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Sudan
Index
Figure 2. The Mahdist State, 1881-98
Developments in Sudan during this period cannot be understood
without reference to the British position in Egypt. In 1869 the
Suez Canal opened and quickly became Britain's economic lifeline
to India and the Far East. To defend this waterway, Britain
sought a greater role in Egyptian affairs. In 1873 the British
government therefore supported a program whereby 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 more politically acceptable son,
Tawfiq (1877-92).
After the removal, in 1877, of Ismail, who had appointed him
to the post, Gordon resigned as governor general of Sudan in
1880. His successors lacked direction from Cairo and feared the
political turmoil that had engulfed Egypt. As a result, they
failed to continue the policies Gordon had put in place. The
illegal slave trade revived, although not enough to satisfy the
merchants whom Gordon had put out of business. The Sudanese army
suffered from a lack of resources, and unemployed soldiers from
disbanded units troubled garrison towns. Tax collectors
arbitrarily increased taxation.
In this troubled atmosphere, Muhammad Ahmad ibn as Sayyid Abd
Allah, a faqir or holy man who combined personal magnetism
with religious zealotry, emerged, determined to expel the Turks
and restore Islam to its primitive purity. The son of a Dunqulah
boatbuilder, Muhammad Ahmad had become the disciple of Muhammad
ash Sharif, the head of the Sammaniyah order. Later, as a shaykh
of the order, Muhammad Ahmad spent several years in seclusion and
gained a reputation as a mystic and teacher. In 1880 he became a
Sammaniyah leader.
Muhammad Ahmad's sermons attracted an increasing number of
followers. Among those who joined him was Abdallahi ibn Muhammad,
a Baqqara from southern Darfur. His planning capabilities proved
invaluable to Muhammad Ahmad, who revealed himself as Al Mahdi al
Muntazar ("the awaited guide in the right path," usually seen as
the Mahdi), sent from God to redeem the faithful and prepare the
way for the second coming of the Prophet Isa (Jesus). The Mahdist
movement demanded a return to the simplicity of early Islam,
abstention from alcohol and tobacco, and the strict seclusion of
women.
Even after the Mahdi proclaimed a jihad, or holy war, against
the Turkiyah, Khartoum dismissed him as a religious fanatic. The
government paid more attention when his religious zeal turned to
denunciation of tax collectors. To avoid arrest, the Mahdi and a
party of his followers, the Ansar, made a long march to Kurdufan,
where he gained a large number of recruits, especially from the
Baqqara. From a refuge in the area, he wrote appeals to the
shaykhs of the religious orders and won active support or
assurances of neutrality from all except the pro-Egyptian
Khatmiyyah. Merchants and Arab tribes that had depended on the
slave trade responded as well, along with the Hadendowa Beja, who
were rallied to the Mahdi by an Ansar captain, Usman Digna.
Early in 1882, the Ansar, armed with spears and swords,
overwhelmed a 7,000-man Egyptian force not far from Al Ubayyid
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 Ansar, 30,000 men strong, then
defeated an 8,000-man Egyptian relief force at Sheikan. Next the
Mahdi captured Darfur and imprisoned Rudolf Slatin, an Austrian
in the khedive's service, who later became the first Egyptianappointed governor of Darfur Province.
The advance of the Ansar and the Beja rising in the east
imperiled communications with Egypt and threatened to cut off
garrisons at Khartoum, Kassala, Sannar, and Sawakin and in the
south. To avoid being drawn into a costly military intervention,
the British government ordered an Egyptian withdrawal from Sudan.
Gordon, who had received a reappointment as governor general,
arranged to supervise the evacuation of Egyptian troops and
officials and all foreigners from Sudan.
After reaching Khartoum in February 1884, Gordon realized
that he could not extricate the garrisons. As a result, he called
for reinforcements from Egypt to relieve Khartoum. Gordon also
recommended that Zubayr, an old enemy whom he recognized as an
excellent military commander, be named to succeed him to give
disaffected Sudanese a leader other than the Mahdi to rally
behind. London rejected this plan. As the situation deteriorated,
Gordon argued that Sudan was essential to Egypt's security and
that to allow the Ansar a victory there would invite the movement
to spread elsewhere.
Increasing British popular support for Gordon eventually
forced Prime Minister William Gladstone to mobilize a relief
force under the command of Lord Garnet Joseph Wolseley. A "flying
column" sent overland from Wadi Halfa across the Bayyudah Desert
bogged down at Abu Tulayh (commonly called Abu Klea), where the
Hadendowa Beja--the so-called Fuzzy Wuzzies--broke the British
line. An advance unit that had gone ahead by river when the
column reached Al Matammah arrived at Khartoum on January 28,
1885, to find the town had fallen two days earlier. The Ansar had
waited for the Nile flood to recede before attacking the poorly
defended river approach to Khartoum in boats, slaughtering the
garrison, killing Gordon, and delivering his head to the Mahdi's
tent. Kassala and Sannar fell soon after, and by the end of 1885
the Ansar had begun to move into the southern region. In all
Sudan, only Sawakin, reinforced by Indian army troops, and Wadi
Halfa on the northern frontier remained in Anglo-Egyptian hands
(see
fig. 2).
The Mahdiyah (Mahdist regime) imposed traditional Islamic
laws. Sudan's new ruler also authorized the burning of lists of
pedigrees and books of law and theology because of their
association with the old order and because he believed that the
former accentuated tribalism at the expense of religious unity.
The Mahdiyah has become known as the first genuine Sudanese
nationalist government. The Mahdi maintained that his movement
was not a religious order that could be accepted or rejected at
will, but that it was a universal regime, which challenged man to
join or to be destroyed. The Mahdi modified Islam's five pillars
to support the dogma that loyalty to him was essential to true
belief
(see Islamic Movements and Religious Orders
, ch. 2). The
Mahdi also added the declaration "and Muhammad Ahmad is the Mahdi
of God and the representative of His Prophet" to the recitation
of the creed, the shahada. Moreover, service in the jihad
replaced the hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, as a duty incumbent on
the faithful. Zakat (almsgiving) became the tax paid to
the state. The Mahdi justified these and other innovations and
reforms as responses to instructions conveyed to him by God in
visions.
Data as of June 1991
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