Sir Sayyid Abdul Rahman al-Mahdi, KBE (; June 1885 – 24 March 1959) was a Sudanese politician and prominent religious leader. He was one of the leading religious and political figures during the colonial era in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (1898–1955), and continued to exert great authority as leader of the Neo-Mahdists after Sudan became independent. The British tried to exploit his influence over the Sudanese people while at the same time profoundly distrusting his motives. Throughout most of the colonial era of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, the British saw al-Mahdi as important as a moderate leader of the Mahdists.
He was the posthumous son of Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah, who had proclaimed himself the Mahdi or redeemer of the Islamic faith in 1881, and died in 1885 a few months after his forces had captured Khartoum. A joint British and Egyptian force recaptured Sudan in 1898. At first, the British severely restricted al-Mahdi's movement and activity. However, he soon emerged as the Imam (leader) of the Ansar religious sect, supporters of the Mahdist movement.
The British maintained a close political relationship with al-Mahdi. Meanwhile, he grew wealthy from cotton production, for which his supporters provided labour since he was a child exiled to Aba Island, and was influential and well loved among his people. The British administration distrusted him because they could not control him or use him to exert influence in Sudan.
In the 1930s, he spoke out against a treaty between Egypt and Britain that recognized Egyptian claims of sovereignty in Sudan, although no Sudanese had been consulted. He travelled to London to make his case. His Ansar followers became an influential faction in the General Congress established in 1938, and in the successor Advisory Council set up in 1944. al-Mahdi was patron of the nationalist Umma (Nation) political party in the period before and just after Sudan became independent in 1956. In 1958, the Umma party won the most seats in the first parliamentary elections after independence. In November 1958, the Sudanese Army staged a coup, which al-Mahdi supported. He died on 24 March 1959, aged 73.
Background
Since antiquity Egypt has straddled the trade route between the Mediterranean, Arabia, India and countries to the east. With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 it gained huge strategic importance. In 1882 the British took effective control of Egypt in the Anglo-Egyptian War.
Northern and central Sudan had been nominally under Egyptian suzerainty since an Ottoman force had conquered and occupied the region in 1821. The primary motive was not territorial conquest but to secure a source of slaves to serve in the Egyptian army. The slaves, paid in lieu of taxes, were brought from the formerly inaccessible regions of southern Sudan. When the British explorer Samuel Baker visited Khartoum in 1862, he found that everyone in the town was involved in the slave trade, including the Governor-General. The Egyptian and Nubian garrison lived on the land like an army of occupation. Bribery was the only way to get anything done. Torture and floggings were routine in the prisons. Baker said of Khartoum that "a more miserable and unhealthy place can hardly be imagined". He described the Governor-General Musa Pasha as combining "the worst of Oriental failings with the brutality of a wild animal".
In the 1870s, a Muslim cleric named Muhammad Ahmad began to preach renewal of the faith and liberation of Sudan from the Egyptians. In 1881 he proclaimed himself the Mahdi, the promised redeemer of the Islamic world. The Mahdi's followers were named "Ansar", or helpers, the name that was given to the citizens of Medina who helped Muhammad. The religious and political revolt gathered momentum, with the Egyptians steadily losing ground and the British showing little enthusiasm for a costly engagement in this remote region. By the end of 1883, the Ansar army had wiped out three Egyptian armies. A force under William Hicks was sent to suppress the revolt but was destroyed. When the governor of Darfur, Slatin Pasha, surrendered to the Mahdi almost all of the west of Sudan had come under the Mahdi's control.
Major-General Charles George Gordon was given the job of evacuating the Egyptian garrison from Khartoum. He arrived on 18 February 1884. Gordon was reluctant to abandon the population of Khartoum to the forces of the Mahdi, and also felt that by evacuating the city he would open the way for the Mahdi to threaten Egypt. He bombarded the authorities in Cairo with telegrams suggesting alternative courses, and delayed starting the evacuation. On 13 March 1884 the tribes north of Khartoum declared for the Mahdi, cutting the telegraph and blocking river traffic. Khartoum was besieged, falling on 25 January 1885 after a siege of 313 days. A relief column arrived two days after the city had fallen and Gordon had been killed. Despite a short-lived public outcry in Britain over Gordon's death, Britain took no further action in Sudan for several years.
Mahdiyah (1885–1898) Muhammad Ahmad died of typhus a few months after his victory, leaving power to his three deputies, or Kalifas. Abd al-Rahman was born on 15 July 1885 in Omdurman, three weeks after his father's death. His mother was granddaughter of a former Sultan of Darfur, Mohammed al-Fadl. As a child, Abd al-Rahman's only formal education was that of a religious school where the pupils memorised the Quran. By the age of eleven he could recite the Quran.
By 1891, after a prolonged struggle, the Kalifa Abdallahi ibn Muhammad emerged as sole leader due to support from the nomadic Baggara Arabs of the west. He proved to be an able and ruthless ruler of the Mahdiyah, the Mahdist state. At first the state was run on military lines as a Jihadist state. Later, a more conventional form of administration was introduced. The Kalifa consolidated his rule in Sudan, then invaded Ethiopia, killing Emperor Yohannes IV in March 1889 and penetrating as far as Gondar. The same year, the Kalifa attacked Egypt at Tushki, but was defeated.
