The Republic of the Sudan was long the largest country in Africa and, according to the general consensus, also one of the least successful in many ways. This was not entirely its fault since it lay along the fault line between Muslim and Christian Africa and between the Nile Valley civilizations and African Sudanic cultures. This partly explains the long and bloody warfare waged by the Southerners to achieve independence, which they did in July 2011. So this hefty book actually covers not one but two states. This fourth edition of the Historical Dictionary of the Sudan does so, first, through a lengthy and detailed chronology tracing its relatively few successes and numerous failures. The introductory essay does an admirable job of putting it all in perspective. But the most informative part is the dictionary, with now over 700 entries for this fourth edition. They deal with important personalities, politics, the economy, society, culture, religion and inevitably the civil war. There are also appendixes and an extensive bibliography.

Historical Dictionary of the Sudan (Historical Dictionaries of Africa)

History

Lobban Jr., Richard A.

Kramer, Robert S.

Fluehr-Lobban Professor Emerita of Anthropology Rhode Island College, Carolyn

Africa

Scarecrow Press

The late 19th century of the Common Era also marked the end of the 13th Islamic century, a time when millions of Muslims--especially in sub-Saharan Africa--fervently expected the arrival of a Mahdi, a "divinely guided one," who would fill the world with justice and equity and defeat the enemies of Islam. The Sudanese holy man Muhammad Ahmad, proclaiming himself to be the Expected Mahdi, famously led an uprising against Turco-Egyptian rule that culminated in the capture of Khartoum in 1885. Following his sudden death, his successor, Khalifa Abdallahi, ruled Sudan for 13 tumultuous years from Omdurman--"the Mahdi's city"--opposite Khartoum on the Nile. A self-consciously holy city, a place of pilgrimage, Omdurman was also Sudan's market center and political capital. Its history during this era of holy war and martyrdom reveals the complexities and compromises that accompany revolutionary times and addresses the question: How should one live day-to-day in a "holy city" at the End of Time? In our contemporary world of Islamist revolt and resurgent millennialism, Omdurman's history is particularly instructive.

Holy City on the Nile: Omdurman During the Mahdiyya, 1885-1898

Markus Wiener Publishers

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