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Biography of Mahdi, TheName: Mahdi, TheBirth Date: c. 1844 Death Date: June 22, 1885 Place of Birth: Dongola, Sudan Nationality: Sudanese Gender: Male Occupations: military leader, puritan, reformer Mahdi, The Mohammed Ahmed (ca. 1844-1885) was an Islamic puritan, reformer, and military leader of the Sudan. He is better known as the Mahdi.Mohammed Ahmed was born on an island in the Nile River near Dongola in what is now the northern Sudan. His father was a boatbuilder. Mohammed Ahmed took an early and intense interest in Islamic mysticism and asceticism, becoming a religious teacher and joining the Sammaniya order in 1861. Gathering pupils and disciples about him, he established his retreat on Aba Island in the White Nile south of Khartoum, where he earned a reputation for holiness and mystical powers.Messianic LeaderHis religious experiences and contemplations on Aba Island caused Mohammed Ahmed to feel that Allah had selected him as the true Mahdi, the right-guided one or the messianic leader called to battle against immorality and corruption and for the rejuvenation and purification of Islam. He saw himself as sent by …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…of the Ansar (Helpers) movement today, a powerful religious brotherhood and an important but conservative political factor in the Republic of the Sudan, the Mahdi was a nationalist leader who liberated the people of the Sudan from alien oppression and began the modern history of the country. Further Reading An old and romantic view of the Mahdi is in the biography by Richard A. Bermann, The Mahdi of Allah (1931). The Mahdist movement is well treated in A. B. Theobald, The Mahdiya: A History of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1881-1899 (1951), and in P. M. Holt, The Mahdist State in the Sudan, 1881-1898 (1958). For general background on the Sudan see a work by a Sudanese, Mekki Shibeika, The Independent Sudan (1959), and P. M. Holt, A Modern History of the Sudan (1966).Farwell, Byron, Prisoners of the Mahdi: the story of the Mahdist revolt which frustrated Queen Victoria's designs on the Sudan ..., New York: W.W. Norton, 1989. |