Al-Ahram's First Sudan Correspondent: Selim Effendi's 1882 Travelogue and the Mahdist Uprising"

In part 26 of his account, Dr Yunan Labib Rizq looks at Sudan in 1882 and 1883 through the eyes of Al-Ahram's correspondent, the "illustrious Selim Effendi" who, when not following revolution, was fascinated by strange customs, hot food and 'exotic women' During the summer of 1882, the editors of Al-Ahram, decided to dispatch "the illustrious Selim Effendi, a correspondent of Al-Ahram in the provinces" to report on condi. ons in the Sudan. This date is a significant turning point in the history of Al-Ahram. On the one hand, the event implied that the interests or rather the concerns of Egyptians had started to occupy some space on the pages of the newspaper, which, hitherto, had mainly focused on Syria and understandably, Lebanon the homeland of the owners of the newspaper. On the other hand, it also meant that the actual orientation of the newspaper had been diverted to the south of Egypt. It should be noted that so far, Europe and European actuality had been the epicentres of interest, and news about the continent had been perennially in the forefront, that is, on the front page. Sending a correspondent to the Sudan, was a shift of interest experienced by the owners of Al-Ahram, and a diversion in their orientation which implied a great deal of hardship. Channels of communication with Syria and Europe were then widely accessible. Steamships were crossing the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, telegraphic cables were flickering news and news agencies were diffusing all about innovations of every kind. Foreign newspapers arrived promptly and regularly in Egypt. However, it was different with the Sudan. The decision to send the "illustrious Selim Effendi" was taken, and he did furnish the newspaper with an account which appeared as a series entitled, "Description of the Provinces of the Sudan". One of the most interesting stories in his account of the journey is about the hardship a traveller endures after crossing the Utmur Desert. He writes, "After crossing the Utmur Desert, the traveller comes upon a small village called Abi Hamad, where he is greeted by the ululations of the villagers as is their custom, to congratulate him on his safe arrival!" Congratulations for safe arrival from a journey gives some idea about what it is to journey to the south! The half hour journey by train from Aswan to Shallal is the only part covered by train. The next destination on the journey is Korosko, and the "illustrious Selim Effendi" succeeded in reaching it in two days and a half, yet he does not complain. The true hardship is what lies ahead, to cover the distance from Korosko to Dinquila: The stretch to Dinquila is covered in twelve days. He writes, "Twelve days of travelling in a continuous stretch of sandy plains and arid hills, punctuated by mountain barriers where not a single spring of water is to be found." He notes that no traveller would venture on such a journey without the help of a guide who would "follow the tracks by day and the stars by night. For if travellers lose their way, they would most certainly perish"! Succeeding in covering this part of the journey is certainly well deserving of congratulations. After benting the road for four days, "The illustrious Selim Effendi" arrived in Berber. Once in Berber, Selim Effendi could count his journey almost over. The distance to Khartoum is covered in seven days by steamboat to the "Hukumdariya" or the office of the commandant of the Sudan. According to the account of Selim Effendi, the journey of the first correspondent ever sent by Al-Ahram to the Sudan, lasted for 27 days of travelling time or much more than a month taking into account the delays on the way and the journey from Cairo to Aswan. Having taken all this trouble on the journey, Selim Effendi had to furnish the readers of Al-Ahram with useful information, and we will see that he indeed accomplished his task. Before delving into the details of the journey, it is clear that he was unlucky in his endeavour. A series of incidents took place which had an adverse effect on his mission in 1882. In the Sudan, the early signs of the Mahdiya Revolution were coming to light. In Egypt on the other hand, the incidents of the Orabi Revolution were in full swing. The reports filed by Selim Effendi to the newspaper headquarters in Alexandria, did not have time to be published as the staff had been breathlessly pursuing the incidents of the local revolution. Unfortunately however, the headquarters of Al-Ahram were burnt and the ill-fated files sent by Selim Effendi went up in flames. Selim Effendi recounts this story at the beginning of his account: "Having spent a whole year touring the provinces of the Sudan as a correspondent for Al-Ahram, learning about the customs of its people, discovering its roads and exploring the various sites, I thought that it would be useful to convey the highlights of my journey to the reader... I arranged in detail everything I endured on this journey, and sent the files to Al-Ahram, but they were consumed in the fire which was set on the building by the revolution last year. Both my files and the premises of Al-Ahram and all its contents were victims of this rebellious incident. As for me, I had to write it all over again!" In recounting his story, Selim Effendi first describes the cities he visited. He focused on the cities of the middle region, namely, Berber, Shandi and Sinar, in addition to an elaborate account of the capital Khartoum. If visiting the middle region of the Sudan needed one year, Selim Effendi would have probably needed another year to visit the rest of the provinces located in the western region to Darfur