First and foremost, between the two countries, so I descended with the expedition that he sent to Sudan, led by his son Ismail, three elite Egyptian scholars, namely the Hanafi judge Muhammad Al-Asyuti, and Sayyid Ahmad Ahmad Al-Baqli, of the Shafi'i school, and Sheikh Ahmad Al-Sunlawi, of the Maliki school, so that each of the three schools would have a sheikh to oversee its affairs, and so that the requirements of a school would not force one to resort to a sheikh of another school for fatwas and rulings.

Muhammad Ali did not content himself with sending scholars, but rather tried to encourage the Sufi orders to migrate to Sudan so that this religious connection between Egypt and Sudan would be strengthened, and he encouraged the Sa'adiyya order, a branch of the Rifa'iyya, and the Rahmaniyya order, a type of the Waraqawiyya, and the Badawiyya order, named after Ahmad Al-Badawi and Tanta, and the Hamamiyya and the Disuqiyya, named after Ibrahim Al-Disuqi.

Also arriving in Sudan at the beginning of this phase was Sheikh Rifaa'ah Raadi' Al-Tahtawi (1267 AH), who took charge of a school in Khartoum and brought with him a group of reciters who taught the jurists of Khartoum to perfect the recitation of the Holy Quran and taught the readings until they became skilled in them. Some mosques were also established that played a noticeable role in spreading the sciences of Islamic religion, and among these mosques was the Old Mosque in Khartoum, which was a center of knowledge and a dwelling place for scholars. This was because in this era, when Islamic Sudan emerged in the general Islamic life, the Sufi orders had prevailed and dominated people's beliefs and thinking, and had mingled with Islamic studies. Many scholars came to believe that outward knowledge is not complete without inward knowledge, and some even considered this inward knowledge to be the only knowledge that matters. The Islamic nations were immersed in the depths of Sufism with its various orders, manners, systems, traditions, dhikrs, and venerations, to the extent that scholars and jurists no longer held the first rank in the hearts of Muslims. Instead, this rank was occupied by the men of the Sufi orders, who rose to a position of sanctity, both alive and deceased.

274