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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of In Morocco, by Edith Wharton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: In Morocco
+
+Author: Edith Wharton
+
+Release Date: March 4, 2012 [EBook #39042]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN MOROCCO ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IN MOROCCO
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Fez Elbali from the ramparts]
+
+
+
+
+IN MOROCCO
+
+BY
+
+EDITH WHARTON
+
+ILLUSTRATED
+
+[Illustration]
+
+NEW YORK
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+1920
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1919, 1920, BY
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+Published October, 1920
+
+THE SCRIBNER PRESS
+
+
+TO
+GENERAL LYAUTEY
+
+RESIDENT GENERAL OF FRANCE IN MOROCCO AND TO
+MADAME LYAUTEY,
+
+THANKS TO WHOSE KINDNESS THE JOURNEY
+I HAD SO LONG DREAMED OF
+SURPASSED WHAT I HAD DREAMED
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+I
+
+Having begun my book with the statement that Morocco still lacks a
+guide-book, I should have wished to take a first step toward remedying
+that deficiency.
+
+But the conditions in which I travelled, though full of unexpected and
+picturesque opportunities, were not suited to leisurely study of the
+places visited. The time was limited by the approach of the rainy
+season, which puts an end to motoring over the treacherous trails of the
+Spanish zone. In 1918, owing to the watchfulness of German submarines in
+the Straits and along the northwest coast of Africa, the trip by sea
+from Marseilles to Casablanca, ordinarily so easy, was not to be made
+without much discomfort and loss of time. Once on board the steamer,
+passengers were often kept in port (without leave to land) for six or
+eight days; therefore for any one bound by a time-limit, as most
+war-workers were, it was necessary to travel across country, and to be
+back at Tangier before the November rains.
+
+This left me only one month in which to visit Morocco from the
+Mediterranean to the High Atlas, and from the Atlantic to Fez, and even
+had there been a Djinn's carpet to carry me, the multiplicity of
+impressions received would have made precise observation difficult.
+
+The next best thing to a Djinn's carpet, a military motor, was at my
+disposal every morning; but war conditions imposed restrictions, and the
+wish to use the minimum of petrol often stood in the way of the second
+visit which alone makes it possible to carry away a definite and
+detailed impression.
+
+These drawbacks were more than offset by the advantage of making my
+quick trip at a moment unique in the history of the country; the brief
+moment of transition between its virtually complete subjection to
+European authority, and the fast approaching hour when it is thrown open
+to all the banalities and promiscuities of modern travel.
+
+Morocco is too curious, too beautiful, too rich in landscape and
+architecture, and above all too much of a novelty, not to attract one of
+the main streams of spring travel as soon as Mediterranean passenger
+traffic is resumed. Now that the war is over, only a few months' work on
+roads and railways divide it from the great torrent of "tourism"; and
+once that deluge is let loose, no eye will ever again see Moulay Idriss
+and Fez and Marrakech as I saw them.
+
+In spite of the incessant efforts of the present French administration
+to preserve the old monuments of Morocco from injury, and her native
+arts and industries from the corruption of European bad taste, the
+impression of mystery and remoteness which the country now produces must
+inevitably vanish with the approach of the "Circular Ticket." Within a
+few years far more will be known of the past of Morocco, but that past
+will be far less visible to the traveller than it is to-day. Excavations
+will reveal fresh traces of Roman and Phenician occupation; the remote
+affinities between Copts and Berbers, between Bagdad and Fez, between
+Byzantine art and the architecture of the Souss, will be explored and
+elucidated; but, while these successive discoveries are being made, the
+strange survival of mediæval life, of a life contemporary with the
+crusaders, with Saladin, even with the great days of the Caliphate of
+Bagdad, which now greets the astonished traveller, will gradually
+disappear, till at last even the mysterious autocthones of the Atlas
+will have folded their tents and silently stolen away.
+
+
+II
+
+Authoritative utterances on Morocco are not wanting for those who can
+read them in French; but they are to be found mainly in large and often
+inaccessible books, like M. Doutté's "En Tribu," the Marquis de
+Segonzac's remarkable explorations in the Atlas, or Foucauld's classic
+(but unobtainable) "Reconnaissance au Maroc"; and few, if any, have been
+translated into English.
+
+M. Louis Châtelain has dealt with the Roman ruins of Volubilis and M.
+Tranchant de Lunel, M. Raymond Koechlin, M. Gaillard, M. Ricard, and
+many other French scholars, have written of Moslem architecture and art
+in articles published either in "France-Maroc," as introductions to
+catalogues of exhibitions, or in the reviews and daily papers. Pierre
+Loti and M. André Chevrillon have reflected, with the intensest visual
+sensibility, the romantic and ruinous Morocco of yesterday; and in the
+volumes of the "Conférences Marocaines," published by the French
+government, the experts gathered about the Resident-General have
+examined the industrial and agricultural Morocco of to-morrow. Lastly,
+one striking book sums up, with the clearness and consecutiveness of
+which French scholarship alone possesses the art, the chief things to be
+said on all these subjects, save that of art and archæology. This is M.
+Augustin Bernard's volume, "Le Maroc," the one portable and compact yet
+full and informing book since Leo Africanus described the bazaars of
+Fez. But M. Augustin Bernard deals only with the ethnology, the social,
+religious and political history, and the physical properties, of the
+country; and this, though "a large order," leaves out the visual and
+picturesque side, except in so far as the book touches on the always
+picturesque life of the people.
+
+For the use, therefore, of the happy wanderers who may be planning a
+Moroccan journey, I have added to the record of my personal impressions
+a slight sketch of the history and art of the country. In extenuation of
+the attempt I must add that the chief merit of this sketch will be its
+absence of originality. Its facts will be chiefly drawn from the pages
+of M. Augustin Bernard, M. H. Saladin, and M. Gaston Migeon, and the
+rich sources of the "Conférences Marocaines" and the articles of
+"France-Maroc." It will also be deeply indebted to information given on
+the spot by the brilliant specialists of the French administration, to
+the Marquis de Segonzac, with whom I had the good luck to travel from
+Rabat to Marrakech and back; to M. Alfred de Tarde, editor of
+"France-Maroc"; to M. Tranchant de Lunel, director of the French School
+of Fine Arts in Morocco; to M. Goulven, the historian of Portuguese
+Mazagan; to M. Louis Châtelain, and to the many other cultivated and
+cordial French officials, military and civilian, who, at each stage of
+my journey, did their amiable best to answer my questions and open my
+eyes.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+
+In the writing of proper names and of other Arab words the French
+spelling has been followed.
+
+In the case of proper names, and names of cities and districts, this
+seems justified by the fact that they occur in a French colony, where
+French usage naturally prevails; and to spell _Oudjda_ in the French
+way, and _koubba_, for instance, in the English form of _kubba_, would
+cause needless confusion as to their respective pronunciation. It seems
+therefore simpler, in a book written for the ordinary traveller, to
+conform altogether to French usage.
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+
+
+                                             PAGE
+
+PREFACE                                       vii
+
+I. RABAT AND SALÉ                               1
+
+II. VOLUBILIS, MOULAY IDRISS AND MEKNEZ        35
+
+III. FEZ                                       75
+
+IV. MARRAKECH                                 121
+
+V. HAREMS AND CEREMONIES                      159
+
+VI. GENERAL LYAUTEY'S WORK IN MOROCCO         207
+
+VII. A SKETCH OF MOROCCAN HISTORY             229
+
+VIII. NOTE ON MOROCCAN ARCHITECTURE           259
+
+IX. BOOKS CONSULTED                           279
+
+INDEX                                         283
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+FEZ ELBALI FROM THE RAMPARTS                 _Frontispiece_
+
+                                               FACING PAGE
+
+GENERAL VIEW FROM THE KASBAH OF THE OUDAYAS--RABAT      16
+
+INTERIOR COURT OF THE MEDERSA OF THE OUDAYAS--RABAT     20
+
+ENTRANCE OF THE MEDERSA--SALÉ                           24
+
+MARKET-PLACE OUTSIDE THE TOWN--SALÉ                     26
+
+CHELLA-RUINS OF MOSQUE--SALÉ                            30
+
+THE WESTERN PORTICO OF THE BASILICA OF ANTONIUS
+PIUS--VOLUBILIS                                         46
+
+MOULAY IDRISS                                           48
+
+THE MARKET-PLACE--MOULAY IDRISS                         50
+
+MARKET-PLACE ON THE DAY OF THE RITUAL DANCE OF
+THE HAMADCHAS--MOULAY IDRISS                            52
+
+THE MARKET-PLACE. PROCESSION OF THE CONFRATERNITY
+OF THE HAMADCHAS--MOULAY IDRISS                         56
+
+GATE: "BAB-MANSOUR"--MEKNEZ                             58
+
+THE RUINS OF THE PALACE OF MOULAY-ISMAËL--MEKNEZ        66
+
+FEZ ELDJID                                              84
+
+A REED-ROOFED STREET--FEZ                               88
+
+THE NEDJARINE FOUNTAIN--FEZ                             94
+
+THE BAZAARS. A VIEW OF THE SOUK EL ATTARINE AND
+THE QUAISARYA--FEZ                                      108
+
+THE "LITTLE GARDEN" IN BACKGROUND, PALACE OF
+THE BAHIA--MARRAKECH                                    128
+
+THE GREAT COURT, PALACE OF THE BAHIA--MARRAKECH         130
+
+APARTMENT OF THE GRAND VIZIER'S FAVORITE, PALACE
+OF THE BAHIA--MARRAKECH                                 132
+
+A FONDAK--MARRAKECH                                     144
+
+MAUSOLEUM OF THE SAADIAN SULTANS SHOWING THE
+TOMBS--MARRAKECH                                        156
+
+THE SULTAN OF MOROCCO UNDER THE GREEN UMBRELLA          168
+
+A CLAN OF MOUNTAINEERS AND THEIR CAÏD                   170
+
+THE SULTAN ENTERING MARRAKECH IN STATE                  176
+
+WOMEN WATCHING A PROCESSION FROM A ROOF                 194
+
+A STREET FOUNTAIN--MARRAKECH                            262
+
+GATE OF THE KASBAH OF THE OUDAYAS--RABAT                266
+
+MEDERSA BOUANYANA--FEZ                                  268
+
+THE PRAYING-CHAPEL IN THE MEDERSA EL ATTARINE--FEZ      270
+
+INTERIOR COURT OF THE MEDERSA--SALÉ                     274
+
+THE GATE OF THE PORTUGUESE--MARRAKECH                   276
+
+
+MAP
+
+THE PART OF MOROCCO VISITED BY MRS. WHARTON               8
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+RABAT AND SALÉ
+
+
+I
+
+LEAVING TANGIER
+
+To step on board a steamer in a Spanish port, and three hours later to
+land in _a country without a guide-book_, is a sensation to rouse the
+hunger of the repletest sight-seer.
+
+The sensation is attainable by any one who will take the trouble to row
+out into the harbour of Algeciras and scramble onto a little black boat
+headed across the straits. Hardly has the rock of Gibraltar turned to
+cloud when one's foot is on the soil of an almost unknown Africa.
+Tangier, indeed, is in the guide-books; but, cuckoo-like, it has had to
+lays its egg in strange nests, and the traveller who wants to find out
+about it must acquire a work dealing with some other country--Spain or
+Portugal or Algeria. There is no guide-book to Morocco, and no way of
+knowing, once one has left Tangier behind, where the long trail over the
+Rif is going to land one, in the sense understood by any one accustomed
+to European certainties. The air of the unforeseen blows on one from the
+roadless passes of the Atlas.
+
+This feeling of adventure is heightened by the contrast between
+Tangier--cosmopolitan, frowsy, familiar Tangier, that every tourist has
+visited for the last forty years--and the vast unknown just beyond. One
+has met, of course, travellers who have been to Fez; but they have gone
+there on special missions, under escort, mysteriously, perhaps
+perilously; the expedition has seemed, till lately, a considerable
+affair. And when one opens the records of Moroccan travellers written
+within the last twenty years, how many, even of the most adventurous,
+are found to have gone beyond Fez? And what, to this day, do the names
+of Meknez and Marrakech, of Mogador, Saffi or Rabat, signify to any but
+a few students of political history, a few explorers and naturalists?
+Not till within the last year has Morocco been open to travel from
+Tangier to the Great Atlas, and from Moulay Idriss to the Atlantic.
+Three years ago Christians were being massacred in the streets of Salé,
+the pirate town across the river from Rabat, and two years ago no
+European had been allowed to enter the Sacred City of Moulay Idriss, the
+burial-place of the lawful descendant of Ali, founder of the Idrissite
+dynasty. Now, thanks to the energy and the imagination of one of the
+greatest of colonial administrators, the country, at least in the French
+zone, is as safe and open as the opposite shore of Spain. All that
+remains is to tell the traveller how to find his way about it.
+
+Ten years ago there was not a wheeled vehicle in Morocco; now its
+thousands of miles of trail, and its hundreds of miles of firm French
+roads, are travelled by countless carts, omnibuses and motor-vehicles.
+There are light railways from Rabat to Fez in the west, and to a point
+about eighty-five kilometres from Marrakech in the south; and it is
+possible to say that within a year a regular railway system will connect
+eastern Morocco with western Algeria, and the ports of Tangier and
+Casablanca with the principal points of the interior.
+
+What, then, prevents the tourist from instantly taking ship at Bordeaux
+or Algeciras and letting loose his motor on this new world? Only the
+temporary obstacles which the war has everywhere put in the way of
+travel. Till these are lifted it will hardly be possible to travel in
+Morocco except by favour of the Resident-General; but, normal conditions
+once restored, the country will be as accessible, from the straits of
+Gibraltar to the Great Atlas, as Algeria or Tunisia.
+
+To see Morocco during the war was therefore to see it in the last phase
+of its curiously abrupt transition from remoteness and danger to
+security and accessibility; at a moment when its aspect and its customs
+were still almost unaffected by European influences, and when the
+"Christian" might taste the transient joy of wandering unmolested in
+cities of ancient mystery and hostility, whose inhabitants seemed hardly
+aware of his intrusion.
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE TRAIL TO EL-KSAR
+
+With such opportunities ahead it was impossible, that brilliant morning
+of September, 1917, not to be off quickly from Tangier, impossible to do
+justice to the pale-blue town piled up within brown walls against the
+thickly-foliaged gardens of "the Mountain," to the animation of its
+market-place and the secret beauties of its steep Arab streets. For
+Tangier swarms with people in European clothes, there are English,
+French and Spanish signs above its shops, and cab-stands in its squares;
+it belongs, as much as Algiers, to the familiar dog-eared world of
+travel--and there, beyond the last dip of "the Mountain," lies the world
+of mystery, with the rosy dawn just breaking over it. The motor is at
+the door and we are off.
+
+The so-called Spanish zone, which encloses internationalized Tangier in
+a wide circuit of territory, extends southward for a distance of about a
+hundred and fifteen kilometres. Consequently, when good roads traverse
+it, French Morocco will be reached in less than two hours by
+motor-travellers bound for the south. But for the present Spanish
+enterprise dies out after a few miles of macadam (as it does even
+between Madrid and Toledo), and the tourist is committed to the _piste_.
+These _pistes_--the old caravan-trails from the south--are more
+available to motors in Morocco than in southern Algeria and Tunisia,
+since they run mostly over soil which, though sandy in part, is bound
+together by a tough dwarf vegetation, and not over pure desert sand.
+This, however, is the utmost that can be said of the Spanish _pistes_.
+In the French protectorate constant efforts are made to keep the trails
+fit for wheeled traffic, but Spain shows no sense of a corresponding
+obligation.
+
+After leaving the macadamized road which runs south from Tangier one
+seems to have embarked on a petrified ocean in a boat hardly equal to
+the adventure. Then, as one leaps and plunges over humps and ruts, down
+sheer banks into rivers, and up precipices into sand-pits, one gradually
+gains faith in one's conveyance and in one's spinal column; but both
+must be sound in every joint to resist the strain of the long miles to
+Arbaoua, the frontier post of the French protectorate.
+
+[Illustration: The part of Morocco visited by Mrs. Wharton]
+
+Luckily there are other things to think about. At the first turn out of
+Tangier, Europe and the European disappear, and as soon as the motor
+begins to dip and rise over the arid little hills beyond to the last
+gardens one is sure that every figure on the road will be picturesque
+instead of prosaic, every garment graceful instead of grotesque. One
+knows, too, that there will be no more omnibuses or trams or
+motorcyclists, but only long lines of camels rising up in brown friezes
+against the sky, little black donkeys trotting across the scrub under
+bulging pack-saddles, and noble draped figures walking beside them or
+majestically perching on their rumps. And for miles and miles there will
+be no more towns--only, at intervals on the naked slopes, circles of
+rush-roofed huts in a blue stockade of cactus, or a hundred or two nomad
+tents of black camel's hair resting on walls of wattled thorn and
+grouped about a terebinth-tree and a well.
+
+Between these nomad colonies lies the _bled_, the immense waste of
+fallow land and palmetto desert: an earth as void of life as the sky
+above it of clouds. The scenery is always the same; but if one has the
+love of great emptinesses, and of the play of light on long stretches of
+parched earth and rock, the sameness is part of the enchantment. In such
+a scene every landmark takes on an extreme value. For miles one watches
+the little white dome of a saint's grave rising and disappearing with
+the undulations of the trail; at last one is abreast of it, and the
+solitary tomb, alone with its fig-tree and its broken well-curb, puts a
+meaning into the waste. The same importance, but intensified, marks the
+appearance of every human figure. The two white-draped riders passing
+single file up the red slope to that ring of tents on the ridge have a
+mysterious and inexplicable importance: one follows their progress with
+eyes that ache with conjecture. More exciting still is the encounter of
+the first veiled woman heading a little cavalcade from the south. All
+the mystery that awaits us looks out through the eye-slits in the
+grave-clothes muffling her. Where have they come from, where are they
+going, all these slow wayfarers out of the unknown? Probably only from
+one thatched _douar_[1] to another; but interminable distances unroll
+behind them, they breathe of Timbuctoo and the farthest desert. Just
+such figures must swarm in the Saharan cities, in the Soudan and
+Senegal. There is no break in the links: these wanderers have looked on
+at the building of cities that were dust when the Romans pushed their
+outposts across the Atlas.
+
+
+III
+
+EL-KSAR TO RABAT
+
+A town at last--its nearness announced by the multiplied ruts of the
+trail, the cactus hedges, the fig-trees weighed down by dust leaning
+over ruinous earthern walls. And here are the first houses of the
+European El-Ksar--neat white Spanish houses on the slope outside the old
+Arab settlement. Of the Arab town itself, above reed stockades and brown
+walls, only a minaret and a few flat roofs are visible. Under the walls
+drowse the usual gregarious Lazaruses; others, temporarily resuscitated,
+trail their grave-clothes after a line of camels and donkeys toward the
+olive-gardens outside the town.
+
+The way to Rabat is long and difficult, and there is no time to visit
+El-Ksar, though its minaret beckons so alluringly above the
+fruit-orchards; so we stop for luncheon outside the walls, at a canteen
+with a corrugated iron roof where skinny Spaniards are serving thick
+purple wine and eggs fried in oil to a party of French soldiers. The
+heat has suddenly become intolerable, and a flaming wind straight from
+the south brings in at the door, with a cloud of blue flies, the smell
+of camels and trampled herbs and the strong spices of the bazaars.
+
+Luncheon over, we hurry on between the cactus hedges, and then plunge
+back into the waste. Beyond El-Ksar the last hills of the Rif die away,
+and there is a stretch of wilderness without an outline till the Lesser
+Atlas begins to rise in the east. Once in the French protectorate the
+trail improves, but there are still difficult bits; and finally, on a
+high plateau, the chauffeur stops in a web of crisscross trails, throws
+up his hands, and confesses that he has lost his way. The heat is mortal
+at the moment. For the last hour the red breath of the sirocco has
+risen from every hollow into which we dipped; now it hangs about us in
+the open, as if we had caught it in our wheels and it had to pause above
+us when we paused.
+
+All around is the featureless wild land, palmetto scrub stretching away
+into eternity. A few yards off rises the inevitable ruined _koubba_[2]
+with its fig-tree: in the shade under its crumbling wall the buzz of the
+flies is like the sound of frying. Farther off, we discern a cluster of
+huts, and presently some Arab boys and a tall pensive shepherd come
+hurrying across the scrub. They are full of good-will, and no doubt of
+information; but our chauffeur speaks no Arabic and the talk dies down
+into shrugs and head-shakings. The Arabs retire to the shade of the
+wall, and we decide to start--for anywhere....
+
+The chauffeur turns the crank, but there is no responding quiver.
+Something has gone wrong; we can't move, and it is not much comfort to
+remember that, if we could, we should not know where to go. At least we
+should be cooler in motion than sitting still under the blinding sky.
+
+Such an adventure initiates one at the outset into the stern facts of
+desert motoring. Every detail of our trip from Tangier to Rabat had been
+carefully planned to keep us in unbroken contact with civilization. We
+were to "tub" in one European hotel, and to dine in another, with just
+enough picnicking between to give a touch of local colour. But let one
+little cog slip and the whole plan falls to bits, and we are alone in
+the old untamed Moghreb, as remote from Europe as any mediæval
+adventurer. If one lose one's way in Morocco, civilization vanishes as
+though it were a magic carpet rolled up by a Djinn.
+
+It is a good thing to begin with such a mishap, not only because it
+develops the fatalism necessary to the enjoyment of Africa, but because
+it lets one at once into the mysterious heart of the country: a country
+so deeply conditioned by its miles and miles of uncitied wilderness that
+until one has known the wilderness one cannot begin to understand the
+cities.
+
+We came to one at length, after sunset on that first endless day. The
+motor, cleverly patched up, had found its way to a real road, and
+speeding along between the stunted cork-trees of the forest of Mamora
+brought us to a last rise from which we beheld in the dusk a line of
+yellow walls backed by the misty blue of the Atlantic. Salé, the fierce
+old pirate town, where Robinson Crusoe was so long a slave, lay before
+us, snow-white in its cheese-coloured ramparts skirted by fig and olive
+gardens. Below its gates a stretch of waste land, endlessly trailed over
+by mules and camels, sloped down to the mouth of the Bou-Regreg, the
+blue-brown river dividing it from Rabat. The motor stopped at the
+landing-stage of the steam-ferry; crowding about it were droves of
+donkeys, knots of camels, plump-faced merchants on crimson-saddled
+mules, with negro servants at their bridles, bare-legged water-carriers
+with hairy goat-skins slung over their shoulders, and Arab women in a
+heap of veils, cloaks, mufflings, all of the same ashy white, the
+caftans of clutched children peeping through in patches of old rose and
+lilac and pale green.
+
+Across the river the native town of Rabat lay piled up on an orange-red
+cliff beaten by the Atlantic. Its walls, red too, plunged into the
+darkening breakers at the mouth of the river; and behind it, stretching
+up to the mighty tower of Hassan, and the ruins of the Great Mosque, the
+scattered houses of the European city showed their many lights across
+the plain.
+
+
+IV
+
+THE KASBAH OF THE OUDAYAS
+
+Salé the white and Rabat the red frown at each other over the foaming
+bar of the Bou-Regreg, each walled, terraced, minareted, and presenting
+a singularly complete picture of the two types of Moroccan town, the
+snowy and the tawny. To the gates of both the Atlantic breakers roll in
+with the boom of northern seas, and under a misty northern sky. It is
+one of the surprises of Morocco to find the familiar African pictures
+bathed in this unfamiliar haze. Even the fierce midday sun does not
+wholly dispel it: the air remains thick, opalescent, like water slightly
+clouded by milk. One is tempted to say that Morocco is Tunisia seen by
+moonlight.
+
+The European town of Rabat, a rapidly developing community, lies almost
+wholly outside the walls of the old Arab city. The latter, founded in
+the twelfth century by the great Almohad conqueror of Spain,
+Yacoub-el-Mansour, stretches its mighty walls to the river's mouth.
+Thence they climb the cliff to enclose the Kasbah[3] of the Oudayas, a
+troublesome tribe whom one of the Almohad Sultans, mistrusting their
+good faith, packed up one day, flocks, tents and camels, and carried
+across the _bled_ to stow them into these stout walls under his
+imperial eye. Great crenellated ramparts, cyclopean, superb, follow the
+curve of the cliff. On the landward side they are interrupted by a
+gate-tower resting on one of the most nobly decorated of the horseshoe
+arches that break the mighty walls of Moroccan cities. Underneath the
+tower the vaulted entrance turns, Arab fashion, at right angles,
+profiling its red arch against darkness and mystery. This bending of
+passages, so characteristic a device of the Moroccan builder, is like an
+architectural expression of the tortuous secret soul of the land.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Rabat--general view from the Kasbah of the Oudayas]
+
+Outside the Kasbah a narrow foot-path is squeezed between the walls and
+the edge of the cliff. Toward sunset it looks down on a strange scene.
+To the south of the citadel the cliff descends to a long dune sloping to
+a sand-beach; and dune and beach are covered with the slanting
+headstones of the immense Arab cemetery of El Alou. Acres and acres of
+graves fall away from the red ramparts to the grey sea; and breakers
+rolling straight from America send their spray across the lowest stones.
+
+There are always things going on toward evening in an Arab cemetery. In
+this one, travellers from the _bled_ are camping in one corner, donkeys
+grazing (on heaven knows what), a camel dozing under its pack; in
+another, about a new-made grave, there are ritual movements of muffled
+figures and wailings of a funeral hymn half drowned by the waves. Near
+us, on a fallen headstone, a man with a thoughtful face sits chatting
+with two friends and hugging to his breast a tiny boy who looks like a
+grasshopper in his green caftan; a little way off, a solitary
+philosopher, his eye fixed on the sunset, lies on another grave, smoking
+his long pipe of kif.
+
+There is infinite sadness in this scene under the fading sky, beside the
+cold welter of the Atlantic. One seems to be not in Africa itself, but
+in the Africa that northern crusaders may have dreamed of in snow-bound
+castles by colder shores of the same ocean. This is what Moghreb must
+have looked like to the confused imagination of the Middle Ages, to
+Norman knights burning to ransom the Holy Places, or Hansa merchants
+devising, in steep-roofed towns, of Barbary and the long caravans
+bringing apes and gold-powder from the south.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Inside the gate of the Kasbah one comes on more waste land and on other
+walls--for all Moroccan towns are enclosed in circuit within circuit of
+battlemented masonry. Then, unexpectedly, a gate in one of the inner
+walls lets one into a tiled court enclosed in a traceried cloister and
+overlooking an orange-grove that rises out of a carpet of roses. This
+peaceful and well-ordered place is the interior of the Medersa (the
+college) of the Oudayas. Morocco is full of these colleges, or rather
+lodging-houses of the students frequenting the mosques; for all
+Mahometan education is given in the mosque itself, only the preparatory
+work being done in the colleges. The most beautiful of the Medersas date
+from the earlier years of the long Merinid dynasty (1248-1548), the
+period at which Moroccan art, freed from too distinctively Spanish and
+Arab influences, began to develop a delicate grace of its own as far
+removed from the extravagance of Spanish ornament as from the
+inheritance of Roman-Byzantine motives that the first Moslem invasion
+had brought with it from Syria and Mesopotamia.
+
+These exquisite collegiate buildings, though still in use whenever they
+are near a well-known mosque, have all fallen into a state of sordid
+disrepair. The Moroccan Arab, though he continues to build--and
+fortunately to build in the old tradition, which has never been
+lost--has, like all Orientals, an invincible repugnance to repairing and
+restoring, and one after another the frail exposed Arab structures, with
+their open courts and badly constructed terrace-roofs, are crumbling
+into ruin. Happily the French Government has at last been asked to
+intervene, and all over Morocco the Medersas are being repaired with
+skill and discretion. That of the Oudayas is already completely
+restored, and as it had long fallen into disuse it has been transformed
+by the Ministry of Fine Arts into a museum of Moroccan art.
