First Jihad: Khartoum, and the Dawn of Militant Islam (15 page)

In October 1876 Gordon arrived in Cairo on leave, and promptly informed Ismail that he would not be returning to Equatoria.
The Khedive did not believe that Gordon was finished in Africa, but by the time Gordon reached London he had prepared a telegram to the British Consul-general in Cairo, asking him to inform the Khedive that on no terms would he be going back to Egypt.
Ismail Pasha responded by saying that Gordon had promised to return, and that he was expected to keep his word.
It was a shrewd move by Ismail, who knew his man, for Gordon took the keeping of a promise as a sacred duty; consequently he decided to return as far as Cairo, but he was quite determined that, unless Ismail appointed him Governor-General of the whole of the Sudan, he would go no further.
Ismail at first demurred, but before long he acceded to Gordon’s terms—Gordon was too good an administrator, a breed of person that the Khedive’s government was sorely lacking.

Gordon’s first challenge was to do what he could to redeem the sorry state of the political relationship between Egypt and Abyssinia, which revolved around a disputed territory in the Sudan.
Both the Khedive and King John of Abyssinia claimed the district of Bogos, lying not far inland from Massawa, for their respective dominions, and the squabbling broke out into a full scale war in 1875.
An Egyptian expedition that marched against Abyssinia was routed by King John near Gundet—it was the beginning of a pattern that Egyptian armies would follow for the next decade—and a second, larger expedition under Prince Hassan, Khedive Ismail’s son, met a similar fate the following year at Gura.
The Egyptians licked their wounds until March 1877, when Gordon made his way to Massawa to negotiate a settlement with King John.
The Abyssinian monarch did not immediately reply, having felt after defeating two Egyptian field forces that he had little to fear on his northern frontier, and in fact he had gone south to make war on Menelek, king of Shoa.
Gordon, sensing that the Abyssinian question could be put off for a few months, proceeded to Khartoum.

Once there he began restoring discipline among his native troops, ceaselessly drilling and training them, often working them to exhaustion.
He would frequently set out from Khartoum on inspections, riding a camel and accompanied by an escort.
The escort soon learned that Gordon was not content with the sedate walk to which they were accustomed, and which would often take up to twelve hours to reach their destination.
He would get his camel up to a full gallop and would leave his escort behind, arriving some three hours after he set out.
On his arrival he would then set about taking to task any poor soul found doing his job improperly; frequently he would sack them on the spot.
He took the slavery issue head-on, by proposing a regulation making the registration of slaves compulsory, a move that would have ruined the slavers by placing them under government control, but his proposals were not approved by the Cairo government, for much the same reasons that Ismail Pasha Ayoub had thwarted Gordon just a few years earlier.

At the same time, an insurrection had broken out in Darfur, which required Gordon to take what troops he could spare from the Khartoum garrison to relieve the Egyptian forces trapped in the rebellious province.
It wasn’t long before he discovered two disturbing facts: the garrisons he was attempting to relieve were actually larger than the force with which he was marching, and second, that the rebel forces far outnumbered his little relieving army.
Wisely choosing to rely on diplomacy rather than arms, he brazenly rode into the enemy camp to discuss the situation.
Probably no one but Gordon would have attempted such a bold move, but given his conviction that he was an instrument of God’s will, it was virtually inevitable for him.
Gordon’s curious mixture of quiet charm and martial flamboyance made for a powerful diplomatic presence.
It would prove to be a shrewd move, as a large number of the insurgents joined his small army, while the rest retreated into the mountains to the south.

