Egyptian Sudan,

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Gateway to the Sudan 15

III. A Desert Journey 30

II

FuiiLY twenty-six centuries ago, in the language of poetry and of prophecy, Isaiah penned a vivid picture of the land " which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia." He was speaking of what is, to-day, the Egyptian Sudan. He called it " the land of the rustling of wings."

" One whole tile which I picked out of the mud," says Professor Petrie in a recent article on the temples of Abydos, in Harper's Magazine, " has an aboriginal negro chief and his name and locality. This proves of particular interest, as he belonged to the fortress of Anu, a people with whom the early Egyptians were continually at war, and the day of whose destruction was a festival down to late times. From this tile we know that the Anu were the negro races of the southern border which the Egyptians had such difficulty in holding back." This too takes us back many centuries, indicating that " the Sudan question is as old as the beginning of history."

In more recent times, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, we find Egypt laying claim to the Sudan. It is purely a claim of conquest.

n

With cupidity as a motive, the Egyptian flag was steadily carried southward until at last the limits of the Egyptian Sudan almost reached the northern boundary of the kingdom of Uganda, and spread eastward to the frontier of Abyssinia, and westward until it included the kingdoms of Kordofan and Darfur. The government was in reality a system of wholesale robbery. The ofiicials cared nothing for the good of the people or the country except so far as it served their best interest to be good or do good. There was no patriotism in the administration of the government, and no restraining principles of right and justice. Always dealing with a class of people whom they believed to be much their inferiors, and rightful plunder, there were many acts of horrible cruelty committed in the name of the government, but always in the interest of officials. Slave hunting and slave driving almost always led to the perpetration of crime and the committing of horrible cruelties. There was naturally a hostile feeling against the government authorities on the part of those who constantly suffered these things. Then rivalry and jealousy among the more wealthy and influential of the population and officials kept the deep-seated discontent constantly boiling. This, in short, is the story of the Sudan, during the larger part of the nineteenth century.

In 1881 there appeared in the Sudan, Mohammed Ahmed, a native of Dongola, a religious teacher. Mohammed Ahmed was of a poor family, and without influence. His father had been a religious teacher, and taught his son the Koran and writing, certainly not more than that. As his education had been in Berber and Khartum, it is reasonable to suppose that he had heard of Egypt, and had a fairly correct idea of what it was like. He doubtless too had heard of Europe and Constantinople and, in the stories heard in his youth, would have some notion of India and Persia. At best, his ideas of the world outside his own little circle of a few hundred miles of Sudan territory would be of the vaguest kind. He was superior, however, to his people, exceedingly intelligent, and with force of character.

Mohammed Ahmed's strong point was his piety. He was deeply religious and fervently zealous, and hence became a favorite with all his teachers. At one time this same pious disposition led him to rebuke his instructor for allowing singing and dancing at the celebration of a feast. This, Mohammed held, would be greatly displeasing to God. A quarrel between teacher and pupil was the result. The former was so greatly incensed by the presumption of his disciple that he drove him away with cursing. Even in the Sudan, where the dailjr paper does not spread gossip, the news of this quarrel spread rapidly, and drew the sympathy of the masses of the people to the pious pupil. Mohammed Ahmed revisited his people on Abba Island, about one hundred and seventy miles south of Khartum, on the White Nile. Here the people flocked to him for his blessing, the blessing of a holy man, and one bold and brave enough to rebuke a teacher for his sins. Then Mohammed Ahmed visited the district of Kordofan, " where the towns and villages abound with religious teachers of the most ignorant and superstitious description." He began to preach and exhort the people. He had one subject and one theme: Our religion is becoming debased and corrupted ; our prophet is insulted and every true Moslem is humbled by the corruption of the government officials and their utter disregard for the true faith.

