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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2009
This is how Ismaʿil bin ʿAbd al-Qadir, a Mahdist chronicler of late 19th-century Sudan, gave a broad Islamic significance to the defeat of Ethiopian armies by Mahdist forces at al-Qallabat in March 1889. Culminating in the death of Emperor Yohannes IV, the four-year confrontation between Mahdist Sudan and Christian Ethiopia (1885–89) had repercussions that transcended the local setting, reaching far into the intertwined history of Sudan, Ethiopia, and European imperialism in the Nile Valley and Red Sea regions.
Author's note: This article is based on a master's thesis entitled Le Soudan Mahdiste face à l'Abyssinie Chrétienne: Une Histoire de(s) Représentations (University of Provence, France, June 2007). My thanks to Professors Ghislaine Alleaume and Catherine Miller (IREMAM, Aix-en-Provence), Barbara Casciarri (CEDEJ, Khartoum), and the staff of the National Records Office in Khartoum. Unless noted, the translations are mine.
1 Muhammad Ibrahim Abu Salim and Muhammad Saʿid al-Qaddal, eds., Al-Harb al-Habashiyya al-Sudaniyya: 1885–1888 (The Ethiopian–Sudanese War) (Beirut: Dar al-Jil, 1991), critical edition of Ismaʿil ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Kurdufani, Al-Tiraz al-Manqush bi-Bushra Qatl Yuhanna Malik al-Hubush (The Embroidery Inscribed with the Good News of the Slaying of Yohannes, King of the Ethiopians) (Omdurman, Sudan: handwritten manuscript by the kātib Muhammad Ahmad Hashim, 1889), 106.
The Mahdiyya's supporters called themselves anṣār in reference to the Prophet Muhammad's first disciples in Medina. For a Mahdist proclamation on the adoption of this name, see Wingate, Francis R., Mahdiism and the Egyptian Sudan: Being an Account of the Rise and Progress of Mahdiism, and of Subsequent Events in the Sudan to the Present Time, 2nd ed. (London: F. Cass, 1968), 48Google Scholar.
2 See Sanderson, George N., “Conflict and Co-operation between Ethiopia and the Mahdist State, 1884–1898,” Sudan Notes and Records 50 (1969): 15–40Google Scholar; Caulk, Richard A., “Yohannes IV, the Mahdists, and the Partition of North-East Africa,” Transafrican Journal of History 1 (1971): 23–42Google Scholar; al-Qaddal, Muhammad Saʿid, The Mahdiyya and Ethiopia, Study in Domestic and Foreign Policies of the Mahdist State, 1881–1898 (in Arabic) (Beirut: Dar al-Jil, 1992)Google Scholar.
3 Paul Ricoeur has elaborated three meanings of the concept: representation as a mnemonic process (the presence to the mind of an absent thing that has been but is not anymore), as a tool of history writing (the historian produces a written discourse claiming to represent the past truthfully), and as an object of historical studies. See Ricoeur, Paul, Memory, History, Forgetting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), part II, chap. 2–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 It was not the only important theater of Sudanese–Ethiopian confrontation. For instance, Mahdist forces under amir ʿUthman Abu Bakr Diqna were crushed by Ethiopian troops at the battle of Kufit (23 September 1885), in present-day Eritrea. See Erlich, Haggai, Ras Alula and the Scramble for Africa: A Political Biography: Ethiopia and Eritrea, 1875–1897 (Lawrenceville, N.J.: Red Sea Press, 1996), 68ffGoogle Scholar.
5 Such as Rudolf Carl von Slatin (known as Slatin Pasha), Joseph Ohrwalder, Charles Neufeld, and Giuseppe Cuzzi for Sudan and Gerald H. Portal and Sadiq Basha al-Muʾayyad al-ʿAzm for Ethiopia. We mention their respective writings further on.
6 Muhammad Ibrahim Abu Salim, director of the National Records Office from 1955 till 1995, has published numerous studies on the Mahdist period, as well as critical editions of Mahdist primary sources. See O'Fahey, R. S. and Bjørkelo, Anders, “The Writings of Muhammad Ibrahim Abu Salim,” Sudanic Africa 1 (1990): 11–18Google Scholar.
