The RSF’s distortions of Mahdist history
Examining the role of the Rizeigat tribe in the 1880s uprising
HISTORY
A key aspect of the racial propaganda of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) is their invocation of the Mahdist revolt of the 1880s against the Turco-Egyptian rulers of that period. They portray the Rizeigat Arab tribe—which forms the core of the RSF—as the heroes of the Mahdist revolt—the true native Sudanese warriors who toppled an oppressive colonial regime.
This historical claim is meant to bolster the RSF fighters’ self-conception as a warrior race with a proud history, while simultaneously belittling the Nile Valley tribes—the Shaiygiya and Ja’alin Arabs, and the Danagla Nubians—as tools of the colonial oppressor, who were defeated once before and will be again.
The problem with this history is that it is largely false. The Rizeigat tribe played only a minor role in the Mahdist uprising, helping to topple the Turco-Egyptian governor in Darfur (“Slatin Pasha”), before they were suppressed by the Mahdist regime itself.
The Mahdist revolt began in central Sudan at Aba Island in 1881, not in Sudan’s west. Therefore, none of the earliest followers of the Mahdi, known as the ansar, were Rizeigat, and the revolt was already well underway before the Rizeigat got involved.
Subsequently, some of the Rizeigat joined the uprising, but they had nothing to do with the key Mahdist victories at Abu Klea, Shaykan, and El Teb in 1883-1885. It is not clear that they were present at the Siege of Khartoum (or if they were, their role was limited), nor do they seem to have played a major role in later fighting in the 1890s.
Prelude to revolt
The revolt against the Turco-Egyptian regime began in 1881 when a Muslim cleric named Mohamed Ahmed proclaimed himself Mahdi (“the Guided One”) and declared that “preaching will not purify the Turks; only the sword will purify them.” His followers routed a force of 200 Egyptian soldiers sent to arrest him, winning him renown and triggering a wider revolt.
At the time, the Rizeigat were already a large tribe of pastoralists, relying mostly on cattle and camel-herding for their livelihood. But they were internally divided and were not a coherent political entity. The core of their territory was (and is) in southeastern Darfur around present-day Ed Daien (far from the birthplace of the Mahdist revolt), though sections of the tribe lived elsewhere in the province.
For at least a century, the Rizeigat had been subjects of a series of colonial and pre-colonial governments. Throughout the 1700s and 1800s, they were vassals of the Fur Sultanate, which taxed them and launched punitive raids if they failed to pay, but otherwise mostly left them alone.
After the Turco-Egyptian conquest of the Nile Valley of central Sudan in 1821, the Rizeigat remained subjects of the Fur but also developed ties with Egyptian and Sudanese merchants involved in slave raiding and trafficking in sub-Saharan Africa.
Slavery and the export of slaves to the north was a long-standing institution in Darfur and the wider Sahel, but the trade increased after the Egyptian invasion, particularly during the American Civil War of 1861-1865, which caused a huge spike in the global price of cotton, generating more demand for slave labor in Egypt.
During the 1860s and early 1870s, the Rizeigat became clients and trade partners of the famous slaver and warlord Al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur (known as Zubeir Pasha), whose headquarters was at Deim Zubeir in Western Bahr al Ghazal in present-day South Sudan. In those years, the Rizeigat remained nominally subjects of the Fur Sultan but increasingly were independent.
According to Rudolf Carl von Slatin, an Egyptian-appointed administrator and eventual governor Darfur, the Rizeigat “drove off the tax gatherers” of the sultan and defeated an army led by the vizier of the Sultan Muhammad IV Husayn (r. 1839–1873). In his famous and controversial work Fire and Sword in the Sudan, Slatin wrote,
“Let us turn now for a moment to the Rizighat [Rizeigat]. For years following on the terrible treatment they had received at the hands of the Darfur Sultan, they remained quiet and submissive, but gradually, as the governing power in Darfur grew weak, they recovered in proportion, and again assumed a semi-independent position between Darfur and Bahr el Ghazal. Attempts were made to collect taxes from them, but they almost invariably drove off the tax-gatherers, and in one of these raids the Vizir Adam Tarbush, one of the principal Darfur commanders lost his life,—curiously enough at the very spot where, some years later, I was destined to suffer a heavy defeat at the hands of the Dervishes [Mahdists].”
Slatin and other English sources also report a “continual dispute” between two chiefs of the Rizeigat, Sheikh Madibbo ibn Ali and Sheikh Egel al-Jangawi, which persisted from the 1870s into the 1880s during the Mahdist uprising.
Slatin, aka “Slatin Pasha,” served as the Egyptian governor in Darfur, taking office shortly before the Mahdist revolt. He attempted to mediate the dispute between the two Rizeigat chiefs first by supporting Madibbo, then by appointing a third chief in their stead. (In the end, Madhist generals would execute both feuding Rizeigat chiefs).
