Mahdi, El (El Mahdi) (Muhammad Ahmad) (Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah) (Muhammad Ahmed Al Mahdi) Muhammad Ahmad ibn ‘Abdallah al-Mahdi (Muhammad Ahmad ibn 'Abdallah) (the Mahdi) (August 12, 1844 - June 22, 1885). Sudanese politician and religious leader. His original name was Muhammad Ahmad, and he was arguably the single most influential personality in the history of the modern Sudan. A descendant of an “Arabized Nubian” family from Dongola, he was born in 1844 in Dirar Island off Dongola.
His father was a descendant of a respected religious man, a shariff known for his good “faith” among the people of that area. He migrated to Khartoum for better prospects for his family. All Muhammad’s brothers preferred to master the father’s profession of building boats, but he found himself attracted to religious studies like his great grandfather, the shariff.
Muhammad Ahmad learned the Qur’an in Khartoum and Kararie and later he studied fiqh under Sheikh Muhammad Kheir’s patronage. Muhammad Ahmad mastered different aspects of Islamic Studies and was known for his Sufi tendency among his mates. In 1861, he approached Sheik Muhammad Sheief, the leader of the Sammaniyya Sect, and requested to join his students and learn more on Sufism. Muhammad had shown a great deal of devotion and dedication to his Sheikh and teacher as well as a great deal of faith which distinguished him from his colleagues. When sheikh Muhammad realized Muhammad’s dedication and devotion, he appointed him shaykh and permitted him to give tariqa and uhud to new followers wherever he wanted to be.
In 1871, Muhammad Ahmad migrated with the rest of his family to Aba Island in western Sudan where he built a mosque for prayers and started to teach the Qur’an and Islamic Studies. Shortly he could gather all the inhabitants of Aba Island around him and got a wide popularity and fame among them.
The following years, and until he declared himself Mahdi, he spent time visiting people in different neighboring areas warning them and asking them to follow the “path of God Almighty.” He roamed all the areas as far as Dongola in the north, the Blue Nile region, Kordofan in the west, Sinnar and East of Sudan. He noticed the people’s discontent with the ruling Turks (the Ottoman-Egyptians) and their desire to get rid of the Turks – a desire that made many wish for the appearance of the awaited Mahdi to save them. Thus, whenever the people found in a man a great deal of knowledge, dedication and devotion to the religion they thought that he was the Mahdi.
Muhammad found in the people the desire and belief that he was the awaited Mahdi. Meanwhile, he was very much concerned by the bleak condition of Islam in Sudan under the self-proclaimed Shaykhs. Compelled by all this, in addition to his consideration of the wish and desire of the majority of the people and the sense of expectation of El Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad started to prepare himself to proclaim Mahdism.
During this period, the Khalifa Abdullahi came to recognize Muhammad Ahmad as “Mahdi” even before Muhammad himself had proclaimed it. From then on, and until the fall of Khartoum, to the Mahdi’s forces in January 1885, there was a continuous triumphal progress of volunteer armies fighting for the victory of Islam and the accomplishment of the eschatological mission.
It was in 1881 at Aba Island that Muhammad Ahmad proclaimed himself as the “Mahdi” and started to unify central and southern Sudanese tribes to exploit their increasing social and economical discontent with the ruling Turks and their exploitation of the country’s resources and mal-administration. El Mahdi led a national revolution and an “Islamic revivalism” uprising against the ruling Turks which was culminated by the fall of Khartoum and the assassination of Gordon Pasha in 1885.
Even though El Mahdi died shortly after the fall of Khartoum, his Mahdist Islamic regime survived until 1898 when the Anglo-Egyptian forces under Kitchener captured Khartoum, regained control and proclaimed a British-Egyptian condominium dominated mainly by British policies. The British presence would last until 1956 when Sudan achieved its independence.
Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah (otherwise known as the Mahdi or Muhammad Ahmed Al Mahdi (August 12, 1844 – June 22, 1885) was a Sufi sheikh of the Samaniyya order in Sudan who, on June 29, 1881, proclaimed himself as the Mahdi or messianic redeemer of the Islamic faith. His proclamation came during a period of widespread resentment among the Sudanese population of the oppressive policies of the Turco-Egyptian rulers, and capitalized on the messianic beliefs popular among the various Sudanese sufi sects (or tariqa/turuq) of the time. More broadly, the Mahdiyya, as Muhammad Ahmad's movement was called, was influenced by earlier Mahdist movements in West Africa, as well as Wahabism and other puritanical forms of Islamic revivalism that developed in reaction to the growing military and economic dominance of the European powers throughout the 19th century.
From his announcement of the Mahdiyya in June 1881 until the fall of Khartoum in January 1885, Muhammad Ahmad led a successful military campaign against the Turco-Egyptian government of the Sudan (known as the Turkiyya). During this period, many of the theological and political doctrines of the Mahdiyya were established and promulgated among the growing ranks of the Mahdi's supporters. After Muhammad Ahmad's unexpected death on 22 June 1885, a mere six months after the conquest of Khartoum, his chief deputy, the Khalifa Abdullah took over the administration of the nascent Mahdist state.
Muhammad Ahmad was born on August 12, 1844 on Labab Island in the province of Dongola in Northern Sudan to a family that claimed to be descendants of the Prophet Muhammad through the line of his grandson Hassan. As a child, the family moved to the town of Karari, north of Khartoum, where Muhammad Ahmad's father, Abdullah, could find a supply of timber for his boat-building business.
While his siblings joined his father's trade, Muhammad Ahmad showed a proclivity for religious study. He studied first under Sheikh al-Amin al-Suwaylih in the Gezira region around Khartoum, and subsequently under Sheikh Muhammad al-Dikayr 'Abdallah Khujali near the town of Berber in North Sudan.
Determined to live a life of asceticism, mysticism, and worship, in 1861 he sought out Sheikh Muhammad Sharif Nur al-Dai'm, the grandson of the founder of the Samaniyya Sufi sect in Sudan. Muhammad Ahmad stayed with Sheikh Muhammad Sharif for seven years, during which time he was recognized for his piety and asceticism. Near the end of this period, he was awarded the title of Sheikh himself, and began to travel around the country on religious missions. He was permitted to give tariqa and Uhūd to new followers.
