< THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN with a series of very comprehensive curses. When he had ended his cursings, after some persuasion he told m.e how the Khalifa's followers had treated him. It seemed that when the British left the Siidan in 1885 the Dervish movement made great progress, and a Dervish horde, blatant and elated after the fall of Khartum, came to Sanam Abu Dom, and crossed the Nile and appeared in Merawi. The Dervishes hated the people of Merawi, Shibba and Barkal, because they had refused to join the Mahdi's followers, and because they belonged to the Shaikiya tribe, which, like the Gaalin Arabs, denied his pretensions to be a reformer sent by God. The Dervishes seized all the young women, both married and unmarried, and dishonoured them, and then began to loot the houses. They forced the men to show them where their grain and dates were stored, and when they had smashed the mud bins which held the family stores, they compelled them to carry their property to the Dervish depot, which was always established near the place where any plunder was to be had. Day by day cattle were killed to feed the Dervishes, parties of whom went about in the villages harassing the men and terrifying the women until they revealed the places where their money was hidden.

Now Muhammad, the shkh, was reputed to possess much money, and when certain of his enemies told this to the Dervishes, he was seized and ordered to give up his hidden dollars. He was laid on the ground and beaten with a whip made of hippopotamus hide,i or sinew, until the skin of his back was in strips, but he made no confession. A few days later he was dragged from the hut into which he had been taken and beaten on the feet until his toe-nails dropped out. The Dervishes would have killed him, only they felt sure that he had money hidden somewhere, and they knew they would lose it if he died. They therefore allowed time for his wounds to heal, and then they finally determined either to make him confess where his money was, or to kill him. When they had brought him out of his hut again they drove stakes in the ground and tied him to them securely, and then they kindled four fires near him, one at each side, one at his back, and one in » The kirbag, commonly called kurbag or kurbash. 1 he Arabic form of the word is y, and it exists in .mharic as akarbdg TiPCHX" : 210 i I