+
+The plan of the Medersas is always much the same: the eternal plan of
+the Arab house, built about one or more arcaded courts, with long narrow
+rooms enclosing them on the ground floor, and several stories above,
+reached by narrow stairs, and often opening on finely carved cedar
+galleries. The chief difference between the Medersa and the private
+house, or even the _fondak_,[4] lies in the use to which the rooms are
+put. In the Medersas, one of the ground-floor apartments is always
+fitted up as a chapel, and shut off from the court by carved cedar doors
+still often touched with old gilding and vermilion. There are always a
+few students praying in the chapel, while others sit in the doors of the
+upper rooms, their books on their knees, or lean over the carved
+galleries chatting with their companions who are washing their feet at
+the marble fountain in the court, preparatory to entering the chapel.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph by Schmitt, Rabat_
+
+Rabat--interior court of the Medersa of the Oudayas]
+
+In the Medersa of the Oudayas, these native activities have been
+replaced by the lifeless hush of a museum. The rooms are furnished with
+old rugs, pottery, brasses, the curious embroidered hangings which line
+the tents of the chiefs, and other specimens of Arab art. One room
+reproduces a barber's shop in the bazaar, its benches covered with fine
+matting, the hanging mirror inlaid with mother-of-pearl, the
+razor-handles of silver _niello_. The horseshoe arches of the outer
+gallery look out on orange-blossoms, roses and the sea. It is all
+beautiful, calm and harmonious; and if one is tempted to mourn the
+absence of life and local colour, one has only to visit an abandoned
+Medersa to see that, but for French intervention, the charming
+colonnades and cedar chambers of the college of the Oudayas would by
+this time be a heap of undistinguished rubbish--for plaster and rubble
+do not "die in beauty" like the firm stones of Rome.
+
+
+V
+
+ROBINSON CRUSOE'S "SALLEE"
+
+Before Morocco passed under the rule of the great governor who now
+administers it, the European colonists made short work of the beauty and
+privacy of the old Arab towns in which they established themselves.
+
+On the west coast, especially, where the Mediterranean peoples, from the
+Phenicians to the Portuguese, have had trading-posts for over two
+thousand years, the harm done to such seaboard towns as Tangier, Rabat
+and Casablanca is hard to estimate. The modern European colonist
+apparently imagined that to plant his warehouses, _cafés_ and
+cinema-palaces within the walls which for so long had fiercely excluded
+him was the most impressive way of proclaiming his domination.
+
+Under General Lyautey such views are no longer tolerated. Respect for
+native habits, native beliefs and native architecture is the first
+principle inculcated in the civil servants attached to his
+administration. Not only does he require that the native towns shall be
+kept intact, and no European building erected within them; a sense of
+beauty not often vouchsafed to Colonial governors causes him to place
+the administration buildings so far beyond the walls that the modern
+colony grouped around them remains entirely distinct from the old town,
+instead of growing out of it like an ugly excrescence.
+
+The Arab quarter of Rabat was already irreparably disfigured when
+General Lyautey came to Morocco; but ferocious old Salé, Phenician
+counting-house and breeder of Barbary pirates, had been saved from
+profanation by its Moslem fanaticism. Few Christian feet had entered its
+walls except those of the prisoners who, like Robinson Crusoe, slaved
+for the wealthy merchants in its mysterious terraced houses. Not till
+two or three years ago was it completely pacified; and when it opened
+its gates to the infidel it was still, as it is to-day, the type of the
+untouched Moroccan city--so untouched that, with the sunlight
+irradiating its cream-coloured walls and the blue-white domes above
+them, it rests on its carpet of rich fruit-gardens like some rare
+specimen of Arab art on a strip of old Oriental velvet.
+
+Within the walls, the magic persists: which does not always happen when
+one penetrates into the mirage-like cities of Arabian Africa. Salé has
+the charm of extreme compactness. Crowded between the river-mouth and
+the sea, its white and pale-blue houses almost touch across the narrow
+streets, and the reed-thatched bazaars seem like miniature reductions of
+the great trading labyrinths of Tunis or Fez.
+
+Everything that the reader of the Arabian Nights expects to find is
+here: the whitewashed niches wherein pale youths sit weaving the fine
+mattings for which the town is still famous; the tunnelled passages
+where indolent merchants with bare feet crouch in their little kennels
+hung with richly ornamented saddlery and arms, or with slippers of pale
+citron leather and bright embroidered _babouches_; the stalls with
+fruit, olives, tunny-fish, vague syrupy sweets, candles for saints'
+tombs, Mantegnesque garlands of red and green peppers, griddle-cakes
+sizzling on red-hot pans, and all the varied wares and cakes and
+condiments that the lady in the tale of the Three Calanders went out to
+buy, that memorable morning in the market of Bagdad.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Salé--entrance of the Medersa]
+
+Only at Salé all is on a small scale: there is not much of any one
+thing, except of the exquisite matting. The tide of commerce has ebbed
+from the intractable old city, and one feels, as one watches the
+listless purchasers in her little languishing bazaars, that her long
+animosity against the intruder has ended by destroying her own life.
+
+The feeling increases when one leaves the bazaar for the streets
+adjoining it. An even deeper hush than that which hangs over the
+well-to-do quarters of all Arab towns broods over these silent
+thorough-fares, with heavy-nailed doors barring half-ruined houses. In a
+steep deserted square one of these doors opens its panels of
+weather-silvered cedar on the court of the frailest, ghostliest of
+Medersas--mere carved and painted shell of a dead house of learning.
+Mystic interweavings of endless lines, patient patterns interminably
+repeated in wood and stone and clay, all are here, from the tessellated
+paving of the court to the honeycombing of the cedar roof through which
+a patch of sky shows here and there like an inset of turquoise tiling.
+
+This lovely ruin is in the safe hands of the French Fine Arts
+administration, and soon the wood-carvers and stucco-workers of Fez will
+have revived its old perfection; but it will never again be more than a
+show-Medersa, standing empty and unused beside the mosque behind whose
+guarded doors and high walls one guesses that the old religious
+fanaticism of Salé is dying also, as her learning and her commerce have
+died.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph by Schmitt, Rabat_
+
+Salé--market-place outside the town]
+
+In truth the only life in her is centred in the market-place outside the
+walls, where big expanding Rabat goes on certain days to provision
+herself. The market of Salé, though typical of all Moroccan markets, has
+an animation and picturesqueness of its own. Its rows of white tents
+pitched on a dusty square between the outer walls and the fruit-gardens
+make it look as though a hostile tribe had sat down to lay siege to the
+town; but the army is an army of hucksters, of farmers from the rich
+black lands along the river, of swarthy nomads and leather-gaitered
+peasant women from the hills, of slaves and servants and tradesmen from
+Rabat and Salé; a draped, veiled, turbaned mob shrieking, bargaining,
+fist-shaking, call on Allah to witness the monstrous villanies of the
+misbegotten miscreants they are trading with, and then, struck with the
+mysterious Eastern apathy, sinking down in languid heaps of muslin among
+the black figs, purple onions and rosy melons, the fluttering hens, the
+tethered goats, the whinnying foals, that are all enclosed in an outer
+circle of folded-up camels and of mules dozing under faded crimson
+saddles.
+
+
+VI
+
+CHELLA AND THE GREAT MOSQUE
+
+The Merinid Sultans of Rabat had a terribly troublesome neighbour across
+the Bou-Regreg, and they built Chella to keep an eye on the pirates of
+Salé. But Chella has fallen like a Babylonian city triumphed over by the
+prophets; while Salé, sly, fierce and irrepressible, continued till well
+on in the nineteenth century to breed pirates and fanatics.
+
+The ruins of Chella lie on the farther side of the plateau above the
+native town of Rabat. The mighty wall enclosing them faces the city wall
+of Rabat, looking at it across one of those great red powdery wastes
+which seem, in this strange land, like death and the desert forever
+creeping up to overwhelm the puny works of man.
+
+The red waste is scored by countless trains of donkeys carrying water
+from the springs of Chella, by long caravans of mules and camels, and
+by the busy motors of the French administration; yet there emanates from
+it an impression of solitude and decay which even the prosaic tinkle of
+the trams jogging out from the European town to the Exhibition grounds
+above the sea cannot long dispel.
+
+Perpetually, even in the new thriving French Morocco, the outline of a
+ruin or the look in a pair of eyes shifts the scene, rends the thin veil
+of the European Illusion, and confronts one with the old grey Moslem
+reality. Passing under the gate of Chella, with its richly carved
+corbels and lofty crenellated towers, one feels one's self thus
+completely reabsorbed into the past.
+
+Below the gate the ground slopes away, bare and blazing, to a hollow
+where a little blue-green minaret gleams through fig-trees, and
+fragments of arch and vaulting reveal the outline of a ruined mosque.
+
+Was ever shade so blue-black and delicious as that of the cork-tree near
+the spring where the donkey's water-cans are being filled? Under its
+branches a black man in a blue shirt lies immovably sleeping in the
+dust. Close by women and children splash and chatter about the spring,
+and the dome of a saint's tomb shines through lustreless leaves. The
+black man, the donkeys, the women and children, the saint's dome, are
+all part of the inimitable Eastern scene in which inertia and agitation
+are so curiously combined, and a surface of shrill noise flickers over
+depths of such unfathomable silence.
+
+The ruins of Chella belong to the purest period of Moroccan art. The
+tracery of the broken arches is all carved in stone or in glazed
+turquoise tiling, and the fragments of wall and vaulting have the firm
+elegance of a classic ruin. But what would even their beauty be without
+the leafy setting of the place? The "unimaginable touch of Time" gives
+Chella its peculiar charm: the aged fig-tree clamped in uptorn tiles and
+thrusting gouty arms between the arches; the garlanding of vines flung
+from column to column; the secret pool to which childless women are
+brought to bathe, and where the tree springing from a cleft of the steps
+is always hung with the bright bits of stuff which are the votive
+offerings of Africa.
+
+The shade, the sound of springs, the terraced orange-garden with irises
+blooming along channels of running water, all this greenery and coolness
+in the hollow of a fierce red hill make Chella seem, to the traveller
+new to Africa, the very type and embodiment of its old contrasts of heat
+and freshness, of fire and languor. It is like a desert traveller's
+dream in his last fever.
+
+Yacoub-el-Mansour was the fourth of the great Almohad Sultans who, in
+the twelfth century, drove out the effete Almoravids, and swept their
+victorious armies from Marrakech to Tunis and from Tangier to Madrid.
+His grandfather, Abd-el-Moumen, had been occupied with conquest and
+civic administration. It was said of his rule that "he seized northern
+Africa to make order prevail there"; and in fact, out of a welter of
+wild tribes confusedly fighting and robbing he drew an empire firmly
+seated and securely governed, wherein caravans travelled from the Atlas
+to the Straits without fear of attack, and "a soldier wandering through
+the fields would not have dared to pluck an ear of wheat."
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Chella--ruins of mosque]
+
+His grandson, the great El-Mansour, was a conqueror too; but where he
+conquered he planted the undying seed of beauty. The victor of Alarcos,
+the soldier who subdued the north of Spain, dreamed a great dream of
+art. His ambition was to bestow on his three capitals, Seville, Rabat
+and Marrakech, the three most beautiful towers the world had ever seen;
+and if the tower of Rabat had been completed, and that of Seville had
+not been injured by Spanish embellishments, his dream would have been
+realized.
+
+The "Tower of Hassan," as the Sultan's tower is called, rises from the
+plateau above old Rabat, overlooking the steep cliff that drops down to
+the last winding of the Bou-Regreg. Truncated at half its height, it
+stands on the edge of the cliff, a far-off beacon to travellers by land
+and sea. It is one of the world's great monuments, so sufficient in
+strength and majesty that until one has seen its fellow, the Koutoubya
+of Marrakech, one wonders if the genius of the builder could have
+carried such perfect balance of massive wall-spaces and traceried
+openings to a triumphant completion.
+
+Near the tower, the red-brown walls and huge piers of the mosque built
+at the same time stretch their roofless alignment beneath the sky. This
+mosque, before it was destroyed, must have been one of the finest
+monuments of Almohad architecture in Morocco: now, with its tumbled red
+masses of masonry and vast cisterns overhung by clumps of blue aloes, it
+still forms a ruin of Roman grandeur.
+
+The Mosque, the Tower, the citadel of the Oudayas, and the mighty walls
+and towers of Chella, compose an architectural group as noble and
+complete as that of some mediæval Tuscan city. All they need to make the
+comparison exact is that they should have been compactly massed on a
+steep hill, instead of lying scattered over the wide spaces between the
+promontory of the Oudayas and the hillside of Chella.
+
+The founder of Rabat, the great Yacoub-el-Mansour, called it, in memory
+of the battle of Alarcos, "The Camp of Victory" (_Ribat-el-Path_), and
+the monuments he bestowed on it justified the name in another sense, by
+giving it the beauty that lives when battles are forgotten.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Village of tents. The village of mud-huts is called a _nourwal_.
+
+[2] Saint's tomb. The saint himself is called a _marabout_.
+
+[3] Citadel.
+
+[4] The Moroccan inn or caravanserai.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+VOLUBILIS, MOULAY IDRISS AND MEKNEZ
+
+
+I
+
+VOLUBILIS
+
+One day before sunrise we set out from Rabat for the ruins of Roman
+Volubilis.
+
+From the ferry of the Bou-Regreg we looked backward on a last vision of
+orange ramparts under a night-blue sky sprinkled with stars; ahead, over
+gardens still deep in shadow, the walls of Salé were passing from drab
+to peach-colour in the eastern glow. Dawn is the romantic hour in
+Africa. Dirt and dilapidation disappear under a pearly haze, and a
+breeze from the sea blows away the memory of fetid markets and sordid
+heaps of humanity. At that hour the old Moroccan cities look like the
+ivory citadels in a Persian miniature, and the fat shopkeepers riding
+out to their vegetable-gardens like Princes sallying forth to rescue
+captive maidens.
+
+Our way led along the highroad from Rabat to the modern port of Kenitra,
+near the ruins of the Phenician colony of Mehedyia. Just north of
+Kenitra we struck the trail, branching off eastward to a European
+village on the light railway between Rabat and Fez, and beyond the
+railway-sheds and flat-roofed stores the wilderness began, stretching
+away into clear distances bounded by the hills of the Rarb,[5] above
+which the sun was rising.
+
+Range after range these translucent hills rose before us; all around the
+solitude was complete. Village life, and even tent life, naturally
+gathers about a river-bank or a spring; and the waste we were crossing
+was of waterless sand bound together by a loose desert growth. Only an
+abandoned well-curb here and there cast its blue shadow on the yellow
+_bled_, or a saint's tomb hung like a bubble between sky and sand. The
+light had the preternatural purity which gives a foretaste of mirage: it
+was the light in which magic becomes real, and which helps to understand
+how, to people living in such an atmosphere, the boundary between fact
+and dream perpetually fluctuates.
+
+The sand was scored with tracks and ruts innumerable, for the road
+between Rabat and Fez is travelled not only by French government motors
+but by native caravans and trains of pilgrims to and from the sacred
+city of Moulay Idriss, the founder of the Idrissite dynasty, whose tomb
+is in the Zerhoun, the mountain ridge above Volubilis. To untrained eyes
+it was impossible to guess which of the trails one ought to follow; and
+without much surprise we suddenly found the motor stopping, while its
+wheels spun round vainly in the loose sand.
+
+The military chauffeur was not surprised either; nor was Captain de M.,
+the French staff-officer who accompanied us.
+
+"It often happens just here," they admitted philosophically. "When the
+General goes to Meknez he is always followed by a number of motors, so
+that if his own is stuck he may go on in another."
+
+This was interesting to know, but not particularly helpful, as the
+General and his motors were not travelling our way that morning. Nor was
+any one else, apparently. It is curious how quickly the _bled_ empties
+itself to the horizon if one happens to have an accident in it! But we
+had learned our lesson between Tangier and Rabat, and were able to
+produce a fair imitation of the fatalistic smile of the country.
+
+The officer remarked cheerfully that somebody might turn up, and we all
+sat down in the _bled_.
+
+A Berber woman, cropping up from nowhere, came and sat beside us. She
+had the thin sun-tanned face of her kind, brilliant eyes touched with
+_khol_, high cheek-bones, and the exceedingly short upper lip which
+gives such charm to the smile of the young nomad women. Her dress was
+the usual faded cotton shift, hooked on the shoulders with brass or
+silver clasps (still the antique _fibulæ_), and wound about with a vague
+drapery in whose folds a brown baby wriggled.
+
+The coolness of dawn had vanished and the sun beat down from a fierce
+sky. The village on the railway was too far off to be reached on foot,
+and there were probably no mules there to spare. Nearer at hand there
+was no sign of help: not a fortified farm, or even a circle of nomad
+tents. It was the unadulterated desert--and we waited.
+
+Not in vain; for after an hour or two, from far off in the direction of
+the hills, there appeared an army with banners. We stared at it
+unbelievingly. The _mirage_, of course! We were too sophisticated to
+doubt it, and tales of sun-dazed travellers mocked by such visions rose
+in our well-stocked memories.
+
+The chauffeur thought otherwise. "Good! That's a pilgrimage from the
+mountains. They're going to Salé to pray at the tomb of the _marabout_;
+to-day is his feast-day."
+
+And so they were! And as we hung on their approach, and speculated as to
+the chances of their stopping to help, I had time to note the beauty of
+this long train winding toward us under parti-colored banners. There was
+something celestial, almost diaphanous, in the hundreds of figures
+turbaned and draped in white, marching slowly through the hot colorless
+radiance over the hot colorless sand.
+
+The most part were on foot, or bestriding tiny donkeys, but a stately
+Caïd rode alone at the end of the line on a horse saddled with crimson
+velvet; and to him our officer appealed.
+
+The Caïd courteously responded, and twenty or thirty pilgrims were
+ordered to harness themselves to the motor and haul it back to the
+trail, while the rest of the procession moved hieratically onward.
+
+I felt scruples at turning from their path even a fraction of this pious
+company; but they fell to with a saintly readiness, and before long the
+motor was on the trail. Then rewards were dispensed; and instantly those
+holy men became a prey to the darkest passions. Even in this land of
+contrasts the transition from pious serenity to rapacious rage can
+seldom have been more rapid. The devotees of the _marabout_ fought,
+screamed, tore their garments and rolled over each other with sanguinary
+gestures in the struggle for our pesetas; then, perceiving our
+indifference, they suddenly remembered their religious duties, scrambled
+to their feet, tucked up their flying draperies, and raced after the
+tail-end of the procession.
+
+Through a golden heat-haze we struggled on to the hills. The country was
+fallow, and in great part too sandy for agriculture; but here and there
+we came on one of the deep-set Moroccan rivers, with a reddish-yellow
+course channelled between perpendicular banks of red earth, and marked
+by a thin line of verdure that widened to fruit-gardens wherever a
+village had sprung up. We traversed several of these "sedentary"[6]
+villages, _nourwals_ of clay houses with thatched conical roofs, in
+gardens of fig, apricot and pomegranate that must be so many pink and
+white paradises after the winter rains.
+
+One of these villages seemed to be inhabited entirely by blacks, big
+friendly creatures who came out to tell us by which trail to reach the
+bridge over the yellow _oued_. In the _oued_ their womenkind were
+washing the variegated family rags. They were handsome blue-bronze
+creatures, bare to the waist, with tight black astrakhan curls and
+firmly sculptured legs and ankles; and all around them, like a swarm of
+gnats, danced countless jolly pickaninnies, naked as lizards, with the
+spindle legs and globular stomachs of children fed only on cereals.
+
+Half terrified but wholly interested, these infants buzzed about the
+motor while we stopped to photograph them; and as we watched their
+antics we wondered whether they were the descendants of the little
+Soudanese boys whom the founder of Meknez, the terrible Sultan
+Moulay-Ismaël, used to carry off from beyond the Atlas and bring up in
+his military camps to form the nucleus of the Black Guard which defended
+his frontiers. We were on the line of travel between Meknez and the sea,
+and it seemed not unlikely that these _nourwals_ were all that remained
+of scattered outposts of Moulay-Ismaël's legionaries.
+
+After a time we left _oueds_ and villages behind us and were in the
+mountains of the Rarb, toiling across a high sandy plateau. Far off a
+fringe of vegetation showed promise of shade and water, and at last,
+against a pale mass of olive-trees, we saw the sight which, at whatever
+end of the world one comes upon it, wakes the same sense of awe: the
+ruin of a Roman city.
+
+Volubilis (called by the Arabs the Castle of the Pharaohs) is the only
+considerable Roman colony so far discovered in Morocco. It stands on the
+extreme ledge of a high plateau backed by the mountains of the Zerhoun.
+Below the plateau, the land drops down precipitately to a narrow
+river-valley green with orchards and gardens, and in the neck of the
+valley, where the hills meet again, the conical white town of Moulay
+Idriss, the Sacred City of Morocco, rises sharply against a wooded
+background.
+
+So the two dominations look at each other across the valley: one, the
+lifeless Roman ruin, representing a system, an order, a social
+conception that still run through all our modern ways; the other, the
+untouched Moslem city, more dead and sucked back into an unintelligible
+past than any broken architrave of Greece or Rome.
+
+Volubilis seems to have had the extent and wealth of a great military
+outpost, such as Timgad in Algeria; but in the seventeenth century it
+was very nearly destroyed by Moulay-Ismaël, the Sultan of the Black
+Guard, who carried off its monuments piece-meal to build his new capital
+of Meknez, that Mequinez of contemporary travellers which was held to be
+one of the wonders of the age.
+
+Little remains to Volubilis in the way of important monuments: only the
+fragments of a basilica, part of an arch of triumph erected in honour of
+Caracalla, and the fallen columns and architraves which strew the path
+of Rome across the world. But its site is magnificent; and as the
+excavation of the ruins was interrupted by the war it is possible that
+subsequent search may bring forth other treasures comparable to the
+beautiful bronze _sloughi_ (the African hound) which is now its
+principal possession.
+
+It was delicious, after seven hours of travel under the African sun, to
+sit on the shady terrace where the Curator of Volubilis, M. Louis
+Châtelain, welcomes his visitors. The French Fine Arts have built a
+charming house with gardens and pergolas for the custodian of the ruins,
+and have found in M. Châtelain an archæologist so absorbed in his task
+that, as soon as conditions permit, every inch of soil in the
+circumference of the city will be made to yield up whatever secrets it
+hides.
+
+
+II
+
+MOULAY IDRISS
+
+We lingered under the pergolas of Volubilis till the heat grew less
+intolerable, and then our companions suggested a visit to Moulay Idriss.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Volubilis--the western portico of the basilica of Antonius Pius]
+
+Such a possibility had not occurred to us, and even Captain de M. seemed
+to doubt whether the expedition were advisable. Moulay Idriss was still
+said to be resentful of Christian intrusion: it was only a year before
+that the first French officers had entered it.
+
+But M. Châtelain was confident that there would be no opposition to our
+visit, and with the piled-up terraces and towers of the Sacred City
+growing golden in the afternoon light across the valley it was
+impossible to hesitate.
+
+We drove down through an olive-wood as ancient as those of Mitylene and
+Corfu, and then along the narrowing valley, between gardens luxuriant
+even in the parched Moroccan autumn. Presently the motor began to climb
+the steep road to the town, and at a gateway we got out and were met by
+the native chief of police. Instantly at the high windows of mysterious
+houses veiled heads appeared and sidelong eyes cautiously inspected us.
+But the quarter was deserted, and we walked on without meeting any one
+to the Street of the Weavers, a silent narrow way between low
+whitewashed niches like the cubicles in a convent. In each niche sat a
+grave white-robed youth, forming a great amphora-shaped grain-basket out
+of closely plaited straw. Vine-leaves and tendrils hung through the reed
+roofing overhead, and grape-clusters cast their classic shadow at our
+feet. It was like walking on the unrolled frieze of a white Etruscan
+vase patterned with black vine garlands.
+
+The silence and emptiness of the place began to strike us: there was no
+sign of the Oriental crowd that usually springs out of the dust at the
+approach of strangers. But suddenly we heard close by the lament of the
+_rekka_ (a kind of long fife), accompanied by a wild thrum-thrum of
+earthenware drums and a curious excited chanting of men's voices. I had
+heard such a chant before, at the other end of North Africa, in
+Kairouan, one of the other great Sanctuaries of Islam, where the sect of
+the Aïssaouas celebrate their sanguinary rites in the _Zaouïa_[7] of
+their confraternity. Yet it seemed incredible that if the Aïssaouas of
+Moulay Idriss were performing their ceremonies that day the chief of
+police should be placidly leading us through the streets in the very
+direction from which the chant was coming. The Moroccan, though he has
+no desire to get into trouble with the Christian, prefers to be left
+alone on feast-days, especially in such a stronghold of the faith as
+Moulay Idriss.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Moulay-Idriss (9,000 inhabitants)]
+
+But "Geschehen ist geschehen" is the sum of Oriental philosophy. For
+centuries Moulay Idriss had held out fanatically on its holy steep;
+then, suddenly, in 1916, its chiefs saw that the game was up, and
+surrendered without a pretense of resistance. Now the whole thing was
+over, the new conditions were accepted, and the chief of police assured
+us that with the French uniform at our side we should be safe anywhere.
+
+"The Aïssaouas?" he explained. "No, this is another sect, the Hamadchas,
+who are performing their ritual dance on the feast-day of their patron,
+the _marabout_ Hamadch, whose tomb is in the Zerhoun. The feast is
+celebrated publicly in the market-place of Moulay Idriss."
+
+As he spoke we came out into the market-place, and understood why there
+had been no crowd at the gate. All the population was in the square and
+on the roofs that mount above it, tier by tier, against the wooded
+hillside: Moulay Idriss had better to do that day than to gape at a few
+tourists in dust-coats.
+
+Short of Sfax, and the other coast cities of eastern Tunisia, there is
+surely not another town in North Africa as white as Moulay Idriss. Some
+are pale blue and pinky yellow, like the Kasbah of Tangier, or cream and
+blue like Salé; but Tangier and Salé, for centuries continuously
+subject to European influences, have probably borrowed their colors from
+Genoa and the Italian Riviera. In the interior of the country, and
+especially in Morocco, where the whole color-scheme is much soberer than
+in Algeria and Tunisia, the color of the native houses is always a
+penitential shade of mud and ashes.
+
+But Moulay Idriss, that afternoon, was as white as if its arcaded square
+had been scooped out of a big cream cheese. The late sunlight lay like
+gold-leaf on one side of the square, the other was in pure blue shade;
+and above it, the crowded roofs, terraces and balconies packed with
+women in bright dresses looked like a flower-field on the edge of a
+marble quarry.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Moulay-Idriss--the market-place]
+
+The bright dresses were as unusual a sight as the white walls, for the
+average Moroccan crowd is the color of its houses. But the occasion was
+a special one, for these feasts of the Hamadchas occur only twice a
+year, in spring and autumn, and as the ritual dances take place out of
+doors, instead of being performed inside the building of the
+confraternity, the feminine population seizes the opportunity to burst
+into flower on the house-tops.
+
+It is rare, in Morocco, to see in the streets or the bazaars any women
+except of the humblest classes, household slaves, servants, peasants
+from the country or small tradesmen's wives; and even they (with the
+exception of the unveiled Berber women) are wrapped in the prevailing
+grave-clothes. The _filles de joie_ and dancing-girls whose brilliant
+dresses enliven certain streets of the Algerian and Tunisian towns are
+invisible, or at least unnoticeable, in Morocco, where life, on the
+whole, seems so much less gay and brightly-tinted; and the women of the
+richer classes, mercantile or aristocratic, never leave their harems
+except to be married or buried. A throng of women dressed in light
+colors is therefore to be seen in public only when some street festival
+draws them to the roofs. Even then it is probable that the throng is
+mostly composed of slaves, household servants, and women of the lower
+_bourgeoisie_; but as they are all dressed in mauve and rose and pale
+green, with long earrings and jewelled head-bands flashing through their
+parted veils, the illusion, from a little distance, is as complete as
+though they were the ladies in waiting of the Queen of Sheba; and that
+radiant afternoon at Moulay Idriss, above the vine-garlanded square, and
+against the background of piled-up terraces, their vivid groups were in
+such contrast to the usual gray assemblages of the East that the scene
+seemed like a setting for some extravagantly staged ballet.
