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The First Jihad: The Battle for Khartoum and the Dawn of Militant Islam
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.
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.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2006
18 people are currently reading
99 people want to read
About the author
Daniel Allen Butler
21 books27 followersDaniel Allen Butler is a maritime and military historian, the author (through September 2011) of nine books. Some of his previous works include Unsinkable: the Full Story of RMS Titanic (1998); Distant Victory: The Battle of Jutland and the Allied Triumph in the First World War (2006); The Age of Cunard (2003); The Other Side of the Night: The Carpathia, theCalifornian, and the Night the Titanic was Lost (2009); The Burden of Guilt: How Germany Shattered the Last Days of Peace, Summer 1914 (2010); and Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm: the Destruction of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (2011).
Educated at Hope College, Grand Valley State University, and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Butler served in the United States Army before becoming a full-time author. He is an internationally recognized authority on maritime subjects and a popular guest speaker, having given presentations at the National Archives in Washington, DC, the Mariners’ Museum, and in the United Kingdom. He has also been frequently included in the on-board enrichment series of Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth 2 andQueen Mary 2, as well as the ships of the Royal Caribbean and Norwegian cruise lines.
Butler is currently at work on three new projects: The Field Marshal, a biography of Erwin Rommel; The Last Field of Glory: Waterloo, 1815, a history of the Hundred Days; and But for Freedom Alone, the story of the Declaration of Arbroath.
A self-proclaimed “semi-professional beach bum,” Butler divides what little time he spends away from his writing between wandering long stretches of warm, sandy beaches, his love of woodworking, his passion for British sports cars, and his fascination with building model ships. After living and working in Los Angeles, California, for several years, Butler has recently relocated—permanently, he hopes!—to Atlantic Beach, Florida, where the beaches are better.
Educated at Hope College, Grand Valley State University, and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Butler served in the United States Army before becoming a full-time author. He is an internationally recognized authority on maritime subjects and a popular guest speaker, having given presentations at the National Archives in Washington, DC, the Mariners’ Museum, and in the United Kingdom. He has also been frequently included in the on-board enrichment series of Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth 2 andQueen Mary 2, as well as the ships of the Royal Caribbean and Norwegian cruise lines.
Butler is currently at work on three new projects: The Field Marshal, a biography of Erwin Rommel; The Last Field of Glory: Waterloo, 1815, a history of the Hundred Days; and But for Freedom Alone, the story of the Declaration of Arbroath.
A self-proclaimed “semi-professional beach bum,” Butler divides what little time he spends away from his writing between wandering long stretches of warm, sandy beaches, his love of woodworking, his passion for British sports cars, and his fascination with building model ships. After living and working in Los Angeles, California, for several years, Butler has recently relocated—permanently, he hopes!—to Atlantic Beach, Florida, where the beaches are better.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 28, 2025
QUICK UPDATE: Having just finished the excellent Omdurman last month, I revisited this book just to go through its brief (30 page) overview of that massive campaign. So yeah, concise but nice summary, and I "enjoyed" (I know that's not the right word) Butler's rehash of the largely disastrous charge of the 21st Lancers, which turned out to be the last cavalry charge ever made by the British Army. The 21st had been around for a while but never seen real action, and so while its official motto was "Death or Glory," other units cynically joked that it's true motto was "Thou Shalt Not Kill." Anyway — kill they ultimately did in the desert north of Omdurman — but it was a high price to pay for regimental pride.
Book includes a handful — but only a handful — of interesting photos, and just ONE pitiful map of the entire Nile River with some place names...as my two-year-old grandson loves to say, "come on, man!"
ORIGINAL REVIEW: Fascinating and timely overview of what was pretty much the birth of militant Islam vs. the West. Never really knew anything about this before, other than that "General Gordon was killed during the siege of Khartoum," so this brought together a wealth of interesting information — Sudanese history, birth of Islam, life of Gordon, etc. I can't vouch for it's accuracy — the library book I read had several pages of angry "corrections" penciled in by a previous (and obviously Muslim) reader, and at least one Goodreads reviewer considered this "maybe the single most bigoted and racist historical book that was published in the modern era." I didn't really see that much bigotry/racism, but again — as this is my first exposure to this history, I can't judge it's accuracy or objectivity.