7 Conceptions of the Mahdi vary among Sunnis, but according to Sunni doctrine, the Mahdi should appear before the end of times in order to restore the true religion as well as bring justice to the world. For more details, see Madelung, Wilferd, “Al-Mahdi,” in Encyclopédie de l'Islam (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986), 1221–228Google Scholar; Gabriel R. Warburg, Islam, Sectarianism and Politics in the Sudan since the Mahdiyya (London: C. Hurst and Co., 2002), 22–23.
8 Collins, Robert O., Egypt and the Sudan (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967), 72, 77Google Scholar; Holt, Peter M. and Daly, Martin W., A History of the Sudan from the Coming of Islam to the Present Day, 5th ed. (London: Longman, 2000), 78Google Scholar; Voll, John O., “The Eastern Sudan, 1822 to the Present,” in The History of Islam in Africa, ed. Levtzion, Nehemia and Pouwels, Randall L. (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2000), 154Google Scholar; Warburg, Islam, Sectarianism and Politics, 24.
9 Aharon Layish, “The Mahdi's Legal Methodology as a Mechanism for Adapting the Sharīʿa in the Sudan to Political and Social Purposes,” Revue des Mondes Musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 91–94 (2000): 223–24; Warburg, Islam, Sectarianism, and Politics, 40–41.
10 “Khalifa” here not merely refers to a caliphal function but is also—and perhaps more importantly—an integral part of the Sudanese leader's name. This historical figure is referred to as Khalifa ʿAbdullahi in Sudanese popular and official discourse as well as in most academic writings focusing on Sudan.
11 Several European prisoners detained in the Mahdist capital (Omdurman) wrote at length about this famine. See Ohrwalder, Joseph, Ten Years' Captivity in the Mahdi's Camp, 2nd ed. (London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co., 1892), 284–91Google Scholar; Pacha, Rudolf C. Slatin, Fer et Feu au Soudan, translated from the 8th German edition by Bettex, G. (Cairo: F. Diemer, 1898), 591–98Google Scholar; Neufeld, Charles, A Prisoner of the Khaleefa: Twelve Years of Captivity at Omdurman, 3rd ed. (London: Chapman and Hall, 1899), 116–18Google Scholar.
12 Holt and Daly, A History of the Sudan, 90; Warburg, Islam, Sectarianism and Politics, 47.
13 Negusä nägäst means “king of kings.” This title traditionally designated Ethiopian emperors.
14 Zewde, Bahru, A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855–1974 (London: James Currey, 1991), 44Google Scholar; see also Erlich, Haggai, Ethiopia and the Middle East (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Press, 1994), 57Google Scholar.
15 Henze, Paul B., Histoire de l'Ethiopie: l'Œuvre du Temps (Paris: Moulin du Pont, 2004), 151Google Scholar. The Tewahedo (“being made one” in Geez) doctrine insists on the single unified nature of Christ as opposed to the belief in the dual nature of Christ espoused by Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches.
16 Coulbeaux, Jean-Baptiste, Histoire Politique et Religieuse de l'Abyssinie: Depuis les Temps les Plus Reculés Jusqu'à l'Avènement de Ménélick II, 2 vols. (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1929), 2:469Google Scholar.
17 Ahmed, Hussein, Islam in Nineteenth-Century Wallo, Ethiopia (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001), 174Google Scholar.
18 Caulk, Richard A., “Religion and State in Nineteenth-Century Ethiopia,” Journal of Ethiopian Studies 10 (1972): 28Google Scholar. The cultivation and use of tobacco were prohibited by the emperor, who associated the substance with Satan and impiety. See Portal, Gerald H., My Mission to Abyssinia (London: E. Arnold, 1892), 149–50Google Scholar.
19 Trimingham, J. Spencer, Islam in Ethiopia (Oxford: Geoffrey Cumberlege for the University Press, 1952), 123Google Scholar. In a letter to Queen Victoria dated 20 November 1879, Yohannes IV presents these conversions as wholly voluntary. See Rubenson, Sven, ed., Internal Rivalries and Foreign Threats, 1869–1879 (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Addis Ababa University Press, 2000), 333Google Scholar.
