Qualla: Battle of Shaykan https://qualla.com/battle-of-shaykan en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:29 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Battle of Shaykan https://qualla.com/battle-of-shaykan Battle of Shaykan: Introduction https://qualla.com/battle-of-shaykan/ The army that marched out of Duem in 1883 was, in Winston Churchill's assessment, perhaps the worst that had ever marched to war. Eight thousand Egyptian regulars, most of them recruited from the ranks of those imprisoned after fighting in the Urabi Revolt, released to serve in Sudan and showing no particular interest in doing so. A thousand bashi-bazouk cavalry, a hundred tribal irregulars, two thousand camp followers. Five thousand camels. Ten mountain guns, four Krupp field guns, six Nordenfelt machine guns. Fifty days of supplies. And at the top of this unhappy caravan, a retired colonel named William "Billy" Hicks, experienced in India and Abyssinia, reluctantly commanding a force he had warned was hopeless.

Read more: Battle of Shaykan on Qualla

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/d/m/6/battle-of-shaykan-wp/sdm6-battle-of-shaykan-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Battle of Shaykan: The Mahdi Was Winning https://qualla.com/battle-of-shaykan/ Two years earlier, in 1881, a religious teacher named Muhammad Ahmad had proclaimed himself the Mahdi, the promised redeemer of Islamic eschatology. He withdrew to Kordofan and Darfur and began to build an army. The Egyptian government, ruling Sudan with increasing difficulty, se...

Read more: Battle of Shaykan on Qualla

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/d/m/6/battle-of-shaykan-wp/sdm6-battle-of-shaykan-the-mahdi-was-winning.mp3 0:06 2 full Battle of Shaykan: Guides Into the Woods https://qualla.com/battle-of-shaykan/ From Duem on the Nile to El Obeid was about 200 miles of mostly featureless Kordofan scrub. The expedition set out in the summer of 1883. Their guides, either through genuine mistake or, as later writers suggested, through design, led them into increasingly difficult country. Mor...

Read more: Battle of Shaykan on Qualla

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/d/m/6/battle-of-shaykan-wp/sdm6-battle-of-shaykan-guides-into-the-woods.mp3 0:06 3 full Battle of Shaykan: Two Days and Then Silence https://qualla.com/battle-of-shaykan/ On the third day, 5 November, the square collapsed. The Mahdist army poured in. Nearly all the Egyptian officers, including Hicks himself and his chief of staff Colonel Farquhar, were killed. About one-third of the Egyptian soldiers surrendered and were freed later; most had only...

Read more: Battle of Shaykan on Qualla

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/d/m/6/battle-of-shaykan-wp/sdm6-battle-of-shaykan-two-days-and-then-silence.mp3 0:06 4 full Battle of Shaykan: A Decisive Battle https://qualla.com/battle-of-shaykan/ Shaykan was one of the most significant battles of the Mahdist War. With the Egyptian army in Kordofan destroyed, the Mahdi could consolidate his hold on the western Sudan and prepare for the larger campaigns to come. Osman Digna, whose Hadendoa tribesmen on the Red Sea coast had...

Read more: Battle of Shaykan on Qualla

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/d/m/6/battle-of-shaykan-wp/sdm6-battle-of-shaykan-a-decisive-battle.mp3 0:06 5 full Battle of Shaykan: The Worst Army and the Victorious One https://qualla.com/battle-of-shaykan/ Churchill's contempt for the Hicks expedition, in The River War, was blunt: an army that was unpaid, untrained, undisciplined, with soldiers who had more in common with the Mahdist fighters than with their officers. He may have been right. But the framing obscures the other side....

Read more: Battle of Shaykan on Qualla

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/d/m/6/battle-of-shaykan-wp/sdm6-battle-of-shaykan-the-worst-army-and-the-victorious-one.mp3 0:06 6 full Battle of Shaykan: Where It Lies https://qualla.com/battle-of-shaykan/ The battlefield near Kashgil and the woods of Shaykan sits in what is now North Kordofan state, Sudan, southeast of El-Obeid. It is not a memorialized site. The exact location of the defensive square that held for two days is debated. No cenotaph marks the spot where Hicks Pasha ...

Read more: Battle of Shaykan on Qualla

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/d/m/6/battle-of-shaykan-wp/sdm6-battle-of-shaykan-where-it-lies.mp3 0:06 7 full