Ali Barsi the bandit

In 1822, the French traveller Linant de Bellefonds passed through Hannek and Tajab while returning north after visiting Sennar.  He was told that a fortified site he passed ('el Bonique') was associated with a famous local bandit, Ali Barsi, apparently killed only a few years previously. Linant's account suggest that he had had a considerable reputation at the time, and this seems to survive some 180 years after his death.

A version of the story of Ali Barsi was recorded in Tajab in 2001, by Muhammed Jalaal Hashim and its outline is given below.  Enquiries on Simit Island have so far not tracked down the story, beyond the fact that Ali Barsi had married a woman from the island …..

.... Ali Barsi was member of ruling family at Kokka who became an outlaw/bandit. Took up residence at Kisse (site TJB006) and was terrorising the region.   Nearby, on Fogon-arti was a man, reputedly a son of the kings of Dongola, who had married a woman from Simit.  When seeing this woman, Ali Barsi was determined to take her and threatened the man that if he did not leave immediately, he would kill him.  The man was beaten twice in combat by Ali Barsi, but spared the first time, for being a foreigner, and the second time, for the sake of his wife.  In  a third fight, Ali Barsi finally killed him, dragged his body to Kisse, mutilated his corpse and left it unburied.  He took the dead man’s wife to Kisse.

While the man’s relatives were afraid to seek revenge for fear of provoking war with the Kokka kings, the wife’s family, from Simit plotted their revenge.  While Ali Barsi was sleeping alone, the men from Simit crossed the river by night, bringing piles of sorghum, cane and grass.  They scaled the walls of the diffi and rescued the wife, and then began to pile the dry cane and grass around Ali Barsi’s room. Awoken by the noise, he tried to shoot at them.  However, his wife had poured water into the guns he always kept loaded at the windows of his tower.  The men from Simit then set fire to the grass and Ali began to choke in the smoke.  Driven out of his room he was forced outside, where he was finally killed.