ABU-HARAZ— MELBEIS— BAEA— KAÏMAE— EL-SAFI. 269 



huts of branches, so that no exterior signs might bear witness to inequality 

 amongst the Mussulmans, all " sons of the same father." 



In the spring of the year 1885 the report reached Europe that El-Obeid had 

 been burnt and plundered, the booty being carried away to Jebel-Dehr by Nowal, 

 an Arab sheikh who had never submitted to the first Mahdi, Then came the news 

 that a second or rival Mahdi, Muley Hassan Ali, made a triumphant entry into the 

 capital of Kordofân on March 12th, 1885. He bore a sword in his hand, rode on 

 a white horse, and was followed by derwishes, by prisoners, and by his adherents 

 with drawn swords. When he passed the people kissed the ground, and during 

 his stay in the mosque a large pile was made, upon which a copy of the other 

 Mahdi's Koran was burnt. The new Mahdi told the assembled multitudes that 

 Mahommed had given him a sword wherewith to extirpate the " false " Mahdi and 

 all his followers. Since then it appears that the forces of the rival Mahdis have 

 met on the battlefield, and that the original Mahdi was defeated with great 

 slaughter and driven out of Kordofân. 



Abu-Haraz — Melbeïs. 



To the south-west of El-Obeid is Abu-Haraz, a somewhat important group of 

 hamlets, situated in a large wooded valley, in the midst of gardens surrounded by 

 quickset hedges. Melhcis, another town, is built in a depression near a morass 

 occasionally flooded by the torrents which descend from Mount Kordofân. In the 

 vicinity of this town, on the banks of the Khor Kashgil, a tributary of the Abû- 

 Hableh, is the spot where was fought in 1883 the decisive battle which put an end 

 to the Egyptian rule by exterminating an army of eleven thousand men. At the 

 same time the Europeans lost much of their prestige in the eyes of the natives, 

 because the commander of the Egyptian troops was General llicks, an Englishman, 

 and the bulk of his officers had been selected from the British army. Throughout 

 the whole of the Nile basin it was repeated from tribe to tribe that England had 

 been conquered by the Mahdi, and that the cannons of the " Infidels " had 

 thundered in vain against the warriors sent by God. 



Bara — Kaïmar — El-Safi. 



The main caravan routes in Kordofân were till recently skirted by the tele- 

 graph, which was much dreaded by the natives ; many of them hardly dared to 

 speak when near the wires, lest their voices might be heard at Khartum or in 

 Egypt. 



To the north of El-Obeid, the principal town, situated on the caravan route 

 between Kordofân and the bend described by the Nile at Dabbeh, is Bara, founded 

 by the Danagla merchants. Under the rule of the Dar-For people before the 

 invasion of the Egyptians, this market-town was very prosperous ; at that time, 

 according to tradition, " all the Bara women wore earrings of gold and bracelets 

 and hair-pins of gold and silver." Near Bara was fought in 1821 the battle 



