Two Dead Holy Men’s Bodies Found Intact Decades After Burial| Sudanow Magazine

KHARTOUM (Sudanow) - This amazing story had occurred in 1964, during the evacuation of the people of Wadi Halfa of the Nubian region (extreme Northern Sudan, adjacent to the border with Egypt) from their home district to their new location in the East of the country. The Nubians were being evacuated to their new home area of New Halfa in Eastern Sudan, to escape imminent Nile flood to be caused by the accumulating water in what was later on called Lake Nassir that resulted from the construction of the High Dam in Upper Egypt.

The story is told by Hassan Dafalla, the civil servant commissioned by the then regime of General Ibrahim Abboud to evacuate the Nubians to their new home area.

Commissioner Hassan Dafalla had kept an elaborate diary of what he did and saw as the citizen’s evacuation was in progress. Later on he published his memoirs in an English book he called “The Nubian exodus”. The book was published by the Khartoum University Press and was printed in Great Britain. It was revised by Ian Cunnison, a British writer with strong connections to the Sudan. Cunnison also wrote the book’s foreword.

When he was about to conclude the evacuation of the citizens, Commissioner Hassan Dafalla said he was faced with the other important duty of evacuating bodies of two Sudanese religious men who died and were buried in Wadi Halfa region, long years before.

The first man was Osman Digna, a devout Moslem and a hero of the Mahdiya Revolution that flushed the Turkish colonizers out of the country in a few years, after they ruled the country for 64 years.

The second man was Ibrahim al-Mirghani, a devout Moslem who descended from the Mirghani family which is widely revered in Sudan as an ancestry of holy men and women.

Osman Digna had joined Mohammad Ahmad al-Mahdi after the El-Obeid battle in which al-Mahdi defeated the Turks, consequently having control of all the land west of the River Nile. Osman Digna gave oath of allegiance to al-Mahdi who appointed him Emir (prince) of Eastern Sudan. Digna, who hailed from the Bija community of the East, launched war in the East in which he defeated the Turks and their British allies in ten battles, including the battle of Handub (1888). In this battle Digna (for the first time in history) broke what is known in warfare as ”The British Square”. Later on and after Sudan was re-conquered by Britain in 1900, Osman Digna was taken captive and sent to Egypt. He was then moved down to Wadi Halfa and stayed in captivity there until he died.

Ibrahim al-Mirghani was known to have no inclination towards earthly matters and preferred to migrate from Khartoum to Degheim in Wadi Halfa district. There Ibrahim al-Mirghani lead a life of seclusion and worship until he died.

The author said Osman Digna’s body was exhumed at the request of Imam al-Hadi al-Mahdi, grandson of Imam Mohammad Ahmad al-Mahdi and leader of the Ansar religious group, and also at the behest of Eastern Sudan’s Port Sudan City Council. After the exhumation, Osman Degna’s body was transferred to the summer resort of Erkuwit in the East where it was reburied.

Ibrahim al-Mirghani’s body was exhumed at the request of his cousin Ali al- Mirghani, leader of the Khatmiya religious group. The body was then transferred to New Halfa, where it was re-buried.

As commissioner of the locals’ evacuation, Hassan Dafalla was responsible for both exhumations. In his book he recounted what he did and saw during the two sensational exhumations. He wrote:

OSMAN DIGNA:

“On 27 August I received a telegram from Port Sudan city clerk informing me that the Council had deputed Sayed/ Suliman Osman Figiri to attend the exhumation at Wadi Halfa and accompany the body to Port Sudan, and that arrangements had been made with Sudan Railways to send a closed wagon to Wadi Halfa on the 28 August to transport the body..

Accordingly we prepared the following for the exhumation in good time: a strong air-tight timber coffin, a roll of white calico, bottles of perfumes and disinfectant, the Sudan flag for covering the coffin, six diggers with picks and shovels and ten wreaths with cloth label, each bearing the name and date of one of Osman Digna’s ten battles (to be ready on the day of exhumation).The medical inspector was asked to attend and supervise the exhumation.

A notice was published inviting the remaining inhabitants to be present for the occasion at 4 p.m. on 30 August at the cemetery. On 29 August Suliman arrived from Port Sudan. He told me that his Council had prepared a great show for the historic occasion, and that the new grave had already been dug near Kitchener’s Gate in Suakin. At the appointed time, amid a big crowd of people, four diggers set to work with their picks and shovels upon the grave of Osman Digna. The soil was soft and the digging easy. Within a quarter of an hour, they struck the stone slabs covering the trench in which the body rested. The first slab covering the head was removed, and we could see the white calico in perfect condition, with the ribbon tying the end of the shroud at the top of the head. Then the rest of the slabs were removed one by one, revealing the whole body wrapped in its shroud and absolutely intact. The shroud itself was in a good state, not a stitch was missing and the passage of thirty seven years had left only a slight yellowish tinge on its snowy whiteness. There was a faint odor, indicating that the slim body of the old man had not decomposed by dehydration. The body was then raised from the grave by six men: two at the feet, two at the shoulders and two at each side. It was laid on a patch of flat ground, and then the face was uncovered for identification. The features were recognizable, although the cheeks were eroded to the bones. The rest of the skin was stuck to the skull. Osman’s hair and bushy eyebrows were still there and his long broad beard was still stained with the red dye of henna. Then we covered the face, and the whole body was wrapped up in the new calico cloth, sprinkled with perfumes and placed in the coffin. The lid was nailed and the coffin was covered with the Sudan flag, over which the ten wreaths were heaped. The sight was both moving and majestic.

