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The Mahdi of Sudan

Compiled By: Syed Ali Shahbaz
On June 29, 1881 AD, Mohammad Ahmad, the leader of the Samaniyya Sufi Order of Sudan, wrongly declared himself to be the Mahdi, during a period of widespread resentment among the Sudanese people because of the oppressive policies of the Turko-Egyptian rulers. The Mahdiyya, as his movement was called, was influenced by earlier messianic trends in West Africa in reaction to the growing military and economic dominance of European powers.
Until his sudden death at the age of 40 years on 22nd June 1885, nearly six months after his capture of Khartoum, he led a successful military campaign against the British-commanded Turko-Egyptian government of the Sudan. He traced his descent to a family of descendants of the Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) through the line of his elder grandson, Imam Hasan al-Mojtaba (AS). Mohammed Ahmad's posthumous son, Abdur-Rahman al-Mahdi, became leader of the neo-Mahdist movement in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and later the Ummah Party, which was supported by the crafty British, who however, foiled his ambition to become King of Sudan when the country gained independence 1956.
In modern-day Sudan, Mohammad Ahmad is sometimes seen as a precursor of Sudanese nationalism. The present leader of the Ummah Party, former Sudanese prime minister, Sadeq al-Mahdi, is his great great-grandson as well as the self-styled Imam of the religious order, Ansar.

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