My only technical complaint is that the book could have used a better proofreader. Casemate is a small Philadelphia publisher that specializes in military history; and unfortunately, as is often the case with smaller houses, there are way too many typos. And Butler makes the mistake (IMHO) of going with "Moslem" through most of the book, rather than the now-preferred "Muslim," (although he uses that a few times as well; here again, probably a case of loose editing).
But overall, an excellent overview and the perfect companion to The Four Feathers, which I also just finished - review of which can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
(For those who wonder about this sudden interest in the Sudan, turns out I have to take a trip there in June for the State Department, and such historical works are all I could find at the library — for "some reason," not really a lot of tourists going there these days, so no good guidebooks. I just hope things have gotten a little calmer there the past hundred years!)
Book includes a handful — but only a handful — of interesting photos, and just ONE pitiful map of the entire Nile River with some place names...as my two-year-old grandson loves to say, "come on, man!"
ORIGINAL REVIEW: Fascinating and timely overview of what was pretty much the birth of militant Islam vs. the West. Never really knew anything about this before, other than that "General Gordon was killed during the siege of Khartoum," so this brought together a wealth of interesting information — Sudanese history, birth of Islam, life of Gordon, etc. I can't vouch for it's accuracy — the library book I read had several pages of angry "corrections" penciled in by a previous (and obviously Muslim) reader, and at least one Goodreads reviewer considered this "maybe the single most bigoted and racist historical book that was published in the modern era." I didn't really see that much bigotry/racism, but again — as this is my first exposure to this history, I can't judge it's accuracy or objectivity.
My only technical complaint is that the book could have used a better proofreader. Casemate is a small Philadelphia publisher that specializes in military history; and unfortunately, as is often the case with smaller houses, there are way too many typos. And Butler makes the mistake (IMHO) of going with "Moslem" through most of the book, rather than the now-preferred "Muslim," (although he uses that a few times as well; here again, probably a case of loose editing).
But overall, an excellent overview and the perfect companion to The Four Feathers, which I also just finished - review of which can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
(For those who wonder about this sudden interest in the Sudan, turns out I have to take a trip there in June for the State Department, and such historical works are all I could find at the library — for "some reason," not really a lot of tourists going there these days, so no good guidebooks. I just hope things have gotten a little calmer there the past hundred years!)
June 12, 2021
DNF. The 1 star is for publishing agents and the printing press!!
The author's belief and bias comes through heavily in his writing. Sure I learnt a lot of things from this book but the author's ignorance about Islamic history in totality that even the part where he is seemingly accurate just left a bitter taste. I think the whole book (at least the part I read) was toned with the author's lack of information, toning his writing for easy narration whilst conflicting information and sometimes blatant hate of countries in Africa and Islam. I mean he called them 'utterly lacking in grace'. Religion is not simple, writing 256 pages about the religion and the terrorist and extremist groups that fall away from the religion tell us that it is not simple. Religion rarely is.
.
Yes, I did not finish this book but I am 97% sure that nothing the author wrote in the remaining pages would have changed my opinion of the book. Feel free to read it yourself and develop your own opinion.
The author's belief and bias comes through heavily in his writing. Sure I learnt a lot of things from this book but the author's ignorance about Islamic history in totality that even the part where he is seemingly accurate just left a bitter taste. I think the whole book (at least the part I read) was toned with the author's lack of information, toning his writing for easy narration whilst conflicting information and sometimes blatant hate of countries in Africa and Islam. I mean he called them 'utterly lacking in grace'. Religion is not simple, writing 256 pages about the religion and the terrorist and extremist groups that fall away from the religion tell us that it is not simple. Religion rarely is.
.
Yes, I did not finish this book but I am 97% sure that nothing the author wrote in the remaining pages would have changed my opinion of the book. Feel free to read it yourself and develop your own opinion.
December 1, 2012
I wanted to learn more about the Madhi and how his cause and operating principle (jihad) affects contemporary events. The author's bias emerges from the bitter aftertaste of 9/11 and some passages read like anti-Islam opinion pages. I didn't get through this one. Gordon's desperate stand in Khartoum became too grim and I became disengaged from the story by the ideological backwash of both Gordon and the author.
