Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-qxdb6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T19:04:30.270Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Sudanese Mahdī: Frontier Fundmentalist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

John Voll
John Voll
Affiliation:
American University In Cairo
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The Sudanese Mahdī has been pictured as a villain, as a hero, as a reactionary, as an anti-imperialist revolutionary, and in many other ways. The romance and excitement of the nineteenth-century Mahdiyya has inspired novels and movies, while the many faceted reality of the movement has caught the attention of a wide range of scholars in search of case studies of specific phenomena. In recent years the Mahdī has been used as an example of a ‘charismatic’ leader,1 the founder of a religionpolitical party in the ‘third world,’2 the leader of a millenarian revolt,3 an African rebel against alien rule,4 and a Semitic messiah in an African context. Many of these analyses are the constructive products of the changing situation in the world of contemporary historical studies. Each tends to reflect a broader analytical concern aroused by modern developments.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , May 1979 , pp. 145 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Dekmejian, Richard H. and Wyszomirski, Margaret J., ‘Charismatic Leadership in Islam: The Mahdi of the Sudan,’ Comparative Studies in Society and History, 14 (1972), 193–214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Smith, Donald Eugene, Religion, Politics, and Social Change in the Third World (New York: The Free Press, 1971), pp. 155–161.Google Scholar

3 Lewy, Guenter, Religion and Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 176–193.Google Scholar

4 These last two refer to Brown, L. Carl, ‘The Sudanese Mahdiya,’ in Rotberg, Robert I. and Mazrui, Ali A., eds., Protest and Power in Black Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 145–168. The editors put the chapter in the section entitled ‘Rebellions against Alien Rule,’ but L. Carl Brown presents the Mahdī in the broader context of Semitic messianism.Google Scholar

5 Barraclough, Geoffrey, An Introduction to Contemporary History (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1964), p. 35.Google Scholar

6 See, for example, Hodgson, Marshall G. S., The Venture of Islam (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974), 3, 247;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSmith, Wilfred Cantwell, Islam in Modern History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 58–59;Google ScholarEl Mahdi, Mandour, A Short History of the Sudan (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp. 96–97.Google Scholar

7 Brown, ‘The Sudanese Mahdiya.’Google Scholar

8 In this way, in a general survey of modern Middle Eastern history, the Sudanese Mahdi is given as an example of the Shi'a mahdist concept. See Spencer, William, Political Evolution in the Middle East (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1962), p. 17.Google Scholar

9 This is especially true of some of the older Western descriptions of the Mahdi. See Wingate, F. R., Mahdiism and the Egyptian Sudan (2d ed.; London: Cass, 1968), pp. 5–6;Google ScholarBermann, Richard A., The Mahdi of Allah (New York: Macmillan, 1932), pp. 73–74;Google ScholarMargoliouth, D. S., ‘Mahdi,’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, 8, 339.Google Scholar More recently this approach was followed to some extent in Fatih, Soad el, ‘The Teachings of Muhammad Ahmad the Sudanese Mahdi’ (unpublished M.A. thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1961).Google Scholar

10 See, for example, the conclusions drawn in Holt, P. M., The Mahdist State in the Sudan, 1881–1898 (2d ed.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 31,Google Scholar and Brown, ‘The Sudanese Mahdiya,’ pp. 145–147.Google Scholar

11 Weber, Max, The Sociology of Religion, trans. Fischoff, Ephraim (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), p. 56.Google Scholar

12 Gibb, H. A. R., Modern Trends in Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947), p. 27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 See ibid., Macdonald, Duncan Black, The Religious Attitude and Life in Islam (Beirut: Khayats, 1965);Google ScholarGoldziher, Ignaz, Muslim Studies, ed. Stern, S. M. (London: Allen & Unwin, 1971), 2, 255–344.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., II, 262, and passim.

