Osman Digna

Image of Osman Digna in captivity

Osman Digna ( Arabic عثمان دقنة ʿUthmān Diqna , actually Uthman abu Bakr Diqna ; also Osman Digma ; * 1836 in Suakin ; † 1926 in Wadi Halfa ) was a military commander in the Mahdist army with the rank of Amir al-Umara .

Life

Osman Digna was a slave trader in eastern Sudan. During one of his slave transports he was picked up by a British warship and handed over to the Egyptian government, as Sudan had been occupied by Egypt since 1821 . He was arrested by them. After his release he joined the Urabi movement against the growing international influence on Egypt. After their suppression he went to Sudan and followed the Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad in the Mahdi uprising that had broken out in the meantime . The main reason for this was that the Anglo-Egyptian measures against the slave trade disrupted its business.

Osman led the uprising in eastern Sudan in the coastal area of ​​the Red Sea . He appeared on August 5, 1883 with 1,500 men in front of the Sinkat garrison and asked them to join the Mahdi. His subsequent attack was repulsed, two of his nephews killed and he himself wounded. His next attack on September 9th was also repulsed. In mid-October, Osman Digna was able to crush a relief force from Suakin . As a result, his reputation increased and his following increased. On November 4, 1883, he defeated Egyptian troops, under the English consul of Suakin, Captain Moncrieff, at Tokar . He was able to take Tokar himself in February 1884. At the same time he threatened the provincial capital, his hometown Suakin. Suakin was an important base for the British on the sea route to India . The government in Cairo then sent a force of 3,700 men under General Baker Pasha to Suakin. On February 4, 1884, Osman Digna was able to defeat Valentine Baker Pasha's army at El-Teb . More than 2000 Egyptians were killed.

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The British therefore sent 5,000 men under Gerald Graham to Suakin in February 1884 to secure the important coast of the Red Sea . Graham defeated Osman Digna in the Second Battle of El Teb on February 29. On March 13, Osman Digna Graham lost again in the bloody battle of Tamanieh . The coastal area was now temporarily in Anglo-Egyptian hands and the British troops were withdrawn. Osman Digna took his seat in Tokar.

In September 1888 Osman Digna tried again to drive the British out of Suakin and besieged the city. They therefore strengthened the base, were able to end the siege and started a counterattack. On February 19, 1891, Osman Digna was defeated near Tokar, had to give up the city and withdrew to the Atbara .

After the capture of Berber in September 1897 by the Anglo-Egyptian army under General Kitchener , he joined the army of Mahmoud Ahmad . On April 8, 1898, he took part in the Battle of Atbara . After the successful attack by Kitchener's troops, Osman Digna led several thousand insurgents in a retreat southwards while the majority of the Mahdists were killed or captured. In the decisive battle of Omdurman on September 2, 1898, Osman Digna was one of the commanders of the army of Abdallahi ibn Muhammad , the successor of the Mahdi.

After the defeat at Omdurman, Osman Digna fled south with Abdallahi ibn Muhammad. Here the two controlled the area from Darfur to the border with Ethiopia until 1899 . In October 1899, Kitchener dispatched 8,000 soldiers under Francis Reginald Wingate to finally destroy the Mahdists. Osman Digna was the only one of the Mahdist leaders who escaped in the battle of Umm Diwaykarat . He was only captured on January 19, 1900 near Tokar by the chief of the Suakin police and arrested in Rosette . In 1908 he was released and lived with Wadi Halfa until 1926. At the end of his life he made a pilgrimage to Mecca .

ancestry

He has often been mistaken for a Frenchman named George Nisbet from Rouen . Kurdish ancestry was assumed for his father . His mother was a Sudanese from the Hadendoa tribe .

literature

• Henry Cecil Jackson: Osman Digna . Methuen & Co Ltd., London 1926.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Farwell: Encyclopedia