The Mahdi’s uprising restored a disgraced Egyptian nationalist officer to rank via British patronage.

Evidence

It was difficult for the nationalists of the `Uräbï rebellion to be in this position, caught between Circassian anger and British censure. Fortunately, Fawzï and his colleagues were spared the death penalty that the khedive had at first hoped to impose, but they suffered months of imprisonment. Fawzï was stripped of the medals, honors, and rank that he had struggled for so long to achieve in the Sudan and then so zealously guarded for years. But unlike the soldiers Broadley saw stripped of their arms and herded ignominiously onto steamers, headed for almost certain defeat in the Sudan, Ibrahïm Fawzï actually gained a ray of professional hope from the momentum of the Mahdï’s movement. As events in the Sudan continued to escalate, the khedive called upon General Gordon to return to the Sudan and take charge of the Egyptian troops still present. Gordon quickly sent telegrams to General Wodehouse, leader of the British troops in Egypt, and to Lord Cromer, who had become the British consul-general in Egypt, requesting the services of Ibrahïm Fawzï.These two men were the pillars of the British administration in Egypt, and without their consent Fawzï would never have been returned to service, an irony that was not lost on him as he strode with Gordon past the “army of occupation” (jaysh al-ihtiläl) toward the steamers headed for the Sudan. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 528

Categorization

• XREF: Links the 1882 British occupation of Egypt and the Gordon mission to the wider comparative question of how Egypt’s military was subordinated and redeployed into Sudan.