The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-04-28
AN EGYPTIAN SCIENTIST.
Honor Paid tho Memory of an Oriental
 Explorer.

Honor Paid tho Memory of an Oriental Explorer. . New York Evening Post. The last meeting of the Khedivai Society of Geography at Carlo. Egypt, was devoted to @ commemoration of the services to geo. | sraphy of Mohammed Sadik Fasha. for forty years an officer in the Egyptian army, who recently died at the advanced age of 80.
 Mohammed sadik will be remembered as long as the followers of Islam make pill grimages to the holy cities of Arabia. His three journeys over the sands of that deso- late country to Medina and Mecca supplied to the Western. world an immense amount of information about the annual pilgrimage. the geographic environment, amid which thousands of the faithful have perished .ev- cry year. and the routes followed. Previous to his journeys this information had been inaccessible, for. though Burckhardt in 1874 and Burton in 1s5s had preceded Mo hammed Sadik they travelled in disguise at the peril of their lives, and many sources of information were closed to them which were thrown wide open to the Mohammedan who was distinguished both among his CO., religionists and also in the service of the State
 Mohammed sadik was able to do what he did because he was Mohammedan with Western training. Educated in the School
 
 promise that he sent by the Govern ment to Paris to study civil engineering, and lived for some years the French cap- ital
 Burton had scarcely returned from Mec- ca. the birthplace of the prophet. when the Khedike Said Pasha set out on his re- markable pilgrimage to Medina, where the founder of Islam was buried. On the jour ney he had escort of twelve companies of infantry. a squadron of cavalry and B. 900 men driving camels. The route was across the desert from Suez, Mohammed Sadik, serving on the Khedive's staff meas ured with a surveyors chain every step of the way from Suez to Medina, mapped all the elevations and determined their alti- tudes and took meteorological observations three times day. Arriving at Medina, he made large scale plans of the city and the mosque. in which rests the sacred dust of the prophet and of the first capils, Abu- bekr and Omar the founders of the po- litical powers of Islam.
 It was not till 1880 that Mohammed Sa- dix dared print the information he had col lected. It filled three bulletins of the Khe- dival Geographical Society. It told of the practices and rites of the pilgrims on their visit to the sacred tomb, and gave a minute description of the city of Medina, it's popu- lation and the robber tribes of Bedouins who were met on the route
 Ihe account or this Journey and the ac- curate maps of the route and plans of the city which accompanied 1t were received with delight by geographers all over the world. Encouraged by the hearty recep- tion given to his writings, Mohammed SadjlS in 1881 asked permission to accompany the pilgrimage from Egypt and complete his studies of the holy cities.
 The hard journey across the desert from Suez and Sinai to Mecca and that city itself gave further opportunity for minute surveys and description. which were published, with large scale map, in 1882 Owing to his position the explorer was able to make all his studies and to take the large number of fine photographs without the slightest pre- caution to escape observation.
 His collection of photographs was exhib- tied at the Geographical Congress of Ven ice. and King Humbert gave the explorer a gold medal.