Osman Digna

Osman Digna (born c. 1840, Sawakin, the Sudan—died 1926, Egypt) was a leader of the Mahdist revolt that broke out in the Sudan in 1881.

Osman’s father was a merchant of Kurdish descent; his mother, a member of the local Hadendowa tribe. Before the revolt of al-Mahdī, Osman traded in slaves. In 1877, however, the Egyptian government, which had nominal authority in the Sudan, began to take serious measures against the slave trade. Osman was jailed for a time and later joined an ecstatic mystical order. When in 1883 he learned of the advent of Muḥammad Aḥmad, al-Mahdī, he joined him and thereafter became a devoted follower. Al-Mahdī gave him the mission of raising the rebellion in the Red Sea hinterland. The Beja tribesmen who populated the area did not speak Arabic and had never been ruled by an Arab; they thus quickly gave their allegiance to Osman, who was their kinsman and through years of friendly commercial dealings with them had come to know their language and their ways. With his Beja tribal warriors, Osman destroyed two Egyptian columns near Tokar in November and December 1883, while Tokar itself, the chief city in the region, fell to him several months later. From then until 1891 Osman directed Mahdist activities in the eastern Sudan and thus protected its eastern borders from Egyptian forces. In February 1891, however, an Anglo-Egyptian force recaptured Tokar, and, abandoned by all of his allies, Osman fled to the mountains. He remained a general in the Mahdist army but did not play a decisive role in the battles that led to the defeat and death of al-Mahdī’s successor, ʿAbd Allāh, in November 1899. Osman then fled, trying to reach the Hejaz. He was captured in the Red Sea hills in January 1900 and was imprisoned until 1908. Thereafter he lived in Egypt.