First Jihad: Khartoum, and the Dawn of Militant Islam (27 page)

By the first week of September, the endless war of nerves between the besieged and the besiegers had begun to take its toll on Khartoum’s defenders.
Food was hardly an issue—so much grain had been laid in according to Gordon’s orders and so many cattle taken in raids on Arab camps that the price of foodstuffs had actually dropped below what merchants were charging before the siege began.
What was gradually wearing away the defenders’ will to resist was the lack of news from the outside world.
Rumors were spread by Mahdist sympathizers who remained behind in the city claiming that Khartoum had been abandoned by both Cairo and London, and that the relief expedition was a myth.
Gordon, the whisperings ran, had been forgotten by his own government.

More critical to the city’s morale was the outcome of a skirmish on September 4, when one of Gordon’s cattle-raiding parties was overtaken by a horde of Arab horsemen.
Dispersed in open country, the Egyptian soldiers were quickly ridden down, some eight hundred being lost in this single action.
It was a heavy blow to Gordon’s pride as well as the garrison’s strength, for up until this moment it had been a point of pride for him that his soldiers could carry out such raids with near-impunity.
The effects of the raids themselves had been twofold: not only were they a source of fresh meat for the city, they also gave the garrison and populace a means of striking back at their besiegers, alleviating some of the feeling of being trapped and helplessness.
Even Gordon was at times overtaken by melancholy: watching the hawks that soared and swooped above the palace reminded him of a passage from Proverbs, Chapter 30, verse 17: “The eye that mocketh at his father and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it.” “I often wonder,” he confided to his journal, “whether they are destined to pick my eyes, for I fear I was not the best of sons.”

Apparently it was this action that caused Gordon to decide to try and force a passage of the Nile past Berber.
The Nile had risen to the point where a steamer could safely negotiate the Sixth Cataract above Berber and sail down the river into friendly waters.
Determined to make his case before the authorities in London and Cairo for remaining behind to defend the city, a cache of documents was prepared, including Colonel Stewart’s diary of the siege, along with a personal appeal from Gordon to all the European powers, asking for assistance.
The steamer
Abbas
was given the task of carrying the package, along with the English and French consuls and the rest of the Europeans who had remained in the city after the siege began.
Also boarding the
Abbas
was Colonel Stewart, Gordon’s second-in-command, who had come to share his General’s passion for defending Khartoum and who was expected to make a forceful case before the Cabinet—and the House of Commons if need be—for a relief column to be sent up the Nile.
Gordon, careful to protect Stewart’s reputation, gave him written orders to depart on the
Abbas
, so that no one would question whether Stewart had abandoned his post.
Four extra steamers would sail with the
Abbas
, protecting her until she was out of danger from attacks by the Mahdi’s troops.

Extra baulks of wood and whatever bits of metal plating could be found were placed around the vulnerable spots of the
Abbas
’ hull and superstructure.
As long as the steamer stayed in mid-channel, she would be safe from nearly any weapon the Arabs possessed.
Only if she neared the shore was there a danger that the Ansar’s small arms might be able to do serious damage.
As much cordwood for the boilers as could be carried was brought aboard, and the steamer’s pilot, one of the most experienced men on the river, was urged to stop only at deserted parts of the river when it became necessary to collect wood to refuel.
As darkness fell on September 10, the small convoy of steamers pulled away from the Khartoum waterfront and headed down the river.
Though he had no way of knowing it, Gordon would never see anyone aboard the
Abbas
alive again.

While he never explicitly said so in his Journals, Gordon appears to have discounted the possibility that he would share Slatin’s fate should Khartoum be taken.
He expected no mercy from the Madhi, who, Gordon believed, would have him executed, no matter what the teachings of the Koran.
He was aware of the ghastly fate that had befallen another European who had become a prisoner of the Madhi: a Frenchman by the name of Clavier Pain.

