had taken their places there was another expectant pause.
The ombeya shrieked once more and the Mahdi’s sword-bearer entered through the gateway. He carried before him the symbol of the Mahdi’s temporal powers: a sword with an extraordinarily long, bright blade. Its gold hilt and guard were worked with jewelled stars and crescents, and the steel was inlaid in gold with the double- headed eagle of the Holy Roman Empire, beneath which was the legend “Vivat Carolus’. It was not an Islamic relic but must once have belonged to a Christian crusader. It was an heirloom that had been passed down over the centuries until it had become the sword of the Mahdi. Behind his sword-bearer came the prophet of God himself.
The Mahdi was dressed in a spotlessly clean and beautifully quilted jibba. On his head he wore a gold casque with chain mesh cheek pieces that might once have belonged to one of Saladin’s Saracens. He began a slow, dignified progress through the congregation of kneeling worshippers. Their ranks opened before him, and sheikhs, warriors, priests and emirs crawled forward to kiss his feet and proffer gifts.
They held up handfuls of pearls and gold jewellery, of precious stones and beautifully wrought objects of silver. They laid bolts of silk and pure gold embroidery at his feet. The Mahdi smiled his angelic smile and touched their heads in acceptance of each gift. While his Ansar followed behind him and gathered up the offerings, the Mahdi preached to them.
“Allah has spoken to me many times, and he has told me that you should be forbidden to wear fine clothes and jewellery, for this is conceit and pride. You should wear only the jibba, which marks you as a lover of the Prophet and the Mahdi. Therefore it is right and wise that you should deliver these trinkets and fripperies into my keeping.”
Those close enough to hear the words shouted them aloud so that all might hear and know the wisdom of the Mahdi, and others further on repeated them so by the end they had been shouted to the furthest reaches of the vast enclosure. The worshippers praised God that they should be allowed to hear such wisdom.
They lifted up leather bags of gold and silver coins and poured them at his feet, glittering piles of Maria Theresa dollars, gold mohurs and English sovereigns, the currency of the Orient and the Occident. Osman Atalan crawled forward under the weight of the largest of the six tusks and his aggagiers followed him with similar offerings. The Mahdi smiled down on Osman and stooped to embrace him.
The watchers hummed with amazement at such favour bestowed.
“You know that these riches cannot buy you a place in Paradise. If any man hold back treasures and does not bring them to me freely and of his own accord, Allah will burn him with fire and the earth will swallow him. Repent and obey my words. Return to me all that you have taken for yourselves. The Prophet, grace be upon him, has told me many times that any man who still keeps the spoils of looting in his possession shall be destroyed. Believe the revealed word of the Prophet.”
They shouted again with joy to hear the word of God and his Prophet and the Divine Mahdi, and shoved their way to the front to deliver up their treasure.
Once the Mahdi had completed his progress round the mosque he returned to the dais and took his seat on his silk prayer mat. One at a time, his three khalifas knelt before him and offered their gifts. One clapped his hands and his grooms led in a black stallion that shone like washed obsidian in the sunlight. Its saddle was carved from ebony, while its bridle and reins were of gold lace, tasselled with the feathers of marabou and eagles.
The second khalifa offered him a royal angareb bed, whose frame was cunningly carved of ivory and inlaid with gold.
Abdullahi was the khalifa who knew his master best. He offered the Divine Mahdi a woman, but no ordinary woman. He led her into the enclosure himself. She was cloaked from head to ankles, but her outline beneath the silk was as graceful as that of a gazelle, and her bare feet were elegantly shaped. The khalifa opened the front of her cloak, but held it so that she was screened from all eyes other than those of the Mahdi. She was naked under the cloth.
