Note 31 — Chapter VII · SIUT TO DENDERAH.

According to the account given in her letters by Lady Duff Gordon, this dervish, who had acquired a reputation for unusual sanctity by repeating the name of Allah three thousand times every night for three years, believed that he had by these means rendered himself invulnerable; and so, proclaiming himself the appointed slayer of Antichrist, he stirred up a revolt among the villages bordering Gebel Sheik Hereedee, instigated an attack on an English dahabeeyah, and brought down upon himself and all that country-side the swift and summary vengeance of the government. Steamers with troops commanded by Fadl Pasha were dispatched up the river; rebels were shot; villages sacked; crops and cattle confiscated. The women and children of the place were then distributed among the neighboring hamlets; and Gow, which was as large a village as Luxor, ceased to exist. The dervish’s fate remained uncertain. He was shot, according to some; and by others it was said that he had escaped into the desert under the protection of a tribe of Bedouins.