+
+For the same reason the spectacle unrolling itself below us took on a
+blessed air of unreality. Any normal person who has seen a dance of the
+Aïssaouas and watched them swallow thorns and hot coals, slash
+themselves with knives, and roll on the floor in epilepsy must have
+privately longed, after the first excitement was over, to fly from the
+repulsive scene. The Hamadchas are much more savage than Aïssaouas, and
+carry much farther their display of cataleptic anæsthesia; and, knowing
+this, I had wondered how long I should be able to stand the sight of
+what was going on below our terrace. But the beauty of the setting
+redeemed the bestial horror. In that unreal golden light the scene
+became merely symbolical: it was like one of those strange animal masks
+which the Middle Ages brought down from antiquity by way of the
+satyr-plays of Greece, and of which the half-human protagonists still
+grin and contort themselves among the Christian symbols of Gothic
+cathedrals.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph taken by Captain Henissart of the
+French Army_
+
+Moulay-Idriss--market-place on the day of the ritual dance of the
+Hamadchas]
+
+At one end of the square the musicians stood on a stone platform above
+the dancers. Like the musicians in a bas-relief they were flattened
+side by side against a wall, the fife-players with lifted arms and
+inflated cheeks, the drummers pounding frantically on long earthenware
+drums shaped like enormous hour-glasses and painted in barbaric
+patterns; and below, down the length of the market-place, the dance
+unrolled itself in a frenzied order that would have filled with envy a
+Paris or London impresario.
+
+In its centre an inspired-looking creature whirled about on his axis,
+the black ringlets standing out in snaky spirals from his haggard head,
+his cheek-muscles convulsively twitching. Around him, but a long way
+off, the dancers rocked and circled with long raucous cries dominated by
+the sobbing booming music; and in the sunlit space between dancers and
+holy man, two or three impish children bobbed about with fixed eyes and
+a grimace of comic frenzy, solemnly parodying his contortions.
+
+Meanwhile a tall grave personage in a doge-like cap, the only calm
+figure in the tumult, moved gravely here and there, regulating the
+dance, stimulating the frenzy, or calming some devotee who had broken
+the ranks and lay tossing and foaming on the stones. There was
+something far more sinister in this passionless figure, holding his hand
+on the key that let loose such crazy forces, than in the poor central
+whirligig who merely set the rhythm of the convulsions.
+
+The dancers were all dressed in white caftans or in the blue shirts of
+the lowest classes. In the sunlight something that looked like fresh red
+paint glistened on their shaved black or yellow skulls and made dark
+blotches on their garments. At first these stripes and stains suggested
+only a gaudy ritual ornament like the pattern on the drums; then one saw
+that the paint, or whatever it was, kept dripping down from the whirling
+caftans and forming fresh pools among the stones; that as one of the
+pools dried up another formed, redder and more glistening, and that
+these pools were fed from great gashes which the dancers hacked in their
+own skulls and breasts with hatchets and sharpened stones. The dance was
+a blood-rite, a great sacrificial symbol, in which blood flowed so
+freely that all the rocking feet were splashed with it.
+
+Gradually, however, it became evident that many of the dancers simply
+rocked and howled, without hacking themselves, and that most of the
+bleeding skulls and breasts belonged to negroes. Every now and then the
+circle widened to let in another figure, black or dark yellow, the
+figure of some humble blue-shirted spectator suddenly "getting religion"
+and rushing forward to snatch a weapon and baptize himself with his own
+blood; and as each new recruit joined the dancers the music shrieked
+louder and the devotees howled more wolfishly. And still, in the centre,
+the mad _marabout_ spun, and the children bobbed and mimicked him and
+rolled their diamond eyes.
+
+Such is the dance of the Hamadchas, of the confraternity of the
+_marabout_ Hamadch, a powerful saint of the seventeenth century, whose
+tomb is in the Zerhoun above Moulay Idriss. Hamadch, it appears, had a
+faithful slave, who, when his master died, killed himself in despair,
+and the self-inflicted wounds of the brotherhood are supposed to
+symbolize the slave's suicide; though no doubt the origin of the
+ceremony might be traced back to the depths of that ensanguined grove
+where Mr. Fraser plucked the Golden Bough.
+
+The more naïve interpretation, however, has its advantages, since it
+enables the devotees to divide their ritual duties into two classes, the
+devotions of the free men being addressed to the saint who died in his
+bed, while the slaves belong to the slave, and must therefore simulate
+his horrid end. And this is the reason why most of the white caftans
+simply rock and writhe, while the humble blue shirts drip with blood.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph taken by Captain Henissart of the
+French Army_
+
+Moulay-Idriss--the market-place. Procession of the confraternity of the
+Hamadchas]
+
+The sun was setting when we came down from our terrace above the
+market-place. To find a lodging for the night we had to press on to
+Meknez, where we were awaited at the French military post; therefore we
+were reluctantly obliged to refuse an invitation to take tea with the
+Caïd, whose high-perched house commands the whole white amphitheatre of
+the town. It was disappointing to leave Moulay Idriss with the Hamadchas
+howling their maddest, and so much besides to see; but as we drove away
+under the long shadows of the olives we counted ourselves lucky to have
+entered the sacred town, and luckier still to have been there on the day
+of the dance which, till a year ago, no foreigner had been allowed to
+see.
+
+A fine French road runs from Moulay Idriss to Meknez, and we flew on
+through the dusk between wooded hills and open stretches on which the
+fires of nomad camps put orange splashes in the darkness. Then the moon
+rose, and by its light we saw a widening valley, and gardens and
+orchards that stretched up to a great walled city outlined against the
+stars.
+
+
+III
+
+MEKNEZ
+
+All that evening, from the garden of the Military Subdivision on the
+opposite height, we sat and looked across at the dark tree-clumps and
+moon-lit walls of Meknez, and listened to its fantastic history.
+
+Meknez was built by the Sultan Moulay-Ismaël, around the nucleus of a
+small town of which the site happened to please him, at the very moment
+when Louis XIV was creating Versailles. The coincidence of two
+contemporary autocrats calling cities out of the wilderness has caused
+persons with a taste for analogy to describe Meknez as the Versailles of
+Morocco: an epithet which is about as instructive as it would be to call
+Phidias the Benvenuto Cellini of Greece.
+
+There is, however, a pretext for the comparison in the fact that the two
+sovereigns took a lively interest in each other's affairs. Moulay-Ismaël
+sent several embassies to treat with Louis XIV on the eternal question
+of piracy and the ransom of Christian captives, and the two rulers were
+continually exchanging gifts and compliments.
+
+The governor of Tetouan, who was sent to Paris in 1680, having brought
+as presents to the French King a lion, a lioness, a tigress, and four
+ostriches, Louis XIV shortly afterward despatched M. de Saint-Amand to
+Morocco with two dozen watches, twelve pieces of gold brocade, a cannon
+six feet long and other firearms. After this the relations between the
+two courts remained friendly till 1693, at which time they were strained
+by the refusal of France to return the Moorish captives who were
+employed on the king's galleys, and who were probably as much needed
+there as the Sultan's Christian slaves for the building of Moorish
+palaces.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Meknez--gate: "Bab-Mansour"]
+
+Six years later the Sultan despatched Abdallah-ben-Aïssa to France to
+reopen negotiations. The ambassador was as brilliantly received and as
+eagerly run after as a modern statesman on an official mission, and his
+candidly expressed admiration for the personal charms of the Princesse
+de Conti, one of the French monarch's legitimatized children, is
+supposed to have been mistaken by the court for an offer of marriage
+from the Emperor of Barbary. But he came back without a treaty.
+
+Moulay-Ismaël, whose long reign (1673 to 1727) and extraordinary
+exploits make him already a legendary figure, conceived, early in his
+career, a passion for Meknez; and through all his troubled rule, with
+its alternations of barbaric warfare and far-reaching negotiations,
+palace intrigue, crazy bloodshed and great administrative reforms, his
+heart perpetually reverted to the wooded slopes on which he dreamed of
+building a city more splendid than Fez or Marrakech.
+
+"The Sultan" (writes his chronicler Aboul Kasim-ibn-Ahmad, called
+"Ezziani") "loved Meknez, the climate of which had enchanted him, and he
+would have liked never to leave it." He left it, indeed, often, left it
+perpetually, to fight with revolted tribes in the Atlas, to defeat one
+Berber army after another, to carry his arms across the High Atlas into
+the Souss, to adorn Fez with the heads of seven hundred vanquished
+chiefs, to put down his three rebellious brothers, to strip all the
+cities of his empire of their negroes and transport them to Meknez ("so
+that not a negro, man, woman or child, slave or free, was left in any
+part of the country"); to fight and defeat the Christians (1683); to
+take Tangier, to conduct a campaign on the Moulouya, to lead the holy
+war against the Spanish (1689), to take Larache, the Spanish commercial
+post on the west coast (which furnished eighteen hundred captives for
+Meknez); to lay siege to Ceuta, conduct a campaign against the Turks of
+Algiers, repress the pillage in his army, subdue more tribes, and build
+forts for his Black Legionaries from Oudjda to the Oued Noun. But almost
+each year's bloody record ends with the placid phrase: "Then the Sultan
+returned to Meknez."
+
+In the year 1701, Ezziani writes, the indomitable old man "deprived his
+rebellious sons of their principalities; after which date he consecrated
+himself exclusively to the building of his palaces and the planting of
+his gardens. And in 1720 (nineteen years later in this long reign!) he
+ordered the destruction of the mausoleum of Moulay Idriss for the
+purpose of enlarging it. And to gain the necessary space he bought all
+the adjacent land, and the workmen did not leave these new labors till
+they were entirely completed."
+
+In this same year there was levied on Fez a new tax which was so heavy
+that the inhabitants were obliged to abandon the city.
+
+Yet it is written of this terrible old monarch, who devastated whole
+districts, and sacrificed uncounted thousands of lives for his ruthless
+pleasure, that under his administration of his chaotic and turbulent
+empire "the country rejoiced in the most complete security. A Jew or a
+woman might travel alone from Oudjda to the Oued Noun without any one's
+asking their business. Abundance reigned throughout the land: grain,
+food, cattle were to be bought for the lowest prices. Nowhere in the
+whole of Morocco was a highwayman or a robber to be found."
+
+And probably both sides of the picture are true.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What, then, was the marvel across the valley, what were the "lordly
+pleasure-houses" to whose creation and enlargement Moulay-Ismaël
+returned again and again amid the throes and violences of a nearly
+centenarian life?
+
+The chronicler continues: "The Sultan caused all the houses near the
+Kasbah[8] to be demolished, _and compelled the inhabitants to carry away
+the ruins of their dwellings_. All the eastern end of the town was also
+torn down, and the ramparts were rebuilt. He also built the Great Mosque
+next to the palace of Nasr.... He occupied himself personally with the
+construction of his palaces, and before one was finished he caused
+another to be begun. He built the mosque of Elakhdar; the walls of the
+new town were pierced with twenty fortified gates and surmounted with
+platforms for cannon. Within the walls he made a great artificial lake
+where one might row in boats. There was also a granary with immense
+subterranean reservoirs of water, and a stable _three miles long_ for
+the Sultan's horses and mules; twelve thousand horses could be stabled
+in it. The flooring rested on vaults in which the grain for the horses
+was stored.... He also built the palace of Elmansour, which had twenty
+cupolas; from the top of each cupola one could look forth on the plain
+and the mountains around Meknez. All about the stables the rarest trees
+were planted. Within the walls were fifty palaces, each with its own
+mosque and its baths. Never was such a thing known in any country, Arab
+or foreign, pagan or Moslem. The guarding of the doors of these palaces
+was intrusted to twelve hundred black eunuchs."
+
+Such were the wonders that seventeenth century travellers toiled across
+the desert to see, and from which they came back dazzled and almost
+incredulous, as if half-suspecting that some djinn had deluded them with
+the vision of a phantom city. But for the soberer European records, and
+the evidence of the ruins themselves (for the whole of the new Meknez is
+a ruin), one might indeed be inclined to regard Ezziani's statements as
+an Oriental fable; but the briefest glimpse of Moulay-Ismaël's Meknez
+makes it easy to believe all his chronicler tells of it, even to the
+three miles of stables.
+
+Next morning we drove across the valley and, skirting the old town on
+the hill, entered, by one of the twenty gates of Moulay-Ismaël, a long
+empty street lined with half-ruined arcades. Beyond was another street
+of beaten red earth bordered by high red walls blotched with gray and
+mauve. Ahead of us this road stretched out interminably (Meknez, before
+Washington, was the "city of magnificent distances"), and down its empty
+length only one or two draped figures passed, like shadows on the way to
+Shadowland. It was clear that the living held no further traffic with
+the Meknez of Moulay-Ismaël.
+
+Here it was at last. Another great gateway let us, under a resplendently
+bejewelled arch of turquoise-blue and green, into another walled
+emptiness of red clay; a third gate opened into still vaster vacancies,
+and at their farther end rose a colossal red ruin, something like the
+lower stories of a Roman amphitheatre that should stretch out
+indefinitely instead of forming a circle, or like a series of Roman
+aqueducts built side by side and joined into one structure. Below this
+indescribable ruin the arid ground sloped down to an artificial water
+which was surely the lake that the Sultan had made for his
+boating-parties; and beyond it more red earth stretched away to more
+walls and gates, with glimpses of abandoned palaces and huge crumbling
+angle-towers.
+
+The vastness, the silence, the catastrophic desolation of the place,
+were all the more impressive because of the relatively recent date of
+the buildings. As Moulay-Ismaël had dealt with Volubilis, so time had
+dealt with his own Meknez; and the destruction which it had taken
+thousands of lash-driven slaves to inflict on the stout walls of the
+Roman city, neglect and abandonment had here rapidly accomplished. But
+though the sun-baked clay of which the impatient Sultan built his
+pleasure-houses will not suffer comparison with the firm stones of Rome,
+"the high Roman fashion" is visible in the shape and outline of these
+ruins. What they are no one knows. In spite of Ezziani's text (written
+when the place was already partly destroyed) archæologists disagree as
+to the uses of the crypt of rose-flushed clay whose twenty rows of
+gigantic arches are so like an alignment of Roman aqueducts. Were these
+the vaulted granaries, or the subterranean reservoirs under the three
+miles of stabling which housed the twelve thousand horses? The stables,
+at any rate, were certainly near this spot, for the lake adjoins the
+ruins as in the chronicler's description; and between it and old
+Meknez, behind walls within walls, lie all that remains of the fifty
+palaces with their cupolas, gardens, mosques and baths.
+
+This inner region is less ruined than the mysterious vaulted structure,
+and one of the palaces, being still reserved for the present Sultan's
+use, cannot be visited; but we wandered unchallenged through desert
+courts, gardens of cypress and olive where dried fountains and painted
+summer-houses are falling into dust, and barren spaces enclosed in long
+empty façades. It was all the work of an eager and imperious old man,
+who, to realize his dream quickly, built in perishable materials; but
+the design, the dimensions, the whole conception, show that he had not
+only heard of Versailles but had looked with his own eyes on Volubilis.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Meknez--the ruins of the palace of Moulay-Ismaël]
+
+To build on such a scale, and finish the work in a single lifetime, even
+if the materials be malleable and the life a long one, implies a command
+of human labor that the other Sultan at Versailles must have envied.
+The imposition of the _corvée_ was of course even simpler in Morocco
+than in France, since the material to draw on was unlimited, provided
+one could assert one's power over it; and for that purpose Ismaël had
+his Black Army, the hundred and fifty thousand disciplined legionaries
+who enabled him to enforce his rule over all the wild country from
+Algiers to Agadir.
+
+The methods by which this army were raised and increased are worth
+recounting in Ezziani's words:
+
+"A _taleb_[9] of Marrakech having shown the Sultan a register containing
+the names of the negroes who had formed part of the army of El-Mansour,
+Moulay-Ismaël ordered his agents to collect all that remained of these
+negroes and their children.... He also sent to the tribes of the
+Beni-Hasen, and into the mountains, to purchase all the negroes to be
+found there. Thus all that were in the whole of Moghreb were assembled,
+from the cities and the countryside, till not one was left, slave or
+free.
+
+"These negroes were armed and clothed, and sent to Mechra Erremel (north
+of Meknez) where they were ordered to build themselves houses, plant
+gardens and remain till their children were ten years old. Then the
+Sultan caused all the children to be brought to him, both boys and
+girls. The boys were apprenticed to masons, carpenters, and other
+tradesmen; others were employed to make mortar. The next year they were
+taught to drive the mules, the third to make _adobe_ for building; the
+fourth year they learned to ride horses bareback, the fifth they were
+taught to ride in the saddle while using firearms. At the age of sixteen
+these boys became soldiers. They were then married to the young
+negresses who had meanwhile been taught cooking and washing in the
+Sultan's palaces--except those who were pretty, and these were given a
+musical education, after which each one received a wedding-dress and a
+marriage settlement, and was handed over to her husband.
+
+"All the children of these couples were in due time destined for the
+Black Army, or for domestic service in the palaces. Every year the
+Sultan went to the camp at Mechra Erremel and brought back the
+children. The Black Army numbered one hundred and fifty thousand men, of
+whom part were at Erremel, part at Meknez, and the rest in the
+seventy-six forts which the Sultan built for them throughout his domain.
+May the Lord be merciful to his memory!"
+
+Such was the army by means of which Ismaël enforced the _corvée_ on his
+undisciplined tribes. Many thousands of lives went to the building of
+imperial Meknez; but his subjects would scarcely have sufficed if he had
+not been able to add to them twenty-five thousand Christian captives.
+
+M. Augustin Bernard, in his admirable book on Morocco, says that the
+seventeenth century was "the golden age of piracy" in Morocco; and the
+great Ismaël was no doubt one of its chief promoters. One understands
+his unwillingness to come to an agreement with his great friend and
+competitor, Louis XIV, on the difficult subject of the ransom of
+Christian captives when one reads in the admiring Ezziani that it took
+fifty-five thousand prisoners and captives to execute his architectural
+conceptions.
+
+"These prisoners, by day, were occupied on various tasks; at night they
+were locked into subterranean dungeons. Any prisoner who died at his
+task was _built into the wall he was building_." (This statement is
+confirmed by John Windus, the English traveller who visited the court of
+Moulay-Ismaël in the Sultan's old age.) Many Europeans must have
+succumbed quickly to the heat and the lash, for the wall-builders were
+obliged to make each stroke in time with their neighbors, and were
+bastinadoed mercilessly if they broke the rhythm; and there is little
+doubt that the expert artisans of France, Italy and Spain were even
+dearer to the old architectural madman than the friendship of the
+palace-building despot across the sea.
+
+Ezziani's chronicle dates from the first part of the nineteenth century,
+and is an Arab's colorless panegyric of a great Arab ruler; but John
+Windus, the Englishman who accompanied Commodore Stewart's embassy to
+Meknez in 1721, saw the imperial palaces and their builder with his own
+eyes, and described them with the vivacity of a foreigner struck by
+every contrast.
+
+Moulay-Ismaël was then about eighty-seven years old, "a middle-sized
+man, who has the remains of a good face, with nothing of a negro's
+features, though his mother was a black. He has a high nose, which is
+pretty long from the eye-brows downward, and thin. He has lost all his
+teeth, and breathes short, as if his lungs were bad, coughs and spits
+pretty often, which never falls to the ground, men being always ready
+with handkerchiefs to receive it. His beard is thin and very white, his
+eyes seem to have been sparkling, but their vigor decayed through age,
+and his cheeks very much sunk in."
+
+Such was the appearance of this extraordinary man, who deceived,
+tortured, betrayed, assassinated, terrorized and mocked his slaves, his
+subjects, his women and children and his ministers like any other
+half-savage Arab despot, but who yet managed through his long reign to
+maintain a barbarous empire, to police the wilderness, and give at least
+an appearance of prosperity and security where all had before been
+chaos.
+
+The English emissaries appear to have been much struck by the
+magnificence of his palaces, then in all the splendor of novelty, and
+gleaming with marbles brought from Volubilis and Salé. Windus extols in
+particular the sunken gardens of cypress, pomegranate and orange trees,
+some of them laid out seventy feet below the level of the palace-courts;
+the exquisite plaster fretwork; the miles of tessellated walls and
+pavement made in the finely patterned mosaic work of Fez; and the long
+terrace walk trellised with "vines and other greens" leading from the
+palace to the famous stables, and over which it was the Sultan's custom
+to drive in a chariot drawn by women and eunuchs.
+
+Moulay-Ismaël received the English ambassador with every show of pomp
+and friendship, and immediately "made him a present" of a handful of
+young English captives; but just as the negotiations were about to be
+concluded Commodore Stewart was privately advised that the Sultan had no
+intention of allowing the rest of the English to be ransomed. Luckily a
+diplomatically composed letter, addressed by the English envoy to one of
+the favorite wives, resulted in Ismaël's changing his mind, and the
+captives were finally given up, and departed with their rescuers. As one
+stands in the fiery sun, among the monstrous ruins of those tragic
+walls, one pictures the other Christian captives pausing for a second,
+at the risk of death, in the rhythmic beat of their labor, to watch the
+little train of their companions winding away across the desert to
+freedom.
+
+On the way back through the long streets that lead to the ruins we
+noticed, lying by the roadside, the shafts of fluted columns, blocks of
+marble, Roman capitals: fragments of the long loot of Salé and
+Volubilis. We asked how they came there, and were told that, according
+to a tradition still believed in the country, when the prisoners and
+captives who were dragging the building materials toward the palace
+under the blistering sun heard of the old Sultan's death, they dropped
+their loads with one accord and fled. At the same moment every worker on
+the walls flung down his trowel or hod, every slave of the palaces
+stopped grinding or scouring or drawing water or carrying faggots or
+polishing the miles of tessellated floors; so that, when the tyrant's
+heart stopped beating, at that very instant life ceased to circulate in
+the huge house he had built, and in all its members it became a carcass
+for his carcass.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[5] The high plateau-and-hill formation between Tangier and Fez.
+
+[6] So called to distinguish them from the tent villages of the less
+settled groups.
+
+[7] Sacred college.
+
+[8] The citadal of old Meknez.
+
+[9] Learned man.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+FEZ
+
+
+I
+
+THE FIRST VISION
+
+Many-walled Fez rose up before us out of the plain toward the end of the
+day.
+
+The walls and towers we saw were those of the upper town, Fez Eldjid
+(the New), which lies on the edge of the plateau and hides from view Old
+Fez tumbling down below it into the ravine of the Oued Fez. Thus
+approached, the city presents to view only a long line of ramparts and
+fortresses, merging into the wide, tawny plain and framed in barren
+mountains. Not a house is visible outside the walls, except, at a
+respectful distance, the few unobtrusive buildings of the European
+colony; and not a village breaks the desolation of the landscape.
+
+As we drew nearer, the walls towered close over us, and skirting them we
+came to a bare space outside a great horseshoe gate, and found ourselves
+suddenly in the foreground of a picture by Carpaccio or Bellini. Where
+else had one seen just those rows of white-turbaned majestic figures,
+squatting in the dust under lofty walls, all the pale faces ringed in
+curling beards turned to the story-teller in the centre of the group?
+Transform the story-teller into a rapt young Venetian, and you have the
+audience and the foreground of Carpaccio's "Preaching of St. Stephen,"
+even to the camels craning inquisitive necks above the turbans. Every
+step of the way in North Africa corroborates the close observation of
+the early travellers, whether painters or narrators, and shows the
+unchanged character of the Oriental life that the Venetians pictured,
+and Leo Africanus and Windus and Charles Cochelet described.
+
+There was time, before sunset, to go up to the hill, from which the
+ruined tombs of the Merinid Sultans look down over the city they made
+glorious. After the savage massacre of foreign residents in 1912 the
+French encircled the heights commanding Fez with one of their admirably
+engineered military roads, and in a few minutes our motor had climbed to
+the point from which the great dynasty of artist-Sultans dreamed of
+looking down forever on their capital.
+
+Nothing endures in Islam, except what human inertia has left standing
+and its own solidity has preserved from the elements. Or rather, nothing
+remains intact, and nothing wholly perishes, but the architecture, like
+all else, lingers on half-ruined and half-unchanged. The Merinid tombs,
+however, are only hollow shells and broken walls, grown part of the
+brown cliff they cling to. No one thinks of them save as an added touch
+of picturesqueness where all is picturesque: they survive as the best
+point from which to look down at Fez.
+
+There it lies, outspread in golden light, roofs, terraces, and towers
+sliding over the plain's edge in a rush dammed here and there by
+barriers of cypress and ilex, but growing more precipitous as the
+ravine of the Fez narrows downward with the fall of the river. It is as
+though some powerful enchanter, after decreeing that the city should be
+hurled into the depths, had been moved by its beauty, and with a wave of
+his wand held it suspended above destruction.
+
+At first the eye takes in only this impression of a great city over a
+green abyss; then the complex scene begins to define itself. All around
+are the outer lines of ramparts, walls beyond walls, their crenellations
+climbing the heights, their angle fortresses dominating the precipices.
+Almost on a level with us lies the upper city, the aristocratic Fez
+Eldjid of painted palaces and gardens; then, as the houses close in and
+descend more abruptly, terraces, minarets, domes, and long reed-thatched
+roofs of the bazaars, all gather around the green-tiled tomb of Moulay
+Idriss, and the tower of the Almohad mosque of El Kairouiyin, which
+adjoin each other in the depths of Fez, and form its central sanctuary.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From the Merinid hill we had noticed a long façade among the cypresses
+and fruit-trees of Eldjid. This was Bou-Jeloud, the old summer-palace
+of the Sultan's harem, now the house of the Resident-General, where
+lodgings had been prepared for us.
+
+The road descended again, crossing the Oued Fez by one of the fine old
+single-arch bridges that mark the architectural link between Morocco and
+Spain. We skirted high walls, wayside pools, and dripping mill-wheels;
+then one of the city gates engulfed us, and we were in the waste spaces
+of intramural Fez, formerly the lines of defense of a rich and
+perpetually menaced city, now chiefly used for refuse-heaps, open-air
+fondaks, and dreaming-places for rows of Lazaruses rolled in their
+cerements in the dust.
+
+Through another gate and more walls we came to an arch in the inner line
+of defense. Beyond that, the motor paused before a green door, where a
+Cadi in a silken caftan received us. Across squares of orange-trees
+divided by running water we were led to an arcaded apartment hung with
+Moroccan embroideries and lined with wide divans; the hall of reception
+of the Resident-General. Through its arches were other tiled distances,
+fountains, arcades; beyond, in greener depths, the bright blossoms of a
+flower-garden. Such was our first sight of Bou-Jeloud, once the
+summer-palace of the wives of Moulay Hafid.
+
+Upstairs, from a room walled and ceiled with cedar, and decorated with
+the bold rose-pink embroideries of Salé and the intricate old needlework
+of Fez, I looked out over the upper city toward the mauve and tawny
+mountains.
+
+Just below the window the flat roofs of a group of little houses
+descended like the steps of an irregular staircase. Between them rose a
+few cypresses and a green minaret; out of the court of one house an
+ancient fig-tree thrust its twisted arms. The sun had set, and one after
+another bright figures appeared on the roofs. The children came first,
+hung with silver amulets and amber beads, and pursued by negresses in
+striped turbans, who bustled up with rugs and matting; then the mothers
+followed more indolently, released from their ashy mufflings and
+showing, under their light veils, long earrings from the _Mellah_[10]
+and caftans of pale green or peach color.
