a conspiracy between Menilek and Negus Takla-Haymanot against him, Yohannes had no choice but to return without achieving anything. That was to be his last encounter with the Italians. One year later, he died on the battlefield at Matamma, and the Italians immediately marched on to the highlands.
Like the Italian occupation of Massawa, the bloody confrontation between Ethiopia and Mahdist Sudan was a legacy of Egyptian expansion. The Mahdist movement arose as a combination of religious revivalism and Sudanese nationalist opposition to Egyptian rule. As such it was primarily directed against Egypt, in Mahdist thinking regarded as both renegade and oppressor. But Yohannes’s faithful implementation of the Hewett Treaty had the effect of redirecting Mahdist fury against Ethiopia. By coming to the relief of the beleaguered Egyptian garrisons, Ethiopia identified herself with the hated enemy. Simultaneously, the Egyptian buffer between her and Mahdist Sudan was eliminated, and the two countries were brought into direct confrontation.
2.6 The port town of Massawa towards the end of the nineteenth century
The first battle was fought at Kufit (to the east of Kasala) on 23 September 1885. The Ethiopian troops were led by Ras Alula. The Mahdists or Ansar were commanded by a no less redoubtable general, Uthman Diqna. After two reverses, in the latter of which Alula himself was wounded, the Ethiopian side was victorious. About 3,000 Ansar lost their lives. The Ethiopian losses were about half that number killed, including Alula’s lieutenant, Blatta Gabru.
Another arena of Ethio-Mahdist confrontation was in the south, in the present-day Wallaga region. In the sheikhdoms of Asosa, Bela Shangul and Khomosha, the Ansar had stepped into the shoes of the Egyptians, who had exercised some sort of paramountcy characterized chiefly by annual tax-gathering raids. Islam and trans-frontier trade had also prepared the ground for Mahdist penetration, although this did not mean that the Ansar were universally welcomed in the region. All the same, gaining influence over even some of the Oromo rulers, they had penetrated as far as the Najjo area, deep inside Oromo territory. It was there, at the Battle of Gute Dili (14 October 1888), that Menilek’s general, Ras Gobana Dache, finally stopped them.
But the most decisive battles were undoubtedly fought on the Matamma front. Matamma, known as Gallabat to the Sudanese, had been historically the most important centre of contact, peaceful or hostile, between the two countries. It was therefore only fitting that the issue was finally resolved there. Significantly, too, trade continued even during the period of hostility, with traders often doubling as spies.
Mahdist forces occupied Matamma following the Egyptian evacuation, and initiated a period of border raids and counter-raids. It was in response to one such Ansar raid in Dambya, in the plains south-west of Gondar, that Negus Takla-Haymanot, Yohannes’s general on this front, attacked and sacked Matamma in January 1887. One year later, the Ansar, led by another of their famous generals, Abu Anja, defeated Takla-Haymanot’s troops at Sar Weha, in Dambya. They followed this up with the deepest incursion they had yet made in north-west Ethiopia, sacking the town of Gondar.
It was in the same year, 1888, that Yohannes’s relations with his vassals entered a critical phase. Suspicious of Menilek’s intentions, Yohannes had declined his offer of assistance during the Saati campaign. Instead, he had instructed him to position himself at Ambachara, to the south of Gondar, and watch the movements of the Mahdists. Menilek arrived too late to save Gondar from the Ansar attack. On his way back, he met Negus Takla-Haymanot of Gojjam, and the two vassals agreed to work together against the emperor. Hearing of the conspiracy, Yohannes opened a devastating punitive campaign against Gojjam soon after his return from his inconclusive Saati campaign.
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