In 1881, Muhammad Ahmad bin ‘Abdallah, a Sudanese Sufi shaykh of the Sammaniya order and the son of a boat builder who claimed descent from Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, proclaimed that he was the Mahdi. In Sunni Islam, al-Mahdi al-Muntazar – a messianic figure who will come at the end of the world to … Continue reading The Rise of the Mahdist State in the Sudan