THE MAHDI OF THE SUDAN

Following several decades of exploration by various European adventurers, the last two decades of the nineteenth century witnessed the frantic squabble of English, French and Italian imperialism for the division of the spoils of Africa between them. At that time, Egypt enjoyed a tenuous hold over the Sudan. In his over-zealous efforts to modernize the country so that his dream could be fulfilled to make Egypt an appendage to Europe, the Khedive Ismail rapidly emptied the national treasury and the country fell into bankruptcy. Under Lord Cromer, England promptly intervened and occupied the land. Khedive Ismail was succeeded by his weak son, Tewfik, who was no more than a British puppet. Egyptian administration treated the Sudanese like aliens and was chiefly concerned with extorting as heavy taxes as possible from them. Every official was known to the public to be corrupt. In the midst of this atmosphere of despotism and discontent, an exceptionally gifted man rapidly rose to international prominence destined to become the most outstanding leader in Sudanese history—Muhammad Ahmad, the Mahdi.

When Muhammad Ahmad declared himself as the expected Imam al-Mahdi in 1881, he was thirty-seven years of age.

He was born on August 12, 1844 in the province of Dongola. His family claimed direct descendency from the Holy Prophet. His father, Abdullah, was a boat-builder and when the future Mahdi was a child, the family moved 30 southwards and settled about twelve miles north of Khartoum where there was an adequate supply of timber. Here Abdullah died and was buried, leaving a family of four sons and a daughter. While Muhammad Ahmad’s brothers all followed their father’s trade, he displayed a special aptitude for religious studies.

His teacher was subsidized by the government and it is said that Muhammad Ahmad refused to eat the food he provided since it was derived from oppression. After he had received as thorough an education as was available in the Sudan in those days, instead of, like numerous other Sudanese students, proceeding to al-Azhar to continue his theological training, he decided to enter a Sufi order and devote himself to a life of asceticism and mystic experiences.

Therefore in 1861 he became the disciple of Shaikh Muhammad Sharif Nur Daim, the grandson of the founder of the Sammaniya order in the Sudan.

Here he remained for seven years gaining a reputation of extreme asceticism and performing the most menial duties in evidence of his humility towards his master. At the end of this period, he was appointed as a Shaikh of the order and began to travel about the country on religious missions. During this period, he made his home with his brothers in Khartoum and married the daughter of his grand-uncle, Ahmad Sarfi. In search of timber he accompanied his brothers when they moved to the island of Aba on the White Nile and from 1870, this became his headquarters.

At first Shaikh Muhammad Sharif displayed the warmest affection towards his nephew but as the popularity and fame of the young Shaikh increased, the uncle, 31 consumed with jealousy and fearing a loss of his prestige, expelled him from the order. This opened his eyes to the faults in his master whom he had previously served with servile devotion. He particularly resented his uncle permitting music and dancing on the occasion of the circumcision feast of his sons. This, he declared, contravened the Shariah for which no excuse would suffice. Shaikh Muhammad Sharif again denounced him most contemptuously. His popularity, however, appeared to be not at all affected. He decided not to relinquish the order but instead to profess allegiance to the rival head of the Sammaniya, Shaikh al-Quraishi, who welcomed him and expected him to eventually become his successor. In 1880 he died and Muhammad Ahmad’s leadership of the Sammaniya order was assured.

The following year an obscure man from the Ta’aisha tribe named Abdullah bin Muhammad came to him and requested admission into the Sammaniya order. His father had been a man of high repute for his piety and skill as a diviner on whose foresight they relied in planning their raids. As his father grew old, he succeeded him as the tribal sooth-sayer. He dictated the following to Muhammad Ahmad:

“I saw in a dream that you are the expected Imam al-Mahdi and I am one of your followers so tell me if you are the Mahdi of the age that I may follow you!”

Despite his illiteracy, Abdullah bin Muhammad proved himself highly intelligent, energetic and able and rapidly¹ 32 gained a high place in his master’s affections which he repaid with complete devotion.