In 1870, his family moved again in search for timber, this time to Aba Island on the White Nile south of Khartoum. On Aba Island, Muhammad Ahmad built a mosque and started to teach the Qur'an. He soon gained a notable reputation among the local population as an excellent speaker and mystic. The broad thrust of his teaching followed that of other reformers, his Islam was one devoted to the words of Muhammad and based on a return to the virtues of strict devotion, prayer, and simplicity as laid down in the Qur'an. Any deviation from the Qur'an was therefore heresy.
In 1872, Muhammad Ahmad invited Sheikh Sharif to move to al-Aradayb, an area on the White Nile neighboring Aba Island. Despite initially amicable relations, in 1878 the two religious leaders had a dispute motivated by Sheikh Sharif's resentment of his former student's growing popularity. The dispute led to violence between their followers, and while they temporarily reconciled their differences, the experience revealed to Muhammad Ahmad his mentor's faults. At a subsequent celebration in honor of the circumcision of Sheikh Sharif's sons, Muhammad Ahmad expressed his disapproval of the dancing and music, which reignited the latent tension between the two men. As a result of this second dispute, Sheikh Sharif expelled his former student from the Samaniyya order, and despite numerous apologies and emotional appeals, refused to forgive and re-admit him.
After recognizing that the split with Sheikh Sharif was irreconcilable, Muhammad Ahmad approached a rival leader of the Samaniyya order named Sheikh al-Qurashi wad al-Zayn. The elderly sheikh eagerly accepted him and his followers, and under his new master, Muhammad Ahmad resumed his life of piety and religious devotion at Aba Island. During this period, he also travelled to the province of Kordofan, west of Khartoum, where he visited with the notables of the capital, el-Obeid, who were enmeshed in a power struggle between two rival claimants to the governorship of the province. While in Kordofan, he also enhanced his reputation by granting baraka to the common people who attended his sermons en masse.
On July 25, 1878, Sheikh al-Qurashi died and his followers recognized Muhammad Ahmad as their new leader. Around this time, Muhammad Ahmad first met Abdallahi bin Muhammad al-Ta'aishi, who was to become his chief deputy and successor in the years to come.
On June 29, 1881, Muhammad Ahmad publicly announced his claim to be the Mahdi. In part, his claim was based on his status as a prominent Sufi sheikh with a large following in the Samaniyya order and among the tribes in the area around Aba Island. Yet the idea of the Mahdiyya had been central to the belief of the Samaniyya prior to Muhammad Ahmad's manifestation. The previous Samaniyya leader, Sheikh al-Qurashi Wad al-Zayn, had asserted that the long-awaited-for redeemer would come from the Samaniyya line. According to Sheikh al-Qurashi, the Mahdi would make himself known through a number of signs, some established in the early period of Islam and recorded in the Hadith literature, and others having a more distinctly local origin, such as the prediction that the Mahdi would ride the sheikh's pony and erect a dome over his grave after his death.
Drawing from aspects of the Sufi tradition that were intimately familiar to both his followers and his opponents, Muhammad Ahmad claimed that he had been appointed as the Mahdi by a prophetic assembly or hadra. A hadra, in the Sufi tradition, is a gathering of all the prophets from the time of Adam to Muhammad, as well as many Sufi holy men who are believed to have reached the highest level of affinity with the divine during their lifetime. The hadra is chaired by the Prophet Muhammad, known as Sayyid al-Wujud, and at his side are the seven Qutb, the most senior of whom is known as Ghawth az-Zaman. In the belief system of the Mahdiyya, it was this divine assembly that bestowed upon Muhammad Ahmad the title of al-Mahdi. The hadra was also the source of a number of central beliefs about the Mahdi, including that Muhammad Ahmad was created from the sacred light at the center of the Prophet's heart, that the Mahdiyya was eternal and the basic institution of the universe, and that all living creatures had acknowledged the Mahdi's claim since his birth.
In order to frame the Mahdiyya as a return to the early days of Islam, when the Muslim community, or Ummah, was unified under the guidance of the Prophet Muhammad and his immediate successors, Muhammad Ahmad drew many parallels between his manifestation as the Mahdi and the career of the Prophet. For example, he referred to himself as the Successor of the Messenger of God (Arabic: Khalifat Rusul Allah), and named his four closest deputies after the four successors to the Prophet Muhammad. Later, in order to distinguish his followers from adherents of other Sufi sects, he forbid the use of the word darwish (commonly known as "dervish" in English) to describe his followers, replacing it with the title Ansar, the term the Prophet Muhammad used for the people of Medina who welcomed him and his followers after their flight from Mecca.
Beyond his charismatic leadership, early military success, and religious appeal, there were numerous social and political factors that led to the rapid growth of Muhammad Ahmad's influence and the ultimate success of the Mahdiyya under his command. One of the most salient factors was the way in which Turco-Egyptian rule (1821–1885) interfered with local power structures, disenfranchised many influential segments of the Sudanese population, and subjected Sudan to the increasing penetration of the European powers.
Throughout the period of Turco-Egyptian rule, many segments of the Sudanese population suffered extreme hardship due to the system of taxation imposed by the central government. Under this system, a flat tax was imposed on farmers and small traders and collected by government-appointed tax collectors from the Sha'iqiyya tribe of northern Sudan. In bad years, and especially during times of drought and famine, farmers were unable to pay the high taxes. Fearing the brutal and unjust methods of the Sha'iqiyya, many farmers fled their villages in the fertile Nile Valley to the remote areas of Kordofan and Darfur. These migrants, known as "Jallaba" after their loose-fitting style of dress, began to function as small traders and middlemen for the foreign trading companies that had established themselves in the cities and towns of central Sudan. At the time, trade was dominated by two goods: ivory and slaves. The slaves were kidnapped in extensive slave raids led by Egyptian, European, and Sudanese slave traders in the provinces of Bahr Al-Ghazal and elsewhere in what is today South Sudan. While in the early years of the Turco-Egyptian rule, many slaves were sent north to serve as soldiers in Muhammad Ali's army, those taken captive later in the century were often forced to undertake the labor-intensive cultivation of crops in the Nile Valley.
