Egyptian Sudan

Muhammad Ali to Abbas II

1812 - 1903

When Muhammad Ali consolidated his rule in Egypt, the first thing he turned his attention to was the conquest of Sudan. The historians of his good reign, indeed his happy era, mention that among the reasons that compelled him to hasten this was his certainty that Egypt could not survive without Sudan. The most important of these reasons are the following:

The first - to secure the benefits of the land so that it would be in the grasp of the Egyptians. The second - to excavate gold mines to link Egypt's agricultural wealth with the mineral wealth of Sudan. The third - to recruit Sudanese because they are people of strength and power, and they are famous for wars, and he, in his new kingdom, was in need of armies. The fourth - to eradicate the Mamluks who had fled to Dongola and Sennar, fearing they might form a Sudanese army to invade Egypt. So he did what Napoleon did before him by sending Deseix to eliminate the remaining Mamluks. And Sudan, after he defeated them in Egypt and the Maghreb, was a place for them to seize fiefs in the vast Sudan, because this volunteer army was like the Janissary army in its rebellion and sedition. So it was subjected to and its leaders were influenced by the Egyptian style of the Mamluk army. The sixth - to pave the way for trade between Egypt and Sudan, because Egyptian merchants suffered hardship and neglect in Sudan, and were even exposed to severe oppression. The seventh - to expand the Egyptian kingdom by annexing Syria and the Arabian Peninsula after annexing Sudan, the source of the Nile.