Conflicted S5 E2: Africa: Sudan Pt.1: The First Mahdi

Speakers: Thomas Small & Aimen Dean

Thomas: Welcome back to Conflicted, dear listeners. Thomas Small and Aimen Dean, back with you to begin in earnest, our season long exploration into the history, the heart of Africa. Aimen, where are we beginning our African journey?

Aimen: Oh my God, it is in my favourite African country of all of them, even though I never been there, yet I had so many lovely interactions with the people of that country. That is the country of Sudan.

Thomas: Sudan, the Sudan, as it used to be known in colonial times. Yes, indeed. You haven't been there Aimen, I'm surprised, given how much you've crisscrossed the region.

Aimen: Well, I always wanted to go to Sudan. I had the chance actually in 2009/2010 to go there to explore some mining opportunities. No, not crypto mining, I mean the real mining, to our millennial listeners.

But unfortunately, it didn't happen, and it was supposed to be with a Russian associate of mine at the time. So, talk about red flags already started to come.

Thomas: Absolutely. Well, you could be rolling in gold now if you'd taken that opportunity, Aimen.

Aimen: Well, actually, it was about nickel and chromium. But similar, once you extract them and sell them, then yes, you are rolling in gold. But you know what, Thomas? For me, Sudan is really synonymous with the Arabic language. Why? Because almost all of my Arabic teachers in the elementary school and the middle school in Saudi Arabia, were from Sudan.

Thomas: Well, there are many surprises in store, dear listener, in this four-episode arc on the history and geopolitics of Sudan. And so, without further ado, let's begin our voyage into the deep past of this fascinating land where we'll travel through Sudan's extraordinary period of mediaeval Christianity.

Surprising it was to me to find out about this period. It's Islamization, it's conquest by the Egyptians and the British, and ask ourselves the question, will Sudan be saved by a revolutionary Mahdi? Let's find out.

[Music Playing]

“The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Kush.” Aimen, where do you suppose that quote comes from?

Aimen: Is that from the Prophet Muhammad?

Thomas: No, it's from the Prophet Moses, Aimen. It's from the second chapter of the book of Genesis, in fact.

Aimen: Interesting.

Thomas: Where the Bible describes the four rivers of paradise, one of which the River Gihon flowed around the whole land of Kush, which is to say, of course, Sudan. Ancient Kush, modern Sudan, a land of extraordinary antiquity.

But before we get into the history, Aimen, with everything going on in the Middle East today, I think it's fair to say that the horrific civil war in Sudan is being overlooked. We've wanted to talk about it for so long on Conflicted. It's the world's forgotten war, isn't it?

Aimen: It's been going around for 15 months now. 15 months. Tens and tens of thousands of dead people, millions displaced.

And I don't find any coverage that is worthy of the horror that is going on right there, including, by the way, ethnic cleansing of tribal people from the west of Sudan, another Darfur tragedy, the fight over resources, the involvement of so many outside players like the Russians and the Iranians, and people from other parts of the region, the Egyptians.

No one talks about it. No one talks about it. And this is why we decided, you know what, you and I need to bring this country and its history, its rich, deep traditions, and its tragic past events into light, so our listeners can appreciate what is happening there right now.

Thomas: Absolutely. In our usual fashion, we are going to use this four-episode arc on Sudan to do our best to situate the terrible, tragic events going on in Sudan now, with its history, ancient, mediaeval, and modern.

In this episode, we're going to talk about the deep past. And in the second half, a rather surprising figure will make his appearance, Aimen. Let's not talk about him now in any detail.

But we've talked a lot on Conflicted about Mahdis, about the Mahdi, the great figure at the end of time that in Shia, Twelver Islam, especially in the present day, emphasises this figure, the Mahdi.

However, of course, the Mahdi is not only a Shia figure, and in Sudan in the 19th century, there was a Mahdi. So, this gives us our first opportunity, Aimen, to talk about a Sunni Mahdi.

Aimen: Oh yeah. A Sunni Mahdi. And of course, you know my beliefs. So, he is a fake Mahdi. Nonetheless, fake or not, we have to talk about him and the legacy he left behind and the influence on Sudanese national identity.

And the irony is that one of his descendants happened to be my teacher in Saudi Arabia, when he came to work there teaching me Arabic.

Thomas: Aimen, I swear to God, every single episode, you have some personal connection to some illustrious figure from the past. Really, I'm getting sick of this.

Fake Mahdi, he might have been, but as we'll see, I think he's actually a rather impressive figure. And we'll get there in the second half.

Now, Aimen. Let's just talk about Sudan; bilād al-sūdān, land of the blacks. How are we going to define Sudan, geographically? It's hard to do, Aimen. I mean, it is a vast area of about a million square miles, now separated into two countries, Sudan proper and the Republic of South Sudan.

For well over a century, they were one big country. And much of this history will talk about both. A huge country, mainly desert, split into lots of deserts, but also mountains in the east, and of course, the Nile River flowing down the centre. How do we help the listener understand Sudanese geography?

Aimen: Well, for me, I think Sudan is like this. Sudan starts from the south of Egypt in the Nubian area, so there is that border. Then it goes all the way south to the lush, green, tropical region of Sudan.

So, from the Egyptian border to the tropics and from the Red Sea, where you have Suakin which is now also known as Port Sudan nearby, all the way to the beginning of the Sahara. So, this is in the west.

And in the middle, you have the Nile zone until the convergence of the White Nile with the Blue Nile. That is what Sudan is.

Thomas: That Nile zone running down the middle of the country is in historical terms, really the heart of Sudan. And it itself was split into four zones, one zone at the north known as Lower Nubia, and which is now actually in Egypt. A part of historic Nubia is in Egypt, more or less, where Lake Nasser is, as you said, Aimen.

