Mysteries of the Libyan Desert

by W. J. Harding King

He told me a good deal about the Mawhub family of the Senussi zawia at Qasr Dakhl. He said they were entirely neglecting their religious work in order to make money, and had then only got five pupils left in the zawia at Qasr Dakhl, where formerly they had had great numbers. Old Sheykh Mohammed el Mawhub, who was well over seventy, had just started, he said, for Kufara with one servant and three men, who had been sent from that oasis to fetch him.

Wissa professed to have collected information from some unknown source of treasure that was hidden in many places in or near the oasis. One place in which he said it was to be found was in a stone temple eighteen hours’ journey to the west of the village of Gedida. I afterwards met a native who said he had ridden out and found this place, so probably it exists—the temple, not the treasure. He was clearly badly bitten with the treasure-seeking mania.

He was, of course, the possessor of a “book of treasure.” In the triangle between Mut, Masara and Ezbet Sheykh Mufta there is, he said, an old brick building on a white stone foundation covered by a dome, known as the Der el Arais—I saw this place afterwards. In it, under the dome, the book said, is a staircase with seven flights of steps, at the bottom of which is a passage seven cubits long. At the end of the passage is a monk—painted, Wissa thought, on the wall. The book said that there is an iron ring let into the floor near his feet, and that by pulling the ring a door would be caused to appear—this Wissa concluded to be a trap-door. Below is a flight of steps, which the book said must be descended without fear. At the bottom of the stair is a small chamber in which a king is buried.

The king has a gold ring with a stone in it on his finger. This is a magic ring, and if it is immersed in water, which is then given to a sick person, he will at once be cured, no matter what the nature of his malady may be. In the chamber there is also a clock that goes for ever, and in addition a sagia (wheel for raising water) that contains the secret of Zerzura.

After I had got to know him better, he one day suggested that “as I was looking for Zerzura,” we should join together to search for the Der el Arais. He offered to let me keep the wonderful clock and sagia, and any treasure we might find, if I would only let him have the ring. With the help of that magic ring he felt certain that he would become the greatest doctor in the world—yet this was a man who had taken a diploma at the Qasr el ’Aini Hospital, spent a year at St. Thomas’s, six months at the Rotunda, and another six studying medicine between Paris and Geneva—and he wanted to cure his patients with a magic ring!

On leaving Dakhla, as he was an unusually capable native doctor, he was appointed to Luxor. Here he got into trouble. His sister contracted plague, and Wissa, without notifying the authorities, as he should have done, took her into his house, where he seems to have neglected the most elementary sanitary precautions. The last I heard of him he was, perhaps naturally, again in disgrace, and was on his way to take up an appointment at Sollum, where delinquents of his kind are sent when there is no room for them in the oases.

All this just shows what inestimable benefits an unusually intelligent native will reap from a highly expensive European education!

I had several times noticed in Mut a man dressed like a Tripolitan Arab in a long woollen blanket, but had never been able to get a good look at him, as he always avoided meeting me. On one occasion, when he saw me approaching, he even turned back and slunk round a corner to get out of my way.

Meeting Wissa one day, I asked him if he knew this Maghrabi Arab. He replied that he was not really an Arab at all, but a native of Smint, in Dakhla, and that he was a local magician he had often spoken to me about, who only wore the Tripolitan dress for effect, as the Western Arabs are noted as being the best sorcerers.

This man was a member of the Senussi—or as it was usually expressed “he followed the Sheykh.” I found that he was staying with Shekyh Senussi, the Clerk in Mut, and by a curious coincidence Qway also happened to be living in the same house.