In 1863, concern in Europe about the slave trade was ignited by the Speke and Grant expedition to discover the source of the Nile. The British government, increasingly involved in the administration of Egyptian affairs under the Khedive Ismail, began to target slave-ships transporting their cargo up the Nile. Recognizing that this approach was ineffective, the British eventually succeeded in establishing The Convention for the Suppression of the Slave Trade, which granted the British navy the right to search Egyptian ships leaving from Suakin (the site of Port Sudan today) on the Red Sea. This two-pronged assault on the slave trade not only threatened the prosperity of all those involved directly in the procurement and sale of slaves, but also the large segments of northern Sudanese society that relied on slave labor for agricultural and domestic work. In many cases, the same Jallaba that had been forced to flee their land due to excessive taxation were now under threat of losing their livelihood from the slave trade.
By the middle 19th century the Ottoman Imperial subject administration in Egypt was in the hands of Khedive Ismail. Although not a competent or devoted leader, Khedive Ismail had grandiose schemes about Egypt. His spending had put Egypt into huge debt and when his financing of the Suez Canal started to crumble, Great Britain stepped in and repaid his loans in return for controlling shares in the canal. As the canal took on a vast strategic importance as a control point for British trade with India, the need to ensure its security and stability became paramount. Thus, control of the canal required an ever increasing role in Egyptian affairs. With Khedive Ismail's spending and corruption causing instability, in 1873 the British government supported a program where an Anglo-French debt commission assumed responsibility for managing Egypt's fiscal affairs. This commission eventually forced Khedive Ismail to abdicate in favor of his son Tawfiq in 1877, leading to a period of political turmoil.
Ismail had appointed General Charles "Chinese" Gordon Governor of the Equatorial Provinces of Sudan in 1873. For the next three years, General Gordon fought against a native chieftain of Darfur, Zobeir, who had erected, on the basis of slave-traffic, a dangerous military power. Zobeir's organisation was eventually dismantled. Although unsuccessful at total pacification, Gordon was successful in limiting the power of the slave traders. Thus, he was made Governor-General of the Sudan in 1877. Soon after he arrived at his new post he started to end the slave trade, which at that point dominated the economy and was controlled by the tiny minority of Arabs. Before his arrival some 7 out of 8 blacks in the Sudan were enslaved by the tiny minority of Arabs; the native Africans formed well over 80% of the overall population. Gordon's policies were effective, but the effects on the economy were disastrous, and soon the Arab Social Ascendancy came to see this not a liberation from slavery, but a modern-day European Christian crusade and a threat to Muslim and Arab social dominance. It was this anger that fed the Ansars' ranks.
Upon Ismail's abdication, Gordon found himself with dramatically decreased support. He eventually resigned his post in 1880, exhausted by years of work, and left early the next year. His policies were soon abandoned by the new governors, but the anger and discontent of the dominant Arab minority was left unaddressed.
Although the Egyptians were fearful of the deteriorating conditions, the British refused to get involved, "Her Majesty’s Government are in no way responsible for operations in the Sudan", the Foreign Secretary Earl Granville noted.
Among the forces historians see as the causes of the uprising are ethnic Sudanese anger at the foreign Turkish Ottoman rulers, Muslim revivalist anger at the Turks' lax religious standards and willingness to appoint non-Muslims such as the Christian Charles Gordon to high positions and Sudanese Sufi resistance to "dry, scholastic Islam of Egyptian officialdom".
In 1881, Muhammad Ahmed declared himself Mahdi and ruler so as to prepare the way for the second coming of the Prophet Isa (Jesus),. "After consulting the ulama", Egyptian authorities "attempted to arrest him for spreading false doctrine." A military expedition was sent to reassert the government's authority on Aba Island, but the government's forces were ambushed and nearly annihilated by the Mahdi's followers.[citation needed] Muhammad Ahmed retaliated by declaring jihad.
I am the Mahdi, the Successor of the Prophet of God. Cease to pay taxes to the infidel Turks and let everyone who finds a Turk kill him, for the Turks are infidels
Unlike other Muslim reformers, the Mahdi did not advocate the application of ijtihad but "claimed to receive direct inspiration from God", so that his own proclamations superseded traditional jurisprudence. This, however, did not usurp the prophet Muhammad's position as seal of the Prophets, because the Prophet was — in some way — the intermediary of his revelations.
Information came from the Apostle of God that the angel of inspiration is with me from God to direct me and He has appointed him. So from this prophetic information I learnt that that with which God inspires me by means of the angel of inspiration, the Apostle of God would do, were he present.
The Mahdi and a party of his followers, the Ansār -- the "Helpers" (known in the West as "the Dervishes") --, made a long march to Kurdufan. There he gained a large number of recruits, especially from the Baqqara, and noble leaders such as Sheikh Madibbo ibn Ali of Rizeigat and Abdallahi ibn Muhammad of Ta'aisha tribes. They were also joined by the Hadendoa Beja, who were rallied to the Mahdi by an Ansār captain in east of Sudan in 1883, Osman Digna.
The Khatmiyya sufi order which had enjoyed popular support in east and north Sudan rejected the Mahdi's claim outright. Mahdist forces attacked the Khatmiyya adherents and even ransacked the tomb of sayyid Al-Hassan grandson of the revered religious leader Mohammed Uthman al-Mirghani al-Khatim in Kassala. The head of the Khatmiyya sufi order was forced into exile in Egypt for fear of assassination.
Late in 1883, the Ansār, armed only with spears and swords, overwhelmed an 4000-man Egyptian force not far from Al Ubayyid ("El Obeid"), and seized their rifles and ammunition. The Mahdi followed up this victory by laying siege to al-Ubayyid and starving it into submission after four months. The town remained the headquarters of the Ansar for much of the decade.
The Ansār, now 40,000 strong, then defeated an 8000-man Egyptian relief force led by British officer William Hicks at Sheikan, in the battle of El Obeid. The defeat of Hicks sealed the fate of Darfur, which until then had been effectively defended by Rudolf Carl von Slatin. Jabal Qadir in the south was also taken. The western half of Sudan was now firmly in Ansārī hands.
Their success emboldened the Hadendoa, who under the generalship of Osman Digna wiped out a smaller force of Egyptians under the command of Colonel Valentine Baker near the Red Sea port of Suakin. Major-General Gerald Graham was sent with a force of 4000 British soldiers and defeated Digna at El Teb on February 29, but were themselves hard-hit two weeks later at Tamai. Graham eventually withdrew his forces.
