Compare and Contrast Interpretations:

[from article "Sudan Civil War " http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/sudan.htm]

In 1881, a religious leader named Muhammad ibn Abdalla proclaimed himself the Mahdi, or the “expected one,” and began a religious crusade to unify the tribes in western and central Sudan. His followers took on the name “Ansars” (the followers) which they continue to use today and are associated with the single largest political grouping, the Umma Party, led by the descendant of the Mahdi, Sadiq al Mahdi. Taking advantage of conditions resulting from Ottoman-Egyptian exploitation and maladministration, the Mahdi led a nationalist revolt culminating in the fall of Khartoum in 1885. The Mahdi died shortly thereafter, but his state survived until overwhelmed by an Ango-Egyptian force under Lord Kitchener in 1898. Sudan was proclaimed a condominium in 1899 under British-Egyptian administration. While maintaining the appearance of joint administration, the British Empire formulated policies, and supplied most of the top administrators.

[from article "Islamic Extremism" http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&q=mahdi+sudan]
The Mahdi

The idea of a mahdi ("expected one"), or savior figure, has been most influential in the Shi'a sect of Islam. In this tradition, the Mahdi is someone sent by Allah to wage jihad against the enemies of Islam. Thus, any movement surrounding a Mahdi figure was designed for the specific purpose of revolution and reformation.

The focus here, however, is on the reformist movement which began in 1881 around the figure of Muhammad Ahmad, who proclaimed himself Al Mahdi al Muntazar ("the awaited guide in the right path," usually seen as the Mahdi) and led a revolt against the Ottoman rulers in the Sudan. He was sent, he said, to prepare the way for the second coming of the Prophet Isa (Jesus) and the impending end of the world. In anticipation of Judgment Day, it was essential that the people return to a simple, rigorous, and even puritanical Islam.

Most Westerners learn about this revolt as being staged against western Christian rulers, probably because of how British general Charles George Gordon died in Khartoum in 1885 after a year-long siege by the Mahdi's forces. And it is true that the Mahdi moved against western influences; but what most people miss is that his movement was originally aimed against the ostensibly Muslim rulers of Sudan.

Like so many extremist movements in modern Islam, the Mahdi objected that the country's leaders were no longer "real" Muslims, and hence no longer had any right to rule. Thus he proclaimed a jihad against the Ottoman rulers of the time.

The Westerners were drawn into the conflict partly because they were accused of supporting the apostate leaders as part of a deliberate effort to undermine and eventually destroy "real" Islam. This can be seen in how the Mahdi advocated eliminating various "un-Islamic" reforms which had taken hold in Sudan, for example the relative freedom accorded to women.

By 1885, his followers had defeated the ruling powers, captured Khartoum, and established a Muslim state controlling most of present-day Sudan. However, the Mahdi died a short time later, and his successors failed to eliminate the corruption that had plagued the previous regime. British forces were later able to recapture Sudan in 1898.

But that was not the end of the Mahdi's influence. In the 1940s, the Mahdist movement became the basis for a new political party run by the Sadiq al-Mahdi, the grandson of the Mahdi. Sadiq served as prime minister of Sudan in the 1960s and again later in the 1980s.

Contemporary Islamists certainly don't try to claim for themselves that they are the Mahdi, sent by Allah to rid the world of evil and re-establish true Islam. Nevertheless, they do fulfill a similar function because they claim that they will lead the effort to eliminate the enemies of Islam. The solution to contemporary problems lies with getting rid of Western influences and establishing a genuine Islamic government.

[from article "Biography of Mahdi" http://www.bookrags.com/biography/mahdi-the]


Mohammed Ahmed (ca. 1844-1885) was an Islamic puritan, reformer, and military leader of the Sudan. He is better known as the Mahdi.

