The Ansar is a Sufi religious movement in Sudan that was founded by Muhammad Ahmad, the self-proclaimed Mahdi. Between 1883 and 1885, the Mahdi took power in Sudan, supported by Afro-Arab farmers in northern Sudan who had been subjected to Egyptian rule. The Mahdi ruled Mahdist Sudan with a modified form of sharia, and he refused to call his Sufi followers "dervishes", instead calling them Ansar after the Prophet Muhammad's original helpers during his stay in Medina. He attracted followers by claiming that he was clearing the way for the second coming of Jesus, and men were ordered to abstain from alcohol and tobacco, while women were stricly secluded. In addition, Ahmed taught that war was a duty incumbent on all Muslims instead of the hajj, and that the zakat tax was meant to be paid to the state instead of to charity. From 1881 to 1889, the United Kingdom, Canada, the Khedivate of Egypt, British India, the Congo Free State, Ethiopia, and Italy waged war on the Mahdists, who initially had many successes; they conquered Khartoum in 1885 and set up their own Islamic state. After the Battle of Omdurman, the Mahdist state collapsed, but the Mahdist movement continued to exist. The National Umma Party was founded in 1945 to represent the Ansar's ideology.
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