THE RISE OF THE "MAHDI EL MUNTAZER."

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1289, 12 November 1896, Page 9

THE RISE OF THE "MAHDI EL MUNTAZER."

This master-cheat, the life of the socalled Dervish movement, was a fanatic parody of the original Prophet of Islam. At once a reformer and a tyrant, ho bade his followers put away all the good things and pleasures of this world, living only for that which is to come. Thus he preached, while exacting by force of murderous rod and mutilating knife the last farthing from his conquered enemies. Praising poverty, he would go about in the plain jibba, the patched shirt imposed on all as the badge of his following ; but within the closed doors of his harem he would riot and wanton in silken robes and perfumed cushions, on the soft couches of luxury. An ascetic without, a voluptuary within his palace courts, shut in by lofty windowless walls in Khartoum and Omdurman, he would summon to the call of his pleasures the hapless youth and beauty of each town he captured and burnt. The fatherless girl, with the wretched widow and mother, were brought, in the bitterless moments of recent bereavement, to writhe under the loathed lips that had pronounced the death doom of their natural protectors. Their vain cries or mute despair were the pleasant excitement of his lighter hours, varying the scene of festivities, too often found tame and tasteless when furnished only by the submissive, purchased slaves, gathered from every province as a love-tribute to the insatiable passions of the impostor they had learned to worship as a mortal god, with human sacrifice. Suddenly, as a malignant growth of the night, his person and power rose, were magnified by report, and met with general submission through the Soudan and its bordering |

lands* Second to him in authority, although far beneath, as the moon to the sun, stood out his favourite, Khalifa Abdullahi, ultimately his successor as leader of Mahdism. With these two, ' Rudolf Slatin was destined to come into relationship closer than he desired, longer : almost than iife and patience could endure, and conquer in the end. Gradually the new movement spread, during the first months of 1882. The Mahdi took courage to proclaim his divine mission, and declared himself master of the land in open defiance of Rauf Pasha, Gordon's successor as Governor-General at Khartoum. Expeditions to crush and capture the upstart went out from that fated city, only to suffer annihilation at the hands of a mob of ignorant wretches, driven by the wild enthusiasm of mistaken faith like fire of lightning along the ground, resistless, inevitable ministers of death. Two chivfs of renown, Yusef Pasha and Abu Sidr, met their doom through the fatal fault of despising their foe. Encamped within a rough enclosure of scrub, they were surprised at break of day by the Mahdi's hungry, half-naked Arabs, the very scum of the earth, risen to possess it. Arms they had none to speak of, only the chance weapons of nature and savage fury. In one fierce moment they had thrust through the useless barrier opposed to their onslaught, and were upon the sleeping men and officers. These last were killed in their nightshirts as they rushed to the tent | doors. Abu Sidr was avenged by a woman slave who loved him ; seizing a revolver, she shot two of his murderers dead, then fell upon his body, stabbed to the heart —happy in her death. A few minutes of slaughter, and scarce a man was left alive.— Belgraviz.