In March 1881, a Sudanese holy man named Muhammad Ahmad began to confide to his intimate associates that he was the Expected Mahdi, a prominent figure in Islamic eschatology. In the months and years to follow, he and his supporters overthrew the Ottoman colonial regime in the Sudan and united much of the country under a Mahdist State that endured until the colonial conquest by the British of 1898. The Mahdi himself died in June 1885, but his Companions, following the example of the Prophet Muhammad, thereafter recorded anecdotes concerning his words and deeds, which were broadly comparable in their legal effects to the hadith of the Prophet Muhammad.
Before his call to become the Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad had been master and guide to a leading Sudanese Sufi brotherhood. Within the Mahdist State that he subsequently established, the Mahdi abolished all Sufi brotherhoods and every established madhhab (school of Islamic law). (He placed a pejorative emphasis upon the Hanafi madhhab of the Ottoman Empire and the Maliki madhhab prevalent under precolonial Islamic Sudanese governments. A few Shafi`i sympathizers among those in Berber and Suakin who did business with East Asia were included in the prohibition but their suppression was not emphasized.) The Mahdi alone claimed the supreme authority over the dispensation of justice.
The book under review here by Aharon Layish is a discussion of the Sudanese Mahdi and his all-powerful ‘legal methodology and doctrine’, or in technical jargon, his usul al-fiqh (roots of the law). Having dismissed precedent in its established forms (taqlid), the Mahdi became the ultimate source of law. Layish explains that he ‘elaborated a unique, though simple and unsophisticated, legal methodology, according to which a Prophetic sunna [precedent by word or deed] might abrogate (naskh) a Qur'anic text. He rejected analogical reasoning (qiyas) and the consensus (ijma’) of the fuqaha’ [qualified interpreters of the law] as sources of law. Instead, he adopted inspiration (ilham) from the Prophet and God as a source of law, alongside the textual sources of the Qur'an and the sunna. In the event that he could not find an appropriate legal solution in the textual sources, the Mahdi would derive law by resorting to inspiration from the Prophet himself by means of a colloquy (hadra). Direct communication with the Prophet practically rendered the Mahdi an independent legislator with almost unrestricted discretion to interpret the word of God’ (1–2). The Mahdi's word – like that of a traditional precolonial Sudanese king – was law.
The Mahdi's legal methodology may be inferred from an abundant surviving written literature of legal opinions (sing. fatwa), proclamations (sing. manshura) and sayings (sing. qawl). After the Mahdi's death, additional information was derived from the memory of his companions at ‘instructional sessions’ (sing. majlis). The Mahdist legal literature has been studied extensively, notably by Professor P. M. Holt, and significant portions have been published in the Sudan and elsewhere, conspicuously by the long-time director of the National Records Office, Dr Muhammad Ibrahim Abu Salim. The author has tracked down, scrutinized, and evaluated very many, if not all, of these previous collections.
The volume reviewed here offers an invaluable set of 72 documents translated into English with detailed annotations. The author brings to this eloquent and magisterial work not only a comprehensive understanding of the Mahdist literature in all its forms, but also a deep familiarity with the non-Mahdist jurisprudence that surrounded and opposed it. Thus the reader may learn at each point how the Mahdist position resembled or differed from its predecessors and rivals. They may well also learn why these differences came to exist. The topics addressed are arranged according to categories any legal scholar may recognize: they include slavery, property, obligations and contracts, family law, inheritance and wills, homicide and bodily harm, international law, alms and public morality, and testimony. One category is specifically Islamic; the penalties enjoined by scripture (sing. hadd).
A concluding essay summarizes the general thrust of why the Mahdi's jurisprudence differed from what otherwise exists in Islamic law. The present reviewer was impressed by the kind and alert sensitivity expressed by the Mahdi in his rulings towards women. For many readers, particularly those encountering the early Sudan for the first time, this book will open the door to a little-known universe of profoundly complex interpretations concerning Sudanese intellectual, religious, and social history.
