The Sudan Handbook

110 the sudan handbook

Muhammad Ahmad ibn Abdallah, from the Dongola area of the Nile,

a minor Sufi leader who in  1881     declared himself to be the Mahdi: the

Expected One, whose appearance on earth presages the second coming

of the messiah, Nabi Isa, (the prophet Jesus). Inspired by this idea

the followers of Muhammad Ahmad defeated the forces of the Turco-

Egyptian state in a series of battles which culminated in the capture

of Khartoum and the killing of Charles George Gordon, the British

officer who had been sent to organize an Egyptian withdrawal, but who

unwisely stayed on to try and defeat the Mahdi. It is worth noting that

the Mahdi’s messianic declaration did not have an instantaneous effect.

The movement took some years to establish itself and its appeal did

not extend much beyond central and western Sudan. The Mahdi’s final

capture of Khartoum in January 1885, after a long-drawn out siege, struck

a powerful symbolic blow against the Turco-Egyptian administration,

but as a military feat it was unremarkable: the town was poorly fortified

and ill defended.

The reasons for the Mahdi’s ultimate success have been much debated.

It has usually been argued that it was the weakness and brutality of the

state which encouraged popular revolt against it; some have suggested

that the attempts to abolish the slave trade and the institution of

slavery further irritated influential traders and property owners. There

are other arguments concerned with the internal dynamics of Islam.

The Mahdi’s movement fits into a wider pattern of nineteenth-century

Islamic radicalism – not the reformist movements of the Middle East,

but movements of renewal, which looked to restore a pristine Islamic

purity to states which had become compromised. Such movements swept

much of West Africa from the late eighteenth century onwards. Built on

the dissatisfactions of those on the margin of the Islamic world, they

appealed to those who had most reason to fear enslavement. Adherence

to Islam offered a less arbitrary political system, one which took account

of religion and not skin colour. The latter aspect may be significant in

the case of Sudan: the Mahdi’s forces were swelled – perhaps decisively

so – by recruits from the south of the country, often of slave origin,

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors who^ had^ been^ forced^ into^ military^ service^ under^ Turco-Egyptian^ rule.^

(www.riftvalley.net).