torture-jellab

Updated: May 3, 2025

Recompense was a mockery of the sufferings which had led to death; restitution was no longer possible his own purse being empty without robbery of the treasury of his master; fair dealing and even justice were a vain hope in Barbary, where every man who held office, from the heartless Sultan in his hareem to the pert Mut'hasseb in the market, must be only as a human torture-jellab, made and designed to squeeze the life-blood out of the man beneath him.

Sir Hall Caine - The Scapegoat; a romance and a parable