With this sort of preaching he struck the right chord in the character of the Moslem and of all the Sudanese tribes. He thought to unite all in one great faith. Wisely for his scheme, he recognized the general state of discontent and made the most of it. He was a religious leader, but he was also a shrewd politician. He based arguments on the prevailing " hard times," and traced these to the existing government. His astuteness was also shown in the fact that he selected as the field for his earliest effort the most disturbed section of. the country and a section rather remote from the central government and hence difficult of approach.

It was in 1882 that the government began to be somewhat alarmed, but still looked upon him as a holy man, zealous for religion but poor and without much influence, and no doubt easily silenced. The government, however, had already come to be despised by the people because of its weakness and corruption, while the prestige of Mohammed Ahmed was in the ascendency. The spirit of rebellion which prevailed in Egypt no doubt helped to augment fanaticism in the Sudan. When the government finally sent for Mohammed Ahmed, he refused to go. There now followed in wonderfully rapid succession defeat after defeat for the government, and success after success for the Mahdi.

A few troops were sent in 1881 to bring the Mahdi to Khartum, but he and his followers fell on these troops with clubs and sharp sticks and destroyed them. More troops were sent, but these, too, were destroyed. Then came the Mahdi's attempt to capture El-Obeid, the capital of Kordofan, and although driven back with great slaughter, he persevered until, after a siege of five months, the town and garrison surrendered. This was in the beginning of 1883. There was no doubt now in the minds of all that this was the longlooked-for " Mahdi," or Expected Leader, whose coming is prophesied in the Koran and is anxiously awaited in the whole Mohammedan world. From every tribe where Arabic was spoken and Islam was the prevailing religion, men flocked to his standard. Hicks Pasha was sent from Khartum with an army of ten thousand and met his enemy and his fate on November 4, 1883, at Shekan, a town two or three hours distant from El-Obeid. The battle, or rather the slaughter, lasted perhaps one hour, and there were possibly two or three hundred of the Egyptian army who escaped out of a force of ten thousand.

The effect of these repeated successes can be easily understood. Mohammed Ahmed's claim to divine appointment as the " Expected Leader " of the faithful had been fully established and his prestige grew apace. Meanwhile the Mahdi dispatched letters in all directions proclaiming his victories and his divine mission. He summoned all to join the holy war (Jehad) and promised four-fifths of the booty taken in war to his followers, to whom he gave the name " Ansar " ; the remaining fifth he reserved for himself. To all those who should fall fighting for God and His religion, he held out the certainty of the fullest enjoyment of the pleasures of paradise. " Thui^

" These notes for ten Egyptian piasters, zvere issued as currency by General Gordon during the Siege of Khartum. They read that they are redeemable at Khartum or Cairo after a period of six months, from April 25th. 1884. illustrating Gordon's expectation of relief at any time, certainly long before the end of 1884."

" These medals were presented tn gold, silver or lead to those who seri'cd his Government in any unusual zvay. The medal bears the inscription in Arabic ' Sie^e of Khartum ' until the Mohammedan year 1300."

MEDAL AND NOTES ISSUED BY GEN. GORDON DURING THE SIEGE OF KHARTUM did he pander to the main characteristics of the Sudanese, viz., fanaticism and greed." Each new victory was an inspiration and added other followers to the leadership of the Mahdi. Practically the whole Sudan lay at his feet.

By this time Egypt had realized that her Sudanese province was lost. Her only desire was to withdraw her troops, of whom forty thousand were scattered throughout the country in isolated garrisons. To accomplish this task, Egypt called to her aid once more General Charles Gordon, who had been governor-general of this disaffected province in 1877. His was an impossible task and he was left to do it alone.

The story of Gordon's attempt to save the Sudan is a pathetic one. We find him making the city of Khartum his headquarters, then hemmed in on all sides, until, at last, the city was wholly cut off from the outside world. Then we see him, the single Englishman in the city, bravely standing to his post, trying to do the work of a hundred men, baffled by the shiftlessness and incompetency of his officers, making promises until their faith in his word as an Englishman began to fail, and yet inspiring that listless population to resistance for 321 days. * Then we know of the night attack, the rush to the palace, the j avelin throw, and " he whom the Sudanese women called ' the Father and Saviour of the Sudan ' lay dead."

