Muhammad Ahmad - Advance of The Rebellion

Advance of The Rebellion

After consulting the Ulema, Egyptian authorities attempted to arrest him for spreading false doctrine. A military expedition was sent to reassert the government's authority on Aba Island, but the government's forces were ambushed and nearly annihilated by the Mahdi's followers.

Muhammad Ahmed retaliated by declaring jihad, an act which was highly criticized as unjust by the then scholars of Islam:

I am the Mahdi, the Successor of the Prophet of God. Cease to pay taxes to the infidel Turks and let everyone who finds a Turk kill him, for the Turks are infidels

Unlike other Muslim reformers, the Mahdi did not advocate the application of ijtihad but "claimed to receive direct inspiration from God", so that his own proclamations superseded traditional jurisprudence. This, however, did not usurp the prophet Muhammad's position as seal of the Prophets, because the Prophet was — in some way — the intermediary of his revelations.

Information came from the Apostle of God that the angel of inspiration is with me from God to direct me and He has appointed him. So from this prophetic information I learnt that that with which God inspires me by means of the angel of inspiration, the Apostle of God would do, were he present.

The Mahdi and a party of his followers, the Ansār "Helpers" (known in the West as "the Dervishes"), made a long march to Kurdufan. There he gained a large number of recruits, especially from the Baqqara, and notable leaders such as Sheikh Madibbo ibn Ali of Rizeigat and Abdallahi ibn Muhammad of Ta'aisha tribes. They were also joined by the Hadendoa Beja, who were rallied to the Mahdi by an Ansār captain in east of Sudan in 1883, Osman Digna.

Although the Mahdist revolution started in June 1881 in Northern Sudan and was backed by western Sudan but it found a great support from the Nuer, Shilluk and Anuak tribes from southern Sudan in addition to the tribes of Bahr Alghazal, a thing which affirmed that the Mahdist revolution was a national revolution and not a regional one.

The Khatmiyya sufi order which had enjoyed popular support in east and north Sudan rejected the Mahdi's claim outright. Mahdist forces attacked the Khatmiyya adherents and even ransacked the tomb of sayyid Al-Hassan grandson of the revered religious leader Mohammed Uthman al-Mirghani al-Khatim in Kassala. The head of the Khatmiyya sufi order was forced into exile in Egypt for fear of assassination.

Late in 1883, the Ansār, armed only with spears and swords, overwhelmed a 4,000-man Egyptian force not far from Al Ubayyid ("El Obeid"), and seized their rifles and ammunition. The Mahdi followed up this victory by laying siege to al-Ubayyid and starving it into submission after four months. The town remained the headquarters of the Ansar for much of the decade.

The Ansār, now 40,000 strong, then defeated an 8,000-man Egyptian relief force led by British officer William Hicks at Sheikan, in the battle of El Obeid. The defeat of Hicks sealed the fate of Darfur, which until then had been effectively defended by Rudolf Carl von Slatin. Jabal Qadir in the south was also taken. The western half of Sudan was now firmly in Ansārī hands.

Their success emboldened the Hadendoa, who under the generalship of Osman Digna wiped out a smaller force of Egyptians under the command of Colonel Valentine Baker near the Red Sea port of Suakin. Major-General Gerald Graham was sent with a force of 4,000 British soldiers and defeated Digna at El Teb on February 29, but were themselves hard-hit two weeks later at Tamai. Graham eventually withdrew his forces.