of people he would have wished to take into his confidence, but some he was afraid might betray him, and the others he could not trust with the little discretion they could boast of. He feared they might unwittingly let slip a few words prematurely, and then his and their tongues would be silenced for ever.
As the director of the Beit-el-Mal, his first care was to keep the treasury and granaries full to repletion. During the famine this was an impossibility, but some grain and money had to be procured from somewhere. The poor, and those who had come by their little stores honestly, Adlan never made a call upon; indeed, he was the protector of the poor and the Muslimanieh (captive Christians). It was Adlan's policy to create enemies of Abdullahi, so that was another reason for his protecting the poor, who were already bitter enemies of their savage ruler. On reporting to Abdullahi the depleted condition of the treasury and granaries — and Abdullahi was aware that the doors of the Beit-el-Mal and Adlan's house were besieged night and day by thousands of starving wretches — Adlan would be given a verbal order to search for grain and bring it into the Beit-el-Mal. This order he would put into immediate execution against Abdullahi's particular friends and adherents, for the whole of their stores were the proceeds of robbery, and the plundering and murdering of weaker tribes and people. To all remonstrances Adlan would reply that he was carrying out Abdullahi's orders, and every one knew that disobedience to these, or any attempt to evade them, meant summary execution. Occasionally some