" By those for whom he lived, he died ; His land awoke, too late to crown dead brows with praise."

The fall of the city of Khartum marked the full triumph of the cause of Mahdism. Only those who read some record, such as Slatin Pasha's " Fire and Sword in the Sudan," or Father Ohrwalder's " Ten Years in the Mahdi's Camp," can appreciate the sorrow and suffering, the tyranny and oppression, the bloodshed and demoralization, inflicted upon the Sudan by the Mahdi government. Wholesale butcheries and outrageous immoralities were committed and tolerated in the name of religion. Famine followed in the wake of misgovernment, and the population was reduced fully one-half by starvation and wars.

The next chapter has to do with Kitchener's campaign. With that remarkable combination of power, Egyptian perseverance and endurance, and English leadership and training. General Kitchener succeeded in stemming the tide of the Mahdi invasion of Egypt, then repelled it, and at last after a series of campaigns extending over fourteen years, crushed the Mahdi movement and its kingdom. The last great battle was that of Omdurman, memorable in awful carnage. Ten thousand corpses strewed the battle-field of Omdurman as the sun set behind the hills of Kerreri. But the death of these ushered in new life to the inhabitants of the Sudan. Thus we come to the Sudan of to-daj.

Ill

The journey from Wadi Haifa to Khartum is made simple and easy by means of the Military Railway, although the accommodations of the ordinary passenger train leave much to be desired.

It is practically a desert journey of nearly six hundred miles. The line of railway starts out in a direction that leads away from the river into the desert. Although the speed with which the train moves off is exceedingly moderate, yet its course desertward is so direct that the river, with its fringe of palms and of green, is very soon lost to sight, and all around is a great sea of sand, with waves of yellow gold and rocks of polished stone projecting above the surface.

Ordinarily there is not much in this ride to divert the mind ; yet all is so strange that it has an interest of its own and one cannot help but keep on the watch for something new. The changing mirages of great lakes or of green fields fringed with palms relieve the monotony.

It was on this first part of the journey that for the first time I saw the Southern Cross. I was awakened at about three o'clock in the morning to have a look at it. Even then, half asleep as I was, I agreed fully with Mark Twain that it was not much of a constellation, but later I came to think better of it, for all the starry hosts became my friends in that country where a man's house is for shelter from the sun by day and the great canopy of heaven is his chamber by night.

It is said that the constellation can be seen 183 miles north of Wadi Haifa, but this cannot be with any degree of distinctness. However, going south from Wadi Haifa it is generally visible, some time during the night season, if one remains up late enough or rises early enough to find it.

The night in the desert is always cool and sometimes very cold ; but it has been my experience that the chill of the desert does no injury to one's health, unless it comes on too suddenly. Indeed, it acts like a tonic and you rise refreshed. There is a feeling altogether different from what is experienced after a night in a close room. Almost stiff with cold, a little exercise brings a warmth and glow, and the chill quickly passes off.

All night long the train moves through the sandy plain, at rather a slow pace, to be sure, but it moves and you are grateful. If it were not for this railway we would be compelled to make the journey by camel train or not make it at all; and so, by comparison, the slowness of speed or lack of conveniences are unnoticed, or if noticed they are minimized. This is the philosophy of a desert journey and it is the only way to get satisfaction out of it.

Here in the desert stations are given numbers instead of names, because, as I suppose, there are no natural objects or beings bearing names with which to associate them. At daylight we were at " Number Six," and I find this note in my diary, made while on my second journey in 1900:

" * Number Six,'' December 7th. We arrived here at about eight o'clock this morning after making ever so many stops during the night. The paymaster is on the train and so we stop wherever there are men at work along the line. Each man is paid separately into his own hand. These workmen are all soldiers. Sometimes there are as many as fifty or sixty of them in one squad, and it takes time. At the rate the train moves, one would suppose this could all be done without stopping, but no one seemed to think of this. However, we expect to go slow here in the desert.

