ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Through a Glass Darkly Supplement 1 The second-most successful Sunni Mahdist movement is one much more recent in time, that of Muhammad Ahmad b. `Abd Allah (d. 1885), the Sudanese Mahdi.

A Sufi and-like Ibn Tumart-a pious, ascetic Muslim, Muhammad Ahmad became convinced, through dreams and visions, that God wanted him, as Mahdi, to overthrow the corrupt Turco-Egyptian Ottoman regime ruling Sudan and, indeed, to unite the whole Islamic world under his Mahdiyah. After an initial period of secretly informing certain key followers that he was the Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad went public and claimed the title, whereupon the Ottoman governor sent troops to capture or kill him.

The Sudanese Mahdi took his supporters on a hirjah to far southwestern Sudan, whence he build up the movement and sent da`is to other parts of Ottoman Sudan. Returning to attack territory ruled by the Ottoman regime, Muhammad Ahmad and his growing throng of Mahdists eventually took Khartoum in January 1885, killing and beheading the British general, Charles Gordon, whom the Sultan had put in charge.

(Interestingly, however, the Mahdi wrote Gordon a letter first, giving him the choice of converting and joining him.) Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi died six months later, probably of typhoid or malaria, but his followers-led by his primary caliph, `Abd Allah-would rule Sudan for the next 13 years, until British forces invaded in 1898. The administration and foreign policy of the Sudanese Mahdist state is much more known to us than that of the Muwahhids, not least because of a greater source base.

Unlike Ibn Tumart, Muhammad Ahmad lived long enough to actually take power and begin handing down fatwas. He dissolved (or at least tried to dissolve) the madhahib, making his Mahdist madhhab preeminent. His Mahdist ijtihad was based on Qur'an, Sunnah, Hadith and his own ilham, or "direct inspiration" from God. Fatwas thus were "final, irrevocable and infallible" and unappealable, since there was no higher legal authority.

And in fact death was mandated for apostasy-which was defined as falling away from belief in him as Mahdi. While his legal reforms did, to some measure, improve the status of women-particularly in inheritance matters--under the Sudanese understanding of Islamic law previously regnant, he was almost Taliban-esque in mandating that women wear hijab at all times and avoid the bazaars and main roads.