1823. Feby. 4. Trip. H. ?.1 Family etc State

(a.) Instances of the cruelty of Mahomet Caramalli eldest son of the Bashaw of

Tripoli, Ao. 1817. From Della Scalas "Narrative of an Expedition from Tripoli to

the Western frontier of Egypt: translated by Aufrere. London. 8vo.

p.4. to 6. "Among all the monsters generated by Africa, which by the ancients

was denominated the country of monsters, the first place is due to Mhamet

Karamalli, eldest Son of the present Pacha of Tripoli; of intellect the most

obtuse and impenetrable; of mind the most grovelling and unenlightened; and of

disposition the most brutal; unbridled in the gratification of the most

atrocious passions, there is no cruelty with which he is not stained, no

violence which he has not committed; and one of his choicest pleasures was to

watch the convulsive motions, comparative sufferings, and dying agonies of some

of his slaves, to whom he occasionally caused graduated doses of arsenic to be

administered. This savage having been employed by his father, at the head of a

small army, to reduce to obedience a tribe of Bedouins who had infested the

shores of the gulph, ravaged the adjoining districts, and (proh nefas!) refused

to pay the customary tribute, he so fully executed the commission, that not a

single one of the whole tribe remained alive.

"Upon his return to Tripoli, elated with the success of his sanguinary

expedition, and accustomed to the most implicit and blind obedience to his

orders; he no longer treated his father with respect, but in one of his many

sallies of passion, struck at him with a poniard, which was fortunately warded

off by a female slave. Instead of punishing him as he deserved, and depriving

him of the means of further aggression, his father sent him out as governor of

the provinces of Bengasi and Derna, upon the eastern frontier of his

territories, inhabited by a powerful tribe of Bedouins, called Zaasi, long ill

affected towards the Pacha, and frequently breaking out into open rebellion. But

no sooner was the new governor arrived at Bengasi, than the Pacha found that in

his son he had given a chieftain to the malcontents: and the rebellion spreading

rapidly throughout those provinces, the Pacha judged it expedient to dispatch a

considerable body of troops under the command of his second son, Bey Ahmet, in

order to check the progress of the insurrection, and punish the treacherous

conduct of the rebellious son....

p.179. to 180. "At Derna we had speaking proofs of the cruelties committed by

the rebellious Bey previous to his retreat; for the ground in the fort was

stained with the blood of those whom the monster, at the moment of marching, had

sacrificed to his passion and suspicions. The first victims were his female

slaves, who were slaughtered because he did not choose that others should

possess what had once belonged to him, and because he thought they would retard

his flight."