Badi VII (reigned 1805–1821) was the last ruler of the
Funj Sultanate.
Badi offered no resistance to
Ismail Pasha, who had led the
khedive
Khedive ( ; ; ) was an honorific title of Classical Persian origin used for the sultans and grand viziers of the Ottoman Empire, but most famously for the Khedive of Egypt, viceroy of Egypt from 1805 to 1914.Adam Mestyan"Khedive" ''Encyclopaedi ...
army of his father up the
Nile
The Nile (also known as the Nile River or River Nile) is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa. It has historically been considered the List of river sy ...
to his capital at
Sennar. Alan Moorhead repeats
Frédéric Cailliaud's impression of Badi, that the king was an extremely limited little man who was stunned by the loss of his kingdom, taking particular note that Badi "was intrigued by Cailliaud's gift of a box of matches."
[Alan Moorehead, ''The Blue Nile'', revised edition (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), p. 214]
According to Moorhead, even had the king wanted to resist, he had few resources to do so. There was no sign of the famous cavalry of Black Horses which had impressed
James Bruce
James Bruce of Kinnaird (14 December 1730 – 27 April 1794) was a Scottish traveller and travel writer who physically confirmed the source of the Blue Nile. He spent more than a dozen years in North and East Africa and in 1770 became the fir ...
forty years before, and his armament consisted of four rusty cannons which were "flung into the Blue Nile to appease the Turks." Of the town itself, the palace and mosque "the only two buildings of any consequence in Sennar, were tumbling down, and the inhabitants no more steadfast; Cailliaud singled out the women of the town, "who were much given to smoking and beer-drinking."
[Moorehead, ''The Blue Nile'', p. 215]
Badi emerged from the town "to surrender and offer gifts of horses and their trappings to the conquerors. Ismail had served coffee, had presented Badi with a somewhat unsuitable fur-lined cloak, and on June 14 had led his rabble in the town, where they began their usual lootings and reprisals, including one particularly horrible
impalement
Impalement, as a method of torture and execution, is the penetrating trauma, penetration of a human by an object such as a stake, pole, spear, or hook, often by the complete or partial perforation of the torso. It was particularly used in respon ...
."
[
Badi was reinstated as the nominal ruler of this province, but Moorhead aptly quotes Crawford's words that "the long-drawn-out death agony of the Kingdom of Sennar was finished."][
]
Notes
Funj sultans
19th-century monarchs in Africa
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