With the relief of the threatened garrisons accomplished, Gordon returned to the provinces of Berber and Dongola, to once again confront King John across the Abyssinian frontier.
But once again there was to be no settlement of their differences, and Gordon returned to Khartoum in January 1878.
A week later he was on the move again, returning to Cairo at the Khedive’s summons, in order to assist a commission of inquiry into the country’s finances and restore some semblance of order to Egypt’s treasury after a decade of wastrel spending by Ismail, who seemed to regard the national treasury as his own personal pocket money.
The Khedive at once appointed him president of the commission, with the understanding that the various Europeans in Cairo who were holding bonds on Ismail’s debts would not be members of the commission.
Gordon accepted the position on these terms, for he saw, as did Ismail, that such men would be less interested in restoring Egypt to solvency than merely getting their money out.
Admittedly, such concern on the part of Ismail for Egypt’s finances had a certain element of the absurd about it, since he was responsible for the debacle in the first place, but he did have the measure of those who were arrayed against him.
The consuls-general of the various powers quickly objected to the make-up of the investigatory commission and appointed their own representatives to it instead.
Ismail was powerless to prevent this, and the result was that he and all of his property were turned over to his creditors; the Sultan in Constantinople deposed him as Khedive less than a year later, putting Ismail’s son Tewfik in his place.

One of the consequences of this episode would lead directly to the confrontation between Gordon and the Mahdi at Khartoum five years later.
In order to satisfy Ismail’s debt, his creditors liquidated his shares in the Suez Canal Company, which were bought by the British government, which in turn made Great Britain the company’s largest shareholder.
It was a sensible move from a strategic standpoint, as the need to protect the canal and the Red Sea route to India was of paramount importance to the Empire.
However, when the Mahdi’s revolt spread up the Nile to Khartoum in 1883, the debate over how genuine a threat he posed to the Suez Canal would paralyze Prime Minister Gladstone’s cabinet for several critical weeks before a decision to relieve Khartoum was finally reached.

After the curious interlude of the financial commission had come to a close, Gordon headed south once more, this time to the province of Harrar, south of Abyssinia.
It had been poorly administered by Raouf Pasha, an appointee and crony of Ismail Pasha Ayoub, Gordon’s predecessor.
Raouf was dismissed out of hand and in his place Gordon named an Italian, Romolo Gessi, who then swept through the province like a reforming whirlwind.
His story long lost and neglected, Gessi was one of colonial Africa’s brightest lights.
He shared Gordon’s passion for crushing the slave trade, and in 1879 fought a major battle with the slavers and their retinues in the Bahrel-Ghazal district, arresting and eventually executing their leader, Suleiman, the son of Zobeir, the greatest slaver of all.
Coupled with Gordon’s successes in Darfur, Gessi’s triumph crippled the slavers and put an end to the trade, at least for the moment.

Shortly afterward, Gordon was called back to Cairo for an audience with the new Khedive, Tewfik, who requested of Gordon that he attempt to reopen negotiations with King John of Abyssinia and bring an end to the border conflict that had broken out again.
While Gordon was able to secure an interview with the Abyssinian monarch and found him a fascinating man, he was unable to make any progress toward a peace treaty between Egypt and Abyssinia, as the king sought considerable concessions from Egypt, while the Khedive’s instructions were clear that Gordon should concede nothing of worth.
The affair ended with Gordon returning to Cairo to announce his resignation as Governor-General of the Sudan.
He was physically and emotionally exhausted by nearly three years of non-stop work, during which he had ridden no fewer than 8,500 miles to and fro across the Sudan, earning himself another nickname, “The Camel Rider.”

He returned to England where he quietly awaited his next assignment.
He wrote articles and tracts for the Anti-Slavery Society, and consented to be interviewed by anyone seeking knowledge of the Sudan, but otherwise chose to avoid public attention.
In March 1880 Gordon visited Brussels at the invitation of the Belgian monarch, King Leopold, who suggested that at some future date he take charge of the Congo Free State.
Gordon said that he would consider the offer, and while he was pondering it, a summons arrived for him in the form of a telegram from the government of South Africa’s Cape Colony, offering him the position of commandant of the Cape’s local forces.
Gordon loved having the command of troops, but he declined the appointment, as he felt that it was too fraught with political pitfalls.
The Marquess of Ripon, who had been named Viceroy of India in May, asked Gordon to serve as his private secretary.
This post lasted for all of three days, for Gordon discovered that Lord Ripon had the disconcerting habit of claiming to have read his official correspondence, when, in fact, he had not done so, and expected Gordon to cover his ignorance for him.
Ripon refused to accept his resignation, and so Gordon accompanied him to India, but once there was able to make his resignation stick.

