What lovely figures.
As Sudan is so often the flavour of the month, these guys can also be used to fight the Mahdists. For example, the battle of Gallabat in 1889: the Mahdist army fought and beat the Ethiopian forces of Yohannes IV. Over 15,000 men are thought to have been killed, and so much booty taken back to Omdurman it caused the price of slaves to collapse. But was a pyrrhic victory, as although the Ethiopian king was killed, the cream of the Mahdist army was destroyed and the battle essentially marked the end of the expansionist dreams of the Khalifa.