THE REOCCUPATION OF NORTHERN AFRICA 395 
Gessi, the Bahr-el-Ghazal became a garden, the confidence 
of all the headmen was secured, and the trade of the region 
was revived on a firm basis. Equally creditable progress 
was being made at the same time by Gordon’s other lieu- 
tenants, including Rudolph Slatin Bey in Dar-Fur and 
Kordofan and Edward Schnitzler (Emin Effendi Hakim) 
Bey, in the Equatorial Province which extended from 
Lado and Rejaf on the Nile to Lake Albert. 
After the abdication of Ismail Pasha in 1879, Gordon, 
realizing that substantial governmental support would 
no longer be forthcoming, resigned at the end of the year. 
Gessi resigned also in 1881, after receiving no supplies or 
steamers from Khartoum for eight months, and having the 
pay of his military and civil officials reduced by two years’ 
time by the incompetent and corrupt Raouf Pasha, who 
succeeded Gordon as Governor-General. He was followed 
in the Bahr-el-Ghazal as governor by Lupton Bey. Civil 
and military centers were maintained also by the Egyptian 
Government at El Obeid in Kordofan, Sennar, Kassala, 
Suakin on the Red Sea, and at Berber and Dongola on the 
Nile. 
Conditions generally went from bad to worse under the 
Egyptian officials, who cared more for money and gain 
than for real progress and an honest rule. Finally, in Au- 
gust, 1881, Egypt and Europe were aroused by the appear- 
ance in Dar-Fur of one Mohammed Ahmed, who pro- 
claimed himself as the Mahdi, or successor of the Prophet, 
and as a savior of the Sudanese from the oppression and 
rule of foreigners and Egyptians. The Egyptian Govern- 
ment paid little attention to the movement at first, which 
spread rapidly until at length the Mahdi was able to take 
the field in person. After two or three slight successes, he 
overran Kordofan and after a siege took El Obeid, its 
capital, on January 19, 1883, and made it his headquar-