On June 29, 1881, Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah declared that he was the Mahdi, a messianic figure aiming to expel the British and Ottoman Empires from the Sudan and create a theocratic Islamic state. Join us as we discuss the Mahdi's rise and revolt in this first part of our series on the Mahdist Revolution.

Correction: The Funj Sultanate was founded in the early sixteenth century, not the nineteenth century as we accidentally say.