November 22, 2013
Maybe the single most bigoted and racist historical book that was published in the modern era
January 8, 2013
Misnomer: I would think the first jihad occured in the eighth century when Islam swept across northern Africa into Spain;
November 11, 2021
When the author isn't busy exposing his ignorance about Islam and sticks to a straightforward retelling of events that occurred in Khartoum and the surrounding area, this book isn't terrible. But unfortunately, he was very busy doing the former, and for that reason I have to question the scholarship of this book. The whole venture is spoiled because, in addition to a distractingly hostile tone, he gets so much so wrong. If he can't be bothered to fact check basic information about Islam, why should I think he made an effort to be fastidious about details about the so-called Mahdi and his confrontation with the British?
Now for some examples of what I disliked about this book, lest I come across as equally lazy as Mr. Butler. Some are factual errors, some are evidence of his Islamophobic agenda.
Page 3: "Simple, subtle, remorseless, utterly lacking in grace, though not in beauty, the Sudan and Islam mirrored one another [...]" -- Ouch. Islam is "simple," "remorseless" and "utterly lacking in grace"? Hard to say that a religion that has spawned as much scholarship and cultural efflorescence as Islam has is "simple." To say nothing of the other ugly words he used to snipe with.
Page 5: "[...] the commander's experience with the 'sudd' -- the Arabic word for 'obstruction' from which the country derived its name [...]" Incorrect. The word "sudd" does indeed mean obstruction, but I have no idea where he read this bogus claim to Sudan deriving its name from "sudd." In fact, Sudan's name essentially means "the country of the Blacks," referring to the skin color of the inhabitants. Arabic is a language that cleverly (and often systematically) builds on triconsonantal roots. The three that make up Sudan are s-w-d; the three that make up "sudd" are s-d-d. Sudan and sudd are not at all related. Considering how basic this knowledge is to any student of Arabic, it's pretty obvious the author doesn't speak the language. Which means he couldn't avail himself of any of the sources in Arabic that could have helped him write a book about an Arabic-speaking figure whose life was spent in an Arabic-speaking country, and interacted a lot with another Arabic-speaking country (Egypt). This is not surprising, given his approval of British imperialism in Sudan (and elsewhere) and disdain for Islam.
Page 7: When describing Muhammad's first experience receiving the words of the Quran from the angel Gabriel, which is said to have happened in a cave, Butler wrote: "[j]ust why he was in the cave in the first place, and how long he stayed there, is unknown." What a catty remark. I bet he chuckled with great satisfaction at that one. Clearly he's implying Muhammad was a strange character for hanging out in a cave, probably up to no good. However, Muhammad's motives are well-known to history. Looking for respite from the worldly, bustling merchant city of Mecca, he liked to make a retreat to the solitude of the caves in order to clear his mind and recharge, spiritually. I've never heard any serious disputation about this.
Pages 7-8: "One recorded incident tells of Muhammed slaughtering seven hundred men in one caravan and selling their wives and children as slaves." He wrote this on the heels of an explanation that Muhammad liked to raid caravans, kill people, and forcibly convert them to Islam. Unfortunately, the event he's writing about never happened. What he's thinking of is the execution of a large number of men of the Banu Qurayza, a Jewish tribe that lived beside Muhammad and his community of believers in Medina. The traditional Islamic account of this event is that the Banu Qurayza, after making a pact of mutual defense and cooperation with Muhammad, reneged and put the Islamic community in grave physical peril. As a punishment for this crime, Muhammad had all the adult males and post-pubescent boys killed. I'm certainly not writing an apology for the violence, rather pointing out the shoddy scholarship of Butler. Whether or not Muhammad was overly harsh in his punishment is irrelevant: what is relevant is that Butler either willfully or unknowingly mischaracterized this as the result of a caravan raid. This is a well-known story among anyone, friend or foe, who has even a cursory knowledge about the history of Islam. Clearly Butler is not one of them.
Page 8: "[Muhammad] did not make his converts by his teaching or example, but literally with the point of his sword [...]" -- A typical accusation, though baseless. Muhammad built the early Islamic community by his teachings and examples; if there were any sword points involved, they were aimed at his followers, not by them. The earliest Muslims, who lived in Mecca, were brutalized by the Meccan elite. They didn't like the Muslims, whose message they felt threatened their way of life -- which, as successful merchants and guardians of a pagan shrine, was very comfortable. The early Muslims quite often found themselves at the wrong end of a sword, yet they followed Muhammad regardless.
