The town was to be the railhead for Lord Kitchener's supply railway through the vast and inhospitable Nubian Desert, allowing expeditionary forces to bypass a great stretch of the Nile on their way to Omdurman, the capital of Mahdist Sudan.

Accordingly, Kitchener ordered a flying column, led by Major-General Sir Archibald Hunter and composed of around three-thousand Egyptian soldiers, to march from Merowe to Abu Hamed with all possible speed.

Forming his battalions in a broad semi-circle that pitted Abu Hamed's defenders against the river, Major-General Hunter ordered his troops to advance at approximately six-thirty that morning.

The Mahdist Rebellion broke out in 1881 when a religious leader, the self-proclaimed Mahdi, declared a jihad against the Egyptian government, which had been subject to increasing British control since the construction of the Suez Canal around a decade earlier.

[1] Leveraging widespread resentment towards European influence in Egypt and preaching renewal of the Islamic faith, the Mahdi began to accumulate followers and soon presented a serious threat to the government.

[2] Early Egyptian-led efforts to suppress the movement failed spectacularly, and their humiliating defeat at the hands of the outnumbered, outgunned, and undersupplied Mahdist force only increased their leader's fame and reputation.

[3] Colonel William Hicks, a British officer, was appointed commander of eight thousand Egyptian soldiers and an extensive supply train, and was given the simple objective of crushing the insurrection.

[4] After this defeat, and facing immense financial difficulties in Egypt, the British government decided not to pursue further offensive action and instead selected General Charles George Gordon to lead the evacuation effort, as thousands of civilians and pounds of equipment were to be withdrawn from outposts throughout Sudan.

[11] Finally, it was politically advantageous in Europe for Britain to distract the Khalifa from the Italians in Eritrea, who had been made vulnerable by a recent defeat at the hands of Menelik II, Emperor of Ethiopia.

[12] The government chose Herbert Horatio Kitchener to lead the new expedition, outfitting him with around ten-thousand soldiers and Britain's latest technology: Maxim guns, heavy artillery, and a small fleet of gunboats.

[13] Kitchener sought an alternative route, and settled on one widely thought to be infeasible: he determined to build a railway across the vast, dry, and scorching Nubian Desert that would connect Wadi Halfa to Abu Hamed, a small town then under Mahdist control.

[20] As well, every delay offered greater chances for disaster; if the Mahdists were alerted to Kitchener's plans, the whole operation would be jeopardized and the catastrophic fate of General Gordon's expedition potentially repeated.

[22] The plan was for Major-General Hunter and a flying column of crack troops to race with all possible speed from Merowe north-east to Abu Hamed, where they would surprise the numerically inferior Mahdist garrison and win control of the town.

[26] Major-General Hunter's flying column set out from Kassinger, a small town a few miles north of Merowe, at 5:30 the evening of July 29, marching only at night so as to avoid both the heat of the sun and the eyes of any Mahdist lookouts.

[25] There was no road or path to follow, and the terrain upon which Hunter's flying column marched was nearly nontraversable; the route alternated between broken, rocky ground and ankle-high sand, ultimately proving extremely difficult to navigate in the dark of night.

Added to these difficulties was the measure of speed imposed upon the column, as the mounted Major-General Hunter and Lieutenant MacDonald drove their units to their breaking points in order to preempt Mahdist reinforcements.

Sleeping during the day was made impossible by the sweltering heat; only when adequate shade was found in the barren desert could the exhausted men of Hunter's flying column rest.

[27] The advance continued in this fashion until the village of El Kab was reached on August 4, where a shot fired at the column alerted Major-General Hunter that his presence was known to the Mahdists.

Fully aware that reinforcements would be on their way to Abu Hamed, Major-General Hunter further increased his column's pace, despite the deaths of three soldiers of the 3rd Egyptian Battalion and the loss of fifty-eight stragglers at various points along the route.

[29] The town of Abu Hamed was a small, inscrutable network of houses and alleyways on the bank of the Nile river, surrounded on three sides by a slightly elevated plateau.

A furious melee ensued, wherein soldiers of MacDonald's brigade poured into the trenches and through the town, engaging in vicious hand-to-hand combat with Mahdists wherever they were to be found in the winding alleyways and narrow houses of Abu Hamed.

[35] In several places artillery was used to dislodge particularly stalwart defenders, while the Mahdist cavalry, looking on as Hunter's battalions swept through the town, turned to flee south towards Berber.

[41] When Major-General Hunter won Abu Hamed from its defenders, the Mahdist reinforcements he knew had been racing towards the town since his force was spotted on August 4 were less than twenty miles away.

However, the small troop of Mahdist cavalry that had fled the battle met the incoming detachment and informed them of the events, whereupon they immediately changed course due southwards in the opposite direction of Abu Hamed.