15 Rahman, Fazlur, Islam (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966), p. 132.Google Scholar See also the vigorous discussion in Makdisi, George, ‘Ibn Taimiya: A Sufi of the Qadiriya Order,’ American Journal of Arabic Studies, 1 (1973), 118–129.Google Scholar

16 von Grunebaum, G. E., ‘The Problem: Unity in Diversity,’ Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization, ed. von Grunebaum, Gustave E. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955), p. 23.Google Scholar

17 See, for example, the introductory essay by Lewis, I. M. and the essay by Trimingham, J. S. in Islam in Tropical Africa, ed. Lewis, I. M. (London: Oxford University Press, 1966).Google Scholar

18 The terminology ‘authenticity’ and ‘openness’ and the definitions are taken from the Center for the Study of the Modern Arab World, St. Joseph's University, Beirut, ‘Thematic Content Analysis of Arab Writings on Acculturation,’ March, 1973, mimeographed.Google Scholar

19 Watt, W. Montgomery, The Formative Period of Islamic Thought (Edinburgh: The University Press, 1973), p. 184.Google Scholar

20 Gibb, Hamilton A. R., Studies on the Civilization of Islam (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962), pp. 34–46.Google Scholar

21 Watt, The Formative Period, passim.Google Scholar

22 Nicholson, Reynold A., The Mystics of Islam (Beirut: Khayats, 1966), Introduction.Google Scholar

23 Robson, J., ‘Bid'a,” Encyclopaedia of Islam2, 1, 1199.Google Scholar

24 American University of Beirut, al-Wathā'iq al-'Arabiyyah 1969, p. 292.Google Scholar

25 Watt, W. Montgomery, Islamic Philosophy and Theology (Edinburgh: The University Press, 1962), p. 53.Google Scholar

26 Nasr, Seyyed Hossein, Ideals and Realities of Islam (London: Allen & Unwin, 1966), p. 166.Google Scholar

27 Canard, M., ‘Fātimids,’ Encyclopaedia of Islam2, 2, 859.Google Scholar

28 See Margoliouth, D. S., ‘Mahdi,’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, 8, 336–340;Google ScholarMacdonald, D. B., ‘Al-Mahdi,’ Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam, pp. 310–313.Google Scholar

29 Geilner, Ernest, ‘Post-Traditional Forms in Islam: The Turf and Trade, and Votes and Peanuts,’ Daedalus, 102, 1 (Winter 1973), 194.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., 193.

31 Shuqayr, Na'ūm, Tārīkh al-Sūdān al-Qadīm wa al-Hadīth wa Jughrāfiyatuh (Cairo: n.p., 1903), 3, 125–126.Google Scholar

32 Holt, The Mahdist State, p. 106.Google Scholar

33 al-Bashīr, Muhammad 'Ali b., ‘Uqūd al-Durur fī Sharh Rātib al-’Imām al-Mahdī al-Muntazhzhar (Cairo: al-Maktabah al-Mahmūdiyyah, n.d.), pp. 65–66.Google Scholar

34 Manshūrāt Sayyidnā al-'Imām al-Mahdi (Khartoum: Sudan Government — Central Archives, 1963–1964), II, 154–155.Google Scholar

35 Shuqayr, III, 121.Google Scholar

36 Manshūrāt, II, 22.Google Scholar

37 Shuqayr, III, 139.Google Scholar

38 Gibb, H. A. R., Mohammedanism (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), p. 171.Google Scholar

39 Manshūrāt, I, 129.Google Scholar

40 ‘Summary Translation of the Mahadi's Book,’ in Khartoum University Library, Sudan Collection, 1677/48CM, typescript, 25 August 1936.Google Scholar

41 Fawzi, Ibrāhim, Kitāb al-Sūdān bayn yaday Churdūn wa Kitshinir (Cairo: Jarīdah al-Mu'ayyid, 1319/1901), 1, 73–74.Google Scholar

42 Manshūrāt, III, 30. Holt (The Mahdist State, p. 131) gives the punishment prescribed for smoking as being one hundred lashes. He cites the Nujūmī notebook as the source of the legislation. It could be that the Mahdi changed the punishment.Google Scholar

