OMDURMAN, STRONGHOLD OF THE MAHDI
One of the queerest cities I have ever visited is Omdurman, once the
capital of the Mahdi and to-day the great native commercial centre of
the Sudan. Omdurman stretches for more than six miles along the Nile
at the point where the Blue Nile flows in from the distant Abyssinian
hills. Opposite the city is Tuti Island, while beyond the island on the
farther bank of the White Nile is Khartum. Founded by the Mahdi, or the
Mohammedan Messiah, and the scene of the most atrocious cruelties and
extravagances of the Khalifa who succeeded him, Omdurman once contained
about one million of African Sudanese. It was then a great military camp,
composed of one hundred thousand mud houses and inhabited by tribes from
all parts of the million square miles embraced in the realm of that
savage ruler. The Khalifa forced the people to come here to live that he
might have their services in time of war, allowing them to go home only
to cultivate and harvest their crops, which they were obliged to bring
back for sale. He made Omdurman his seat of government, and he had his
own residence here inside a great wall of sun-dried brick which enclosed
about sixty acres, and in which was an open-air mosque of ten acres or
more. Here he had his palace and here he kept his four hundred wives.
Just outside the city he fought the great battle which ended in his
downfall and the destruction of his capital.
According to Mohammedan tradition, the Prophet said that there would
arise among the Faithful a sort of Messiah, or Mahdi, which means in
Arabic “he who is guided aright.” Mohammed Ahmed, later known as the
Mahdi, claimed to be such a leader, and so he founded the empire which
lasted until the Battle of Omdurman. He got the people to believe he had
been appointed Mahdi by God, and that he had been taken by the Prophet
himself into the presence of the apostles and saints, and by them
commanded to cleanse and purify the Mohammedan religion.
He did anything, however, but practise what he preached. By the Koran,
smoking and drinking are strictly prohibited, and extravagance is frowned
upon, but in the height of his power the Mahdi and his chiefs lived
lives of the most horrible drunkenness, extravagance, and vice. Mohammed
Ahmed is described by Slatin Pasha, who was for years a prisoner of the
Mahdists in Omdurman, as a tall, broad-shouldered, powerfully built man,
with a black beard and the usual three scars on each cheek. He had the
V-shaped gap between his two front teeth which the Sudanese consider
a sign of good luck and which is said to have been the cause of his
popularity among women. Their name for him was Abu Falja, “the man with
the separated teeth.” His beautifully washed woollen garments were always
scented with a mixture of musk, sandalwood, and attar of roses. This
perfume, which was known as the “odour of the Mahdi,” was supposed to
equal, if not surpass, that of the dwellers of Paradise.
After the siege and capture of Khartum the people who had held out
against the Mahdists were put to the most unspeakable tortures, all of
them, that is, except the young women and girls. These were reserved
for the Mahdi’s harem. For weeks after the battle there went on in his
camp at Omdurman the business of choosing from the fairest for his own
establishment, while the ones he rejected were turned over to his chief
favourites and advisers. After Mohammed Ahmed’s death, which occurred
close on the heels of his victory, the Khalifa had the Mahdi’s widows and
all the women of his harem imprisoned in a high-walled compound guarded
by eunuchs. None was allowed to marry or go out into the world again.
The Omdurman of the present, which is laid on practically the same lines
as that of the past, covers almost the same ground, although it has much
fewer people. During my trip of to-day I climbed to the top of the old
palace of the Khalifa, and took a look over the city.
The houses stretch along the Nile for seven or eight miles, and the water
front is fringed with a thicket of boats. Some of the town is on the main
stream, and reaches out from the river in all directions. It is a city
of mud in every sense of the word. Of its many thousand houses there are
not a score which are of more than one story, and you can count on your
fingers the houses made of burnt brick. When I first rode through it I
asked my guide if the holes in the walls had been made by cannon-balls
at the time of the fighting. “Why, man,” he replied, “those are the
windows.” Most of the houses are flat roofed, with drain pipes extending
out over the street so that when it rains the water pours down on the
necks of the passers-by. The one-story mud houses have mud walls about
them, and the mud stores face streets paved only with mud. The walls
of the vast inclosure of the Khalifa are made of mud bricks, while the
houses inside, which now form the quarters of the Anglo-Egyptian soldiers
and officers, are of sun-baked dirt.
The Khalifa was so afraid of being assassinated that he had all the
houses near his palace torn down, shut himself up in his walled
inclosure, and kept at his side a great bodyguard, to which he was
forever adding more soldiers. His special apartments in the palace were
considered the last word in luxury. They had beautiful curtains and
carpets of silk and actually boasted big brass beds with mosquito nets,
spoils from the European houses at Khartum.