However, the state suffered from economic problems and internal opposition to the Khalifa, particularly from the Mahdi's family, and the Khalifa was forced to concentrate on consolidation. The British detected his weakness, and prepared an invasion motivated in part by a desire to avenge Gordon's death, and in part by a desire for raw cotton for their textile industry. A methodical invasion was launched in 1896 slowly moving south supported by a railway that the army built along its route. The force reached Berber in September 1897 and Atbara in April 1898. The British and Egyptian force led by General Kitchener defeated the Kalifa at the Battle of Omdurman on 2 September 1898. The battle is known as the Battle of Karari to Mahdists.
In his book The River War, Sir Winston Churchill, who was present at the Battle, summed up the result: "The River War is over. In its varied course, which extended over fourteen years and involved the untimely destruction of perhaps 300,000 lives, many extremes and contrasts have been displayed. There have been battles which were massacres, and others that were mere parades. There have been occasions of shocking cowardice and surprising heroism... of wisdom and incompetence. But the result is at length achieved and the flags of England and Egypt wave unchallenged over the valley of the Nile".
The British sent the Mahdi's family to al-Shakaba on the Blue Nile in September 1898. The group included the Khalifa Muhammad Sharif, the Mahdi's cousin and one of his chosen successors. In 1899 the government heard rumours that the family group was advocating a Mahdist revival and dispatched a military force to al-Shakaba. One account stated that the force attacked the family and followers, firing on them at random. Abd al-Rahman was badly wounded and his two elder brothers were killed. Another account said that Muhammad Sharif and the two elder sons of the Mahdi were arrested. There was a skirmish when an attempt was made to rescue them. Muhammad Sharif and the Mahdi's two sons were found guilty by a court martial trial and were shot.
Organised resistance to the British had ended by 1899, although sporadic fighting continued for a few more years. In theory the British ruled Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in partnership with Egypt through a condominium. In practice, although Egypt bore most of the costs of the military conquest and occupation of Sudan, the British ran the country as they chose. The head of the military and the civil administration under the 19 January 1899 Condominium Agreement was a British-nominated Governor-General, who acted independently of the Cairo government.
Early period of British rule
After the British took control, Abd al-Rahman lived at first with a relative in the Gezira. On the advice of the Inspector General Slatin Pasha, Abd al-Rahman was constantly watched in the early years of British rule, was given a very small allowance and was not allowed to call himself Imam or the Mahdi. Both Slatin and the Governor-General Reginald Wingate were determined to stamp out Mahdism. Slatin had been held a prisoner of the Mahdists for eleven years. He placed many restrictions on the Mahdist leaders such as prohibiting them from reading the Mahdi's prayer book, from visiting "sacred" places associated with their movement other than the Mahdi's tomb, and from praying or making offerings at the tomb.
From 1906 Abd al-Rahman lived in Gezirat al-Fil, near Omdurman. He was subject to constant and obtrusive supervision by the intelligence department. However, after 1908 Abd al-Rahman was allowed to live in Omdurman and study under a distinguished Azharite named Muhammad al-Badawi, where he gained some understanding of Islamic jurisprudence and the fundamentals of his religion, including the Hadith (traditional stories about Muhammad). However, he was never able to become a well-educated and knowledgeable Islamic scholar as his father had been. The government lent him money to build the family mosque in Omdurman in 1908, and let him farm part of his father's land on Aba Island. He emphasised his peaceful intentions, convincing the colonialist government that his movement was not dangerous. A British official described him in 1909, when he was aged about twenty-four, as "an obsequious, sorry-looking youth in soiled clothes". In 1910 he made a public speech in which he supported the condominium administration of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.
Abd al-Rahman quietly began to regroup the Ansar as a religious sect. Until 1914, he lived in seclusion in Omdurman or on Aba Island, closely watched by Slatin's intelligence agents. Despite the surveillance, he built considerable influence in the White Nile region. He often visited the many mosques in Omdurman to meet his followers with his face covered so he would not be recognized by government agents. He received many visitors who sought his blessing.
World War I When World War I broke out in 1914, the Ottoman Empire sided with Germany against Britain. Governor-General Wingate had to persuade the Sudanese people that the Ottoman Empire was no longer a truly Muslim state. Wingate was helped by Sudanese memories of the harsh former Turkish rule. Wingate described Britain as the true defender of Islam, and called the Turkish rulers a "Syndicate of Jews, financiers and low-born intriguers". The British and most of the northern Sudanese saw the Sayyids, the leaders of the main Islamic groups, as the natural spokesmen for the people. Wingate decided to enlist Sayyid Abd al-Rahman to support the British cause. Abd al-Rahman publicly declared his full support for the British and assisted in suppressing a rebellion in the Nuba Mountains in 1915.