MUHAMMAD AHMAD IBN ˓ABDULLAH (1844–1885)

Muhammad Ahmad b. ˓Abdullah, known as al-Mahdi, was born in 1844 in northern Sudan and died on 22 June 1885 in Omdurman. He did not follow his family's profession of boat building, embarking instead on a religious and political career. He studied Qur˒anic and other religious sciences and joined the Sammaniyya mystical brotherhood. Besides his religious and ascetic fervor, he was imbued with a strong sense of social justice and reform-mindedness that filled him with a firm commitment to eradicate the colonial Turco-Egyptian regime and establish an Islamic state (1820–1885).

The regime's oppression and injustices, the loss of the class of religious shaykhs (masters) of the privileged status they had hitherto enjoyed, and the discontent of the influential northern merchant class, all contributed to the creation of a revolutionary situation. Furthermore, there was an eschatological expectation among many people of the imminent coming of a mahdi (the guided one).

Muhammad Ahmad's declaration of his Mahdism in June 1881 sparked off a relentless series of battles against the Turco-Egyptian regime that culminated in the fall of Khartoum in January 1885. Shortly afterward, al-Mahdi died before realizing his dream of carrying his Mahdist revolution beyond Sudan.

Muhammad Ahmad legitimized his Mahdism by a claim of a prophetic sanction based on a vision of the Prophet in a colloquy (hadra). He perceived his career as corresponding to that of the Prophet's and his mission as a universal one. He asserted that his Mahdism entailed the abolition of all juristic schools and mystical orders. His movement did not succeed in uprooting these expressions of Islam but instead led to the birth of a new politico-religious brotherhood—the Ansar (the followers of the Mahdi).

See alsoMahdi .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abu Salim, Muhammad Ibrahim. Al-Haraka l-Fikriyya fi l-Mahdiyya (The intellectual movement under the Mahdiyya). Khartoum: Khartoum University Press, 1989.

Holt, P. M. The Mahdist State in the Sudan, 1881–1898. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1970.

Shaked, Haim. The Life of the Sudanese Mahdi. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1978.

Mohamed Mahmoud