20 Some Ethiopian Muslims fled to Sudan and joined the Mahdiyya. See Sadiq Basha al-Muʾayyad al-ʿAzm, Rihlat al-Habasha: Min al-Asitana ila Adis Abada, 1896 (Travel to Abyssinia: From Asitana [Istanbul] to Addis Ababa, 1896), 2nd ed. (Abu Dhabi, UAE: Dar al-Suwaydi, 2001), 170.
21 For instance, Sheikh Talha bin Jaʿfar declared a jihad in 1884, protesting against the ban on Islamic worship and preaching. It then merged with a wider uprising directed against the taxation policy and execution of a local governor by Arʾaya Sellase (Yohannes IV's son). Ahmed, Islam in Nineteenth-Century Wallo, 178.
22 Caulk, “Yohannes IV, the Mahdists,” 25; Berhanou Abebbe, Histoire de l'Ethiopie, d'Axoum à la Révolution (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1998), 107; Henze, Histoire de l'Ethiopie, 148–49.
23 Zewde, A History of Modern Ethiopia, 54; Marcus, Harold G., The Life and Times of Menelik II: Ethiopia 1844–1913 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 79, 82Google Scholar.
24 Zewde, A History of Modern Ethiopia, 56.
25 Hertslet, Sir E., The Map of Africa by Treaty, 3 vols. (London: F. Cass, 1967)Google Scholar, 2:422–23 quoted by Marcus, The Life and Times, 81; Abebbe, Histoire de l'Ethiopie, 114–15. For the treaty's background, see the detailed analysis of Gabre-Sellassie, Zewde, Yohannes IV of Ethiopia: A Political Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 122–51Google Scholar.
26 Wingate, Francis R., Mahdiism and the Egyptian Sudan: Being an Account of the Rise and Progress of Mahdiism, and of Subsequent Events in the Sudan to the Present Time, 2nd ed. (London: F. Cass, 1968), 465Google Scholar.
27 Al-Qallabat appears as Matamma in Figure 1. Although both names are sometimes used interchangeably to designate the border town, al-Qaddal points out that they were two distinct but adjacent towns. See al-Qaddal, Al-Mahdiyya wa-l-Habasha, 14. Al-Qadarif was also known as Suq Abu Sin.
28 See n. 1.
29 A man called Adam Muhammad claimed to be the prophet Jesus and managed to gather many disciples among resentful Mahdist soldiers posted at al-Qallabat. Abu ʿAnja reported the event to the khalifa, who had the conspirators executed (December 1887). Al-Dikaym's position remains unclear, but he certainly did not succeed in quelling the revolt. See Wingate, Mahdiism, 334–35; Naʿum Shuqayr, Taʾrikh al-Sudan al-Qadim wa-l-Hadith wa-Jughrafiyatuhu (The History of Ancient and Modern Sudan and Its Geography), 3 vols. (Cairo: n.p., 1903), Muhammad Ibrahim Abu Salim, ed., Taʾrikh al-Sudan (The History of Sudan) (Beirut: Dar al-Jil, 1981), 733–35; Holt, Peter M., The Mahdist State in the Sudan 1881–1898: A Study of its Origins Development and Overthrow (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), 152–53Google Scholar.
30 Takla-Haymanot is the new name that ras ʿAdal received when he was accorded the title of negus and given control of Gojjam and Kaffa in 1881.
31 Abu Salim and al-Qaddal, Al-Harb al-Habashiyya, 15–16; al-Qaddal, Al-Mahdiyya wa-l-Habasha, 109–10.
32 Holt, The Mahdist State, 155; Sanderson, “Conflict and Co-operation,” 25.
33 See National Records Office (NRO), MAHDIA 1/34/10B, Balanbras Bozna Venis Balezla Governor of Jelga to En Nur Salaa, early Jumada al-Ula 1312/November 1894; idem, Betwadded Mangasha to the Khalifa of the Mahdi, 6 Safar 1314/17 July 1896; NRO, MAHDIA 1/34/16, Statement of Mohammed Osman El Haj Khaled, n.d.; Sanderson, “Conflict and Co-operation,” 26, 28–37.