" ' Number Six ' is on the old Korosko caravan route, the one General Gordon passed over on his way to Khartum in 1884, when he went to his martyrdom. Poor Gordon! had there been a railway then, possibly he would now be alive and things in the Sudan altogether different. But who knows? Gordon's death was one of the necessary sacrifices in the redemption of the country.

" Our old engine seems to be in a state of collapse and they have ' run it in for repairs ' while our saloon car is out in the desert. But we have company, be it good or bad. In the box in front of us — we cannot call it a car — are some of our steamer associates, keeping jcool on whisky and soda. Scotch whisky, ' made by Buchanan Brothers, Distillers to the Prince of Wales ' and to anybody else who wishes to buy. Every few minutes we can hear the pop of the soda bottle. It takes a lot of the stuff to keep them cool here in the desert.

" December 8th, 1900, We left * Number Six ' repair shops at about nine o'clock last night, and after going for an hour or two had another breakdown and a long stop for repairs.

" We arrived at Abu Hamed in the early morning while it was still cool and fresh. There is a fine view of the river here, and the beauty and freshness of the scene loses nothing by contrast as one emerges from the long tedious desert ride. There are no cultivated fields in sight, but there is a green ribbon along the river bank and some green islands in the rocky bed of the river."

The next year the railroad management ar-

U THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN ranged baths at this station for the accommodation of tourists especially and the good of all travelers, and now it is " thirty minutes for a bath " instead of " twenty minutes for breakfast." The latter is served on the tourist train. There are no longer any " out of the way places " in this world.

"December 9th, 1900, We have been passing through an immense plain, which is desert only for lack of water. In fact it is not wholly desert land, for mimosa groves cover much of it, an indication that it is not far down to water. Old wells and broken waterwheels are all that is left of better days.

" The railway runs through this plain with the palms indicating the river's line always in sight. There are flocks of beautiful gazelle in the bush, but the shepherds who live on the river banks herd their flocks in the better pasture lands. Still it is a dreary life in the present condition of things.

" To-day my one thought has been * why could not this immense plain be brought under cultivation .^^ ' This thought kept presenting itself until I concluded that it could be and would be, some day. The plain is perhaps one hundred and fifty miles long, and Shendi is about midway. If some wealthy man of philanthropic spirit would buy a tract or tracts of this land and install machinery for irrigation and establish an industrial mission, what a blessing it would be to these poor people, too poor and weak and ignorant to help themselves.

" To teach this people to cultivate the land, to build their houses and tend their flocks, and eventually to buy their own homes, would be a work worth doing and a life worth living. No one man would see the beginning and end of such a scheme, but such a work would be a grand inheritance for his children and his children's children and the world.

" At Shendi we were provided with an American engine, built at the Baldwin Locomotive Works, and we were taken at express speed into Halfaiyah, the railway terminus of North Khartum. It reminded me of the donkey boys of Egypt, who allow their crippled, sore-backed donkeys to stumble along all day, but just as they come to the home stretch, with much flourish, ' ha '-ing and prodding of the donkey, the weary rider is landed with a sort of triumphant feeling, provided, of course, he does not land on his head. In this case, we were successfully brought into Halfaiyah, and our saloon car was run out into the desert where we could sleep and snore and not disturb the inhabitants.

" December lOthy 1900. This morning as daylight was appearing, we awoke bewildered, scarcely knowing where we were. Drums were beating (they always seem to be beating drums in the Sudan), and the clans seemed to be assembling around the station, which was decorated with red and white muslin and with the British and Egyptian flags. Evidently something very unusual was the cause of all this stir.

