An excellent recent history book by Dominic Green looks at a pivotal British-Egyptian victor over the Islamic terror network that was lead by this nut who called himself the Mahdi. H Mahdi's slave selling Islamic state in Sudan was a terror threat to both Egypt and British interests in the region not to mention the various African tribes which were wiped out by these Sudanese Islamic radicals. Dominic's book called "Three Empires On The Nile" look at the political football that the British, Ottoman, and French empire played in this area that pretty much initiated the scramble of Africa. This conflict defined the relationship between the West and the Islamic world as an increasing affirmative Arab people pushed for more autonomy in Egypt against the Turks and the English. The self-proclaimed messiah known as the Mahdi rejected the modern world and spread his vision of battling modernity through the spear killing and enslaving many. The author recounts this Mahdist empire growing in Sudan and how it started as it headed North eventually conquering Khartoum and sacking and taping the city. The Famed British overlord Charles Gordon would become a self-made martyr as he rejected many opportunities to flee the city and waited for reinforcements he knew was not forthcoming.
Dominic Green covers all you can cover in this Sudan campaign and the Victorian jihad to civilize this area and seeing all that has occurred in this sorry country in the past fifty years undoubted the British empire failed miserable in the long run. In the shirt run they defeated a serious rural threat to mankind in killing off the Dervish devils of the Mahdi's armies and similarities with today's Islamic state with these Muslim monsters in Sudan in 1885 are very evident. Green covers this book with chapters highlighting some of the major political voices and players that set up this campaign from Khedive Ismail, Jamel Ed-din, Mohammed Ahmed the fuming Mahdi, William Gladstone, Charles Gordon,Shariff Urabi,Garnet Wolseley, and Herbert Kitchner.
Jamel-Ed-din started modern Islamic radicalism as he felt the reason the Muslim world fell so behind the Christian states was because they moved away from mid evil and pure backwards Islam. The Mahdisits overwhelmed many Egyptian and British armies sent into the difficult terrain to find and destroy the Mahdi. In the midst of the Mahdisits revolt which was spreading like wildfire, there was dissension within the Egyptian and colonial forces. Egyptians were pressing for the British troops to leave and for more independence from the Ottomans and invading and fighting fellow Muslims proved difficult for some Egyptian. The death of Gordon inspired the British to send more men and supplies nto the region and unveiled a new weapon called the Maxim gun that could shoot seven bullets per second and put many Ansar holy warriors to an early paradise. The Madhi would not live to see this crucial defeat of his warriors as Allah called him early to about the humiliation and allowed the British and Colonel Kitchener to quickly destroy this new Caliphate in Sudan. The Ansar were forced in a starvation mode where the savages reverted to cannibalism before mercifully being put away through the rifles of the Egyptians and British forces and a footnote in history. 
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