Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi (1844–85) was a Sudanese holy man who led a successful revolt from 1882 to 1885 against the Turco-Egyptian forces that had been occupying the Nilotic Sudan since 1821.
Muhammad Ahmad was born in the northern Sudanese province of Dongola in 1844 to parents who both claimed to be ashrāf, or descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. At a young age, he studied the Qur’an, followed by Islamic jurisprudence, then Islamic mysticism, or Sufism, under the grandson of the founder of the Sammani order, Shaykh Muhammad Sharif Nur al-Da‘im. In 1861, he requested the shaykh’s permission to become one of his disciples and, his request granted, devoted himself to prayer and asceticism for seven years, after which the shaykh gave his disciple the license of shaykh of the Sammani order. This license gave him the opportunity to travel and engage in missionary work for the order and to return to his family in Khartoum and marry.
In 1871, Muhammad Ahmad emigrated to Aba Island in the White Nile and built a mosque and a school for the study of the Qur’an. His reputation for piety and asceticism became widespread, and many of the inhabitants of the island pledged allegiance to him and became his disciples. His former shaykh, Muhammad Sharif, visited Aba Island and ultimately settled in a village near the island. Shortly thereafter, however, the cordial relationship between the two men turned to one of animosity. As a result, Muhammad Ahmad professed allegiance to another important shaykh of the Sammani, Shaykh al-Qurashi b. al-Zayn. Qurashi’s religious authority was at least on par with and perhaps even surpassed that of Muhammad Sharif. Meanwhile, the reputation of Muhammad Ahmad for piety and asceticism grew to such an extent that people from throughout the country traveled to Aba Island to seek his blessings and to request permission to join the ranks of his disciples.
Upon Qurashi’s death in 1880, a majority of the adherents of the order agreed that Muhammad Ahmad should succeed the shaykh as leader. Muhammad Ahmad began traveling with his disciples to the western provinces of the Sudan, calling the people to remain steadfast in their adherence to the Qur’an and sunna of the Prophet Muhammad. During these travels he witnessed firsthand the discontent of the Sudanese masses with the Egyptian occupation, a discontent so great that many people asked Muhammad Ahmad if he was indeed al-mahdī al-muntaẓar (the anticipated deliverer) that would deliver them from the oppression of the Turco-Egyptian rule.
This rule, in the view of many Sudanese at the time, posed an economic threat because of the taxes levied against the populace as well as the abolition of the slave trade. The Mahdi, however, viewed the Turco-Egyptian occupation as a threat to the very sanctity of Islam in the Sudan. He was angered by what he viewed as a regression into unbelief and the preponderance of bid‘a, innovations that he believed were brought by the Turco-Egyptian occupation to Islam. He called for a revivification of the faith and the expulsion of the occupying forces from the Sudan.
On August 12, 1881, the Turco-Egyptian administration in Khartoum dispatched a steamer with two companies of troops to Aba Island to arrest Muhammad Ahmad, but a battle ensued that set the stage for the Mahdist Revolt. Muhammad Ahmad succeeded in defeating the Turco-Egyptian forces in this battle, and by December 9, 1881, he had defeated all the Turco-Egyptian forces sent to apprehend him. Thereafter, he no longer hesitated to refer to himself as the Mahdi and took up the title khalīfat rasūl Allāh, “the Successor of God’s Messenger.” Furthermore, Muhammad Ahmad dispatched letters to several tribal shaykhs, summoning them to join him, proclaiming his victories and identifying the purpose of his mission as ending the Turkish occupation and establishing an Islamic state modeled after the nascent state in Medina during the time of the Prophet Muhammad. By early June 1883, the Mahdi had consolidated his power over all of southern Kordofan, defeating the Turco-Egyptian forces, and on January 26, 1885, his forces conquered Khartoum, the capital, spelling the end of Turco-Egyptian imperial presence in the Sudan. The Mahdi, however, did not live to see his vision of an Islamic state come to fruition: he died of typhus on June 22, 1885. Nonetheless, his vision of an Islamic state manifested itself under the leadership of his second-in-command and eventual successor, the Khalifa Abdallah al-Ta’ayishi.
The Mahdist state, founded in 1885, ended in 1898, when the British conquered the Sudan and established the Anglo-Egyptian condominium.
Further Reading
Peter M. Holt, Mahdist State in the Sudan: A Study of its Origins, Development and Overthrow, 1958; Kim Searcy, The Formation of the Sudanese Mahdist State: Ceremony and Symbols of Authority, 1882–1898, 2010; A. B. Theobold, The Mahdiyya: A History of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1881–1899, 1965; Francis R. Wingate, Ten Years in the Mahdi’s Camp: 1882–1892, 1895.
KIM SEARCY