South of Lower Nubia is Upper Nubia, which runs from the Egyptian border to Khartoum the capital of Sudan, where as you say, where the White and Blue Niles meet.

And then you have what's called the Gezira, the island. This is a more verdant, more green sort of well-watered area between the two Niles as they split and going against stream southward.

And then finally far in the south, the Sudd beyond the White Nile. And that's really now what's South Sudan. A vast wetland, extremely swampy, extremely hot. And for that reason, historically impenetrable.

So, that part of the Sudanese lands, what is now South Sudan emerges into history relatively late because the “civilised peoples” to the north simply could not get there. It was too impassable.

And in terms of the people of Sudan, I mean, we have to speak very broadly here, Aimen. And forgive me, dear listener, if this is offensive racialist language, but in a way, there's a brown race in the north and a black race in the south.

I mean, there's been so much intermarriage between the two over a millennia that the reality is less black and brown. But in general terms, the north of the Sudanese lands is inhabited by a brown race of Arabians, really Arabians/ancient maybe Berber, et cetera. And in the south, a black race.

Aimen: Basically, in Africa, if you actually go to South Sudan, South Sudan has one of the largest concentration of Africans with the darkest tone of skin. And if you go to the north, you will find Africans with the lightest of dark brown skin.

And this is one of the things that fascinated me. It's like I see a Sudanese teacher who's really, really dark in terms of skin, and then I see another Sudanese teacher who is lighter, like brownish, less dark than the other.

And I ask, and they say, “Well, because we are from different regions of Sudan,” and because of the intermingling and the intermarriage between all of these different tribal groups and genetic mixing that happened because of that. It is amazing, and I always find it fascinating.

Thomas: So, the diversity, the ethnic and indeed tribal diversity of the vast area of Sudan is also manifest in an extraordinary linguistic diversity. Sudan is very polyglot. There are 81 languages, native to the whole vast area across three different language families.

So, we're talking incredible diversity. English is to some extent the lingua franca because of the history of British colonialism there, but also mainly Arabic.

And Aimen, you're always telling me that the Arabic of Sudan, which has its own dialect, of course, that the Juba dialect is the main Arabic dialect of Sudan. But you say that the Sudanese speak classical Arabic with great sophistication and elegance.

Aimen: Yes. I mean, the Sudanese people, especially from the north and the east, they speak brilliant Arabic. For example, someone like you Thomas, you are a scholar of Arabic language. And so, if I take-

Thomas: Well, that's very flattering. I wish I could call myself that, but I'm a student of Arabic.

Aimen: No, you are, you are. So, if I bring you into Cairo in order to converse with people in classical Arabic, first, they will struggle to understand you. And you will struggle to understand the colloquial Egyptian, because it is really, really almost a separate language almost.

However, if I take you to the heart of Khartoum, the capital of Sudan today, and you speak in your classical Arabic, I mean, they will understand everything you say, and you will understand mostly everything they say.

Thomas: Well, as I said, dear listener, the historic Sudan is huge. It's now split into two countries, South Sudan and Sudan, with its capital in Khartoum. This episode will focus mainly on that northern part of the historic Sudan.

The southerners will come in at the end, but this episode will focus mainly on Nubia, on the northern part of that Nile strip. Nubia, an ancient place called Kush originally, and then Nubia.

It's as ancient as anywhere. Eventually, they were conquered by the ancient Egyptians. They conquered the ancient Egyptians. They in fact established a dynasty of Pharaohs all of their own, which was eventually pushed back into Nubia by the ancient Assyrians where they established their own kingdom for a long time.

It saw the vicissitudes of history. Persians came, Greeks came, Romans came, the whole shebang. We can't talk about that, Aimen. There's too much. I want to start our historical exploration of Sudan in the fourth century AD in the Christian period, that is to say, when Nubia began to be converted to Christianity. This started in the fourth century and was completed in the sixth century.

Now, in general, I have been a Christian my whole life, and I pride myself on knowing a lot about Christian history. But in researching this episode, Aimen, I was shocked to discover just how deeply Christianized Nubia was, and for how long Nubia was a stalwart member of the fraternity of Christian kingdoms.

I just had no idea. And the story of their conversion is really interesting, I think. So, in the sixth century, the mid sixth century, during the reign of the Emperor Justinian, the famous Byzantine Emperor Justinian, the man who built the Hagia Sophia, which still dominates the Istanbul skyline today, really the most wonderful building in the history of the world, as far as I'm concerned.

The Emperor Justinian, he wanted to convert Nubia famed for its wealth and its sophistication. He wanted to convert Nubia to orthodox Christianity, to bring it under his influence, if not his direct rule. So, he sent missionaries there.

Now, it's a strange and interesting fact about the Emperor Justinian that his dearly beloved wife, the Empress Theodora, was a heretic. She was not Orthodox; she was a Miaphysite. And she got it into her head to convert the Nubians as well.

So, she sent missionaries and to prepare the way for them, she sent a message to the Byzantine Duke of Upper Egypt, ordering him to keep Justinian, her husband's missionaries from proceeding southward.

He did so, and therefore, Theodora's Miaphysite missionaries arrived in Nubia first and successfully converted in the year 543 AD the northernmost Kingdom of Nubia, the kingdom of Nobatia.

Justinian was extremely irritated about this and was determined that the two other Nubian kingdoms would become Orthodox. So, he sent missionaries to them, and he sent out a decree saying all Miaphysite missionaries were to stay in Constantinople. He would not let them leave.

Well, Theodore was too smart for that. She appointed a man, his name was Longinus, a priest, and he disguised himself as a woman. He dressed up as a woman and managed to smuggle himself out of Constantinople undiscovered and make his way to the second Nubian kingdom of Makuria, where he discovered that Justinian missionaries had already converted that kingdom to the Orthodox faith.