Pain, an adventurer at heart who had fought with the Paris Commune during the Franco-Prussian War, had been exploring the western Sudan when he was captured by the Mahdi’s followers sometime in late 1883.
It’s unclear whether Pain was already unwell when he was captured or fell ill after he was taken, but in any case, as he was shuffled from encampment to encampment, a fever he had contracted became progressively worse.
Forced to ride a camel on which he could barely sit, he was being carried to the Mahdi’s camp outside Khartoum when he passed out and fell to the ground.
Orders were given to bury him immediately, and within minutes Pain’s body was lost to sight under a mound of sand.
Witnesses later said they were convinced that Pain had been buried alive.

With Stewart gone, the burden of command began to weigh heavily on Gordon.
Again and again he confided to his journal his need for subordinates he could trust.
He was expected to be everywhere, to make every decision.
“Nearly every order has to be repeated two or three times.
I am weary of my life.” And yet the intrepidity of Charles Gordon was never more evident than in the last few months of the siege of Khartoum.

He continued to pass out medals to deserving soldiers and civilians; special rations were issued on Moslem feast days; cash bonuses were paid to soldiers who volunteered for hazardous duty.
At his orders, bands would give public concerts and fireworks displays were arranged.
The latest bit of encouraging news, no matter how slight, was posted in city squares and the marketplace.
Still, morale sagged.
When in early October word reached him that sixteen of Khartoum’s leading citizens were planning a revolt of their own to deliver the city to the Mahdi, Gordon had the lot of them arrested and imprisoned.
But he confided to his journal that night, “I confess I am more perplexed about these arrests than I like: is it a good thing?
Or is it not?
If I could be sure that the majority wished to go to the Mahdi, I could make up my mind at once what to do: it would be an immense relief to me, but does the mass wish it?”

On the next day, October 16, came what was probably the cruelest blow of all.
Slatin, still vainly carrying on his correspondence with Gordon, informed the General that the
Abbas
had been captured and all aboard her had been slain.
Gordon had heard a rumor to that effect a few days earlier, but discounted it.
Now Slatin apparently confirmed it, and while Gordon clung to the belief for a few more days that the report was another attempt at Mahdist propaganda, he confided to his journal on October 21, “I am very anxious about the Abbas: it would be terrible, if it is true, that she is captured.”

The next morning a letter from the Mahdi arrived.
It began, in Muhammed Ahmed’s classically florid style:

In the Name of Allah the Merciful and Compassionate: praise be to Allah, the Bountiful Ruler, and blessing on our Lord Muhammed with peace.

From the servant who trusts in Allah—Muhammed the son of Abdullah.

To Gordon Pasha of Khartoum, may God guide him into the path of virtue, amen!

Know that your small steamer, named
Abbas
—which you sent with the intention of forwarding your news to Cairo, by way of Dongola, the persons sent being your representative Stewart Pasha and the two consuls, French and English, with other persons, has been captured by the will of Allah.

Those who believed in us as Mahdi, and surrendered, have been delivered; and those who did not were destroyed—as your representative afore-named, with the Consuls and the rest—whose souls Allah has condemned to the fire and eternal misery.

Muhammed Ahmed then went on to catalogue what property had been taken from the steamer—Gordon’s government cipher; the appeals for help to the Pope and the Sultan; Stewart’s journals; and the documents containing the details of state of the garrison, the food, and ammunition reserves within the city; along with copies of all the telegraphic traffic that had passed between Khartoum and Cairo.
“We have now understood it all,” the letter went on.
Once again the Mahdi invited Gordon to surrender and convert to Islam, declaring that he would be given no more such opportunities: “For, after the beginning of the battle were you to surrender, it would be from fear, and not willingly, and that is not to be accepted.”

What had happened to the
Abbas
?
Gordon had no way of knowing, though he suspected treachery.
But a message from Kitchener smuggled into the city a few days later provided some of the details, which were far less dramatic but equally tragic.

