"Suppose that I now turned Mohammedan," said I, "would my men believe in me and hope for victory? and would that give them more confidence in me?" "Of course the men would believe you," said he,—"at least the majority of them; have you not taken every opportunity of showing respect to our religion, and even caused it to be respected by others? They will trust you implicitly; but will you change your faith from conviction?" he asked, smiling.
"Mohammed Effendi," said I, "you are an intelligent and well-educated man; here conviction has nothing to do with the case. In this life one has often to do things which are contrary to one's persuasions, either by compulsion or from some other cause. I shall be quite content if the soldiers believe me and abandon their silly superstitions. Whether others believe me or not, is a matter of indifference to me. I thank you most sincerely; keep our conversation entirely to yourself. Good night!"
Mohammed Effendi Farag now left, and after a few minutes' deliberation I resolved to present myself to the troops the following morning as a Mohammedan. I was perfectly well aware that in taking this step I should be placing myself in a curious position, which could not fail to be condemned by some. However, I made up my mind to do it, knowing that I should thereby cut the ground from under the feet of these intriguers, and should have a better chance of preserving the province with which the Government had intrusted me. In my early youth my religious ideas were somewhat lax; but at the same time I believed myself to be by conviction as well as by education a good Christian, though I was always inclined to let people take their own way to salvation. The simple fact was that I had not been sent to the Sudan as a missionary, but as an official of the Egyptian Government.
At sunrise the next morning, I sent for the adjutant-major, and ordered him to have all the troops paraded and to wait for me; I then sent word to Zogal to summon before me the Kadi, Ahmed Wad Beshir, and the chief merchant, Mohammed Ahmed. When they came I talked to them on general matters, and then told them to come on parade with me inside the fort, only a few hundred paces from my door. Taking command of the parade, I ordered the troops to form square, and, mounted on horseback, I then entered it, accompanied by the officers, attendants, and officials. "Soldiers!" said I, "we have passed through many hard times together; the presence of danger shows what a man is made of. You have fought and endured bravely, and I am certain you will continue to do so. We fight for our master the Khedive, the ruler of this country, and for our lives. I have shared with you your joys and your sorrows. Where danger was to be faced I was there with you, and that shall ever be my place. Although I am your chief, my life at such times is of no more value than yours." "Allah yetawel umrak! Allah yekhallik!" (May God give you long life! May God preserve you!) shouted most of the men. I then continued, "I hear that I am considered a foreigner and an unbeliever. You also all belong to different tribes; my birth-place is far away, it is true, but I am not a foreigner. I am not an unbeliever; I am as much a believer as you. Ashhadu inna la ilaha illallah wa inna Mohammed rasul Allah!" (I bear witness that there is no God but God, and Mohammed is His Prophet). On my uttering these words the soldiers raised their rifles, shook their lances, and shouted out congratulations to me, whilst the officers and officials advanced and shook hands with me. When order was restored, I told them that I should openly attend prayers with them, and, ordering the men to re-form, Farag Effendi gave the "present arms," and the men then marched off to their quarters.
When everything was over, I invited Zogal Bey, my former companion, and the officers to remain and partake of food and coffee with me; they then bade me good-bye, assuring me of their delight, fidelity, and obedience. They made as if they credited me with my convictions, and I gave them equally to understand that I believed in the reality of their feelings and sentiments (though I well knew how little they were really worth). When they left I told Farag Effendi to select twenty of the best oxen from our stock and distribute them amongst the men as "karama" (sacrificial offerings), as well as one ox for each officer, at my own expense.
The effect on the men of the step I had now taken was much greater than I expected; there was no longer any reluctance to be sent on expeditions, although our enemies were increasing daily in number and strength.
It will be remembered that I had sent Gabralla and Ahmed Katong some time before to Sirga and Arebu—a country which had been desolated by war and was peopled by the ignorant Fur tribe—with instructions to collect a force of his own people in these districts, and uphold the Government authority there. Instead of doing so, however, he had sold them as slaves to the Gellabas after a peculiar method of his own. Despatching messengers to the Gellabas with orders to come to him at once under pain of punishment, he then insisted on each of them marrying three or four women, and instructed the latter to depart with their new husbands, accompanied by their brothers and sisters. Many of the former husbands having been killed in the wars, it happened that most of the women thus disposed of were widows; but should any of them happen to have husbands, the latter Gabralla threw into chains and compelled them to work in the fields. For each human being thus made over to the Gellabas he received a small sum of money. When these extraordinary proceedings had been brought to my notice, I had ordered the roads to be watched, and it was not long before a batch of newly married women and their relatives was seized; I had sent for Gabralla and put him in chains, and about twenty months later I had released him on bail; but shortly afterwards he had disappeared, together with his guarantor, and had joined the Beni Helba, who, after the murder of Afifi, had actively joined in the revolt.
Next to the Rizighat, the Beni Helba was the most powerful tribe in Darfur, and they soon began worrying the Tagu and Messeria Arabs, who had up to now remained faithful, and lived in the neighbourhood of Dara. I therefore resolved to attack them, but before doing so sent a message to Beshari Bey Wad Bekir, warning him that he must make no more incursions. Although my letter remained unanswered, it seemed that my threatening attitude had had some effect, for the neighbouring tribes were not further molested.
Merchants whom I paid to send me news from Kordofan informed me that reinforcements were daily arriving at Khartum from Cairo, and that the Government was hurrying on preparations for the despatch of the expedition, under European officers, to retake Kordofan; whilst the entire population without exception had joined the Mahdi, and were determined to offer a powerful resistance.
In Darfur all the southern tribes were now in open revolt; but thanks to our military posts and to the fact that the northern tribes had been in contact with Egypt, from which they had derived considerable benefit through the caravan routes, they had hitherto shown no hostility. Of course it had been for long impossible to gather taxes in any part of the country; I had, therefore, paid the troops out of our reserve stores.