Standing on the Khalifa’s palace, one can follow many of the streets
with one’s eye. Some of them are of great width, but the majority are
narrow and winding. The whole city, in fact, is a labyrinth cut up by
new avenues laid out by the British, with the holy buildings and the
Khalifa’s old government structures in the middle. But the British are
improving conditions in Omdurman, and have elaborate plans for its
development, including a fine park in the centre of the city.
Each of the towns of the Sudan has a British official to rule it; but
under each such governor is a sub-governor who must be a native Egyptian.
This man is called the _mamour_ and is the real executive as far as
carrying out the orders of the government is concerned. He represents the
natives, and understands all about them and their ways. The _mamour_ at
Omdurman is an ex-cavalry officer of the army of the Khedive who fought
with the British in their wars against the Khalifa. He speaks English
well, and as he understands both Turkish and Arabic, he was able to tell
me all about the city as we went through.
[Illustration: Being followers of the Prophet, the Bisharin consider a
difference of fifty years in ages no bar to matrimony. This girl wife
probably spent a whole day in straightening out her kinky hair with a
mixture of grease and clay, and adorning it with beads.]
[Illustration: Omdurman, which once had a population of a million, is
a strange city of mud. The houses and stores are one-story flat-roofed
buildings with drain pipes extending out over the street that drip on the
passers-by when it rains.]
[Illustration: Within sight of the British and their civilization, the
Sudanese blacks live miserably, crowded into their burrow-like mud huts,
possessing only a few pots and bowls and the sheets of calico in which
many of the women wrap themselves.]
I came down the Blue Nile from Khartum in a skiff. The distance is about
five miles, but we had to tack back and forth all the way, so that the
trip took over two hours. The _mamour_ met me on landing. He had a good
donkey for me, and we spent the whole day in going through the city,
making notes, and taking the photographs which now lie before me.
The people are stranger than any I have ever seen so far in my African
travels. They come from all parts of the Sudan and represent forty or
fifty-odd tribes. Some of the faces are black, some are dark brown, and
others are a rich cream colour. One of the queerest men I met during my
journey was an African with a complexion as rosy as that of a tow-headed
American baby and hair quite as white. He was a water carrier, dressed
in a red cap and long gown. He had two great cans on the ends of a pole
which rested on his shoulder, and was trotting through the streets
carrying water from one of the wells to his Sudanese customers. His feet
and hands, which were bare, were as white as my own. Stopping him, I
made him lift his red fez to see whether his hair was white from age. It
was flaxen, however, rather than silver, and he told me that his years
numbered only twenty-five. The _mamour_, talking with him in Arabic,
learned that he was a pure Sudanese, coming from one of the provinces
near the watershed of the Congo. He said that his parents were jet-black
but that many men of his colour lived in the region from whence he came.
I stood him up against the mud wall in the street with two Sudanese
women, each blacker than the ink with which this paper is printed, and
made their photographs. The man did not like this at first, but when at
the close I gave him a coin worth about twenty-five cents he salaamed to
the ground and went away happy.
I am surprised to see how many of these Sudanese have scars on their
faces and bodies. Nearly every other man I meet has the marks of great
gashes on his cheeks, forehead, or breast, and some of the women are
scarred so as to give the idea that terrible brutalities have been
perpetrated upon them. As a rule, however, these scars have been
self-inflicted. They are to show the tribe and family to which their
owners belong. The _mamour_ tells me that every tribe has its own special
cut, and that he can tell just where a man comes from by such marks.
The scars are of all shapes. Sometimes a cheek will have three parallel
gashes, at another time you will notice that the cuts are crossed, while
at others they look like a Chinese puzzle.
The dress of the people is strange. Those of the better classes wear long
gowns, being clad not unlike the Egyptians. Many of the poor are almost
naked, and the boys and girls often go about with only a belt of strings
around the waist. The strings, which are like tassels, fall to the middle
of the thigh. Very small children wear nothing whatever.
A number of the women wear no clothing above the waist, yet they do not
seem to feel that they are immodest. I saw one near the ferry as I landed
this morning. She was a good-looking girl about eighteen, as black as
oiled ebony, as straight as an arrow, and as plump as a partridge. She
was standing outside a mud hut shaking a sieve containing sesame seed.