So, two kingdoms down, one Miaphysite, one Orthodox, Father Longinus, was not to be stopped. He was forced to take a very dangerous desert road to the third Nubian kingdom of Alodia.

But nomads in the desert assisted him. He reached Alodia and converted its king to the Miaphysite creed. So, two out of three Nubian kingdoms became Miaphysite, not Orthodox.

And when they conspired to conquer the Orthodox one Nubia was firmly in the Miaphysite camp, which is to say that form of Eastern Christianity that still is the faith of the Coptic Church in Egypt, of the Ethiopian church, so that Nubia fell into that strain of Christianity and remained so for a thousand years.

Aimen, can you believe it? For a thousand years, Nubia, Northern Sudan today, was a Christian civilization.

Aimen: Actually, Thomas, yes, it's survived for a thousand years, and I think it's a testament because the Berbers couldn't survive for a hundred years against the onslaught of Muslim armies in Northern Africa.

However, the Christian Kingdom of Nubia resisted for a thousand years against Muslim armies coming from the north, trying to penetrate south. And more or less, I mean, it took them a thousand years until they finally cracked the code that they were able to enter into the land of Sudan and Islamize Sudan and the Nile Valley as we know it.

Thomas: Yes, for much of that thousand years, Nubia was on the defensive against Islamic encroachment. But a few times they went on the offensive. They became the protectors of the Patriarch of Alexandria, the Coptic Patriarch in Alexandria.

And with that title, in their minds, they sometimes rampage down the Nile northward to make sure that the various caliphates were not mistreating the Coptic Christians.

Also, interestingly, Aimen, in that time, Arab gold miners arrived in what is now Sudan, to set up mining works, particularly in the East and the Red Sea Mountains, which was the beginning of a long history of gold mining involving Sudanese and Arabs.

Aimen: Indeed, in fact, this is what I call the Sudanese Red Sea Coast gold rush. Between the ninth century and the 16th century, there were several waves of Arab migration towards Sudan, especially East Sudan, on the Red Sea.

So, this area, which include also parts of Eritrea today from Northern Eritrea, the east of Sudan, all this coast on the Red Sea, all the way to Hurghada in Egypt. All of this was settled by waves of Arab migration, either coming from the Arabia through the Red Sea into East Sudan or coming down from Egypt.

These tribes are actually ancient tribes such as Himyar, Juhaynah, people from Hudhayl, people from even Quraysh. There will be some Umayyads, we'll talk about them later.

So, basically, these waves of migration were driven by one, the constant famines that were striking Arabia at that time. So, basically, they went seeking a better life. Why? Because minerals, so there is gold, silver, copper, also the trade on the Red Sea. So, it was grazing land, game land, arable land, plus all the minerals. Why would anyone just resist the temptation?

Thomas: Yes, Sudan attracted a lot of migration, as you say, from Arabia, also Berber tribes in the west of Sudan, Sub-Saharan African tribal movements. The result of this was that over the mediaeval period, slowly but surely in a process that is still little understood by scholars, because very little historical evidence remains of it, slowly but surely, ancient Nubia declined, economically, declined, culturally declined.

Its cities got smaller, they were emptied, and the glories of the past really were over. It is in this shadowy period, very little unknown, that Islamization began in earnest, which culminated to a certain degree in the early 16th century, when the very first Muslim dynasty, the first Muslim sultanate emerged in Nubia, what had been Nubia.

It's known as the Funj Sultanate. We can't say too much about the Funj Sultanate, it fought a lot with the Egyptians. It fought a lot with the Ethiopians. It wasn't a major power by any stretch of the imagination. But it's ruling dynasty does have an interesting origin story.

Aimen: Yes, the Funj. Oh my God, this is going to ruffle some feathers, nonetheless, their origins come from a group of travellers who were escaping in the ninth century. They were escaping the Abbasid Revolution. So, we talked about it many times-

Thomas: Which we talked about so many times on Conflicted.

Aimen: Exactly. But nonetheless, when the Abbasid chased the last Umayyad caliph, the 14th one into Egypt, and they actually dragged him from a Coptic Orthodox monastery, Thomas, from a monastery where he was giving sanctuary.

So, they dragged him out and beheaded him in front of the monastery, because they say, “Oh, we have to respect the sanctity of the monastery, so we can't kill him inside. We'll kill him outside.” So, a caliph-

Thomas: Well, that makes sense to me.

Aimen: Has to be beheaded not inside the Christian monastery, because they respected the Christian monastery, more than they respected the Muslim caliph, and they are Muslims themselves. Talk about contradictory personality of early Muslims. Anyway.

Thomas: Politics, man.

Aimen: Exactly. So, the remaining of the Umayyad Dynasty that we are with him, they were about 400 in total. They kept running southward, southward, southward until they reached so Suakin on the Red Sea. Today, it's called Sukain on Sudan, Red Sea Coast. And they settled there.

And they were known to be the Umayyads, but because the Abbasids has no reach there, they couldn't reach them, and they flourished there. They became known as those noble Arab tribe, when other Arab tribal migrations came, they relied on them because they are the first to be there.

And slowly, gradually, they gained that momentum in terms of power and influence. And that what led to the establishment of their sultanate in the city of Sennar which is just between the Nile and the Red Sea. And it's called the sultanate of the Funj.

Thomas: The Funj was an interesting state, actually. As you say, it's aristocracy to some extent were the descendants of these Umayyad refugees. But it was also the first time that the people from the south of Sudan, the black Sudanese from what is now South Sudan, emerge into history.

Because at some point, a people from the Sudd from South Sudan conquered mediaeval Nubia, or at least parts of it, nominally converted to Islam and along with these Umayyad descendants established the Funj Sultanate. That's it. That's all we're going to say about the Funj Sultanate.

