Introduction to Mahdist Military Organisation
Introduction to Mahdist Military Organisation
In June, 1881, a Sufi shaykh, or holyman, named Muḥammad Aḥmad residing on a small island in the White Nile publicly proclaimed himself to be the Mahdī, the redeemer of Islam. An act which drew the ire of the incumbent Turco-Egyptian regime. The government authorities attempted and failed to summon Muḥammad Aḥmad to the capital, Khartoum, whereupon it was decided to send a military expedition to arrest him. The Mahdī, however, had anticipated this [1].
Exhibit in the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Display_of_unidentified_contents_-_Royal_Museum_for_Central_Africa_-_DSC06706.JPG
He first set about summoning the surrounding tribes to come to his aid, which they did until his forces numbered from 313–350 men. It is here that we get the first instance of Mahdist military organisation, with the Mahdī taking inspiration from that of a Sufi ṭarīqa (or brotherhood). He divided his force into units of 10 men each, placing over ever unit a muqaddam which in Sufi usage denotes followers attendant to a ṭarīqa(s) centre. To complete his dispositions the Mahdī then furnished 5 flags to distribute amongst his army [2].
The government expedition arrived on the evening of 12 August, 1881, and consisted of 200 infantry accompanied by an artillery piece. Disembarking the Turco-Egyptian force was met with dark and muddy conditions which, combined with their poor leadership, put them at a severe disadvantage. They advanced, unsure of their surroundings until they came across Mahdists. The government troops fired haphazardly upon their enemy, who despite being armed primarily with sticks, managed to charge and annihilate the government force [3].
After the victory on Ābā Island, the Mahdī set about appointing his khalīfa(s) or successors. This was done so as to imitate the career of the Prophet Muḥammad (Peace be Upon Him), who had appointed from among his chief followers his successors, the four rightly-guided caliphs of Islamic history. Each of the Mahdī’s khalīfa(s) were subsequently identified with their own corresponding historical figure, whom they were to represent. The first Mahdist khalīfa was ʿAbdallāhi b. Muḥammad Tawr Shayn, with the title of khalīfat al-Siddīq representing the Caliph Abū Bakr. The Second khalīfa was ʿAlī b. Muḥammad Ḥilū, granted the title khalīfat al-Farūq representing Caliph ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb. The Mahdī had intended his third khalīfa to be Muḥammad al-Mahdī of the Libyan Sanūsiyya Order, but the latter refused. The fourth khalīfa was Muḥammad al-Sharīf b. Ḥāmid, the Mahdī’s son-in-law, given the title of khalīfat al-Karrār representing the Caliph ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib [4].
The Mahdī then made hijra, or exodus, to Jabal Qadīr in the Nuba hills of Southern Kordofan. This is an act which again imitated the Prophet Muḥammad (Peace be Upon Him), who had made hijra with his followers from Makka to Madīna in 622 AD, a point in time which serves as the starting point of the Islamic calendar. The Turco-Egyptian government had been sent into a state of panic by the Mahdī’s victory at Ābā, and in the midst of the chaos the governor of Fashoda, Rāshid Bey Aymān, decided to launch an expedition against the Mahdī. His force had intended to surprise the Mahdī but his deception failed and his force was destroyed when it fell into an ambush. A similar fate befell another expedition under Yūsuf Ḥasan al-Shallālī Pahsa [5].
The victories over Rāshid Bey and al-Shallālī Pasha had boosted the legitimacy of the Mahdists, and followers were flocking to join the Mahdī at Jabal Qadīr. It thus became pertinent to better organise his expanded following. Having previously appointed his three khalīfa(s) the Mahdī now chose to divide his army amongst them. Each khalīfa was provided with a colour coded banner, or rāya, as well as a set of naḥās or copper kettledrums, presumably cared for by the officer known as muqaddam al-naḥās, ‘supervisor of drums.’ One should note, however, that the khalīfa(s) served more so as spiritual heads of their divisions, with direct military command often being handed to trusted associates [6].