In 1873, the relationship between Zubeir and the Rizeigat broke down, reportedly after some Rizeigat ambushed one of the slaver’s caravans and killed some of his relatives. Zubeir and his army entered Darfur in 1873 to “punish the Rizeigat,” and “quickly dispersed the irregular forces of the Rizeigat” (Sudan Notes and Records volume 31, 1950, page 207). Zubeir then marched against the Fur Sultanate itself and overthrew it. Over the next decade, his realm was absorbed into the Egyptian Empire.
Thus, at the start of the Mahdist revolt in 1881, the Rizeigat had recently been violently defeated and brought under the rule of the Turco-Egyptian state based in Khartoum. They were a largely stateless people, loosely governed by a far-off sovereign, who were divided between at least two ruling chiefs.
Joining the Mahdi
The Mahdist revolt spread into western and southern Sudan in 1882-1883, after the Mahdi withdrew from the Nile Valley to the Nuba Mountains, a journey he compared to the hijra of Mohamed. He sent letters in all directions, proclaiming his victories and his divine mission. This attracted followers from throughout Sudan, including from parts of what is today South Sudan.
Among those who travelled to meet the Mahdi, and pledged loyalty to him, was Madibbo, the disaffected Rizeigat chief. The Mahdi sent Madibbo back to Darfur, where he gathered support for the cause and overran the Egyptian garrison at Shakka.
Throughout 1882 and 1883, the Darfur governor—an Austrian officer who commanded a mix of Egyptian and Sudanese troops—fought a series of engagements against Rizeigat troops under Madibbo, and other Mahdist supporters. He won some of these battles and lost others, as the overall tide of war gradually shifted in favor of the Mahdists. Slatin finally surrendered in December 1883, after the Mahdi captured El Obeid and annihilated a relief force under “Hicks Pasha,” cutting him from the Nile.
Meanwhile, in 1882, the Emir Yunis Dikeim, a Ta’isha Arab and commander of the cavalry of the Mahdist army, arrested Madibbo’s rival, the Rizeigat chief Egeil El Jangawi. He sent him to the Mahdi in Kordofan, where he was executed. According to the historian and British administrator J. A. Reid,
“Before the fall of El Obeid [in 1882], he [the Emir Yunis Dikeim] was sent by the Mahdi to deal with the Rizeigat tribe in Darfur. He obtained their adherence to the Mahdist cause and sent their chief, Sheikh Egeil El Jangawi, as a prisoner to El Obeid where he was executed.” ['The Mahdi's Emirs', Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. 20 No. 2 1937, page 308-312].
The exact circumstances of this event are obscure and not well documented; some contemporary Sudanese commentators have described Jangawi as an opponent of the Mahdi, while others say he fell victim to a rivalry with the future caliph (i.e. successor of the Mahdi), Abdullah al-Ta’ishi. Other possible explanations include the sheikh’s former allegiance to the Egyptian regime, which made him suspect, or his rivalry with Madibbo, who had already pledged himself to the Mahdi.
Either way, this anecdote suggests that at least part of the Rizeigat tribe, far from playing a leading role in the revolt, was sidelined early on.
(It is also worth noting that the surname of this Rizeigat chief means “the Dinka,” from the Dinka autonym Jieng, referring to his likely southern origins. This itself is a strike against the racial ideology prevalent among the RSF today).
Defeat of the Rizeigat
The remaining Rizeigat chief, Madibbo, soon fell out of favor with the new Mahdist state. In 1885, after the fall of Khartoum and the subsequent death of the Mahdi, Madibbo refused a summons to relocate himself and his family to the new capital at Omdurman. Anxious to establish his authority, the Khalifa (successor of the Mahdi) sent one of his generals against Madibbo, the Emir Karamallah.
Reginald Wingate, who directed British intelligence efforts along the Mahdist frontier in the late 1880s and 1890s, and wrote one of the earliest histories of the uprising, described what happened next:
“Karamallah at first tried pacific means, but these soon failed; he therefore sent the emir Ketenbur to Shakka with 600 riflemen, and collecting some Arabs on the way, he surprised Madibbo at Ed Di’ian [Ed Daien], forty miles north-west of Shakka, inflected considerable loss on him, and captured some 2000 prisoners and a considerable quantity of cattle. Madibbo attempted to recover these the following day but was again defeated” (Mahdism and the Egyptian Sudan, Wingate, 1891).
Madibbo fled into the territory of a neighboring Arab tribe (the Beni Halba), who initially supported the Rizeigat before deserting them as the Mahdist army advanced against them. Madibbo was left with a force of just 500 fellow tribesmen, whom the Mahdists defeated in a battle in 1886, “annihilating” them, according to Wingate. Madibbo and a handful of survivors fled into the mountainous Jebel Marra region, where the Fur authorities arrested him and handed him over to the Mahdists.
