Al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur (1830-January 1913) was the Egyptian governor of South Sudan from 1873 to 1877.
Biography[]
Al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur was born in northern Sudan to the Arab Gemaab tribe, and he became a slave trader during the 1850s. In 1856, he left Khartoum with a small army and established a network of trading forts which dealt in slave trading and ivory sales. In 1873, Khedive Isma'il Pasha recognized Rahma's princely court at Deim Zubeir and named him Governor of Bahr el-Ghazal, and he became a bey and pasha. In 1877, Charles Gordon was appointed Governor of Sudan, and he suppressed the slave trade and executed Rahma's son Suleiman in the process. This turned Rahma into a fierce enemy of Gordon, and, while Gordon offered Rahma the leadership of all of Sudan in 1884 in exchange for Rahma's support against the Mahdist forces of Muhammad Ahmad, Rahman wished Gordon death for the execution of his son. He was later given command of all the Black forces fighting for Egypt, in spite of the British government's opposition to his continuing involvement in the slave trade. He was arrested in 1885 and imprisoned at Gibraltar after he was caught negotiating fealty to Ahmad, but he was allowed to return to Cairo in 1887 and to Sudan in 1899, when the Mahdist revolt was crushed. He wrote his memoirs before dying peacefully in 1913.