The Khalīfa ʿAbdallāhi was gifted a Black Flag, known as al-Rāya al-Zarqāʾ. It was commanded by his half brother, amīr Yaʿqūb. Initially being composed of the tribes of the western Sudan, namely the Baqqāra of Kordofan and Darfur, the Black Flag later served as the host of a massive levy force from all corners of the Sudan which could be summoned to Omdurman when need be. The Khalīfa ʿAlī b. Ḥilū was given the Green Flag, al-Rāya al-Khaḍrāʾ, made up of the Arab tribes found along the White Nile. This force was commanded by Mūsā b. Ḥilū, brother of ʿAlī. After Mūsā’s death at the battle of Abū Klea in 1885, the Green Flag would go on to be commanded by ʿAbdallāh Abū Siwār, a tribal kinsman. Finally, Khalīfa al-Sharīf had a Red Flag, al-Rāya al-Ḥamraʾ. It represented the tribes of Riverain Sudan, including the Mahdī’s kinsmen commonly referred to as the Ashrāf. Due to the Khalīfa al-Sharīf’s youth upon the declaration of the Mahdiyya he had been placed under the care of a faithful adherent of the Mahdī named ʿAbd al-Raḥmān w. al-Nujūmī, who subsequently became the commander of the Red Standard. Later, in 1886, the Red Banner was disbanded and placed into storage after a failed coup by the Ashrāf, but al-Nujūmī would remain a prominent military commander until his death at the battle of Ṭūshkī in 1889. To oversee the armies, the Mahdī appointed his brother, Muḥammad, providing him with a White Banner which had been fashioned at Ābā [7].
To these divisions were also applied a military hierarchy, which was organised as such: the commander of a large force was designated amīr al-umarāʾ, or amīr of amīr(s); this included men such as w. al-Nujūmī. An army was then divided into four rubʿ(s) or quarters under an amīr al-rubʿ. These units could vary greatly in size and had little standardisation. Each rubʿ was subdivided into units of a hundred men each under an officer known as a raʾs mīʾa. Below the raʾs mīʾa(s) were muqaddam(s), commanding units of 20 men. Later the duties of the muqaddam(s) would also include the issuing of ammunition to the army before an engagement, but for now the Mahdists regulated themselves to cold weapons. Every amīr al-umarāʾ, amīr al-rubʿ, and raʾs mīʾa carried with them a personal banner which served as the rallying point for their forces [8].
After the Mahdī’s victories at Jabal Qadīr the armies of the Mahdiyya began to descend down from the Nuba mountains and upon the settlements of Kordofan. It was not long before al-Ubayyiḍ, the capital of Kordofan, was itself under threat of the Mahdī. On 8 September, 1882, a large army led by the Mahdī’s brother assaulted al-Ubayyiḍ. Despite being armed with only spears and swords, the Mahdists managed to breach the town’s defences but it was soon revealed they’d fallen into a trap. Emerging from their hiding places, the government soldiers poured a deadly fire from the rooftops. The Mahdists could do little to resist. The loss was horrific, with an estimated 10,000 Mahdists being killed, among them being the Mahdī’s brother.
The defeat of 8 September brought about a number of important changes in the Mahdist camp, chief among them being that the Khalīfa ʿAbdallāhi now became the overseer of the Mahdist military. With this elevation also came a change in strategies. Upon ʿAbdallāhi’s insistence, and faced with the devastating example of recent defeats, the Mahdī signed off on the formation of a corps of slave riflemen [9].
This corps, known as jihādiyya, was composed of ex-government soldiers who had been captured or deserted to the Mahdist cause, bringing with them their knowledge and their rifles. They were then placed under the command of amīr al-umarāʾ Ḥamdān Abū ʿAnja, a half slave client of the Khalīfa ʿAbdallāhi who had served under al-Zubayr Pasha in Dār-Fūr. The jihādiyya quickly proved their worth, playing a vital role in the subsequent siege of al-Ubayyiḍ, and several other key engagements such as the battle of Shaykān, against Hicks Pasha, and the siege of Khartoum.
Abū ʿAnja and his successors took extreme care to regularly drill the jihādiyya. They employed ex-government soldiers as drill instructors, swapping out the old governmental calls in Turkish with Arabic substitutes. This was also the case with the Khalīfa’s bodyguard, the mulāzimiyya, who later came to supersede the jihādiyya garrison in Omdurman [10].
The mulāzimiyya had initially been the personal attendants of the Mahdī, but had been augmented into a corps of bodyguards for himself and his khalīfa(s). After the Khalīfa ʿAbdallāhi’s succession to the Caliphate in June 1885, he began to expand his force of mulāzimīn. This continued until it grew too large, and he felt it necessary to divide the mulāzimīn into two groups. The first division, the jaysh al-mulāzimiyya al-qadīm, or ‘old mulāzimīn army,’ was the Khalīfa’s personal bodyguard of 2,000 men commanded by the amīr Bakhīt Jāmūs. The second was the jaysh al-mulāzimiyya al-jadīd, ‘new mulāzimīn army,’ the "standing army of mahdism" [11]. It was divided into three corps placed under overall command of ʿUthmān Shaykh al-Dīn, the Khalīfa’s eldest son. ʿUthmān is generally described as an educated, though spoiled youth much disposed to partying. He was also underqualified for his position as he had virtually no military experience, the soldiers under his command have even been quoted as saying “the Khalifa’s son is ahbal (silly), and will come to no good" [12]. Despite this he took to hoarding for himself all modern firearms and quality ammunition, leaving the other armies to pick over the remnants [13].