Mohammed Ahmed was born on an island in the Nile River near Dongola in what is now the northern Sudan. His father was a boatbuilder. Mohammed Ahmed took an early and intense interest in Islamic mysticism and asceticism, becoming a religious teacher and joining the Sammaniya order in 1861. Gathering pupils and disciples about him, he established his retreat on Aba Island in the White Nile south of Khartoum, where he earned a reputation for holiness and mystical powers.

Messianic Leader

His religious experiences and contemplations on Aba Island caused Mohammed Ahmed to feel that Allah had selected him as the true Mahdi, the right-guided one or the messianic leader called to battle against immorality and corruption and for the rejuvenation and purification of Islam. He saw himself as sent by Allah to purge Islam of its evils and to return it to the purity of the faith of Mohammed the Prophet. In addition, his theological views had eschatological overtones in that he not only viewed himself as the rightful head of the Islamic community fulfilling the role of Mohammed the Prophet but as the ultimate figure presiding over the end of time.

Mohammed Ahmed found ideal conditions in the central and northern Sudan for a mass emotional movement, not only in the religious devotion of the Moslem population of the area but especially in the resentment of the inhabitants toward the corruption and oppression of the Turkish and Egyptian rulers who had dominated the Upper Nile region since the reign of Mohammed Ali earlier in the 19th century. Mohammed Ahmed thus found support from the Sudanese for a variety of reasons and motives--from pious and religious believers who accepted his puritan and reformist views, from nomadic groups who opposed all governmental restrictions, and from others who profited from the slave trade and rejected efforts of the Egyptian khedive Ismail and Gen. Gordon to eliminate it.

Mohammed Ahmed's movement for reform and reorganization spread rapidly following his public appearance as the Mahdi in June 1881 because of its wide appeal. But the weakness and indecision of Egyptian authorities because of economic and political problems within Egypt played a key role in the success of the Mahdi's campaign. The Egyptian government declared its bankruptcy in 1876 owing to, at least in part, Khedive Ismail's efforts to build a vast Egyptian empire in the Sudan and Upper Nile area. Foreign debt supervisors secured considerable influence and power in Egypt in the late 1870s, thus popularizing the nationalist movement against this foreign presence and culminating in Col. Arabi's coup of early 1882 and the consequent British intervention and occupation later that year.

Military Victories

Successive victories over halfhearted Egyptian attempts to overcome the Mahdi vastly strengthened the new movement through the acquisition of much military equipment and the apparent proof of Allah's support. After the British occupation of Egypt in 1882, the new British authorities in Cairo ignored the Sudan, but the Egyptian government did seek to demonstrate its own power despite British overrule by ordering a new campaign to oust the Mahdi. In 1883 the Mahdists overwhelmed the Egyptian army of Gen. Hicks, and Great Britain ordered the withdrawal of all Egyptian troops and officials from the Sudan. How could Britain reestablish financial order in Egypt if the country's resources were being utilized in expensive campaigns in the Sudan?

The victorious followers of the Mahdi occupied most of the Sudan; Lord Cromer, the British consul general in Cairo, sent the famous Gen. Gordon to carry out and accelerate the Egyptian evacuation. Khartoum, the capital and center of the country, fell to the Mahdi in January 1885 following Gen. Gordon's legendary and foolhardy defense.

The Mahdi had successfully expelled foreign influences and had united most of the Sudan area in a unique religiopolitical movement. According to Mahdist theology and theocracy, the Mahdi held his superior power directly from Allah and then delegated power directly to others as he chose. The Mahdi died in 1885, probably of typhus, but his theocratic state continued for another 13 years under his follower and friend the caliph Abdullahi. The British general Kitchener reoccupied the Sudan primarily with Egyptian troops in 1898, not only because of any threat the Mahdist movement itself posed to the British position in Egypt but because of British imperial needs in the partition of Africa among the great powers of Europe.

To members of the Ansar (Helpers) movement today, a powerful religious brotherhood and an important but conservative political factor in the Republic of the Sudan, the Mahdi was a nationalist leader who liberated the people of the Sudan from alien oppression and began the modern history of the country.