Hassan; or, The Child of the Pyramid: An Egyptian Tale

by Sir Charles Augustus Murray

Tales of Hassan’s deeds of prowess, daring, and generosity became current among the villagers of the whole valley of the Nile, among whom he was generally spoken of as “Hassan eed-el-maftouha,” or “eed-el-hadid”—that is, “Hassan of the open hand” (i.e., the generous), or “Hassan of the iron hand”; and the provincial governors were completely stupefied by his apparent power of ubiquity, for no sooner did one of them send a force in pursuit of him near some village where his presence had lately been reported, than they heard of his having plundered some Sheik-el-Beled or caravan one hundred miles off.

This latter circumstance, though devised by Hassan, was carried out by the versatile talents of Abou-Hamedi, who had secret friends and spies in most of the Nile villages. These fellows were instructed from time to time to run to the nearest town or residence of a governor bawling for help, and stating that they had seen Hassan and his band prowling near their village on the preceding night. Soldiers would be sent to watch for him, and then news would arrive that some depredation had been committed by his band in another province.

Meanwhile Hassan did not neglect the precaution of maintaining a good understanding with the Bedouin tribes: totally indifferent to money himself, all his share of booty that he did not bestow on the poor and helpless he gave in presents to the most powerful of the Bedouin sheiks, so that when Mohammed Ali tried to employ against Hassan his favourite method of “setting a thief to catch a thief,” by calling upon some of the Arab chiefs to assist in apprehending our hero, they apparently obeyed the Viceroy’s wishes, but it was after having sent a secret and timely notice to Hassan, and, as might be expected, their ostensible efforts were without result.

We have said that the wild and lawless career upon which our hero had entered caused deep regret to Delì Pasha, and it may be imagined that it caused the tears of his daughter to flow. Neither these tears nor these regrets were much diminished by a letter which the Pasha one day received, and which was brought by a stranger, who disappeared as soon as he had delivered it. Allowing for the difference between Turkish and English idiom, it ran as follows:—

“To the High in Rank, the Honourable and Honoured Delì Pasha, Governor of Siout.

“Hassan, his faithful servant, having been driven from his honourable place in his Excellency’s service, and having been degraded in the eyes of the household and others by the tyranny of Osman Bey, has had no other choice than to maintain his honour and life as the chief of a Bedouin band. He may be exiled—outlawed, perhaps—if such be the will of Allah, put to death by the Egyptian Government, but no act of cowardice, treachery, or cruelty on his part shall cause his Excellency to blush for having once extended to Hassan his generous protection. His life is in the hands of Allah; but so long as it endures, his thoughts, his hopes, his heart, and his faith are a sacrifice at the feet of Amina, and his prayers are for her and for her honoured father.”

Nothing can be more dull, hot, and disagreeable than a summer in Upper Egypt; we therefore take the liberty of skipping over the following six months, briefly mentioning the changes that took place in the destinies of our principal dramatis personæ.

Mr Thorpe and all his party had gone to pass the summer among the cool breezes of the Lebanon; but as the health of his daughter caused him some disquietude, he had determined to return to Upper Egypt in the following winter, for which purpose he re-engaged the two dahabiahs in which he had before made his voyage up the Nile.

Delì Pasha had obtained the Viceroy’s permission to return with his family to Cairo, leaving Osman Bey in charge of the government of Siout; and the latter received a significant hint from his Highness that if he did not contrive some means of apprehending the formidable outlaw whom his ill-timed harshness had driven to revolt, it might prove the worse for himself.

As for our hero and his band, the heat of summer and the cold of winter were alike to their hardy frames, and the terror of his name spread far and wide with every succeeding month. The reports of his daring achievements excited the Viceroy’s anger, sometimes mingled with admiration, sometimes with mirth, which he cared not to suppress.