The Mahdist State, also known as Mahdist Sudan or the Sudanese Mahdiyya, was a state based on a religious and political movement launched in 1881 by Muhammad Ahmad (later Muhammad al-Mahdi) against the Khedivate of Egypt, which had ruled Sudan since 1821. After four years of struggle, the Mahdist rebels overthrew the Ottoman-Egyptian administration and established their own "Islamic and national" government with its capital in Omdurman. Thus, from 1885 the Mahdist government maintained sovereignty and control over the Sudanese territories until its existence was terminated by Anglo-Egyptian forces in 1898.
Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi enlisted the people of Sudan in what he declared a jihad against the administration that was based in Khartoum, which was dominated by Egyptians and Turks. The Khartoum government initially dismissed the Mahdi's revolution. He defeated two expeditions sent to capture him in the course of a year. The Mahdi's power increased, and his call spread throughout Sudan, with his movement becoming known as the Ansar. During the same period, the 'Urabi revolution broke out in Egypt, with the British occupying the country in 1882. Britain appointed Charles Gordon as General-Governor of Sudan. Months after his arrival in Khartoum and after several battles with the Mahdi rebels, Mahdist forces captured Khartoum, and Gordon was killed in his palace. The Mahdi did not live long after this victory, and his successor Abdallahi ibn Muhammad consolidated the new state, with administrative and judiciary systems based on their interpretation of Islamic law. The Coptic Christians, who composed a substantial portion of the country's population, were forced to convert to Islam.
Sudan's economy was destroyed during the Mahdist War and famine, war and disease reduced the population by more than half.
The British reconquered Sudan in 1898, ruling it after that in theory as a condominium with Egypt but in practice as a colony. However, remnants of the Mahdist State held out in Darfur until 1909.
History
Background
From the early 19th century, Egypt had begun to conquer Sudan and subjugated it as a source of human and material resources. This period became locally known as the Turkiyya, i.e. the "Turkish" rule by the Eyalet and later Khedivate of Egypt. The name was something of a misnomer: the Egyptians recruited local Sudanese for initially low-level, and then later quite high-level official posts. Egyptian control integrated Sudan into global commercial networks, but Egypt's trans-Mediterranean links proved a doubled-edged sword. In 1869, the Suez Canal opened and quickly became a key economic lifeline for the British Empire in 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 programme whereby an Anglo-French debt commission assumed responsibility for managing Egypt's fiscal affairs. To appease the commission, the Egyptians allowed Christian missionaries to proselytize throughout the Sudan. Meanwhile, Khedive Ismail appointed the Briton Charles George Gordon as governor-general of the Sudan. Gordon's (and the general British) commitment to abolition squarely opposed the traditional Sudanese economy, which was coming to center on the slave trade now that ivory sources were being exhausted.
The debt commission eventually forced the Khedive to abdicate in 1877 for his more politically acceptable son, Tawfiq (reigned 1877–1892). In 1879, Egypt fell into the chaos of the Urabi revolt, and shortly thereafter Gordon resigned. His successors lacked direction from Cairo, and Sudanese discontent grew rapidly. The illegal slave trade revived, although not enough to satisfy the merchants whom Gordon had bankrupted. The Sudanese army suffered from a lack of resources, and unemployed soldiers from disbanded units troubled garrison towns. Tax collectors arbitrarily increased taxation.
Muhammad Ahmad
In this troubled atmosphere, Muhammad Ahmad ibn as Sayyid Abd Allah, who combined personal charisma with a religious and political mission, emerged, determined to expel the Turks and restore Islam to its original purity. The son of a Danagla boatbuilder, Muhammad Ahmad had become the disciple of Muhammad ash Sharif, the head of the Sammaniyah Sufi order. Later, as a sheikh of the order, Muhammad Ahmad spent several years in seclusion and gained a reputation as a mystic and teacher.
In 1881, Muhammad Ahmad proclaimed himself the Mahdi ("expected one"). Some of his most dedicated followers regarded him as directly inspired by Allah. He wanted Muslims to reclaim the Quran and hadith as the foundational sources of Islam, creating a just society. Specifically relating to Sudan, he claimed its poverty was a virtue and denounced worldly wealth and luxury. For Muhammad Ahmad, Egypt was an example of wealth leading to impious behavior. Muhammad Ahmad's calls for an uprising found great appeal among the poorest communities along the Nile, as it combined a nationalist, anti-Egyptian agenda with fundamentalist religious certainty.
Even after the Mahdi proclaimed a jihad, or holy war, against the Egyptians, Khartoum dismissed him as a religious fanatic. The Egyptian 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 Baggara. From a refuge in the area, he wrote appeals to the sheikhs 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 Hadendoa Beja, who were rallied to the Mahdi by an Ansar captain, Osman Digna.
Ahmad's new polity functioned as a jihad state, run like a military camp. The Mahdiyah equalized its male citizenry in totalitarian asceticism, mandating communal jibba; and firmly excluded women from all public space. The Mahdi dissolved all fiqh, insisting on the literal meaning of the Quran. Sharia courts enforced Islamic law and the Mahdi's precepts, which had the force of law. A contemporary scout on behalf of Muhammad as-Sanusi described the land as "a burning country, dying and reeking of death".
