sters who wanted to save the expense of feeding and clothing slaves (Lovejoy 169; 175). As late as 1939, some slave owners were declaring their slaves, especially females, part of the family circle, hence subject not to the courts of the (British) empire but rather to Islamic law, known as sharia (Sikainga 10). On similar lines, Lane and Rubinstein (36) note that the British colonial government unsuccessfully opposed female circumcision, customarily conducted in Islam, animist, and Christian communities in Sudan.
The successful Muslim revolt against British/Egyptian rule in 1885 had the effect, whatever the intent, of reinstitution of slavery in Sudan. The Mahdi formally governed by the sharia, "which in practice was evangelical, puritanical, and autocratic" (Viorst 49). The thirteen-year regime known as the Mahdiyya was administratively incompetent and degenerated into something like anarchy, especially in the south, finally being overtaken by British colonial rule lasting from 1899 to 1956, when Sudan's independence was recognized by the international
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