34 Caulk, “Yohannes IV, the Mahdists,” 26; Erlich, Ethiopia, 71.
35 Erlich, Ethiopia, 71; Caulk, “Yohannes IV, the Mahdists,” 27; Shaked, Haim, The Life of the Sudanese Mahdi: A Historical Study of Kitab Saʿadat al-Mustahdi bi-Sirat al-Imam al-Mahdi, the Book of the Bliss of Him Who Seeks Guidance by the Life of the Imam the Mahdi (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1978), 8Google Scholar; Robinson, David, “The Sudan: The Mahdi and Khalifa amid Competing Imperialisms,” in idem, Muslim Societies in African History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 177CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Abu Salim and al-Qaddal, Al-Harb al-Habashiyya, 17. The Italians later defeated the Mahdists at Agordat (1893) and occupied Kassala (July 1894).
36 The book was completed on 6 November 1888. For a critical edition in Arabic, see Muhammad Ibrahim Abu Salim, ed., Saʿadat al-Mustahdi bi-Sirat al-Imam al-Mahdi (Khartoum, Sudan: al-Dar al-Sudaniyya li-l-Kutub; Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1972). For an English summary and annotated translation, see Shaked, The Life.
37 The chronicle was finished on 6 June 1889 according to Abu Salim and al-Qaddal, Al-Harb al-Habashiyya, 22. See also Sanderson, “Conflict and Co-operation,” 39, n. 4.
38 He may have been influenced by Mahdist partisans living in El Obeid but also may have joined the Mahdi out of sincere faith in his mission. Abu Salim nevertheless argues that he acted on pragmatic rather than religious or ideological motives. See Saʿadat al-Mustahdi, 17–18; Abu Salim and al-Qaddal, Al-Harb al-Habashiyya, 20.
39 Historians suggest various explanations for ʿAbd al-Qadir's banishment. Jealous of his sociopolitical elevation, the qadi al-Islam Ahmad ʿAli had him slandered in front of the khalifa: Husayn Sayyid Ahmad al-Mufti, Tatawwur Nizam al-Qadaʾ fi al-Sudan (The Development of the Judicial System in the Sudan) (Khartoum, Sudan: n.p., 1959), 140–41. One of ʿAbd al-Qadir's descendants claims that the khalifa removed the chronicler from the center of the Mahdist state out of fear from a potential alliance with the ashrāf: Abu Salim, Saʿadat al-Mustahdi, 24. In a more global perspective, ʿAbd al-Qadir could have counted among the victims of “the great purge which accompanied the transformation of the Mahdist theocracy into an autocracy” between 1892 and 1896: Shaked, The Life, 30.
40 Sanderson, “Conflict and Co-operation,” 28, 38–39; Shaked, The Life, 30.
41 Naʿum Shuqayr, who worked in the Egyptian Military Intelligence, obtained this single copy in April 1895 and gave it to his director, Francis W. Wingate. In 1958, the Tiraz was donated to the Sudan Archive of Durham University, where it was rediscovered a decade later. See Shaked, The Life, 35.
42 Abu Salim and al-Qaddal, Al-Harb al-Habashiyya, 35. Abu Salim argues that the conception of history that prevailed in late 19th-century Sudan implied the extensive use of oral accounts at the expense of written documents: Abu Salim, Al-Haraka al-Fikriyya fi al-Mahdiyya (The Intellectual Movement in the Mahdiyya), 3rd ed. (Khartoum, Sudan: Dar Jamiʿat al-Khartum li-l-Nashr, 1989), 214.
43 Abu Jummayza initiated a massive opposition movement to the Mahdist regime in western Darfur (1888–89). Thought to possess magical powers, he claimed the vacant position of Khalifa ʿUthman, which the Mahdi had previously offered to Muhammad al-Mahdi bin al-Sanusi. He died a few months after his manifestation and was succeeded by his brother Sagha, who was killed by a victorious Mahdist army (February 1889). See Holt, The Mahdist State, 136–40; Kapteijns, Lidwien, Mahdist Faith and Sudanic Tradition: The History of the Masalit Sultanate 1870–1930 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), 83–94Google Scholar.
44 Abu Salim and al-Qaddal, Al-Harb al-Habashiyya, 25–26.
45 See n. 29.
46 Such as the correspondence between amir Abu ʿAnja and negus Takla-Haymanot during the first half of 1888. See, for instance, NRO, MAHDIA 1/34/16A/38, Hamdan Abu ʿAnja to negus Takla-Haymanot, 15 Jumada al-Akhira 1305/27 February 1888; NRO, MAHDIA 1/34/10B/163 negus Takla-Haymanot to Hamdan Abu ʿAnja, 30 Shaʿban 1305/12 May 1888.