Given their general lack of interest in the area, the British decided to abandon the Sudan in December 1883, holding only several northern towns and Red Sea ports, such as Khartoum, Kassala, Sannar, and Sawakin. The evacuation of Egyptian troops and officials and other foreigners from Sudan was assigned to General Gordon, who had been reappointed governor general with orders to return to Khartoum and organize a withdrawal of the Egyptian garrisons there.
Gordon reached Khartoum in February 1884. At first he was greeted with jubilation as many of the tribes in the immediate area were at odds with the Mahdists. Transportation northward was still open and the telegraph lines intact. However, the uprising of the Beja soon after his arrival changed things considerably, reducing communications to runners.
Gordon considered the routes northward to be too dangerous to extricate the garrisons and so pressed for reinforcements to be sent from Cairo to help with the withdrawal. He also suggested that his old enemy Al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur, a fine military commander, be given tacit control of the Sudan in order to provide a counter to the Ansār. London rejected both proposals, and so Gordon prepared for a fight.
In March 1884, Gordon tried a small offensive to clear the road northward to Egypt but a number of the officers in the Egyptian force went over to the enemy and their forces fled the field after firing a single salvo. This convinced him that he could carry out only defensive operations and he returned to Khartoum to construct defensive works.
By April 1884, Gordon had managed to evacuate some 2500 of the foreign population that were able to make the trek northwards. His mobile force under Colonel Stewart then returned to the city after repeated incidents where the 200 or so Egyptian forces under his command would turn and run at the slightest provocation.
That month the Ansār reached Khartoum and Gordon was completely cut off. Nevertheless, his defensive works, consisting mainly of mines, proved so frightening to the Ansār that they were unable to penetrate into the city. Stewart maintained a number of small skirmishes using gunboats on the Nile once the waters rose, and in August managed to recapture Berber for a short time. However, Stewart was killed soon after in another foray from Berber to Dongola, a fact Gordon only learned about in a letter from the Mahdi himself.
Under increasing pressure from the public to support him, the British Government under Prime Minister Gladstone eventually ordered Lord Garnet Joseph Wolseley to relieve Gordon. He was already deployed in Egypt due to the attempted coup there earlier, and was able to form up a large force of infantry, moving forward at an extremely slow rate. Realizing they would take some time to arrive, Gordon pressed for him to send forward a "flying column" of camel-borne troops across the Bayyudah Desert from Wadi Halfa under the command of Brigadier-General Sir Herbert Stuart. This force was attacked by the Hadendoa Beja, or "Fuzzy Wuzzies", twice, first at the Battle of Abu Klea and two days later nearer Metemma. Twice the British square held and the Mahdists were repelled with heavy losses.
At Metemma, 100 miles (160 km) north of Khartoum, Wolseley's advance guard met four of Gordon's steamers, sent down to provide speedy transport for the first relieving troops. They gave Wolseley a dispatch from Gordon claiming that the city was about to fall. However, only moments later a runner brought in a message claiming the city could hold out for a year. Deciding to believe the latter, the force stopped while they refit the steamers to hold more troops.
They finally arrived in Khartoum on January 28, 1885 to find the town had fallen during the Battle of Khartoum two days earlier. When the Nile had receded from flood stage, Faraz Pasha had opened the river gates and let the Ansār in. The garrison was slaughtered, and Gordon was killed fighting the Mahdi's warriors on the steps of the palace, hacked to pieces and beheaded which the Mahdi had forbade. When Gordon's head was unwrapped at the Mahdi's feet, he ordered the head transfixed between the branches of a tree "....where all who passed it could look in disdain, children could throw stones at it and the hawks of the desert could sweep and circle above." When Wolseley's force arrived, they retreated after attempting to force their way to the center of the town on ships, being met with a hail of fire.
The Mahdi Army continued its sweep of victories. Kassala and Sannar fell soon after and by the end of 1885 the Ansār had begun to move into the southern regions of Sudan. In all Sudan, only Suakin, reinforced by Indian troops, and Wadi Halfa on the northern frontier remained in Anglo-Egyptian hands.
With Sudan now in Sudanese hands, the Mahdi formed a government. The Mahdiyya (Mahdist regime) modified the Shariah, (Islamic law) which would be implemented by Islamic courts headed by various Islamic imams, in accordance with the view of an Islamic state. The courts enforced a Sharia law that the Mahdi claimed was founded on instructions conveyed to him by God in visions.
According to this doctrine loyalty to him was essential to true belief. The recitation of the shahada was modified to include and Muhammad Ahmad is the Mahdi of God and the representative of His Prophet. Among the five pillars, service in the "jihād" replaced the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) as a duty incumbent on the faithful (though Jihad-warfare is central to orthodox Islam, it is not considered one of the five pillars of faith).
He also authorized the burning of lists of pedigrees and books of law and theology because of their association with the old regime and because he believed that they accentuated tribalism at the expense of religious unity.
Six months after the capture of Khartoum, Muhammad Ahmad died of typhus. He was buried in Omdurman. The Mahdi had planned for this eventuality and had chosen three deputies to replace him, in imitation of the Prophet Muhammad. This led to a long period of disarray, due to rivalry among the three, each supported by people of his native region. This continued until 1891, when Abdallahi ibn Muhammad, with the help primarily of the Baqqara Arabs, emerged as unchallenged leader. Abdallahi, referred to as the "Khalifa" (Caliph, lit. "successor"), purged the Mahdiyya of members of the Mahdi's family and many of his early religious disciples.
The "Khalifa" was committed to the Mahdi's vision of extending the Mahdiyah through jihād, which led to strained relations with practically everyone else. For example, the "Khalifa" rejected an offer of an alliance against the Europeans by Ethiopia's Emperor, Yohannes IV. Instead, in 1887 a 60,000-man Ansar army invaded Ethiopia, penetrated as far as Gonder, and captured prisoners and booty. The Khalifa then refused to conclude peace with Ethiopia.
In March 1889, an Ethiopian force commanded personally by the Nəgusa nagast (Emperor, lit. "King of Kings") marched on Gallabat; however, after Yohannes IV fell in battle, the Ethiopians withdrew.
