He also reported that Zubayr's court was 'little less than princely.' "In 1873, the Ottoman rulers of Sudan acknowledged Zubeir's power and granted him the title of governor over Bahr El Ghazal. One year later, he conquered the Darfur sultanate with his army of bazinger slave soldiers. As Zachary Berman concludes, Deim Zubeir was "simultaneously imperial and imperialized, an empire unto himself as well as part of overlapping overarching powers." At this point, the Khedive ruler in Cairo moved against Zubeir's ambitions and had him detained indefinitely from 1876 on. Instead, Zubeir's son Suleiman took over and renamed Deim Zubeir into Deim Suleiman (also transliterated into various spellings like Dem Soliman, Daym Sulayman etc.). Suleiman took advantage of the discontent that had grown amongst Northern Sudanese traders because of high taxes and the anti-slavery efforts imposed by the government in Khartoum and started a rebellion in 1877.Suleiman's revolt was, however, short-lived. In 1878 and 1879 his forces were defeated by an Egyptian army under the Italian Romolo Gessi. The support of local Southern allies and their proxy forces led by the Zande king Tombura and Golo chief Kayongo played a key role in the war. Suleiman surrendered, but was executed regardless. Gessi moved into his former residence and set up headquarters there. One of his first steps was to disarm many of his own troops, who - by his own account - "were no less brutal and savage than Suleiman's troops." In November 1879, the Austrian photographer, writer and scientist Richard Buchta visited Gessi, who retained the name Deim Suleiman. In a letter to Schweinfurth he wrote that Gessi, with the support of local Southern fighters whom he had armed as proxies, "did not just chase away the slave-traders, but actually annihilated them. Without any mercy, hundreds of Jellaba were chased into the bushes like wild beasts and butchered to death." The Russian-German explorer Wilhelm Junker, who visited Deim Suleiman shortly after Buchta, noted that:"Soliman Bey Ziber had undoubtedly greatly strengthened the place, especially in recent times. Around the whole zeriba runs a double and treble palisade, 26 feet high; within this enclosure the several courts are separated by matting almost hard as boards, and behind them are grouped the high and spacious dwellings sur-mounted by conic roofs. Soliman's residence, now occupied by Gessi, was built in the style of a two-storeyed house in Khartum; there were also several other