47 Such as the episode of al-Nabi ʿIsa and the ashrāf opposition. Their mention could indeed call into question the validity of the khalifa's position. The khalifa's authority is reinforced by the fact that in the Tiraz he is the only protagonist who corresponds with the Ethiopian enemy. Letters sent by other Mahdist leaders are totally excluded.
48 In the Tiraz, Yohannes IV embodies the leader of the Ethiopian unbelievers and is accused of having attacked dār al-Islām. ʿAbd al-Qadir does not mention his peace proposal to the khalifa (25 December 1888) in order not to erode the emperor's image as an aggressor.
49 Abu Salim, Al-Haraka al-Fikriyya, 209.
50 This Mahdist division of the world replaced the classical Islamic distinction between dār al-Islām and dār al-ḥarb.
51 Al-Qaddal quoted by Warburg, Islam, Sectarianism, and Politics, 32. Although the term Turk was initially used by 19th-century Sudanese to refer to their Turco-Egyptian rulers, it came to encompass all non-Sudanese political and military elites in Sudan. The Anglo-Egyptian administration established in 1899 was thus called the “second Turkiyya” in opposition to the “first Turkiyya” dating from the 1820–85 period.
52 Ḥabasha historically refers to the country's inhabitants rather than to a territory. Derived from this Arabic root, the term Abyssinia was attributed a territorial meaning in its European uses.
53 Abu Salim and al-Qaddal, Al-Harb al-Habashiyya, 56. ʿAbd al-Qadir probably evokes the beginning of Turco-Egyptian rule in the Sudan, during which the town of al-Qallabat was subordinated to Ethiopia (until 1838). See al-Qaddal, Al-Mahdiyya wa-l-Habasha, 15.
54 Abu Salim and al-Qaddal, Al-Harb al-Habashiyya, 58–59. It is here referring to the battle in which Arbab was killed by the Ethiopians (al-Qallabat, January 1887). The exaggerated number of 20,000 Mahdist victims, which is mentioned in an Egyptian Military Intelligence report, should undoubtedly be reduced to a few thousand. See NRO, CAIRINT 1/29/148, “War between Derviches and Abyssinians,” and al-Qaddal, Al-Mahdiyya wa-l-Habasha, 55.
55 ʿAbd al-Qadir quotes a Qurʾanic verse to strengthen the link between Mahdist military strategy and divine will: “God surely likes those who fight for his cause in ranks, as if they were a solid construction” (61:4). See Abu Salim and al-Qaddal, Al-Harb al-Habashiyya, 82.
56 Ibid., 98–99.
57 Ibid.
58 For instance, Mahdist fighters are reported to have seen the khalifa leading their army to battle, although he was actually in Omdurman at the time. Some of them witnessed men with white flags coming down from the sky to help them fight the infidels. Ten months before the battle, the khalifa had a prophetic vision in which the Prophet informed him of a coming Mahdist victory against the Ethiopians. On the battlefield, fire burns miraculously “devoured the body of killed enemies.” Ibid., 109, 110, 111, n. 1.
59 Ibid., 103.
60 The matab is a cordon that Christian Ethiopians wore around their necks to mark their religious affiliation. See Viviane A. Yagi, Le Tiraz: Chronique sur la Guerre Soudano-Abyssine de 1885–1889 (Omdurman, Sudan: n.p., 1984); unpublished French translation of Ismaʿil ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Kurdufani, Al-Tiraz al-Manqush bi-Bushra Qatl Yuhanna Malik al-Hubush (Omdurman, Sudan: handwritten manuscript by the kātib Muhammad Ahmad Hashim 1889), 198, n. 96.
61 The title of ʿAbd al-Qadir's book is in this regard very evocative. Using the term tiraz refers to a caliphal prerogative because the embroideries and robes called by this name from the Umayyad until the Fatimid period symbolized the khalifa's power. See Stillman, Yedida K. and Sanders, Paula, “Tiraz,” in Encyclopédie de l'Islam (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002), 573–78Google Scholar. Rather than being inscribed with Khalifa ʿAbdullahi's name—traditional tiraz bore the khalifa's name—ʿAbd al-Qadir's Tiraz is decorated with the name of the vanquished enemy. Yohannes IV's defeat is thus transformed into an attribute of the khalifa.
