During the summer of 1794, five men, who had exercised considerable authority in some of the provinces, were brought to El Fasher as prisoners. It was said that they had been detected in treasonable correspondence with the hostile leader (Hashem) in Kordofân. They did not undergo any form of trial, but as the Sultan chose to give credit to the depositions that were made against them, his command issued for their execution. Three of them were very young men, the youngest not appearing to be more than seventeen years of age. Two of them were eunuchs. A little after noon they were brought, chained and fettered, into the market-place before one of the entrances of the palace, escorted by a few of the royal slaves, armed with spears. Several of the Meleks, by the monarch’s express order, were present, to witness, as he termed it, what they might expect to suffer if they failed in their fidelity. The executioner allowed them time only to utter some short prayer, when he plunged the knife in the neck of the oldest of them, exactly in the same manner as they kill a sheep. The operation too is marked by the same term (_dhebbah_). He fell and struggled for some time: the rest suffered in their turn. The three last were much agitated, and the youngest wept. The two first had borne their fate with becoming firmness. The crowd, that had assembled, had scarcely satiated itself with the spectacle of their convulsive motions, while prostrate in the dust, when the slaves of the executioner coolly brought a small block of wood, and began mangling their feet with an axe. I was surprized at this among Mohammedans, whose decency in all that concerns the dead is generally worthy of applause. Nor did it diminish my astonishment, that having at length cut off their feet, they took away the fetters, which had been worn by the criminals, in themselves of very inconsiderable value, and left the bodies where they were. Private humanity, and not public order, afterwards afforded them sepulture.