Word: mahdi
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Founded in 1879 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, a village in the Punjab, who claimed to be the promised Mahdi (Leader of the Faithful) as well as the Messiah...
...Gotham a swarthy guest in white turban, striped flannel skirt and long, grey coat attracted some attention. He was mannerly, scholarly Sayed Saddiq El Mahdi, grandson of the famed Sudanese leader whose career came to an end at the hands of the British at Omdurman in 1898. Sayed was not strictly a delegate. He was in town to watch the Assembly handle Egypt's case. Some day his own state might be in the same fix. Meanwhile, he was prepared to enjoy himself. "Before we came," he told a reporter over a lemonade last week, "we thought America...
...thousand desert dervishes in flowing abbayas streamed into town on camels, horses and rickety provincial trains. Ten thousand Sudanese jammed the big dusty square before the stuccoed, white-domed tomb, brightening the drab town with pink, blue, yellow and green galabias (skirted garments). For the first time since the Mahdi's victory over Gordon, big black, green and red banners, bearing the silver crescent, and dervish spear, danced overhead. Inside the tomb enclosure, women rocked and swayed over big rawhide drums, wailing mournful tunes in high-pitched tones...
...brick city Sayed Abdul Rahman's spanking new black Chevrolet picked its way. As it entered the square before the tomb, butchers hacked off the heads of three camels and seven oxen. They threw hunks of bleeding meat to the city's poor. Unruffled, the Mahdi's son stepped daintily from his car, unfurled a light blue parasol, mounted the notables' platform...
...square before the Mahdi's tomb, the poor cooked their free camel and ox meat on great bonfires. The big war drums boomed through the night. After seven days of merrymaking, the husbands would claim their brides, the British could sigh with relief. For then the Mahdi's dervishes, wives and all, would melt back into the deserts and fields of the Sudan...