 They were free to practice Judaism until the rebel leader Muhamed Ahmed Ibn Abdulla El-Mahdi seized control of Sudan from its Ottoman-Egyptian rulers in 1885 and the community was forcibly converted to Islam.In September 1898, General Kitchener and 20,000 Anglo-Egyptian troops including a young Winston Churchill entered Omdurman and regained control of the Sudan.The country became an Anglo-Egyptian condominium and with this new political status it began to economically flourish.