During the summer of 1794, five men, who had exercised considerable authority in some of the provinces, were brought to El Fasher as prisoners. It was said that they had been detected in treasonable correspondence with the hostile leader (Hashem) in Kordofân. They did not undergo any form of trial, but as the Sultan chose to give credit to the depositions that were made against them, his command issued for their execution. Three of them were very young men, the youngest not appearing to be more than seventeen years of age. Two of them were eunuchs. A little after noon they were brought, chained and fettered, into the market-place before one of the entrances of the palace, escorted by a few of the royal slaves, armed with spears. Several of the Meleks, by the monarch’s express order, were present, to witness, as he termed it, what they might expect to suffer if they failed in their fidelity. The executioner allowed them time only to utter some short prayer, when he plunged the knife in the neck of the oldest of them, exactly in the same manner as they kill a sheep. The operation too is marked by the same term (dhebbah). He fell and struggled for some time: the rest suffered in their turn. The three last were much agitated, and the youngest wept. The two first had borne their fate with becoming firmness. The crowd, that had assembled, had scarcely satiated itself with the spectacle of their convulsive motions, while prostrate in the dust, when the slaves of the executioner coolly brought a small block of wood, and began mangling their feet with an axe. I was surprized at this among Mohammedans, whose decency in all that concerns the dead is generally worthy of applause. Nor did it diminish my astonishment, that having at length cut off their feet, they took away the fetters, which had been worn by the criminals, in themselves of very inconsiderable value, and left the bodies where they were. Private humanity, and not public order, afterwards afforded them sepulture.
It happened this year that some excesses had been committed by persons in a state of inebriation, and the Sultan having had cognizance of the fact, could find a remedy only in force. He ordered search to be made in all houses throughout the country for the utensils for making merîsé; directed that those who should be found in a state of intoxication should be capitally punished; and the women who made it should have their heads shaved, be fined severely, and exposed to all possible ignominy. The Furians had however been habituated to Merîsé before they had known their monarch, or the Islam. The severity of the order, therefore, and the numbers trespassing against it, defeated the Sultan’s purpose. It was indeed put in execution, and a few miserable women suffered unrelenting tonsure, and innumerable earthen jars were indignantly strewed piecemeal in the paths of the faithful; but the opulent, as is usual, escaped with impunity, and some were bold enough to say, that the eyes even of the Sultan’s women were still reddened with the voluptuous beverage, while priests and magistrates were bearing the fulminating edict from one extremity of the empire to the other. It is certain that, subsequent to this new law, the minds of the troops were much alienated from the monarch, and it is thought that no other cause than this was to be sought. The monarch who admits of no licence will never reign in the hearts of the soldiery; and he must give up the hope of their affections, who is disposed to become an impartial censor of the public morals.
Innumerable reports had been propagated at different times, that the Jelabs would be allowed to depart. But none was well authenticated; nay, as afterwards appeared, all were false. It is probable they were artfully circulated by order of the Sultan, with a view to cajole the foreign merchants, who, having now collected the intended number of slaves, were at a heavy expense for their daily sustenance, and of course ill bore the unexplained delay, while his own merchandize was sold at a prodigious advance in Egypt. In effect, two small caravans found their way thither, between the time of my arrival at Fûr, and that of my departure; but they consisted only of the Sultan’s property, and that of one or two individuals, whom he particularly favoured. For a great quantity of merchandize having accumulated in his hands, he was determined to dispose of it to advantage, before the other merchants should be permitted to produce theirs for sale.
They were therefore restrained by the strong arm of power, to favour the monarch’s pernicious monopoly; while the latter, with singular effrontery, gave out, that he had sent to negociate with the Beys the reception of the commodities of Soudân, on more advantageous terms than they had been before admitted.
The man whom I had brought with me from Kahira as servant, had availed himself of the property he had plundered to purchase several slaves. He still continued to live in an apartment within the same inclosure with myself, and I occasionally employed one of his slaves to prepare my food.
He knew too much of me to imagine that I should lose any opportunity that might offer of punishing him, and accordingly was desirous of anticipating my design. I had received warning of his views, and was cautious, sleeping little at night, and going always armed; not that I much expected any thing would be attempted by open force, though in effect two men had been employed by him, under promise of a reward, to strangle me. Finding that measure unsuccessful, he obtained some corrosive sublimate, and put it into a dish that one of the slaves was dressing. She was honest and generous enough to inform me of it, or the scheme would probably have taken effect, as I had certainly then no suspicion. The villain on returning, after a few hours, and finding that the poison had not produced its effect, vented his rage on the slave, and had nearly strangled her with a cord, when I interfered and forced him to leave her. The next scheme was an accusation of debauching his slaves, which after a tedious investigation before the civil judge, and then the Melek of Jelabs, I was able to refute. Other attempts, planned with sufficient art, were made against my life, which, however, I had equal good fortune in escaping.
In the summer of 1795, I received the second payment for the property in the Sultan’s hands, which consisted of female camels (naka). The same injustice operated on this occasion as before. After all the other creditors of the monarch had been satisfied, I was directed to choose from what remained: two of which, as usual, were allotted as equivalent to a slave, though of so inferior a kind, that three would not have been sufficient to purchase one.
After having received these, I was preparing to return to Cobbé, when a message came to require my attendance on a sick person. The patient was brother of the Melek of the Jelabs. He was in the last stage of a peripneumony, and I immediately saw the case was desperate; but was forced to remain there with the sick man, administering such remedies as his situation permitted the application of, till he expired. Two guides were sent to accompany me home, but coming to a torrent that crossed the road, (it was the middle of the Harîf, or wet season,) they were fearful of passing it, and returned, after endeavouring in vain to persuade me to do the same. I was obliged to abandon the camel, which belonged to the Melek, and pursue my journey on foot.
The time I was constrained to devote to this patient afforded me an opportunity of remarking the True believer’s practice of physic. No mummery, that ever was invented by human imbecility to banish the puny fears of mortality, was forgotten to be put in practice. The disease was sometimes exorcised as a malignant spirit, at others deprecated as the just visitation of the Deity: two or three thousand fathas were to be uttered, and numbered at the same moment on a chaplet; and sentences of the Koran were then written on a board, which being washed off, the inky water was offered to the sick man to drink, when he was no longer able to open his mouth. But though this puerile anxiety prevailed so long as the man remained alive, the moment he was dead, all sunk into undisturbed composure, except a few of the women, who officiously disquieted the living, with vociferations of affected sorrow for the dead.
Near the end of the year 1795, a body of troops was mustered and reviewed, who were to replace those that had died of the small-pox in Kordofân, which it was said amounted to more than half the army. The spoils which had been taken from Hashem, were also on this occasion ostentatiously displayed. They consisted of eighty slaves, male and female, but the greater proportion of the latter, many of them were very beautiful, nor the less interesting, that though the change in their situation could not be very important, their countenances were marked with despondency. To these succeeded five hundred oxen and two hundred large camels; the whole procession concluded with eighty horses, and many articles of less value borne by slaves. Shouts rent the air, of “Long live el Sultan Abd-el-rachmân el rashîd! May God render him always victorious!”