THE SOUDAN UNDER THE MOORS 309 Zergoun ordered the whole of them to be arrested.

He then divided them into two groups, and sent them by different roads to the fortress in which they were to be confined.

Whether by accident or by design, one group was massacred. Amongst the victims were representatives of some of the greatest families of the town. The houses of the jurisconsults were then pillaged. Their wives and daughters were subjected to every indignity, and the whole of their wealth, including that deposited with them by the less influential persons of the town, was appropriated by Mahmoud Zergoun to himself. The families of the jurisconsults, after suffering these injuries, were imprisoned, and were kept in confinement for about six months. During this interval the Fulani ruler of the semi-independent province of Masina made the most urgent representations in their favour. Mahmoud, however, rejected his advice, and resolved to deport them to Morocco. This resolution involved the deportation of the whole body of the best society of Timbuctoo. All that was cultivated, all that was enlightened, all that was rich, refined, and influential, was driven out, and the greater number, men, women, and children, were taken in chains across the desert.

The caravan which conveyed them left Timbuctoo on 1 8th March 1594. The scenes which were witnessed were, we are told, very terrible. Fathers, children, grandchildren, men and women, were made to march together, ** pressed close as arrows in a quiver." They were exposed to all the brutality of the Moorish soldiery, and they had a journey of upwards of two months through the desert. Amongst the exiles were the most distinguished men of letters of the Soudan, and the most delicately nurtured women and children of the town. Ahmed Baba, the biographer and historian, who has already been mentioned more than once, and to whom we are indebted for many of the most interesting pages of the Tarikhy was among them. Fortunately