The White Nile, by Alan Moorehead (oversize TPB, 1983, $3.50)- Avail. 2/17
Filled with numerous drawings and 21 color plates, this lushly illustrated history of the Egyptian/Sudan region covers from 1856 to 1900. Herodotus had looked for the source of the Nile, and failed. Nero also tried, and failed. Even as late as 1856 the center of Africa was still uncharted. The Nile was a mystery. "No one could explain why it was that it should rise and flow over its banks in the Nile Delta in September, the driest and hottest time of the year... nor how it was possible for the river to continue... for well over a thousand miles through one of the most frightful of all deserts without receiving a single tributary and hardly a drop of rain." The men who would followed the Nile to its beginning had to travel all the way to Lake Victoria, both by boat and by foot where the river was unnavigable.
This is also the story of the Sudan, which Egypt claimed from 1819 on. Mixed in this history of Egypt and the Sudan are the British, the Ottomans, and a Sudanese Islamic leader/ warrior named Mahdi. The British cared about the area because of the Suez Canal, the slave trade, Egypt's claim to the Sudan, and eventually the race by European countries to accumulate new colonies in Africa.
I had never heard of Mahdi's Muslim Revolt. At first the revolt was between Mahdi's Sudan Muslims and the Ottoman "sort-of" Muslims. Mahdi wanted to revive the true Muslim religion, and to liberate the Sudan. For awhile, from 1883 to 1898, he and his followers were successful. The British were arrogant, and thoroughly amazed that they continued to lose against him. Mahdi was so successful the British even withdrew for a time, because they could not afford the cost of sending a force large enough to defeat him.
During this time the Sudanese leader, Khalifa, ruled over a depopulating land. Continual wars, executions, the slave trade, endemic smallpox and syphilis, locusts, and famine killed about 75% of the Sudanese people! Even so, in 1898 Khalifa was able to raise an army of 50,000 to meet the British. This time, fighting against a crack British army and modern weapons, the Mahdis would lose. Britain would then control the Sudan until its independence in 1956. Of course, even since then Sudan has been a killing field.
This is both an uplifting and tragic tale. Look for this book in the African section.
