Idris I knew had long coveted Hasseena, and her being with child appeared to him a favourable opportunity of securing her for himself, for under ordinary circumstances, the woman being a slave and the child being born in his hareem, he could lay claim to the paternity, when mother and child would become free, the mother ranking now as a wife. He talked the matter over with Hasseena, and then sent her to interview me. I submitted the case to my friends in prison, and they showed that Idris had misread, or misunderstood, Surah IV. of the Quoran, which only justified his position towards Hasseena in the event |136| of my being a prisoner of war, and he having captured Hasseena on the field. Things became still more complicated by Hasseena admitting to me that there were doubts in her own mind as to the child’s paternity. Hasseena was of a light copper colour; Idris was as black as the ace of spades. It would only be reasonable to expect that the child when born would exhibit in the colour of its skin an evidence of its paternity, and it was precisely on this account that Hasseena wished to defer making any declaration until the event came off. If she elected to declare Idris the father, and the child at birth gave the lie to her statement, her life would be in danger; but before continuing the narrative, and detailing the complications which Hasseena’s condition and her uncertainty on a vital point gave rise to—it might be well to refer briefly to one of the moral code of laws instituted by the Mahdi, as this will help the reader to a better understanding of the quandary we were placed in. While a man, having already the regulation quota of four legal wives, might crowd his hareem with as many female slaves and concubines as he could support or keep in order, a woman was restricted to the one husband or master. All breakings of our seventh commandment were, if proved, followed by flogging in the case of unmarried women and slaves, and by the stoning to death of married women; but, in the latter case, _the sentence could not be given, nor the punishment inflicted, unless the woman confessed_. Very few stonings to death took place, and these were in the earlier days of Mahdieh, when religious fanaticism held sway. |137|