Abdallahi ibn Muhammad (the Khalifa)

Biography

The Mahdi's foremost lieutenant, a Baggara tribesman of the west, Abdallahi ibn Muhammad succeeded him on his sudden death in 1885 and ruled the Mahdist state for fourteen years as the Khalifa. He proved a formidable and often ruthless statesman, crushing rival emirs, centralising power, and building the new capital at Omdurman into a great city — but his favouring of his own Baggara kinsmen and the famines and wars of his reign bred discontent. He dreamed of carrying the jihad into Egypt and beyond, but the destruction of his invasion at Toski in 1889 put him on the defensive. When Kitchener's army finally came, the Khalifa gathered his host before Omdurman and saw it slaughtered by machine guns. He fled to raise resistance in the west, but was hunted down and killed a year later at Umm Diwaykarat, dying seated on his prayer-mat among his emirs — the end of the Mahdist state.

Key Battles