196 Dongola under the Khalifa [ J 895 



an alem and a faki; but his political fortunes were the work originally 

 of Jaffir Bey, who had quarrelled with the Government. He said the 

 Mahdi was a good man; and as long as he lived everybody in the 

 Soudan believed in him as the true Mahdi. But the Khalifa had 

 ruined everything. The reason of the Baggara power was that the 

 Khalifa had put forward all the best men of the other tribes to fight, 

 and these had got killed in the wars, while the Baggaras were held in 

 reserve and reaped the profits. The Khalifa had got possession of 

 all the firearms in the country on the pretext of having them in readi- 

 ness to resist an invasion, and so the Baggaras, his own tribe, were the 

 only ones thus armed. El Nejumi had made his expedition, which 

 ended at Toski [this was the battle won by Grenfell, see later], be- 

 cause an attempt had been made to poison him, and he wanted to get 

 away somewhere where he should be his own master. The chiefs of 

 the tribes when not killed in war had been got rid of on various pre- 

 texts by the Khalifa. They had been accused of treason and put into 

 a kind of fetter which Minshatti described to me as being a long tube 

 of iron holding the arms straight out from the shoulder to the wrist. 

 A man with his arms thus fettered was helpless and died in a month. 

 Thus only children were left in the tribes, and the Baggaras, an ignoble 

 tribe with whom the Taalin and Kababish and Hadendowas and 

 Ababdeh would not in former times intermarry, had got all power into 

 their hands. 



" I did not, however, gather from him that the fellahin were ill off. 

 He told me durra was at three reals the ardeb, and all things were 

 plentiful. Bu'fc the richer people suffered exactions, so that it was the 

 common cry that the Baggaras' rule was worse than the rule of the 

 Turks. He talked a good deal about Salatin (Slatin) and Neufelt. 

 He said that an expedition from the Government would be joined by 

 everyone in the Soudan. I asked him if it would be so if the expedi- 

 tion was an English one. He said that the opinion now in the Soudan 

 had changed, and that the people there no longer regarded the gufara 

 (infidels, meaning Christians) as they did ten years ago. Many of 

 them had been wounded and taken prisoners, and had afterwards been 

 released, and had related at home that the kufara had treated them 

 well. As Minshatti was certainly suspected of being in league with 

 the Mahdists, and probably was so a few years ago, his evidence is of 

 more value than most. But I expect that the Baggaras are stronger 

 in the country than he quite makes out. The noble tribes are doubtless 

 jealous of 'diem, as there are always jealousies among Arab tribes. 

 Of his own position he said that he was one of the three great Sheykhs 

 of the Ababdeh, the others being Beshir and Saleh Ibn Khalifeh, lately 

 killed at Murad. They each used to received £40 a month from the 

 Government, but Beshir's allowance had been reduced to £32, and his 



