Muhammad Ahmad
Ahmad was a religious and military leader in the Sudan who proclaimed himself to be the Mahdi, who in most Islamic traditions will accompany Jesus – in Islam known as Isa – to defeat the antichrist at the time of Judgment. Ahmad was a leader of the Samaniyya order who with others of the Sudanese people revolted against Turkish and Egyptian rulers in the late nineteenth century. Aware that many of the Sudanese believed in the messianic figure of the Mahdi arriving to overthrow their oppressors, Ahmad so proclaimed himself with the announcement of a movement he called the Mahdiyya.
Ahmad was born into a family of boat builders, but from an early age preferred quiet religious study over manual labor. Ahmad studied under various sheikhs, developing a reputation for piety and humility, and traveled about the Sudan. After acquiring the title of Sheikh he conducted religious missions where he taught that any practice not sanctioned in the Quran was heresy. His missions and high standing with several sheikhs were enhanced by his demonstrated piety.
In accordance with Samaniyya tradition, the Mahdi would come from their order, following signs which would foretell his arrival. Ahmad used his knowledge of the necessary signs and that of the people to whom he proclaimed the Mahdiyya to convince them of its truth, claiming to have had the title bestowed upon him by an assembly of prophets known as a Hadra. The Hadra had included all of the prophets from the first, Adam, to Muhammad. In the tradition, the Mahdi would reign for a period of eight years before being defeated in a battle with the antichrist, heralding the return of Isa who would destroy the antichrist.
Although Ahmad was widely popular with the Sudanese Samaniyya, he was criticized and ridiculed for his pronouncement in other quarters, including the authorities of the Egyptian and Turkish governments. Egypt sent a military force to arrest Ahmad for the crime of heresy and false doctrine. Ahmad declared a Jihad and directed his followers to cease paying taxes. Open warfare between Ahmad’s forces and Egyptian forces led the British to withdraw from most of Sudan, retaining some ports on the Red Sea and a few towns in the north. They held onto Khartoum and were there besieged by Ahmad’s forces in 1884.
When the British were defeated and the city taken by Ahmad’s forces, the garrison troops were massacred to a man, and the bodies of many were hacked to pieces by the Sudanese. Ahmad died of typhus within six months of the battle. His successor purged the Mahdiyya of Ahmad’s family and closest followers, and continued the war as the Khalifa. When the Khalifa was defeated in 1898 the British commander, General Kitchener, ordered Ahmad’s tomb destroyed and his remains thrown into the Nile, to prevent the tomb from becoming a shrine.