1846 - 1899
Commander of the Mahdist forces and ruler of the Mahdist domains in the Sudan, 1885 - 1898.
Known in Western literature as Khalifa Abdullahi, Muhammad Turshain Abdullahi was born at Turdat in southwestern Darfur, one of four sons of a holy man of the Taʿayshe Baqqara. Upon hearing of Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi, he went east to join him at Aba Island in the Bahr al-Abyad; he was the first to recognize him as the Mahdi. The Mahdi recognized his military abilities and made him a principal military commander. In 1881 Abdullahi was appointed a caliph, given the name Abu Bakr alSiddiq, and placed in command of the prestigious black flag division of the Madhist army.
Abdullahi retired with the Mahdi to Kordofan and there organized a series of crushing defeats of the government forces that gave the Mahdist movement the reputation of invincibility. He fought in the Jazira and oversaw the siege of Khartoum, which, after long resistance, fell in January 1885. On the death of the Mahdi in June 1885, Abdullahi assumed the temporal functions of government as dictator of an empire that extended from Dar Mahas to the Upper Nile and from the Red Sea to Darfur. Except at Omdurman in 1898, when he was overthrown, he did not personally lead his armies, preferring to leave operational details to his field commanders.
Abdullahi ruled harshly and arbitrarily in order to maintain his large military establishment. His genius for organization was revealed in his system of taxation and his attempts to establish factories to manufacture steamers and ammunition, as well as mints to produce coins. He insisted on the strict observance of Islamic law. He was hostile to the religious brotherhoods, suppressing them where the Mahdi had only discountenanced them. His merciless rule at length aroused the opposition of most tribal peoples except his own baqqara, to whom he gave a privileged position in the state in return for their loyalty.
After the advance of the army of Egypt and Britain into Dongola in 1896, Abdullahi's prestige suffered. Numerous defeats of the incompetent general Amir al-Umara Mahmud Ahmad and Abdullahi's defeat at Atbara culminated in the battle of Omdurman in September 1898. Fleeing south, he and several companions were killed at Umm Dibaikarat in 1899. He was buried on the battlefield, several miles southeast of Tendelti on the Kordofan railway. His tomb is venerated.
Bibliography
Holt, P. M., and Daly, M. W. A History of the Sudan: From the Coming of Islam to the Present Day, 5th edition. Harlow, U.K., and New York: Longman, 2000.
Petterson, Donald. Inside Sudan: Political Islam, Conflict, and Catastrophe, revised edition. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2003.
— ROBERT O. COLLINS