Muhammad Ahmad was no passive tool in the hands of his disciple. His assumption of the Mahdia came from firm inner conviction supported by his wide popularity and the public’s searching for the Messiah to rescue them from disaster and calamity and restore universal justice and righteousness. Muhammad Ahmad began to study the Hadith which foretold the coming of the Imam al-Mahdi and applied them to himself. Then he experienced a series of remarkable visions to that effect. First he disclosed the secret of his divine election to Abdullah bin Muhammad and afterwards in March 1881, to his other disciples and supporters. With fervent emotionalism he spoke before his followers, promising them to liberate the Sudan from Egyptian tyranny and then after conquering Egypt, proceed to take Mecca. Next, he would advance on Jerusalem where Jesus Christ would descend from heaven to meet him and Islam thereafter would rule the world.

The oath of allegiance Muhammad Ahmad instructed his followers to make shows his loyalty to the Sunnah of the Holy Prophet:

We swear allegiance to Allah and His Apostle and we swear allegiance to you, upon the Unity of God, and that we will not associate anyone with Him; we will not steal, we will not commit adultery, we will not bring false accusations, and we will not disobey you in that which is lawful. We swear allegiance to you upon the renunciation of this world and being content with what is with God, desiring only the Hereafter and that we will not shirk our duty of Jihad.² 33 Alarmed, the Egyptian governor and his force of 200 men were dispatched to Aba island with instructions to bring the rebel to Khartoum for punishment only to be killed by the Mahdi’s followers. This was followed by the news that the Mahdi had retreated into the desert of Kordofan and raised the demand for Jihad.

On May 22, 1882, the Mahdi wrote the following reply to the Egyptian Governor:

You say that our only followers are the poor, the ignorant, the nomads and the idolators. Know then that the followers of the prophets and their successors and of the Holy Prophet Muhammad were the weak and the ignorant, the destitute, slaves and idolators who worshipped rocks and trees.

As for the kings and the rich and the people of luxury, they did not follow them until they had ruined their palaces, killed their nobles and ruled them by force.

We are not under your command but you and your superiors are under our command. For there is nothing between us and you save the sword.³

From the most powerful Amir to the humblest watercarrier, his followers never doubted his claim and were ready to die for him. He was able to command from the wild tribesmen a sense of duty and a discipline that was utterly lacking in the demoralized Egyptian ranks. His success was astonishing. In Kordofan, his men were hardly armed at all except for spears and sticks, yet they routed a column of Egyptian soldiers equipped with modern weapons sent against them. In August 1882, (the same month that the British established their hold on the Suez), the Mahdi laid seige to el-Obeid, which was a town of 100,000 people protected by a strong Egyptian garrison. After managing to resist for six months, famine defeated them and in January 1883, the city fell.

The following proclamation was issued by the Mahdi from the Government House at his new residence in Obeid:

“Let us show penitence before Allah and abandon all evil and forbidden, degrading acts of the flesh such as the use of liquour and tobacco, lying, bearing false witness, disobedience to parents, brigandage, the non-restitution of goods to others, improper glances with the eyes, the clapping of hands, singing, dancing, extravagant wailing and lamentation at the bed of the dead, slanderous language, calumny and the company of strange women. Clothe your women in a decent way and let them be careful not to associate with unknown persons. All those who refuse to heed these precepts disobey Allah and the Holy Prophet and they shall be punished in accordance with the law. Perform regular Salat at the prescribed times. Adore Allah and hate not each other but assist each other to do good.”⁴

The British government had hoped that the Governor-General in Khartoum would be able to handle the rebellion with the soldiers already under his command but with the fall of Kordofan, the richest province in the Sudan, it became plain that a large military expedition would have to be sent from Cairo if the revolution was to be crushed. The command was given to Colonel William Hicks of the Bombay army who had joined the Egyptian service and he had with him a staff of more than a dozen Europeans including a correspondent of the London Times and another from the London Graphic. With them followed 7,000 infantry, 1,000 cavalry and 5,000 camels required to carry supplies across the desert. They were armed with machine 35 guns and a million rounds of ammunition. On November 5, 1883, the expedition encountered an army of 50,000 Arab warriors. Of the original ten thousand, not more than two or three hundred men survived. Colonel Hicks and his entire European staff were slain.

After this triumph, one town after the other fell into the hands of the Mahdi. Alarmed, the British sent General Gordon to take charge of the administration in Khartoum. General Gordon posed as a great humanitarian, as the champion of civilization and progress as opposed to barbarism and fanaticism. Much propaganda was created by the British about the inhumanity of the slave-trade in the Sudan and other parts of Africa still under Muslim rule, conveniently forgetting the unpalatable fact that during the 18th and much of the 19th centuries, under the sway of British imperialism, millions of African slaves were shipped to the New World under the most brutal and degrading conditions, far worse than the treatment of slaves in any Muslim country. On the pretext of stopping the traffic of slaves in the Sudan, General Gordon was determined to establish the British as supreme.

