‘What consoles me with regard to the stagnant state of the Mohammedan law in this country is the fact—deplorable though that fact be—that this state of stagnation is general throughout the Mohammedan world. And, although, for many centuries, it has been the only law applied to the people, time has, on account of the failure of those in charge to administer it properly, necessitated the introduction of other codes. ‘The whole responsibility for this decline in the Mohammedan law must be attributed to the authorities of former times. ‘What renders this condition of things the more regrettable is the fact that some of the causes which have for long been undermining the stability of this law have become a part of its traditions, any digression from which would be considered as a deviation from the Sharia law. Hence, it is impossible for me to exaggerate the difficulties which obstruct the way of the reformer. Yet I hope that we may have a good opportunity in this country to improve this state of things, and to bring about an unprecedented epoch of advance in the history of reform.’ Apart from the defects of the religious law, there are many obstacles to a proper administration of justice in the Soudan. Justice is a new idea. Colloquial Soudan-Arabic has no very extended vocabulary. A British officer learning Arabic at Khartoum had impressed upon his teacher that he only wished to master the ordinary language of the country. One day a new word turned up. ‘Is that a good word?’ he asked his teacher. ‘Good?’ said the learned man. ‘I should think so, indeed. Why, if you use that word, you and I will be the only people in the Soudan who understand what you mean.’ The word might well have been the ordinary Arabic term for justice. There has seldom been any use for it until now in common parlance. To the mind of the Arab the notion of an impartial tribunal giving final decisions is an absolute novelty. His natural view is that the judge decides either according to his own caprice, or according to the greater bribe, or to please some great man. The image of blind Justice holding equal scales is very puzzling to him. A judge, therefore, who, when he has decided a case, thinks he has heard the last of it, is liable to rude disappointment. The unsuccessful suitor is very likely to reappear a month or two later and ask for at least a modification of the judgment. He knows now that a bribe is worse than useless; so he comes with a terrible tale of ruin and despair to move the compassion of the Father of the Oppressed and the Protector of the Poor; or—for he is full of resources—he alleges that the judgment has not been properly carried out; or that at the trial an important witness on his side was absent; or that some third party, who had an interest in the case, never heard anything about the trial at all. It may be all pure invention, and very often is, for the Arab can be a fertile liar—that difficulty is not peculiar to the Soudan—but