And you see that you give to the youngest of the princes of Al-Mahdi twenty girls, but to the great princes and relatives of Al-Mahdi, the spoils are taken by each of them, their number exceeding thirty virgins. And let the reader not think that these are stolen, but rather from the spoils of Al-Mahdi or one of the allies or the treasurer, with the name of the girl, her mother, her grandfather, and her descriptions clearly stated, and that she was given to so-and-so as spoils for him, and it is permissible for him to have intercourse with her by right of ownership and to sell her, unless she becomes a mother of a child. And whoever finds her among the followers of Al-Mahdi, and she is a woman, and he does not have a concubine, with the details we have explained, his property will be confiscated and he will be treated as a thief.

And Al-Mahdi had issued an order prohibiting the enslavement of every woman who was his property. But this order was not implemented unless the woman was old or ugly and not attractive to men. And the treasurer would hold the women and they would be inspected after their menstrual period. Whoever was found to be free of defects was taken, and whoever was found to have a defect was returned and expelled.

This is what Al-Mahdi did to the inhabitants of Khartoum regarding property and possessions. I have mentioned it briefly, because if I were to go into detail, I would need years without fulfilling the right of the matter.

And Al-Mahdi issued a proclamation in which he said that all those who left Khartoum, i.e., the trench of Khartoum, their marriages are not legally valid because they occurred during the period before his conquest. And he ordered the marriage of all those couples from among those prisoners. And if there was anything of youth left in the woman, her marriage would be confirmed. Rather, she would be taken as spoils.

And the treasurer wrote to Al-Mahdi seeking his opinion on the fact that he found freedmen in Khartoum who had been freed a long time before the city was conquered. So, how should they be treated, as free men or as slaves?