The Mahdist War, which took place at the end of the nineteenth century, was officially a war against colonialism in Sudan. In reality, though, it was much more than that; fighting took place across a continent, and reverberations were felt around the world. The Mahdist War began—technically—as a religious conflict. An Islamic religious leader named Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah led a group of Muslim fundamentalists in rebellion against Egypt, which controlled Sudan, and Great Britain, who supported Egypt financially and had a large stake in the construction of the Suez Canal in Egypt.
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