+
+The houses were humble ones, such as grow up in the cracks of a wealthy
+quarter, and their inhabitants doubtless small folk; but in the
+enchanted African twilight the terraces blossomed like gardens, and when
+the moon rose and the muezzin called from the minaret, the domestic
+squabbles and the shrill cries from roof to roof became part of a story
+in Bagdad, overheard a thousand years ago by that arch-detective
+Haroun-al-Raschid.
+
+
+II
+
+FEZ ELDJID
+
+It is usual to speak of Fez as very old, and the term seems justified
+when one remembers that the palace of Bou-Jeloud stands on the site of
+an Almoravid Kasbah of the eleventh century, that when that Kasbah was
+erected Fez Elbali had already existed for three hundred years, that El
+Kairouiyin is the contemporary of Sant' Ambrogio of Milan, and that the
+original mosque of Moulay Idriss II was built over his grave in the
+eighth century.
+
+Fez is, in fact, the oldest city in Morocco without a Phenician or a
+Roman past, and has preserved more traces than any other of its
+architectural flowering-time; yet it would be truer to say of it, as of
+all Moroccan cities, that it has no age, since its seemingly immutable
+shape is forever crumbling and being renewed on the old lines.
+
+When we rode forth the next day to visit some of the palaces of Eldjid
+our pink-saddled mules carried us at once out of the bounds of time. How
+associate anything so precise and Occidental as years or centuries with
+these visions of frail splendor seen through cypresses and roses? The
+Cadis in their multiple muslins, who received us in secret doorways and
+led us by many passages into the sudden wonder of gardens and fountains;
+the bright-earringed negresses peering down from painted balconies; the
+pilgrims and clients dozing in the sun against hot walls; the deserted
+halls with plaster lace-work and gold pendentives in tiled niches; the
+Venetian chandeliers and tawdry rococo beds; the terraces from which
+pigeons whirled up in a white cloud while we walked on a carpet of their
+feathers--were all these the ghosts of vanished state, or the actual
+setting of the life of some rich merchant with "business connections"
+in Liverpool and Lyons, or some government official at that very moment
+speeding to Meknez or Casablanca in his sixty h. p. motor?
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Fez Eldjid (the upper city)]
+
+We visited old palaces and new, inhabited and abandoned, and over all
+lay the same fine dust of oblivion, like the silvery mould on an
+overripe fruit. Overripeness is indeed the characteristic of this rich
+and stagnant civilization. Buildings, people, customs, seem all about to
+crumble and fall of their own weight: the present is a perpetually
+prolonged past. To touch the past with one's hands is realized only in
+dreams; and in Morocco the dream-feeling envelopes one at every step.
+One trembles continually lest the "Person from Porlock" should step in.
+
+He is undoubtedly on the way; but Fez had not heard of him when we rode
+out that morning. Fez Eldjid, the "New Fez" of palaces and government
+buildings, was founded in the fourteenth century by the Merinid princes,
+and probably looks much as it did then. The palaces in their overgrown
+gardens, with pale-green trellises dividing the rose-beds from the
+blue-and-white tiled paths, and fountains in fluted basins of Italian
+marble, all had the same drowsy charm; yet the oldest were built not
+more than a century or two ago, others within the last fifty years; and
+at Marrakech, later in our journey, we were to visit a sumptuous
+dwelling where plaster-cutters and ceramists from Fez were actually
+repeating with wonderful skill and spontaneity, the old ornamentation of
+which the threads run back to Rome and Damascus.
+
+Of really old private dwellings, palaces or rich men's houses, there are
+surprisingly few in Morocco. It is hard to guess the age of some of the
+featureless houses propping each other's flanks in old Fez or old Salé;
+but people rich enough to rebuild have always done so, and the passion
+for building seems allied, in this country of inconsequences, to the
+supine indifference that lets existing constructions crumble back to
+clay. "Dust to dust" should have been the motto of the Moroccan
+palace-builders.
+
+Fez possesses one old secular building, a fine fondak of the fifteenth
+century; but in Morocco, as a rule, only mosques and the tombs of saints
+are preserved--none too carefully--and even the strong stone buildings
+of the Almohads have been allowed to fall to ruin, as at Chella and
+Rabat. This indifference to the completed object--which is like a kind
+of collective exaggeration of the artist's indifference to his completed
+work--has resulted in the total disappearance of the furniture and works
+of art which must have filled the beautiful buildings of the Merinid
+period. Neither pottery nor brass-work nor enamels nor fine hangings
+survive; there is no parallel in Morocco to the textiles of Syria, the
+potteries of Persia, the Byzantine ivories or enamels. It has been said
+that the Moroccan is always a nomad, who lives in his house as if it
+were a tent; but this is not a conclusive answer to any one who knows
+the passion of the modern Moroccan for European furniture. When one
+reads the list of the treasures contained in the palaces of the mediæval
+Sultans of Egypt one feels sure that, if artists were lacking in
+Morocco, the princes and merchants who brought skilled craftsmen across
+the desert to build their cities must also have imported treasures to
+adorn them. Yet, as far as is known, the famous fourteenth-century
+bronze chandelier of Tetuan, and the fine old ritual furniture reported
+to be contained in certain mosques, are the only important works of art
+in Morocco later in date than the Roman _sloughi_ of Volubilis.
+
+
+III
+
+FEZ ELBALI
+
+The distances in Fez are so great and the streets so narrow, and in some
+quarters so crowded, that all but saints or humble folk go about on
+mule-back.
+
+In the afternoon, accordingly, the pink mules came again, and we set out
+for the long tunnel-like street that leads down the hill to the Fez
+Elbali.
+
+"Look out--'ware heads!" our leader would call back at every turn, as
+our way shrank to a black passage under a house bestriding the street,
+or a caravan of donkeys laden with obstructive reeds or branches of
+dates made the passers-by flatten themselves against the walls.
+
+On each side of the street the houses hung over us like fortresses,
+leaning across the narrow strip of blue and throwing out great beams and
+buttresses to prop each other's bulging sides. Windows there were none
+on the lower floors; only here and there an iron-barred slit stuffed
+with rags and immemorial filth, from which a lean cat would suddenly
+spring out, and scuttle off under an archway like a witch's familiar.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Fez--a reed-roofed street]
+
+Some of these descending lanes were packed with people, others as
+deserted as a cemetery; and it was strange to pass from the thronged
+streets leading to the bazaars to the profound and secretive silence of
+a quarter of well-to-do dwelling-houses, where only a few veiled women
+attended by negro slaves moved noiselessly over the clean cobblestones,
+and the sound of fountains and runnels came from hidden courtyards and
+over garden-walls.
+
+This noise of water is as characteristic of Fez as of Damascus. The Oued
+Fez rushes through the heart of the town, bridged, canalized, built
+over, and ever and again bursting out into tumultuous falls and pools
+shadowed with foliage. The central artery of the city is not a street
+but a waterfall; and tales are told of the dark uses to which, even
+now, the underground currents are put by some of the dwellers behind the
+blank walls and scented gardens of those highly respectable streets.
+
+The crowd in Oriental cities is made up of many elements, and in Morocco
+Turks, Jews and infidels, Berbers of the mountains, fanatics of the
+confraternities, Soudanese blacks and haggard Blue Men of the Souss,
+jostle the merchants and government officials with that democratic
+familiarity which goes side by side with abject servility in this land
+of perpetual contradictions. But Fez is above all the city of wealth and
+learning, of universities and counting-houses, and the merchant and the
+_oulama_[11]--the sedentary and luxurious types--prevail.
+
+The slippered Fazi merchant, wrapped in white muslins and securely
+mounted on a broad velvet saddle-cloth anchored to the back of a broad
+mule, is as unlike the Arab horseman of the desert as Mr. Tracy Tupman
+was unlike the Musketeers of Dumas. Ease, music, money-making, the
+affairs of his harem and the bringing-up of his children, are his chief
+interests, and his plump pale face with long-lashed hazel eyes, his
+curling beard and fat womanish hands, recall the portly potentates of
+Hindu miniatures, dreaming among houris beside lotus-tanks.
+
+These personages, when they ride abroad, are preceded by a swarthy
+footman, who keeps his hand on the embroidered bridle; and the
+government officers and dignitaries of the _Makhzen_[12] are usually
+escorted by several mounted officers of their household, with a servant
+to each mule. The cry of the runners scatters the crowd, and even the
+panniered donkeys and perpetually astonished camels somehow contrive to
+become two-dimensional while the white procession goes by.
+
+Then the populace closes in again, so quickly and densely that it seems
+impossible it could ever have been parted, and negro water-carriers,
+muffled women, beggars streaming with sores, sinewy and greasy "saints,"
+Soudanese sorcerers hung with amulets made of sardine-boxes and
+hares'-feet, long-lashed boys of the Chleuh in clean embroidered
+caftans, Jews in black robes and skull-caps, university students
+carrying their prayer-carpets, bangled and spangled black women,
+scrofulous children with gazelle eyes and mangy skulls, and blind men
+tapping along with linked arms and howling out verses of the Koran,
+surge together in a mass drawn by irresistible suction to the point
+where the bazaars converge about the mosques of Moulay Idriss and El
+Kairouiyin.
+
+Seen from a terrace of the upper town, the long thatched roofing of El
+Attarine, the central bazaar of Fez, promises fantastic revelations of
+native life; but the dun-colored crowds moving through its checkered
+twilight, the lack of carved shop-fronts and gaily adorned
+coffee-houses, and the absence of the painted coffers and vivid
+embroideries of Tunis, remind one that Morocco is a melancholy country,
+and Fez a profoundly melancholy city.
+
+_Dust and ashes, dust and ashes_, echoes from the gray walls, the
+mouldering thatch of the _souks_, the long lamentable song of the blind
+beggars sitting in rows under the feet of the camels and asses. No young
+men stroll through the bazaar in bright caftans, with roses and jasmine
+behind their ears, no pedlars offer lemonade and sweetmeats and golden
+fritters, no flower-sellers pursue one with tight bunches of
+orange-blossom and little pink roses. The well-to-do ride by in white,
+and the rest of the population goes mournfully in earth-color.
+
+But gradually one falls under the spell of another influence--the
+influence of the Atlas and the desert. Unknown Africa seems much nearer
+to Morocco than to the white towns of Tunis and the smiling oases of
+South Algeria. One feels the nearness of Marrakech at Fez, and at
+Marrakech that of Timbuctoo.
+
+Fez is sombre, and the bazaars clustered about its holiest sanctuaries
+form its most sombre quarter. Dusk falls there early, and oil-lanterns
+twinkle in the merchants' niches while the clear African daylight still
+lies on the gardens of upper Fez. This twilight adds to the mystery of
+the _souks_, making them, in spite of profane noise and crowding and
+filth, an impressive approach to the sacred places.
+
+Until a year or two ago, the precincts around Moulay Idriss and El
+Kairouiyin were _horm_, that is, cut off from the unbeliever. Heavy
+beams of wood barred the end of each _souk_, shutting off the
+sanctuaries, and the Christian could only conjecture what lay beyond.
+Now he knows in part; for, though the beams have not been lowered, all
+comers may pass under them to the lanes about the mosques, and even
+pause a moment in their open doorways. Farther one may not go, for the
+shrines of Morocco are still closed to unbelievers; but whoever knows
+Cordova, or has stood under the arches of the Great Mosque of Kairouan,
+can reconstruct something of the hidden beauties of its namesake, the
+"Mosque Kairouan" of western Africa.
+
+Once under the bars, the richness of the old Moorish Fez presses upon
+one with unexpected beauty. Here is the graceful tiled fountain of
+Nedjarine, glittering with the unapproachable blues and greens of
+ceramic mosaics; near it, the courtyard of the Fondak Nedjarine, oldest
+and stateliest of Moroccan inns, with triple galleries of sculptured
+cedar rising above arcades of stone. A little farther on lights and
+incense draw one to a threshold where it is well not to linger unduly.
+Under a deep archway, between booths where gay votive candles are sold,
+the glimmer of hanging lamps falls on patches of gilding and mosaic, and
+on veiled women prostrating themselves before an invisible shrine--for
+this is the vestibule of the mosque of Moulay Idriss, where, on certain
+days of the week, women are admitted to pray.
+
+Moulay Idriss was not built over the grave of the Fatimite prophet,
+first of the name, whose bones lie in the Zerhoun above his sacred town.
+The mosque of Fez grew up around the tomb of his posthumous son, Moulay
+Idriss II, who, descending from the hills, fell upon a camp of Berbers
+on an affluent of the Sebou, and there laid the foundations of Fez, and
+of the Moroccan Empire.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Fez--the Nedjarine fountain]
+
+Of the original monument it is said that little remains. The
+_zaouïa_[13] which encloses it dates from the reign of Moulay-Ismaël,
+the seventeenth-century Sultan of Meknez, and the mosque itself, and the
+green minaret shooting up from the very centre of old Fez, were not
+built until 1820. But a rich surface of age has already formed on all
+these disparate buildings, and the over-gorgeous details of the shrines
+and fountains set in their outer walls are blended into harmony by a
+film of incense-smoke, and the grease of countless venerating lips and
+hands.
+
+Featureless walls of mean houses close in again at the next turn; but a
+few steps farther another archway reveals another secret scene. This
+time it is a corner of the jealously guarded court of ablutions in the
+great mosque El Kairouiyin, with the twin green-roofed pavilions that
+are so like those of the Alhambra.
+
+Those who have walked around the outer walls of the mosque of the other
+Kairouan, and recall the successive doors opening into the forecourt and
+into the mosque itself, will be able to guess at the plan of the church
+of Fez. The great Almohad sanctuary of Tunisia is singularly free from
+parasitic buildings, and may be approached as easily as that of Cordova;
+but the approaches of El Kairouiyin are so built up that one never knows
+at which turn of the labyrinth one may catch sight of its court of
+fountains, or peep down the endless colonnades of which the Arabs say:
+"The man who should try to count the columns of Kairouiyin would go
+mad."
+
+Marble floors, heavy whitewashed piers, prostrate figures in the
+penumbra, rows of yellow slippers outside in the sunlight--out of such
+glimpses one must reconstruct a vision of the long vistas of arches, the
+blues and golds of the _mirhab_,[14] the lustre of bronze chandeliers,
+and the ivory inlaying of the twelfth-century _minbar_[15] of ebony and
+sandalwood.
+
+No Christian footstep has yet profaned Kairouiyin, but fairly definite
+information as to its plan has been gleaned by students of Moroccan art.
+The number of its "countless" columns has been counted, and it is known
+that, to the right of the _mirhab_, carved cedar doors open into a
+mortuary chapel called "the mosque of the dead"--and also that in this
+chapel, on Fridays, old books and precious manuscripts are sold by
+auction.
+
+This odd association of uses recalls the fact that Kairouiyin is not
+only a church but a library, the University of Fez as well as its
+cathedral. The beautiful Medersas with which the Merinids adorned the
+city are simply the lodging-houses of the students; the classes are all
+held in the courts and galleries adjoining the mosque.
+
+El Kairouiyin was originally an oratory built in the ninth century by
+Fatmah, whose father had migrated from Kairouan to Fez. Later it was
+enlarged, and its cupola was surmounted by the talismans which protect
+sacred edifices against rats, scorpions and serpents; but in spite of
+these precautions all animal life was not successfully exorcised from
+it. In the twelfth century, when the great gate Ech Chemmâïn was
+building, a well was discovered under its foundations. The mouth of the
+well was obstructed by an immense tortoise; but when the workmen
+attempted to take the tortoise out she said: "Burn me rather than take
+me away from here." They respected her wishes and built her into the
+foundations; and since then women who suffer from the back-ache have
+only to come and sit on the bench above the well to be cured.
+
+The actual mosque, or "praying-hall," is said to be formed of a
+rectangle or double cube of 90 metres by 45, and this vast space is
+equally divided by rows of horseshoe arches resting on whitewashed piers
+on which the lower part is swathed in finely patterned matting from
+Salé. Fifteen monumental doorways lead into the mosque. Their doors are
+of cedar, heavily barred and ornamented with wrought iron, and one of
+them bears the name of the artisan, and the date 531 of the Hegira (the
+first half of the twelfth century). The mosque also contains the two
+halls of audience of the Cadi, of which one has a graceful exterior
+façade with coupled lights under horseshoe arches; the library, whose
+20,000 volumes are reported to have dwindled to about a thousand; the
+chapel where the Masters of the Koran recite the sacred text in
+fulfilment of pious bequests; the "museum" in the upper part of the
+minaret, wherein a remarkable collection of ancient astronomical
+instruments is said to be preserved; and the _mestonda_, or raised hall
+above the court, where women come to pray.
+
+But the crown of El Kairouiyin is the Merinid court of ablutions. This
+inaccessible wonder lies close under the Medersa Attarine, one of the
+oldest and most beautiful collegiate buildings of Fez; and through the
+kindness of the Director of Fine Arts, who was with us, we were taken
+up to the roof of the Medersa and allowed to look down into the
+enclosure.
+
+It is so closely guarded from below that from our secret of vantage we
+seemed to be looking down into the heart of forbidden things. Spacious
+and serene the great tiled cloister lay beneath us, water spilling over
+from a central basin of marble with a cool sound to which lesser
+fountains made answer from under the pyramidal green roofs of the twin
+pavilions. It was near the prayer-hour, and worshippers were flocking
+in, laying off their shoes and burnouses, washing their faces at the
+fountains and their feet in the central tank, or stretching themselves
+out in the shadow of the enclosing arcade.
+
+This, then, was the famous court "so cool in the great heats that seated
+by thy beautiful jet of water I feel the perfection of bliss"--as the
+learned doctor Abou Abd Allah el Maghili sang of it; the court in which
+the students gather from the adjoining halls after having committed to
+memory the principals of grammar in prose and verse, the "science of
+the reading of the Koran," the invention, exposition and ornaments of
+style, law, medicine, theology, metaphysics and astronomy, as well as
+the talismanic numbers, and the art of ascertaining by calculation the
+influences of the angels, the spirits and the heavenly bodies, "the
+names of the victor and the vanquished, and of the desired object and
+the person who desires it."
+
+Such is the twentieth-century curriculum of the University of Fez.
+Repetition is the rule of Arab education as it is of Arab ornament. The
+teaching of the University is based entirely on the mediæval principle
+of mnemonics; and as there are no examinations, no degrees, no limits to
+the duration of any given course, nor is any disgrace attached to
+slowness in learning, it is not surprising that many students, coming as
+youths, linger by the fountain of Kairouiyin till their hair is gray.
+One well-known _oulama_ has lately finished his studies after
+twenty-seven years at the University, and is justly proud of the length
+of his stay. The life of the scholar is easy, the way of knowledge is
+long, the contrast exquisite between the foul lanes and noisy bazaars
+outside and this cool heaven of learning. No wonder the students of
+Kairouiyin say with the tortoise: "Burn me rather than take me away."
+
+
+IV
+
+EL ANDALOUS AND THE POTTERS' FIELD
+
+Outside the sacred precincts of Moulay Idriss and Kairouiyin, on the
+other side of the Oued Fez, lies El Andalous, the mosque which the
+Andalusian Moors built when they settled in Fez in the ninth century.
+
+It stands apart from the bazaars, on higher ground, and though it is not
+_horm_ we found it less easy to see than the more famous mosques, since
+the Christian loiterer in its doorways is more quickly noticed. The Fazi
+are not yet used to seeing unbelievers near their sacred places. It is
+only in the tumult and confusion of the _souks_ that one can linger on
+the edge of the inner mysteries without becoming aware of attracting
+sullen looks; and my only impression of El Andalous is of a magnificent
+Almohad door and the rich blur of an interior in which there was no time
+to single out the details.
+
+Turning from its forbidden and forbidding threshold we rode on through
+a poor quarter which leads to the great gate of Bab F'touh. Beyond the
+gate rises a dusty rocky slope extending to the outer walls--one of
+those grim intramural deserts that girdle Fez with desolation. This one
+is strewn with gravestones, not enclosed, but, as in most Moroccan
+cemeteries, simply cropping up like nettles between the rocks and out of
+the flaming dust. Here and there among the slabs rises a well-curb or a
+crumbling _koubba_. A solitary palm shoots up beside one of the shrines.
+And between the crowded graves the caravan trail crosses from the outer
+to the inner gate, and perpetual lines of camels and donkeys trample the
+dead a little deeper into the dusty earth.
+
+This Bab F'touh cemetery is also a kind of fondak. Poor caravans camp
+there under the walls in a mire of offal and chicken-feathers and
+stripped date-branches prowled through by wolfish dogs and buzzed over
+by fat blue flies. Camel-drivers squat beside iron kettles over heaps of
+embers, sorcerers from the Sahara offer their amulets to negro women,
+peddlers with portable wooden booths sell greasy cakes that look as if
+they had been made out of the garbage of the caravans, and in and out
+among the unknown dead and sleeping saints circulates the squalid
+indifferent life of the living poor.
+
+A walled lane leads down from Bab F'touh to a lower slope, where the
+Fazi potters have their baking-kilns. Under a series of grassy terraces
+overgrown with olives we saw the archaic ovens and dripping wheels which
+produce the earthenware sold in the _souks_. It is a primitive and
+homely ware, still fine in shape, though dull in color and monotonous in
+pattern; and stacked on the red earth under the olives, the rows of jars
+and cups, in their unglazed and unpainted state, showed their classical
+descent more plainly than after they have been decorated.
+
+This green quiet hollow, where turbaned figures were moving attentively
+among the primitive ovens, so near to the region of flies and offal we
+had just left, woke an old phrase in our memories, and as our mules
+stumbled back over the graves of Bab F'touh we understood the grim
+meaning of the words: "They carried him out and buried him in the
+Potters' Field."
+
+
+V
+
+MEDERSAS, BAZAARS AND AN OASIS
+
+Fez, for two centuries and more, was in a double sense the capital of
+Morocco: the centre of its trade as well as of its culture.
+
+Culture, in fact, came to northwest Africa chiefly through the Merinid
+princes. The Almohads had erected great monuments from Rabat to
+Marrakech, and had fortified Fez; but their "mighty wasteful empire"
+fell apart like those that had preceded it. Stability had to come from
+the west; it was not till the Arabs had learned it through the Moors
+that Morocco produced a dynasty strong and enlightened enough to carry
+out the dream of its founders.
+
+Whichever way the discussion sways as to the priority of eastern or
+western influences on Moroccan art--whether it came to her from Syria,
+and was thence passed on to Spain, or was first formed in Spain, and
+afterward modified by the Moroccan imagination--there can at least be no
+doubt that Fazi art and culture, in their prime, are partly the
+reflection of European civilization.
+
+Fugitives from Spain came to the new city when Moulay Idriss founded
+it. One part of the town was given to them, and the river divided the
+Elbali of the Almohads into the two quarters of Kairouiyin and Andalous,
+which still retain their old names. But the full intellectual and
+artistic flowering of Fez was delayed till the thirteenth and fourteenth
+centuries. It seems as though the seeds of the new springtime of art,
+blown across the sea from reawakening Europe, had at last given the
+weltering tribes of the desert the force to create their own type of
+beauty.
+
+Nine Medersas sprang up in Fez, six of them built by the princes who
+were also creating the exquisite collegiate buildings of Salé, Rabat and
+old Meknez, and the enchanting mosque and minaret of Chella. The power
+of these rulers also was in perpetual flux; they were always at war with
+the Sultans of Tlemeen, the Christians of Spain, the princes of northern
+Algeria and Tunis. But during the fourteenth century they established a
+rule wide and firm enough to permit of the great outburst of art and
+learning which produced the Medersas of Fez.
+
+Until a year or two ago these collegiate buildings were as inaccessible
+as the mosques; but now that the French government has undertaken their
+restoration strangers may visit them under the guidance of the Fine Arts
+Department.
+
+All are built on the same plan, the plan of Salé and Rabat, which (as M.
+Tranchant de Lunel[16] has pointed out) became, with slight
+modifications, that of the rich private houses of Morocco. But
+interesting as they are in plan and the application of ornament, their
+main beauty lies in their details: in the union of chiselled plaster
+with the delicate mosaic work of niches and revêtements; the web-like
+arabesques of the upper walls and the bold, almost Gothic sculpture of
+the cedar architraves and corbels supporting them. And when all these
+details are enumerated, and also the fretted panels of cedar, the bronze
+doors with their great shield-like bosses, and the honeycombings and
+rufflings of the gilded ceilings, there still remains the general tinge
+of dry disintegration, as though all were perishing of a desert
+fever--that, and the final wonder of seeing before one, in such a
+setting, the continuance of the very life that went on there when the
+tiles were set and the gold was new on the ceilings.
+
+For these tottering Medersas, already in the hands of the restorers, are
+still inhabited. As long as the stairway holds and the balcony has not
+rotted from its corbels, the students of the University see no reason
+for abandoning their lodgings above the cool fountain and the house of
+prayer. The strange men giving incomprehensible orders for unnecessary
+repairs need not disturb their meditations; and when the hammering grows
+too loud the _oulamas_ have only to pass through the silk market or the
+_souk_ of the embroiderers to the mosque of Kairouiyin, and go on
+weaving the pattern of their dreams by the fountain of perfect bliss.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One reads of the bazaars of Fez that they have been for centuries the
+central market of the country. Here are to be found not only the silks
+and pottery, the Jewish goldsmiths' work, the arms and embroidered
+saddlery which the city itself produces, but "morocco" from Marrakech,
+rugs, tent-hangings and matting from Rabat and Salé, grain baskets from
+Moulay Idriss, daggers from the Souss, and whatever European wares the
+native markets consume. One looks, on the plan of Fez, at the space
+covered by the bazaars; one breasts the swarms that pour through them
+from dawn to dusk--and one remains perplexed, disappointed. They are
+less "Oriental" than one had expected, if "Oriental" means color and
+gaiety.
+
+Sometimes, on occasion, it does mean that: as, for instance, when a
+procession passes bearing the gifts for a Jewish wedding. The gray crowd
+makes way for a group of musicians in brilliant caftans, and following
+them comes a long file of women with uncovered faces and bejewelled
+necks, balancing on their heads the dishes the guests have sent to the
+feast--_kouskous_, sweet creams and syrups, "gazelles' horns" of sugar
+and almonds--in delicately woven baskets, each covered with several
+squares of bright gauze edged with gold. Then one remembers the
+marketing of the Lady of "The Three Calendars," and Fez again becomes
+the Bagdad of Al Raschid.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Fez--the bazaars. A view of the Souk el Attarine and the Quaisarya (silk
+market)]
+
+But when no exceptional events, processions, ceremonies and the like
+brighten the underworld of the _souks_, their look is uniformly
+melancholy. The gay bazaars, the gaily-painted houses, the flowers and
+flute-playing of North Africa, are found in her Mediterranean ports, in
+contact with European influences. The farther west she extends, the more
+she becomes self-contained, sombre, uninfluenced, a gloomy fanatic with
+her back to the walls of the Atlantic and the Atlas. Color and laughter
+lie mostly along the trade-routes, where the peoples of the world come
+and go in curiosity and rivalry. This ashen crowd swarming gloomily
+through the dark tunnels represents the real Moghreb that is close to
+the wild tribes of the "hinterland" and the grim feudal fortresses of
+the Atlas. How close, one has only to go out to Sefrou on a market-day
+to see.
+
+Sefrou is a military outpost in an oasis under the Atlas, about forty
+miles south of Fez. To most people the word "oasis" evokes palms and
+sand; but though Morocco possesses many oases it has no pure sand and
+few palms. I remember it as a considerable event when I discovered one
+from my lofty window at Bou-Jeloud.
+
+The _bled_ is made of very different stuff from the sand-ocean of the
+Sahara. The light plays few tricks with it. Its monotony is wearisome
+rather than impressive, and the fact that it is seldom without some form
+of dwarfish vegetation makes the transition less startling when the
+alluvial green is finally reached. One had always half expected it, and
+it does not spring at a djinn's wave out of sterile gold.
