Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-03-12
ARABIA'S BENEF ACTOR
MOHAMMED SADIK'S WORK FOR
SUFFERING PILGRIMS.
Cairo Commentaries His Great Service
His Maps, Photographs and
Plans of the Holy Cities.

From the New York Evening Post
The last meeting of the Khedival Society
of Geography at Cairo, Egypt was devoted
to commemoration of the services to
geography of Mohammed Sadik Pasha, for
forty years an officer in the Egyptian army.
who recently died at the advanced age of
eighty.
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 desc
late country to Medina and Mecca supplied
to the western world an immense amount
of informa ton about the great annual pill
grimage, the geographic environment amid
which thousands of the faithful have per-
ished every year, and the routes followed.
Previous to his journeys this information
had been inaccessible; for though Burck-
hardt in 1911 and Burton in 1858 had pre-
coded Mohammed Sadik. they travelled In
disguise at the peril of their lives, and
many sources of information We're closed to
them which were thrown wide open to the
Mohamm,dan. who was distinguished. both
among his coreligioniStS and also In the
service of the state
Mohammed Sadik was able to do what he
did because he was a Mohammedan with
western training Educated in the school,
of Kanka at Cairo, he showed so much
promise that he was sent by the govern
ment to Paris to study civil engineering.
and lived for some years in the French cap
ital. When he entered the army on his re-
turn to Egypt he was a civil engineer with
a practical knowledge of surveying and
mapping, with training in science and sci
entiic observa ton. He was soon conspc-
uous among Egyptians as a learned man,
skilled in modern methods of research.
The Pilgrimage to Medina.
Burton had scarcely returned from Mecca,
the birthplace of the prophet, when the
khedive. Said Pasha. set out on his re-
markable pilgrimage to Medina, where the
founder of Islam was buried. On this
journey he had escort of twelve COM
panies of infantry, squadron of cavalry
and 1900 men driving camels. The route
was across the desert from SueZ Moham-
med Sadik, serving on the khedives staff,
measured with a surveyors chain every
step of the way from Suez to Medina. map
ped all the elevations and determined their
attitudes, and took meteorological obServa-
tons three times day. Arriving at Me-
dina, he made large scale plans of the city
and the mosque in which rests the sacred
dust of the prophet, and of the first califs,
Abubekr and Omar, the founders of the po-
litical power of Islam.
All Mussulmans rejoice that in the dry
hot air of the desert they are able to pre-
serve the venerated remains of the found
ers of their religion; and they assert that
in Europe it has been impossible to keep
the ashes of the great men who gave i'm
pulsion to western civilization.
Mohammed Sadik brought home the first
pictures of the holy city that were ever
made. 1t is strictly against the tenets of
the Koran to make ikenesses of any per-
son or thing: but this traveller had inn
bibed broader views, and the influence he
commanded gave him many privileges that
were denied to others.
Facts for Pilgrims.
1t was not till 1880 that Mohammed sadik
dared print the information he had collect
ed. 1t filled three Bulletins of the Khedival