Aba Island
By the 1920s, Abd al-Rahman was a respected religious and political leader. In 1921, he held a meeting at his home where the attendees signed two documents that laid out the Mahdist objectives. These were for Sudan to be ruled by Britain rather than Egypt, and for Sudan to eventually achieve self-government. In the early 1920s, between 5,000 and 15,000 pilgrims were coming to Aba Island each year to celebrate Ramadan. Many of them identified Abd al-Rahman with "Isa", the prophet Jesus, and assumed that he would drive the Christian colonists out of Sudan. The British found that Abd al-Rahman was in correspondence with agents and leaders in Nigeria and Cameroon, predicting the eventual victory of the Mahdists over the Christians. They blamed him for unrest in these colonies. After pilgrims from West Africa held mass demonstrations on Aba Island in 1924, Abd al-Rahman was told to put a stop to the pilgrimages.