The formation of the Sudanese Mahdist State
- Author
- Date of creation
-
2011
Gregorian
- Preferred title
-
The formation of the Sudanese Mahdist State English
- Work type
-
Single work
- Work manifested
- Monograph
- Work genre
- Textual work
- Audience
-
Adult, serious
- Summary
-
This book is the first analysis of the Sudanese Mahdiyya from a socio-political perspective that treats how relationships of authority were enunciated through symbol and ceremony. The book focuses on how the Mahdi and his second-in-command and ultimate successor, the Khalifa Abdallahi, used symbols, ceremony and ritual to articulate their power, authority and legitimacy first within the context of resistance to the imperial Turco-Egyptian forces that had been occupying the Nilotic Sudan since 1821, and then within the context of establishing an Islamic state. This study examines five key elements from a historical perspective: the importance of Islamic mysticism as manifested in Sufi brotherhoods in the articulation of power in the Sudan; ceremony as handmaids of power and legitimacy; charismatic leadership; the routinization of charisma and the formation of a religious state purportedly based upon the first Islamic community in the seventh century C.E.
- Year
- 2011
- Monograph
- The formation of the Sudanese Mahdist State : Ceremony and symbols of authority, 1882-1898
- Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2011
- Call number
- 9-841-54