139 THK NILE NEAR KHARTOUM.

CHAPTER XXV OMDURMAN', THE SACRED CITY Ol- M/\HDISM "The Khalifa," wrote Slatin Pasha in 1895, "has not movedout ofOmdurman for upwardsof ten years. Here he has centralised all power, stored up all ammunition, and gathered under his personal surveillance all those whom he suspects, obliging them to say the five prayers daily in his presence and listen to his sermons. He has declaredOmdurman to be the sacredcity of the Mahdi. It is strange to think that ten years ago this great town was merely a little village lying opposite to Khartoum, andinhabitedby a few brigands. It wasnot for some timeafterthe fall of Khartoum that the Mahdidecidedtosettle there. ... Duringhis lifetime he had declared that Omdurman was merely a temporary camp, as the Prophet had revealed to him that he should depart this life in Syria, after conquering Egypt and Arabia;but his earlydeath shattered all his plans,and the hopes ofhis followers."

Slatin gives, inhis story ofhis captivity in the Soudan, an elaborate accountof the capital of Mahdism,the Court of the Khalifa,and the daily life of the people of Omdurman as it was before the reconquest. " From north to south," he says, " the new city covers a length of about six English miles. The southern extremity lies almost immediately opposite the south-west end of Khartoum. At first everyone wanted to live as ill ar the river banks as possible, in order to facilitate the drawingof water ;consequentlythe BEFORE the Egyptian conquest of the Soudan, three-quarters of a century ago, Metemneh and Shendy, the great riserside towns of the Jaalin tribe, were the chief centres of population and trade in the country near the confluence of the White and Blue Nile. On the point of low-lying land at the junction of the rivers there was only an insignificant village. Mehemet Ali made it the site of a city, which he designed to be the new capital of the Egyptian Soudan. It was called Khartoum, the Arab name of the pointbetween the rivers,so called from a fancied resemblance of its outline to an elephant's trunk, the literal meaning of the word.

Khartoum remained the capital till its fall in 1885. The Mahdi ordered the abandonmentof the place after the long siege, and began the building of a new town on the west bank of the White Nile,near the outlying fort ofOmdurman. There he built the great mosque, a huge square enclosure,close to his ownhouse. There he was buried when he died in the following summer, and the possession of his tomb, a lofty, whitedomed building, made the city more than ever sacred for his followers. His successor, the Khalifa Abdullahi, further extended the new capital, and while Khartoum fell to ruins, Omdurman spread for mile after mile along the river bank.