Page 9: "After the death of Muhammaed, from a wound to the head received in battle in June of 632 [...]" -- Muhammad did not die of a head wound received in battle, and I have no idea where Butler read this fabrication (though I guarantee it wasn't an Arabic source, as pointed out earlier!). Muhammad came down with a fever and died from that, which wasn't very uncommon among the Meccans who moved to Medina. The climate of the latter seemed especially difficult for them and fever was a common malady. I see some very dubious books in Butler's bibliography, among them a book by noted Islamophobe Robert Spencer. I assume that is where Butler has been spoon-fed this nonsensical misinformation about Islam.
Page 21: On this page, he refers to ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the notorious founder of Wahhabism, as "Al-Wahhab." This faux pas further exposes his ignorance of the Arabic language and Islamic culture. "Al-Wahhab" is considered to be one of the names of God; it is considered sacrilegious to call anyone other than God by one of his 99 names. Again, if Butler lacks even this most basic of understandings about the religious and cultural milieu in which one of the main characters in this story lived, how can I trust anything else he's written? This is "Islamic Culture and Society 101" stuff.
Page 27: "[...]after Ali had been killed in battle near Karbala." -- Ali did not die in battle, nor did he die near Karbala. Ali was assassinated while praying in a mosque in Kufa. His son Husayn was killed in battle outside Karbala. Considering Butler brought this up to explain the reason for the Sunni-Shia split should be concerning. He truly does not have even a dilettante's understanding of this subject. The story of Husayn's death -- not Ali's -- outside Karbala is a very important, defining event for the Shia. To bungle its telling by mistakenly inserting Ali into the picture exposes Butler's profound ignorance of Islamic history. Again, why should I trust his knowledge of Sudanese history?
I'll stop there. I have a couple of more pages of notes, but I think you get the point.
I'll just make one more criticism, which is that I really hated his cynical attempt to shoehorn the Mahdist revolt into a narrative about modern Islamic terrorism. I say cynical because I'm certain he did this to sell books: he knows that a lurid title with the word "jihad" sells to a certain segment of the population; well-researched, scholarly books about obscure revolutionaries in 19th-century Sudan don't. But his ham-fisted attempts fail, in my opinion. He failed to convince me that there's any meaningful connection between the "Mahdi" fighting to expel a Western colonial power (Great Britain) and its puppet regime (Egypt) from his country and Islamic terrorists that attack Western civilians in Western countries. Butler feels very strongly that the Mahdist revolt was a precursor to 9/11 and the bombings in Madrid. It couldn't possibly be that the so-called Mahdi was simply a nationalist who used Islamic rhetoric in order to unite a disparate group of people in an attempt to gain independence from foreign rule. No, Butler is having none of that. He was adamant in denying this, saying that Muhammad Ahmad had international aims. Really? I'm very skeptical that a 19th century Sudanese revolutionary planned on storming the streets of London and beheading Christians there. In fact, the proof is in the pudding: after the British withdrew from Sudan, the so-called Mahdi victorious and in control of the majority of the country, he never expanded even into neighboring Egypt, let alone Western countries. So how exactly was he clearly the 19th century bin Laden instead of another 19th century nationalist revolutionary?
All in all, a terrible book by a close-minded ignoramus. Don't waste your time. Now I'm off to find a dispassionately written, well-researched book about the fascinating story of the Mahdist revolt.
Now for some examples of what I disliked about this book, lest I come across as equally lazy as Mr. Butler. Some are factual errors, some are evidence of his Islamophobic agenda.
Page 3: "Simple, subtle, remorseless, utterly lacking in grace, though not in beauty, the Sudan and Islam mirrored one another [...]" -- Ouch. Islam is "simple," "remorseless" and "utterly lacking in grace"? Hard to say that a religion that has spawned as much scholarship and cultural efflorescence as Islam has is "simple." To say nothing of the other ugly words he used to snipe with.