After the final defeat of the Khalifa by the British under General Kitchener, Muhammad Ahmad's tomb was destroyed and his bones were thrown into the Nile. Kitchener retained his skull. Allegedly the skull was later buried at Wadi Halfa. The tomb was eventually rebuilt.
In modern-day Sudan, Muhammad Ahmad is sometimes seen as a precursor of Sudanese nationalism. The Umma party claim to be his political descendants. Their leader Imam Sadiq al-Mahdi, is also the imam of the Ansar, the religious order that pledges allegiance to Muhammad Ahmad. Sadiq al-Mahdi was Prime Minister of Sudan on two occasions: first briefly in 1966–67, and then between 1986 and 1989.
El Mahdi see Mahdi, El
Muhammad Ahmad see Mahdi, El
Ahmad, Muhammad see Mahdi, El
Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah see Mahdi, El
Muhammad Ahmed Al Mahdi see Mahdi, El
Muhammad Ahmad ibn ‘Abdallah al-Mahdi see Mahdi, El
In 1870, his family moved again in search for timber, this time to Aba Island on the White Nile south of Khartoum. On Aba Island, Muhammad Ahmad built a mosque and started to teach the Qur'an. He soon gained a notable reputation among the local population as an excellent speaker and mystic. The broad thrust of his teaching followed that of other reformers, his Islam was one devoted to the words of Muhammad and based on a return to the virtues of strict devotion, prayer, and simplicity as laid down in the Qur'an. Any deviation from the Qur'an was therefore heresy.
In 1872, Muhammad Ahmad invited Sheikh Sharif to move to al-Aradayb, an area on the White Nile neighboring Aba Island. Despite initially amicable relations, in 1878 the two religious leaders had a dispute motivated by Sheikh Sharif's resentment of his former student's growing popularity. The dispute led to violence between their followers, and while they temporarily reconciled their differences, the experience revealed to Muhammad Ahmad his mentor's faults. At a subsequent celebration in honor of the circumcision of Sheikh Sharif's sons, Muhammad Ahmad expressed his disapproval of the dancing and music, which reignited the latent tension between the two men. As a result of this second dispute, Sheikh Sharif expelled his former student from the Samaniyya order, and despite numerous apologies and emotional appeals, refused to forgive and re-admit him.
After recognizing that the split with Sheikh Sharif was irreconcilable, Muhammad Ahmad approached a rival leader of the Samaniyya order named Sheikh al-Qurashi wad al-Zayn. The elderly sheikh eagerly accepted him and his followers, and under his new master, Muhammad Ahmad resumed his life of piety and religious devotion at Aba Island. During this period, he also travelled to the province of Kordofan, west of Khartoum, where he visited with the notables of the capital, el-Obeid, who were enmeshed in a power struggle between two rival claimants to the governorship of the province. While in Kordofan, he also enhanced his reputation by granting baraka to the common people who attended his sermons en masse.
On July 25, 1878, Sheikh al-Qurashi died and his followers recognized Muhammad Ahmad as their new leader. Around this time, Muhammad Ahmad first met Abdallahi bin Muhammad al-Ta'aishi, who was to become his chief deputy and successor in the years to come.
On June 29, 1881, Muhammad Ahmad publicly announced his claim to be the Mahdi. In part, his claim was based on his status as a prominent Sufi sheikh with a large following in the Samaniyya order and among the tribes in the area around Aba Island. Yet the idea of the Mahdiyya had been central to the belief of the Samaniyya prior to Muhammad Ahmad's manifestation. The previous Samaniyya leader, Sheikh al-Qurashi Wad al-Zayn, had asserted that the long-awaited-for redeemer would come from the Samaniyya line. According to Sheikh al-Qurashi, the Mahdi would make himself known through a number of signs, some established in the early period of Islam and recorded in the Hadith literature, and others having a more distinctly local origin, such as the prediction that the Mahdi would ride the sheikh's pony and erect a dome over his grave after his death.
Drawing from aspects of the Sufi tradition that were intimately familiar to both his followers and his opponents, Muhammad Ahmad claimed that he had been appointed as the Mahdi by a prophetic assembly or hadra. A hadra, in the Sufi tradition, is a gathering of all the prophets from the time of Adam to Muhammad, as well as many Sufi holy men who are believed to have reached the highest level of affinity with the divine during their lifetime. The hadra is chaired by the Prophet Muhammad, known as Sayyid al-Wujud, and at his side are the seven Qutb, the most senior of whom is known as Ghawth az-Zaman. In the belief system of the Mahdiyya, it was this divine assembly that bestowed upon Muhammad Ahmad the title of al-Mahdi. The hadra was also the source of a number of central beliefs about the Mahdi, including that Muhammad Ahmad was created from the sacred light at the center of the Prophet's heart, that the Mahdiyya was eternal and the basic institution of the universe, and that all living creatures had acknowledged the Mahdi's claim since his birth.
In order to frame the Mahdiyya as a return to the early days of Islam, when the Muslim community, or Ummah, was unified under the guidance of the Prophet Muhammad and his immediate successors, Muhammad Ahmad drew many parallels between his manifestation as the Mahdi and the career of the Prophet. For example, he referred to himself as the Successor of the Messenger of God (Arabic: Khalifat Rusul Allah), and named his four closest deputies after the four successors to the Prophet Muhammad. Later, in order to distinguish his followers from adherents of other Sufi sects, he forbid the use of the word darwish (commonly known as "dervish" in English) to describe his followers, replacing it with the title Ansar, the term the Prophet Muhammad used for the people of Medina who welcomed him and his followers after their flight from Mecca.
This revivalist vision of the Mahdi intersected with the popular beliefs and legends of the Mahdi. Many of these beliefs have obscure origins in unsubstantiated Hadith, or are influenced by a convergence of local mythologies, Shi'a concepts, and Sufi traditions. It was believed that the Mahdi would manifest himself at the turn of an Islamic century, that his coming would herald in the end of time, that he would revitalize the faith and restore unity to the Ummah, and that his reign would last for eight years. At the end of his reign, it was believed that he would be defeated in battle with the anti-Christ (al-Dajjal), who would subsequently be vanquished by the return of Jesus (Nabi 'Isa).
