orig. Muḥammad Aḥmad ibn al-Sayyid ʽAbd Allāh
born Aug. 12, 1844
died June 22, 1885, Omdurman, Sudan
Sudanese religious and political leader.
The son of a shipbuilder in Nubia, he was brought up near Khartoum . After orthodox religious study, he turned to a mystical interpretation of Islam in the Sufi tradition, joined a religious brotherhood, and in 1870 moved to a hermitage with his disciples. In 1881 he proclaimed a divine mission to purify Islam and the governments that defiled it, targeting the Turkish ruler of Egypt and its dependency, Sudan. In 1885, after he defeated mahdi ; Mahdist movement ; Sufism .