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Muhammad Ahmad ibn as Sayyid Abd Allah (otherwise known as The Mahdi or Muhammad Ahmed Al Mahdi Arabic:محمد أحمد المهدي) (b.12 August, 1845–June 22, 1885) was a Muslim religious leader, in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Under his religious authority the divided clans of the Baggara and their subject Fur tribesmen were united into an aggressive Ansar alliance dedicated to establishing an Islamic Republic as the first step in the global Islamic state. Believing himself to be the long awaited Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmed Al Mahdi declared a jihad, raised an army, and led a successful religious war to topple the secular Ottoman-Egyptian-British military occupation. His principal opponent was the British general Charles George Gordon who was eventually killed after the fall of Khartoum. Without the religious certainty of Muhammad, Mahdism lost much of its momentum and never spread beyond the frontiers of Sudan. Seeking to avenge the massacre of Khartoum and the execution of General Gordon, the British launched another invasion which met the Mahdi's army at the gates of Khartoum and destroyed it at the battle of Omdurman in 1898. The state he founded was doomed to reconquest by the militarily superior British Empire.