+
+But the fact brings its own compensations. Moroccan oases differ one
+from another far more than those of South Algeria and Tunisia. Some have
+no palms, others but a few, others are real palm-oases, though even in
+the south (at least on the hither side of the great Atlas) none spreads
+out a dense uniform roofing of metal-blue fronds like the date-oases of
+Biskra or Tozeur. As for Sefrou, which Foucauld called the most
+beautiful oasis of Morocco, it is simply an extremely fertile valley
+with vineyards and orchards stretching up to a fine background of
+mountains. But the fact that it lies just below the Atlas makes it an
+important market-place and centre of caravans.
+
+Though so near Fez it is still almost on the disputed border between the
+loyal and the "unsubmissive" tribes, those that are _Blad-Makhzen_ (of
+the Sultan's government) and those that are against it. Until recently,
+therefore, it has been inaccessible to visitors, and even now a strongly
+fortified French post dominates the height above the town. Looking down
+from the fort, one distinguishes, through masses of many-tinted green, a
+suburb of Arab houses in gardens, and below, on the river, Sefrou
+itself, a stout little walled town with angle-towers defiantly thrust
+forth toward the Atlas. It is just outside these walls that the market
+is held.
+
+It was swarming with hill-people the day we were there, and strange was
+the contrast between the crowd inside the circle of picketed horses and
+the white-robed cockneys from Rabat who fill the market-place of Salé.
+Here at last we were in touch with un-Arab Morocco, with Berbers of the
+_bled_ and the hills, whose women know no veils and no seclusion, and
+who, under a thin surface of Mahometanism, preserve their old stone and
+animal worship, and all the gross fetichistic beliefs from which Mahomet
+dreamed of freeing Africa.
+
+The men were lean and weather-bitten, some with negroid lips, others
+with beaked noses and gaunt cheek-bones, all muscular and
+fierce-looking. Some were wrapped in the black cloaks worn by the Blue
+Men of the Sahara,[17] with a great orange sun embroidered on the back;
+some tunicked like the Egyptian fellah, under a rough striped outer
+garment trimmed with bright tufts and tassels of wool. The men of the
+Rif had a braided lock on the shoulder, those of the Atlas a ringlet
+over each ear, and brown woollen scarfs wound round their temples,
+leaving the shaven crown bare.
+
+The women, squatting among their kids and poultry and cheeses, glanced
+at us with brilliant hennaed eyes and smiles that lifted their short
+upper lips maliciously. Their thin faces were painted in stripes and
+patterns of indigo. Silver necklets covered their throats, long earrings
+dangled under the wool-embroidered kerchiefs bound about their temples
+with a twist of camel's hair, and below the cotton shifts fastened on
+their shoulders with silver clasps their legs were bare to the knee, or
+covered with leather leggings to protect them from the thorny _bled_.
+
+They seemed abler bargainers than the men, and the play of expression on
+their dramatic and intensely feminine faces as they wheedled the price
+of a calf out of a fierce hillsman, or haggled over a heap of dates that
+a Jew with greasy ringlets was trying to secure for his secret
+distillery, showed that they knew their superiority and enjoyed it.
+
+Jews abounded in the market-place and also in the town. Sefrou contains
+a large Israelite colony, and after we had wandered through the steep
+streets, over gushing waterfalls spanned by "ass-backed" Spanish
+bridges, and through a thatched _souk_ smelling strong of camels and the
+desert, the French commissioner (the only European in Sefrou) suggested
+that it might interest us to visit the _Mellah_.
+
+It was our first sight of a typical Jewish quarter in Africa. The
+_Mellah_ of Fez was almost entirely destroyed during the massacres of
+1912 (which incidentally included a _pogrom_), and its distinctive
+character, happily for the inhabitants, has disappeared in the
+rebuilding. North African Jews are still compelled to live in ghettos,
+into which they are locked at night, as in France and Germany in the
+Middle Ages; and until lately the men have been compelled to go unarmed,
+to wear black gabardines and black slippers, to take off their shoes
+when they passed near a mosque or a saint's tomb, and in various other
+ways to manifest their subjection to the ruling race. Nowhere else do
+they live in conditions of such demoralizing promiscuity as in some of
+the cities of Morocco. They have so long been subject to unrestricted
+extortion on the part of the Moslems that even the wealthy Jews (who are
+numerous) have sunk to the habits and appearance of the poorest; and
+Sefrou, which has come so recently under French control, offers a good
+specimen of a _Mellah_ before foreign sanitation has lighted up its dark
+places.
+
+Dark indeed they were. After wandering through narrow and malodorous
+lanes, and slipping about in the offal of the _souks_, we were suddenly
+led under an arch over which should have been written "All light
+abandon--" and which made all we had seen before seem clean and bright
+and airy.
+
+The beneficent African sun dries up and purifies the immemorial filth
+of Africa; where that sun enters there is none of the foulness of damp.
+But into the _Mellah_ of Sefrou it never comes, for the streets form a
+sort of subterranean rabbit-warren under the upper stories of a solid
+agglomeration of tall houses--a buried city lit even at midday by
+oil-lamps hanging in the goldsmiths' shops and under the archways of the
+black and reeking staircases.
+
+It was a Jewish feast-day. The Hebrew stalls in the _souks_ were closed,
+and the whole population of the _Mellah_ thronged its tunnels in holiday
+dress. Hurrying past us were young women with plump white faces and
+lovely eyes, turbaned in brilliant gauzes, with draperies of dirty
+curtain muslin over tawdry brocaded caftans. Their paler children
+swarmed about them, little long-earringed girls like wax dolls dressed
+in scraps of old finery, little boys in tattered caftans with
+long-lashed eyes and wily smiles; and, waddling in the rear, their
+unwieldy grandmothers, huge lumps of tallowy flesh who were probably
+still in the thirties.
+
+With them were the men of the family, in black gabardines and
+skull-caps: sallow striplings, incalculably aged ancestors,
+round-bellied husbands and fathers bumping along like black balloons;
+all hastening to the low doorways dressed with lamps and paper garlands
+behind which the feast was spread.
+
+One is told that in cities like Fez and Marrakech the Hebrew quarter
+conceals flowery patios and gilded rooms with the heavy European
+furniture that rich Jews delight in. Perhaps even in the _Mellah_ of
+Sefrou, among the ragged figures shuffling past us, there were some few
+with bags of gold in their walls and rich stuffs hid away in painted
+coffers; but for patios and flowers and daylight there seemed no room in
+the dark _bolgia_ they inhabit. No wonder the babies of the Moroccan
+ghettos are nursed on date-brandy, and their elders doze away to death
+under its consoling spell.
+
+
+VI
+
+THE LAST GLIMPSE
+
+It is well to bid good-by to Fez at night--a moonlight night for choice.
+
+Then, after dining at the Arab inn of Fez Eldjid--where it might be
+inconvenient to lodge, but where it is extremely pleasant to eat
+_kouskous_ under a grape-trellis in a tiled and fountained patio--this
+pleasure over, one may set out on foot and stray down the lanes toward
+Fez Elbali.
+
+Not long ago the gates between the different quarters of the city used
+to be locked every night at nine o'clock, and the merchant who went out
+to dine in another part of the town had to lodge with his host. Now this
+custom has been given up, and one may roam about untroubled through the
+old quarters, grown as silent as the grave after the intense life of the
+bazaars has ceased at nightfall.
+
+Nobody is in the streets: wandering from ghostly passage to passage, one
+hears no step but that of the watchman with staff and lantern. Presently
+there appears, far off, a light like a low-flying firefly; as it comes
+nearer, it is seen to proceed from the _Mellah_ lamp of open-work brass
+that a servant carries ahead of two merchants on their way home from
+Elbali. The merchants are grave men: they move softly and slowly on
+their fat slippered feet, pausing from time to time in confidential
+talk. At last they stop before a house wall with a low blue door barred
+by heavy hasps of iron. The servant lifts the lamp and knocks. There is
+a long delay; then, with infinite caution, the door is opened a few
+inches, and another lifted light shines faintly on lustrous tiled walls,
+and on the face of a woman slave who quickly veils herself. Evidently
+the master is a man of standing, and the house well guarded. The two
+merchants touch each other on the right shoulder, one of them passes in,
+and his friend goes on through the moonlight, his servant's lantern
+dancing ahead.
+
+But here we are in an open space looking down one of the descents to El
+Attarine. A misty radiance washes the tall houses, the garden-walls, the
+archways; even the moonlight does not whiten Fez, but only turns its
+gray to tarnished silver. Overhead in a tower window a single light
+twinkles: women's voices rise and fall on the roofs. In a rich man's
+doorway slaves are sleeping, huddled on the tiles. A cock crows from
+somebody's dunghill; a skeleton dog prowls by for garbage.
+
+Everywhere is the loud rush or the low crooning of water, and over every
+wall comes the scent of jasmine and rose. Far off, from the red
+purgatory between the walls, sounds the savage thrum-thrum of a negro
+orgy; here all is peace and perfume. A minaret springs up between the
+roof like a palm, and from its balcony the little white figure bends
+over and drops a blessing on all the loveliness and all the squalor.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[10] The Ghetto in African towns. All the jewellers in Morocco are Jews.
+
+[11] Learned man, doctor of the university.
+
+[12] The Sultan's government.
+
+[13] Moslem monastery.
+
+[14] Niche in the sanctuary of mosques.
+
+[15] Movable pulpit.
+
+[16] In _France-Maroc_, _No._ 1.
+
+[17] So called because of the indigo dye of their tunics, which leaves a
+permanent stain on their bodies.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+MARRAKECH
+
+
+I
+
+THE WAY THERE
+
+There are countless Arab tales of evil Djinns who take the form of
+sandstorms and hot winds to overwhelm exhausted travellers.
+
+In spite of the new French road between Rabat and Marrakech the memory
+of such tales rises up insistently from every mile of the level red
+earth and the desolate stony stretches of the _bled_. As long as the
+road runs in sight of the Atlantic breakers they give the scene
+freshness and life; but when it bends inland and stretches away across
+the wilderness the sense of the immensity and immobility of Africa
+descends on one with an intolerable oppression.
+
+The road traverses no villages, and not even a ring of nomad tents is
+visible in the distance on the wide stretches of arable land. At
+infrequent intervals our motor passed a train of laden mules, or a group
+of peasants about a well, and sometimes, far off, a fortified farm
+profiled its thick-set angle-towers against the sky, or a white _koubba_
+floated like a mirage above the brush; but these rare signs of life
+intensified the solitude of the long miles between.
+
+At midday we were refreshed by the sight of the little oasis around the
+military-post of Settat. We lunched there with the commanding officer,
+in a cool Arab house about a flowery patio; but that brief interval
+over, the fiery plain began again. After Settat the road runs on for
+miles across the waste to the gorge of the Oued Ouem; and beyond the
+river it climbs to another plain so desperate in its calcined aridity
+that the prickly scrub of the wilderness we had left seemed like the
+vegetation of an oasis. For fifty kilometres the earth under our wheels
+was made up of a kind of glistening red slag covered with pebbles and
+stones. Not the scantest and toughest of rock-growths thrust a leaf
+through its brassy surface; not a well-head or a darker depression of
+the rock gave sign of a trickle of water. Everything around us glittered
+with the same unmerciful dryness.
+
+A long way ahead loomed the line of the Djebilets, the Djinn-haunted
+mountains guarding Marrakech on the north. When at last we reached them
+the wicked glister of their purple flanks seemed like a volcanic
+upheaval of the plain. For some time we had watched the clouds gathering
+over them, and as we got to the top of the defile rain was falling from
+a fringe of thunder to the south. Then the vapours lifted, and we saw
+below us another red plain with an island of palms in its centre.
+Mysteriously, from the heart of the palms, a tower shot up, as if alone
+in the wilderness; behind it stood the sun-streaked cliffs of the Atlas,
+with snow summits appearing and vanishing through the storm.
+
+As we drove downward the rock gradually began to turn to red earth
+fissured by yellow streams, and stray knots of palms sprang up, lean and
+dishevelled, about well-heads where people were watering camels and
+donkeys. To the east, dominating the oasis, the twin peaked hills of the
+Ghilis, fortified to the crest, mounted guard over invisible Marrakech;
+but still, above the palms, we saw only that lonely and triumphant
+tower.
+
+Presently we crossed the Oued Tensif on an old bridge built by Moroccan
+engineers. Beyond the river were more palms, then olive-orchards, then
+the vague sketch of the new European settlement, with a few shops and
+cafés on avenues ending suddenly in clay pits, and at last Marrakech
+itself appeared to us, in the form of a red wall across a red
+wilderness.
+
+We passed through a gate and were confronted by other ramparts. Then we
+entered an outskirt of dusty red lanes bordered by clay hovels with
+draped figures slinking by like ghosts. After that more walls, more
+gates, more endlessly winding lanes, more gates again, more turns, a
+dusty open space with donkeys and camels and negroes; a final wall with
+a great door under a lofty arch--and suddenly we were in the palace of
+the Bahia, among flowers and shadows and falling water.
+
+
+II
+
+THE BAHIA
+
+Whoever would understand Marrakech must begin by mounting at sunset to
+the roof of the Bahia.
+
+Outspread below lies the oasis-city of the south, flat and vast as the
+great nomad camp it really is, its low roofs extending on all sides to a
+belt of blue palms ringed with desert. Only two or three minarets and a
+few noblemen's houses among gardens break the general flatness; but they
+are hardly noticeable, so irresistibly is the eye drawn toward two
+dominant objects--the white wall of the Atlas and the red tower of the
+Koutoubya.
+
+Foursquare, untapering, the great tower lifts its flanks of ruddy stone.
+Its large spaces of unornamented wall, its triple tier of clustered
+openings, lightening as they rise from the severe rectangular lights of
+the first stage to the graceful arcade below the parapet, have the
+stern harmony of the noblest architecture. The Koutoubya would be
+magnificent anywhere; in this flat desert it is grand enough to face the
+Atlas.
+
+The Almohad conquerors who built the Koutoubya and embellished Marrakech
+dreamed a dream of beauty that extended from the Guadalquivir to the
+Sahara; and at its two extremes they placed their watch-towers. The
+Giralda watched over civilized enemies in a land of ancient Roman
+culture; the Koutoubya stood at the edge of the world, facing the hordes
+of the desert.
+
+The Almoravid princes who founded Marrakech came from the black desert
+of Senegal; themselves were leaders of wild hordes. In the history of
+North Africa the same cycle has perpetually repeated itself. Generation
+after generation of chiefs have flowed in from the desert or the
+mountains, overthrown their predecessors, massacred, plundered, grown
+rich, built sudden palaces, encouraged their great servants to do the
+same; then fallen on them, and taken their wealth and their palaces.
+Usually some religious fury, some ascetic wrath against the
+self-indulgence of the cities, has been the motive of these attacks; but
+invariably the same results followed, as they followed when the Germanic
+barbarians descended on Italy. The conquerors, infected with luxury and
+mad with power, built vaster palaces, planned grander cities; but
+Sultans and Viziers camped in their golden houses as if on the march,
+and the mud huts of the tribesmen within their walls were but one degree
+removed from the mud-walled tents of the _bled_.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Marrakech--The "Little Garden" (with painted doors) in background,
+Palace of the Bahia]
+
+This was more especially the case with Marrakech, a city of Berbers and
+blacks, and the last outpost against the fierce black world beyond the
+Atlas from which its founders came. When one looks at its site, and
+considers its history, one can only marvel at the height of civilization
+it attained.
+
+The Bahia itself, now the palace of the Resident General, though built
+less than a hundred years ago, is typical of the architectural
+megalomania of the great southern chiefs. It was built by Ba-Ahmed, the
+all-powerful black Vizier of the Sultan Moulay-el-Hassan.[18] Ba-Ahmed
+was evidently an artist and an archæologist. His ambition was to
+re-create a Palace of Beauty such as the Moors had built in the prime of
+Arab art, and he brought to Marrakech skilled artificers of Fez, the
+last surviving masters of the mystery of chiselled plaster and ceramic
+mosaics and honeycombing of gilded cedar. They came, they built the
+Bahia, and it remains the loveliest and most fantastic of Moroccan
+palaces.
+
+Court within court, garden beyond garden, reception halls, private
+apartments, slaves' quarters, sunny prophets' chambers on the roofs and
+baths in vaulted crypts, the labyrinth of passages and rooms stretches
+away over several acres of ground. A long court enclosed in pale-green
+trellis-work, where pigeons plume themselves about a great tank and the
+dripping tiles glitter with refracted sunlight, leads to the fresh gloom
+of a cypress garden, or under jasmine tunnels bordered with running
+water; and these again open on arcaded apartments faced with tiles and
+stucco-work, where, in a languid twilight, the hours drift by to the
+ceaseless music of the fountains.
+
+The beauty of Moroccan palaces is made up of details of ornament and
+refinements of sensuous delight too numerous to record; but to get an
+idea of their general character it is worth while to cross the Court of
+Cypresses at the Bahia and follow a series of low-studded passages that
+turn on themselves till they reach the centre of the labyrinth. Here,
+passing by a low padlocked door leading to a crypt, and known as the
+"Door of the Vizier's Treasure-House," one comes on a painted portal
+that opens into a still more secret sanctuary: The apartment of the
+Grand Vizier's Favourite.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph by Felix, Marrakech_
+
+Marrakech--the great court, Palace of the Bahia]
+
+This lovely prison, from which all sight and sound of the outer world
+are excluded, is built about an atrium paved with disks of turquoise and
+black and white. Water trickles from a central _vasca_ of alabaster into
+a hexagonal mosaic channel in the pavement. The walls, which are at
+least twenty-five feet high, are roofed with painted beams resting on
+panels of traceried stucco in which is set a clerestory of jewelled
+glass. On each side of the atrium are long recessed rooms closed by
+vermilion doors painted with gold arabesques and vases of spring
+flowers; and into these shadowy inner rooms, spread with rugs and divans
+and soft pillows, no light comes except when their doors are opened
+into the atrium. In this fabulous place it was my good luck to be lodged
+while I was at Marrakech.
+
+In a climate where, after the winter snow has melted from the Atlas,
+every breath of air for long months is a flame of fire, these enclosed
+rooms in the middle of the palaces are the only places of refuge from
+the heat. Even in October the temperature of the favourite's apartment
+was deliciously reviving after a morning in the bazaars or the dusty
+streets, and I never came back to its wet tiles and perpetual twilight
+without the sense of plunging into a deep sea-pool.
+
+From far off, through circuitous corridors, came the scent of
+citron-blossom and jasmine, with sometimes a bird's song before dawn,
+sometimes a flute's wail at sunset, and always the call of the muezzin
+in the night; but no sunlight reached the apartment except in remote
+rays through the clerestory, and no air except through one or two broken
+panes.
+
+Sometimes, lying on my divan, and looking out through the vermilion
+doors, I used to surprise a pair of swallows dropping down from their
+nest in the cedar-beams to preen themselves on the fountain's edge or in
+the channels of the pavement; for the roof was full of birds who came
+and went through the broken panes of the clerestory. Usually they were
+my only visitors; but one morning just at daylight I was waked by a soft
+tramp of bare feet, and saw, silhouetted against the cream-coloured
+walls, a procession of eight tall negroes in linen tunics, who filed
+noiselessly across the atrium like a moving frieze of bronze. In that
+fantastic setting, and the hush of that twilight hour, the vision was so
+like the picture of a "Seraglio Tragedy," some fragment of a Delacroix
+or Decamps floating up into the drowsy brain, that I almost fancied I
+had seen the ghosts of Ba-Ahmed's executioners revisiting with dagger
+and bowstring the scene of an unavenged crime.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph taken by Mme. la Marquis de Segonzac_
+
+Marrakech--apartment of the grand vizier's favorite, Palace of the
+Bahia]
+
+A cock crew, and they vanished ... and when I made the mistake of
+asking what they had been doing in my room at that hour I was told (as
+though it were the most natural thing in the world) that they were the
+municipal lamp-lighters of Marrakech, whose duty it is to refill every
+morning the two hundred acetylene lamps lighting the palace of the
+Resident General. Such unforeseen aspects, in this mysterious city, do
+the most ordinary domestic functions wear.
+
+
+III
+
+THE BAZAARS
+
+Passing out of the enchanted circle of the Bahia it is startling to
+plunge into the native life about its gates.
+
+Marrakech is the great market of the south; and the south means not only
+the Atlas with its feudal chiefs and their wild clansmen, but all that
+lies beyond of heat and savagery: the Sahara of the veiled Touaregs,
+Dakka, Timbuctoo, Senegal and the Soudan. Here come the camel caravans
+from Demnat and Tameslout, from the Moulouya and the Souss, and those
+from the Atlantic ports and the confines of Algeria. The population of
+this old city of the southern march has always been even more mixed
+than that of the northerly Moroccan towns. It is made up of the
+descendants of all the peoples conquered by a long line of Sultans who
+brought their trains of captives across the sea from Moorish Spain and
+across the Sahara from Timbuctoo. Even in the highly cultivated region
+on the lower slopes of the Atlas there are groups of varied ethnic
+origin, the descendants of tribes transplanted by long-gone rulers and
+still preserving many of their original characteristics.
+
+In the bazaars all these peoples meet and mingle: cattle-dealers,
+olive-growers, peasants from the Atlas, the Souss and the Draa, Blue Men
+of the Sahara, blacks from Senegal and the Soudan, coming in to trade
+with the wool-merchants, tanners, leather-merchants, silk-weavers,
+armourers, and makers of agricultural implements.
+
+Dark, fierce and fanatical are these narrow _souks_ of Marrakech. They
+are mere mud lanes roofed with rushes, as in South Tunisia and
+Timbuctoo, and the crowds swarming in them are so dense that it is
+hardly possible, at certain hours, to approach the tiny raised kennels
+where the merchants sit like idols among their wares. One feels at once
+that something more than the thought of bargaining--dear as this is to
+the African heart--animates these incessantly moving throngs. The Souks
+of Marrakech seem, more than any others, the central organ of a native
+life that extends far beyond the city walls into secret clefts of the
+mountains and far-off oases where plots are hatched and holy wars
+fomented--farther still, to yellow deserts whence negroes are secretly
+brought across the Atlas to that inmost recess of the bazaar where the
+ancient traffic in flesh and blood still surreptitiously goes on.
+
+All these many threads of the native life, woven of greed and lust, of
+fetichism and fear and blind hate of the stranger, form, in the _souks_,
+a thick network in which at times one's feet seem literally to stumble.
+Fanatics in sheepskins glowering from the guarded thresholds of the
+mosques, fierce tribesmen with inlaid arms in their belts and the
+fighters' tufts of wiry hair escaping from camel's-hair turbans, mad
+negroes standing stark naked in niches of the walls and pouring down
+Soudanese incantations upon the fascinated crowd, consumptive Jews with
+pathos and cunning in their large eyes and smiling lips, lusty
+slave-girls with earthen oil-jars resting against swaying hips,
+almond-eyed boys leading fat merchants by the hand, and bare-legged
+Berber women, tattooed and insolently gay, trading their striped
+blankets, or bags of dried roses and irises, for sugar, tea or
+Manchester cottons--from all these hundreds of unknown and unknowable
+people, bound together by secret affinities, or intriguing against each
+other with secret hate, there emanates an atmosphere of mystery and
+menace more stifling than the smell of camels and spices and black
+bodies and smoking fry which hangs like a fog under the close roofing of
+the _souks_.
+
+And suddenly one leaves the crowd and the turbid air for one of those
+quiet corners that are like the back-waters of the bazaars: a small
+square where a vine stretches across a shop-front and hangs ripe
+clusters of grapes through the reeds. In the patterning of grape-shadows
+a very old donkey, tethered to a stone-post, dozes under a pack-saddle
+that is never taken off; and near by, in a matted niche, sits a very old
+man in white. This is the chief of the Guild of "morocco" workers of
+Marrakech, the most accomplished craftsman in Morocco in the preparing
+and using of the skins to which the city gives its name. Of these sleek
+moroccos, cream-white or dyed with cochineal or pomegranate skins, are
+made the rich bags of the Chleuh dancing-boys, the embroidered slippers
+for the harem, the belts and harnesses that figure so largely in
+Moroccan trade--and of the finest, in old days, were made the
+pomegranate-red morocco bindings of European bibliophiles.
+
+From this peaceful corner one passes into the barbaric splendor of a
+_souk_ hung with innumerable plumy bunches of floss silk--skeins of
+citron yellow, crimson, grasshopper green and pure purple. This is the
+silk-spinners' quarter, and next to it comes that of the dyers, with
+great seething vats into which the raw silk is plunged, and ropes
+overhead where the rainbow masses are hung out to dry.
+
+Another turn leads into the street of the metalworkers and armourers,
+where the sunlight through the thatch flames on round flanks of beaten
+copper or picks out the silver bosses of ornate powder-flasks and
+pistols; and near by is the _souk_ of the plough-shares, crowded with
+peasants in rough Chleuh cloaks who are waiting to have their archaic
+ploughs repaired, and that of the smiths, in an outer lane of mud huts
+where negroes squat in the dust and sinewy naked figures in tattered
+loincloths bend over blazing coals. And here ends the maze of the
+bazaars.
+
+
+IV
+
+THE AGDAL
+
+One of the Almohad Sultans who, during their hundred years of empire,
+scattered such great monuments from Seville to the Atlas, felt the need
+of coolness about his southern capital, and laid out the olive-yards of
+the Agdal.
+
+To the south of Marrakech the Agdal extends for many acres between the
+outer walls of the city and the edge of the palm-oasis--a continuous
+belt of silver foliage traversed by deep red lanes, and enclosing a
+wide-spreading summer palace and two immense reservoirs walled with
+masonry; and the vision of these serene sheets of water, in which the
+olives and palms are motionlessly reflected, is one of the most poetic
+impressions in that city of inveterate poetry.
+
+On the edge of one of the reservoirs a sentimental Sultan built in the
+last century a little pleasure-house called the Menara. It is composed
+of a few rooms with a two-storied loggia looking across the water to the
+palm-groves, and surrounded by a garden of cypresses and orange-trees.
+The Menara, long since abandoned, is usually uninhabited; but on the day
+when we drove through the Agdal we noticed, at the gate, a group of
+well-dressed servants holding mules with embroidered saddle-clothes.
+
+The French officer who was with us asked the porter what was going on,
+and he replied that the Chief of the Guild of Wool-Merchants had hired
+the pavilion for a week and invited a few friends to visit him. They
+were now, the porter added, taking tea in the loggia above the lake; and
+the host, being informed of our presence, begged that we should do him
+and his friends the honour of visiting the pavilion.
+
+In reply to this amiable invitation we crossed an empty saloon
+surrounded with divans and passed out onto the loggia where the
+wool-merchant and his guests were seated. They were evidently persons of
+consequence: large bulky men wrapped in fresh muslins and reclining side
+by side on muslin-covered divans and cushions. Black slaves had placed
+before them brass trays with pots of mint-tea, glasses in filigree
+stands, and dishes of gazelles' horns and sugar-plums; and they sat
+serenely absorbing these refreshments and gazing with large calm eyes
+upon the motionless water and the reflected trees.
+
+So, we were told, they would probably spend the greater part of their
+holiday. The merchant's cooks had taken possession of the kitchens, and
+toward sunset a sumptuous repast of many courses would be carried into
+the saloon on covered trays, and the guests would squat about it on rugs
+of Rabat, tearing with their fingers the tender chicken wings and small
+artichokes cooked in oil, plunging their fat white hands to the wrist
+into huge mounds of saffron and rice, and washing off the traces of each
+course in the brass basin of perfumed water carried about by a young
+black slave-girl with hoop-earrings and a green-and-gold scarf about her
+hips.
+
+Then the singing-girls would come out from Marrakech, squat round-faced
+young women heavily hennaed and bejewelled, accompanied by gaunt
+musicians in bright caftans; and for hours they would sing sentimental
+or obscene ballads to the persistent maddening twang of violin and flute
+and drum. Meanwhile fiery brandy or sweet champagne would probably be
+passed around between the steaming glasses of mint-tea which the slaves
+perpetually refilled; or perhaps the sultry air, the heavy meal, the
+scent of the garden and the vertiginous repetition of the music would
+suffice to plunge these sedentary worthies into the delicious coma in
+which every festive evening in Morocco ends.
