FIRST JIHAD: Khartoum, and the Dawn of Militant Islam

246 Pages·2007·2.37 MB·English

by  Daniel Allen Butler

Published by
CASEMATE
© 2007 Daniel Allen Butler
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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contact Casemate Publishers, 1016 Warrior Road, Drexel Hill, PA
19026.
ISBN (10): 1-932033-54-8
ISBN (13): 978-1-932033-54-0
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of
Congress.
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MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
Introduction
“Fuzzy Wuzzy” by Rudyard Kipling
PROLOGUE
Chapter 1 THE LAND AND THE PROPHET
Chapter 2 THE COMING OF THE MAHDI
Chapter 3 REVOLT IN THE DESERT
Chapter 4 THE CITY BETWEEN THE
RIVERS
Chapter 5 GORDON
Chapter 6 THE SIEGE BEGINS
Chapter 7 LONDON AND CAIRO
Chapter 8 THE DUEL
Chapter 9 THE RELIEF COLUMN
Chapter THE FALL OF KHARTOUM
10
Chapter THE DEATH OF THE MAHDI
11
Chapter OMDURMAN
12
EPILOGUE
Author’s Note
Bibliography
For
Eily
who was there
from the beginning
INTRODUCTION
For over a hundred years, the siege of Khartoum has been considered a
modern military epic. It was there, on the banks of the Nile, that a few
thousand Egyptian soldiers led by British General Charles Gordon held
off the massed hordes of the Mahdi, a Moslem holy man waging jihad,
for three hundred and seventeen days. For nearly all of this time the
most enduring image of the siege has been that of the indomitable
Gordon, with his apparently inexhaustible courage, exhorting the
citizens and garrison alike to hold out just a few days longer as help was
on the way.
Yet as central to the story of Khartoum as is Gordon, just as vital,
and perhaps more so, is the Mahdi. It could even be said, with
considerable justification, that without the Mahdi, Gordon would be
remembered as little more than a minor footnote in the history of
Victorian Britain. Of even greater significance is the force that the
Mahdi unleashed on the world, one that would grow in intensity and
malignancy as the decades passed. It was the power of militant Islam,
with the Moslem religion harnessed as the violent driving force of
revolutions, a power to be reckoned with in and of itself, rather than
being used, as it had been so often in the past, as an ecclesiatical
camouflage for temporal and material ambitions.
The victor of Khartoum, born Muhammed Ahmed ibn-Abdullah,
was an imam whose messiah-like delusions led him to style himself
“The Mahdi”—“The Expected One.” More than one hundred twenty
years ago, he united the Islamic peoples of the Sudan in a bloody revolt,
denouncing all who did not follow his vision as heretics and infidels. He
declared that foreign influences had corrupted and defiled the true
Moslem faith, and proclaimed a jihad, a holy war, to purify Islam and
remake the “true faith” by cleansing it in a torrent of foreign blood. The
Mahdi’s followers annihilated Egyptian expeditions sent to crush them,
and then challenged the military might of the world’s greatest power, the
British Empire. It was at a heretofore insignificant city sitting astride the
confluence of the White Nile and the Blue Nile—Khartoum—that this
confrontation came to a head, as the British general Charles “Chinese”
Gordon defended the city and made it a household word around the
globe.
What is startling today about the story of the Mahdi is the
immediacy of the mysterious desert mullah to the incarnation of modern
worldwide terrorism. It is a significant and striking relevance, for those
dangerous fanatics who seek to impose their vision of Islam on an
unwilling world are only echoing the declamations and proclamations
issued by the Mahdi more than a century ago. Militant Islam is not a late
20th-century phenomenon, but rather its roots run deep in certain still-
powerful segments of the Moslem world. To the majority of people in
the West—preoccupied through most of the century with global wars,
hot and cold—militant Islam first reared its head in the Munich tragedy
of September 1972 at the Olympic Games, and peaked with the horrors
of September 11, 2001. Yet the frightening truth is that such terrible acts
were steps in what parts of the Moslem world have long seen as an
ancient and honorable determination to achieve worldwide Islamic
hegemony by any means possible.
Many elements of the story of the siege and fall of Khartoum will
seem eerily familiar: the refusal of the governments involved to
recognize the threat the Mahdi presented; the influence of the press in
shaping public opinion and shifting public policy; the disavowal of
responsibility by the government charged with the safety of Khartoum;
the search for scapegoats as the specter of failure loomed; the seemingly
ponderous and unwieldy military reaction; and above all, the Mahdi’s
