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. ( )

A little bit too much speculation on the mental state of the participants, and not quite enough actual data in this book about the Mahdist “uprising” in the Sudan and the siege of Khartoum, Author Daniel Allen Butler, a retired US intelligence officer, notes that he began the book before 9/11, not in response to it, and that while he originally intended to tell the story from General Gordon’s point of view, he quickly became fascinated by the Mahdi. Well and good, but it doesn’t come across quite like that.


The introductory chapters set the tone for the rest of the book. Butler discuses the founding of Islam by saying


“In what is now Saudi Arabia, in a cave outside the city of Mecca, a 39-year old trader named Muhammad is said to have had a life-changing religious experience. Just why he was in the cave in the first place, and how long he stayed there, is unknown, but when he emerged he claimed to have had a visitation from the angel Gabriel.”


Why is it necessary or desirable to have the qualification “is said to have had a life changing religious experience” or ask “why he was in the cave in he first place, and how long he stayed there”? Butler goes on to describe “Allah” as a “Moslem” [sic] word meaning “the one true God”, when it’s actually an Arabic word that just means “God” – if you were a Christian Arab you would use “Allah” in the same contexts an English-speaker would use “God”. After working his way through the history of Islam, the Crusades, and so on, Butler eventually gets to the life of Muhammad Ahmad:


“Gone was the thoughtful, introspective scholar of the early days on the island of Abba; in his place was the religious dogmatic whose every pronouncement is inspired by Allah and infallible.”


How does Butler know this? Based on his bibliography, it doesn’t appear that he knows Arabic; all the books are English or English translations of Arabic. This seems to be pretty tenuous material for judging the Mahdi’s philosophical state.


The descriptions of the Sudan campaigns up to the siege of Khartoum are fairly interesting; but once Gordon comes on scene there is again quite a bit of hypothetical material on Gordon and the Mahdi’s plans and thoughts. The description of the fall of Khartoum, while dramatic, seems completely invented –


“For a while he [Gordon] was able to hold them [the Mahdi’s troops] off with a Maxim gun mounted there [on the roof of the governor’s palace] but eventually the crowd got so close to the building he couldn’t depress the muzzle sufficiently to fire on them.”


One wonders exactly how this information on Gordon’s actions turned up, and how a Maxim gun, not publicly demonstrated until several months later, managed to show up in the back end of nowhere in January 1885.


There’s no shortage of English-language material for the 1899 battle of Omdurman, and Butler provides a vivid description; alas, the battle was quite complicated and it’s difficult to follow. Why couldn’t a military intelligence officer come up with a decent map?


About the best I can say is Butler knows how to write stirring battle stories, but for a more even handed book I’d look elsewhere. ( )