I delivered a long address, describing the life from he met the Mahdi after the conquest of El Obeid in 1882 and was appointed Emir of the East, until his death in captivity in Wadi Halfa in 1927. I paid tribute to the heroic valor with which he had stubbornly defended the country’s liberty against foreign invasion, and ended my address by saying:

Our great hero spent the last nineteen years of his life as a captive under British rule in this town, living confined with broken spirits until he passed away unnoticed, like any inferior common creature who had lived and died without leaving a trace behind him.

But history is just, it never forgets, and the great deeds that men do always live after them, however much they may be ignored or disregarded for a time. They will continue to glow like a smoldering fire, and gain strength as time passes, then they flare and lighten the way to future generations.

The moment has now come for us, in this generation, to honor and glorify him and to learn from his story the noble principles of patriotic devotion, courage and sense of manhood.

When I had finished, the coffin was carried by eight policemen with the wreaths piled on top of it, while the big crowd followed slowly and silently to the railway station. The next day the train drove away to Port Sudan. In Port Sudan I learned that the burial place was changed from Suakin to the summer resort of Erkuwit, where the great man was laid to rest. A tomb was later built on his grave.”

IBRAHIM AL-MIRGHANI:

Wrote Hassan Dafalla:

“On 7 September Khalifa Ibrahim Salih Swar el Dahab contacted me, telling me that they had decided to carry out the exhumation of Ibrahim al-Mirghani at once - a day early. (The term Khalifa refers to a dignitary in the Khatmiya religious group). Khalifa Ibrahim requested me to attend, and I therefore rushed to the tomb of Sidi Ibrahim (Sidi refers to my master or my lord in Arabic). I found a mass of people filling the mosque and the yard where the tomb was, reciting with deep emotion religious poems of the Khatmiya group. Some were flashing their swords in the air, while others wept. Khalifa Ibrahim met me at the gate and conducted me inside the tomb. There I found a mass of people packed like sardines, leaving no space for someone to set his foot, let alone for the diggers to do their work. Only with the help of the police could part of the crowd be cleared away and the diggers start. The ceremony was led by Khalifa Ali Mohammad Osman Malik. In a speech he related the history of Sidi Ibrahim, read a chapter from the Koran, then led the crowd in the recitation of El-Barragh (a religious poem normally recited on burials). All the while, digging continued and the sand was shoveled out of the grave. Suddenly the pickaxe struck the slab cover. There was a pause of deep silence. The diggers only cleared sand from the pit leaving the slabs as they were without going any further. At that moment Khalifa Ibrahim took me outside the tomb and showed me a list containing the names of six Khulafas (plural of khalifa) in the handwriting of El Sayed Ali el-Mirghani, telling me that El Sayed Ali directed that only six persons should be present inside the tomb at the time of exhumation. I therefore ordered the police to clear everyone from the tomb and to allow no one to enter except with the permission of Khalifa Ibrahim. In a moment everybody was out and the six khulafas entered and locked the door behind them. I stayed outside. After a quarter of an hour the door opened and I was called for. I entered the tomb with the crowd squeezing through the door behind me. There I saw the body of Sidi Ibrahim lying on a heap of sand beside the grave pit. The shroud still looked very white. The body seemed in perfect condition, short, stout, full and still fleshy. The fifty six years since his burial had naturally affected the strength of the cloth as it was slightly torn at the side; Khalifa Ibrahim said this had happened when they raised the body from the trench. A Nubian khalifa who attended the exhumation and took part in raising the body told me that the body was still fresh, a statement that I was inclined to believe.

Within a moment the tomb was flooded with people, each forcing his way through to touch the body for blessing. Others got down into the trench, scooped up the blessed sand and carried as much as they could in the lower edges of their jellabias (garments) and turbans, using them as loose bags. Others still carried away the stone slabs of the grave, to be used in their own graves when they die. Outside the tomb there was a tumult. There were mixed sounds of weeping and chanting. Men were dancing with sticks and swords and everybody was excited by the marvel of the body’s preservation. Much animal blood had flowed to mark the occasion and meat was distributed to everybody. It was as if the occasion was attended by some supernatural power, since it undoubtedly deepened the people’s faith in Sidi Ibrahim.

The body was then laid on an angareb (local bed) and carried to an open space in the mosque covered only with a transparent green cloth so that everybody could see it. It remained in that state until after the evening prayer, and was then laid in the coffin and kept inside the mosque under police guard until the next day.

On 8 September at 10 a.m. the tomb yard was crowded again with people. The coffin was now placed on a specially decorated angareb and carried in a huge procession on the shoulders of policemen to Angash railway station, where it was placed inside a closed van. The special train left at 11 a.m.

El Sayed Ali el Mirghani had first wanted to transfer the body of Sidi Ibrahim to Khartoum North for burial inside the tomb of El Sayed El Mahgoub, but owing to the persistent request of the Nubians to have it buried in their new home, he sent it to New Halfa for burial there.

The residents of Degheim village were displeased to see the body removed from their area, as they had a strong belief that as long as Sidi Ibrahim remained with them, the Nile would never flood their land. The majority of them were upset that they refused to attend the exhumation.

So the body was transferred to the village of new Degheim in New Halfa, where it was reburied and a tomb was built on the grave.”

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YH/AS

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OSMAN DIGNA:

IBRAHIM AL-MIRGHANI:

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