Sudan's billon coinage of this period was struck under the authority of the Ottoman-aligned Khedivate of Egypt, which nominally administered the region even as the Mahdist State controlled most of the interior following the fall of Khartoum in 1885. The name "Abdullah" references Abdullah ibn Muhammad, the Khalifa who succeeded the Mahdi and ruled the theocratic state from Omdurman — making this a coin issued by a government that existed in direct defiance of the Egyptian and British authorities whose currency circulated alongside it.
The billon alloy reflects chronic silver shortages that plagued the Mahdist administration throughout the 1880s and 1890s.
Sudan's billon coinage of this period was struck under the authority of the Ottoman-aligned Khedivate of Egypt, which nominally administered the region even as the Mahdist State controlled most of the interior following the fall of Khartoum in 1885. The name "Abdullah" references Abdullah ibn Muhammad, the Khalifa who succeeded the Mahdi and ruled the theocratic state from Omdurman — making this a coin issued by a government that existed in direct defiance of the Egyptian and British authorities whose currency circulated alongside it.
The billon alloy reflects chronic silver shortages that plagued the Mahdist administration throughout the 1880s and 1890s.