Thesis (doctoral)--University of Edinburgh, 1976.

This dissertation explores formations of the ‘colonial’ in Sudan through the vantage point of transformations in debt and temporality. Situating Sudan in an Ottoman-Egyptian context, it offers an account of how debt and land came to be reorganised so as to be separated from the realm of ethical relations. It does so by exploring legal-juridical changes brought about under Ottoman-Egyptian rule, which gradually altered notions of selfhood and time. In light of this, forms of resistance—especially during the Mahdist uprising—are shown to be a reformulation of disciplinary and ethical regimes and a (re)fashioning of subjects. Concluding with the early decades of British colonial rule, it considers the temporal regimes used to neutralise Mahdist subjectivities, which involved producing a rational, sedentary, and calculative peasantry oriented toward—not an afterlife but—a prosperous future.

This master thesis deals with the modern messianic Ahmadiyya movement founded in the 19th century in Punjab, India, which later spread to Europe as a missionary movement. Followers of the Ahmadiyya consider themselves Muslims, but are considered heretics by the Muslim majority, and persecuted in many parts of the world because of their faith. The work presents the origin and history of the movement against the background of the life of its founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, as well as the general context of messianism and the theory of the restoration of faith in India. It also maps the situation after the death of Ghulam Ahmad and the doctrinal schism in the movement. The aim of the thesis is to answer the question of the identity and exclusivity of the Ahmadiyya movement in the context of Islam, as well as to point out the connection between its political activity before the partition of India and the subsequent persecution in Pakistan after 1947. The work is based not only on the works of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and rich Ahmadiyya production, but also on academic studies of Western researchers and religious and social periodicals. Keywords: ahmadiyya, movement, Islam, messianism, India, Ahmad