Muhammad Ahmad was a Nubian Sufi religious leader of the Samaniyya order in Sudan who, as a youth, studied Sunni Islam.
22 Facts About Muhammad Ahmad
2.
Muhammad Ahmad created a vast Islamic state extending from the Red Sea to Central Africa, and founded a movement that remained influential in Sudan a century later.
3.
Muhammad Ahmad was born on 12 August 1844 at Aba Island, on the White Nile, south of Khartoum.
4.
When Muhammad Ahmad was still a child, the family moved to the town of Karari, north of Omdurman.
5.
Muhammad Ahmad studied first under Sheikh al-Amin al-Suwaylih in the Gezira region south of Khartoum, and subsequently under Sheikh Muhammad al-Dikayr 'Abdallah Khujali near the town of Berber in northern Sudan.
6.
Muhammad Ahmad stayed with Sheikh Muhammad Sharif for seven years, during which time he was recognized for his piety and asceticism.
7.
Muhammad Ahmad was permitted to give tariqa and Uhud to new followers.
8.
Muhammad Ahmad soon gained a notable reputation among the local population as an excellent speaker and mystic.
9.
The broad thrust of his teaching followed that of other reformers: his Islam was one devoted to the words of Muhammad Ahmad and based on a return to the virtues of strict devotion, prayer, and simplicity as laid down in the Qur'an.
10.
In 1872, Muhammad Ahmad invited Sheikh Sharif to move to al-Aradayb, an area on the White Nile neighboring Aba Island.
11.
Muhammad Ahmad resumed his life of piety and religious devotion at Aba Island.
12.
Around this time, Muhammad Ahmad first met Abdallahi bin Muhammad al-Ta'aishi, who was to become his chief deputy and successor in the years to come.
13.
On 29 June 1881, Muhammad Ahmad claimed to be the Mahdiyya so as to prepare the way for the second coming of Jesus.
14.
The hadra is chaired by Muhammad Ahmad, known as Sayyid al-Wujud, and at his side are the seven Qutb, the most senior of whom is known as Ghawth az-Zaman.
15.
Muhammad Ahmad framed the Mahdiyya as a return to the early days of Islam, when the Muslim community, or Ummah, was unified under the guidance of Muhammad and his immediate successors.
16.
Later, in order to distinguish his followers from adherents of other Sufi sects, the Mahdi forbade the use of the word darwish to describe his followers, replacing it with the title Ansar, the term which Muhammad Ahmad used for the people of Medina who welcomed him and his followers after their flight from Mecca.
17.
Muhammad Ahmad suggested that his old enemy Al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur, a fine military commander, be given tacit control of the Sudan in order to provide a counter to the Ansar.
18.
Muhammad Ahmad was already deployed in Egypt due to the attempted coup there earlier, and organized a large force of infantry, but advanced at an extremely slow rate.
19.
Six months after the capture of Khartoum, Muhammad Ahmad died of typhus.
20.
Muhammad Ahmad was buried in Omdurman near the ruins of Khartoum.
21.
Muhammed Muhammad Ahmad's son, Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi, born after his father's death, whom the British considered important as a popular leader of the Mahdists, became a leader of the neo-Mahdist movement in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.
22.
In modern-day Sudan, Muhammad Ahmad is sometimes considered to be a precursor of Sudanese nationalism.