Hardly had he done so when a telegram arrived from Sir Robert Hart, Inspector-General of customs in China, inviting him to go to Peking to help arbitrate a touchy situation between China and Russia.
He set out at once for Tientsin, where in July he was met by his old colleague Li Hung Chang, and learned that the situation had deteriorated to the point where the risk of war with Russia was very real.
Gordon then rushed to Peking where he used all of his charm, wit, and powers of persuasion and intimidation—which were considerable—to influence the various representatives from Russia, China, and Great Britain to favor a peaceful settlement.
War was avoided, and Gordon was able to return to England, where in April 1881 he exchanged positions with another officer of the Engineers who had been ordered to Mauritius as Commanding Royal Engineer, but who for family reasons was unable to accept the appointment.

He remained in Mauritius until March of the following year, when he was promoted to the rank of major-general, and was once more contacted by the government of the Cape Colony.
This time he was asked to go to the Cape to consult with the government as regards settling disputes with the native population of Basutoland.
The telegram was explicit in stating the gravity of the situation and the importance of having someone of proved ability, firmness, and energy to step in to resolve it.
Gordon sailed at once for the Cape, where in a meeting with senior government officials he was asked to not go to Basutoland for political reasons, but to take the appointment of commandant of the colonial forces at King Williams Town instead.
Not certain as to why the government’s position had changed so dramatically, he consented, and spent the next few months reorganizing the colonial forces in much the same way as he had his Egyptian troops in the Sudan.
When Gordon was later requested to go to Basutoland to try to arrange a settlement with the chief Masupha, one of the most powerful of the Basuto leaders, he began to see the design behind the earlier political maneuverings: J.W.
Sauer, a member of the Cape government, was conspiring with Lerethodi, another Basuto chief, to depose Masupha.
Gordon was appalled.
Not only did this place him in a position of grave danger, but it appeared like an act of treachery.
He promptly advised Masupha not to have any further dealings with the Cape government until Lerethodi’s forces were withdrawn and disbanded, and he further resigned his appointment.
He considered that all the problems that the Cape Colony had been having with the Basuto people was due to poor and avaricious administration by the colonial government, a view that was vindicated a few years later when Basutoland was separated from Cape Colony and placed directly under the Imperial government.

Returning in disgust to England, and having no official position, Gordon chose to distance himself entirely from any form of government service, at least for a while, and decided to visit Palestine, where he remained for a year, spending his days immersed in the study of Biblical history and the antiquities of Jerusalem.
In late 1883, King Leopold of Belgium reminded him of his earlier promise to take charge of the Congo Free State, and Gordon accepted the mission, returning to London to make the necessary preparations.
But within a few days of his arrival the British government requested that he instead return immediately to the Sudan.

One of the consequences of Col.
Arabi’s abortive revolt in 1881 was a paralysis of the Egyptian government, just at the moment when the Mahdi’s army began to pose a serious threat, not only to Egypt’s suzerainity over the Sudan, but to southern Egypt itself.
There was also a collective fear among the Egyptian, British, and French governments that the peasantry of Egypt, still quietly seething after the Arabi fiasco, might prove sympathetic to the message being proclaimed by the Mahdi a thousand miles to the south.
This mysterious new figure, the Mahdi, preached an end to the institutionalized inferiority and exploitation of Moslems by Christian interlopers, and a purification of Islam, which he said had been maligned and demeaned by “Turk” and Christian influences alike.

In London, Prime Minister Gladstone was gravely worried.
To him the Arabi revolt had seemed pregnant with the possibility of open warfare between Britain and France.
The French had long coveted control of Egypt, had done so since the days of Napoleon Bonaparte, and had maintained an enduring tradition of participation-–many Egyptians would have said “interference”—in Egypt’s affairs.
It had been French engineering expertise and French capital that had built the Suez Canal, and it now galled France to see Britain the master of it.
To Gladstone, the chaos of Arabi’s revolt seemed to offer the perfect pretext for France to seize Egypt for herself.