92 THK WAHABEES. 



It was here, at Patna, in the centre of the rich 

 province of Bahar, where, at the outbreak of the 

 mutiny in 1857, the Wahabees, a fanatical sect of 

 Puritan Mohamedans, were the arch -intriguers, and 

 it was fortunate indeed for the Government, tliat 

 in Mr. WilHam Taylor, the Commissioner of the 

 district, it possessed one of its most sagacious and 

 energetic servants. He, as soon as he had discovered 

 the plot, without hesitation arrested the chief Mulvis 

 of the sect, whom he placed under supervision, not- 

 withstanding the favour they stood in with the 

 Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. They were event- 

 ually tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged, 

 but the High Commissioner commuted the sentence 

 to imprisonment for life on the Andaman Islands. 

 Here Ahmed.- Ulla, one of them, was under nominal 

 confinement when Lord Mayo was assassinated by a 

 Mohamedan, — and only the year before, in 1871, the 

 Chief Justice of Calcutta had been stabbed by a 

 Wahabee fanatic on the steps of his own court ! 

 Colonel Meadows Taylor, author of the " Story of 

 my Life," mentions an earlier case of the murderous 

 excesses of the sect in Southern India, where in 1833, 

 a horrible jolot, said to have been of their contrivance, 

 was discovered to kill all Europeans at Bangalore and 

 sell the women as slaves. 



