The Egyptian Governor, Rauf Pasha, decided that the only solution to the growing rebellion was a fight, and against the advice of his British advisors started to raise an army of his own.

He hired a number of European officers to lead his force, placing them under the command of William "Billy" Hicks, a retired colonel who had experience in India and Abyssinia.

They initially stayed near Khartoum and met small portions of the Mahdist forces on April 29, near the fort of Kawa, on the Nile, fending them off with little issue.

Later during the summer of 1883 they heard that the Mahdi himself was besieging El Obeid, a small town set up by the Egyptians some years earlier and now the capital of Kordofan.

The Egyptian officials decided to capture him and, despite Hicks' reluctance, planned an expedition from their current location at Duem on the Nile to El Obeid, about 200 miles away.

Their success also emboldened Osman Digna, whose Hadendoa tribesmen, the so-called fuzzy-wuzzies, joined the rebellion from their lands on the Red Sea coast.