The Mahdi, Past and Present

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885 edition. Excerpt: ...Probably El-Muntazar, the ancient title of the Mahdi, or last Imam. For particulars of a coin struck in the name of El-Muntazar, and issued by the Vizier Abu-Ali in the year of the Hegira 524 (1130 A.d.), see Catalogue of the Coins in the British Museum, by Stanley Lane-Poole, Introduction pp. ix. et seq.--A. S. B. (Daily News, March 10, 1885; the letter is published in the correspondence from the battlefield, dated February 11th.) 60. Univers Israelite, 1885, February 16th. 61. According to an interesting article published in the Daily News for March 21, 1885, Osman Digna, the most able of the Mahdi's lieutenants, is the grandson of a Turkish slavemerchant established at Suakin in the beginning of this century; on the mother's side he belonged to the non-Arab tribe of the Hadendowas. The house of Osman Digna was the richest and most influential in the country of Suakin. In the course of his business travels in the Soudan, where he went in search of profitable exchanges, negroes included, he allied himself with the principal heads of the anti-Egyptian movement which was hatching. Euined by the Anglo-Egyptian Convention against slavery, he assembled the sheikhs under the sycamore which shadows the chief well of Suakin, and exhorted them to rise against the Turks (the Egyptians), those false Mussulmans who entered into alliance with the Christians. The sheikhs thought he was mad. He waited, and recommenced his travels. When the Mahdi declared himself he became one of his first followers, and went to seek him at El-Obeid, receiving the title of "Emir of the Dervish of God," with letters to the Soudanese sheikhs ordering them to obey him. Since then be has bravely held his own against the English, often vanquished, but regaining his...