[1] * is prefixed to names which figure on occasions which seem to be
historical. Female names are in italics.
[2] Dates are given A.D.
MAHOMMED AHMED IBN SEYYID ABDULLAH (1848-1885), Sudanese tyrant, known
as "the Mahdi," was born in Dongola. His family, known as excellent
boat-builders, claimed to be _Ashraf_ (or _Sherifs_), i.e. descendants
of Mahomet. His father was a _fiki_ or religious teacher, and Mahommed
Ahmed devoted himself early to religious studies. When about twenty
years old he went to live on Abba Island on the White Nile about 150 m.
above Khartum. He first acquired fame by a quarrel with the head of the
brotherhood which he had joined, Mahommed asserting that his master
condoned transgression of the divine law. After this incident many
dervishes (religious mendicants) gathered round the young sheikh, whose
reputation for sanctity speedily grew. He travelled secretly through
Kordofan, where (with ample justification) he denounced to the villagers
the extortion of the tax-gatherer and told of the coming of the mahdi
who should deliver them from the oppressor. He also wrote a pamphlet
summoning true believers to purify their religion from the defilements
of the "Turks" i.e. the Egyptian officials and all non-native
inhabitants of the Sudan. The influence he gained at length aroused the
anxiety of the authorities, and in May 1881 a certain Abu Saud, a
notorious scoundrel, was sent to Abba Island to bring the sheikh to
Khartum. Abu Saud's mission failed, and Mahommed Ahmed no longer
hesitated to call himself al-Mahdi al Montasir, "The Expected Guide." In
August he defeated another force sent to Abba Island to arrest him, but
thereafter deemed it prudent to retire to Jebel Gedir, in the Nuba
country south of Kordofan, where he was soon at the head of a powerful
force; and 6000 Egyptian troops under Yusef Pasha, advancing from
Fashoda, were nearly annihilated in June 1882. By the end of 1882 the
whole of the Sudan south of Khartum was in rebellion, with the exception
of the Bahr-el-Ghazal and the Equatorial Provinces. In January 1883 El
Obeid, the capital of Kordofan, was captured. In the November following
Hicks Pasha's force of 10,000 men was destroyed at Kashgil, and in the
same year the mahdi's lieutenant, Osman Digna, raised the tribes in the
eastern Sudan, and besieged Sinkat and Tokar, near Suakin, routing
General Valentine Baker's force of 2500 men at El Teb in February 1884.
The operations undertaken by Great Britain in face of this state of
affairs are narrated under EGYPT: _Military Operations_. It need only be
added that General Gordon (q.v.) was besieged at Khartum by the mahdi
and was killed there when the town was captured by the mahdists on the
25th-26th of January 1885. The mahdi himself died at Omdurman a few
months later (June 22, 1885), and was succeeded in power by his khalifa
Abdullah.
When he announced his divine mission Mahommed Ahmed adopted the Shi`ite
traditions concerning the mahdi, and thus put himself in opposition to
the sultan of Turkey as the only true commander of the faithful. To
emphasize his position the mahdi struck coins in his own name and set
himself to suppress all customs introduced by the "Turks." His social
and religious reforms are contained in various proclamations, one of
which is drawn up in the form of ten commandments. They concern,
chiefly, such matters as ritual, prayers, soberness in food and raiment,
the cost of marriage and the behaviour of women. How far the mahdi was
the controller of the movement which he started cannot be known, but
from the outset of his public career his right-hand man was a Baggara
tribesman named Abdullah (the khalifa), who became his successor, and
after his flight to Jebel Gedir the mahdi was largely dependent for his
support on Baggara sheikhs, who gratified one of his leading tastes by
giving him numbers of their young women. In the few months between the
fall of Khartum and his death the mahdi, relieved from the incessant
strain of toil, copied in his private life all the vices of Oriental
despots while maintaining in public the austerity he demanded of his
followers. His death is variously attributed to disease and to poisoning
by a woman of his harem. On the occupation of Omdurman by the British
(Sept. 1898) the mahdi's tomb was destroyed, his body burnt and the
ashes thrown into the Nile (see SUDAN: _Anglo-Egyptian_).
See _Mahdiism and the Egyptian Sudan_ by F. R. Wingate (1891); _Ten
Years' Captivity in the Mahdi's Camp_ (1882-1892) from the MS. of
Father Joseph Ohrwalder by F. R. Wingate (1892) and _Fire and Sword in
the Sudan_ (1879-1895) by Slatin Pasha (trans. F. R. Wingate, 1896).
Both Ohrwalder and Slatin were personally acquainted with the mahdi,
and their narratives contain much first-hand information. Wingate
prints many translations of the proclamations and correspondence of
the mahdi.