434 
TRAVELS IN AFRICA. Chap. LXVI 
countryman 'Othman dan Fodiye*, had become far 
more fanatical champions of the faith than the Arabs 
and Moors ; and treating the inhabitants of the newly 
conquered city, as well as the foreigners who used to 
visit it, with extreme rigour, according to the pre- 
judices which they had imbibed, they could not fail to 
ruin almost the whole commercial activity of the place. 
Their oppression was not confined to the pagan traders, 
the Wangarawa, who carry on almost the whole com- 
merce with the countries south of the Niger, but ex- 
tended even to the Mohammedan merchants from the 
north, especially the traders from Tawat and Gha- 
dames, against whom the Morocco merchants, insti- 
gated by a feeling of petty rivalry, succeeded in direct- 
ing their rancour. It was in consequence of this op- 
pression, especially after a further increase of the Fiilbe 
party in the year 1831, that the Ghadamsiye people 
induced the Sheikh el Mukhtar, the elder brother 
of El Bakay, and successor of Sidi Mohammed, to 
remove his residence from the hille, or hillet e' sheikh 
el Mukhtar, in A'zawad, half a day's journey from 
the well Bel Mehan to Timbuktu. Thus we find in 
this distracted place a third power stepping in between 
the Fiilbe on the one side and the Tawarek on 
the other, and using the power of the latter as far as 
their want of centralisation allowed, against the 
* See what I have said, p. 256, about the Sheikh A'hmedu, or 
rather Mohammed Lebbo, the founder of the kingdom of Hamda- 
Allahi, having brought from Gando the religious banner under 
which he conquered Masina. 