+
+The next day would be spent in the same manner, except that probably the
+Chleuh boys with sidelong eyes and clean caftans would come instead of
+the singing-girls, and weave the arabesque of their dance in place of
+the runic pattern of the singing. But the result would always be the
+same: a prolonged state of obese ecstasy culminating in the collapse of
+huge heaps of snoring muslin on the divans against the wall. Finally at
+the week's end the wool-merchant and his friends would all ride back
+with dignity to the bazaar.
+
+
+V
+
+ON THE ROOFS
+
+"Should you like to see the Chleuh boys dance?" some one asked.
+
+"There they are," another of our companions added, pointing to a dense
+ring of spectators on one side of the immense dusty square at the
+entrance of the _souks_--the "Square of the Dead" as it is called, in
+memory of the executions that used to take place under one of its grim
+red gates.
+
+It is the square of the living now, the centre of all the life,
+amusement and gossip of Marrakech, and the spectators are so thickly
+packed about the story-tellers, snake-charmers and dancers who frequent
+it that one can guess what is going on within each circle only by the
+wailing monologue or the persistent drum-beat that proceeds from it.
+
+Ah, yes--we should indeed like to see the Chleuh boys dance; we who,
+since we had been in Morocco, had seen no dancing, heard no singing,
+caught no single glimpse of merry-making! But how were we to get within
+sight of them?
+
+On one side of the "Square of the Dead" stands a large house, of
+European build, but modelled on Oriental lines: the office of the French
+municipal administration. The French Government no longer allows its
+offices to be built within the walls of Moroccan towns, and this house
+goes back to the epic days of the Caïd Sir Harry Maclean, to whom it was
+presented by the fantastic Abd-el-Aziz when the Caïd was his favourite
+companion as well as his military adviser.
+
+At the suggestion of the municipal officials we mounted the stairs and
+looked down on the packed square. There can be no more Oriental sight
+this side of the Atlas and the Sahara. The square is surrounded by low
+mud-houses, fondaks, cafés, and the like. In one corner, near the
+archway leading into the _souks_, is the fruit-market, where the
+red-gold branches of unripe dates[19] for animal fodder are piled up in
+great stacks, and dozens of donkeys are coming and going, their
+panniers laden with fruits and vegetables which are being heaped on the
+ground in gorgeous pyramids: purple egg-plants, melons, cucumbers,
+bright orange pumpkins, mauve and pink and violet onions, rusty crimson
+pomegranates and the gold grapes of Sefrou and Salé, all mingled with
+fresh green sheaves of mint and wormwood.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from "France-Maroc"_
+
+Marrakech--a fondak]
+
+In the middle of the square sit the story-tellers' turbaned audiences.
+Beyond these are the humbler crowds about the wild-ringleted
+snake-charmers with their epileptic gestures and hissing incantations,
+and farther off, in the densest circle of all, we could just discern the
+shaved heads and waving surpliced arms of the dancing-boys. Under an
+archway near by an important personage in white muslin, mounted on a
+handsome mule and surrounded by his attendants, sat with motionless face
+and narrowed eyes gravely following the movements of the dancers.
+
+Suddenly, as we stood watching the extraordinary animation of the scene,
+a reddish light overspread it, and one of our companions exclaimed:
+"Ah--a dust-storm!"
+
+In that very moment it was upon us: a red cloud rushing across the
+square out of nowhere, whirling the date-branches over the heads of the
+squatting throngs, tumbling down the stacks of fruits and vegetables,
+rooting up the canvas awnings over the lemonade-sellers' stalls and
+before the café doors, huddling the blinded donkeys under the walls of
+the fondak, and stripping to the hips the black slave-girls scudding
+home from the _souks_.
+
+Such a blast would instantly have scattered any western crowd, but "the
+patient East" remained undisturbed, rounding its shoulders before the
+storm and continuing to follow attentively the motions of the dancers
+and the turns of the story-tellers. By and bye, however, the gale grew
+too furious, and the spectators were so involved in collapsing tents,
+eddying date-branches and stampeding mules that the square began to
+clear, save for the listeners about the most popular story-teller, who
+continued to sit on unmoved. And then, at the height of the storm, they
+too were abruptly scattered by the rush of a cavalcade across the
+square. First came a handsomely dressed man, carrying before him on his
+peaked saddle a tiny boy in a gold-embroidered orange caftan, in front
+of whom he held an open book; and behind them a train of white-draped
+men on showily harnessed mules, followed by musicians in bright dresses.
+It was only a Circumcision procession on its way to the mosque; but the
+dust-enveloped rider in his rich dress, clutching the bewildered child
+to his breast, looked like some Oriental prince trying to escape with
+his son from the fiery embraces of desert Erl-maidens.
+
+As swiftly as it rose the storm subsided, leaving the fruit-market in
+ruins under a sky as clear and innocent as an infant's eye. The Chleuh
+boys had vanished with the rest, like marionettes swept into a drawer by
+an impatient child; but presently, toward sunset, we were told that we
+were to see them after all, and our hosts led us up to the roof of the
+Caïd's house.
+
+The city lay stretched before us like one immense terrace circumscribed
+by palms. The sky was pure blue, verging to turquoise green where the
+Atlas floated above mist; and facing the celestial snows stood the
+Koutoubya, red in the sunset.
+
+People were beginning to come out on the roofs: it was the hour of
+peace, of ablutions, of family life on the house-tops. Groups of women
+in pale tints and floating veils spoke to each other from terrace to
+terrace, through the chatter of children and the guttural calls of
+bedizened negresses. And presently, on the roof adjoining ours, appeared
+the slim dancing-boys with white caftans and hennaed feet.
+
+The three swarthy musicians who accompanied them crossed their lean legs
+on the tiles and set up their throb-throb and thrum-thrum, and on a
+narrow strip of terrace the youths began their measured steps.
+
+It was a grave static dance, such as David may have performed before the
+Ark; untouched by mirth or folly, as beseemed a dance in that sombre
+land, and borrowing its magic from its gravity. Even when the pace
+quickened with the stress of the music the gestures still continued to
+be restrained and hieratic; only when, one by one, the performers
+detached themselves from the round and knelt before us for the _peseta_
+it is customary to press on their foreheads, did one see, by the
+moisture which made the coin adhere, how quick and violent their
+movements had been.
+
+The performance, like all things Oriental, like the life, the patterns,
+the stories, seemed to have no beginning and no end: it just went
+monotonously and indefatigably on till fate snipped its thread by
+calling us away to dinner. And so at last we went down into the dust of
+the streets refreshed by that vision of white youths dancing on the
+house-tops against the gold of a sunset that made them look--in spite of
+ankle-bracelets and painted eyes--almost as guileless and happy as the
+round of angels on the roof of Fra Angelico's Nativity.
+
+
+VI
+
+THE SAADIAN TOMBS
+
+On one of the last days of our stay in Marrakech we were told, almost
+mysteriously, that permission was to be given us to visit the tombs of
+the Saadian Sultans.
+
+Though Marrakech has been in the hands of the French since 1912, the
+very existence of these tombs was unknown to the authorities till 1917.
+Then the Sultan's government privately informed the Resident General
+that an unsuspected treasure of Moroccan art was falling into ruin, and
+after some hesitation it was agreed that General Lyautey and the
+Director of Fine Arts should be admitted to the mosque containing the
+tombs, on the express condition that the French Government undertook to
+repair them. While we were at Rabat General Lyautey had described his
+visit to us, and it was at his request that the Sultan authorized us to
+see the mosque, to which no travellers had as yet been admitted.
+
+With a good deal of ceremony, and after the customary _pourparlers_ with
+the great Pasha who controls native affairs at Marrakech, an hour was
+fixed for our visit, and we drove through long lanes of mud-huts to a
+lost quarter near the walls. At last we came to a deserted square on one
+side of which stands the long low mosque of Mansourah with a
+turquoise-green minaret embroidered with traceries of sculptured terra
+cotta. Opposite the mosque is a gate in a crumbling wall; and at this
+gate the Pasha's Cadi was to meet us with the keys of the mausoleum. But
+we waited in vain. Oriental dilatoriness, or a last secret reluctance to
+admit unbelievers to a holy place, had caused the Cadi to forget his
+appointment; and we drove away disappointed.
+
+The delay drove us to wondering about these mysterious Saadian Sultans,
+who, though coming so late in the annals of Morocco, had left at least
+one monument said to be worthy of the Merinid tradition. And the tale of
+the Saadians is worth telling.
+
+They came from Arabia to the Draa (the fruitful country south of the
+Great Atlas) early in the fifteenth century, when the Merinid empire was
+already near disintegration. Like all previous invaders they preached
+the doctrine of a pure Islamism to the polytheistic and indifferent
+Berbers, and found a ready hearing because they denounced the evils of a
+divided empire, and also because the whole of Morocco was in revolt
+against the Christian colonies of Spain and Portugal, which had
+encircled the coast from Ceuta to Agadir with a chain of fortified
+counting-houses. To _bouter dehors_ the money-making unbeliever was an
+object that found adherents from the Rif to the Sahara, and the Saadian
+cherifs soon rallied a mighty following to their standard. Islam, though
+it never really gave a creed to the Berbers, supplied them with a
+war-cry as potent to-day as when it first rang across Barbary.
+
+The history of the Saadians is a foreshortened record of that of all
+their predecessors. They overthrew the artistic and luxurious Merinids,
+and in their turn became artistic and luxurious. Their greatest Sultan,
+Abou-el-Abbas, surnamed "The Golden," after defeating the Merinids and
+putting an end to Christian rule in Morocco by the crushing victory of
+El-Ksar (1578), bethought him in his turn of enriching himself and
+beautifying his capital, and with this object in view turned his
+attention to the black kingdoms of the south.
+
+Senegal and the Soudan, which had been Mohammedan since the eleventh
+century, had attained in the sixteenth century a high degree of
+commercial wealth and artistic civilization. The Sultanate of Timbuctoo
+seems in reality to have been a thriving empire, and if Timbuctoo was
+not the Claude-like vision of Carthaginian palaces which it became in
+the tales of imaginative travellers, it apparently had something of the
+magnificence of Fez and Marrakech.
+
+The Saadian army, after a march of four and a half months across the
+Sahara, conquered the whole black south. Senegal, the Soudan and Bornou
+submitted to Abou-el-Abbas, the Sultan of Timbuctoo was dethroned, and
+the celebrated negro jurist Ahmed-Baba was brought a prisoner to
+Marrakech, where his chief sorrow appears to have been for the loss of
+his library of 1,600 volumes--though he declared that, of all the
+numerous members of his family, it was he who possessed the smallest
+number of books.
+
+Besides this learned bibliophile, the Sultan Abou-el-Abbas brought back
+with him an immense booty, principally of ingots of gold, from which he
+took his surname of "The Golden"; and as the result of the expedition
+Marrakech was embellished with mosques and palaces for which the Sultan
+brought marble from Carrara, paying for it with loaves of sugar from the
+sugar-cane that the Saadians grew in the Souss.
+
+In spite of these brilliant beginnings the rule of the dynasty was short
+and without subsequent interest. Based on a fanatical antagonism
+against the foreigner, and fed by the ever-wakeful hatred of the Moors
+for their Spanish conquerors, it raised ever higher the Chinese walls of
+exclusiveness which the more enlightened Almohads and Merinids had
+sought to overthrow. Henceforward less and less daylight and fresh air
+were to penetrate into the _souks_ of Morocco.
+
+The day after our unsuccessful attempt to see the tombs of these
+ephemeral rulers we received another message, naming an hour for our
+visit; and this time the Pasha's representative was waiting in the
+archway. We followed his lead, under the openly mistrustful glances of
+the Arabs who hung about the square, and after picking our way through a
+twisting land between walls we came out into a filthy nettle-grown space
+against the ramparts. At intervals of about thirty feet splendid square
+towers rose from the walls, and facing one of them lay a group of
+crumbling buildings masked behind other ruins.
+
+We were led first into a narrow mosque or praying-chapel, like those of
+the Medersas, with a coffered cedar ceiling resting on four marble
+columns, and traceried walls of unusually beautiful design. From this
+chapel we passed into the hall of the tombs, a cube about forty feet
+square. Fourteen columns of colored marble sustain a domed ceiling of
+gilded cedar, with an exterior deambulatory under a tunnel-vaulting also
+roofed with cedar. The walls are, as usual, of chiselled stucco, above
+revêtements of ceramic mosaic, and between the columns lie the white
+marble cenotaphs of the Saadian Sultans, covered with Arabic
+inscriptions in the most delicate low-relief. Beyond this central
+mausoleum, and balancing the praying-chapel, lies another long narrow
+chamber, gold-ceilinged also, and containing a few tombs.
+
+It is difficult, in describing the architecture of Morocco, to avoid
+producing an impression of monotony. The ground-plan of mosques and
+Medersas is always practically the same; and the same elements, few in
+number and endlessly repeated, make up the materials and the form of the
+ornament. The effect upon the eye is not monotonous, for a patient art
+has infinitely varied the combinations of pattern and the juxtapositions
+of color; while the depth of undercutting of the stucco, and the
+treatment of the bronze doors and of the carved cedar corbels,
+necessarily varies with the periods which produced them.
+
+But in the Saadian mausoleum a new element has been introduced which
+makes this little monument a thing apart. The marble columns supporting
+the roof appear to be unique in Moroccan architecture, and they lend
+themselves to a new roof-plan which relates the building rather to the
+tradition of Venice or Byzantine by way of Kairouan and Cordova.
+
+The late date of the monument precludes any idea of a direct artistic
+tradition. The most probable explanation seems to be that the architect
+of the mausoleum was familiar with European Renaissance architecture,
+and saw the beauty to be derived from using precious marbles not merely
+as ornament, but in the Roman and Italian way, as a structural element.
+Panels and fountain-basins are ornament, and ornament changes nothing
+essential in architecture; but when, for instance, heavy square piers
+are replaced by detached columns, a new style results.
+
+It is not only the novelty of its plan that makes the Saadian mausoleum
+singular among Moroccan monuments. The details of its ornament are of
+the most intricate refinement: it seems as though the last graces of the
+expiring Merinid art had been gathered up into this rare blossom. And
+the slant of sunlight on lustrous columns, the depths of fretted gold,
+the dusky ivory of the walls and the pure white of the cenotaphs, so
+classic in spareness of ornament and simplicity of design--this subtle
+harmony of form and color gives to the dim rich chapel an air of
+dream-like unreality.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph by M. André Chevrillon_
+
+Marrakech--Mausoleum of the Saadian Sultans (sixteenth century) showing
+the tombs]
+
+And how can it seem other than a dream? Who can have conceived, in the
+heart of a savage Saharan camp, the serenity and balance of this hidden
+place? And how came such fragile loveliness to survive, preserving,
+behind a screen of tumbling walls, of nettles and offal and dead beasts,
+every curve of its traceries and every cell of its honeycombing?
+
+Such questions inevitably bring one back to the central riddle of the
+mysterious North African civilization: the perpetual flux and the
+immovable stability, the barbarous customs and sensuous refinements, the
+absence of artistic originality and the gift for regrouping borrowed
+motives, the patient and exquisite workmanship and the immediate neglect
+and degradation of the thing once made.
+
+Revering the dead and camping on their graves, elaborating exquisite
+monuments only to abandon and defile them, venerating scholarship and
+wisdom and living in ignorance and grossness, these gifted races,
+perpetually struggling to reach some higher level of culture from which
+they have always been swept down by a fresh wave of barbarism, are still
+only a people in the making.
+
+It may be that the political stability which France is helping them to
+acquire will at last give their higher qualities time for fruition; and
+when one looks at the mausoleum of Marrakech and the Medersas of Fez one
+feels that, were the experiment made on artistic grounds alone, it would
+yet be well worth making.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[18] Moulay-el-Hassan reigned from 1873 to 1894.
+
+[19] Dates do not ripen in Morocco.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+HAREMS AND CEREMONIES
+
+
+I
+
+THE CROWD IN THE STREET
+
+To occidental travellers the most vivid impression produced by a first
+contact with the Near East is the surprise of being in a country where
+the human element increases instead of diminishing the delight of the
+eye.
+
+After all, then, the intimate harmony between nature and architecture
+and the human body that is revealed in Greek art was not an artist's
+counsel of perfection but an honest rendering of reality: there were,
+there still are, privileged scenes where the fall of a green-grocer's
+draperies or a milkman's cloak or a beggar's rags are part of the
+composition, distinctly related to it in line and colour, and where the
+natural unstudied attitudes of the human body are correspondingly
+harmonious, however hum-drum the acts it is engaged in. The discovery,
+to the traveller returning from the East, robs the most romantic scenes
+of western Europe of half their charm: in the Piazza of San Marco, in
+the market-place of Siena, where at least the robes of the Procurators
+or the gay tights of Pinturicchio's striplings once justified man's
+presence among his works, one can see, at first, only the outrage
+inflicted on beauty by the "plentiful strutting manikins" of the modern
+world.
+
+Moroccan crowds are always a feast to the eye. The instinct of skilful
+drapery, the sense of colour (subdued by custom, but breaking out in
+subtle glimpses under the universal ashy tints) make the humblest
+assemblage of donkey-men and water-carriers an ever-renewed delight. But
+it is only on rare occasions, and in the court ceremonies to which so
+few foreigners have had access, that the hidden sumptuousness of the
+native life is revealed. Even then, the term sumptuousness may seem
+ill-chosen, since the nomadic nature of African life persists in spite
+of palaces and chamberlains and all the elaborate ritual of the Makhzen,
+and the most pompous rites are likely to end in a dusty gallop of wild
+tribesmen, and the most princely processions to tail off in a string of
+half-naked urchins riding bareback on donkeys.
+
+As in all Oriental countries, the contact between prince and beggar,
+vizier and serf is disconcertingly free and familiar, and one must see
+the highest court officials kissing the hem of the Sultan's robe, and
+hear authentic tales of slaves given by one merchant to another at the
+end of a convivial evening, to be reminded that nothing is as democratic
+in appearance as a society of which the whole structure hangs on the
+whim of one man.
+
+
+II
+
+AÏD-EL-KEBIR
+
+In the verandah of the Residence of Rabat I stood looking out between
+posts festooned with gentian-blue ipomeas at the first shimmer of light
+on black cypresses and white tobacco-flowers, on the scattered roofs of
+the new town, and the plain stretching away to the Sultan's palace
+above the sea.
+
+We had been told, late the night before, that the Sultan would allow
+Madame Lyautey, with the three ladies of her party, to be present at the
+great religious rite of the Aïd-el-Kebir (the Sacrifice of the Sheep).
+The honour was an unprecedented one, a favour probably conceded only at
+the last moment: for as a rule no women are admitted to these
+ceremonies. It was an opportunity not to be missed; and all through the
+short stifling night I had lain awake wondering if I should be ready
+early enough. Presently the motors assembled, and we set out with the
+French officers in attendance on the Governor's wife.
+
+The Sultan's palace, a large modern building on the familiar Arab lines,
+lies in a treeless and gardenless waste enclosed by high walls and close
+above the blue Atlantic. We motored past the gates, where the Sultan's
+Black Guard was drawn up, and out to the _msalla_,[20] a sort of common
+adjacent to all the Sultan's residences where public ceremonies are
+usually performed. The sun was already beating down on the great plain
+thronged with horsemen and with the native population of Rabat on
+mule-back and foot. Within an open space in the centre of the crowd a
+canvas palissade dyed with a bold black pattern surrounded the Sultan's
+tents. The Black Guard, in scarlet tunics and white and green turbans,
+were drawn up on the edge of the open space, keeping the spectators at a
+distance; but under the guidance of our companions we penetrated to the
+edge of the crowd.
+
+The palissade was open on one side, and within it we could see moving
+about among the snowy-robed officials a group of men in straight narrow
+gowns of almond-green, peach-blossom, lilac and pink; they were the
+Sultan's musicians, whose coloured dresses always flower out
+conspicuously among the white draperies of all the other court
+attendants.
+
+In the tent nearest the opening, against a background of embroidered
+hangings, a circle of majestic turbaned old men squatted placidly on
+Rabat rugs. Presently the circle broke up, there was an agitated coming
+and going, and some one said: "The Sultan has gone to the tent at the
+back of the enclosure to kill the sheep."
+
+A sense of the impending solemnity ran through the crowd. The mysterious
+rumour which is the Voice of the Bazaar rose about us like the wind in a
+palm-oasis; the Black Guard fired a salute from an adjoining hillock;
+the clouds of red dust flung up by wheeling horsemen thickened and then
+parted, and a white-robed rider sprang out from the tent of the
+Sacrifice with something red and dripping across his saddle-bow, and
+galloped away toward Rabat through the shouting. A little shiver ran
+over the group of occidental spectators, who knew that the dripping red
+thing was a sheep with its throat so skilfully slit that, if the omen
+were favourable, it would live on through the long race to Rabat and
+gasp out its agonized life on the tiles of the Mosque.
+
+The Sacrifice of the Sheep, one of the four great Moslem rites, is
+simply the annual propitiatory offering made by every Mahometan head of
+a family, and by the Sultan as such. It is based not on a Koranic
+injunction, but on the "Souna" or record of the Prophet's "custom" or
+usages, which forms an authoritative precedent in Moslem ritual. So far
+goes the Moslem exegesis. In reality, of course, the Moslem
+blood-sacrifice comes, by way of the Semitic ritual, from far beyond and
+behind it; and the belief that the Sultan's prosperity for the coming
+year depends on the animal's protracted agony seems to relate the
+ceremony to the dark magic so deeply rooted in the mysterious tribes
+peopling North Africa long ages before the first Phoenician prows had
+rounded its coast.
+
+Between the Black Guard and the tents, five or six horses were being led
+up and down by muscular grooms in snowy tunics. They were handsome
+animals, as Moroccan horses go, and each of a different colour; and on
+the bay horse was a red saddle embroidered in gold, on the piebald a
+saddle of peach-colour and silver, on the chestnut, grass-green
+encrusted with seed-pearls, on the white mare purple housings, and
+orange velvet on the grey. The Sultan's band had struck up a shrill
+hammering and twanging, the salute of the Black Guard continued at
+intervals, and the caparisoned steeds began to rear and snort and drag
+back from the cruel Arab bits with their exquisite _niello_
+incrustations. Some one whispered that these were His Majesty's
+horses--and that it was never known till he appeared which one he would
+mount.
+
+Presently the crowd about the tents thickened, and when it divided again
+there emerged from it a grey horse bearing a motionless figure swathed
+in blinding white. Marching at the horse's bridle, lean brown grooms in
+white tunics rhythmically waved long strips of white linen to keep off
+the flies from the Imperial Presence; and beside the motionless rider,
+in a line with his horse's flank, rode the Imperial Parasol-bearer, who
+held above the sovereign's head a great sunshade of bright green velvet.
+Slowly the grey horse advanced a few yards before the tent; behind rode
+the court dignitaries, followed by the musicians, who looked, in their
+bright scant caftans, like the slender music-making angels of a
+Florentine fresco.
+
+The Sultan, pausing beneath his velvet dome, waited to receive the
+homage of the assembled tribes. An official, riding forward, drew bridle
+and called out a name. Instantly there came storming across the plain a
+wild cavalcade of tribesmen, with rifles slung across their shoulders,
+pistols and cutlasses in their belts, and twists of camel's-hair bound
+about their turbans. Within a few feet of the Sultan they drew in, their
+leader uttered a cry and sprang forward, bending to the saddle-bow, and
+with a great shout the tribe galloped by, each man bowed over his
+horse's neck as he flew past the hieratic figure on the grey horse.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from "France-Maroc"_
+
+The Sultan of Morocco under the green umbrella (at Meknez, 1916)]
+
+Again and again this ceremony was repeated, the Sultan advancing a few
+feet as each new group thundered toward him. There were more than ten
+thousand horsemen and chieftains from the Atlas and the wilderness, and
+as the ceremony continued the dust-clouds grew denser and more
+fiery-golden, till at last the forward-surging lines showed through them
+like blurred images in a tarnished mirror.
+
+As the Sultan advanced we followed, abreast of him and facing the
+oncoming squadrons. The contrast between his motionless figure and the
+wild waves of cavalry beating against it typified the strange soul of
+Islam, with its impetuosity forever culminating in impassiveness. The
+sun hung high, a brazen ball in a white sky, darting down metallic
+shafts on the dust-enveloped plain and the serene white figure under its
+umbrella. The fat man with a soft round beard-fringed face, wrapped in
+spirals of pure white, one plump hand on his embroidered bridle, his
+yellow-slippered feet thrust heel-down in big velvet-lined stirrups,
+became, through sheer immobility, a symbol, a mystery, a God. The human
+flux beat against him, dissolved, ebbed away, another spear-crested wave
+swept up behind it and dissolved in turn; and he sat on, hour after
+hour, under the white-hot sky, unconscious of the heat, the dust, the
+tumult, embodying to the wild factious precipitate hordes a long
+tradition of serene aloofness.
+
+
+III
+
+THE IMPERIAL MIRADOR
+
+As the last riders galloped up to do homage we were summoned to our
+motors and driven rapidly to the palace. The Sultan had sent word to
+Mme. Lyautey that the ladies of the Imperial harem would entertain her
+and her guests while his Majesty received the Resident General, and we
+had to hasten back in order not to miss the next act of the spectacle.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from "France-Maroc"_
+
+A clan of mountaineers and their caïd.]
+
+We walked across a long court lined with the Black Guard, passed under a
+gateway, and were met by a shabbily dressed negress. Traversing a hot
+dazzle of polychrome tiles we reached another archway guarded by the
+chief eunuch, a towering black with the enamelled eyes of a basalt bust.
+The eunuch delivered us to other negresses, and we entered a labyrinth
+of inner passages and patios, all murmuring and dripping with water.
+Passing down long corridors where slaves in dim greyish garments
+flattened themselves against the walls, we caught glimpses of great dark
+rooms, laundries, pantries, bakeries, kitchens, where savoury things
+were brewing and stewing, and where more negresses, abandoning their
+pots and pans, came to peep at us from the threshold. In one corner, on
+a bench against a wall hung with matting, grey parrots in tall cages
+were being fed by a slave.
+
+A narrow staircase mounted to a landing where a princess out of an Arab
+fairy-tale awaited us. Stepping softly on her embroidered slippers she
+led us to the next landing, where another golden-slippered being smiled
+out on us, a little girl this one, blushing and dimpling under a
+jewelled diadem and pearl-woven braids. On a third landing a third
+damsel appeared, and encircled by the three graces we mounted to the
+tall _mirador_ in the central tower from which we were to look down at
+the coming ceremony. One by one, our little guides, kicking off their
+golden shoes, which a slave laid neatly outside the door, led us on soft
+bare feet into the upper chamber of the harem.
+
+It was a large room, enclosed on all sides by a balcony glazed with
+panes of brightly-coloured glass. On a gaudy modern Rabat carpet stood
+gilt armchairs of florid design and a table bearing a commercial bronze
+of the "art goods" variety. Divans with muslin-covered cushions were
+ranged against the walls and down an adjoining gallery-like apartment
+which was otherwise furnished only with clocks. The passion for clocks
+and other mechanical contrivances is common to all unmechanical races,
+and every chief's palace in North Africa contains a collection of
+time-pieces which might be called striking if so many had not ceased to
+go. But those in the Sultan's harem of Rabat are remarkable for the fact
+that, while designed on current European models, they are proportioned
+in size to the Imperial dignity, so that a Dutch "grandfather" becomes a
+wardrobe, and the box-clock of the European mantelpiece a cupboard that
+has to be set on the floor. At the end of this avenue of time-pieces a
+European double-bed with a bright silk quilt covered with Nottingham
+lace stood majestically on a carpeted platform.
