A boat-builder's son declared himself the Mahdi and drove Egypt out of Sudan
When Sudan's governor-general heard in 1881 that a Sufi preacher on Aba Island claimed to be the Mahdi, the redeemer awaited in Islamic tradition, he assumed a pension would quiet him and sent a friendly letter. Muhammad Ahmad answered with a blunt threat, and within four years his followers controlled most of the country.
Born in 1843 on Labab Island near Dongola, into a religious Nubian family that traced its descent to the Prophet, he lost both parents young. His brothers took up the family trade of boat-building, but he turned to religious study and in 1861 joined Sheikh Muhammad Sharif of the Samaniyya Sufi order, staying seven years and earning the title of sheikh. On Aba Island he built a mosque and gained a following as a gifted speaker preaching a return to simple, strict devotion. His popularity provoked his old teacher, who expelled him from the order in 1878, but another Samaniyya leader, al-Qurashi wad al-Zayn, had predicted a Mahdi from the order's own line, and after al-Qurashi died that July his followers accepted Muhammad Ahmad as their leader.
He announced himself on 29 June 1881, saying a Sufi assembly of prophets chaired by Muhammad had appointed him. Religious scholars employed by the Turco-Egyptian government disputed that his coming matched the prophecies. He renamed his followers the Ansar, after the people of Medina who sheltered Muhammad, rather than dervishes.
A small arrest party sent to Aba Island was overwhelmed that August, and a pursuing force of 1,000 soldiers gave up when September rains flooded the roads. From a new base in the Nuba Mountains he drew recruits from the Baqqara and other groups in the west, and later won backing among southern peoples such as the Nuer and Shilluk. Late in 1883 his spear-armed fighters overcame 4,000 Egyptian troops near El Obeid, captured their rifles, and took the town after a four-month siege. At Shaykan the Ansar, by then 40,000 strong, beat an 8,000-strong force under the British officer William Hicks, and Darfur fell soon after.
Britain chose to abandon Sudan and sent Charles Gordon to Khartoum in February 1884 to organise the evacuation, but the Mahdi's siege of the city ended in a decisive victory. He died of typhus in June 1885. His deputy Abdallahi ibn Muhammad ran the Mahdist state until an Anglo-Egyptian conquest ended it in 1899.
Source: Muhammad Ahmad
