Sayyid Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi: a frustrating fulfilment of a dream, 1947–56

Abstract

As argued in the latest piece of my discourse on Neo-Mahdism, the Umma bloc reacted violently to what they considered British 'betrayal' in the Sidqi-Bevin Protocol of October 1946.' But just a couple of years later, they witnessed and experienced real and wholesale sell-out by their so-called friends, notwithstanding an extensive diplomatic offensive masterminded by their leader, Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi, since late 1946 to exhibit his trustworthiness, and that of his movement. This article explores the underlying factors and course of these dramatic developments over a decade or so. It also highlights their repercussions on the Umma party, and its ageing, ailing and frustrated leader and patron, and the country at large. Towards the end of 1946, the mercurial Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi called off his party's shortlived campaign against Britain. Instead, he retreated to his customary and favourite scenario of a 'true friend' whose 'genuine' advice was unheeded by the Sudan Government, and whose numerous services were insufficiently remunerated by them, at both personal and national levels. For the next few years, al-Sayyid had personally, and through his aides and British friends,2 launched a diplomatic offensive to demonstrate the reliability of himself and his followers. This took the form of some crash visits to London, and numerous interviews that he and his lieutenants had with some senior British officials in Khartoum, London and elsewhere, that were usually arranged on their initiative, and sometimes their persistence. While sending his son and heir-apparent, al-Siddiq, to London in 1948 (with Abdullah Khalil) and later in 1954 (with Ibrahim Ahmed),3 al-Sayyid paid a visit to London during May-August, 1949. Alhough the British had firmly declared this visit to be strictly for medical treatment for bronchitis and had no political significance whatsoever, alSayyid tried, without much success, to make political capital out of it. The British Government took 'no particular note' of his presence, and did not allow him to raise any political issues for fear of repercussions in the Sudan