El Husseyn was beloved,
and he was taken in the flower of his manhood.
No satisfactory judicial investigation seems to have been made of the
deed, though a formal mejlis was held at Mecca whither the assassin was
immediately transferred, and on the fourth day he was publicly executed.
Who and what he was it is difficult to determine. The Turkish bulletin
on the event described him as a Persian fanatic, but no one confessed to
having known him, and those who saw and spoke to him while in custody
maintain that he was an Afghan and a Sunite. He seems to have given
half-a-dozen contradictory accounts of himself; but the general
impression remains that he came from Turkey, and was by profession a
dervish. He had not come with the Haj, but had been first noticed as a
beggar at Mecca ten days before, when he had asked and received an alms
of the Sherif, and had since been several times found obtrusively in El
Husseyn's path. No one at Jeddah holds the Turkish Governor to have been
cognisant of the crime. He was personally on good terms with El Husseyn,
and has since been disgraced; but all point to the Stamboul Camarilla
and even the Sultan himself as its author. It is known that Abd el Hamid
constantly employs dervishes as his spies and private agents, and some
who pretend to know best affirm that the old man received his mission
directly from the Caliph.
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