 Another Egyptian expedition dispatched from Fashoda was ambushed and slaughtered on the night of 9 December 1881.The Mahdi also legitimized his movement by drawing deliberate parallels to the life of the Prophet Muhammad.He called his followers Ansar, after the people who greeted the Prophet in Medina, and he called his flight from the British, the hijrah, after the Prophet's flight from the Quraysh.