Personal senility of rulers disrupted Sudan’s colonial administration.

Evidence

During the last years of Muhammad Alï’s reign, the administration in the Sudan tottered from the viceroy’s increasingly confused orders (as Holt and Daly point out, Muhammad Alï had become senile at this late point in his life). His son Muhammad Said Pasha, who became viceroy in 1854, almost gave up completely on the Sudan, before changing his mind and seeking ways to integrate the administration of this vast territory more closely with Cairo. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 225