official orthodoxy as decadent because it had rejected many popular beliefs and practices.
Until its gradual suppression in the 1860s, the slave trade was the most profitable undertaking in Sudan and was the focus of Egyptian interests in the country. The government encouraged economic development through state monopolies that had exported slaves, ivory, and gum arabic
Gum arabic
220px|thumb|right|Acacia gumGum arabic, also known as acacia gum, chaar gund, char goond, or meska, is a natural gum made of hardened sap taken from two species of the acacia tree; Acacia senegal and Acacia seyal...
. In some areas, tribal land, which had been held in common, became the private property of the sheikh
Sheikh
Not to be confused with sikhSheikh — also spelled Sheik or Shaikh, or transliterated as Shaykh — is an honorific in the Arabic language that literally means "elder" and carries the meaning "leader and/or governor"...
s and was sometimes sold to buyers outside the tribe.
Muhammad Ali's immediate successors, Abbas I
Abbas I of Egypt
Abbas I , , also known as Abbas Hilmi I Pasha Wāli of Egypt and Sudan, was a son of Tusun Pasha and grandson of Muhammad Ali, founder of the reigning dynasty of Egypt and Sudan at the time...
(1849–54) and Said
Sa'id of Egypt
Muhammad Sa'id Pasha was the Wāli self-declared Khedive of Egypt and Sudan from 1854 until 1863, officially owing fealty to the Ottoman Sultan but in practice exercising virtual independence. He was the fourth son of Muhammad Ali Pasha. Sa'id was a Francophone, educated in Paris.Under Sa'id's rule...
(1854–63), lacked leadership qualities and paid little attention to Sudan, but the reign of Ismail I
Isma'il Pasha
Isma'il Pasha , known as Ismail the Magnificent , was the Khedive of Egypt and Sudan from 1863 to 1879, when he was removed at the behest of the United Kingdom...
(1863–79) revitalized Egyptian interest in the country. In 1865 the Ottoman Empire ceded the Red Sea
Red Sea
The Red Sea is a seawater inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb strait and the Gulf of Aden. In the north, there is the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez...
coast and its ports to Egypt. Two years later, the Ottoman Sultan formally recognized Ismail as Khedive
Khedive
The term Khedive is a title largely equivalent to the English word viceroy. It was first used, without official recognition, by Muhammad Ali Pasha , the Wāli of Egypt and Sudan, and vassal of the Ottoman Empire...
of Egypt and Sudan, a title Muhammad Ali had previously used without Ottoman sanction. Egypt organized and garrisoned the new provinces of Upper Nile, Bahr al Ghazal, and Equatoria
Equatoria
Equatoria is a region in the south of present-day South Sudan along the upper reaches of the White Nile. Originally a province of Egypt, it also contained most of Northern part of present day Uganda including Albert Lake...
and, in 1874, conquered and annexed Darfur
Darfur
Darfur is a region in western Sudan. An independent sultanate for several hundred years, it was incorporated into Sudan by Anglo-Egyptian forces in 1916. The region is divided into three federal states: West Darfur, South Darfur, and North Darfur...
. Ismail named Europeans to provincial governorships and appointed Sudanese to more responsible government positions. Under prodding from Britain, Ismail took steps to complete the elimination of the slave trade in the north of present-day Sudan. He also tried to build a new army on the European model that no longer would depend on slaves to provide manpower. However, this modernization process caused unrest. Army units mutinied, and many Sudanese resented the quartering of troops among the civilian population and the use of Sudanese forced labor on public projects. Efforts to suppress the slave trade angered the urban merchant class and the Baqqara Arabs, who had grown prosperous by selling slaves.
Sources
– Sudan- Dr. Mohamed H. Fadlalla, Short History of Sudan, iUniverse, 30 April 2004, ISBN 100595314252
- Dr. Mohamed Hassan Fadlalla, The Problem of Dar Fur, iUniverse, Inc. (July 21, 2005), ISBN 978-0595365029
- Egyptian Royalty by Ahmed S. Kamel, Hassan Kamel Kelisli-Morali, Georges Soliman and Magda Malek.
- L'Egypte D'Antan... Egypt in Bygone Days by Max Karkegi.