She held the sieve with both hands high up over her head so that the wind
might blow away the chaff as the seed fell to the ground. She was naked
to the waist, and her pose was almost exactly that of the famed “Vestal
Virgin” in the Corcoran Art Gallery at Washington.
Omdurman is the business centre of the Sudan. Goods are sent from here
to all parts of the country, and grain, gum arabic, ostrich feathers,
ivory, and native cotton are brought in for sale. The town has one
hundred restaurants, twenty coffee houses, and three hundred wells. It
has markets of various kinds, and there are long streets of bazaars or
stores in which each trade has its own section, many of the articles
sold being made on the spot. One of the most interesting places is the
woman’s market. This consists of a vast number of mat tents or shelters
under each of which a woman sits with her wares piled about her. She may
have vegetables, grain, or fowls, or articles of native cloth and other
things made by the people. The women have the monopoly of the sales here.
Men may come and buy, but they cannot peddle anything within the women’s
precincts nor can they open stands there. I understand that the women are
shrewd traders. Their markets cover several acres and were thronged with
black and brown natives as the _mamour_ and I went through.
Not far from the market I came into the great ten-acre square upon which
centre the streets of the stores. There are a number of restaurants
facing it. In one corner there is a cattle market where donkeys, camels,
and horses are sold. The sales are under the government, to the extent
that an animal must be sold there if a good title is to go with it.
If the transfer is made elsewhere the terms of the bargain may be
questioned, so the traders come to the square to do their buying and
selling.
It is strange to have shops that sell money. I do not mean stock
exchanges or banks, but real stores with money on the counters, stacked
up in bundles, or laid away in piles on the shelves. That is what they
have in Omdurman. There are caravans going out from here to all parts of
north central Africa, and before one starts away it must have the right
currency for the journey. In financial matters these people are not far
from the Dark Ages. Many of the tribes do not know what coinage means;
they use neither copper, silver, nor gold, and one of our dollars would
be worth nothing to them. Among many of the people brass wire and beads
are the only currency. Strange to say, every locality has its own style
of beads, and its favourite wire. If blue beads are popular you can buy
nothing with red ones, while if the people want beads of metal it is
useless to offer them glass.
In some sections cloth is used as money; in others salt is the medium of
exchange. The salt is moulded or cut out of the rocks in sticks, and so
many sticks will buy a cow or a camel. The owner of one of the largest
money stores of the Sudan is a Syrian, whose shop is not far from the
great market. He told me that he would be glad to outfit me if I went
into the wilds. I priced some of his beads. Those made of amber were
especially costly. He had one string of amber lumps, five in number. Each
bead was the size of a black walnut, and he asked for the string the
equivalent of about fifteen American dollars. The string will be worn
around some woman’s bare waist, and may form the whole wardrobe of the
maiden who gets it.
Not far from this bead money establishment the _mamour_ and I entered the
street of the silversmiths. This contains many shops in which black men
and boys are busy making the barbaric ornaments of the Sudan. Jewellery
is the savings bank of this region, and many of the articles are of pure
silver and pure gold. Some are very heavy. I priced rings of silver
worth five dollars apiece and handled a pair of gold earrings which the
jeweller said were worth sixty dollars. The earrings were each as big
around as a coffee cup, and about as thick as a lead pencil at the place
where they are fastened into the ear. The man who had them for sale was
barefooted, and wore a long white gown and a cap of white cotton. His
whole dress could not have cost more than ten dollars. He was a black,
and he had half-a-dozen black boys and men working away in his shop. Each
smith sat on the ground before a little anvil about eight inches high and
six inches wide, and pounded at the silver or gold object he was making.
In another shop I saw them making silver anklets as thick as my thumb,
while in another they were turning out silver filigree work as fine as
any from Genoa or Bangkok. The _mamour_ asked two of the jewellers to
bring their anvils out in the sun in order that I might photograph them
and they kindly complied.
A little farther on we entered the shoe bazaar, where scores of merchants
were selling red leather slippers turned up at the toes, and in a court
not far away we found merchants selling hides and leather fresh from the
tanneries. They were salting the hides in the square, and laying them out
in the sun to dry.
During my stay in this section I bought some ostrich feathers of a
merchant who sold nothing else. He had a large stock and his prices were
fixed. My feathers cost me about two dollars apiece, but they are the
long white plumes of the wild ostrich, which are far finer than any of
those from South Africa, where the birds are reared upon farms.
In the Manchester bazaar I found them selling cottons of many kinds
and calicoes of gay patterns. There were but few American goods among
them, the chief importations being from England and Germany. I saw some
American sewing machines in the bazaar of the tailors, and I understand
that they are generally used throughout the Nile valley.
