Butler, Daniel Allen. The First Jihad: The Battle for Khartoum and the Dawn of Militant Islam.(Brief article)(Book review)

Butler, Daniel Allen. The First Jihad: The Battle for Khartoum and the Dawn of Militant Islam. Casemate. Mar. 2007. c.304p. illus. maps. bibliog. index. ISBN 1-932033-54-8 [ISBN 978-1-932033-54-0]. $32.95. HIST

For those looking to find the origins of the extreme terrorism now gripping the planet, this book is the ideal starting point. Butler (Age of Cunard) has extensively researched the struggle for empire in the late 19th-century Middle East among Egypt, Great Britain, and Muhammed Ahmed, the Mahdi--or "Expected One"--of what was then the Sudan. This struggle reached the world stage …