Ten Years in Captivity in the Mahdi's Camp — Father Joseph Ohrwalder

Description

Austrian missionary Father Joseph Ohrwalder spent ten harrowing years as a prisoner of the Mahdi and his successor the Khalifa in Sudan from 1882 to 1891. His dramatic escape and firsthand account of life inside the Mahdist state provides an extraordinary window into one of history's most remarkable captivity narratives.

Excerpt

A few years previous to the time of which I speak, an individual who called himself a Dervish had attracted people’s attention. He wandered through the Sudan in the garb of a Dervish, and strove to rouse the Moslems to religious fanaticism. He urged that reality no longer existed in the religion; faith was becoming of no account, and this religious decadence was due to a luxurious mode of life and contact with Christians.

A number of influential sheikhs and merchants took up his cause, and these he made to swear to remain faithful and true to him.