FROM A PHOTOGRAPH OF THE STUDENTS OF THE MILITARY COLLEGE, 1912

A photograph of the students at the Military College in the possession of the family of the late officer Zayn al-‘Ābdīn ‘Abd al-Tām provides us with the names of most the students who were at the college in 1912. The picture has been compared with colonial records and with the interviews of some 1924 activists, and it reveals the extent of disaffection within the socio-professional category. Visible in the picture of army officers are the names of 35 out of the 40 cadets, excluding the four officers in the front row. At least 14 of 35 were involved in the 1924 revolution, albeit to different degrees. Besides Zayn al-‘Ābdīn ‘Abd al-Tām, the photograph includes ‘Alī ‘Abd al-Laṭīf, Sulaymān Muḥammad – one of the officers executed for the November Mutiny – and Sayyid Shahāta who is discussed later in this chapter. Other officers pictured who participated in the mutiny are ‘Abd al- Wahhāb Bīhārī, who belonged to a political society in Bara around 1919, and who was suspected of being the leader of the White Flag League in Umm Rwaba, Kordofan, in 1924; and ‘Abd al-Raḥman ‘Abd al-Rāḍī, who in 1924 was mamur in Tumbura, Bahr al-Ghazal, where he was accused of spreading disaffection. ‘Abd al-Raḥman ‘Abd al-Rāḍī was also married to a sister of Thābit ‘Abd al-Raḥīm, one of the three young officers executed for having led the November mutiny.

Each of these cadets is as a thread that leads to more insurgents. Several of Zayn al-‘Ābdīn ‘Abd al-Tām's relatives and friends were involved in the events of 1924. Yuzbashi Bilāl Riziq, the father of Amīna, who would later become Zayn al-‘Ābdīn's second wife, attempted to inspire more Sudanese units to rise up during the November Mutiny. His brother-in-law, Adam Adham, Yuzbashi of the Camel Corps, came to the attention of the Intelligence Department as a staunch member of the political movement in El Obeiḍ It was claimed that ‘[He] has been filling up the soldiers with anti-British ideas … He is a thoroughly bad influence in the Camel Corps.’ His son was the founder of the ‘Black Block’, a political association created in the 1940s to defend the interests of ‘black Sudanese’ in which several descendants of 1924 officers participated.

Two other figures with political connections among officers are Zayn al-‘Ābdīn Ṣāliḥ and Ḥassan al-Zayn who were accused in 1924 of forming a League in Darfur called the ‘Black Block’ (not to be confused with the ‘Black Block’ of the 1940s mentioned above) with Mulazim Tani Muḥammad Surūr Rustum and others.