and the eastern regions to Sawakin. This gives us some idea of how difficult communications were in this vast country of one million square kilometres in area until the end of the last century. Abi Hamad was the first station in Sudan after crossing the Utmur desert. He described it as "a station on the course of the journey, with a population of 300 men and women." On the other hand, Berber was "a large city under the jurisdiction of the commandant of the Sudan, with a population of approximately fifteen thousand, ... respectable, with fruit trees ... its main crops are maize, beans, some legumes and vegetables... it is a station where goods from the western provinces of the Sudan arrive... foreign merchants in the city receive the goods and ship them abroad..." In Berber, he was astounded to find a school "where young boys receive education and instruction at the government's expense" and he noted that "the air in the city was pure and said to be the purest in the Sudan". When he arrived in Khartoum in the summer of 1882, he estimated "the population at over one hundred thousand, about sixty thousand of them were slaves". It seems that Selim Effendi spent most of his time in Khartoum or the "Commandant's Headquarters." He furnished us with many details about the interesting sites in the city and of different aspects of its life. The junction of the White Nile and the Blue Nile in Khartoum, considered to this very day one of the landmarks of the city, was described at great length by the journalist. He calls the two rivers, al-bahrein (the two seas) and describes their junction "at the outskirts of Khartoum at a site called Al-Mogran. He contends that Khartoum derived its name from this triangular shaped site resembling the trunk of an elephant. He noticed that where the "two seas meet" the waters of the White Nile are truly white and those of the Blue Nile blue, hence their names. The water of the Blue Nile "has a repulsive taste, and is not potable." The observation is in place, although Selim Effendi was probably unaware of the fact that the Blue Nile carried the alluvial mud which although it rendered the water distasteful, conveyed fertility to the soil of Egypt. Arriving in Khartoum early in June 1882, Selim Effendi witnessed the rainy season. He experienced the "torrential rains which uninterruptedly fell for two hours, washing away fifty houses and killing twenty people under the debris". For him, the experience of the rain was different from "the rain we know in our Egyptian winters". His attention was also drawn to the school in the city which was much larger than the one he had seen in Berber. He described the school as being "a large institution for teaching and disciplining boys, in many subjects, all at the expense of the government". Unlike his observations on the other places he visited, in Sinar, he focused on the people not on the sites. Description of the people has been one of the two aspects of his experiences of the journey. The entire account was published in six parts in Al-Ahram. The very first comments of Selim Effendi about the inhabitants of the Sudan, is about their colour. He classified the people into five groups by the colour of their skin. According to his classification, "The Makadi have a pleasant brownish colour, the Abyssinian is somewhat darker, the Kiuka is very black, and the Ahmar includes most of the Arabs living in the Sudan. The fifth and last group are the 'lemon-coloured' people mainly represented by Europeans born in Sudan." Sudanese women caught the eye of our correspondent. He followed them wherever he went and gave them a considerable share of his record of the journey. In Berber, "all the women wear amulets. They believe so deeply in magic and are so overwhelmed by superstition, that they tie five or more amulets to a leather string and wear it around their necks hanging down to their feet. The number of amulets is a source of pride to those women." "In Khartoum, women have strange customs. When crossing a man on the street, a woman must take off her shoes and carry them in her left hand. When she approaches the man, she must place her right hand over her head then bring it down as a sign of greeting and respect." "In Sinar, the 'land of gold', women wear heavy ornaments. Their earrings of silver or gold can weigh as much as one hundred dirhems, therefore they must tie the earrings to their heads lest their ears are torn. The anklets on their feet are also heavy weighing at times more than four hundred dirhems, they are made of silver or gold depending on the wealth." Selim Effendi did not forget to note the women's hairstyles: "The women wear their hair in thin plaits falling to their shoulders, the plaits could be as many as one thousand." Aware of the readers interest in the world fantasy and superstition, the "illustrious correspondent" deliberately deals with such aspects at length. The people of Sinar received a substantial share of this account. He mentioned that "in their belief in magic and superstition they have by far outdone other communities in the Sudan." "Among their fantasies is the widespread belief that when night falls, certain of them become disfigured, abandon their human form, and take the forms of frightful looking animals known as matheran. "They believe that in the heart of the Sudan there is a village inhabited by women only. The story goes that during certain days every year, the women bathe in the village lake and straight after show signs of pregnancy. These women give birth to females only." Selim Effendi overlooked no aspect of life in the Sudan, he noted the furniture in their houses and their food preferences: "Al-ankarib is a piece of furniture which consists of four poles of wood to