Anael Poussier

When Muḥammad Aḥmad b. ʿAbdallāh, a leading member of the Sammāniyya ṭarīqa1, openly proclaimed on 29 June 1881 that he was the Expected Mahdī (al-Mahdī al-muntaẓar), he initiated a collective religious and political movement that was to profoundly transform Sudanese society. Over the four years that followed, he successfully wrested control over most of Nilotic Sudan from Egyptian colonial domination (1820-1885) and founded a centralised state structure, which was headed by the Khalīfa ʿAbdullāhi after Muḥammad Aḥmad's death on 22 June 1885. Until its demise in September 1898 in the wake of the Anglo-Egyptian conquest (1896-1899), the Mahdist regime exerted tremendous influence on the social fabric of the diverse local communities, which it attempted to radically alter to conform to the Islamic ideals it promoted, notably through its mobilisation of the population for jihad.2 However, the historiography of the Mahdiyya (1881-1898) has remained focused on the political and military dimensions of the period, at the expense of an analysis of its socioeconomic dynamics. The main reason for this gap is the lasting influence of British colonial literature, which was initially developed by Francis R. Wingate, the senior British intelligence officer in Egypt between 1889 and 1899. Indeed, Wingate's first publication, Mahdiism and the Egyptian Sudan (Wingate 1891), and his famous editorial work on the personal accounts published by Joseph Ohrwalder (1892) and Rudolf C. von Slatin (1896), have played a crucial role in shaping contemporary understandings of the Mahdist movement. His efforts were famously described by Peter M. Holt as "war propaganda" or "the public relations literature of the Egyptian Military Intelligence" (Holt 1958: 112), and aimed, through the construction of the "legend of the Mahdiyya" (Daniel 1966: 424-428), to convince British public opinion and political leaders of the necessity and legitimacy of a military intervention in

Cet article a pour ambition de mettre en évidence les représentations de l’État mahdiste (1883-1898) vis-à-vis des identités ethno-tribales bija au Soudan-Est, de montrer les modalités des tentatives de reconfiguration de ces identités, et enfin, d’en exposer les limites qui furent à l’origine de l’adoption d’une politique tribale pragmatique par les autorités mahdistes dans cette région. Il s’appuie sur la correspondance échangée entre le khalīfa ʿAbd Allāh (1846-1899) et ses représentants en province de 1885 à 1898, ainsi que sur le corpus de documents produits par le Trésor provincial (bayt al-māl) de Tūkar entre 1888 et 1891. Ces sources permettent une analyse détaillée des conceptions identitaires de l’administration mahdiste à l’égard des tribus bija ainsi que de leur évolution. Cette analyse vise à déconstruire et historiciser les trois oppositions canoniques des identités soudanaises (nomades et sédentaires, Arabes et non-Arabes, musulmans et non-musulmans), afin de mettre au jour les facteurs politiques et socioéconomiques qui façonnèrent ces représentations identitaires.

This article aims to highlight the representations of the Mahdist State (1883-1898) vis-à-vis the ethno-tribal identities of the Bija in Eastern Sudan, to define the terms of the attempts to reconfigure these identities, and finally, to expose their limits which were at the origin of the adoption of a pragmatic tribal policy by the Mahdist authorities in this region. It is based on the correspondence exchanged between the khalīfa ʿAbd Allāh (1846-1899) and his representatives in Eastern Sudan from 1885 to 1898, as well as on the corpus of documents produced by the provincial treasury (bayt al-māl) of Tūkar between 1888 and 1891. These sources allow for a detailed analysis of the identity conceptions of the Mahdist administration with regard to the Bija tribes as well as their evolution. It aims to deconstruct and historicize the three canonical oppositions of Sudanese identities (nomadic and sedentary, Arabs and non-Arabs, Muslims and non-Muslims) in order to highlight the political and socio-economic factors that shaped these identity representations.