" As we were switched out in the desert well away from the disturbance, we made our toilet leisurely and carefully in preparation for our second entrance into the Dervish Capital. On the clean sand we washed, and from force of habit fastened a stiff collar to a stiff er shirt, and surmounted it all with the regulation white tie. We then had our last breakfast of dry bread, sardines and coffee in the car. For seventy-five hours we had been passengers in that rickety saloon car and we shed no tears upon leaving it. The car was seven feet by twelve and we were three persons, with beds and considerable baggage. We appreciated regaining our liberty once again.

" We called porters. Seven men, we said, would be sufficient, but twelve came at the call and divided the parcels and the money among themselves according to their own law of computation.

** When we arrived at the river bank, where the boats seemed in waiting to carry us over, we were

AT ABU SIMBEL told by a soldier on guard to ' stand back as Lady Wingate was expected by a special just due.' So we waited at a respectful distance and from the top of our bundles watched the surging half-savage crowd. We tried to convince ourselves that we were not in a hurry; but after an hour or so, as the sun became hotter and the sand and dust from the trampling feet became almost unbearable, it took very sharp reasoning to convince one's self that there was no necessity for our getting over to Omdurman at once.

" As the time for the train approached, two hours later, the beating of the drums grew more furious and the confusion more bewildering. Here women danced, there men danced, and in still another place naked children were dancing. There was a general rejoicing, just such as I suppose they had in the days of the Mahdi and his successor when a victory was reported. The driving sand and the heat which annoyed me only added zest to their music and dancing, which was kept up until the arrival of the special.

" As Lady Wingate, the object of their rejoicing, was escorted to the steamer in waiting, the drums were beating a little louder, the men danced more furiously, and the women gave the earsplitting, shrill joy-cry. It was all over. The vast throng dispersed and went away in peace, perfectly satisfied. There was nothing but the flags, and the red and white muslin decorations, and a few harsh palm branches to remind us of what had taken place. We crossed over in a postal boat, the Dal, to Omdurman."

IV

After the cruel death of Gordon and the destruction of Khartum by his forces, the Mahdi crossed the river to the west bank of the White Nile and there in the desert laid the foundations of the capital of his new kingdom. He was then the despotic ruler of the numerous Sudanese tribes. Some gave him homage willingly, some through fear. His subjects had been gathered from every district and every tribe. There was every form of physique and every racial type that the various tribes of the Sudan afford. There were Christians, Moslems, and heathen. There were those who loved the Mahdi and his cause, and those who professed to, but hated him most cordially.

This despot had many advisers, but no trusted friends. To bring order out of this confusion would have appalled the heart of any civilized ruler; but the Mahdi's ideas of order were really confusion, and it is not supposed that he ever worried much over the matter. Each of his subjects, whether loyal or otherwise, was compelled to become architect and builder and the new capital literally grew up out of the desert. To this end the gravel and sand of the desert, mixed with the under stratum of clay, furnished all the material needed. There was perhaps never a city built for so vast a population where so little wood and iron were used as in this city of the desert. But for each house constructed there was a corresponding hole left in the ground. These holes afterwards became receptacles for the filth and refuse of the city. This wa-s the city drainage system.

There was no plan, no municipal engineering or interference, no street commissioner, no " city fathers." While there was a " boom," there was no rush for corner lots, for there were no corners. It is only the western mind that works in straight lines and angles. The savage and the Oriental follow curves.

The result of this aimless building of a great city is aptly described by G. W. Steevens in his " With Kitchener to Khartum " written just after his entrance into Omdurman with the army after the last battle.

" It began just like any other town or village of / the mean Sudan. Half the huts seemed left unfinished, the other half to have been deserted and fallen to pieces. There were no streets, no doors or windows except holes, usually no roofs. As for a garden, a tree, a steading for a beast — any evi-

With Kitchener to Khartum, by G. W. Stevens.