Despite his popularity among Sufis of the Samaniyya and other sects, and among the tribes of western Sudan, the Ulema, or Orthodox religious authorities, ridiculed Muhammad Ahmad's claim to be the Mahdi. Among his most prominent critics were the Sudanese Ulema loyal to the Ottoman Sultan and in the employ of the Turco-Egyptian government, such as the Mufti Shakir al-Ghazi, who sat on the Council of Appeal in Khartoum, and the Qadi Ahmad al-Azhari in Kordofan.
These critics were careful not to deny the concept of the Mahdi as such, but rather to discredit Muhammad Ahmad's claim to it. They pointed out that Muhammad Ahmad's manifestation did not conform to the prophecies laid out in the Hadith literature. In particular, they argued that he had been born in Dongola, that he lacked proof of descent from Fatima, that he did not have the prophesied physical characteristics of the Mahdi, and that his manifestation did not conform with the "time of troubles" "when the land is filed with oppression, tryanny, and enmity."
While his challenge to the legitimacy of Turco-Egyptian rule, and the Sublime Porte by extension, set many of the religious elite against him, some of his radical changes to Islamic doctrine and practice alienated other Muslim scholars, both Sudanese and foreign. In particular, the Mahdi abolished the four Sunni schools of jurisprudence (Arabic: madhahib), rejected all authoritative texts in the history of tafsir or Qur'anic exegesis, changed the Sha'hada, or profession of faith, to include the phrase, "Muhammad al-Mahdi is the Khalifa of the Prophet of God," and revised the five pillars of Islam by replacing the Hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca with the obligation to undertake jihad, and adding a sixth pillar, which was belief in the Mahdiyya.
Linguistically, the Arabic term "al-Mahdi" can be translated as "the one who guides". The term is not found explicitly in the Qur'an, nor is it recorded in two of the most prominent collections of hadith, that of Bukhari and Muslim.
Despite his popularity among Sufis of the Samaniyya and other sects, and among the tribes of western Sudan, the Ulema, or Orthodox religious authorities, ridiculed Muhammad Ahmad's claim to be the Mahdi. Among his most prominent critics were the Sudanese Ulema loyal to the Ottoman Sultan and in the employ of the Turco-Egyptian government, such as the Mufti Shakir al-Ghazi, who sat on the Council of Appeal in Khartoum, and the Qadi Ahmad al-Azhari in Kordofan.
These critics were careful not to deny the concept of the Mahdi as such, but rather to discredit Muhammad Ahmad's claim to it. They pointed out that Muhammad Ahmad's manifestation did not conform to the prophecies laid out in the Hadith literature. In particular, they argued that he had been born in Dongola, that he lacked proof of descent from Fatima, that he did not have the prophesied physical characteristics of the Mahdi, and that his manifestation did not conform with the "time of troubles" "when the land is filed with oppression, tryanny, and enmity."
While his challenge to the legitimacy of Turco-Egyptian rule, and the Sublime Porte by extension, set many of the religious elite against him, some of his radical changes to Islamic doctrine and practice alienated other Muslim scholars, both Sudanese and foreign. In particular, the Mahdi abolished the four Sunni schools of jurisprudence (Arabic: madhahib), rejected all authoritative texts in the history of tafsir or Qur'anic exegesis, changed the Sha'hada, or profession of faith, to include the phrase, "Muhammad al-Mahdi is the Khalifa of the Prophet of God," and revised the five pillars of Islam by replacing the Hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca with the obligation to undertake jihad, and adding a sixth pillar, which was belief in the Mahdiyya.
Linguistically, the Arabic term "al-Mahdi" can be translated as "the one who guides". The term is not found explicitly in the Qur'an, nor is it recorded in two of the most prominent collections of hadith, that of Bukhari and Muslim.
Beyond his charismatic leadership, early military success, and religious appeal, there were numerous social and political factors that led to the rapid growth of Muhammad Ahmad's influence and the ultimate success of the Mahdiyya under his command. One of the most salient factors was the way in which Turco-Egyptian rule (1821–1885) interfered with local power structures, disenfranchised many influential segments of the Sudanese population, and subjected Sudan to the increasing penetration of the European powers.
Throughout the period of Turco-Egyptian rule, many segments of the Sudanese population suffered extreme hardship due to the system of taxation imposed by the central government. Under this system, a flat tax was imposed on farmers and small traders and collected by government-appointed tax collectors from the Sha'iqiyya tribe of northern Sudan. In bad years, and especially during times of drought and famine, farmers were unable to pay the high taxes. Fearing the brutal and unjust methods of the Sha'iqiyya, many farmers fled their villages in the fertile Nile Valley to the remote areas of Kordofan and Darfur. These migrants, known as "Jallaba" after their loose-fitting style of dress, began to function as small traders and middlemen for the foreign trading companies that had established themselves in the cities and towns of central Sudan. At the time, trade was dominated by two goods: ivory and slaves. The slaves were kidnapped in extensive slave raids led by Egyptian, European, and Sudanese slave traders in the provinces of Bahr Al-Ghazal and elsewhere in what is today South Sudan. While in the early years of the Turco-Egyptian rule, many slaves were sent north to serve as soldiers in Muhammad Ali's army, those taken captive later in the century were often forced to undertake the labor-intensive cultivation of crops in the Nile Valley.
In 1863, concern in Europe about the slave trade was ignited by the Speke and Grant expedition to discover the source of the Nile. The British government, increasingly involved in the administration of Egyptian affairs under the Khedive Ismail, began to target slave-ships transporting their cargo up the Nile. Recognizing that this approach was ineffective, the British eventually succeeded in establishing The Convention for the Suppression of the Slave Trade, which granted the British navy the right to search Egyptian ships leaving from Suakin (the site of Port Sudan today) on the Red Sea. This two-pronged assault on the slave trade not only threatened the prosperity of all those involved directly in the procurement and sale of slaves, but also the large segments of northern Sudanese society that relied on slave labor for agricultural and domestic work. In many cases, the same Jallaba that had been forced to flee their land due to excessive taxation were now under threat of losing their livelihood from the slave trade.
