IV.D7.CCXVI. OF THE SUDAN 421
tribe. It may also be taken for granted that it was not paid and that the herds of the nomads were, practically speaking, spoils of war for any official who could catch them (see note to ccLXXXix).
ccxiv The spread of the false rumours mentioned was described by Diwan Effendi to Cailliaud {q.v. Vol. in, 75-76).
An insurrection actually occurred at el Halfaya {op. cit. Vol. ii, 93; cp. also Deherain, pp. 94-96).
ccxv Sa'ad 'Abd el Fattah {q.v. para. CCLXXVii) was one of the 'Ababda.
A '' mu'allim" was a clerk and a " muhdshir" a kind of superintendent. For the move to Wad Medani in March 1822 cp. Cailliaud, ill, 89.
ccxvi Several accounts of the murder of Isma'il Pasha by Mek Nimr are extant. Cailliaud had parted from the Pasha, luckily for himself, and only heard of the murder when he arrived at Marseilles on i ith December 1822. He gives the following description, based presumably on the first account
received in Cairo: "Arrive a Chendy, il commit I'imprudence grave de s'eloigner de son camp, et d'aller dans un village voisin celebrer par un banquet nocturne, avec un petit nombre des siens, le bonheur d'etre bientot rendus a leurs foyers. Nimir 011 Nemr, ancien roi de la province
. . .avait voue a Ismayl une haine eternelle. A la faveur des tenebres, il accourut a la tete de sa troupe chargee de matieres combustibles, et en un
clin d'oeil un vaste incendie enveloppa la maison ou le jeune prince et ses amis dormaient dans une securite perfide. II leur fut impossible de se frayer une issue a travers les flammes, et ils perirent suffoques.. . .Nimr
prit la fuite avec ses complices, et se retira dans le Darfour." (Vol. in, 336, etc.) The last detail is certainly wrong: Nimr fled towards Abyssinia not Darfiir.
Riippell was at Shendi in 1824 and gives a rather different account
(see Reisen..., p. 11 1). Isma'il Pasha gave Nimr two days in which to produce 1000 slaves as tribute. Nimr protested that this was impossible.
Isma'il struck him and threatened him with impalement, and Nimr pre-
tended to give way. He then persuaded the Pasha to leave his boat and stay in the village, and, under pretext of furnishing fodder for the horses, piled masses of dura stalks outside the house where the Pasha was. When
night came and Isma'il and his companions were half drunk, Nimr set fire to the dura stalks, and Isma'il and his friends were burnt to death.
Werne (1840) also gives the story with slight variations and additions:
e.g. Nimr was given three days to pay the impost, and Isma'il struck him on the face with his pipe-stem as he knelt asking for a longer period of grace (see Werne, p. 77).
Zaydan (11, 164) speaks of a time limit of five days and a demand for a boat-load of gold and 2000 men — modified finally to 20,000 rials of silver and 2000 men. Isma'il was then persuaded to attend a dancing entertain-
ment to which all the inhabitants also assembled, and at a given signal the straw was lit and the Pasha and his suite driven within its circle and killed.
The account given in D 7 is practically the same as that given by Riippell.
Of Nimr himself Cailliaud (11, 300) says: "On m'avait prevenu de son