The Ottomans, they conquered Egypt in 1517 after conquering Egypt, of course, they invaded Nubia. They were crushed by the Funj in a battle in 1585, meaning that the Ottomans never again tried to expand southward from Egypt, giving the Funj free reign to rule in Nubia.

And then for the next few centuries, the Funj were there. They fought a lot with the Ethiopians, their sultanate waxed and waned. It began to decline. And in that decline, the Sudan lay wide open for another attempt at conquest.

And this dear listener, is really where modern history begins for the Sudan. And as in so many other cases in Conflicted modernity arrived in Sudan at the hands of none other than Muhammad Ali Pasha of Egypt.

Aimen: Yes, the Albanian Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt, the autonomous ruler who basically brought modernity into Egypt, and then after that, into Sudan.

Thomas: Yes, Muhammad Ali, we've talked about him so many times. The Viceroy, who reckoned himself a sultan, basically wrestled Egypt away from Istanbul and ruled it as his own personal fiefdom. Though officially subservient to the sultan, not really subservient to him.

He rose in Egypt after the Napoleonic period there. And after Napoleon ran away with his tail between his legs, Muhammad Ali, who had been sent by the sultan to fight Napoleon rose to supreme power in Cairo.

Now, Muhammad Ali, as we've said many times, was determined to modernise Egypt, especially its military. But he had a problem, manpower, and for that reason, he needed slaves.

And this is a true fact in the modern history of Sudan. In 1820, a Turco-Egyptian force sent to Nubia by Muhammad Ali was there seeking slaves. Muhammad Ali sent an invasion force of 10,000 men to conquer Sudan.

And he said, in 1823, during the course of this four-year conquest of what is now Northern Sudan, he wrote to his commanders saying, “You are aware that the end of all of our effort and this expense is to procure negroes. Please show zeal in carrying out our wishes in this important matter.”

So, it has to be admitted that Sudan enters modern history on the back of Egyptians looking for slaves.

Aimen: Yes, everyone was looking for slaves at the time. It was 1820. So, the height of the slave trade all over Africa, whether it's in the west of Africa, towards the new world, or the East of Africa, towards the old world, really, the story never changed for thousands of years

Thomas: After its four-year conquest, Muhammad Ali found himself with an empire the size of Western Europe. I mean, his troops successfully conquered Sudan, the Nile Valley, if you like, all the way to the Sudd. And he had a vast land now under his rule.

And it was that that allowed him in 1831 to declare independence from Istanbul to launch his invasion of the Levant. If you remember dear listener, he conquered Syria. He conquered Lebanon. He threatened to conquer Istanbul itself before he was stopped.

And when he was stopped, pushed back into Egypt, he and his successors, who were known as the Khedives of Egypt, they turned their attention in earnest to building up their African empire. They thought, “Well, if we can't have a Levantine, an Anatolian empire, we will have an African empire,” and their power spread.

Aimen: And this is where the modern capital of Sudan comes in, Thomas, because it was the armies of Muhammad Ali Pasha that established the modern city of Khartoum. Khartoum which sits on the confluence of the Blue Nile and the White Nile.

When these two come together, forming that little inner delta, this is when you see Khartoum a city next to Umm Durman. And this city basically was really a centre for military and political administration of the Sudan. In other words, the second capital of the kingdom of Egypt, but also an important slave trading market.

Thomas: Yes, Egypt, which only exercised semi control, really, of the area because they worked alongside a patchwork of local sultanates, tribal networks, and so on because this is how politics was carried on.

So, Egyptian power is expanding to absorb long, established centres of the slave trade. It's also establishing more slaving posts, especially in what is now South Sudan, because thanks to modern technology for the first time, armies from the north were able to penetrate into the Sudd, what is now South Sudan.

And slavery is becoming the backbone of Egypt's Sudanese empire. And this was a big problem. Egypt's establishment of essentially a slave empire in the Sudan was going to bring it into conflict with another very powerful player.

Aimen: Yeah, the British. I mean, because the British already abolished slavery throughout the empire in 1839. And as you know, Thomas, between 1861 and 1865, there was the American Civil War, and it ended with the abolishment of slavery by the Americans.

So, really, the great European powers and Western powers, the Americans, the British, the French, everyone abolished slavery almost by that time. That would inevitably lead to clash between the British and the Egyptians, especially with the fact that they are going to dig the canal, and they don't want to use actual slaves in digging the canal.

They will use just proverbial slaves, Egyptian farmers who were forced into labour. So, they use forced labour, but not slave. The British sensibility refused to use actual slaves, just semi-slaves.

Thomas: This put Muhammad Ali's grandson Isma’il, who was the Khedive of Egypt from 1863. It put him in a difficult spot. I mean, he was extremely westernised. He'd received a French education. He absolutely idolised European culture and was for that reason, desperate to make Egypt a European class power.

But in terms of his empire's Sudanese provinces, he had two big problems. First, of course, Sudan is profoundly underdeveloped, but also, as you've said, slavery is increasingly seen as immoral and barbaric by the Europeans whom Isma’il sought to win over.

So, on that first problem, he decided to develop as much as he could. And he did develop Sudan. The Egyptians developed Sudan; they built telegraph lines. They expanded the Nile, made it more navigable.

Steamers began to go up and down the Nile. They started a railway connecting the north of Sudan to Egypt. All sorts of development did go on.

Aimen: Indeed, and that development was important for what would come next. So, this is why, the development of Northern Sudan really cemented Egyptian authority there, but at the same time, that would pave the way for another power to cement also its authority there.

Thomas: And that power was waiting in the wings. Isma’il decided to bow to British pressure and to suppress the slave trade in Sudan. But this really got the backs up of the local slaver merchant kings of Sudan, who still largely operated outside state control because Egyptian administration in the Sudan was quite light and loose.