By the middle 19th century the Ottoman Imperial subject administration in Egypt was in the hands of Khedive Ismail. Although not a competent or devoted leader, Khedive Ismail had grandiose schemes about Egypt. His spending had put Egypt into huge debt and when his financing of the Suez Canal started to crumble, Great Britain stepped in and repaid his loans in return for controlling shares in the canal. As the canal took on a vast strategic importance as a control point for British trade with India, the need to ensure its security and stability became paramount. Thus, control of the canal required an ever increasing role in Egyptian affairs. With Khedive Ismail's spending and corruption causing instability, in 1873 the British government supported a program where an Anglo-French debt commission assumed responsibility for managing Egypt's fiscal affairs. This commission eventually forced Khedive Ismail to abdicate in favor of his son Tawfiq in 1877, leading to a period of political turmoil.
Ismail had appointed General Charles "Chinese" Gordon Governor of the Equatorial Provinces of Sudan in 1873. For the next three years, General Gordon fought against a native chieftain of Darfur, Zobeir, who had erected, on the basis of slave-traffic, a dangerous military power. Zobeir's organisation was eventually dismantled. Although unsuccessful at total pacification, Gordon was successful in limiting the power of the slave traders. Thus, he was made Governor-General of the Sudan in 1877. Soon after he arrived at his new post he started to end the slave trade, which at that point dominated the economy and was controlled by the tiny minority of Arabs. Before his arrival some 7 out of 8 blacks in the Sudan were enslaved by the tiny minority of Arabs; the native Africans formed well over 80% of the overall population. Gordon's policies were effective, but the effects on the economy were disastrous, and soon the Arab Social Ascendancy came to see this not a liberation from slavery, but a modern-day European Christian crusade and a threat to Muslim and Arab social dominance. It was this anger that fed the Ansars' ranks.
Upon Ismail's abdication, Gordon found himself with dramatically decreased support. He eventually resigned his post in 1880, exhausted by years of work, and left early the next year. His policies were soon abandoned by the new governors, but the anger and discontent of the dominant Arab minority was left unaddressed.
Although the Egyptians were fearful of the deteriorating conditions, the British refused to get involved, "Her Majesty’s Government are in no way responsible for operations in the Sudan", the Foreign Secretary Earl Granville noted.
Among the forces historians see as the causes of the uprising are ethnic Sudanese anger at the foreign Turkish Ottoman rulers, Muslim revivalist anger at the Turks' lax religious standards and willingness to appoint non-Muslims such as the Christian Charles Gordon to high positions and Sudanese Sufi resistance to "dry, scholastic Islam of Egyptian officialdom".
In 1881, Muhammad Ahmed declared himself Mahdi and ruler so as to prepare the way for the second coming of the Prophet Isa (Jesus),. "After consulting the ulama", Egyptian authorities "attempted to arrest him for spreading false doctrine." A military expedition was sent to reassert the government's authority on Aba Island, but the government's forces were ambushed and nearly annihilated by the Mahdi's followers.[citation needed] Muhammad Ahmed retaliated by declaring jihad.
I am the Mahdi, the Successor of the Prophet of God. Cease to pay taxes to the infidel Turks and let everyone who finds a Turk kill him, for the Turks are infidels
Unlike other Muslim reformers, the Mahdi did not advocate the application of ijtihad but "claimed to receive direct inspiration from God", so that his own proclamations superseded traditional jurisprudence. This, however, did not usurp the prophet Muhammad's position as seal of the Prophets, because the Prophet was — in some way — the intermediary of his revelations.
Information came from the Apostle of God that the angel of inspiration is with me from God to direct me and He has appointed him. So from this prophetic information I learnt that that with which God inspires me by means of the angel of inspiration, the Apostle of God would do, were he present.
The Mahdi and a party of his followers, the Ansār -- the "Helpers" (known in the West as "the Dervishes") --, made a long march to Kurdufan. There he gained a large number of recruits, especially from the Baqqara, and noble leaders such as Sheikh Madibbo ibn Ali of Rizeigat and Abdallahi ibn Muhammad of Ta'aisha tribes. They were also joined by the Hadendoa Beja, who were rallied to the Mahdi by an Ansār captain in east of Sudan in 1883, Osman Digna.
The Khatmiyya sufi order which had enjoyed popular support in east and north Sudan rejected the Mahdi's claim outright. Mahdist forces attacked the Khatmiyya adherents and even ransacked the tomb of sayyid Al-Hassan grandson of the revered religious leader Mohammed Uthman al-Mirghani al-Khatim in Kassala. The head of the Khatmiyya sufi order was forced into exile in Egypt for fear of assassination.
Late in 1883, the Ansār, armed only with spears and swords, overwhelmed an 4000-man Egyptian force not far from Al Ubayyid ("El Obeid"), and seized their rifles and ammunition. The Mahdi followed up this victory by laying siege to al-Ubayyid and starving it into submission after four months. The town remained the headquarters of the Ansar for much of the decade.
The Ansār, now 40,000 strong, then defeated an 8000-man Egyptian relief force led by British officer William Hicks at Sheikan, in the battle of El Obeid. The defeat of Hicks sealed the fate of Darfur, which until then had been effectively defended by Rudolf Carl von Slatin. Jabal Qadir in the south was also taken. The western half of Sudan was now firmly in Ansārī hands.
Their success emboldened the Hadendoa, who under the generalship of Osman Digna wiped out a smaller force of Egyptians under the command of Colonel Valentine Baker near the Red Sea port of Suakin. Major-General Gerald Graham was sent with a force of 4000 British soldiers and defeated Digna at El Teb on February 29, but were themselves hard-hit two weeks later at Tamai. Graham eventually withdrew his forces.
Given their general lack of interest in the area, the British decided to abandon the Sudan in December 1883, holding only several northern towns and Red Sea ports, such as Khartoum, Kassala, Sannar, and Sawakin. The evacuation of Egyptian troops and officials and other foreigners from Sudan was assigned to General Gordon, who had been reappointed governor general with orders to return to Khartoum and organize a withdrawal of the Egyptian garrisons there.
Gordon reached Khartoum in February 1884. At first he was greeted with jubilation as many of the tribes in the immediate area were at odds with the Mahdists. Transportation northward was still open and the telegraph lines intact. However, the uprising of the Beja soon after his arrival changed things considerably, reducing communications to runners.
Gordon considered the routes northward to be too dangerous to extricate the garrisons and so pressed for reinforcements to be sent from Cairo to help with the withdrawal. He also suggested that his old enemy Al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur, a fine military commander, be given tacit control of the Sudan in order to provide a counter to the Ansār. London rejected both proposals, and so Gordon prepared for a fight.
