IV. D7.CCCXXV. OF THE SUDAN 429
CCCXIX The Arabic is as follows :
SH>aJ'j ^^^\ ^/J*>-« ajN)^ lj>>jt O^JJt 0^j^*f^\ >»-''^ y>
See preceding note.
cccxx For el Salawi see para, ccxxxvi.
cccxxi Baker's description of Musa Pasha Hamdi is as follows: "This man was a rather exaggerated specimen of Turkish authorities in general, combining the worst of oriental failings with the brutality of a wild animal " {Albert Nyanza, p. 8). He was originally a Circassian slave bought by a Turk in Cairo market. He entered the army, was caught by the Arabs in the Syrian war, and escaped. He was then sent to the Sudan and rose in turn to be a colonel of infantry. Governor of Khartoum, aide-de-camp to the Governor-General, a commander of irregular cavalry. Governor of Dongola, of Berber, and of Kordofan. He was dismissed the service for inhuman treatment of prisoners, but was later appointed Governor of Kena in Egypt, Chief of PoUce in Cairo, President of the Council, and finally
Governor-General of the Sudan and a general of division for operations against Abyssinia and the White Nile. Murder and torture were no more to him than pastimes. (See Petherick, Central Africa..., Vol. i, pp. 51,
52, 147.) To judge from Baker's and Petherick's descriptions of the Sudan in this man's time, the reforms described by D 7 are purely chimerical. cccxxiv A ndzir is properly an overseer.
Of el Zubayr 'Abd el Kadir {q.v. cccxv above) Jackson {Yacubabi Tribe..., p. 4) says that after his return from Egypt " he was made President of the Court of Appeal by Jaafer Pasha but later served for about four years as Sub-Governor of Sennar with the rank of Bimbashi. He quarrelled with his Governor Yusef Pasha (some time between 1879 ^"^^ 1882) and both were recalled to Khartoum; but on the outbreak of the Mahdiist movement he offered to raise a battalion in Sennar. He accordingly went to Sennar but was so unpopular with the people that the Government decided to remove him quietly : he was put on board a sailing-boat by night but in midstream the sailors threw him overboard and he was drowned
at the age of 59 in the year 1885."
cccxxv Cp. Baker {Nile Tributaries..., pp. 140, 278-280): "Mek Nim- mur" (the son that is of the man who killed Isma'il Pasha) "was a most unpleasant neighbour to the Egyptian Government, and accordingly he was a great friend of the King Theodorus; he was, in fact, a shield that protected the heart of Abyssinia . . . Upon several occasions expeditions on
a large scale had been organized against Mek Nimmur by the Governor-
General of the Sudan ; but they had invariably failed ; as he retreated to the inaccessible mountains " In March 1862 Baker visited Nimr: "Since our departure from the Egyptian territory, his country had been invaded by a large force, according to orders sent from the Governor- General of the Soudan. Mek Nimmur as usual retreated to the mountains,
but Mai Gubba and a number of his villages were utterly destroyed by
the Egyptians" (p. 444) "Mek Nimmur's territory was an asylum for all the blackguards of the adjoining countries..." (p. 451, and cp. Werne, p. 78). Baker found him "a man of about fifty, and exceedingly