nineteenth-century Britain would have been well-acquainted with the idea of the Mahdi, the divinely guided redeemer of Islamic eschatology. A search for the term in ’s digital archive for the period 1880-1900 turns up 830 results. This interest in Islamic messianism was a response to the rise of Muhammad Ahmad, a Sudanese mystic who declared himself Mahdi in March 1881 and won a series of victories over Anglo-Egyptian forces, culminating in the conquest of Khartoum and the infamous killing of Gordon in June
