After defeating three previous armies,  he provoked the British into a punitive expedition led by Charles Gordon in 1884, holding Gordon's forces under siege at Khartoum and eventually over-running them due to tardy support from the British government.
Becoming convinced that the khedive was a puppet of foreign and ungodly rulers and thus unfit to rule, he set out from Aba Island with a few followers armed with spears and within four years had created an empire.  After defeating three previous armies,  he provoked the British into a punitive expedition led by Charles Gordon in 1884, holding Gordon's forces under siege at Khartoum and eventually over-running them due to tardy support from the British government. FTP, name this Moslem fundamentalist leader who died from typhus shortly after driving the British from the Sudan and founder of a namesake sect that still survives.
Becoming convinced that the khedive was a puppet of foreign and ungodly rulers and thus unfit to rule, he set out from Aba Island with a few followers armed with spears and within four years had created an empire.  
al Mahdi (also accept Muhammad Ahmad ibn Abd Allah)