Mahdism and slavery

As an employee of Columbia University, I have access to one of the 
finest research libraries in the world. In the course of studying 
about the Mahdist revolt in Sudan during the 1880s, there is one 
riddle that until now has remained unsolved. Although I can not read 
Arabic and therefore can not read scholarly literature on Mahdism 
written in that language (presumably less subject to Eurocentrism), I 
have now read at least 2,000 pages of scholarly material including 
P.M. Holt, considered the premier scholar of Sudanese history in the 
west.

Here is the problem that none of these scholars have addressed. The 
Mahdist revolt is viewed as a slave-owners revolt. The British and 
Egyptians supposedly sparked the revolt by outlawing the slave trade 
(even though the market in slaves was mostly north of the Sudan in 
Egypt itself or Turkey.) However, according to A. Egmont Hake's 
introduction to Gordon's journals, 7 out of 8 Sudanese were slaves. 
Since the Mahdi's army was obviously composed of native Sudanese and 
since it was directed against Egyptian and Turkish oppression--and 
presumably the slave trade that they supported--why would they fight 
on behalf of a system that robbed their freedom?

After wading through 378 pages of Charles Gordon's monumentally 
fat-headed journals, I have finally stumbled across the reason:

"My belief is that the Mahdi business will be the end of slavery in 
the Soudan. The Arabs have invariably put their slaves in the front 
and armed them; and the slaves have seen that they were plucky, while 
their masters shirked: is it likely that those slaves will ever yield 
obedience to those masters as heretofore?"


-- 
Louis Proyect, lnp3@panix.com on 11/09/2001

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