Cairo to Kisumu

by Frank G. Carpenter

One of the queerest cities I have ever visited is Omdurman, once the capital of the Mahdi and to-day the great native commercial centre of the Sudan. Omdurman stretches for more than six miles along the Nile at the point where the Blue Nile flows in from the distant Abyssinian hills. Opposite the city is Tuti Island, while beyond the island on the farther bank of the White Nile is Khartum. Founded by the Mahdi, or the Mohammedan Messiah, and the scene of the most atrocious cruelties and extravagances of the Khalifa who succeeded him, Omdurman once contained about one million of African Sudanese. It was then a great military camp, composed of one hundred thousand mud houses and inhabited by tribes from all parts of the million square miles embraced in the realm of that savage ruler. The Khalifa forced the people to come here to live that he might have their services in time of war, allowing them to go home only to cultivate and harvest their crops, which they were obliged to bring back for sale. He made Omdurman his seat of government, and he had his own residence here inside a great wall of sun-dried brick which enclosed about sixty acres, and in which was an open-air mosque of ten acres or more. Here he had his palace and here he kept his four hundred wives. Just outside the city he fought the great battle which ended in his downfall and the destruction of his capital.

According to Mohammedan tradition, the Prophet said that there would arise among the Faithful a sort of Messiah, or Mahdi, which means in Arabic “he who is guided aright.” Mohammed Ahmed, later known as the Mahdi, claimed to be such a leader, and so he founded the empire which lasted until the Battle of Omdurman. He got the people to believe he had been appointed Mahdi by God, and that he had been taken by the Prophet himself into the presence of the apostles and saints, and by them commanded to cleanse and purify the Mohammedan religion.

He did anything, however, but practise what he preached. By the Koran, smoking and drinking are strictly prohibited, and extravagance is frowned upon, but in the height of his power the Mahdi and his chiefs lived lives of the most horrible drunkenness, extravagance, and vice. Mohammed Ahmed is described by Slatin Pasha, who was for years a prisoner of the Mahdists in Omdurman, as a tall, broad-shouldered, powerfully built man, with a black beard and the usual three scars on each cheek. He had the V-shaped gap between his two front teeth which the Sudanese consider a sign of good luck and which is said to have been the cause of his popularity among women. Their name for him was Abu Falja, “the man with the separated teeth.” His beautifully washed woollen garments were always scented with a mixture of musk, sandalwood, and attar of roses. This perfume, which was known as the “odour of the Mahdi,” was supposed to equal, if not surpass, that of the dwellers of Paradise.

After the siege and capture of Khartum the people who had held out against the Mahdists were put to the most unspeakable tortures, all of them, that is, except the young women and girls. These were reserved for the Mahdi’s harem. For weeks after the battle there went on in his camp at Omdurman the business of choosing from the fairest for his own establishment, while the ones he rejected were turned over to his chief favourites and advisers. After Mohammed Ahmed’s death, which occurred close on the heels of his victory, the Khalifa had the Mahdi’s widows and all the women of his harem imprisoned in a high-walled compound guarded by eunuchs. None was allowed to marry or go out into the world again.

The Omdurman of the present, which is laid on practically the same lines as that of the past, covers almost the same ground, although it has much fewer people. During my trip of to-day I climbed to the top of the old palace of the Khalifa, and took a look over the city.

The houses stretch along the Nile for seven or eight miles, and the water front is fringed with a thicket of boats. Some of the town is on the main stream, and reaches out from the river in all directions. It is a city of mud in every sense of the word. Of its many thousand houses there are not a score which are of more than one story, and you can count on your fingers the houses made of burnt brick. When I first rode through it I asked my guide if the holes in the walls had been made by cannon-balls at the time of the fighting. “Why, man,” he replied, “those are the windows.” Most of the houses are flat roofed, with drain pipes extending out over the street so that when it rains the water pours down on the necks of the passers-by. The one-story mud houses have mud walls about them, and the mud stores face streets paved only with mud. The walls of the vast inclosure of the Khalifa are made of mud bricks, while the houses inside, which now form the quarters of the Anglo-Egyptian soldiers and officers, are of sun-baked dirt.

The Khalifa was so afraid of being assassinated that he had all the houses near his palace torn down, shut himself up in his walled inclosure, and kept at his side a great bodyguard, to which he was forever adding more soldiers. His special apartments in the palace were considered the last word in luxury. They had beautiful curtains and carpets of silk and actually boasted big brass beds with mosquito nets, spoils from the European houses at Khartum.

Standing on the Khalifa’s palace, one can follow many of the streets with one’s eye. Some of them are of great width, but the majority are narrow and winding. The whole city, in fact, is a labyrinth cut up by new avenues laid out by the British, with the holy buildings and the Khalifa’s old government structures in the middle. But the British are improving conditions in Omdurman, and have elaborate plans for its development, including a fine park in the centre of the city.

Each of the towns of the Sudan has a British official to rule it; but under each such governor is a sub-governor who must be a native Egyptian. This man is called the mamour and is the real executive as far as carrying out the orders of the government is concerned. He represents the natives, and understands all about them and their ways. The mamour at Omdurman is an ex-cavalry officer of the army of the Khedive who fought with the British in their wars against the Khalifa. He speaks English well, and as he understands both Turkish and Arabic, he was able to tell me all about the city as we went through.