The
Abbas
had successfully made her way past Berber, despite heavy fire from the banks of the Nile at a number of places.
But when the steamer was sixty miles below Abu Hamed and less than one hundred miles from Kitchener’s outpost at Debba, she struck an uncharted rock, which forced her to make for the south bank.
There she was greeted by Sulieman Wad Gamir, sheik of the Monasir tribe, along with several lesser sheiks.
Professing friendship, the Arabs offered to provide camels to take Stewart and the two consuls to Debba, but during the night, as the Europeans slept, the tribesmen rushed their tents and massacred them.
The
Abbas
was then stormed, and all but fourteen of the passengers and crew still aboard were cut to pieces.

It was a cruel blow to Gordon, who had been counting on Stewart to make a compelling case for intervention in the Sudan to the Cabinet, the Commons, and the British people.
He had no idea that an expedition had already been formed and was slowly making its way up the Nile.
In the same letter in which he announced that the
Abbas
had been captured and those aboard her killed, the Mahdi informed Gordon that he intended to launch a full attack on the city soon, concluding with the words, “I have decided to take pity on some of my men and allow them to die as to obtain paradise.”

Gordon’s reply was, as could be expected, defiant: “Whether he [the Mahdi] has captured twenty thousand steamers like the
Abbas
, or twenty thousand Stewarts Pasha; it is all one to me.
I am here, like iron, and hope to see the newly-arrived English.” With that he ended the correspondence, informing the Mahdi that henceforth they would communicate only with bullets.
The siege of Khartoum was about it enter its final stages.

The Mahdi’s declaration was a revealing look into the soul of a man who some would later claim was merely leading a nationalist fight for freedom.
It was made with such passion and such utter conviction that there was no doubt that he still believed that he was answering a divine calling, and those who followed him were helping him fulfill a holy mission.
At the same time it revealed a portion of that soul that was a portal into hell, for the cruelty inherent in sending thousands of men to their death in the name of pity, attempting to characterize their slaughter as an act of mercy, was the pronouncement of a madman.

It cannot be questioned that Muhammed Ahmed was still bound by his vision of Islam; what had happened was that the vision had changed.
The Mahdi himself was growing corpulent, as years of living in austerity had given way to a life of sensuality and pleasure.
Yet he still knelt toward Mecca five times a day and said his prayers.
The details of his mode of living still adhered to the prescriptions and proscriptions of the Koran; according to all the fundamental teachings of Islam, he was still a holy man, a respected, scholarly imam.
But a darkness was overtaking him.
Gone was the austere, strict but benign Islam that Muhammed Ahmed had preached as an itinerant
imam
in the Sudanese desert; in its place was an austere and strict Islam now devoid of mercy or tolerance.
The Mahdi was Allah’s tool, the vessel by which the truth and glory of pure, unpolluted Islam would spread throughout the world, and in turn his followers were the Mahdi’s tools, to be used and used up as he saw fit, with no regard to their wishes, hopes, or beliefs.

It was a cold contrast to Gordon’s perception of himself as God’s tool, to be discarded when the Almighty chose to do so.
The Mahdi saw himself as indispensable; Allah could not achieve His will without him.
Gordon saw himself as entirely expendable; God’s will was not dependent on any single human being.
The contrast in how each man viewed himself was a microcosm of the profound differences in their faiths: Gordon believed in a merciful Christianity, the Mahdi in a merciless Islam.

It was in early November that some of the most encouraging news yet reached the city, which went far to relieve the despair that had settled over Khartoum with the loss of the
Abbas
.
One of Kitchener’s messengers slipped into the city with a packet of letters for Gordon, wrapped in a copy of the September 15 London Standard.
Reading it eagerly, Gordon learned that Gladstone had finally been compelled to agree to a relief expedition and that it had already sailed for Cairo.

The details of the planned operations were a source of great excitement not only for Gordon but for the city as well.
“Lord Wolseley seen off at Victoria Station, for the Gordon relief expedition!!!
NO!
for the relief of the Sudan garrison….
I declare positively, and once and for all, that I will not leave the Sudan until every one who wants to go down is given the chance to do so, unless a government is established which relieves me of the charge; therefore if any emissary or letter comes up here ordering me to come down, I WILL NOT OBEY IT BUT WILL STAY HERE; AND FALL WITH THE TOWN, AND RUN ALL RISKS.”