110 the sudan handbookMuhammad 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).