43 Wingate, Mahdiism, p. 59.Google Scholar

44 Holt, The Mahdist State, pp. 130–131.Google Scholar

45 Shuqayr, III, 371.Google Scholar

46 Ibid., p. 118.

47 Holt, The Mahdist State, pp. 130–131.Google Scholar

48 Ibid., p. 105.

49 Shuqayr, III, 125.Google Scholar

50 Holt, The Mahdist State, p. 132.Google Scholar

51 Ibid., p. 128, and Shuqayr, III, 364.

52 Manshūrāt, 2, 155.Google Scholar

53 ‘Summary Translation of the Mahadi's Book’, p. 1.Google Scholar

54 Holt, The Mahdist State, p. 131.Google Scholar

55 Toynbee, Arnold, Civilization on Trial and the World and the West (New York: Meridian, 1958), p. 167.Google Scholar

56 Ibid.

57 Lewis, Bernard, The Middle East and the West (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964), p. 105.Google Scholar

58 Sharabi, Hisham, Arab Intellectuals and the West, The Formative Years, 1875–1914 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1970), p. 31.Google Scholar

59 Ibid., pp. 35–32.

60 Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, Islam in Modern History (Princeton, 1957), p. 41.Google Scholar

61 Wingate, Mahdiism, p. 42.Google Scholar

62 Ibid., p. 59.

63 Manshūrāt, II, 57.Google Scholar

64 Wingate, Mahdiism, p. 59.Google Scholar

65 Manshūrāt, II, 57.Google Scholar

66 Gibb, Mohammedanism, p. 172.Google Scholar

67 This is certainly true of Dekmejian and Wyzsomirski, Comparative Studies.Google Scholar

68 Weber, Max, On Charisma and Institution Building, ed. Eisenstadt, S. N. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), p. 46.Google Scholar

69 Ibid., p. 51.

70 This tradition is usefully defined in Brown, ‘The Sudanese Mahdiyya,’ pp. 147–148.Google Scholar

71 Worsley, Peter, The Trumpet Shall Sound (New York: Schocken, 1968), p. 225.Google Scholar

72 Cohn, Norman, The Pursuit of the Millennium (New York: Harper, 1961), p. 319.Google Scholar

73 The definition of this pattern has been made in a number of ways. Some of the best are Brown, ‘The Sudanese Mahdiya,’ pp. 159–168;Google ScholarTrimingham, J. S., ‘The Phases of Islamic Expansion and Islamic Culture Zones in Africa,’ Islam in Tropical Africa, ed. Lewis, I. M. (London: Oxford University Press, 1966);Google ScholarHiskett, Mervyn, The Sword of Truth: The Life and Times of the Shehu Usuman Dan Fodio (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), Introduction.Google Scholar

74 Trimingham, J. Spencer, The Influence of Islam upon Africa (New York: Praeger, 1968), p. 77.Google Scholar

75 Hillelson, S., ‘The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan,’ Islam Today, ed. Arberry, A. J. and Landau, Rom (London: Faber & Faber, 1943), p. 100.Google Scholar

76 Holt, P. M., A Modern History of the Sudan (New York: Grove Press, 1961), p. 28.Google Scholar

77 This is a statement made by Henderson, K. D. D. and cited in Reid, J. A., ‘The Fung Kingdom and Its Religious Background,’ Notes on the Tribes and Prominent Families in the Blue Nile Province (Khartoum, 1935), p. 7.Google Scholar

78 O'Fahey, R. S. and Spaulding, J. L., Kingdoms of the Sudan (London: Methuen, 1974), p. 87.Google Scholar

79 Voll, John, ‘Effects of Islamic Structures on Modern Islamic Expansion in the Eastern Sudan,’ The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 7, No. 1 (1974), 85–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

80 Trimingham, J. S., Islam in the Sudan (London: Cass, 1965), pp. 198–202.Google Scholar

81 Biobaku, Saburi and al-Hajj, Muhammad, ‘The Sudanese Mahdiyya and the Niger–Chad Region,’ Islam in Tropical Africa, ed. Lewis, I. M. (London: Oxford University Press, 1966).Google Scholar

82 Trimingham, Islam in the Sudan, pp. 226−228.Google Scholar

83 Voll, John O., ‘A History of the Khatmiyyah Tariqah in the Sudan,’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1969), chapter 3.Google Scholar