So, Isma’il, in order to suppress slavery in his empire and to crush the autonomy of these merchant princes, he began to appoint Europeans to positions of administration in the Sudanese provinces.

I mean, it's such an interesting window into a pre nationalist world, Aimen, when an Albanian dynasty ruling in Cairo over Egyptians and Arabs, and Sudanese was inviting in Swiss, Germans, Austrian to administer the Sudan, as well as Englishmen.

Englishmen like the famous general Charles “Chinese” Gordon, famous Charles Gordon, an English adventurer soldier, really extremely puritanical, very Christian who Isma’il appointed governor general of the sedan in 1877.

And he worked extremely energetically, if quite erratically and even mono maniacally to stamp out slavery in the Sudan.

Aimen: But as you know, Thomas, in the Middle East, in the late 19th century, any attempt at modernization will be met by resistance, and especially from the religious and military classes. And this is why there was a revolt against the Khedive Isma’il. Although in Arabic we say Khedewi Isma’il.

Thomas: Yes, Isma’il having pissed off a lot of Egyptians with his Westernization, having racked up huge debts, especially to the British and the French, giving the British ever greater leverage over the Egyptian state. This has antagonised the Egyptian army to the extent that fed up, they revolt.

And in the midst of that chaos, the British orchestrate a move against the Khedive Isma’il. They depose him, they replace him with his son, Muhammed Tewfik, whom they feel they can control better. And no longer able to rely on Isma’il's support, General Gordon, who was running the Sudan for him resigns.

All of this means that Egyptian power in the Sudan weakens. And this opened up a power vacuum in Sudan. Sudanese aristocrats, tribal leaders, merchants were already irritated by the Khedive’s attempts to stamp out slavery, but also to impose on them, these European administrators.

They were jealous of their independence, jealous of their traditional ways. And all that was needed for the Sudan to revolt against Egypt in force and proclaim its independence, was for a charismatic leader to arise.

Aimen: Indeed.

Thomas: And when we get back from the break, Aimen, we will introduce the dear listener to the charismatic leader who did revolt against Egypt. And of course, I mean the Mahdi.

Aimen: You mean, Paul Muad'Dib Atreides, Duke of Arrakis. Yeah, yeah.

Thomas: We'll be right back.

[Music Playing]

Mahdi, who since he arose, never betrayed or deceived, who guided the blind and codified religious knowledge, who penetrated into the inmost secrets of the divine presence, who every day is revealed in the colour of a new light, who strives not after created things, but after the creator.

Aimen, that is the translation of a poem by the poet Ahmed Saad, celebrating a man who rose in the late 19th century to become world famous. And I mean the revolutionary Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad.

The Mahdi of Sudan, Aimen, it's really when Mahdism arrives in force in the world, as we talked about in our series on Algeria in season three, there was a bit of a Mahdist quality to the resistance there against French colonial conquest.

But when Muhammad Ahmad, the Sudanese Mahdi, arises, the whole world is forced to sit up and pay attention to this powerful religious revolutionary idea of the Mahdi.

Aimen: Yes, Mohammed Ahmad known to the history as the Mahdi. Well, he was born in 1844, so right during the time of the conquest by Egyptian forces and the administration of the Europeans of Sudan at the time.

And it's understood that his grandfather Hajj Sharif bin Ali was one of the most bias people and scholarly in Islamic tradition. And were introduced into something called a Sammaniya, Sammaniya is a Sufi sect that is in Sudan at that time.

So, we already know that he's from a, I would say, learned family. He was born in 1844 in the city of Dongola which is north of Khartoum today.

Thomas: A very ancient Nubian city, Dongola, in the capital of one of those ancient Nubian kingdoms.

Aimen: Indeed. So, you can see the link here already. And from a young age, memorized the Qur’an, studied the Hadith, joined the Sufi tariqa. He really started to show promise from a young age.

And of course, he was always known as thirsty, all knowledge, but also argumentative. And someone who would sometimes disagree with his teachers, he will feel basically that, “Yeah, I know more than you do,” kind of rebellious streak.

But this is the moment, basically, which is around the 1871, 1872. This is the moment when he met an important individual also, in the history of this movement and the history of Sudan, he met a man called Abdullah al-Taaishi.

So, Abdullah al-Taaishi, when he met him in the shrine of the Sufi tariqa called — when they met at the shrine, he looked at him and he said to him, “I know who you are. I’ve seen you in my dreams. You are the Mahdi.”

And he spent hours telling him, “I've seen it in my dreams. You are the Mahdi. My visions are never wrong. I've seen it, and I will be your first disciple and your successor.”

That's what Abdullah al-Taaishi said to this man, Muhammad Ahmad, who was a young man at the time. And thinking, “Really? Am I the Mahdi?” And he started teaching him the philosophy of Ibn Arabi.

So, I don't know why Ibn Arabi is always there when it comes to these philosopher kings, as well as the philosophy of Ahmad ibn Idris and the Sufi tariqas until basically he really convinced him and put him in the strands that you are the Mahdi.

So, he started writing to the tribes, to the imams, to the leaders of civic communities, that he is the Mahdi, and he has received, that's what he says in his letters, that he has received divine commands to fight against the foreign invaders and the Christians who are desecrating Islamic traditions in Sudan.

And this is when he started to gather around him the movement. You see, Abdullah al-Taaishi, his minister, the first disciple was a brilliant administrator, a propagandist who was able to quickly gather an army around him.

And this is how the Mahdism started to gain traction. And our listeners will link this to what happened in the movie Dune, when you see in Frank Herbert's novels, how false messiahs can rise among primitive people who are basically isolated from the rest of society and do not yet understand the ways of the world.

