Sudanese Mahdist victories inspired Egyptian pan-Islamic writers who resented the same Turkish-Egyptian rulers

Evidence

The Mahdïya in the Sudan created new heroes for the pan-Islamic movement. By 1883, the forces of the Mahdï were imposing defeat after defeat on Egyptian troops, with some startling victories over regiments commanded by British officers. The Mahdïya’s forces decried the rule of the “Turks,” their word for the Circassian-led Egyptian army, for their religious laxness, for their economic exploitation of the Sudan, and for the disruption of the slave trade in the late 1870s. Although they cursed Egyptians, the Mahdï and his forces began to attract a great deal of favorable attention within Egypt itself. Sanü`a, for example, in Abü Nazzara Zarqa, paid great attention to the Sudanese Mahdï, as did many other writers and thinkers promoting the idea of Islamic reform, notably Jamäl al-Dïn al-Afghänï himself. The Mahdï became a completely different symbol, in what had previously been the narrow spectrum of figure allowed in literary and dramatic characterizations of the Sudanese and Nubians. Through the Mahdï’s speeches, and through his military victories, the Sudanese seemed to have a new voice. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 454

Categorization

• XREF: Striking to the reader’s Egypt-vs-Sudan colonial comparison: Sudanese actors who cursed Egyptian rule still drew admiration from Egyptian Islamists, complicating a simple colonizer-colonized division.
• SHARE: For someone interested in Islamist transnational solidarity, the irony that Egyptians lionized the very Mahdi whose forces were crushing Egyptian troops is a rich nugget.