The mulāzimiyya were the last of the Khalīfa ʿAbdallāhi’s military innovations before the Anglo-Egyptian invasion. They, alongside the Black, Green, and Red standards would all be virtually destroyed in the battle of Omdurman on 2 September, 1898, in which the reign of the Khalīfa ended, and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan began.
~Footnotes~
[1] P.M. Holt, The Mahdist State in the Sudan, 1881–1898: A Study of its Origins, Development, and Overthrow, 2nd Edn. (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 54–55.
[2] Neil McHugh, Holman of the Blue Nile: The Making of an Arab-Islamic Community in the Nilotic Sudan (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1994), 89–90. ʿAlī al-Mahdī, Jihād fī Sabīl Allāh, ed. ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad Aḥmad (Khartoum: University Press, 1965), 13–14 quoted in Fergus Nicoll and Osman Nusairi, “The Origins, Development and Use of Banners During the Mahdīa” Sudan Studies 61 (January 2020), 18–19.
[3] Haim Shaked, The Life of the Sudanese Mahdi (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2008), 73–83. Fergus Nicoll, “ʿAlī al-Mahdī’s Oral History of the Mahdīa,” Sudan Studies 51 (January 2015), 37. Joseph Ohrwalder (F.R. Wingate), Ten Years’ Captivity in the Mahdi’s Camp 1882–1892: From the Original Manuscripts of Father Joseph Ohrwalder (London: Sampson Low, Marston & Company, 1892), 7. Richard Hill, ed. The Sudan Memoirs of Carl Christian Giegler Pasha 1873–83, trans. Thirza Küpper (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 175–176.
[4] Fergus Nicoll, The Sword of the Prophet: The Mahdi of Sudan and the Death of General Gordon (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2004), 66–68.
[5] Holt, Mahdist State, 56–58.
[6] F.R. Wingate, “The Sudan Past and Present” Minutes of Proceedings of the Royal Artillery Institution xix (1892), 683. The title of muqaddam al-naḥās is recorded in “Appendix 38,” Sudan Intelligence Report (SIR), no. 60 (25 May–26 December 1898), 68.
[7] Holt, Mahdist State, 120. Fergus Nicoll, Sword of the Prophet, 88. J.A. Reid, “The Mahdi’s Emirs,” Sudan Notes and Records 20, no. 2 (1937), 308–312. Robert S. Kramer, Holy City on the Nile: Omdurman During the Mahdiyya 1885–1898 (New Jersey: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2010), 58–59. Extensive mention is made of ʿAbdallāh Abū Siwār in ‘Ismat Hasan Zulfo, Karari: The Sudanese Account of the Battle of Omdurman, trans. Peter Clark (London: Frederick Warne, 1980).
[8] F.R. Wingate, Mahdiism and the Egyptian Sudan: Being an Account of the Rise and Progress of Mahdiism, and of Subsequent Events in the Sudan to the Present Time (London: Macmillan and Co., 1891), 472, 476. Kramer, Holy City, 59–60.
[9] Wingate, Mahdiism, 22–23. Holt, Mahdist State, 63. Nicoll, Sword of the Prophet, 103–113.
[10] Ohrwalder, Ten Years’ Captivity, 224. Intelligence Report, Egypt (IRE), no. 23 (February 1894), 3. IRE, no. 27 (June 1894), 3. John P. Dunn, Khedive Ismail’s Army (New York: Routledge, 2005), 37, 51. Hudī Makkāwī, al-Banāʾ al-ijtimāʿī lil-Mahdīyya fī al-Sūdān (Cairo: Maktabat Madbūlī, 2007), 90.
[11] A. Hilliard Atteridge, Towards Khartoum: The Story of the Soudan War of 1896 (London: A.D. Innes, 1897), 377.
[12] IRE, no. 32 (November 1894), 5.
[13] Rudolf C. Slatin, Fire and Sword in the Sudan: A Personal Narrative of Fighting and Serving the Dervishes (London: Edward Arnold, 1896), 405–406, 524. Zulfo, Karari, 35–36, 106 n7. Na‘ūm Shuqayr, Ta’rīkh al-Sūdān, ed. Muhammad Abū Salīm (Beirut: Dār al-Jīl, 1981), 836, 933.
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