Draft:History of Uganda under Egyptian rule

The History of Uganda under Egyptian rule is a term given to Uganda after Khedive Ismail ordered the restoration of expansion southward. He wanted to secure the tropical sources of the Nile River, especially Greater Lake Nyanza (Victoria). His rule extended to southern Sudan, so he saw Uganda as a natural extension of his state's borders due to its strategic importance because the sources of the Nile are from Uganda, he began to prepare his equipment and sent his messengers to the kings of Uganda. The kings of Uganda welcomed this and the Egyptian flag was raised and Muteesa I of Buganda sent to Ismail asking him to extend his influence on his land and also asking him to send two scholars to guide him and his people to Islam. Ismail sent preachers who contributed to spreading Islam there, but despite the great Egyptian efforts there, Ismail's use of the English at that stage to extend his influence there and to explore the lands opened the way for England to extend its influence there, which led to the weakening of Egyptian influence in Uganda, especially after Egypt's withdrawal from Sudan after the Mahdist revolution, so Uganda became a British protectorate from 1894 until it gained full independence in 1962.

Khedive Ismail Pasha of Egypt

Annexation of Uganda and its surroundings

After the tension in relations between Khedive Ismail and the Ottoman Empire, the Khedive sought the help of American officers who participated in the American civil war to train the Egyptian army, in order to escape the French-British competition over Egypt. Ismail ordered the restoration of the expansion in Sudan to the south to annex Massawa, one of the cities of Eritrea. He fought wars with the Ethiopian Emperor and subjugated some Ethiopian cities, until he reached Uganda through some missionaries who were seeking to discover and determine the sources of the Nile. They discovered Lake Ibrahim Pasha as a tributary of the Nile, which is now known as Lake Kyoga.

The Khedivate of Egypt during its peak under Ismail including Uganda.

These despatches peacefully imposed Egyptian protection and raised the Egyptian flag over the Kingdom of Uganda, with news coming in of the advance of the Egyptian army consisting of 30,000 fighters to Fashoda under the command of Jaafar Sadiq Pasha, as well as in cooperation with some military leaders such as Al-Zubair Pasha, who annexed most of the Kingdom of Darfur in 24/10/1874, several major battles took place in Darfur, in which Al-Zubair Rahma, one of the major Egyptian slave traders in the Bahr Al-Ghazal region, helped the Egyptians. Al-Zubair was able to defeat the Sultan of Darfur, Ibrahim Qard, in the Battle of Menawashi on October 25, 1874. Hundreds of Darfur princes were killed in this battle and its senior notables, and this defeat was called the "Menawashi Massacre." Zubair helped in subjecting a large part of Sudan to the rule of the Khedive, in addition to annexing parts of Somalia and the western coastal strip of the Red Sea which was known as the Khedivate's Somali Coast. The most important decree issued after those Khedival conquests was the prohibition of the slave trade, which was a source of concern for notables in Sudan and Darfur, as the slave trade at that time was a source of income important to them.

During this period, many Egyptian expeditions to the land of Uganda, which Egypt ruled for more than 14 years, were sent, and delegations were sent from Al-Azhar to spread Islam, until the number of converts to Islam exceeded more than a third of the population, and the Shiite doctrine spread in Uganda during the British occupation through Asian trade.

References

Category:History of Uganda Category:Egypt–Uganda relations Category:Egypt under the Muhammad Ali dynasty