A tribute to Sudan’ s leading historian: Mohamed Al-Gadal
By Mahgoub El-Tigani*
Before his departure, today the 6th of January 2008, Professor Mohamed Sa’eed al-Gadal published a few articles in the al-Midan journal on the October Uprising (Revolution) 1964.
Clearly re-stating his long-life commitment to authenticate with scientific research recurring lessons of the Sudanese historical resistance, as well as contemporary endeavors, to combat and defeat dictatorial governance, irrespective of apparent weaknesses of opposition groups or any propagandist appearance of ruling parties, al-Gadal latest articles signify the authenticity, predominance, and collective nature of the Sudanese political nationalism over all sources of local or external domination.
Born in Sinkat of Eastern Sudan in 1935, Mohamed Sa’eed al-Gadal graduated in the University of Khartoum in 1958, obtained his MA degree from California in 1964, and had his PhD from UoK in 1981. He taught in Sudanese high secondary schools, high institutes of education, University of Khartoum, and the University of ‘Aden. He was dismissed from his job three times in 1971, 1981, and 1992 by anti-democratic regimes.
Gadal published 20 books on the modern history of Sudan, besides works on aspects of the history of Hadramut. Added to his English book on The Dawn of Pan Africanism (1900-1927), his works include academic research in Arabic on the economic policies and the wars of the Mahdiya, Islam and politics in Sudan, and a series of studies on the modern history of Sudan, the history of Sudanese communist party, and an academic guide on the history of Europe. He also published psycho-historical works on Imam al-Mahdi of Sudan and Gadal Pasha – a Sudanese instructor in Hadramut.
The Gadal school of thought has been consistently developed via strict adherence to an objective mode of analysis exploring a Marxist tradition of dialectical historicism, as well as enforcing a remarkable application of liberal academics in scores of published works. His research goals aimed apparently to provide a theoretical advanced re-structure of the material discourse of the Sudanese economic and political experiences through authenticated documentation of historical events.
Many of his readers often shared the impression that his well-researched works seemed to be guided by a vision on a possible flourishing future for an independently unified and prosperous nation free of both local and external patronages. For example, Tarikh al-Sudan al-Hadith, the Gadal’s distinguished work (reprinted 2002), exemplifies his lifetime commitment to promote a clear understanding of the Sudanese mode of development in response to vibrant potentialities of the diverse community of the People of Sudan whose struggles never ceased to determine their own march of “economic and political growth” over all partisan or foreign monopolies.
In so doing, the Sudanese people have been exhibiting unique characteristics of “resistance to foreign domination,” according to Ustaz al-Gadal, supported by a continuous political potential to conduct “revolutionary action.” This was often manifested in historical events under the occurrence of certain social conditions (including possibilities of structural transformations, as well as the availability of appropriate popular leaderships) to restore “the unity and the independent growth of the Sudan over nationalist domination or foreign dependency.” The experiences of Sudan against the earlier Turko-Egyptian rule, the warlike oppressive Mahdiya, and the 50 years’ anti-imperialist movement in the British colonial era testified to this trend.
Based on this mental schemata, the Gadal analysis of the Sudanese historical experiences in the modern times of national upheavals, namely the Turko-Egyptian, Mahdism, British rule, and the independence episodes extracts from objective materials (rather than personal views) the possible historical codes that might well explain the determined stages of Sudanese national behavior in the 18th century throughout the 19th and the first half of the 20ieth century.
The patriotic context of the al-Gadal works has been clearly underlying strict adherence to objective analysis and authentic research. His works will continue to enlighten both Sudanese and foreign scholars of history, as well as students of unity and progression in the social and political transformations of Sudan – the wonderful land of the socially diverse Sudanese!
* The author is a sociologist at the Department of Social Work & Sociology in Tennessee State University, Nashville TN, USA. He can be reached at: [email protected]