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The Sudanese Mahdī: Frontier Fundmentalist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

John Voll
John Voll
Affiliation:
American University In Cairo
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Extract

The Sudanese Mahdī has been pictured as a villain, as a hero, as a reactionary, as an anti-imperialist revolutionary, and in many other ways. The romance and excitement of the nineteenth-century Mahdiyya has inspired novels and movies, while the many faceted reality of the movement has caught the attention of a wide range of scholars in search of case studies of specific phenomena. In recent years the Mahdī has been used as an example of a ‘charismatic’ leader,1 the founder of a religionpolitical party in the ‘third world,’2 the leader of a millenarian revolt,3 an African rebel against alien rule,4 and a Semitic messiah in an African context. Many of these analyses are the constructive products of the changing situation in the world of contemporary historical studies. Each tends to reflect a broader analytical concern aroused by modern developments.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , May 1979 , pp. 145 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

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