November 3–5, 1883 · Kordofan, western Sudan Theater

An Egyptian army of some 10,000 men under the British officer Hicks Pasha marched into the waterless Kordofan scrub to crush the Mahdi. Led astray by treacherous guides, exhausted and parched, it was ambushed in the forest of Shaykan and annihilated almost to the last man; Hicks and nearly his entire force were killed.

February 29, 1884 · Eastern Sudan (near Suakin) Theater

In the Red Sea hills, a British expeditionary force under Graham advanced in disciplined squares to relieve the pressure on the coast and defeated the Mahdist forces of the local emir Osman Digna at El Teb, its rifles and artillery breaking the dervish attacks.

March 13, 1884 · Eastern Sudan (near Suakin) Theater

At Tamai the Beja warriors of Osman Digna charged with such ferocity that they briefly broke one of the British infantry squares — a rare feat that stunned the British — before rifle fire and reserves restored the line and drove them off with heavy loss. It was this fight that inspired Kipling's tribute to the 'Fuzzy-Wuzzy' who 'broke a British square.'

March 1884 – January 26, 1885 · Confluence of the Blue and White Nile Theater

Sent to evacuate the Egyptian garrisons, the charismatic and headstrong General Gordon instead resolved to hold Khartoum, and was besieged there by the Mahdi's army for ten months. As the Nile fell and the city starved, a British relief expedition was despatched too late; on January 26, 1885, the Mahdists stormed the weakened defences and killed Gordon on the steps of his palace — two days before the relief steamers arrived.

January 17, 1885 · Bayuda Desert Theater

The Desert Column of the Gordon relief expedition, cutting across the Bayuda to reach Khartoum quickly, was attacked at the Abu Klea wells. In the fierce fight the British square was briefly penetrated when a machine gun jammed, and there was desperate hand-to-hand fighting before the Mahdists were beaten off.

December 30, 1885 · Nile frontier, northern Sudan Theater

After the relief expedition withdrew, the Mahdists pressed north to the Egyptian frontier, where an Anglo-Egyptian force defeated them at Ginnis. It was the last battle in which British troops wore their traditional red coats before khaki became universal.

August 3, 1889 · Nile, southern Egypt Theater

The Khalifa launched a great invasion of Egypt under his best general, Wad al-Njumi, dreaming of carrying the jihad to Cairo and beyond. Weakened by hunger and thirst on the march, the invading army was intercepted and destroyed at Toski, and al-Njumi was killed.

June 7, 1896 · Nile, northern Sudan (Dongola campaign) Theater

Kitchener opened the methodical reconquest of the Sudan by advancing up the Nile behind a new railway, and at Ferkeh his Anglo-Egyptian army surprised and destroyed the Mahdist force holding the frontier of Dongola province in a dawn attack.

April 8, 1898 · Confluence of the Atbara and the Nile Theater

As Kitchener's army neared Khartoum, the Khalifa's general Mahmud entrenched a large force in a thorn-fenced zariba on the Atbara river. Kitchener's infantry stormed the position after an artillery bombardment, breaking the Mahdist army and capturing Mahmud himself.

September 2, 1898 · Outside Omdurman, opposite Khartoum Theater

Before the Khalifa's capital, some 50,000 Mahdist warriors charged Kitchener's entrenched Anglo-Egyptian army across open ground in the morning light. Against Maxim machine guns, magazine rifles, and gunboat artillery, the charges were mown down in their thousands before they could close; the young cavalryman Winston Churchill rode in the 21st Lancers' famous charge. By midday the Mahdist army was destroyed, at a cost of some 48 British dead against roughly 10,000 of the enemy.

November 24, 1899 · Kordofan, southern Sudan Theater

The Khalifa had fled Omdurman to raise resistance in the west, but he was hunted down at Umm Diwaykarat, where his last force was defeated. The Khalifa, refusing to flee, was killed seated on his sheepskin prayer-mat surrounded by his emirs — the traditional death of a defeated Mahdist leader.