+
+But for the enchanting glimpses of sea and plain through the lattices of
+the gallery, the apartment of the Sultan's ladies falls far short of
+occidental ideas of elegance. But there was hardly time to think of
+this, for the door of the _mirador_ was always opening to let in another
+fairy-tale figure, till at last we were surrounded by a dozen houris,
+laughing, babbling, taking us by the hand, and putting shy questions
+while they looked at us with caressing eyes. They were all (our
+interpretess whispered) the Sultan's "favourites," round-faced
+apricot-tinted girls in their teens, with high cheek-bones, full red
+lips, surprised brown eyes between curved-up Asiatic lids, and little
+brown hands fluttering out like birds from their brocaded sleeves.
+
+In honour of the ceremony, and of Mme. Lyautey's visit, they had put on
+their finest clothes, and their freedom of movement was somewhat
+hampered by their narrow sumptuous gowns, with over-draperies of gold
+and silver brocade and pale rosy gauze held in by corset-like sashes of
+gold tissue of Fez, and the heavy silken cords that looped their
+voluminous sleeves. Above their foreheads the hair was shaven like that
+of an Italian fourteenth-century beauty, and only a black line as narrow
+as a pencilled eyebrow showed through the twist of gauze fastened by a
+jewelled clasp above the real eye-brows. Over the forehead-jewel rose
+the complicated structure of the head-dress. Ropes of black wool were
+plaited through the hair, forming, at the back, a double loop that stood
+out above the nape like the twin handles of a vase, the upper veiled in
+airy shot gauzes and fastened with jewelled bands and ornaments. On each
+side of the red cheeks other braids were looped over the ears hung with
+broad earrings of filigree set with rough pearls and emeralds, or gold
+hoops and pendants of coral; and an unexpected tulle ruff, like that of
+a Watteau shepherdess, framed the round chin above a torrent of
+necklaces, necklaces of amber, coral, baroque pearls, hung with
+mysterious barbaric amulets and fetiches. As the young things moved
+about us on soft hennaed feet the light played on shifting gleams of
+gold and silver, blue and violet and apple-green, all harmonized and
+bemisted by clouds of pink and sky-blue; and through the changing group
+capered a little black picaninny in a caftan of silver-shot purple with
+a sash of raspberry red.
+
+But presently there was a flutter in the aviary. A fresh pair of
+_babouches_ clicked on the landing, and a young girl, less brilliantly
+dressed and less brilliant of face than the others, came in on bare
+painted feet. Her movements were shy and hesitating, her large lips
+pale, her eye-brows less vividly dark, her head less jewelled. But all
+the little humming-birds gathered about her with respectful rustlings as
+she advanced toward us leaning on one of the young girls, and holding
+out her ringed hand to Mme. Lyautey's curtsey. It was the young
+Princess, the Sultan's legitimate daughter. She examined us with sad
+eyes, spoke a few compliments through the interpretess, and seated
+herself in silence, letting the others sparkle and chatter.
+
+Conversation with the shy Princess was flagging when one of the
+favourites beckoned us to the balcony. We were told we might push open
+the painted panes a few inches, but as we did so the butterfly group
+drew back lest they should be seen looking out on the forbidden world.
+
+Salutes were crashing out again from the direction of the _msalla_:
+puffs of smoke floated over the slopes like thistle-down. Farther off, a
+pall of red vapour veiled the gallop of the last horsemen wheeling away
+toward Rabat. The vapour subsided, and moving out of it we discerned a
+slow procession. First rode a detachment of the Black Guard, mounted on
+black horses, and, comically fierce in their British scarlet and Meccan
+green, a uniform invented at the beginning of the nineteenth century by
+a retired English army officer. After the Guard came the
+standard-bearers and the great dignitaries, then the Sultan, still
+aloof, immovable, as if rapt in the contemplation of his mystic office.
+More court officials followed, then the bright-gowned musicians on
+foot, then a confused irrepressible crowd of pilgrims, beggars, saints,
+mountebanks, and the other small folk of the Bazaar, ending in a line of
+boys jamming their naked heels into the ribs of world-weary donkeys.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from "France-Maroc"_
+
+The Sultan entering Marrakech in state]
+
+The Sultan rode into the court below us, and Vizier and chamberlains,
+snowy-white against the scarlet line of the Guards, hurried forward to
+kiss his draperies, his shoes, his stirrup. Descending from his velvet
+saddle, still entranced, he paced across the tiles between a double line
+of white servitors bowing to the ground. White pigeons circled over him
+like petals loosed from a great orchard, and he disappeared with his
+retinue under the shadowy arcade of the audience chamber at the back of
+the court.
+
+At this point one of the favourites called us in from the _mirador_. The
+door had just opened to admit an elderly woman preceded by a respectful
+group of girls. From the newcomer's round ruddy face, her short round
+body, the round hands emerging from her round wrists, an inexplicable
+majesty emanated; and though she too was less richly arrayed than the
+favourites she carried her head-dress of striped gauze like a crown.
+
+This impressive old lady was the Sultan's mother. As she held out her
+plump wrinkled hand to Mme. Lyautey and spoke a few words through the
+interpretess one felt that at last a painted window of the _mirador_ had
+been broken, and a thought let into the vacuum of the harem. What
+thought, it would have taken deep insight into the processes of the Arab
+mind to discover; but its honesty was manifest in the old Empress's
+voice and smile. Here at last was a woman beyond the trivial
+dissimulations, the childish cunning, the idle cruelties of the harem.
+It was not a surprise to be told that she was her son's most trusted
+adviser, and the chief authority in the palace. If such a woman deceived
+and intrigued it would be for great purposes and for ends she believed
+in: the depth of her soul had air and daylight in it, and she would
+never willingly shut them out.
+
+The Empress Mother chatted for a while with Mme. Lyautey, asking about
+the Resident General's health, enquiring for news of the war, and
+saying, with an emotion perceptible even through the unintelligible
+words: "All is well with Morocco as long as all is well with France."
+Then she withdrew, and we were summoned again to the _mirador_.
+
+This time it was to see a company of officers in brilliant uniforms
+advancing at a trot across the plain from Rabat. At sight of the figure
+that headed them, so slim, erect and young on his splendid chestnut,
+with a pale blue tunic barred by the wide orange ribbon of the Cherifian
+Order, salutes pealed forth again from the slope above the palace and
+the Black Guard presented arms. A moment later General Lyautey and his
+staff were riding in at the gates below us. On the threshold of the
+inner court they dismounted, and moving to the other side of our balcony
+we followed the next stage of the ceremony. The Sultan was still seated
+in the audience chamber. The court officials still stood drawn up in a
+snow-white line against the snow-white walls. The great dignitaries
+advanced across the tiles to greet the General; then they fell aside,
+and he went forward alone, followed at a little distance by his staff. A
+third of the way across the court he paused, in accordance with the
+Moroccan court ceremonial, and bowed in the direction of the arcaded
+room; a few steps farther he bowed again, and a third time on the
+threshold of the room. Then French uniforms and Moroccan draperies
+closed in about him, and all vanished into the shadows of the audience
+hall.
+
+Our audience too seemed to be over. We had exhausted the limited small
+talk of the harem, had learned from the young beauties that, though they
+were forbidden to look on at the ceremony, the dancers and singers would
+come to entertain them presently, and had begun to take leave when a
+negress hurried in to say that his Majesty begged Mme. Lyautey and her
+friends to await his arrival. This was the crowning incident of our
+visit, and I wondered with what Byzantine ritual the Anointed One fresh
+from the exercise of his priestly functions would be received among his
+women.
+
+The door opened, and without any announcement or other preliminary
+flourish a fat man with a pleasant face, his djellabah stretched over a
+portly front, walked in holding a little boy by the hand. Such was his
+Majesty the Sultan Moulay Youssef, despoiled of sacramental burnouses
+and turban, and shuffling along on bare yellow-slippered feet with the
+gait of a stout elderly gentleman who has taken off his boots in the
+passage preparatory to a domestic evening.
+
+The little Prince, one of his two legitimate sons, was dressed with
+equal simplicity, for silken garments are worn in Morocco only by
+musicians, boy-dancers and other hermaphrodite fry. With his ceremonial
+raiment the Sultan had put off his air of superhuman majesty, and the
+expression of his round pale face corresponded with the plainness of his
+dress. The favourites fluttered about him, respectful but by no means
+awestruck, and the youngest began to play with the little Prince. We
+could well believe the report that his was the happiest harem in
+Morocco, as well as the only one into which a breath of the outer world
+ever came.
+
+Moulay Youssef greeted Mme. Lyautey with friendly simplicity, made the
+proper speeches to her companions, and then, with the air of the
+business-man who has forgotten to give an order before leaving his
+office, he walked up to a corner of the room, and while the
+flower-maidens ruffled about him, and through the windows we saw the
+last participants in the mystic rites galloping away toward the
+crenellated walls of Rabat, his Majesty the Priest and Emperor of the
+Faithful unhooked a small instrument from the wall and applied his
+sacred lips to the telephone.
+
+
+IV
+
+IN OLD RABAT
+
+Before General Lyautey came to Morocco Rabat had been subjected to the
+indignity of European "improvements," and one must traverse boulevards
+scored with tram-lines, and pass between hotel-terraces and cafés and
+cinema-palaces, to reach the surviving nucleus of the once beautiful
+native town. Then, at the turn of a commonplace street, one comes upon
+it suddenly. The shops and cafés cease, the jingle of trams and the
+trumpeting of motor-horns die out, and here, all at once, are silence
+and solitude, and the dignified reticence of the windowless Arab
+house-fronts.
+
+We were bound for the house of a high government official, a Moroccan
+dignitary of the old school, who had invited us to tea, and added a
+message to the effect that the ladies of his household would be happy to
+receive me.
+
+The house we sought was some distance down the quietest of white-walled
+streets. Our companion knocked at a low green door, and we were admitted
+to a passage into which a wooden stairway descended. A brother-in-law of
+our host was waiting for us: in his wake we mounted the ladder-like
+stairs and entered a long room with a florid French carpet and a set of
+gilt furniture to match. There were no fretted walls, no painted cedar
+doors, no fountains rustling in unseen courts: the house was squeezed in
+between others, and such traces of old ornament as it may have possessed
+had vanished.
+
+But presently we saw why its inhabitants were indifferent to such
+details. Our host, a handsome white-bearded old man, welcomed us in the
+doorway; then he led us to a raised oriel window at one end of the room,
+and seated us in the gilt armchairs face to face with one of the most
+beautiful views in Morocco.
+
+Below us lay the white and blue terrace-roofs of the native town, with
+palms and minarets shooting up between them, or the shadows of a
+vine-trellis patterning a quiet lane. Beyond, the Atlantic sparkled,
+breaking into foam at the mouth of the Bou-Regreg and under the towering
+ramparts of the Kasbah of the Oudayas. To the right, the ruins of the
+great Mosque rose from their plateau over the river; and, on the farther
+side of the troubled flood, old Salé, white and wicked, lay like a jewel
+in its gardens. With such a scene beneath their eyes, the inhabitants of
+the house could hardly feel its lack of architectural interest.
+
+After exchanging the usual compliments, and giving us time to enjoy the
+view, our host withdrew, taking with him the men of our party. A moment
+later he reappeared with a rosy fair-haired girl, dressed in Arab
+costume, but evidently of European birth. The brother-in-law explained
+that this young woman, who had "studied in Algeria," and whose mother
+was French, was the intimate friend of the ladies of the household, and
+would act as interpreter. Our host then again left us, joining the men
+visitors in another room, and the door opened to admit his wife and
+daughters-in-law.
+
+The mistress of the house was a handsome Algerian with sad expressive
+eyes: the younger women were pale, fat and amiable. They all wore sober
+dresses, in keeping with the simplicity of the house, and but for the
+vacuity of their faces the group might have been that of a Professor's
+family in an English or American University town, decently costumed for
+an Arabian Nights' pageant in the college grounds. I was never more
+vividly reminded of the fact that human nature, from one pole to the
+other, falls naturally into certain categories, and that Respectability
+wears the same face in an Oriental harem as in England or America.
+
+My hostesses received me with the utmost amiability, we seated ourselves
+in the oriel facing the view, and the interchange of questions and
+compliments began.
+
+Had I any children? (They asked it all at once.)
+
+Alas, no.
+
+"In Islam" (one of the ladies ventured) "a woman without children is
+considered the most unhappy being in the world."
+
+I replied that in the western world also childless women were pitied.
+(The brother-in-law smiled incredulously.)
+
+Knowing that European fashions are of absorbing interest to the harem I
+next enquired: "What do these ladies think of our stiff tailor-dresses?
+Don't they find them excessively ugly?"
+
+"Yes, they do;" (it was again the brother-in-law who replied.) "But they
+suppose that in your own homes you dress less badly."
+
+"And have they never any desire to travel, or to visit the Bazaars, as
+the Turkish ladies do?"
+
+"No, indeed. They are too busy to give such matters a thought. In _our
+country_ women of the highest class occupy themselves with their
+household and their children, and the rest of their time is devoted to
+needlework." (At this statement I gave the brother-in-law a smile as
+incredulous as his own.)
+
+All this time the fair-haired interpretess had not been allowed by the
+vigilant guardian of the harem to utter a word.
+
+I turned to her with a question.
+
+"So your mother is French, _Mademoiselle_?"
+
+"_Oui, Madame._"
+
+"From what part of France did she come?"
+
+A bewildered pause. Finally: "I don't know ... from Switzerland, I
+think," brought out this shining example of the Higher Education. In
+spite of Algerian "advantages" the poor girl could speak only a few
+words of her mother's tongue. She had kept the European features and
+complexion, but her soul was the soul of Islam. The harem had placed its
+powerful imprint upon her, and she looked at me with the same remote and
+passive eyes as the daughters of the house.
+
+After struggling for a while longer with a conversation which the
+watchful brother-in-law continued to direct as he pleased. I felt my own
+lips stiffening into the resigned smile of the harem, and it was a
+relief when at last their guardian drove the pale flock away, and the
+handsome old gentleman who owned them reappeared on the scene, bringing
+back my friends, and followed by slaves and tea.
+
+
+V
+
+IN FEZ
+
+What thoughts, what speculations, one wonders, go on under the narrow
+veiled brows of the little creatures destined to the high honour of
+marriage or concubinage in Moroccan palaces?
+
+Some are brought down from mountains and cedar forests, from the free
+life of the tents where the nomad women go unveiled. Others come from
+harems in the turreted cities beyond the Atlas, where blue palm-groves
+beat all night against the stars and date-caravans journey across the
+desert from Timbuctoo. Some, born and bred in an airy palace among
+pomegranate gardens and white terraces, pass thence to one of the feudal
+fortresses near the snows, where for half the year the great chiefs of
+the south live in their clan, among fighting men and falconers and packs
+of _sloughis_. And still others grow up in a stifling Mellah, trip
+unveiled on its blue terraces overlooking the gardens of the great, and,
+seen one day at sunset by a fat vizier or his pale young master, are
+acquired for a handsome sum and transferred to the painted sepulchre of
+the harem.
+
+Worst of all must be the fate of those who go from tents and cedar
+forests, or from some sea-blown garden above Rabat, into one of the
+houses of Old Fez. They are well-nigh impenetrable, these palaces of
+Elbali: the Fazi dignitaries do not welcome the visits of strange women.
+On the rare occasions when they are received, a member of the family
+(one of the sons, or a brother-in-law who has "studied in Algeria")
+usually acts as interpreter; and perhaps it is as well that no one from
+the outer world should come to remind these listless creatures that
+somewhere the gulls dance on the Atlantic and the wind murmurs through
+olive-yards and clatters the metallic fronds of palm-groves.
+
+We had been invited, one day, to visit the harem of one of the chief
+dignitaries of the Makhzen at Fez, and these thoughts came to me as I
+sat among the pale women in their mouldering prison. The descent through
+the steep tunnelled streets gave one the sense of being lowered into the
+shaft of a mine. At each step the strip of sky grew narrower, and was
+more often obscured by the low vaulted passages into which we plunged.
+The noises of the Bazaar had died out, and only the sound of fountains
+behind garden walls and the clatter of our mules' hoofs on the stones
+went with us. Then fountains and gardens ceased also, the towering
+masonry closed in, and we entered an almost subterranean labyrinth which
+sun and air never reach. At length our mules turned into a _cul-de-sac_
+blocked by a high building. On the right was another building, one of
+those blind mysterious house-fronts of Fez that seem like a fragment of
+its ancient fortifications. Clients and servants lounged on the stone
+benches built into the wall; it was evidently the house of an important
+person. A charming youth with intelligent eyes waited on the threshold
+to receive us: he was one of the sons of the house, the one who had
+"studied in Algeria" and knew how to talk to visitors. We followed him
+into a small arcaded _patio_ hemmed in by the high walls of the house.
+On the right was the usual long room with archways giving on the court.
+Our host, a patriarchal personage, draped in fat as in a toga, came
+toward us, a mountain of majestic muslins, his eyes sparkling in a
+swarthy silver-bearded face. He seated us on divans and lowered his
+voluminous person to a heap of cushions on the step leading into the
+court; and the son who had studied in Algeria instructed a negress to
+prepare the tea.
+
+Across the _patio_ was another arcade closely hung with unbleached
+cotton. From behind it came the sound of chatter, and now and then a
+bare brown child in a scant shirt would escape, and be hurriedly pulled
+back with soft explosions of laughter, while a black woman came out to
+readjust the curtains.
+
+There were three of these negresses, splendid bronze creatures, wearing
+white djellabahs over bright-coloured caftans, striped scarves knotted
+about their large hips, and gauze turbans on their crinkled hair. Their
+wrists clinked with heavy silver bracelets, and big circular earrings
+danced in their purple ear-lobes. A languor lay on all the other inmates
+of the household, on the servants and hangers-on squatting in the shade
+under the arcade, on our monumental host and his smiling son; but the
+three negresses, vibrating with activity, rushed continually from the
+curtained chamber to the kitchen, and from the kitchen to the master's
+reception-room, bearing on their pinky-blue palms trays of Britannia
+metal with tall glasses and fresh bunches of mint, shouting orders to
+dozing menials, and calling to each other from opposite ends of the
+court; and finally the stoutest of the three, disappearing from view,
+reappeared suddenly on a pale green balcony overhead, where, profiled
+against a square of blue sky, she leaned over in a Veronese attitude and
+screamed down to the others like an excited parrot.
+
+In spite of their febrile activity and tropical bird-shrieks, we waited
+in vain for tea; and after a while our host suggested to his son that I
+might like to visit the ladies of the household. As I had expected, the
+young man led me across the _patio_, lifted the cotton hanging and
+introduced me into an apartment exactly like the one we had just left.
+Divans covered with striped mattress-ticking stood against the white
+walls, and on them sat seven or eight passive-looking women over whom a
+number of pale children scrambled.
+
+The eldest of the group, and evidently the mistress of the house,
+was an Algerian lady, probably of about fifty, with a sad and
+delicately-modelled face; the others were daughters, daughters-in-law
+and concubines. The latter word evokes to occidental ears images of
+sensual seduction which the Moroccan harem seldom realizes. All the
+ladies of this dignified official household wore the same look of
+somewhat melancholy respectability. In their stuffy curtained apartment
+they were like cellar-grown flowers, pale, heavy, fuller but frailer
+than the garden sort. Their dresses, rich but sober, the veils and
+diadems put on in honour of my visit, had a dignified dowdiness in odd
+contrast to the frivolity of the Imperial harem. But what chiefly struck
+me was the apathy of the younger women. I asked them if they had a
+garden, and they shook their heads wistfully, saying that there were no
+gardens in Old Fez. The roof was therefore their only escape: a roof
+overlooking acres and acres of other roofs, and closed in by the naked
+fortified mountains which stand about Fez like prison-walls.
+
+After a brief exchange of compliments silence fell. Conversing through
+interpreters is a benumbing process, and there are few points of contact
+between the open-air occidental mind and beings imprisoned in a
+conception of sexual and domestic life based on slave-service and
+incessant espionage. These languid women on their muslin cushions toil
+not, neither do they spin. The Moroccan lady knows little of cooking,
+needlework or any household arts. When her child is ill she can only
+hang it with amulets and wail over it; the great lady of the Fazi palace
+is as ignorant of hygiene as the peasant-woman of the _bled_. And all
+these colourless eventless lives depend on the favour of one fat
+tyrannical man, bloated with good living and authority, himself almost
+as inert and sedentary as his women, and accustomed to impose his whims
+on them ever since he ran about the same _patio_ as a little
+short-smocked boy.
+
+The redeeming point in this stagnant domesticity is the tenderness of
+the parents for their children, and western writers have laid so much
+stress on this that one would suppose children could be loved only by
+inert and ignorant parents. It is in fact charming to see the heavy eyes
+of the Moroccan father light up when a brown grasshopper baby jumps on
+his knee, and the unfeigned tenderness with which the childless women of
+the harem caress the babies of their happier rivals. But the
+sentimentalist moved by this display of family feeling would do well to
+consider the lives of these much-petted children. Ignorance,
+unhealthiness and a precocious sexual initiation prevail in all classes.
+Education consists in learning by heart endless passages of the Koran,
+and amusement in assisting at spectacles that would be unintelligible
+to western children, but that the pleasantries of the harem make
+perfectly comprehensible to Moroccan infancy. At eight or nine the
+little girls are married, at twelve the son of the house is "given his
+first negress"; and thereafter, in the rich and leisured class, both
+sexes live till old age in an atmosphere of sensuality without
+seduction.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from "France-Maroc"_
+
+Women watching a procession from a roof]
+
+The young son of the house led me back across the court, where the
+negresses were still shrieking and scurrying, and passing to and fro
+like a stage-procession with the vain paraphernalia of a tea that never
+came. Our host still smiled from his cushions, resigned to Oriental
+delays. To distract the impatient westerners, a servant unhooked from
+the wall the cage of a gently-cooing dove. It was brought to us, still
+cooing, and looked at me with the same resigned and vacant eyes as the
+ladies I had just left. As it was being restored to its hook the slaves
+lolling about the entrance scattered respectfully at the approach of a
+handsome man of about thirty, with delicate features and a black beard.
+Crossing the court, he stooped to kiss the shoulder of our host, who
+introduced him as his eldest son, the husband of one or two of the
+little pale wives with whom I had been exchanging platitudes.
+
+From the increasing agitation of the negresses it became evident that
+the ceremony of tea-making had been postponed till his arrival. A metal
+tray bearing a Britannia samovar and tea-pot was placed on the tiles of
+the court, and squatting beside it the newcomer gravely proceeded to
+infuse the mint. Suddenly the cotton hangings fluttered again, and a
+tiny child in the scantest of smocks rushed out and scampered across the
+court. Our venerable host, stretching out rapturous arms, caught the
+fugitive to his bosom, where the little boy lay like a squirrel,
+watching us with great sidelong eyes. He was the last-born of the
+patriarch, and the youngest brother of the majestic bearded gentleman
+engaged in tea-making. While he was still in his father's arms two more
+sons appeared: charming almond-eyed schoolboys returning from their
+Koran-class, escorted by their slaves. All the sons greeted each other
+affectionately, and caressed with almost feminine tenderness the dancing
+baby so lately added to their ranks; and finally, to crown this scene of
+domestic intimacy, the three negresses, their gigantic effort at last
+accomplished, passed about glasses of steaming mint and trays of
+gazelles' horns and white sugar-cakes.
+
+
+VI
+
+IN MARRAKECH
+
+The farther one travels from the Mediterranean and Europe the closer the
+curtains of the women's quarters are drawn. The only harem in which we
+were allowed an interpreter was that of the Sultan himself; in the
+private harems of Fez and Rabat a French-speaking relative transmitted
+(or professed to transmit) our remarks; in Marrakech, the great nobleman
+and dignitary who kindly invited me to visit his household was deaf to
+our hint that the presence of a lady from one of the French government
+schools might facilitate our intercourse.
+
+When we drove up to his palace, one of the stateliest in Marrakech, the
+street was thronged with clansmen and clients. Dignified merchants in
+white muslin, whose grooms held white mules saddled with rose-coloured
+velvet, warriors from the Atlas wearing the corkscrew ringlets which are
+a sign of military prowess, Jewish traders in black gabardines,
+leather-gaitered peasant-women with chickens and cheese, and beggars
+rolling their blind eyes or exposing their fly-plastered sores, were
+gathered in Oriental promiscuity about the great man's door; while under
+the archway stood a group of youths and warlike-looking older men who
+were evidently of his own clan.
+
+The Caïd's chamberlain, a middle-aged man of dignified appearance,
+advanced to meet us between bowing clients and tradesmen. He led us
+through cool passages lined with the intricate mosaic-work of Fez, past
+beggars who sat on stone benches whining out their blessings, and pale
+Fazi craftsmen laying a floor of delicate tiles. The Caïd is a lover of
+old Arab architecture. His splendid house, which is not yet finished,
+has been planned and decorated on the lines of the old Imperial palaces,
+and when a few years of sun and rain and Oriental neglect have worked
+their way on its cedar-wood and gilding and ivory stucco it will have
+the same faded loveliness as the fairy palaces of Fez.
+
+In a garden where fountains splashed and roses climbed among cypresses,
+the Caïd himself awaited us. This great fighter and loyal friend of
+France is a magnificent eagle-beaked man, brown, lean and sinewy, with
+vigilant eyes looking out under his carefully draped muslin turban, and
+negroid lips half-hidden by a close black beard.
+
+Tea was prepared in the familiar setting; a long arcaded room with
+painted ceiling and richly stuccoed walls. All around were ranged the
+usual mattresses covered with striped ticking and piled with muslin
+cushions. A bedstead of brass, imitating a Louis XVI cane bed, and
+adorned with brass garlands and bows, throned on the usual platform; and
+the only other ornaments were a few clocks and bunches of wax flowers
+under glass. Like all Orientals, this hero of the Atlas, who spends half
+his life with his fighting clansmen in a mediæval stronghold among the
+snows, and the other half rolling in a 60 h.p. motor over smooth French
+roads, seems unaware of any degrees of beauty or appropriateness in
+objects of European design, and places against the exquisite mosaics
+and traceries of his Fazi craftsmen the tawdriest bric-à-brac of the
+cheap department-store.
+
+While tea was being served I noticed a tiny negress, not more than six
+or seven years old, who stood motionless in the embrasure of an archway.
+Like most of the Moroccan slaves, even in the greatest households, she
+was shabbily, almost raggedly, dressed. A dirty _gandourah_ of striped
+muslin covered her faded caftan, and a cheap kerchief was wound above
+her grave and precocious little face. With preternatural vigilance she
+watched each movement of the Caïd, who never spoke to her, looked at
+her, or made her the slightest perceptible sign, but whose least wish
+she instantly divined, refilling his tea-cup, passing the plates of
+sweets, or removing our empty glasses, in obedience to some secret
+telegraphy on which her whole being hung.
+
+The Caïd is a great man. He and his famous elder brother, holding the
+southern marches of Morocco against alien enemies and internal
+rebellion, played a preponderant part in the defence of the French
+colonies in North Africa during the long struggle of the war.
+Enlightened, cultivated, a friend of the arts, a scholar and
+diplomatist, he seems, unlike many Orientals, to have selected the best
+in assimilating European influences. Yet when I looked at the tiny
+creature watching him with those anxious joyless eyes I felt once more
+the abyss that slavery and the seraglio put between the most
+Europeanized Mahometan and the western conception of life. The Caïd's
+little black slaves are well-known in Morocco, and behind the sad child
+leaning in the archway stood all the shadowy evils of the social system
+that hangs like a millstone about the neck of Islam.
+
+Presently a handsome tattered negress came across the garden to invite
+me to the harem. Captain de S. and his wife, who had accompanied me,
+were old friends of the Chief's, and it was owing to this that the
+jealously-guarded doors of the women's quarters were opened to Mme de S.
+and myself. We followed the negress to a marble-paved court where
+pigeons fluttered and strutted about the central fountain. From under a
+trellised arcade hung with linen curtains several ladies came forward.