At first he thought he could appease the Mahdi by appointing him as Sultan of Kordofan and urged him to release all European prisoners in his charge. Along with the letter confirming the appointment, he sent a red robe of honour and a tarbush.

The Mahdi’s reply shows how seriously General Gordon had underestimated the calibre of his rival:

Know that I am the Imam al-Mahdi, the successor to the Messenger of Allah. Thus I have no need of the sultanate nor of the Kingdom of Kordofan or elsewhere nor of the wealth of this world and its vanity.

36 I am but a slave of Allah, guiding unto Allah and to what is with Him according to His will and Allah has succoured me with the Prophets, saints and pious men to revive His faith. As for the gift which you have sent us, may Allah reward you for your good-will and guide you to the Straight Path. Returned to you are the clothing you sent. We wish for ourselves and our Companions only salvation in the world to come.*

After the receipt of this communication, General Gordon then telegraphed Lord Cromer:

If Egypt is to be kept quiet, the Mahdi must be smashed up. If you decide to smash the Mahdi, then send up another one hundred thousand pounds and dispatch Indian troops to Wadi Haifa and send another officer to Dongola under pretence to look out quarters for troops.

At present, it should be comparatively easy to destroy the Mahdi.** With full-scale British military intervention in the Sudan, the Mahdi decided that it would be essential to lay siege to Khartoum. The British government repeatedly begged General Gordon to escape before it was too late but this he steadfastly refused.

Again he telegraphed Lord Cromer:

I declare positively once and for all that I will not leave the Sudan until our Government is established which relieves me of the charge.*** This made General Gordon a hero in England overnight.

At midnight on January 25, 1885 the Mahdi crossed the white Nile and gave his general, al-Nujmi, the order to attack. An hour before dawn, the assault began. In a few hours all resistance had ceased. In the struggle

* The Mahdist State in the Sudan, op. cit., p. 85.

* Ibid.,* p. 89.

** The White Nile,* op. cit., p. 271.

37 General Gordon had perished, speared to death on the staircase of his palace. Four days after the conquest, the Mahdi made his triumphal entry into the capital and led the Friday prayer in the mosque.

Queen Victoria’s feelings have been described by her private secretary:

The Queen was in a terrible state about the fall of Khartoum and indeed, it had a good deal to do with making her ill. She was just going out when she received the telegram and sent for me.

Pale and trembling, she said to my wife who was terrified at her appearance. “Too late!”* The following letter in Queen Victoria’s handwriting reached General Gordon’s sister in Southampton:

“How shall I write to you or how shall I attempt to express what I feel? To think of your dear, noble, heroic brother who served his country and his Queen so truly, so heroically with self-sacrifice so edifying to the world, not having been rescued! This is to me grief inexpressible. Indeed, it has made me ill.”** Mrs. Gordon replied by sending the Queen one of Gordon’s Bibles and it was placed in a special exhibition case under glass in Windsor Castle. The English press then proceeded to publish General Gordon’s diary which immediately became a best-seller. The English press inflamed the public with rabid anti-Islamic propaganda depicting the Mahdi and his followers as savage, blood-thirsty fanatics. The only prominent Englishman who openly expressed his sympathy for the Mahdi was the orientalist, Wilfred Scawen Blunt who vehemently protested against British aggression in the Sudan. He fearlessly condemned General

* Ibid., p. 290.

* Ibid.* 38 Wolseley and his men and pleaded for peaceful negotiations with the Mahdi.

The personal magnetism of the Mahdi was so great that he was able to impress even his most avowed enemies. Father Joseph Ohrwalder, an Austrian priest who was a prisoner of the Mahdists for seven years recalled:

His physical appearance was strangely fascinating. He was a man of strong constitution, powerfully built with broad shoulders, a large head, sparkling eyes, a black beard and three tribal gashes on his cheek. His complexion was very dark and his face always wore a pleasant smile.

He had singularly even white teeth and his mode of conversation had by training become exceptionally pleasing and sweet.* And Wingate, the future Governor of the Sudan remarked:

There is no doubt that this man had the strongest head and the clearest mental vision in the two million square miles of which he had more or less made himself master before he died.**

Five months after the fall of Khartoum in his new capital at Omdurman, the Mahdi was stricken with typhus and expired several days later.