The Mahdi leant forward on one elbow and stared at her. She was a lovely child of the Galla who, at fourteen years, had eyes as dark as pools of oil, and skin as smooth as butter. She moved like a newly woken fawn. Her breasts were small and girlish, but shaped like ripe figs. Every hair had been meticulously plucked from her sex, so that the pink tips of her inner lips peeked out at him shyly from the plump little cleft. This emphasized her tender age. The Mahdi smiled at her. She hung her head, covered her mouth with a tiny hand and giggled coyly. The Khalifa Abdullahi covered her again and the Mahdi nodded at him. “Take her to my quarters.”
Then he rose, spread his arms and began to speak again.
“The Prophet has told me many times that my Ansar are a chosen and blessed people. Thus He has forbidden you to smoke or chew tobacco. You shall not drink alcohol. You shall not play a musical instrument except the drum and the ombeya. You shall not dance, except in praise of God and his Prophet. You shall not fornicate, nor shall you commit adultery. You shall not steal. Behold the fate of those who disobey my laws.”
He clapped his hands, and from the side gate his executioners led in an elderly man. He was barefoot and dressed only in a loincloth. His turban had been stripped off and his unwashed hair was a dirty white. He looked confused and hopeless. He had a rope round his neck. When he stood in front of the dais one of the executioners jerked it and threw him to the ground. Then four surrounded him with their whips poised.
“This man has been seen smoking tobacco. He must suffer a hundred blows with the kurbash.”
“In the Name of God and his victorious Mahdi!” the congregation assented, with a single voice, and the executioners laid on together.
The first stroke raised a red welt across the man’s back, and the second drew blood. The victim writhed and shrieked as others followed in quick succession. At the end he moved no more and they dragged him out of the gate through which he had entered. Behind him the dust was damp with his blood.
The next offender was brought in at the rope’s end, and the Mahdi gazed down on him with a mild and benign smile. “This man stole the oars from his neighbour’s dhow. The Prophet has decreed that he shall have one hand and one foot cut off.”
The executioner standing behind him swung his broadsword low and hard, and lopped off the right foot at the ankle. The man collapsed in the dust and as he put out a hand to save himself, the executioner stood on it to pin it to the ground, then hacked down and cut through the wrist bone. Quickly and expertly they cauterized the stumps by dipping them into a small pot of boiling pitch from the brazier. Then they tied the severed hand and foot around the man’s neck and dragged him out through the side gate.
“Praise the justice and mercy of the Mahdi,” howled the worshippers. “God is Great and there is no other God but God.”
Osman Atalan watched from his seat in the front rank of the mosque. He was amazed by the wisdom and perception of the Mahdi. He knew instinctively that new religious orders are not forged by granting luxurious indulgences but by enforcing moral austerity and devotion to the word of God. No man who witnessed the rule of this prophet could doubt that he wielded the authority of God.
The Mahdi spoke again: “My heart is as heavy as a stone with sorrow, for there is a couple in our midst, a man and a woman, who have been taken in adultery.”
The congregation roared with anger and waved their hands above their heads, crying, “They must die! They must die!”
They brought in the woman first. She was little more than a child, a waif like figure with stick-thin arms and legs. Her hair had come down in a tangle over her face and shoulders, and she wailed piteously as they tied her arms and legs to the stake below the dais.
Then they led in the man. He also was young, but tall and proud, and he called to the woman, “Be brave, my love. We will be together in a better place than this.”
Despite the rope round his neck he strode forward towards the edge of the dais as if he wished to address the Divine Mahdi, but the executioner pulled him up short. “No closer, thou foul beast, lest your blood soil the raiment of the Victorious One.”
“The penalty for adultery is that the man suffer beheading,” said the Mahdi, and his words were repeated and shouted across the wide enclosure. The executioner stepped up behind his victim and touched the back of his neck with the blade of the sword, marking his aim. Then he drew back and struck, and the blade fluted through the air. The girl at the stake screamed in despair as her lover’s head seemed to spring from his shoulders. He stood a moment longer as a bright stream fountained into the air, then cascaded over his torso. The Mahdi stepped back fastidiously but a single drop splashed the skirt of his white jibba. The dead man fell in an untidy tangle of limbs and