A good deal of cotton is being grown throughout the Sudan nowadays and
there is a whole street in Omdurman devoted to the manufacture and sale
of the native product. This market at Omdurman serves a large district
beyond the city, and consists of many little sheds covered with mats
facing a dirt road. It is situated not far from the centre of the city,
and there are several thousand acres of mud huts reaching out on all
sides of it. Both the sheds and the streets are filled with cotton. It is
brought in in bags of matting, and sold just as it is when picked from
the plants. The samples are displayed in flat, round baskets, each of
which holds perhaps a bushel; and when carried away it is put up in bags
and not in bales. A great part of it goes to the native weavers, who turn
it into cloth, using the smallest factories one can imagine.
Not far from the street where the cotton is sold I found one of these
tiny factories. The establishment consisted of a half-dozen mud huts,
shut off from the street by a mud wall, which, with the huts, formed a
court. In the court a dozen black-skinned women were sitting on mats on
the ground, ginning and spinning, while the weaving went on in the huts
at the back. The gin was somewhat like a clothes wringer save that the
rolls were about as big around as the ordinary candle, and the whole
machine was so small that it could have fitted into a peck measure. One
woman turned the machine while another put in the cotton and picked
out the seeds as they failed to go through. Near the gin sat two women
who were snapping the lint with bowstrings to separate the fibres, and
farther over there were a half-dozen others, sitting cross-legged, and
spinning the lint into yarn by hand.
I went to the mud huts at the back to look in at the weavers. They were
black boys and men, who sat before rude looms on the edge of holes in
the ground. The looms were so made that they could be worked with the
feet, the shuttles being thrown back and forth by hand. The latter moved
through the cloth with a whistling noise, which was about the only sound
to be heard. The cloth turned out is very good. It is well woven and
soft, and brings good prices. Its wearing qualities are better than
those of the Manchester and American cottons. I asked what wages the boy
weavers received, and was told ten cents a day.
A large part of the grain of the Upper Sudan comes down the Blue and
White Niles to Omdurman. The grain markets are close to the river and
since there is no rain here at this time of the year, there is no need
for warehouses or sheds. The grain is poured out on the hard ground
in great piles and left there until sold. If you will imagine several
hundred little mountains of white or red sand with wooden measures of
various sizes lying at their feet or stuck into their sloping sides,
you may have some idea of this Central African grain market. You
must add the tents of canvas or the mat shelters in which the native
merchants stay while waiting for their customers, as well as a crowd of
black-skinned, white-gowned men and women moving about sampling the wares
and buying or selling.
The merchants watch the grain all day, and if they are forced to go away
at nightfall they smooth the hills out and make cabalistic marks upon
them so that they can easily tell if their property has been disturbed
during their absence. The most common grains sold here are wheat, barley,
and dura. The last named is ground to a flour either in hand mills or
between stones moved about by bullocks or camels, and is eaten in the
shape of round loaves of about the circumference of a tea plate and
perhaps two inches thick. The wheat is of the macaroni variety, which
grows well in these dry regions wherever irrigation is possible.
Speaking of the flour of the Sudan, I visited one of the largest milling
establishments of the country during my stay in Omdurman. The owner is
among the richest and most influential of the Sudanese. He is an emir,
and as such is a leading citizen of the town. His mills were in a great
mud-walled compound, which contained also his garden and home. The garden
was irrigated by a well, and upon entering it I saw two black slave girls
turning the wheels which furnished the water supply.
The mills were three in number. Each was in a mud stable-like one-story
building just large enough to hold the millstones and the track for the
animals which turned them. The stones were similar to the old-fashioned
grinding machines of our own country. They rested one upon the other and
were so made that the grain flowed from a hopper on to the top stone. The
motive power for each mill was a blindfolded camel, who moved around in a
circle, turning the top stone. The camels were driven by black boys, who
sat on the bars of the mills and rode there as they whipped them along.
The flour so ground was fine. Picking up a handful, I tasted it and found
it quite good.
[Illustration: The Shilouks are among the most powerful Sudanese tribes.
The men are usually over six feet tall and well formed. They stiffen
their hair with grease and clay and then cut it into fantastic shapes
much as a privet hedge is trimmed.]
[Illustration: When the Khalifa ruled he feared education and had all the
books in his dominions destroyed. Hence not one Sudanese in a hundred
can read and write. But the natives respect learning and those at Gordon
College are good students.]