CHAPTER XXXII THE MOORISH CONQUEST *' DjouDER Pasha was a little man with blue eyes." Thus begins the chapter in the Tarikh which recounts the coming of the Moors. Another account says that he had a light complexion of the colour of steel. Djouder Pasha was the commander - in - chief of the Moorish army. He had at his disposal for the purposes of an expedition to the Soudan only a small force of something under 4000 men, but they were well armed with muskets — which were apparently unknown to the western armies of the Soudan — they were well mounted, well disciplined, well equipped with tents and medical stores, and, for the purposes of an army which meant to live upon the country through which they passed, they were sufficiently well provisioned. Their organisation had been reformed on the model of the Turks, with whom the armies of Morocco had had more than one occasion to measure their strength.

A little steel-coloured man with blue eyes, at the head of such a force, was in a position to play, if he chose, amid the rich and supine populations of the Soudan, a part not unlike that of the leader of a pack of wolves among flocks of sheep. The disproportionate numbers of the sheep were only so much the more to the advantage of the wolves. Djouder Pasha was an accomplished soldier. He had gained experience in the wars of the coast with Turks and Spaniards. The results to be obtained with modern weapons were well known to him, and it is probable that he fully appreciated the importance of moving with a small, rather than with a large unwieldy 296 1