FIRST JIHAD: Khartoum, and the Dawn of Militant Islam
This well-researched but reactionary history chronicles the  little-known holy war (jihad) led by Sudanese cleric Muhammed Ahmed ibn  'Abdullah—known as the "Mahdi" or "expected one"—against the English  Empire. The initial armed encounter took place in late 1882, when 50,000 of the  Mahdi's men obliterated a British garrison in Kordofan, after the English  became embroiled in regional affairs due to financial concerns about the Suez  Canal. Enraged, British Prime Minister Gladstone sent decorated war veteran  Gen. Charles "Chinese" Gordon to reassert British control. While Mahdi had  sheer manpower, Gordon had superior ammunition. But after holding off a 317-day  siege of Khartoum, Gordon's forces crumbled in January 1885, when an Egyptian  lieutenant helped the Mahdi into the city. However, the Mahdi died shortly  thereafter and in 1899, his short-lived empire was put to rest by a renewed  English offensive. Butler lays important tracks into the study of terror,  fundamentalism and the early clash between Islam and Christianity, but his  account is tarnished by an angry narrative tone, in which he casts Islam as  murderous, inflexible and impervious to modernization, while General Gordon is  civilization's savior destroyed by savages. 16 pages illus., maps.(Mar.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.