In March 1884, Gordon tried a small offensive to clear the road northward to Egypt but a number of the officers in the Egyptian force went over to the enemy and their forces fled the field after firing a single salvo. This convinced him that he could carry out only defensive operations and he returned to Khartoum to construct defensive works.
By April 1884, Gordon had managed to evacuate some 2500 of the foreign population that were able to make the trek northwards. His mobile force under Colonel Stewart then returned to the city after repeated incidents where the 200 or so Egyptian forces under his command would turn and run at the slightest provocation.
That month the Ansār reached Khartoum and Gordon was completely cut off. Nevertheless, his defensive works, consisting mainly of mines, proved so frightening to the Ansār that they were unable to penetrate into the city. Stewart maintained a number of small skirmishes using gunboats on the Nile once the waters rose, and in August managed to recapture Berber for a short time. However, Stewart was killed soon after in another foray from Berber to Dongola, a fact Gordon only learned about in a letter from the Mahdi himself.
Under increasing pressure from the public to support him, the British Government under Prime Minister Gladstone eventually ordered Lord Garnet Joseph Wolseley to relieve Gordon. He was already deployed in Egypt due to the attempted coup there earlier, and was able to form up a large force of infantry, moving forward at an extremely slow rate. Realizing they would take some time to arrive, Gordon pressed for him to send forward a "flying column" of camel-borne troops across the Bayyudah Desert from Wadi Halfa under the command of Brigadier-General Sir Herbert Stuart. This force was attacked by the Hadendoa Beja, or "Fuzzy Wuzzies", twice, first at the Battle of Abu Klea and two days later nearer Metemma. Twice the British square held and the Mahdists were repelled with heavy losses.
At Metemma, 100 miles (160 km) north of Khartoum, Wolseley's advance guard met four of Gordon's steamers, sent down to provide speedy transport for the first relieving troops. They gave Wolseley a dispatch from Gordon claiming that the city was about to fall. However, only moments later a runner brought in a message claiming the city could hold out for a year. Deciding to believe the latter, the force stopped while they refit the steamers to hold more troops.
They finally arrived in Khartoum on January 28, 1885 to find the town had fallen during the Battle of Khartoum two days earlier. When the Nile had receded from flood stage, Faraz Pasha had opened the river gates and let the Ansār in. The garrison was slaughtered, and Gordon was killed fighting the Mahdi's warriors on the steps of the palace, hacked to pieces and beheaded which the Mahdi had forbade. When Gordon's head was unwrapped at the Mahdi's feet, he ordered the head transfixed between the branches of a tree "....where all who passed it could look in disdain, children could throw stones at it and the hawks of the desert could sweep and circle above." When Wolseley's force arrived, they retreated after attempting to force their way to the center of the town on ships, being met with a hail of fire.
The Mahdi Army continued its sweep of victories. Kassala and Sannar fell soon after and by the end of 1885 the Ansār had begun to move into the southern regions of Sudan. In all Sudan, only Suakin, reinforced by Indian troops, and Wadi Halfa on the northern frontier remained in Anglo-Egyptian hands.
With Sudan now in Sudanese hands, the Mahdi formed a government. The Mahdiyya (Mahdist regime) modified the Shariah, (Islamic law) which would be implemented by Islamic courts headed by various Islamic imams, in accordance with the view of an Islamic state. The courts enforced a Sharia law that the Mahdi claimed was founded on instructions conveyed to him by God in visions.
According to this doctrine loyalty to him was essential to true belief. The recitation of the shahada was modified to include and Muhammad Ahmad is the Mahdi of God and the representative of His Prophet. Among the five pillars, service in the "jihād" replaced the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) as a duty incumbent on the faithful (though Jihad-warfare is central to orthodox Islam, it is not considered one of the five pillars of faith).
He also authorized the burning of lists of pedigrees and books of law and theology because of their association with the old regime and because he believed that they accentuated tribalism at the expense of religious unity.
Six months after the capture of Khartoum, Muhammad Ahmad died of typhus. He was buried in Omdurman. The Mahdi had planned for this eventuality and had chosen three deputies to replace him, in imitation of the Prophet Muhammad. This led to a long period of disarray, due to rivalry among the three, each supported by people of his native region. This continued until 1891, when Abdallahi ibn Muhammad, with the help primarily of the Baqqara Arabs, emerged as unchallenged leader. Abdallahi, referred to as the "Khalifa" (Caliph, lit. "successor"), purged the Mahdiyya of members of the Mahdi's family and many of his early religious disciples.
The "Khalifa" was committed to the Mahdi's vision of extending the Mahdiyah through jihād, which led to strained relations with practically everyone else. For example, the "Khalifa" rejected an offer of an alliance against the Europeans by Ethiopia's Emperor, Yohannes IV. Instead, in 1887 a 60,000-man Ansar army invaded Ethiopia, penetrated as far as Gonder, and captured prisoners and booty. The Khalifa then refused to conclude peace with Ethiopia.
In March 1889, an Ethiopian force commanded personally by the Nəgusa nagast (Emperor, lit. "King of Kings") marched on Gallabat; however, after Yohannes IV fell in battle, the Ethiopians withdrew.
After the final defeat of the Khalifa by the British under General Kitchener, Muhammad Ahmad's tomb was destroyed and his bones were thrown into the Nile. Kitchener retained his skull. Allegedly the skull was later buried at Wadi Halfa. The tomb was eventually rebuilt.
In modern-day Sudan, Muhammad Ahmad is sometimes seen as a precursor of Sudanese nationalism. The Umma party claim to be his political descendants. Their leader Imam Sadiq al-Mahdi, is also the imam of the Ansar, the religious order that pledges allegiance to Muhammad Ahmad. Sadiq al-Mahdi was Prime Minister of Sudan on two occasions: first briefly in 1966–67, and then between 1986 and 1989.
El Mahdi see Mahdi, El
Muhammad Ahmad see Mahdi, El
Ahmad, Muhammad see Mahdi, El
Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah see Mahdi, El
Muhammad Ahmed Al Mahdi see Mahdi, El
Muhammad Ahmad ibn ‘Abdallah al-Mahdi see Mahdi, El
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