Suakin

In total, the siege of Khartoum lasted a staggering 317 days, and upon its conclusion, the Mahdi was now the undisputed leader of a vast empire stretching from the Red Sea to the plains of Darfur, and from the swamps and jungles of the Bar al-Ghazal to Dongola.

Muhammad Ahmed wasted no time in consolidating his ascendant position, almost immediately ordering his generals to crush the troublemaking tribes of the Nuba Mountains and to vanquish the government presence in the holdout settlements of Sana'a, Qasala and Suakin.

In fact, in the five months after the cessation of hostilities, Muhammad Ahmed would send out over 300 letters and proclamations to his generals, judges, and bureaucrats as the foundations of the Mahdist state and its social, military, and administrative structures began to take shape.

In the meantime, the ever-ambitious Mahdi now planned the second stage of his jihad, the conquest of Egypt, in addition to considering the best ways he could extend his rule into the ripe territories of Morocco to the northwest and Abyssinia to the south.

The Travels of Ibn Battuta by Ibn Battuta.

Translated by Samuel Lee Chapter 9 Mecca, Jeddah, Sawakin, Hali, Sarja, Sabit, Khazana, Jabala, Kiyas, Sanaa, Aden, Zaila, Magdashu, Mombasa, Kalwa, Zafar, Hadramout, Amman, El-Akhaf, Fruits, etc., El-Hasik, the island of Ta'ir, Kolhat, Amman, Nazwa At this time, that is in the year 729, A.D. 1328, prayer was made during the sermon for the king of Iraq, Abu Zaid, and after that for El-Malik El-Nasir.

I remained there during the third year also, and then left Mecca with the intention of visiting Yemen.

I arrived accordingly at Jeddah.

From this place I went with a company of merchants who were going to Yemen.

But as the wind changed upon us, we put into the island of Sawakin, the sultan of which was El-Sharif Zaid ibn Abu Noma, son of the emir of Mecca.

Sawakin fell to him on the part of the Beja, who were nearly related to him, and from whom he had an army attending upon him.

From Sawakin I set out for Yemen with the merchants and came to Hali, a large and handsomely built city.

Those of Greek and Roman times were perfectly familiar with them.

They believed that the Nile communicated with the Red Sea near Suakin by means of the Astaboras, and this was certainly the route which the Egyptians of old had imagined for their navigators.

The supposed communication was gradually transferred farther and farther south, and we have only to glance over certain maps of the 16th and 17th centuries to see clearly drawn what the Egyptians had imagined, the center of Africa as a great lake, whence issued the Congo, the Zambezi, and the Nile.

Arab merchants of the Middle Ages believed that a resolute man could pass from Alexandria or Cairo to the land of the Zingis and the Indian Ocean by rising from river to river.

El Mahdi died a few months later, but his army was not dispersed.

Osman Digna, the general of the Modists, overran the region east of the Nile, capturing and massacring Egyptian garrisons at different places, and marching to the very gates of Suakin on the Red Sea, where the Modists desired to have a seaport for communication with Arabia, in order to obtain a good market for slaves from the interior of Africa.

With these Modists, the Italians have now to contend.

Soon after their occupation of Massawa, they acquired control of Tigra and Kassala, then held by the Matas and Dervishes.