Thomas: Yes. Having built up really behind the scenes, this network of followers, Muhammad Ahmad, the Mahdi in 1881, so he's about 37-years-old, he sends a letter to all the notables of Sudan, all of whom nominally answer to Egyptian power.

He sends them a letter informing them that he is the Mahdi and calling on them to submit to his rule and to throw off the Egyptian yoke.

This letter was obviously very provocative to the Egyptians. And so, the new governor general of the Sudan, the man who replaced General Gordon, an Egyptian officer called Muhammad Rauf, he sends some troops to arrest Muhammad Ahmad from his home on Aba Island, an island in the White Nile, south of Khartoum.

The Egyptian troops arrive, but the Mahdi’s followers beat them back, and they flee. And this encourages the Sudanese even more to back the Mahdi. And his movement begins to spread.

And over the next few years, the movement spreads and spreads and spreads as the Egyptians try and fail, try and fail to stop the Mahdi and his troops.

Now, before we continue with the history itself, I think we need to make it clear because we're laying the foundations here for the modern history of Sudan for the 20th and 21st Century history of Sudan. And though the Mahdi movement was certainly a religious movement, and the Mahdi himself certainly had theocratic Sunni aspirations.

And part of the indications of all of this is that he called his followers the Ansar, the followers, which is exactly the name that not only was given to the followers of the Prophet Muhammad. But if you remember, dear listener, was given to the followers of Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb. So, history is repeating itself here.

And so, the Mahdi and his Chief Lieutenant Abdullah Al-Taaishi, they like Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, were able to invoke religious categories and harness religious enthusiasm to create a new state.

And some of his followers absolutely believed in him. They absolutely agreed with him that the Egyptian administration was evil, that it was unjust because it didn't conform to Sharia law because it imposed Christian overseers on them. That's a familiar dynamic.

But also, many of his followers were opportunistic Arab tribesmen who had participated in the Egyptian expansion to the South, and whose livelihoods were based on the slave trade.

And so, they were very annoyed at the recent attempts to suppress that trade. And of course, that overlapped with the clarion call to the Sharia law, because Islam, after all allows slavery.

And so, they thought, “Well, we're defending our religion,” but really, they were defending their business.

And finally, there was a third group of followers, nomads, largely from the west of Sudan, who simply wanted freedom. They didn't like this new modern state being imposed on them from the north, and they wanted their traditional freedom to be reestablished. So, these three groups coalesced around the Mahdi and his movement spread.

Aimen: Indeed. I like what you said, Thomas, about the comparison with the Salafi Wahhabi movement. It's like a history repeating itself, but there is a distinct difference here.

While the Wahhabi movement where against superstition, the Mahdism in Sudan doubled down on superstition, and in fact, it went so far. For example, the Mahdi himself claimed to be meeting the Prophet Muhammad in real life, not even in the dreams.

Thomas: Well, he was a real mystic then, in his own mind, at least.

Aimen: Indeed. He was really high on his own supply. Let's put it this way. He was really always talking about, “That's it. No more dancing, no more music.” Even he prohibited the smoking, coffee. He was a good Mormon, let's put it this way. So, this is what I would say-

Thomas: But it didn't seem to turn off his followers. His followers grew and grew. They liked him.

Aimen: Exactly. So, this is, I think, where there is a mix between desert Wahhabism and Mormonism, that there is a new prophet somehow here, there is a proto prophet because he claims to be receiving divine commands. And that he meets the Prophet Muhammad in real life, not even in the dreams.

And he is coming up with all of these really outlandish claims that are really considered by the mainstream Muslims to be blasphemous. That is why it is a mix of Wahhabism and Mormonism.

And then when you put them together, oh my God, basically you have a killer mix, man. And as soon as they coalesced around him, all of these tribes and groups and freedom fighters and nomads, he created an unstoppable force.

Thomas: It certainly seemed to be an unstoppable force. And as far as the Egyptians were concerned, something had to be done.

Now, in the meantime, Britain had occupied Egypt. They'd put down that military revolt and were more or less directly governing Egypt. Although it was a very awkward sort of arrangement with the Egyptian government, which is too complicated to describe here.

Now, the Egyptians themselves really were concerned about losing their Sudanese possessions, and they wanted them back. But the British found themselves in a tricky spot.

The prime minister at the time, William Gladstone, a liberal, he sympathised completely with the Sudanese rebels. He was actually rather anti-imperialist Gladstone, very strange position to find himself in the Prime Minister of Britain at really the height of its power to some extent.

But he didn't like the idea that Britain had an empire, and he sympathised with the Sudanese rebels, who in his mind, he heard them calling to be independent.

So, instead of relying on the British army to restore order in Sudan, the Khedive was forced to raise his own expeditionary force of Egyptians. The British wanted nothing to do with the Khedive’s desire to get Sudan back.

This expeditionary force marched into the Sudan, specifically into Kordofan, a part of Sudan quite sort of a desert step west of the Nile. But this force of Egyptians had low morale. The desert conditions were extremely wearying, and the troops began to whisper among themselves that the Mahdi's followers were on the side of God.

The mystical messaging of the Mahdi was spreading even amongst Egyptians. And when they finally met the Mahdi’s followers in battle, the Egyptian force was completely wiped out.

And at this point, the whole of the Sudan swung to the Mahdi. Darfur fell, and then in the South, Bahr el Ghazal in the South fell. And then all the hinterlands along the Red Sea coast, all the way up almost to the coast itself fell to the Mahdi.

And Al-Dawla al-Mahdiyah was founded, the Mahdist State. It had expanded to cover most of the modern Sudan with some Egyptian garrison towns holding out, but under siege.

And at this point, Aimen, most versions of this story focus on the return of General Gordon to Sudan, the English general who had ruled there as Governor General.