which strings made of leather, cloth or skin are stretched. It is used as a bed at night and as a sofa by day. It is found in the houses of the rich and the poor alike because the people are not accustomed to lie on the ground." He attributed this custom to the great numbers of creeping animals or al-hawam as he calls them. As for food, he was amused by its low price: "A goat is worth one riyal in the city and even less in the country and a fleshy chicken costs one piastre." However, he could not savour much of Sudanese food, and says about it, "Their love for excessively hot dishes is amazing. One of their gourmet dishes which is the centrepiece in all their banquets is muluk. When I finally responded to their repeated urges to try it, and took just a little, I immediately felt that my mouth had caught fire, and I almost lost consciousness." Having arrived in the Sudan at the beginning of the Mahdiya Revolution, the elaborate account written be Selim Effendi violently reflected the situation. Under the heading, "How the Sudanese Fight" he writes, "War for them is an undisciplined endeavour. In each tribe, the cavalry are armed with spears, bows and arrows and long sticks, and their horses are covered with a garment of felt... They are scared of firearms to the point that one man could overcome a hundred men with an unloaded gun." By undermining the military might of the Sudanese, Selim Effendi may have meant to bring comfort to the hearts of the Egyptian authorities, fearing the deterioration of the situation in the south after the outbreak of the revolution. He speaks of a battle in Bara in Kordofan: "The Egyptian soldiers in the camp were about 3,000 strong and the forces of the 'false Mahdi' about 15,000. The latter embarked on an attack on the Egyptians, but the Egyptians stood firmly in their posts, aimed their guns at the enemies and fired at them. Not a single soldier of the enemy was able to move forward, but had to flee for his lives after 2,900 of their men were lost in a very short time." In another section of his account, Selim Effendi deals with the genealogy of the inhabitants of Khartoum. He contends that they are descended from neighbouring tribes, and that certain of them are descended from the Dinquila. However he notes the following: "The sons of the "false Mahdi" of Dinquila are strong and reckless, and should be watched with care because their hearts are with their deviate compatriot, and had it not been for their fear of the government's hand, would have openly declared their allegiance to him." He elaborates in alerting against such elements saying that while a large number of them are true relatives of the Mahdi, "others, motivated by their respect and faith in him, like to boast that they are so." He warns the government in these areas, on a grave note, "to be cautious of them and to watch their every move, and to hold the reins with a firm hand as long as the impostor of the Mahdiya is still in action." In another part of this review, Selim Effendi gives an account of Abdel-Qader Pasha, the former commander of the Sudan. He succeeded in drawing a legendary image of the man, an image which was deeply engraved in the minds of Egyptians. Abdel-Qader was one of the Egyptian military men appointed as commander of the Sudan from February 1882-1883. His period in office witnessed the beginnings of the Mahdiya movement. He succeeded in containing this movement, by designing policies for narrowing defence lines, sent expeditions to curb the movement in areas where it had gained ground and defeated its followers at Al-Jezira and Sinar. Abdel-Qader had accomplished such victories over the advocates of the Mahdiya movement, that they repeatedly invoked God, in a subtly worded prayer, to protect them from Abdel-Qader. This further enhanced the image of the hero for Egyptians. Calling Abdel-Qader back home after less than five months of the British occupation of Egypt, spread the belief that the British had a hand in his return. The belief was that the British wished the Mahdiya movement to succeed, and thus bring to an end the Egyptian presence in the Sudan. While there was no scientific evidence of the truth of this belief, it was widely held by Egyptians. We can sense from the account, that Selim Effendi was influenced by this theory about the withdrawal form office of the commander of the Sudan at the time of his visit. He recounts the incident of Abdel-Qader's crossing the Utmur road in six days, while others cross it in a minimum of 12 days as though it were a miracle. In another place, he tells us that Abdel-Qader "at the head of a few men, attacked the followers of the Mahdi, scattered their forces and overcame them despite their greater numbers." In a third part of his account, Selim recounts, "The Glorious Deeds of Abdel-Qader Pasha in the Sudan". Among these was 'the chain of fortresses be built stretching from Khartoum to the borders of the White Nile and Blue Nile to deter the attacks of the enemy regardless of their power." It seems that when the most illustrious Selim Effendi published the above word in Al-Ahram on 2 November 1893, he had not got wind of the latest news. A disaster had befallen the troops which the government had hastily collected under the command of a retired British officer called General Hicks Pasha. The commander, unfamiliar with the nature of the terrain, led the troops into a veritable disaster in Shakun. The defeat marked the beginning of the end of the Egyptian presence in the Sudan: another story which Al-Ahram followed with much zeal. * A version of this article appears in print in the 13 January, 1994 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly. Follow us on: Facebook Instagram Whatsapp Short link: