Muhammad Ahmad

Muhammad Ahmad, also known as the Mahdi (1848-1885), 19th-century religious and political leader in Sudan. Born near Dunqulah, Muhammad Ahmad was a boatbuilder's apprentice who turned to religious studies as a youth. Advocating asceticism, a fundamentalist form of Islam, and Sudanese nationalism, he moved to Aba Island on the White Nile, where he began to develop a following. Sudanese people flocked to him, after years of injustice under Turko-Egyptian rule, which used European assistance to maintain control. In 1881 Ahmad declared himself the Mahdi, the prophesied Muslim messiah who would rid the world of evil, and declared a holy war on the infidel occupiers of Sudan.

The Mahdi led a victorious attack on Al Ubayyiḑ (El Obeid) in 1883, and went on to capture all of the Darfūr region of western Sudan, defeating an Egyptian army led by British Colonel William Hicks. In 1884 British General Charles George Gordon was dispatched to Khartoum to evacuate Egyptian troops. The Mahdi's forces surrounded Khartoum and besieged the city for 10 months, while Gordon begged the British government for reinforcements. On January 26, 1885, two days before British reinforcements arrived, Khartoum fell and Gordon and his entire garrison were massacred. The Mahdi controlled all of Sudan and began the process of creating a unified Islamic state. However, he died suddenly of typhus five months later. He was succeeded by Abdullah ibn Muhammad, the Khalifa (successor), who would rule the Mahdiyya (Mahdi's empire) until his defeat by the British in 1898. Today, the Mahdi's domed tomb and the Khalifa's palace in Omdurman are reminders of this era.