62 The expression “Mahdist attitudes” here refers to the stance of Mahdist political and military elites rather than to the attitudes of Sudanese society as a whole.
63 For the former, see Shouk, Ahmad Ibrahim Abu, “Ideology versus Pragmatism—The Case of the Mahdist Public Treasury in the Sudan (1881–1898),” Die Welt des Islams 46 (2006): 152Google Scholar; Ibrahim, Ahmed Uthman, “Some Aspects of the Ideology of the Mahdiya,” Sudan Notes and Records 60 (1979): 32Google Scholar. For the latter, an Italian prisoner of the Mahdists wrote that in 1884, the Mahdi claimed he would take Khartoum, conquer Egypt, overthrow the Ottoman sultan, and then defeat Europe: Giuseppe Cuzzi, Fifteen Years Prisoner of the False Prophet (Khartoum, Sudan: Sudanese Heritage Series no. 3, Sudan Research Unit, 1968), 103. Sanderson emphasizes that the Mahdi's divine mission aimed at converting the whole world: “Conflict and Co-operation,” 15.
64 These places appear in a proclamation decreed by the Mahdi after the fall of El Obeid (January 1883):
The Apostle of God .–.–. said to me, “As thou didst pray in El Obeid, thou shalt pray in Khartoum, then .–.–. in the mosque of Berber, then .–.–. in the Holy House of God, then .–.–. in the mosque of Yathrib, then .–.–. in the mosque of Cairo, then .–.–. in the mosque of Jerusalem, then .–.–. in the mosque of al-ʿIraq, then you shalt pray in the mosque of al-Kufa.”
Letter-Book of al-Nujumi, 1st unnumbered folio, quoted by Peter M. Holt, “The Sudanese Mahdia and the Outside World,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 21 (1958): 278. This observation contradicts Cuzzi's account, the reliability of which can be legitimately called into question, because it was published in a context of harshly anti-Mahdist British propaganda.
65 Muslim territories comprised West and North Africa, Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, and the Arabian peninsula. Most of the letters sent to leaders of these areas produced no results, although Mahdist beliefs were popular in the territories of the Sokoto Caliphate (1804–1903) and the ancient empire of Bornu (1396–1893). See Warburg, Islam, Sectarianism and Politics, 46; Holt, “The Sudanese Mahdia,” 283–88.
66 For the former, see Sanderson, “Conflict and Co-operation,” 15; Viviane A. Yagi, Khalifa Abdullahi: Sa Vie et Sa Politique (PhD diss., Montpellier III, University of Lille, France, 1990), 505; Abu Salim and al-Qaddal, Al-Harb al-Habashiyya, 9. For the latter, see Cuzzi, Fifteen Years, 104, and Holt, “The Sudanese Mahdia,” 289.
67 Yagi applies this last conception to Sudanese–Ethiopian and Sudanese–British hostilities: Yagi, Khalifa Abdullahi, 507. Jihad's defensive function is related to ribāṭ, which implies the defense of dār al-Islām by forces located in ports and border towns (thughūr). See Khadduri, Majid, War and Peace in the Law of Islam (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Press, 1955), 81Google Scholar.
68 Abu Shouk, “Ideology versus Pragmatism,” 158–59.
69 Al-Qaddal, Al-Mahdiyya wa-l-Habasha, 40; Warburg, Islam, Sectarianism and Politics, 32–33.
70 Holt and Daly, A History of the Sudan, 89; Caulk, “Yohannes IV, the Mahdists,” 28; Warburg, Islam, Sectarianism and Politics, 47.
71 Aregay, Merid Wolde and Selassie, Sergew Hable, “Sudanese–Ethiopian Relations before the Nineteenth Century,” in Sudan in Africa, ed. Hasan, Yusuf Fadl, 2nd ed. (Khartoum, Sudan: Khartoum University Press, 2006), 64–65Google Scholar; Abir, Mordechai, “The Origins of the Ethiopian–Egyptian Border Problem in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of African History 8 (1967): 443, 448, 450, 459CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
72 Holt, “The Sudanese Mahdia,” 287; Erlich, Ethiopia, 63, 66; Abu Salim and al-Qaddal, Al-Harb al-Habashiyya, 10, 12; Sanderson, “Conflict and Co-operation,” 17.
