The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-09-13


 come in every day, but very little
 grain. Seyd Mahomet Osman has sent word to his people to go to Khartoum Tor refuge this is pleasant for us; but 1t shows his confidence in our future, and 1t is great honor to me, who
 QhanS GoD am given faith to out speak I am Christian,' to have ob-
 tanned such confidence from man who
 would in the times of my glory scarcely look at me.
 One of his (Seyd Muhammad Os-
 mans) men going down to Shendy
 (where his sister, very plucky wo-
 man, lives) was taking down pair of
 slippers for her, and he brought them
 here; l wrote my name on the inside of
 each, and told him to tell the Sit or
 lady, when she put them on she put her claw on my head; the man came back
 the other day, and said the 'Sitt' was dehghted with the idea" On Septem- Der "A he wrote: "Seyd Mahomet Os-
 mans little boy, aged nine years, was l caught by Arabs and behaved like hero. He was not going to be a Der Vish He was as much the Mahdi as | Mahomet Achmet, and they might kill
 him if they liked, etc. He was going to stay with the government and Gordon
 Pasha. They left him alone" Sidi | Osman did not long survive the death Of General Gordon and the fall of Kas-
 sala; he died at Cairo, shortly after re-
 turning from visit to the front, on the | morning of January F, 1886. The la dies Fatima and Nefisa, who resided at Shendy and did all that was possible
 to keep the Shaikiya tribe loyal, were / carried off prisoners to Omdurman, where they have suffered great indig- mites.
 | Another of the Morghanis who was | active on behalf of the English was | Sidi Husain, of Cairo. Early in Janua- ry, 1886, he communicated his views to
 the correspondent of "rhe Times" Tn { the light of recent events they show
 considerable prescience The nearest
 point" he said, Grimes" January 15, 1 1SS6) lat which you can hope to do | anything is Dongola If Lord Wolse- | ley had remained for twenty days | longer at Dongola the whole movement
 would now have collapsed. . If
 the English retire from Egypt they | (the Mahdists) will sweep the whole | country. As to the future, I | say you must go to Don- | gola; you will there hold the rebels by ] the throat. From there you can nego- | tiate, but the attempt to do so is ut | terly impossible from any point fur l ther to the north. The necessi- ties are, first, force to go to Dongola 1 secondly, a good government, support | ed by force at Dongola; thirdly, mon- NrK fr ~cn1 1o% l~1 kI1,, of l ter some time. As to the force, you
 want five thousand Englishmen, and l the same number of Turks and Egyp tians, for two or three years. As to the | government it must be military and | either Christian or Moslem, provided it be just"
 l The Morghanis are said to be of Af- 1 ghan or Indo- Persian descent. They believe themselves to have come origi- nally from Bokhara. But they are also 1 Saiyids-that is to say, they have be- l come allied to the family of the Proph- | et and claim to be regarded as among 1 his descendants through Husain, son of Ali and Fatima. As Saiyds, therefore, 1 they devote themselves to learning and religion Hence, too their honorific ti- | tie of Sidi, my lord" and the rever- | ence with which Moslems regard them as lineal descendants of the Prophet. l The first of the family to introduce l the teaching and organization of the | Khatimiya Order into the Soudan was | Sidi Muhammad Osman, of Mecca, who l crossed over from Jiddah with a con l siderable following, and established his 1 order in several parts of the Soudan l early in the first decade of the present l century He had three sons, one of l whom settled at Mecca; a second was | Sidi Hasan, of Kassala, the father of | Sidi Osman; the third was Sidi Muham- mad, the father of Sidi Husain, of Cai- l TO.
 | It is the tomb of Sidi Hasan which is l the celebrated shrine of the Morghani | family at Kassala, and the Mecca of l the members and adherents of the ] Khatimiya Order. It, along with the
 mosque in which it is contained, is known as the Khatmia. The tomb is | in a side building. and has not been l desecrated by the Dervishes, but the ! mosque has been half destroyed. The l khatmia was a handsome and solid | brick edifice some two hundred and | fifty feet in length and one hundred 1 feet in width, situated at the foot of | the huge granite mass of Jebel Kassa- | la el Luz, some three miles to the east | of Kassala. It was recognized as hav- 1 ing considerable architectural merit, | but several of the columns have been | hewn through at the base, the roof and many of the arches have fallen in, and l little remains save it's massive walls 1 and minaret Colonel Parsons an
 nounced, however, in the end of Decem-
 Der on his arrival at Kassala that the
 Khatmia is to be rebuilt and restored
 to it's former glory.
 Sidi Ali, who is a young man of | twenty-five years, is the grandson if 1 Sidi Hasan. He is to reside within the | precincts of the Khatnia as the custo- dian of the tomb and mosque of his | ancestor, In former days pilgrims
 came from all parts of Egypt and the
 Soudan to pray and worship at the
 shrine of the Morghani saint in the | Khatmia, and the rejoicing which 1 greeted the arrival of Sidi Ali may be | regarded as an earnest of the renewed
 success that awaits the Khatimiya Or I der among the tribes of the Upper Nile As sheikhs of the Khatimiya Order 1 the Morghanis have been consistent all
 along and diligent on behalf of the