refusal to be deflected or diverted from what he regarded as his divine
calling, no matter what its price in misery and bloodshed.
Some aspects of the story that follows are less precise than many
scholars prefer their histories to be, but that is an unfortunately
inescapable consequence of the subject, due in part to the vagueness of
the available records, and on the Muslim side to the fact that even the
most “objective” Arab-written “life of the Mahdi” is more hagiography
than biography. Dates are frequently imprecise (there are, for example,
three separate dates given for when the telegraph line between Khartoum
and Cairo was cut), spellings of names are often subjected to the whims
of the person recording them at the time or at the mercy of translators (in
Great Britain “Sudan” was spelled “Soudan” until well into the 20th
century), and geographic features are often known by a variety of local
and regional names. Equally frustrating is the simple lack of records and
archives from the Sudan for most of the 19th century, and the fact that
those that do exist are frequently suspect as to accuracy.
Nevertheless, the story that appears is fascinating, not only for its
appeal as a classic Victorian adventure, but because of its chilling
immediacy. Today a powerful Imam in Iraq style his militia “The Mahdi
Army,” civil war in the Sudan pits Moslem Arabs from the north against
Christian and animist black Africans in the south, and Moslem
fundamentalists of the most extreme shade and hue proclaim jihad in a
desire to “cleanse” Islam from what they perceive to be the corruptions
and decadence of the non-Moslem world. All have roots in the Mahdi’s
revolt in the Sudan in the early 1880s, which reached its climax at the
city of Khartoum.
The story that follows is a straightforward historical narrative,
though its implications and relevance become obvious with the telling.
There are no simple resolutions to the troubles caused by Islamic
extremism to be found in the history of the great duel between the Mahdi
and Gordon at Khartoum. What is to be found instead is the reminder,
often overlooked but all the more necessary for that, of the truth that
militant Islam is a challenge to the very existence of Western society,
one that has endured for generations, and one that will continue to strike
at any and all that it perceives as enemies, Moslem and Christian alike,
until and unless the West and Islam join hands to ensure its eradication.
“FuzzyWuzzy”
(Soudan Expeditionary Force)
RUDYARD KIPLING
WE’VE fought with many men acrost the seas,
An’ some of ’em was brave an’ some was not:
The Paythan an’ the Zulu an’ Burmese;
But the Fuzzy was the finest o’ the lot.
We never got a ha’porth’s change of ’im:
’E squatted in the scrub an’ ’ocked our ’orses, ’E cut our sentries up at
Suakim,
An’ ’e played the cat an’ banjo with our forces.
So ’ere’s to you, FuzzyWuzzy, at your ’ome in the Soudan; You’re a
pore benighted ’eathen but a first class fightin’ man; We gives you
your certificate, an’ if you want it signed We’ll come an’ ’ave a
romp with you whenever you’re inclined.
We took our chanst among the Khyber ’ills,
The Boers knocked us silly at a mile,
The Burman give us Irriwaddy chills,
An’ a Zulu impi dished us up in style:
But all we ever got from such as they
Was pop to what the Fuzzy made us swaller;
We ’eld our bloomin’ own, the papers say,
But man for man the Fuzzy knocked us ’oller.
Then ’ere’s to you, FuzzyWuzzy, an’ the missis and the kid; Our
orders was to break you, an’ of course we went an’ did.
We sloshed you with Martinis, an’ it wasn’t ’ardly fair; But for all
the odds agin’ you, FuzzyWuz, you broke the square.
’E ’asn’t got no papers of ’is own,
’E ’asn’t got no medals nor rewards,
So we must certify the skill ’e’s shown
In usin’ of ’is long two’anded swords:
When ’e’s ’oppin’ in an’ out among the bush
With ’is coffin ’eaded shield an’ shovelspear, An ’appy day with
Fuzzy on the rush
Will last an ’ealthy Tommy for a year.
So ’ere’s to you, FuzzyWuzzy, an’ your friends which are no more,
If we ’adn’t lost some messmates we would ’elp you to deplore; But
give an’ take’s the gospel, an’ we’ll call the bargain fair, For if you
’ave lost more than us, you crumpled up the square!
’E rushes at the smoke when we let drive,
An’, before we know, ’e’s ’ackin’ at our ’ead; ’E’s all ’ot sand an’
ginger when alive,
An’ ’e’s generally shammin’ when ’e’s dead.
’E’s a daisy, ’e’s a ducky, ’e’s a lamb!
’E’s a injiarubber idiot on the spree,
’E’s the on’y thing that doesn’t give a damn
For a Regiment o’ British Infantree!
So ’ere’s to you, FuzzyWuzzy, at your ’ome in the Soudan; You’re a
pore benighted ’eathen but a firstclass fightin’ man; An’ ’ere’s to
you, FuzzyWuzzy, with your ’ayrick ’ead of ’air — You big black
boundin’ beggar—for you broke a British square!