73 Holt and Daly, A History of the Sudan, 89; Abu Salim and al-Qaddal, Al-Harb al-Habashiyya, 12–13.
74 Although the Aksumite ruler's name is Adriaz in Ethiopian and European writings, it varies in Islamic sources: Ashama, Askhama, Mashama, Sahma, Ashaba. He was usually known as al-najā shī, a term borrowed from the Geez nägâsî that designates the ruler. European languages transformed it into negus. See ʿAbdallah El Tayeb, “On the Abyssinian Hijrah,” Sudan Notes and Records, no. 2 (1998): 160; Van Donzel, Emeri, “Al-Nadjashi,” in Encyclopédie de l'Islam (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993), 863Google Scholar.
75 Historians diverge on the exact Qurʾanic verses that he quoted in front of Adriaz, but sura 19 (Maryam) seems to have been recalled. See Van Donzel, “Al-Nadjashi,” 864; Erlich, Ethiopia, 7–8; El Tayeb, “On the Abyssinian Hijrah,” 161.
76 Erlich, Ethiopia, 9.
77 Ibid., 15.
78 For more details, see Khadduri, War and Peace, 252–67.
79 Ibid., 252.
80 Ibid., 256; Van Donzel, “Al-Nadjashi,” 865.
81 Khadduri, War and Peace, 255–56; Erlich, Ethiopia, 9.
82 Ibn Ishaq quoted by Van Donzel, “Al-Nadjashi,” 864.
83 The Solomonic dynasty was established in 1270 on the Ethiopian highlands (Shoa) and claimed direct lineage from the Aksumite kings, who themselves claimed direct descent from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
84 Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia, 85.
85 See Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia, 86, n. 2.
86 Shuqayr, Taʾrikh al-Sudan, 729. It would be instructive to know what the Mahdi had in mind when using the expression jamīʿ al-ʾarḍ (“the whole earth”).
87 Erlich, Ethiopia, 67.
88 MAHDIA Y80, 1. MSS Letter-Book of Uthman Diqna, SOAS 101491 khalifa to ʿUthman Diqna, Muharram 1303/October 1885, and khalifa to ʿUthman Diqna, 21 Muharram 1303/31 October 1885 quoted by Erlich, Ras Alula, 65.
89 Abu Salim and al-Qaddal, Al-Harb al-Habashiyya, 71.
90 Ibid., 70; Shuqayr, Taʾrikh al-Sudan, 730.
91 Although the Mahdist armies did not launch any major attack against Ethiopia until January 1888, frequent bidirectional raids had taken place in the border zone since the end of 1885. See al-Qaddal, Al-Mahdiyya wa-l-Habasha, 55–59.
92 Shuqayr, Taʾrikh al-Sudan, 736.
93 Wingate, Mahdiism, 370; Muhammad Saʿid al-Qaddal, Taʾrikh al-Sudan al-Hadith: 1820–1955 (History of the Modern Sudan: 1820–1955) (Khartoum, Sudan: Sharikat al-ʿAmal li-l-Tibaʿa wa-l-Nashr, 1993), 198.
94 NRO, MAHDIA 1/34/1/64, Hamdan Abu ʿAnja to Yohannes of Ethiopia, Jumada al-Ula 1306/January 1889.
95 Ibid.
96 Al-Qaddal, Taʾrikh al-Sudan, 199.
97 Al-Qaddal, Al-Mahdiyya wa-l-Habasha, 123. Ethiopia was indeed threatened by Italian advances from the coastal town of Massawa and suffered from many internal power struggles.
98 The Mahdi had often used prophetic visions in order to proclaim the new laws of the Mahdist state. As the Prophet's heir (wārith) and successor (khalīfat rasūl Allah), he claimed the ability to communicate directly with the Prophet. See Layish, “The Mahdi's Legal Methodology,” 223.
99 NRO, MAHDIA 3/12 (Daftar al-ṣadir), 9.
100 According to Ethiopian traditions, forty-four churches were devastated. The sight of Gondar in flames brought back the specter of Ahmad Grañ to Ethiopian minds. See Erlich, Ethiopia, 70.
101 Abu Salim and al-Qaddal, Al-Harb al-Habashiyya, 127.