Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1889-10-18
MAHDIST DERVISHES.

|
WARRIORS ENCOUNTERED BY ENG
LIsH ON THE SANDS OF EGYPT.
They Are Arabs Of Pure Bleod Known "a
"Jellabs," and Until Recently Dealers
in Slaves-The Black Troops Arc Sou
danese.
It has been more than once pointed out
here that the 50 called dervishes are no more
or little more dervishes than any other Afri-
can Moslems. As fact, every follower of
Mohammed is "dervish" in some sense or
other of the word Your donkey boy in
Cairo or at Zagaig, or, in short, anywhere
throughout the length Of the land, is der.
vish-belougs, that is, to some sect or section,
moro or less fanatical, Of orthodox Mussul-
man faith. Some of these scots are more
Rufayeh, for example, are the most common
In lower Egypt, but others are almost equally
numerous An immense multitude of the
Saiaeh order used to PROSTATE themselves
under the boots Of their sheik's horse at the
|
Many Of these men were walters at hotels
and servants in private families. The great
Ahmedieh order, which especially affects the
cult of Byumeh, is perhaps the most numer-
GUS in all northern Africa, but new cults,
and with them new orders, are constantly in
vading the old, both in Arabia and Egypt
| We hear less now than formerly of the
Wahabees, who at ono time threatened to
| Avail ,o hut
India.
ARABS OF PURE BLOOD.
The Mahdist dervish belongs to wholly
| different class from the Saidieh or Rufayeh
Egyptian who makes your bed or minds your
horse or rows your boat He is an Arab Of
pure blood, winter than the average Euro
pean, handsome to high degree, with pro-
nounced features, sometimes almost Jewish
in type, and an air of pride and probity
coupled with q poiteness and general superb
GRITTY at first sight most engaging and decep-
tive. He is known amoug the jewellers in
the Nile valley, not as Q Gervish, but as
jellab pronounced in Egypt "gallab"-a
term which means merchant, and, for rea-
sons only too good, has Of late years denoted
merchant Of one commodity only-namely,
slaves The SLAYER on the Nile received sad
blows and encouragement during the reigns
of such viceroys as Baker Pashaand Gordon,
and took to honest merchandise, such as
ivory, feathers, henna, SIENNA and the hides
of antelopes and leopards During the short
but prosperous period indicated the jellabs
might have been seen in Nubia OR at Assouan
with their cargoes, andsit was difficult to
connect these noble looking fellows, with
their regal manners. their exquisite robes of
white cashmere and their scarfs Of priceless
needlework, with the stories you heard from
the people around, who still dreaded and
hated them-stories of craft, oppression, ra-
pine, lust and cruelty for its own sake, such
as would make both hearers ears to tingle.
These are the men whom the present turn Of
affairs has rendered desperate. By their own
doing they have closed the legitimate market
they once enjoyed, and their fanaticism has
grown as their wealth has shrunk. while the
countless negroes whom under Ishmael Pasha
they were enabled to carry into Egypt are
now at mature age able to retaliate ON
their old oppressors and to revenge the woes
of slaughtered fathers and outraged mothers
upon the remnants Of the hated jellabs.
To speak of these black troops as natives"
is somewhat incorrect. A few, mere hand
FIJI, arc Of a second generation from those
originally imported but the bulk of the
"Soudanese regiments" are slaves imported
by those very Arab traders, and remember
personally OF by tradition of their elders how
they came into the Egyptian house of bond
age, what horrors of torture they underwent
at the hands Of these lordly jellabs, and how,
finally, after undergoing and surviving, while
thousands persisted beside them, these hor-
rors, they were seized by connivance of the
Egyptian government, and, under the name
of liberated slaves, were put into training for
the army. The supply Of these soldiers is not,
as some authorities seem to think, inexhausti.
BILE. h1r. Stanley took away with him a
goodly contingent; another contingent has
persisted at Suakin and on the Nile; but Of
those that remain it may safely be said that
for war in SO hot a region, and especially
against the slave Aealers whom we dignity
as "dervishes" above all other dervishes),
they are most useful and may eventually be
of further use as showing an example to the
fellah soldier.
HOW THE BLACKS FIGHT.
The great drawback to their employment
is their inherent savage-y. They are reckless
of the lives they have with such difficulty
preserved, and when they come hand to hand
with their former masters the unhappy jellab
has but a poor chance. When, at Suakn,
they were ordered to charge trenchful OF
dervishes they went forward with reckless
fury, outstripping their European officers
and occupying simultaneously both ends Of
the trench, literally raked it from end to end
with their fire, leaving not single man alive.
How far they are to be depended on before
other troops we have no means of knowing.
The few Egyptian regiments who were led to
dire defeat by the ex-khedive's son in the
Turkish and Russian war were largely COM
posed Of black slaves, then newly imported
by the jellabs, hastily drilled, led by Turkish
or Egyptian officers, and exposed to the one
elemental condition of which they had pre-
had been parboiled under the equator and
roasted in the desert, but snow and frost were
too much for them. They had, moreover, no
special grudge against the Russian-on the
contrary, if they had been hong enough in
Egypt they could not but have learned to
hate the Turk.
Their Moslem fanaticism, if it has ever ex-
listed, had not had time to grow; and, unlike
the jellabs, the soldiers Of the car had never
injured them. With the soldiers of Sir
Francis Grenfell it is different. Their own
recollections OF early life-what they have
heard from their comrades-what has been
told to them by the unhappy refugees on Nu
bian territory of the vengeance wreaked by
the ''dervishes" on the unresisting villagers
Of the Upper Nile after the fall of Khartoum
these and many other considerations which
il is not very easy for the English traveller to