The Mahdi had died at the height of his triumph; it now fell to his chief disciple and successor, Khalifa Abdullah bin Muhammad, the far more difficult task of consolidating his rule, establishing an independent, well-organized Islamic state and guarding it both from dissension and corruption from within and enemies from without.

For some years the British were so terrified of the power of this new Islamic state that they dared not make another attack. The Khalifa now controlled an empire half the size of Europe.

He dispatched a letter to Queen⁵

⁶ 39 Victoria summoning her to Omdurman and inviting her submission to his rule and to embrace Islam:

Know that Allah is Almighty and great and remember the fate that has overtaken Hicks, Gordon and the other British generals in the Sudan. Thy soldiers thought only of retreat whereof they had more than enough. Thou hast erred in many ways and art suffering great loss whereof there is no refuge for thee save by turning to God, the King, and entering among the people of Islam and the followers of the Mahdi, grace be upon him. If thou wilt do this and yield all the matter to us, then shalt thou achieve thy desire of perfect felicity and true repose which is salvation before Allah in the blissful and enduring Dwelling, the like of which eye has not seen nor ear heard nor heart of man conceived. But if thou wilt not turn from thy blindness and self will, continue to war against the hosts of God with all thy armies and warlike equipment, thou shalt behold the end of thy work. Thou shalt be crushed by the power of Allah and His might or be afflicted by the death of many of thy people who have entered on war with the people of God by reason of thy Satanic presumption.*

Soon after the rise of the Khalifa of the Mahdi, tribalism reasserted itself and in order to maintain his rule and avert utter chaos and anarchy in the land, the Khalifa was compelled to crush one faction after another, often dealing with the tribes and even some of his over-ambitious subordinates with harsh severity. The Anti-Slavery Society in England lost no opportunity to give the widest publicity to each fresh alleged brutality. Public sentiment in the English-speaking world ran so high against the Mahdists that to defend the Khalifa against this torrent of anti-Islamic propaganda meant being maligned as a traitor. English journalists depicted Christendom defied by these “murderous fanatics.” The Khalifa was downgraded by 40 presenting him as an ambitious politician who only used the cloak of piety to further his personal gain.

The sincerity of the Khalifa in Islam is proved beyond doubt in the daily routine of his life and his works in which he alone among all the rulers in the Muslim world at that time, fulfilled the essentials of Islamic government. His sense of duty was so strong that he never left the capital at Omdurman but relied upon his subordinates to inform him about conditions in the outlying provinces. He rose at dawn and proceeded to the mosque for Salat. Then he returned to his house to sleep for two hours and after a conference with his Amirs, he rode in procession to review his soldiers on the outskirts of the city. Friday was regarded as a special day and then as many as 50,000 horsemen would gallop towards the black flag of the Mahdia inscribed with verses from the Quran, brandishing their spears and shooting their rifles into the air.

Breakfast followed and after leading the tribesmen in the early afternoon Salat, the Khalifa again spoke in the mosque.

Mid-afternoon found him again behind the high walls of his house or conducting business in the Bait ul-Mal (treasury) and then more Salat at sunset and speeches and announcements in the mosque.

The evening meal was followed by the fifth and final Salat and afterwards, the Khalifa retired to his room, to be seen no more until the following morning.

The Khalifa felt no need of any constitution except the Quran and Sunnah. The Shariah was the supreme law of the land.

Zakat, the fast of Ramadan, the Salat, 41 prohibition of liquor, tobacco, song and dance and the institution of Hijab or the segregation of the sexes was strictly and effectively enforced.

The standard costume of the Mahdists, which amounted to practically a uniform, was a patched white gown or Jibbeh tied at the waist with a girdle, a white turban with one end falling over the neck, and sandals. Repeatedly the Mahdi had praised this form of dress as most pleasing to the Sunnah of the Holy Prophet.

Both geographically and administratively, the heart of the Mahdist state was its capital at Omdurman. From a military camp, within a few years, Omdurman developed into a veritable city, sprawling along the left bank of the Nile for about six miles. The Khalifa’s house was the only two-storied building in Omdurman. Not far away was the arsenal, the storehouse of materials for war and its associated workshops. The treasury or Bait ul Mal formed another complex of buildings containing offices, stores, the lithograph press and the mint. The market covered a large area and was arranged according to trades and commodities. The greater part of Omdurman consisted of an unplanned array of dwelling places, ranging from brick houses to straw and mud huts separated by narrow, winding alleys. The mosque near the domed tomb of the Mahdi was the starting point of the main roads.

