Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1885-02-20
A Portrait of the Mahdi.
now HE EsTABLIsHED HIS FAME AND
SECURED HIS RICHES.


tFron, the CathsIic World]
Imagine man about 40 years Of age. Of
medium height, Is lean, as the saying Is,
Is shotten herring, with q mahogany CON-
plexion, coal black beard and eyes, and
three vertical slashes on his pallid cheeks;
add to this long cotton shirt as gar
ment, narrow turban as head-dress. .
pair Of wooden sandals. and in the hands
dry as those of a mummy-a string of
number of divine attributes, aud you have
the Mahdi. Those who have seen him
say that M0hsmmed-Ahmedp plays to per.
lection the part Of q visionary dervish,
waving his head when walking, and muir
muring constant prayers, his eyes fixed on
heaven. His father was carpenter on
Nsft Island, IN the Nubian province of
Dongola. and about 1852 came. with his
four children, to Chindi. small city on
the banks of the N lie south of Berber.
When still very young he was placed as an
apprentice under the care of one Of his
uncles, a shiphuilder of Chabakah, oppo-
site SEMINAR.
1t seems that the future prophet was not
without his fallings, for one day his uncle
thought we'll OF fiogging him in regular
French style. The proceeding was not
appreciated, and the child ran away until
he arrived in Khartoum, where he entered
sort of school or convent of begging
dervshes, who were in charge of the mOnu-
ment erected over the venerated remains
Of Cheick HOghali, patron of the city.
There his life was 2 remarkable one for
his piety; but rs to education, be never
learned how to write or even how to read
huently. Later, he went to a similar H.
titution in Berber, then to one in Aradup,
on the south of Kena. In the latter city
he became, in 1870, the favorite disciple of
an emlutnt fakir, Cheick Nur-el. Daim,
and finally was ordained by him and went
to Abbas Island, White Nile. His fame
crease. He lived in a kind Of pit or sub
terranean repository for grain, called silo,
which he had dug up with his own hands;
and there he passed his life, fasting and
praying, burning incense day and night,
and repeating the name of Allah tor
hours at time until he would fall to the
ground painting and exhausted. If anybody
spoke to him he gave back no answer, ex-
cept sentences from the sacred books of
Islam. Earthly things seemed to inspire
fu In hod
made VOW to absorb himself in the con-
temptation of divine perfections. aud to
weep all his life for the sins of mankind.
But his tears did not destroy his powers
of vision. and he kept his best eve wide
open to business; and the faithful coming
by thousands and depositing rich offerings
at thu mouth of his silo, he never failed to
see the gifts nor to stow them away care
fully for stormy days. In 1878 he had be-
come so wealthy that he felt the nee ssity
to declare that Allah had ordered him to
leave his silo and to take unto himself
large collection of wives, whom, as truly
practical man, he chose among the most
influential families OF the country, espe-
cially that of the Bagaras, the mosG
Opulent slave traders on the White Nile.
Every one has still fresh in his memory
the appalling determinations of Hicks
Pasha's eleven thousand men, surrounded
on the h of November, 1883 the first
day of the fourteenth century of the
Hegira!-at Kasghil while marching on
Ell Obeid. This horrible butchery, hap
pening ON the threshold of the century, an
nounced as the one of the Last Prophet,
gave bloody conservation to Mohammed-
Ahmed. who, after the three days battle
went all over the battlefield, piercing with
bis spear the CHASTITY corpses of his enemies
and exclaiming: 1T is I, L, the Prophet,
who destroy the heretics p Compared to
him Mohammed was no more, in his mind,