316 



EGYPT. 



8th of the Kamadan (June 21), of spotted fever 

 or small-pox. The Caliph Abdallah has been 

 appointed to succeed him. 



Death of Olivier Pain. The "Intransigeant," 

 M. Rochefort's journal, on the 17th of August, 

 published a letter from one Selikowitch, in 

 which the latter, who had been in the ''Intel- 

 ligence Service " of the English army in the 

 Soudan, asserts that Olivier Pain had been shot 

 by order of the military authorities. The 

 English military authorities, replying to these 

 accusations under date of the 21st August, said : 

 Pain went up the river in the spring of 1883, 

 with the object of joining the Mahdi ; he was 

 obliged to return to Halfai and to Esneh, but 

 he succeeded in the month of July, due to the 

 influence of a French inspector of sugars at 

 Erment with the Bedouins, and went to Obeid, 

 where he arrived last year; then he went to 

 the Mahdi at Eahod. He did not go to Khar- 

 toum with the Mahdi, but died last autumn on 

 the White Nile, en route for Omdurman. This 

 is confirmed by several witnesses, Hussein 

 Khalifa, Muralli Bononi, and others. Major 

 Kitchner, under date of 22d August, says: 

 u The story of the death of Pain is false. ^ I 

 never received any instructions about Pain, 

 and I never attempted to take him." 



M. Bochefort called meetings of indignation 

 in Paris, and even went so far as to threaten 

 that Lord Lyons should be kept as a hostage. 

 The French Government was obliged to take 

 note of these proceedings in the interest of 

 order, and suggested in a friendly spirit to the 

 British Government that it would be desirable 

 to furnish loyally on its side all information 

 establishing the fact of Pain's death, and under 

 what circumstances it occurred. Nothing fur- 

 ther has been learned of the matter. 



Death of M'Tse, King of Ugandi. The death of 

 King M'Ts6 has been again reported, this time 

 as having occurred on October 11, 1884. He 

 is said to have been succeeded by M'Wauga, 

 a lad whom the missionaries claim to have 

 converted. No explanation, however, has been 

 given of the means by which the news has 

 been received, and it may therefore be consid- 

 ered as doubtful. M'Ts< was first visited by 

 Speke, then by ChaiHe" Long, and subsequently 

 by Stanley. The latter, entirely ignoring the 

 visits of the explorers who had preceded him, 

 wrote a fantastic account of the genealogy of 

 M'Tse, and ended by converting him to Chris- 

 tianity! a feat which a few days afterward 

 had a singular disproval, when M'Tse", in order 

 to show his accuracy of aim (to M. Linant, who 

 was then visiting him), leveled a gun at one of 

 his wives and blew her brains out. 



The Insnrrection of Mohammed Ichmed, el-Mahdi. 

 Mohammed Achmed was born at Dongola, 

 in the town of Khanag, in the year 1842. His 

 father was a carpenter and boat-builder. Mo- 

 hammed, like many of his nomadic people, went 

 to Khartoum. There the Dongolowee are en- 

 gaged in the ivory-trade and slave razzias car- 

 ried on by the Zeribas formed throughout Cen- 



tral Africa. The irregular troops, known as 

 Hotariah, in the pay and service of the mer- 

 chants at Khartoum, are composed of the na- 

 tives of Dongola, and are called Dongolowee. 

 Mohammed Achmed is said to have been in- 

 terested in these comptoirs, but shortly after 

 became religious, and, after instruction in the 

 Koran, retired to the island of Abba, situated 

 in the Bahr-el-Abiad (White Nile), in 13 north 

 latitude. There, surrounded by the Bagarrah 

 tribes, a brave and warlike race, resembling the 

 Bedouins of Lower Egypt, he gained a reputa- 

 tion for sanctity which caused him to be looked 

 upon by the simple people as the chosen mes- 

 senger of God el-Mahdi. 



The spirit of discontent which had been bred 

 among the compatriots and followers of Zebehr, 

 who had been badly treated by the Governor- 

 General of Khartoum (Ismail Pasha Ayoube), 

 and imprisoned in Cairo, where he had gone to 

 plead the justness of his cause, and the ruin of 

 the Dongolowee merchants in Khartoum by 

 the proclamation of a monopoly of ivory (is- 

 sued by Col. Gordon, in 1874), were the germs 

 that bred the present insurrection. The re- 

 ligious institution of Sid-es-Senoussi, like those 

 of Sid-el- Azhar and Sid-Abd-el-Kader and Sid- 

 el-Djilani, who are on the qui vive to convert a 

 popular discontent into a religious crusade in 

 the interest of the Faith, seized the opportunity 

 to confer upon the hermit in the cave of the 

 island of Abba the title of Prophet. 



These religious institutions have their siege 

 in Cairo, in Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers. Sidi 

 Mohammed Ben Ali es-Senoussi is said to have 

 been the founder. He was born in Algeria, in 

 the neighborhood of Montagavem ; by profes- 

 sion a jurisconsult, he was initiated at an early 

 age into the mystic philosophy of the Chad- 

 heliya. He left Algeria and went to Cairo, 

 where he taught law and theology in the U 

 versity of El Azhar; thence to Mecca, where 

 became the disciple of Ahmed Ben-Edris, th 

 great doctor of Chadhelisra, and at his d 

 was designated as his successor. The doctrin 

 of which Sidi Mohammed became the apostle, 

 consisted in rendering homage to God alone ; 

 to honor the saints during this life, but without 

 continuing to venerate them after their death, 

 not excepting Mohammed, the most perfect of 

 all men ; to renounce the world, and not to per- 

 mit the luxury of ornament, except to women ; 

 that men should look only to their weapons of 

 war, and obey those chiefs only who rigidly 

 followed the precepts of their religion; to 

 have no relation with a Christian or a Jew, and 

 to consider all as enemies who are not tributary 

 to the faithful ; that the law of " Djehad," or 

 holy war, opens to the believer a seductive per- 

 spective ; to the fervent soul, the sensual joys 

 of a future life ; to the " Moujahed," who fights 

 for his faith, the delights of " Djeuna," para- 

 dise ; to the deserter, the pains of " Gehennah " 

 hell. In these confreries the hatred of the 

 Frank and Israelite is engendered and nur- 

 tured. And there the doctrine of Panislamism 