Execution of Rizeigat chief
Karamalla decided to send the captured Rizeigat leader to El Obeid, where he fell into the hands of another Mahdist emir, Abu Anga, who executed him and sent his head to the Khalifa in Omdurman. According to Slatin, who was a friend and admirer of Madibbo, Abu Anga executed the Rizeigat chief because of a personal and racial feud.
Abu Anga had come from one of the ‘slave’ races of Bahr al-Ghazal, reviled by the Rizeigat. Despite this, the Khalifa elevated him to the position of emir, and he would go on to become one of the most successful generals of the Mahdiyya.
Before his rise to fame, Abu Anga had served as a humble porter in the entourage of Suleiman Zubeir, son of the famous slaver Zubeir Pasha. There he was brutally mistreated by Madibbo, who also was serving this slaver, according to Slatin.
Madibbo “was very hostile to him, and forced him to carry a huge box of ammunition on his head during several days’ march, and, when he complained about it, mercilessly flogged and abused him.”
“When Madibbo was brought before Abu Anga, he had little hope for his life…”
The Rizeigat chief’s final words to the Mahdist emir were the words of an embittered tribalist, not a believer in the Mahdist cause. According to Slatin, he said,
“I have not asked for mercy, but for justice; however, a slave like you can never become noble. The traces of my whip, which may still be seen on your back, were well deserved. In whatever form death may come upon me, it will always find me calm and a man. I am Madibbo, and the tribes know me.”
Marginal role
Thereafter, the Rizeigat largely faded from the picture. Karamalla proceeded to “subdue the leaderless Rizeigat” (Sudan Notes and Records, Volume 31, 1950, page 194). Some members of the tribe probably served in the Mahdist armies, while others remained in Darfur; there are few historical references to Rizeigat involvement in the Mahdist wars after 1886, apart from generalized references to “Baggara” (a general term for pastoralist Arab tribes). In his diaries, Charles Gordon made no reference to Rizeigat involvement in the Siege of Khartoum, nor did Wingate in his 1891 history.
In the late 1880s, the Khalifa forcibly relocated some members of the Rizeigat tribe to Omdurman, in part as hostages and in part to populate the new Mahdist capital. This was part of a wider policy of resettling Arab nomadic groups into central Sudan, particularly the Khalifa’s own tribe, the Ta’isha.
There was nothing particularly noteworthy about the Rizeigat role in the new Mahdist state; their neighbors, the Ta’isha, were politically and militarily more important, as were the Beja who were commanded by another of the Madhi’s famous generals, Osman Digna, and the more literate Nile Valley tribes, which were temporarily sidelined in the early years of the Khalifa, but regained influence in the 1890s.
It was not until after the British-Egyptian “reconquest” under Kitchener that the Rizeigat rose to greater prominence. The British elevated the tribe in status, giving them titles and privileges as part of an effort to create a strong local aristocracy in Darfur that could facilitate the policy of ‘indirect rule.’ This process continued under the post-independence governments, including the Bashir regime, which also spread Arabist and Islamist ideology amongst the Rizeigat.
In other words, the Rizeigat were not a powerful tribe that resisted the colonial occupation; they were a weak tribe that became powerful during the colonial occupation.
Nor was their military performance during the Mahdiyya particularly noteworthy. They lost battles both to Slatin and to the Mahdist generals, who led troops belonging to a mix of other tribes. For sure, they played a role in the defeat of the Egyptian regime in Darfur—but so did other tribes. And if the Mahdi and his ansar had not already defeated the Egyptians in Kordofan, the Rizeigat revolt against Slatin may well have failed.
Echoes of the Mahdiyya
Overall, the historical record suggests that the Rizeigat in the 1880s were motivated principally by locally grievances and were only briefly and half-heartedly committed to the anti-colonial, messianic Mahdist revolt. They were not the warrior vanguard responsible for the success of the uprising, as contemporary RSF propagandists would have us believe.
Clearly, however, there are still echoes of the Mahdiyya in the current war. The RSF share the Mahdist goal of toppling a central state based in the Nile Valley, using troops recruited in the western and southern peripheries of the country.
Studying the Mahdist period can give us helpful insights into the present day. But the RSF’s use of history is flawed and propagandistic; the main goal is to promote a racial mythology that has divided Darfur and now is dividing the country.
The right way to correct these racial myths, I believe, is not through military campaigns but through peace, post-war justice, social reconciliation, and a rebuilt education system. Glorifying warriors of a past age is both historically inaccurate and unhelpful. Throughout its modern history, Sudan’s population has suffered greatly as a result of war after war after war. The solution to this cycle cannot be more war.