Baggara spear "shalazieh"

[colin henshaw]

Thanks to Iain and Ed for their further comments.

Ed, its quite possible the Mahdists used mechanical assistance in making their spears, as they had reasonably modern workshops in Omdurman, having transferred over equipment from Khartoum after the fall of the city and death of General Gordon. I am attaching some extracts from the book "Khartoum Campaign" by Bennet Burleigh 1899, that may interest. Presumably they used European scrap iron ? I have noticed that these shalazieh spears all have bamboo shafts, wonder where the bamboo came from ?

Iain, its quite correct of course, that the advent of modern firearms made spear and sword tactics redundant, more or less. However, if should be noted that the Mahdist Khalifa, Abdullahi made a major error in not attacking the Anglo-Egyptian forces during the night before the Battle of Omdurman, he could easily of done so and the end result might then have been significantly different.

[Iain]

Very interesting Colin, I had no idea they had that kind of machinery at their disposal. Thanks a lot for posting those extracts.

On the gun side, at least in the western Sahel there was a major effort to limit firearms filtering into the region, meaning that the vast majority were poor quality trade muskets. The captured arms in the Sudanese campaigns must have been quite a few levels above what was normally available.

Still, numbers and tactics as you mentioned, could still swing a battle.

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

Salaams ~ General Gordon of Khartoum.