Dodd, Mead & Company.

dence of thrift or intelligence, any attempt at comfort or amenity or. common cleanliness, — not a single trace of any of it. Omdurman was just planless confusion of blind walls and gaping holes, shiftless stupidity, contented filth and beastliness.

" But that, we said, was only the outskirts : when we come farther in, we shall surely find this mass of population manifesting some small symbols of a great dominion. And presently we came indeed into a broader way than the rest — ^something with the rude semblance of a street. Only it was paved with dead donkeys, and here and there it disappeared in a cullender of deep holes where green water festered. Beside it stood a few houses, such as you see in Metemmeh or Berber — two large, naked rooms standing in a naked walled courtyard. Even these were rare: for the rest, in this main street, Omdurman was a rabbit-warren — a threadless labyrinth of tiny huts or shelters, too flimsy for the name of sheds. Oppression, stagnation, degradation, were stamped deep on every yard of miserable Omdurman.

" But the people ! We could hardly see the place for the people. We could hardly hear our own voices for their shrieks of welcome. We could hardly move for their importunate greetings. They tumbled over each other like ants from every mud heap, from behind every dunghill, from under every mat. Most of the men still wore their gibhas turned inside out; you could see the shadows of the patches through the sackcloth. They had been trying to kill us three hours before. But they salaamed, none the less, and volleyed * Peace be with you ' in our track. All the miscellaneous tribes of Arabs whom AbduUahi's fears or suspicions had congregated in his capital, all the blacks his captains had gathered together into franker slavery — indiscriminate, half-naked, grinning the grin of the sycophant, they held out their hands and asked for bakshish.

" Yet more wonderful were the women. The multitude of women whom concupiscence had harried from every recess of Africa and mewed up in Baggara harems came out to salute their new masters. There were at least three of them to every man. Black women from Equatoria and almast white women from Egypt, plum-skinned Arabs and a strange yellow type with square, bony faces and tightly-ringleted black hair; old women and little girls and mothers with babies at the breast ; women who could hardly walk for dyed cotton swathings, muffled in veils, and women with only a rag between themselves and nakedness — the whole city was a huge harem, a museum of African races, a monstrosity of African lust."

Again he writes ; " Inside of the Khalifa's own enclosure was even more squalid, an even more wonderful teeming beehive than the outer town itself. Like all tyrants, he was constantly increasing his body-guard, till the fortified enclosure was bursting with them. From the height of a saddle you could see that this was only part of the citadel, an enclosure within an enclosure. Past a little guard-house at the gate a narrow path ran up the center of it; all the rest was a chaos of piggish dwelling-holes. Tiny round straw tukis, mats propped up a foot from the earth with crooked sticks, dome-topped mud kennels that a man could ju»t crawl into, exaggerated birds' nests falling to pieces of stick and straw — lucky was the man of the Khalifa's guard who could house himself and his family in a mud cabin the size of an omnibus. On every side, of every type, they jumbled and jostled and crushed; and they sweated and stank with people. For one or two old men in new gibhas came out, and one or two younger men naked and wounded. When we offered them no harm the Khalifa's body-guard broke cover. One second and the place might have been an uncouth cemetery; the next it was a gibbering monkeyhouse. From naked hovels, presto! it turned to naked bodies. Climbing, squeezing, burrowing, they came out like vermin from a burning coat. " Next morning the army awoke refreshed, and was able to appreciate to the full the beastliness of Omdurman. When you saw it close and by the light of day, the last suggestion of stateliness vanished. Everything was wretched and foul. They dropped their dung where they listed; they drew their water from beside green sewers; they had filled the streets and hhors with dead donkeys ; they had left their brothers to rot and puff up hideously in the sun. The stench of the place was in your nostrils, in your throat, in your stomach; you could not eat, you dared not drink. Well you could believe that this was the city where they crucified a man to steal a handful of base dollars, and sold mother and daughter together to be divided five hundred miles apart, to live and die in the same bestial concubinage."