The Battle of Umm Diwaykarat (November 25, 1899) in the Sudan of Northeast Africa marked the final destruction of the Mahdist state. The remnants of the Mahdist army commanded by Abdallahi ibn Muhammad, known as the Khalifa, were defeated. The Mahdist army and its followers were brutally massacred, and by the end of the battle of Um Diwaqarat, about 1,000 more corpses were strewn about. This included the corpse of Abdallahi ibn Muhammad, known as the Khalifa, who was the successor to the Mahdi state.
The Mahdist army retreated from the capital Omdurman, and the successor Khalifa and his approximately 10,000 remaining followers chose to confront the Egyptian expeditionary force commanded by General Wingate, which had pursued them, numbering approximately 8,000. The armed Mahdist forces were brutally massacred, and by the end of the battle of Um Diwaqarat, about 1,000 more people were dead.
A year earlier, on September 2, 1989, the Mahdist army suffered a similarly disastrous defeat at the Battle of Omdurman, the Sudanese capital, by an Egyptian expeditionary force commanded by Lord Kitchener of the British Army. The Mahdist army of about 52,000 men lost about 12,000 killed in action, about 13,000 wounded in battle, and about 5,000 taken prisoner. The Egyptian expeditionary force of about 25,800 was overwhelmed by modern equipment, with about 48 killed and 382 wounded in battle.
The Mahdist rebels overthrew the Ottoman Egyptian regime and established their own Islamic state with Omdurman as its capital on January 26, 1885. The British reconquered Sudan in 1898 and ruled it as a colony. Winston Churchill, twice prime minister of the United Kingdom, was an officer in the British Army and fought in the Battle of Omdurman, seeking combat experience to advance his career. Churchill dared to write The River War: A Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan (1899), which detailed the mechanization of warfare through the use of telegraphs, railroads, and a new generation of weaponry.