Page 5: "[...] the commander's experience with the 'sudd' -- the Arabic word for 'obstruction' from which the country derived its name [...]" Incorrect. The word "sudd" does indeed mean obstruction, but I have no idea where he read this bogus claim to Sudan deriving its name from "sudd." In fact, Sudan's name essentially means "the country of the Blacks," referring to the skin color of the inhabitants. Arabic is a language that cleverly (and often systematically) builds on triconsonantal roots. The three that make up Sudan are s-w-d; the three that make up "sudd" are s-d-d. Sudan and sudd are not at all related. Considering how basic this knowledge is to any student of Arabic, it's pretty obvious the author doesn't speak the language. Which means he couldn't avail himself of any of the sources in Arabic that could have helped him write a book about an Arabic-speaking figure whose life was spent in an Arabic-speaking country, and interacted a lot with another Arabic-speaking country (Egypt). This is not surprising, given his approval of British imperialism in Sudan (and elsewhere) and disdain for Islam.
Page 7: When describing Muhammad's first experience receiving the words of the Quran from the angel Gabriel, which is said to have happened in a cave, Butler wrote: "[j]ust why he was in the cave in the first place, and how long he stayed there, is unknown." What a catty remark. I bet he chuckled with great satisfaction at that one. Clearly he's implying Muhammad was a strange character for hanging out in a cave, probably up to no good. However, Muhammad's motives are well-known to history. Looking for respite from the worldly, bustling merchant city of Mecca, he liked to make a retreat to the solitude of the caves in order to clear his mind and recharge, spiritually. I've never heard any serious disputation about this.
Pages 7-8: "One recorded incident tells of Muhammed slaughtering seven hundred men in one caravan and selling their wives and children as slaves." He wrote this on the heels of an explanation that Muhammad liked to raid caravans, kill people, and forcibly convert them to Islam. Unfortunately, the event he's writing about never happened. What he's thinking of is the execution of a large number of men of the Banu Qurayza, a Jewish tribe that lived beside Muhammad and his community of believers in Medina. The traditional Islamic account of this event is that the Banu Qurayza, after making a pact of mutual defense and cooperation with Muhammad, reneged and put the Islamic community in grave physical peril. As a punishment for this crime, Muhammad had all the adult males and post-pubescent boys killed. I'm certainly not writing an apology for the violence, rather pointing out the shoddy scholarship of Butler. Whether or not Muhammad was overly harsh in his punishment is irrelevant: what is relevant is that Butler either willfully or unknowingly mischaracterized this as the result of a caravan raid. This is a well-known story among anyone, friend or foe, who has even a cursory knowledge about the history of Islam. Clearly Butler is not one of them.
Page 8: "[Muhammad] did not make his converts by his teaching or example, but literally with the point of his sword [...]" -- A typical accusation, though baseless. Muhammad built the early Islamic community by his teachings and examples; if there were any sword points involved, they were aimed at his followers, not by them. The earliest Muslims, who lived in Mecca, were brutalized by the Meccan elite. They didn't like the Muslims, whose message they felt threatened their way of life -- which, as successful merchants and guardians of a pagan shrine, was very comfortable. The early Muslims quite often found themselves at the wrong end of a sword, yet they followed Muhammad regardless.
Page 9: "After the death of Muhammaed, from a wound to the head received in battle in June of 632 [...]" -- Muhammad did not die of a head wound received in battle, and I have no idea where Butler read this fabrication (though I guarantee it wasn't an Arabic source, as pointed out earlier!). Muhammad came down with a fever and died from that, which wasn't very uncommon among the Meccans who moved to Medina. The climate of the latter seemed especially difficult for them and fever was a common malady. I see some very dubious books in Butler's bibliography, among them a book by noted Islamophobe Robert Spencer. I assume that is where Butler has been spoon-fed this nonsensical misinformation about Islam.
Page 21: On this page, he refers to ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the notorious founder of Wahhabism, as "Al-Wahhab." This faux pas further exposes his ignorance of the Arabic language and Islamic culture. "Al-Wahhab" is considered to be one of the names of God; it is considered sacrilegious to call anyone other than God by one of his 99 names. Again, if Butler lacks even this most basic of understandings about the religious and cultural milieu in which one of the main characters in this story lived, how can I trust anything else he's written? This is "Islamic Culture and Society 101" stuff.