Aimen: Indeed.

Thomas: And the famous 313-day Siege of Khartoum. At the end of which on the 26th of January 1885, the Mahdi's forces breakthrough Gordon's defences, take the city and put him to the sword.

The story of General Gordon and the Siege of Khartoum absolutely transfixed, Victorian newspaper readers and General Gordon became a hero of the British Empire. And many people in Britain and across the empire were crying out for revenge.

But that story has been told a thousand times. And so, Aimen, for the rest of this episode, I think we need to discuss instead of that Victorian fairytale really, discuss the effect which the Mahdist State, which would last another 13 years, all the way up to 1898, the effect which the Mahdist State had on Sudan, firstly, and then on the Muslim world.

Aimen: Well, before we talk about the legacy of the Mahdist State, we have to talk about what happened to the Mahdi. Well, whether he was a Mahdi or not, he was a mere mortal. He died of typhoid in June of 1885, 139 years ago, almost exactly.

And the reality is that he died in the city that he hastily established city called Umm Durman, just across the water from Khartoum, because he felt that Khartoum was corrupt, was so worldly, was so materialistic.

So, he wanted to establish that utopian city of the pious of the mystics, Umm Durman. And his shrine is still there to this day, Umm Durman being revered by many people in Sudan, because even though his state will last only 13, 14 years after his death, his legacy will last until today.

Because there is a new Sufi tariqa, a new Sufi school called Al-Mahdiya in Sudan, where he's still being revered by some.

Thomas: Wow, that's amazing. I didn't know that. I mean, I know that the Mahdi and his family continued to play a role even in Sudanese politics, as we'll find out in the next episode.

But that's right. He died very shortly after the Siege of Khartoum and was succeeded, Aimen, by his right-hand man who would style himself now, khalifat almahdi, the successor to the Mahdi or indeed the caliph.

Aimen: And so, we go back to Abdullah al-Taaishi, the man who really inserted into the mind of Muhammad Ahmad that he is the Mahdi. Just two decades ago he persuaded him that he's the Mahdi, and then that he will be his successor.

So, he engineered all of this, and then he got his reward in June of 1885, when the Mahdi died of typhoid at a young age. Then Abdullah al-Taaishi, his successor called himself khalifat almahdi, which means the successor of the Mahdi.

So, this is where when some people try to call it a caliphate, it's not really a caliphate, it's a pseudo caliphate, because all the previous caliphs in Islam were successes of the Prophet Muhammad and those who came before them.

However, in this case, he is a successor, not the Prophet Muhammad, but to the Mahdi, because the Mahdi has fulfilled his mission on earth. He established the Mahdist state, and now it is up to the righteous of his followers to expand. Similar to how the story of the Prophet Muhammad really happened.

Arabia united, that's the mission now, the rest of the world is next. And that is what the caliphs of the Prophet Muhammad did. That's what he believed his role to be. And Abdullah al-Taaishi was more or less a brilliant administrator, a propagandist, a charmer, charismatic, and someone who would enchant and charm everyone who would he meet.

Thomas: Yeah. There was a real eschatological dimension to the Mahdi State, especially at the beginning. The successor of the Mahdi, the khalifat almahdi, Abdullah, his personal tribal levy was known as … this will make you laugh, Aimen. Known as the black flag, the famous black flag.

And as soon as he succeeded to power facing a lot of internal rivals, he decided the best course of action was to keep the jihad going. It's often good for a leader to declare war, keeps people occupied, and it was a Holy War.

He sent letters to the Khedive in Egypt, to the Ottoman Sultan and indeed to Queen Victoria, inviting them all to submit to the Mahdist State. He invaded Ethiopia. He actually invaded Egypt, trying to expand the state, but was stopped by Egyptian forces.

So, definitely Aimen, an Islamic revivalist movement, millenarian, eschatological Mahdist, like so many that we've met on Conflicted.

But it was also very much an independence movement and a movement of national liberation also in a modern mode. And, you know, the Khalifa, if you like, he built a proper state.

He minted his own coins, which is always an important symbolic act. He declared Sharia, the law of the land, but he exercised a lot of direct legislative and executive power. He's building up a Sudanese state in the modern era for the first time, and that will have long lasting consequences.

Aimen: Indeed, I would say Abdullah al-Taaishi was the first leader of a properly unified Sudan as we know it today. The Sudan, as we know it today, actually is the legacy of the Mahdi and his successor Abdullah al-Taaishi, because in their state might have lasted only 15 years, but in these 15 years, the modern borders of Sudan were shaped.

Thomas: The modern borders of Sudan to some extent, yes. The modern administration of Sudan to some extent, but also modern political dynamics began to appear because though he did build up this new state and was relatively successful for a good decade or so to maintain its independence, Abdullah, the Khalifa, he did struggle to maintain cohesion.

The Mahdist State did undergo some fragmentation along tribal, regional, and even religious lines. Other Sudanese were calling themselves the Mahdi at the time, Sudanese among the tribal leaders, I mean, who still wished to maintain their own independence.

They did not want to be part of this new Mahdist State. They wanted to be free. Darfur was a big problem. I mean, Darfur will of course come up in episodes to come when we talk about the more recent events in Sudan.

But it had been its own sultanate, the Sultanate of Darfur, or the Sultanate of Fur for centuries until the mid-19th century. And it was really pushing against the Khalifa's attempts to integrate it into his new state.

And as a result of this, a kind of culture in Sudan, a political culture of rivalry among military men was already emerging. And Aimen, I think we can say that in general, Sudan has always been characterised by that kind of rivalry.

Whoever's in control is always having to face off against other local, regional, tribal, whatever centres of military power.

