“We cannot spare thee yet from the recruits,” he said. “That work is useful, and it must be done. Think, thou hast given us a thousand soldiers, none like them for rigidity and speed of motion.”

Muhammad hated the recruits, who still were driven in by hundreds every day⁠—men past their prime, and boys dragged from the wretched villages, and active rogues caught hiding in some ditch or patch of cane. The land had been already drained; the dregs were called for. And they were stupid, dazed, those fellahin; a flock of sheep has more intelligence! Muhammad, for whom soldiering was a religion and every detail of the drill had sanctity, was driven frantic by their apathy, their foolish stare. Dancing with fury, he reviled their mothers and beat them with his cane about the ears.

“By the Prophet, they are pigs!” he told the son of Ghandûr, who served him in his tent and hung upon his every word. “Here is El Islam in danger; they are Muslims; yet they yawn and gape if asked to hold a gun. Ah! if I had a hundred Turks instead of them!”