Advancing attacks
Early in 1882, the Ansar, armed with spears and swords, overwhelmed a British-led 7,000-man Egyptian force not far from Al Ubayyid and seized their rifles, field guns 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. In these actions, the Ansar overcame an earlier aversion to the use of European weaponry (guns).
To the west, the Mahdist uprising was able to count on existing resistance movements. The Turkish rule of Darfur had been resented by locals, and several rebels had already begun revolts. Baggara rebels under Rizeigat chief Madibo (Madibbu 'Ali) pledged themselves to the Mahdi and besieged Darfur's Governor-General Rudolf Carl von Slatin, an Austrian in the khedive's service, at Dara. Slatin's dhimmi religion already depressed morale amongst his men, and his chief lieutenant had married a close relation to the Mahdi. Slatin was captured in 1883, and more Darfuri tribes consequently joined the revolutionaries. Mahdist forces soon took control of most of Darfur. At first, the regime change was very popular in Darfur.
The Mahdiya's consistent military success also helped consolidate Ahmad's power. Following the battle at Sheikan, he ordered all Sufi orders under his control to disband, lest they divide the Ansar ideologically.
The advance of the Ansar and the Hadendowa rising in the east imperiled communications with Egypt and threatened to cut off garrisons at Khartoum, Kassala, Sennar, and Suakin 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.
Conquest of Khartoum
After reaching Khartoum in February 1884, Gordon soon decided he could not extricate the garrisons, and called for reinforcements. The British government repeatedly refused to provide them, but Gordon disobeyed orders, preparing for a siege, and eventually British popular support forced Prime Minister Gladstone to mobilize a relief force under the command of Lord Garnet Joseph Wolseley. The force arrived too late: the first troops on steamboat reached Khartoum on 28 January 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 Sennar fell soon after, and by the end of 1885, the Ansar had begun to move into the southern region. In all of Sudan, only Sawakin, reinforced by Indian army troops, and Wadi Halfa on the northern frontier remained in Anglo-Egyptian hands.
The Mahdists destroyed Ottoman Khartoum, building a new capital across the river at Omdurman. All buildings were demolished and ransacked; when the British rebuilt the town 15 years later, no Ottoman-style architecture remained. The newly-captured wealth may have wrought a change in Mahdist standards of behavior: according to his enemies, "publicly [the Mahdi] continued to urge moderation on his followers, but in private he indulged in Turkish sensualities." His companions may have behaved similarly. Certainly, the Mahdist administration responded to its new finances. The beit al-māl, or public treasury, began to disburse funds to the poor, becoming a social services organization. Those women captured in the siege who had surviving male relatives or husbands were released to the same, but the many captives without a male guardian addled the Mahdist ideal of female seclusion. The Mahdi prescribed that they should be "married", and himself took three wives.
The Mahdi also struggled to delegate responsibilities. Justice was slow, as court decisions required his personal approval; and he continued to command his officers in the field even as he fell ill.
Abdallahi ibn Muhammad
Six months after the capture of Khartoum, the Mahdi died, probably of typhus (22 June 1885). The task of establishing and maintaining a government fell to his deputies—three caliphs chosen by the Mahdi in emulation of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Rivalry among the three had begun even before the Mahdi's death, when he had unequivocally favored Abdallahi ibn Muhammad as his wazir over members of his own clan. Nevertheless, the three caliphs, each supported by people of his native region, continued to jockey until 1891, when Abdallahi achieved unchallenged supremacy, with the help primarily of the Baqqara Arabs.
Abdallahi's new rule demanded a legitimating principle. Some of the Mahdiya's new conquests still hoped for a return of Turkish rule; others were rapidly alienated by increasing autocracy; and yet others claimed themselves new divinely-inspired prophets. Abdallahi—now called the Khalifa (successor)—could not unite his followers against foreigners, as the foreigners had already been defeated and expulsed. The Khalifa was too illiterate to present himself as another prophet; and the elites in other tribes owed him no personal loyalty. Quickly, he purged the Mahdiyah of the Mahdi's family and many of his early religious disciples. But he remained wary, and even the slightest hint of disloyalty in a tribe could spark genocidal reprisals. Abdallahi's massacre of the grain-farming Juhaina tribe strained Sudan's food supply, and then an 1888 drought broke it entirely. Sudan fell into famine, even as it continued wars of conquest.
Regional relations remained tense throughout much of the Mahdiyah period, largely because of the Khalifa's commitment to using jihad to extend his version of Islam throughout the world. For example, the Khalifa rejected an offer of an alliance against the Europeans by Emperor Yohannes IV of Ethiopia (1871–1889). In 1887, a 60,000-man Ansar army invaded Ethiopia, penetrated as far as Gondar, and captured prisoners and booty. The Khalifa then refused to conclude peace with Ethiopia. In March 1889, an Ethiopian force, commanded by the emperor, marched on Metemma; however, after Yohannes fell in the ensuing Battle of Gallabat, the Ethiopians withdrew. Overall, the war with Ethiopia mostly wasted the Mahdists' resources. Abd ar Rahman an Nujumi, the Khalifa's best general, invaded Egypt in 1889, but British-led Egyptian troops defeated the Ansar at Tushkah. The failure of the Egyptian invasion ended the myth of the Ansars' invincibility. The Belgians prevented the Mahdi's men from conquering Equatoria, and in 1893, the Italians repulsed an Ansar attack at Akordat (in Eritrea) and forced the Ansar to withdraw from Ethiopia.