Aimen: Yes. And that's exactly the legacy. The other legacy of the Mahdism is the military commanders of the Mahdi army people like Mohamed Al Tayeb, Sharif Ahmad, Abdul Qadir Imam with habuba.

All of these were in fact, generals within the Mahdi tradition who fought against each other for control and Abdullah al-Taaishi as the caliph, his job was to basically arbitrate between all of these factions.

The factionalization of the Mahdist army was I think, one of the reasons for its weakening. And yet, and yet Thomas, despite all of this, when the British returned, they all got together and united.

Thomas: They did indeed, they did unite to defend the Mahdist state, but sadly, it was the wrong time for Sudan to have created an independent state of its own, because the scramble for Africa was on.

The Anglo-Egyptian reconquest of Sudan, a military campaign of some ferocious brutality, it must be said, which lasted for three years between 1896 and 1899 was part of the wider scramble for Africa, which was heating up at that time.

Technological developments were making military adventures, and I mean by European colonial powers, military adventures in the African interior, more feasible. So, not only the British, the Belgian Congo was expanding towards the Mahdi State. The French were expanding towards the state from the west.

And the Italians who had established themselves in Eritrea were expanding towards the Mahdi State. So, Sudan, which for so many centuries, millennia even, had struggled to maintain its independence, was once again struggling to maintain its independence this time in the face of European colonial expansion.

And though actually in this expansion, even though the British Empire is seen these days as the big bad empire, number one, the prime minister at the time, Lord Salisbury, was not so keen on expansion.

And he decided that he needed to reconquer Sudan for Egypt only after the Italians who were trying to conquer the Mahdi State themselves lost a battle with the Mahdist troops, because Britain feared that if Italy lost its African possessions, then a delicate balance of power in Europe would be upset which would empower France.

European colonial politics is very complicated. But basically, Lord Salisbury realised that in order to protect the balance of power in Europe, he would need to conquer the Sudan.

And indeed, he did. He sent the famous Lord Kitchener into Sudan. And this time he had British troops with him. And what did they have with them?

Aimen: General Kitchener this time decided that he will bring with him the creme, the best of the British military inventions, the maxim gun, to make sure, basically, that he is not just only going to overwhelm the opposition, he's going to slaughter them. He really brought nothing but a gun to a knife fight.

And it's exactly what happened. So, there was of course, the Battle of Kariari, as the Mahdist basically call it, but it's the Battle of Omdurman as a British remember it. And the Mahdist brought together 60,000, 60,000 men.

So, they all united in order to confront Lord Kitchener and his army of 6,000 British troops who were fully armed with the latest rifles, with the latest machine guns. And what they didn't know, the Mahdis, they didn't know that they have also auxiliary Egyptian troops with them.

And on top of this, they brought down to the Nile, down the Nile, they brought what, gunships. They brought actually these gunships that can navigate the Nile. And they started bombarding them from the Nile, and they started bombarding them from land.

And the battle lasted two and a half hours. In two and a half hours, in these 150 minutes, 18,000 of the Mahdis supporters were gunned down and killed. 18,000, one third, almost of the entire Mahdi army were killed. And in addition, 30,000 wounded. That's 48,000 out of 60. So, only 12,000 survived.

Thomas: But you know how many Anglo-Egyptian soldiers died, Aimen? 49.

Aimen: Indeed, very few. In comparison.

Thomas: 49 British losses to upwards of including the wounded 25,000 Mahdist troops. The Battle of Omdurman is really a kind of icon of the confrontation between a modern mechanised west and a more or less traditional Marshall, knightly Islam.

It certainly was remembered that way throughout history, even in the British Empire, the Mahdist soldiers gunned down by Lord Kitchener's maxim guns were remembered with honour, because the British realised that a turning point had been reached as they watched wave after wave of valiant horse riding, soldier being just absolutely slaughtered by these modern guns.

They realised the modern world having arrived in force was truly unstoppable.

Aimen: Yeah. And never the same again. And of course, this defeat broken the Mahdist movement. Not entirely though, it survived another year in Kordofan. But nonetheless, Abdullah al-Taaishi who escaped from Omdurman battle to Kordofan, was still chased by the armies of Lord Kitchener, his General Reginald Wingate, as he was known, chased Abdullah al-Taaishi into Kordofan.

And the last battle between the remnants of the Mahdi, 10,000 thronged against 8,000 British and Egyptian troops, thousand dead, 3000 captured from the Mahdis side, and only three dead among the British.

That shows that the superiority of modern warfare among the thousand dead in that battle, which known as the Battle of Umm Diwaykarat, was the Khalifa himself, Abdullah al-Taaishi, by his death, the Mahdist State, a 15-year-old state came to an end.

It came to an end as a state, but it never died in terms of its legacy. And in terms of its influence on modern Sudan all the way until now.

Thomas: So, in 1899, the British conquered Sudan incorporating it into its empire. It was officially governed as part of a very weird condominium agreement, as it's called, between the UK and Egypt, which allowed the Egyptians to seem like they were governing Sudan.

But in fact, the UK had effective control and more or less governed it directly. And for a good 50 years or more, Sudan was part of the British world. And that's where we're going to leave the Sudan today.

In two weeks’ time, we'll be back to take you through 20th century Sudan, which witnessed the rise of modern Islamism and features a cast of fascinating characters, including Hassan al-Turabi, Omar al-Bashir and of course, Aimen, your old buddy, Osama bin Laden.

[Music Playing]

Aimen: Indeed.

Thomas: And remember, dear listeners, if you want Conflicted every single week, then you'll have to become a dearest listener by signing up to the Conflicted Community for bonus episodes, access to our chat room and lots more besides. You can, as always, find out how to join through the link in our show notes. We'll see you next time.

Conflicted is a Message Heard production. This episode was produced and edited by Harry Stott. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley and Tom Biddle.