The First Jihad: The Battle for Khartoum and the Dawn of Militant Islam - Softcover

Butler, Daniel Allen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1612005934 ISBN 13: 9781612005935

Publisher: Casemate, 2018

Synopsis

Before there was Osama bin Laden, Abu al-Zarqawi or Ayatollah Khomeini, there was the Mahdi—the “Expected One”—who raised the Arabs in pan-tribal revolt against infidels and apostates in the late 19th-century Sudan.

Born on the Nile in 1844, Muhammed Ahmed grew into a devout, charismatic young man, whose visage was said to have always featured the placid hint of a smile. He developed a ferocious resentment, however, against the corrupt Ottoman Turks, their Egyptian lackeys, and finally the Europeans who he felt held the Arab people in subjugation. In 1880, he raised the banner of holy war, and thousands of warriors flocked to his side.

The Egyptians dispatched a punitive expedition to the Sudan, but the Mahdist forces destroyed it. In 1883, Col. William Hicks gathered a larger army of nearly 10,000 men. Trapped by the tribesmen in a defile at El Obeid, it was massacred to a man. Three months later, another British-led force met disaster at El Teb.

Prime Minister William Gladstone ordered a withdrawal from Sudan, and dispatched one of Victoria’s most celebrated heroes, General Charles “Chinese” Gordon, to effect the evacuation. Instead, Gordon was besieged by the Mahdi at Khartoum. In an epic contest pitting military innovation and discipline against religious fervor, the Mahdi and Gordon dueled throughout 1884, while the British government hesitated to send relief.

On January 26, 1885 a treacherous native (or patriot, depending on one’s point of view) let the Mahdist forces into the city of Khartoum. Gordon, realizing that the end was at hand, donned a white uniform, took up his sword, and walked out upon his palace steps. He was hacked to death by jihadists and his head was carried around the city on a pole. A British relief column arrived two days later.

The Mahdi died shortly afterward, yet his revolt had succeeded. The British vacated the territory for almost 15 years until in 1899, led by Herbert Kitchner, they returned to forestall encroachments by other European powers. The Mahdist forces were crushed at the Battle of Omdurman, and the great jihad temporarily dissolved into the desert, not to be renewed for another century.

In today’s world the Mahdi’s words have been repeated almost verbatim by the Muslim jihadists who have attacked New York, Washington, Madrid and London, and continue to wage war from the Hindu Kush to the Mediterranean. Along with Saladin, who once defeated a holy war, the Mahdi stands as an Islamic icon who once launched his own successful crusade against the West.

This deeply researched work reminds us that the “clash of civilizations” that supposedly came upon us in September 2001 in fact began much earlier. This book is essential reading for all those who seek to understand the roots of our current relationship with Islam.

Table of Contents

Introduction
“Fuzzy-Wuzzy” by Rudyard Kipling

Prologue
Chapter 1 The Land and the Prophet
Chapter 2 The Coming of the Mahdi
Chapter 3 Revolt in the Desert
Chapter 4 The City Between the Rivers
Chapter 5 Gordon
Chapter 6 The Siege Begins
Chapter 7 London and Cairo
Chapter 8 The Duel
Chapter 9 The Relief Column
Chapter 10 The Fall of Khartoum
Chapter 11 The Death of the Mahdi
Chapter 12 Omdurman

Epilogue
Author’s Note
Bibliography
Index

About this title

About the Author

Daniel Allen Butler, a maritime and military historian, is the bestselling author of “Unsinkable”: The Full Story of RMS Titanic, Distant Victory: The Battle of Jutland and the Allied Triumph in the First World War, and The First Jihad: The Battle for Khartoum and the Dawn of Militant Islam. He is an internationally recognized authority on maritime subjects and a popular guest-speaker for several cruise lines. Butler lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Daniel Allen Butler was educated at Hope College, Grand Valley State University, and the University of Erlangen.

From Publishers Weekly

This well-researched but reactionary history chronicles the little-known holy war (jihad) led by Sudanese cleric Muhammed Ahmed ibn 'Abdullah—known as the "Mahdi" or "expected one"—against the English Empire. The initial armed encounter took place in late 1882, when 50,000 of the Mahdi's men obliterated a British garrison in Kordofan, after the English became embroiled in regional affairs due to financial concerns about the Suez Canal. Enraged, British Prime Minister Gladstone sent decorated war veteran Gen. Charles "Chinese" Gordon to reassert British control. While Mahdi had sheer manpower, Gordon had superior ammunition. But after holding off a 317-day siege of Khartoum, Gordon's forces crumbled in January 1885, when an Egyptian lieutenant helped the Mahdi into the city. However, the Mahdi died shortly thereafter and in 1899, his short-lived empire was put to rest by a renewed English offensive. Butler lays important tracks into the study of terror, fundamentalism and the early clash between Islam and Christianity, but his account is tarnished by an angry narrative tone, in which he casts Islam as murderous, inflexible and impervious to modernization, while General Gordon is civilization's savior destroyed by savages. 16 pages illus., maps. (Mar.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Casemate
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1612005934
• ISBN 13: 9781612005935
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 256