Death of Sultan Ali Dinar

At dawn on 6 November 1916 a small detachment of the Egyptian Army under Major Hubert Huddleston of the Dorset Regiment caught up with the camp of the Sultan of Darfur, Ali Dinar, near Jebel Juba, in the remote borderlands of south-western Darfur. The soldiers opened fire at a range of about 450 metres and the Sultan’s men scattered in all directions. Ali Dinar’s body was found about 1.5 kilometres from the camp. According to the British official history of the operations in Egypt (MacMunn and Falls, Military Operations: Egypt and Palestine), the Sultan was killed by a bullet to the head. The British official chronology of the war recorded the engagement as the “action of Gyuba”.

Half a year on the run

Since the capture of El Fasher in May 1916 Ali Dinar had been hiding in the Jebel Marra mountains. He negotiated about surrendering, but Lieutenant-Colonel Philip Kelly, commander of the expedition and governor of the occupied country, concluded that the Sultan was playing for time and broke off the talks on 1 August. Meanwhile Ali Dinar’s forces were dwindling. Some of his followers rebelled against him, and the Arab tribes of Darfur, especially the powerful Rizeigat of the south-west, had long been hostile to him. According to the official history he was left with a thousand men at most. That was still enough to raid villages for food and keep the region unsettled, and any success might bring new supporters to the Sultan.

Kelly therefore decided, as soon as the ground had dried out after the August rainy season, to establish posts at Kebkabiya, about 130 kilometres west of El Fasher, and at Dibbis, about 180 kilometres to the south-west. Kebkabiya was occupied without a fight at the beginning of September. In October Huddleston set out for Dibbis with a detachment of about 200 rifles from the 13th Sudanese Battalion and the Camel Corps, with two guns and four Maxim machine guns. He reached it on 13 October and after a brief skirmish dispersed a force under the Sultan’s son: about 150 riflemen and a thousand spearmen. Ali Dinar again offered to negotiate, but once more the British concluded that his intentions were not honest. Kelly sent Huddleston reinforcements, a hundred rifles from the 13th Sudanese Battalion.

Kulme and the pursuit

When word reached Dibbis that the Sultan’s men camped at Kulme, about 80 kilometres further west, were suffering from hunger and disease, Huddleston did not wait for further reinforcements. On 3 November he took Kulme against weak resistance. There he captured most of the arms and ammunition the Sultan still had, and several hundred of his people, including men and women of Ali Dinar’s family, surrendered. The Sultan himself fled south-west, towards Jebel Juba.

Huddleston had no means of feeding his whole detachment, so he left half of it at Kulme. On 5 November he set off in pursuit with 150 riflemen, one gun and four machine guns. He mounted his soldiers on horses captured from the enemy or borrowed from friendly Arabs. The pursuit ended at dawn on 6 November over the Sultan’s camp. The British photographed Ali Dinar’s body, and his sword later went to the collections of the British Museum.

The end of the sultanate

Ali Dinar, a descendant of the old sultans of the Keira dynasty, had rebuilt Darfur after the fall of the Mahdist state in 1898 and for more than 17 years ruled it almost independently, though formally acknowledging the suzerainty of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. In 1915 he had declared for Turkey, and this brought upon him the expedition of the Governor-General of the Sudan, General Sir Reginald Wingate. After his death the country, except for a remote north-western corner, was pacified. For a time bands of armed masterless men still roamed it, but they were gradually broken up. According to the official history, Darfur added about a million inhabitants to the Sudan. At the beginning of 1917 it was formally incorporated into the Sudan as an ordinary province. Most sources give January 1917, but later dates are also found. Kelly became its first governor. Huddleston later had a distinguished career: from 1940 to 1947 he was himself Governor-General of the Sudan.