The rise of the Mahdist movement T lies with Muhammad Ahmad ibn al-Sayyid Abd Allah. Born in Dongola province, Nubia, in 1844, Muhammad was the son of a humble boatbuilder. His father uprooted the family and move to Karari, a village near Khartoum in Sudan, where Muhammad developed a strong interest in Islam. He veered away from the more orthodox studies and leaned towards the Sufi tradition. As he grew, his religious beliefs and practices became increasingly strict.
No photograph of Muhammad exists but Father Joseph Ohrwalder, once a prisoner of the Mahdists, described him in his Ten Years' Captivity in the Mahdi's Camp: "His outward appearance was strangely fascinating; he was a man of strong constitution, very dark complexion, and his face always wore a pleasant smile... Under this smile gleamed a set of singularly white teeth, and between the two upper middle ones was a V-shaped space... As a messenger of God, he pretended to be in direct communication with the Deity. All orders which he gave were supposed to have come to him by inspiration, and it became therefore a sin to refuse to obey them; disobedience to the Mahdi's orders was tantamount to resistance to the will of God, and was therefore punishable by death."
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NAUMACHIA TRUTH BEHIND ROME'S GLADIATOR SEA BATTLES
In their quest for evermore novel and bloody entertainment, the Romans staged enormous naval fights on artificial lakes
OPERATION MANNA
In late April 1945, millions of Dutch civilians were starving as Nazi retribution for the failed Operation Market Garden cut off supplies. eet as In response, Allied bombers launched a risky mission to air-drop food
GASSING HITLER
Just a month before the end of WWI, the future Fuhrer was blinded by a British shell and invalided away from the frontline. Over a century later, has the artillery brigade that launched the fateful attack finally been identified?
SALAMANCA
After years of largely defensive campaigning, Lieutenant General Arthur Wellesley went on the offensive against a French invasion of Andalusia
HUMBERT 'ROCKY'VERSACE
Early in the Vietnam War, a dedicated US Special Forces officer defied his merciless Viet Cong captors and inspired his fellow POWs to survive
LEYTE 1944 SINKING THE RISING SUN
One of the more difficult island campaigns in WWII's Pacific Theatre saw a brutal months-long fight that exhausted Japan’s military strength
MAD DAWN
How technology transformed strategic thinking and military doctrine from the Cold War to the current day
BRUSHES WITH ARMAGEDDON
Humanity came close to self-annihilation with the Cuban Missile Crisis, Broken Arrows’ and other nuclear near misses
THE DEADLY RACE
How the road to peace led to an arms contest between the USA and USSR, with prototypes, proliferation and the world’s biggest bomb
THE MANHATTAN PROJECT
Einstein, Oppenheimer and the race to beat Hitler to the bomb. How a science project in the desert helped win a war
