CHAPTER 4 The ’s Legal Opinion as an Instrument of Reform Issues in Divorce, Inheritance, False Accusation of Unlawful Intercourse and Homicide

Aharon Layish

Introduction1

Muhammad Ahmad b. ʿAbdallah (1844–85) headed, as a self-proclaimed Mahdi, a millenarian, revival and reformist movement in in the late nineteenth century, strongly inspired by Salafi ideas and Sufi traditions that formed the social and intellectual background of his formative period.2 The Mahdi’s vision was to restore the theocracy of the Prophet and the “Righteous Caliphs” in . He claimed legitimacy on the grounds of being a successor to Muhammad, his ability to communicate with him, and his infal- libility and moral authority. The Mahdi nominated successors to the orthodox caliphs, governors, military commanders and judges (qadis). Adherents to the Mahdiyya had to take a pledge of allegiance (bayʿa) entailing a commitment to

1 This paper is part of a comprehensive study entitled “Revival of Islamic Law in the Late 19th- Century Sudan: The Mahdi’s Legal Methodology and Its Application” (in progress) based on the Mahdi’s documents. I am most grateful to the late Prof. P.M. Holt who graciously placed his personal collection of the Mahdi’s documents at my disposal during my sabbatical stay in Oxford in 1993. I am indebted to Ruud Peters of the University of Amsterdam for allowing me to consult in manuscript form chapters on Islamic family law (see bibl.). Gaby Warburg has initiated me into Sudanese studies and was very helpful in various ways for which he deserves my sincere thanks. Eliyahu Stern and David Powers read the annotated translations of the Mahdi’s documents and made generous comments and suggestions for which I am most grateful. I am also indebted to Maaike van Berkel, Léon Buskens, Petra Sijpesteijn and Annemarie van Sandwijk for their substantive comments and editorial assistance. The re- search is supported by a grant from the Israel Science Foundation. 2 Aharon Layish, “The Sudanese Mahdi’s Legal Methodology and Its Sufi Inspiration,” Studies in and Islam, Special Issue in Honor of Yohanan Friedmann 33 (2007): 279–308.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/9789004343733_006 86 Layish refrain from polytheism, offenses of the Qurʾan and evading , along with devotion to asceticism.3 The idea of had manifested itself in Sudan as early as the sev- enteenth century. The Mahdist movement was motivated by eschatological expectations whose source of inspiration can be traced to in the 18th and 19th centuries.4 In its initial stages the Mahdiyya had many of the char- acteristics of a social and political protest movement. Its main causes were the conquest of Sudan by Egypt under Muhammad ʿAli and the annexation of the former sultanate of by Egypt in 1874; the replacement, by the Turco-Egyptian régime, of the indigenous religious functionaries with ortho- dox ʿulamaʾ‌ imported from Egypt; and the attempts to put an end to the slave trade, contrary to Sudanese vested interests. ’s manifesta- tion as the “Expected (muntaẓar) Mahdi” took place in the Egyptian Sudan in 1881. He overthrew the Turco-Egyptian régime and established instead a ter- ritorial state.5 The Mahdi did not leave behind any legal treatise in which he presents his reformist legal methodology. In this paper an attempt will be made to recon- struct this methodology on the basis of his legal documents issued for practi- cal purposes in the course of his struggle to consolidate his new state. He left more than a thousand documents: legal opinions (fatwa, jawāb), decisions or rulings (ḥukm) and proclamations (manshūr) on an extremely broad range of administrative, political, religious, social and legal matters. In addition, “say- ings” (qawl) – that is, traditions, and statements made in instructional sessions (majlis) – were attributed to him after his death. The documents were origi- nally written in lithographic print. Over the years several editions of the docu- ments were published, the last edition, al-Athar al-Kamila li-l- al-Mahdi, consisting of seven volumes, appeared between 1990 and 1994.6

3 Muhammad Ibrahim Abu Salim, ed., Al-Athar al-Kamila li-l-Imam al-Mahdi (: Dar Jamiʿat al-Khartum li-l-Nashr, 1992), 5: 13, 108. Cf. Peter M. Holt, The in the Sudan, 1881–1898 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 115, 117. 4 On the Mahdist idea and its connection to the Shiʿa, see Holt, The Mahdist State, 22ff. Cf. Ahmad Ibrahim Abu Shuk, “Minhajiyyat al-Tashriʿ al-Mahdawi fi ʾl-Sudan (1881–1885),” Kitabat Sudaniyya 9, Markaz al-Dirasat al-Sudaniyya, March 1999, 19, col. i. 5 Holt, The Mahdist State, 19ff.; P.M. Holt, “al-Mahdiyya,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1986), 1247ff.; P.M. Holt & M.W. Daly, The History of the Sudan from the Coming of Islam to the Present Day. 3rd ed. (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1979), 87f.; Kim Searcy, The Formation of the Sudanese Mahdist State, Ceremony and Symbols of Authority: 1882–1898. (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 21–24. 6 For further detail, see R.S. O’Fahey (with the assistance of Muhammad Ibrahim Abu Salim, Albrecht Hofheinz, Yahya Muhammad Ibrahim, Bernd Radtke and Knut S. Vikør), Arabic