Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations, Figures & Maps
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary
- Egyptian Army Ranks & Turkish Honorifics
- Transliteration Note & List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: ‘Ali Jifun's Fashoda Homecoming
- 1 “Backbone of the Egyptian Army”
- 2 “Servants of His Highness the Khedive”
- 3 “Flavour of Domesticity”
- 4 “Brotherhood that Binds the Brave”
- 5 “Tea with the Khalifa”
- Epilogue: Mutiny at Omdurman
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - “Flavour of Domesticity”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations, Figures & Maps
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary
- Egyptian Army Ranks & Turkish Honorifics
- Transliteration Note & List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: ‘Ali Jifun's Fashoda Homecoming
- 1 “Backbone of the Egyptian Army”
- 2 “Servants of His Highness the Khedive”
- 3 “Flavour of Domesticity”
- 4 “Brotherhood that Binds the Brave”
- 5 “Tea with the Khalifa”
- Epilogue: Mutiny at Omdurman
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
True soldiers' spouses, these women always persisted in following their husbands to war. There was no military transport or supplies provided for them. Yet, though the track was long, and a bare desert, gathering their scant household gear together, mostly a few earthenware cooking-pots, and a goatskin or two filled with grain, wheat, dhurra, and beans, which they carried upon their heads, with their cotton cloths girt round their waists, barefooted, they set out after the army. Those who had babes too young to walk bore them upon their backs or shoulders, the elder children trotting by their moiling mothers' sides. Talk of courage! it was something of a sight to see these poor black women, with their households upon their pates and in their arms, bravely bearing their burdens in order to go campaigning with their husbands and lovers.
Bennet Burleigh, Daily Telegraph correspondentSudanese soldiers who fought in the River War were well fed, well clothed, and well armed. They were regularly paid, were of relatively good health, and were the only soldiers in Kitchener's Anglo-Egyptian army allowed to have domestic lives. They were frequently given downtime during the campaign for recreational pursuits, religious life, and social gatherings. They even had opportunities for military advancement, and upon their retirement, were sometimes given pensions, civil administration jobs, or cultivable plots of land. Of course, it had not always been this way, especially during the Turkiyya, when military issue was more theoretical than real, when salaries were often many months in arrears, and Sudanese soldiers, according to ‘Abdallah ‘Adlan, “worked and served until they dropped.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Slaves of FortuneSudanese Soldiers and the River War, 1896-1898, pp. 72 - 120Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2011