In 1896 the British decided on re-conquest at all costs. General Kitchener was appointed to command the expedition along with Wingate in his intelligence service and one of his most promising young soldiers, Winston Churchill.

42 This time there was to be no haste and no mistake. In the summer of 1898, Kitchener fell upon Omdurman with the full force of his modern artillery. No quarter was given to the enemy during the assault and before long, thousands were dead. Few outside the Sudan believed that the Khalifa stood much of a chance. Many of his 50,000 warriors were armed with nothing but spears and sticks and their guns were obsolete. The Mahdist troops were very brave, rushing straight into the British artillery fire and Kitchener’s rifles completed the work. “No white troops could have faced that torrent of death for five minutes,” wrote an English war correspondent for the London Times. “It was not a battle. It was an execution!” Churchill wrote in his memoirs; “Sir H. Kitchener shut up his telescopic glasses, remarking that he thought that the enemy had been given a ‘good dusting.’”

As soon as he entered Omdurman, Kitchener ordered the Mahdi’s tomb destroyed. The body of the Mahdi was exhumed and flung into the Nile, not however, until the head was severed and this was appropriated by Kitchener as a trophy of war.

First he considered using the Mahdi’s ⁷ skull as an inkstand, a paperweight or a drinking cup but finally he decided to forward it as a curiosity to the Royal College of Surgeons in London and so it was sent to Cairo.

Meanwhile Lord Cromer quietly obtained the skull and sent it to the cemetery at Wadi Halfa where it was secretly buried by night.

The Khalifa had escaped the massacre at Omdurman

and fled with 7,000 of his warriors to Jebel Gedir, some 400 miles south of Khartoum in the same country where

43 he was born and reared. Kitchener dispatched a force of 8,000 men to pursue him. The machine guns then opened fire. On the battlefield Wingate came upon an awesome sight. Finding resistance impossible and all routes of escape cut off, the Khalifa called upon his Amirs to dismount from their horses, and seating himself cross-legged on his sheep-skin prayer mat as was the custom for Arab chieftains who disdain surrender, he placed his Ministers on his right and left while the remaining Amirs seated themselves around him with the warriors in front and here they unflinchingly met their end.

The inherent weaknesses of the Mahdists made its failure in a worldly sense inevitable. Firstly, although Muhammad Ahmad’s claim to be Imam al-Mahdi was accepted without question by the illiterate tribesmen who flocked to him, it was plain to all Muslims outside the Sudan that as sincere as he was, his claim was false. In the end, he could have secured more support, especially from Muslims outside the Sudan, by proving himself as a valiant and fearless Mujahid which he certainly was.

The second weakness of the Mahdists was their utter failure to secure any support from Muslims beyond the borders of the Sudan. Just before his death in his last letter to the Khalifa, General Nujmi confessed that non-Sudanese Muslims had not the slightest concern for the plight of the Mahdists, but willingly cooperated with the British, denying them provisions, smuggling arms for the enemy and attacking the Sudanese. A third weakness of the Mahdist state was its almost total neglect of education. In the entire archives of the Mahdists, there is no mention 44 of the establishment of any schools or educational centres where the illiterate tribesmen could be instructed in the practice and true spirit of Islam. The slave-trade was certainly not in conformity to the precepts of the Shariah and the conduct of some of the Mahdist troops at the capture of El-Obeid and Khartoum shows that they did not fully understand the humane requirements for Jihad. But the most serious defect of the Mahdists was its isolationist policy which proved suicidal and the abysmal ignorance of the Mahdi and the Khalifa about the outside world.

In fact, the Khalifa had once asked Slatin, one of his European captives, if France was a tribe! Had the Khalifa been able to secure accurate and adequate knowledge of events taking place beyond the frontiers of the Sudan, then he could have realistically assessed the forces aligned against him and offered more effective and enduring resistance.

However, the Mahdist movement was not in vain. Undoubtedly the fervour of piety and zeal for Jihad that Muhammad Ahmad aroused among his people is responsible for the fact that to this day, the Sudanese are the most Islamically-minded in the Arab world.