First Jihad: Khartoum, and the Dawn of Militant Islam by Daniel Allen Butler Read Free Book Online Page B

that claims a grave has long been excavated for him next to Muhammad’s in the Masjid al-Nabawi in Medina.
There was even considerable detail about the Mahdi’s exact appearance, in order that he would be properly identified and to eliminate the chance for a false claimant to usurp the title.It was believed that the Prophet Muhammad had actually foretold the coming of the Mahdi, having said that the Mahdi’s father would bear the name Abdullah (as did the father of the Prophet), while his mother’s name would be Aamina, (the same as the Prophet’s mother).He would be born in “medina”—the word as used literally means a township, not the city in Arabia—and he would be forty years of age when he was revealed to be the Mahdi.A sign that would indicate his appearance would be twin eclipses of the sun and moon in the month of Ramadan just prior to his appearance.The Mahdi would be tall and smooth-complexioned, facially resembling the Prophet Muhammad.He would speak with a slight stutter, and at times strike his thigh as a means of breaking the stutter.Finally, there would be a v-shaped gap between his upper front teeth, a sign of good luck and favor from Allah among Arabs.
As to his character, Ali ibn Abi Talib, the fourth Caliph, said that the Prophet Muhammed declared of the one who would become known as the Madhi, “Even if only a day remains for the Day of Judgment to come, yet Allah will surely send a man from my family who will fill this world with such justice and fairness, just as it initially was filled with oppression.” One striking detail that emerges from the accumulated teaching and doctrine regarding the Mahdi is the remarkable similarity between the Mahdi and the Christian figure of John the Baptist.In 19th-century Sudan, which was unaffected by the broader conflict between Shi’ite and Sunni Islam, Sufism, aspects of Shi’ism, and Sunnism, including its stern Wahhabi offshoot, were all available to earnest students of the greater faith.
Although Muhammed Ahmed was careful at first to avoid making any claim to being the Mahdi, such was the strength of his message and the power of his personality that many Sudanese came to believe of their own volition that he actually was the Expected One.A murmur of resentment toward their Egyptian conquerors had been running through the Sudanese for nearly four decades, but they lacked a leader to give focus to their unhappiness.Dismayed not only by the bleak condition of Islam in the Sudan under the self-proclaimed shaykhs who were little more than tools of the Egyptian government, but also by the suffering of his countrymen directly at the hands of the Egyptian officials, Ahmed began to see himself as sent by Allah to purge Islam of its evils and to return it to the purity of the faith of Mohammed the Prophet.His teachings began to take on end-of-the-world overtones as he gradually came to view himself as the rightful leader of Islam, the successor to the Prophet Muhammed, the great presiding figure of the end of time.
While it may have been that at first Muhammad Ahmed found himself being carried along by a tide of quasi-nationalist and anti-foreign, as well as religious, feelings, his upbringing and religious training unquestionably made him susceptible to being seduced by such sentiments.Certainly he gave in to the feelings expressed by the majority of the Sudanese he saw every day—the wishes and desires of the people in their expectation of the imminence of the Mahdi.Yet there is little if any evidence that Ahmed had consciously aspired to become more than a great imam and mullah.
Though passionate about his faith and in its proclamation, there seemed to be little of the fanatic or militant about him.Undoubtedly there was a strong streak of mysticism in his character, as quite early in his youth he made it clear to his father that he had no desire to follow into the family trade of boat-building, preferring instead to continue and expand his studies in