Page 27: "[...]after Ali had been killed in battle near Karbala." -- Ali did not die in battle, nor did he die near Karbala. Ali was assassinated while praying in a mosque in Kufa. His son Husayn was killed in battle outside Karbala. Considering Butler brought this up to explain the reason for the Sunni-Shia split should be concerning. He truly does not have even a dilettante's understanding of this subject. The story of Husayn's death -- not Ali's -- outside Karbala is a very important, defining event for the Shia. To bungle its telling by mistakenly inserting Ali into the picture exposes Butler's profound ignorance of Islamic history. Again, why should I trust his knowledge of Sudanese history?
I'll stop there. I have a couple of more pages of notes, but I think you get the point.
I'll just make one more criticism, which is that I really hated his cynical attempt to shoehorn the Mahdist revolt into a narrative about modern Islamic terrorism. I say cynical because I'm certain he did this to sell books: he knows that a lurid title with the word "jihad" sells to a certain segment of the population; well-researched, scholarly books about obscure revolutionaries in 19th-century Sudan don't. But his ham-fisted attempts fail, in my opinion. He failed to convince me that there's any meaningful connection between the "Mahdi" fighting to expel a Western colonial power (Great Britain) and its puppet regime (Egypt) from his country and Islamic terrorists that attack Western civilians in Western countries. Butler feels very strongly that the Mahdist revolt was a precursor to 9/11 and the bombings in Madrid. It couldn't possibly be that the so-called Mahdi was simply a nationalist who used Islamic rhetoric in order to unite a disparate group of people in an attempt to gain independence from foreign rule. No, Butler is having none of that. He was adamant in denying this, saying that Muhammad Ahmad had international aims. Really? I'm very skeptical that a 19th century Sudanese revolutionary planned on storming the streets of London and beheading Christians there. In fact, the proof is in the pudding: after the British withdrew from Sudan, the so-called Mahdi victorious and in control of the majority of the country, he never expanded even into neighboring Egypt, let alone Western countries. So how exactly was he clearly the 19th century bin Laden instead of another 19th century nationalist revolutionary?
All in all, a terrible book by a close-minded ignoramus. Don't waste your time. Now I'm off to find a dispassionately written, well-researched book about the fascinating story of the Mahdist revolt.
November 30, 2019
While I do not regret picking up this, I can not recommend it to anyone for the following reason: the book is ripe with repetitious meanderings.
January 25, 2023
I keep wavering between and 3 and 4 Star on this one, the author can write well and in a compelling fashion, but he keeps trying to tie everything in the book back to the War on Terror and radical Islam, and that’s incredibly frustrating and a disservice to the material, even the title only makes sense in a 19century onward context.
Gordon and the Mahdi are extremely interesting characters and even though the book is relatively flushed out, even continuing to the denouement of Mahdism with Britain’s last cavalry charge at Omdurman, the constant attempt to ‘make it relevant’ is frustrating, let the reader draw their own conclusions.
Some parts of the book are just factually wrong, however the author does a good job in the writing and the various players and I now know more that I did going in, I’m hopeful of the author on another topic where he’s not trying to relate to present day every other page.
Gordon and the Mahdi are extremely interesting characters and even though the book is relatively flushed out, even continuing to the denouement of Mahdism with Britain’s last cavalry charge at Omdurman, the constant attempt to ‘make it relevant’ is frustrating, let the reader draw their own conclusions.
Some parts of the book are just factually wrong, however the author does a good job in the writing and the various players and I now know more that I did going in, I’m hopeful of the author on another topic where he’s not trying to relate to present day every other page.
November 17, 2012
The First Jihad is an excellent work that starts out with the amazing and heroic battle of Khartoum. The author ties an easy to read narrative to an historical event that brings the reader close and does not let them go. It is a chilling read as one correlates the challenges and madness of the region today to how it started. A strongly recommended read for anyone who has interest in the beginnings of modern Muslim extremism and the ties the West has to that epic struggle.
July 26, 2011
Good account of the development of militant Islam in the Sudan leading up to the battle at Khartourn and the defeat of the British-Egyptian army under Gordon.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews