Egyptian Sudan. 26 From Muhammad Ali to Abbas II 1903 - 1812 When Muhammad Ali's rule was established in Egypt, the first thing he turned his attention to was the conquest of Sudan. The historians of his reign, indeed his happy reign, said 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 reach the sources of the Nile so that they would be in Egyptian hands. The second – to excavate gold mines to link Egypt's agricultural wealth with the mineral wealth of Sudan. The third – to recruit Sudanese, as they are people of strength and fortitude, and they are famous for wars, and he, in his new reign, was in need of armies. The fourth – to eradicate the Mamluks who had taken refuge in Dabba and Sennar, fearing that they would form a Sudanese army with which to threaten Egypt. So he did what Napoleon did before him by sending Disck to eliminate the remnants of the Mamluks in Sudan after he had defeated them in Egypt. The fifth – to get rid of his volunteer army of Arnauts, Circassians, and Maghrebis, and to grant them fiefs in the vast Sudan, because this army, like the Janissaries in Istanbul, was a source of threat to the order he had established for his Egyptian army in the style of the French army. The sixth – to pave the way for trade between Egypt and Sudan, because Egyptian merchants faced great hardships in dealing with the lands of Sudan, and were even exposed to severe dangers. The seventh – to complete the formation of the Egyptian kingdom by annexing Syria and the Arab lands to it, after annexing Sudan, the source of the Nile.