+They greeted my companion with exclamations of delight; then they led us
+into the usual commonplace room with divans and whitewashed walls. Even
+in the most sumptuous Moroccan palaces little care seems to be expended
+on the fittings of the women's quarters: unless, indeed, the room in
+which visitors are received corresponds with a boarding-school
+"parlour," and the personal touch is reserved for the private
+apartments.
+
+The ladies who greeted us were more richly dressed than any I had seen
+except the Sultan's favourites; but their faces were more distinguished,
+more European in outline, than those of the round-cheeked beauties of
+Rabat. My companions had told me that the Caïd's harem was recruited
+from Georgia, and that the ladies receiving us had been brought up in
+the relative freedom of life in Constantinople; and it was easy to read
+in their wistfully smiling eyes memories of a life unknown to the
+passive daughters of Morocco.
+
+They appeared to make no secret of their regrets, for presently one of
+them, with a smile, called my attention to some faded photographs
+hanging over the divan. They represented groups of plump
+provincial-looking young women in dowdy European ball-dresses; and it
+required an effort of the imagination to believe that the lovely
+creatures in velvet caftans, with delicately tattooed temples under
+complicated head-dresses, and hennaed feet crossed on muslin cushions,
+were the same as the beaming frumps in the photographs. But to the
+sumptuously-clad exiles these faded photographs and ugly dresses
+represented freedom, happiness, and all they had forfeited when fate
+(probably in the shape of an opulent Hebrew couple "travelling with
+their daughters") carried them from the Bosphorus to the Atlas.
+
+As in the other harems I had visited, perfect equality seemed to prevail
+between the ladies, and while they chatted with Mme de S. whose few
+words of Arabic had loosed their tongues, I tried to guess which was the
+favourite, or at least the first in rank. My choice wavered between the
+pretty pale creature with a _ferronnière_ across her temples and a
+tea-rose caftan veiled in blue gauze, and the nut-brown beauty in red
+velvet hung with pearls whose languid attitudes and long-lidded eyes
+were so like the Keepsake portraits of Byron's Haïdee. Or was it perhaps
+the third, less pretty but more vivid and animated, who sat behind the
+tea-tray, and mimicked so expressively a soldier shouldering his rifle,
+and another falling dead, in her effort to ask us "when the dreadful war
+would be over"? Perhaps ... unless, indeed, it were the handsome
+octoroon, slightly older than the others, but even more richly dressed,
+so free and noble in her movements, and treated by the others with such
+friendly deference.
+
+I was struck by the fact that among them all there was not a child; it
+was the first harem without babies that I had seen in that prolific
+land. Presently one of the ladies asked Mme. de S. about her children;
+in reply, she enquired for the Caïd's little boy, the son of his wife
+who had died. The ladies' faces lit up wistfully, a slave was given an
+order, and presently a large-eyed ghost of a child was brought into the
+room.
+
+Instantly all the bracelet-laden arms were held out to the dead woman's
+son; and as I watched the weak little body hung with amulets and the
+heavy head covered with thin curls pressed against a brocaded bosom, I
+was reminded of one of the coral-hung child-Christs of Crivelli,
+standing livid and waxen on the knee of a splendidly dressed Madonna.
+
+The poor baby on whom such hopes and ambitions hung stared at us with a
+solemn unamused gaze. Would all his pretty mothers, his eyes seemed to
+ask, succeed in bringing him to maturity in spite of the parched summers
+of the south and the stifling existence of the harem? It was evident
+that no precaution had been neglected to protect him from maleficent
+influences and the danger that walks by night, for his frail neck and
+wrists were hung with innumerable charms: Koranic verses, Soudanese
+incantations, and images of forgotten idols in amber and coral and horn
+and ambergris. Perhaps they will ward off the powers of evil, and let
+him grow up to shoulder the burden of the great Caïds of the south.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[20] The _msalla_ is used for the performance of religious ceremonies
+when the crowd is too great to be contained in the court of the mosque.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+GENERAL LYAUTEY'S WORK IN MOROCCO
+
+
+I
+
+It is not too much to say that General Lyautey has twice saved Morocco
+from destruction: once in 1912, when the inertia and double-dealing of
+Abd-el-Hafid abandoned the country to the rebellious tribes who had
+attacked him in Fez, and the second time in August, 1914, when Germany
+declared war on France.
+
+In 1912, in consequence of the threatening attitude of the dissident
+tribes and the generally disturbed condition of the country, the Sultan
+Abd-el-Hafid had asked France to establish a protectorate in Morocco.
+The agreement entered into, called the "Convention of Fez," stipulated
+that a French Resident-General should be sent to Morocco with authority
+to act as the Sultan's sole representative in treating with the other
+powers. The convention was signed in March, 1912, and a few days
+afterward an uprising more serious than any that had gone before took
+place in Fez. This sudden outbreak was due in part to purely local and
+native difficulties, in part to the intrinsic weakness of the French
+situation. The French government had imagined that a native army
+commanded by French officers could be counted on to support the Makhzen
+and maintain order; but Abd-el-Hafid's growing unpopularity had
+estranged his own people from him, and the army turned on the government
+and on the French. On the 17th of April, 1912, the Moroccan soldiers
+massacred their French officers after inflicting horrible tortures on
+them; the population of Fez rose against the European civilians, and for
+a fortnight the Oued Fez ran red with the blood of harmless French
+colonists. It was then that France appointed General Lyautey
+Resident-General in Morocco.
+
+When he reached Fez it was besieged by twenty thousand Berbers. Rebel
+tribes were flocking in to their support, to the cry of the Holy War;
+and the terrified Sultan, who had already announced his intention of
+resigning, warned the French troops who were trying to protect him that
+unless they guaranteed to get him safely to Rabat he would turn his
+influence against them. Two days afterward the Berbers attacked Fez and
+broke in at two gates. The French drove them out and forced them back
+twenty miles. The outskirts of the city were rapidly fortified, and a
+few weeks later General Gouraud, attacking the rebels in the valley of
+the Sebou, completely disengaged Fez.
+
+The military danger overcome, General Lyautey began his great task of
+civilian administration. His aim was to support and strengthen the
+existing government, to reassure and pacify the distrustful and
+antagonistic elements, and to assert French authority without irritating
+or discouraging native ambitions.
+
+Meanwhile a new Mahdi (Ahmed-el-Hiba) had risen in the south.
+Treacherously supported by Abd-el-Hafid, he was proclaimed Sultan at
+Tiznit, and acknowledged by the whole of the Souss. In Marrakech, native
+unrest had caused the Europeans to fly to the coast, and in the north a
+new group of rebellious tribes menaced Fez.
+
+El-Hiba entered Marrakech in August, 1912, and the French consul and
+several other French residents were taken prisoner. El-Hiba's forces
+then advanced to a point half way between Marrakech and Mazagan, where
+General Mangin, at that time a colonial colonel, met and utterly routed
+them. The disorder in the south, and the appeals of the native
+population for protection against the savage depredations of the new
+Mahdist rebels, made it necessary for the French troops to follow up
+their success; and in September Marrakech was taken.
+
+Such were the swift and brilliant results of General Lyautey's
+intervention. The first difficulties had been quickly overcome; others,
+far more complicated, remained. The military occupation of Morocco had
+to be followed up by its civil reorganization. By the Franco-German
+treaty of 1911 Germany had finally agreed to recognize the French
+protectorate in Morocco; but in spite of an apparently explicit
+acknowledgment of this right, Germany, as usual, managed to slip into
+the contract certain ambiguities of form that were likely to lead to
+future trouble.
+
+To obtain even this incomplete treaty France had had to sacrifice part
+of her colonies in equatorial Africa; and in addition to the uncertain
+relation with Germany there remained the dead weight of the Spanish zone
+and the confused international administration of Tangier. The
+disastrously misgoverned Spanish zone has always been a centre for
+German intrigue and native conspiracies, as well as a permanent obstacle
+to the economic development of Morocco.
+
+Such were the problems that General Lyautey found awaiting him. A long
+colonial experience, and an unusual combination of military and
+administrative talents, prepared him for the almost impossible task of
+dealing with them. Swift and decisive when military action is required,
+he has above all the long views and endless patience necessary to the
+successful colonial governor. The policy of France in Morocco has been
+weak and spasmodic; in his hands it became firm and consecutive. A
+sympathetic understanding of the native prejudices, and a real affection
+for the native character, made him try to build up an administration
+which should be, not an application of French ideas to African
+conditions, but a development of the best native aspirations. The
+difficulties were immense. The attempt to govern as far as possible
+through the Great Chiefs was a wise one; but it was hampered by the fact
+that these powerful leaders, however loyal to the Protectorate, knew no
+methods of administration but those based on extortion. It was necessary
+at once to use them and to educate them; and one of General Lyautey's
+greatest achievements has been the successful employment of native
+ability in the government of the country.
+
+
+II
+
+The first thing to do was to create a strong frontier against the
+dissident tribes of the Blad-es-Siba. To do this it was necessary that
+the French should hold the natural defenses of the country, the
+foothills of the Little and of the Great Atlas, and the valley of the
+Moulouya, which forms the corridor between western Algeria and Morocco.
+This was nearly accomplished in 1914 when war broke out.
+
+At that moment the home government cabled the Resident-General to send
+all his available troops to France, abandoning the whole of conquered
+territory except the coast towns. To do so would have been to give
+France's richest colonies[21] outright to Germany at a moment when what
+they could supply--meat and wheat--was exactly what the enemy most
+needed.
+
+General Lyautey took forty-eight hours to consider. He then decided to
+"empty the egg without breaking the shell"; and the reply he sent was
+that of a great patriot and a great general. In effect he said: "I will
+give you all the troops you ask, but instead of abandoning the interior
+of the country I will hold what we have already taken, and fortify and
+enlarge our boundaries." No other military document has so nearly that
+ring as Marshal Foch's immortal Marne despatch (written only a few weeks
+later): "My centre is broken, my right wing is wavering, the situation
+is favorable and I am about to attack."
+
+General Lyautey had framed his answer in a moment of patriotic
+exaltation, when the soul of every Frenchman was strung up to a
+superhuman pitch. But the pledge once made, it had to be carried out;
+and even those who most applauded his decision wondered how he would
+meet the almost insuperable difficulties it involved. Morocco, when he
+was called there, was already honey-combed by German trading interests
+and secret political intrigue, and the fruit seemed ready to fall when
+the declaration of war shook the bough. The only way to save the colony
+for France was to keep its industrial and agricultural life going, and
+give to the famous "business as usual" a really justifiable application.
+
+General Lyautey completely succeeded, and the first impression of all
+travellers arriving in Morocco two years later was that of suddenly
+returning to a world in normal conditions. There was even, so complete
+was the illusion, a first moment of almost painful surprise on entering
+an active prosperous community, seemingly absorbed in immediate material
+interests to the exclusion of all thought of the awful drama that was
+being played out in the mother country; and it was only on reflection
+that this absorption in the day's task, and this air of smiling faith
+in the future, were seen to be Morocco's truest way of serving France.
+
+For not only was France to be supplied with provisions, but the
+confidence in her ultimate triumph was at all costs to be kept up in the
+native mind. German influence was as deep-seated as a cancer: to cut it
+out required the most drastic of operations. And that operation
+consisted precisely in letting it be seen that France was strong and
+prosperous enough for her colonies to thrive and expand without fear
+while she held at bay on her own frontier the most formidable foe the
+world has ever seen. Such was the "policy of the smile," consistently
+advocated by General Lyautey from the beginning of the war, and of which
+he and his household were the first to set the example.
+
+
+III
+
+The General had said that he would not "break the egg-shell"; but he
+knew that this was not enough, and that he must make it appear
+unbreakable if he were to retain the confidence of the natives.
+
+How this was achieved, with the aid of the few covering troops left him,
+is still almost incomprehensible. To hold the line was virtually
+impossible: therefore he pushed it forward. An anonymous writer in
+_L'Afrique Française_ (January, 1917) has thus described the
+manoeuvre: "General Henrys was instructed to watch for storm-signals
+on the front, to stop up the cracks, to strengthen weak points and to
+rectify doubtful lines. Thanks to these operations, which kept the
+rebels perpetually harassed by always forestalling their own plans, the
+occupied territory was enlarged by a succession of strongly fortified
+positions." While this was going on in the north, General Lamothe was
+extending and strengthening, by means of pacific negotiations, the
+influence of the Great Chiefs in the south; and other agents of the
+Residency were engaged in watching and thwarting the incessant German
+intrigues in the Spanish zone.
+
+General Lyautey is quoted as having said that "a work-shop is worth a
+battalion." This precept he managed to put into action even during the
+first dark days of 1914, and the interior development of Morocco
+proceeded side by side with the strengthening of its defenses. Germany
+had long foreseen what an asset northwest Africa would be during the
+war; and General Lyautey was determined to prove how right Germany had
+been. He did so by getting the government, to whom he had given nearly
+all his troops, to give him in exchange an agricultural and industrial
+army, or at least enough specialists to form such an army out of the
+available material in the country. For every battle fought a road was
+made;[22] for every rebel fortress shelled a factory was built, a harbor
+developed, or more miles of fallow land ploughed and sown.
+
+But this economic development did not satisfy the Resident. He wished
+Morocco to enlarge her commercial relations with France and the other
+allied countries, and with this object in view he organized and carried
+out with brilliant success a series of exhibitions at Casablanca, Fez
+and Rabat. The result of this bold policy surpassed even its creator's
+hopes. The Moroccans of the plain are an industrious and money-loving
+people, and the sight of these rapidly improvised exhibitions, where the
+industrial and artistic products of France and other European countries
+were shown in picturesque buildings grouped about flower-filled gardens,
+fascinated their imagination and strengthened their confidence in the
+country that could find time for such an effort in the midst of a great
+war. The Voice of the Bazaar carried the report to the farthest confines
+of Moghreb, and one by one the notabilities of the different tribes
+arrived, with delegations from Algeria and Tunisia. It was even said
+that several rebel chiefs had submitted to the Makhzen in order not to
+miss the Exhibition.
+
+At the same time as the "Miracle of the Marne" another, less famous but
+almost as vital to France, was being silently performed at the other
+end of her dominions. It will not seem an exaggeration to speak of
+General Lyautey's achievement during the first year of the war as the
+"Miracle of Morocco" if one considers the immense importance of doing
+what he did at the moment when he did it. And to understand this it is
+only needful to reckon what Germany could have drawn in supplies and men
+from a German North Africa, and what would have been the situation of
+France during the war with a powerful German colony in control of the
+western Mediterranean.
+
+General Lyautey has always been one of the clear-sighted administrators
+who understand that the successful government of a foreign country
+depends on many little things, and not least on the administrator's
+genuine sympathy with the traditions, habits and tastes of the people. A
+keen feeling for beauty had prepared him to appreciate all that was most
+exquisite and venerable in the Arab art of Morocco, and even in the
+first struggle with political and military problems he found time to
+gather about him a group of archæologists and artists who were charged
+with the inspection and preservation of the national monuments and the
+revival of the languishing native art-industries. The old pottery,
+jewelry, metal-work, rugs and embroideries of the different regions were
+carefully collected and classified; schools of decorative art were
+founded, skilled artisans sought out, and every effort was made to urge
+European residents to follow native models and use native artisans in
+building and furnishing.
+
+At the various Exhibitions much space was allotted to these revived
+industries, and the matting of Salé, the rugs of Rabat, the embroideries
+of Fez and Marrakech have already found a ready market in France,
+besides awakening in the educated class of colonists an appreciation of
+the old buildings and the old arts of the country that will be its
+surest safeguard against the destructive effects of colonial expansion.
+It is only necessary to see the havoc wrought in Tunisia and Algeria by
+the heavy hand of the colonial government to know what General Lyautey
+has achieved in saving Morocco from this form of destruction, also.
+
+All this has been accomplished by the Resident-General during five years
+of unexampled and incessant difficulty; and probably the true
+explanation of the miracle is that which he himself gives when he says,
+with the quiet smile that typifies his Moroccan war-policy: "It was easy
+to do because I loved the people."
+
+
+
+THE WORK OF THE FRENCH PROTECTORATE, 1912-1918
+
+
+PORTS
+
+Owing to the fact that the neglected and roadless Spanish zone
+intervened between the French possessions and Tangier, which is the
+natural port of Morocco, one of the first pre-occupations of General
+Lyautey was to make ports along the inhospitable Atlantic coast, where
+there are no natural harbours.
+
+Since 1912, in spite of the immense cost and the difficulty of obtaining
+labour, the following has been done:
+
+_Casablanca._ A jetty 1900 metres long has been planned: 824 metres
+finished December, 1917.
+
+Small jetty begun 1916, finished 1917: length 330 metres. Small harbour
+thus created shelters small boats (150 tons) in all weathers.
+
+Quays 747 metres long already finished.
+
+16 steam-cranes working.
+
+Warehouses and depots covering 41,985 square metres completed.
+
+_Rabat._ Work completed December, 1917.
+
+A quay 200 metres long, to which boats with a draught of three metres
+can tie up.
+
+Two groups of warehouses, steam-cranes, etc., covering 22,600 square
+metres.
+
+A quay 100 metres long on the Salé side of the river.
+
+_Kenitra._ The port of Kenitra is at the mouth of the Sebou River, and
+is capable of becoming a good river port.
+
+The work up to December, 1917, comprises:
+
+A channel 100 metres long and three metres deep, cut through the bar of
+the Sebou.
+
+Jetties built on each side of the channel.
+
+Quay 100 metres long.
+
+Building of sheds, depots, warehouses, steam-cranes, etc.
+
+At the ports of Fedalah, Mazagan, Safi, Mogador and Agadir similar plans
+are in course of execution.
+
+
+COMMERCE
+
+COMPARATIVE TABLES
+
+     1912                 1918
+
+Total Commerce       Total Commerce
+Fcs. 177,737,723     Fcs. 386,238,618
+
+    Exports              Exports
+Fcs. 67,080,383      Fcs. 116,148,081
+
+
+ROADS BUILT
+
+National roads        2,074 kilometres
+
+Secondary roads         569    "
+
+
+RAILWAYS BUILT
+
+622 kilometres
+
+
+LAND CULTIVATED
+
+     1915                  1918
+
+Approximate area      Approximate area
+
+21,165.17 hectares    1,681,308.03 hectares
+
+
+JUSTICE
+
+1. Creation of French courts for French nationals and those under French
+protection. These take cognizance of civil cases where both parties, or
+even one, are amenable to French jurisdiction.
+
+2. Moroccan law is Moslem, and administered by Moslem magistrates.
+Private law, including that of inheritance, is based on the Koran. The
+Sultan has maintained the principle whereby real property and
+administrative cases fall under native law. These courts are as far as
+possible supervised and controlled by the establishment of a Cherifian
+Ministry of Justice to which the native Judges are responsible. Special
+care is taken to prevent the alienation of property held collectively,
+or any similar transactions likely to produce political and economic
+disturbances.
+
+3. Criminal jurisdiction is delegated to Pashas and Cadis by the Sultan,
+except of offenses committed against, or in conjunction with, French
+nationals and those under French protection. Such cases come before the
+tribunals of the French Protectorate.
+
+
+EDUCATION
+
+The object of the Protectorate has been, on the one hand, to give to the
+children of French colonists in Morocco the same education as they would
+have received at elementary and secondary schools in France; on the
+other, to provide the indigenous population with a system of education
+that shall give to the young Moroccans an adequate commercial or manual
+training, or prepare them for administrative posts, but without
+interfering with their native customs or beliefs.
+
+Before 1912 there existed in Morocco only a few small schools supported
+by the French Legation at Tangier and by the Alliance Française, and a
+group of Hebrew schools in the Mellahs, maintained by the Universal
+Israelite Alliance.
+
+1912.  Total number of schools             37
+1918.    "     "    "     "               191
+1912.  Total number of pupils            3006
+1918.    "     "    "     "            21,520
+1912.  Total number of teachers            61
+1918.    "     "    "     "               668
+
+In addition to the French and indigenous schools, sewing-schools have
+been formed for the native girls and have been exceptionally successful.
+
+Moslem colleges have been founded at Rabat and Fez in order to
+supplement the native education of young Mahometans of the upper
+classes, who intend to take up wholesale business or banking, or prepare
+for political, judicial or administrative posts under the Sultan's
+government. The course lasts four years and comprises: Arabic, French,
+mathematics, history, geography, religious (Mahometan) instruction, and
+the law of the Koran.
+
+The "Ecole Supérieure de la langue arabe et des dialectes berbères" at
+Rabat receives European and Moroccan students. The courses are: Arabic,
+the Berber dialects, Arab literature, ethnography, administrative
+Moroccan law, Moslem law, Berber customary law.
+
+
+MEDICAL AID
+
+The Protectorate has established 113 medical centres for the native
+population, ranging from simple dispensaries and small native
+infirmaries to the important hospitals of Rabat, Fez, Meknez, Marrakech,
+and Casablanca.
+
+Mobile sanitary formations supplied with light motor ambulances travel
+about the country, vaccinating, making tours of sanitary inspection,
+investigating infected areas, and giving general hygienic education
+throughout the remoter regions.
+
+Native patients treated in 1916     over  900,000
+   "      "        "    "  1917       " 1,220,800
+
+Night-shelters in towns. Every town is provided with a shelter for the
+indigent wayfarers so numerous in Morocco. These shelters are used as
+disinfection centres, from which suspicious cases are sent to
+quarantine camp at the gates of the towns.
+
+_Central Laboratory at Rabat._ This is a kind of Pasteur Institute. In
+1917, 210,000 persons were vaccinated throughout the country and 356
+patients treated at the Laboratory for rabies.
+
+_Clinics for venereal diseases_ have been established at Casablanca,
+Fez, Rabat, and Marrakech.
+
+More than 15,000 cases were treated in 1917.
+
+_Ophthalmic clinics_ in the same cities gave in 1917, 44,600
+consultations.
+
+_Radiotherapy._ Clinics have been opened at Fez and Rabat for the
+treatment of skin diseases of the head, from which the native children
+habitually suffer.
+
+The French Department of Health distributes annually immense quantities
+of quinine in the malarial districts.
+
+Madame Lyautey's private charities comprise admirably administered
+child-welfare centres in the principal cities, with dispensaries for the
+native mothers and children.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[21] The loss of Morocco would inevitably have been followed by that of
+the whole of French North Africa.
+
+[22] During the first year of the war roads were built in Morocco by
+German prisoners; and it was because Germany was so thoroughly aware of
+the economic value of the country, and so anxious not to have her
+prestige diminished, that she immediately protested, on the absurd plea
+of the unwholesomeness of the climate, and threatened reprisals unless
+the prisoners were withdrawn.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+A SKETCH OF MOROCCAN HISTORY
+
+NOTE.--In the chapters on Moroccan history and art I have tried to set
+down a slight and superficial outline of a large and confused subject.
+In extenuation of this summary attempt I hasten to explain that its
+chief merit is its lack of originality.
+
+Its facts are chiefly drawn from the books mentioned in the short
+bibliography at the end of the volume; in addition to which I am deeply
+indebted for information given on the spot to the group of remarkable
+specialists attached to the French administration, and to the cultivated
+and cordial French officials, military and civilian, who, at each stage
+of my rapid journey, did their best to answer my questions and open my
+eyes.
+
+
+I
+
+THE BERBERS
+
+In the briefest survey of the Moroccan past account must first of all be
+taken of the factor which, from the beginning of recorded events, has
+conditioned the whole history of North Africa: the existence, from the
+Sahara to the Mediterranean, of a mysterious irreducible indigenous race
+with which every successive foreign rule, from Carthage to France, has
+had to reckon, and which has but imperfectly and partially assimilated
+the language, the religion, and the culture that successive
+civilizations have tried to impose upon it.
+
+This race, the race of Berbers, has never, modern explorers tell us,
+become really Islamite, any more than it ever really became Phenician,
+Roman or Vandal. It has imposed its habits while it appeared to adopt
+those of its invaders, and has perpetually represented, outside the
+Ismalitic and Hispano-Arabic circle of the Makhzen, the vast tormenting
+element of the dissident, the rebellious, the unsubdued tribes of the
+Blad-es-Siba.
+
+Who were these indigenous tribes with whom the Phenicians, when they
+founded their first counting-houses on the north and west coast of
+Africa, exchanged stuffs and pottery and arms for ivory,
+ostrich-feathers and slaves?
+
+Historians frankly say they do not know. All sorts of material obstacles
+have hitherto hampered the study of Berber origins; but it seems clear
+that from the earliest historic times they were a mixed race, and the
+ethnologist who attempts to define them is faced by the same problem as
+the historian of modern America who should try to find the racial
+definition of an "American." For centuries, for ages, North Africa has
+been what America now is: the clearing-house of the world. When at
+length it occurred to the explorer that the natives of North Africa were
+not all Arabs or Moors, he was bewildered by the many vistas of all they
+were or might be: so many and tangled were the threads leading up to
+them, so interwoven was their pre-Islamite culture with worn-out shreds
+of older and richer societies.
+
+M. Saladin, in his "Manuel d'Architecture Musulmane," after attempting
+to unravel the influences which went to the making of the mosque of
+Kairouan, the walls of Marrakech, the Medersas of Fez--influences that
+lead him back to Chaldæan branch-huts, to the walls of Babylon and the
+embroideries of Coptic Egypt--somewhat despairingly sums up the result:
+"The principal elements contributed to Moslem art by the styles
+preceding it may be thus enumerated: from India, floral ornament; from
+Persia, the structural principles of the Acheminedes, and the Sassanian
+vault. Mesopotamia contributes a system of vaulting, incised ornament,
+and proportion; the Copts, ornamental detail in general; Egypt, mass and
+unbroken wall-spaces; Spain, construction and Romano-Iberian ornament;
+Africa, decorative detail and Romano-Berber traditions (with Byzantine
+influences in Persia); Asia Minor, a mixture of Byzantine and Persian
+characteristics."
+
+As with the art of North Africa, so with its supposedly indigenous
+population. The Berber dialects extend from the Lybian desert to
+Senegal. Their language was probably related to Coptic, itself related
+to the ancient Egyptian and the non-Semitic dialects of Abyssinia and
+Nubia. Yet philologists have discovered what appears to be a far-off
+link between the Berber and Semitic languages, and the Chleuhs of the
+Draa and the Souss, with their tall slim Egyptian-looking bodies and
+hooked noses, may have a strain of Semitic blood. M. Augustin Bernard,
+in speaking of the natives of North Africa, ends, much on the same note
+as M. Saladin in speaking of Moslem art: "In their blood are the
+sediments of many races, Phenician, Punic, Egyptian and Arab."
+
+They were not, like the Arabs, wholly nomadic; but the tent, the flock,
+the tribe always entered into their conception of life. M. Augustin
+Bernard has pointed out that, in North Africa, the sedentary and nomadic
+habit do not imply a permanent difference, but rather a temporary one of
+situation and opportunity. The sedentary Berbers are nomadic in certain
+conditions; and from the earliest times the invading nomad Berbers
+tended to become sedentary when they reached the rich plains north of
+the Atlas. But when they built cities it was as their ancestors and
+their neighbours pitched tents; and they destroyed or abandoned them as
+lightly as their desert forbears packed their camel-bags and moved to
+new pastures. Everywhere behind the bristling walls and rock-clamped
+towers of old Morocco lurks the shadowy spirit of instability. Every new
+Sultan builds himself a new house and lets his predecessors' palaces
+fall into decay; and as with the Sultan so with his vassals and
+officials. Change is the rule in this apparently unchanged civilization,
+where "nought may abide but Mutability."
+
+
+II
+
+PHENICIANS, ROMANS AND VANDALS
+
+Far to the south of the Anti-Atlas, in the yellow deserts that lead to
+Timbuctoo, live the wild Touaregs, the Veiled Men of the south, who ride
+to war with their faces covered by linen masks.
+
+These Veiled Men are Berbers; but their alphabet is composed of Lybian
+characters, and these are closely related to the signs engraved on
+certain vases of the Nile valley that are probably six thousand years
+old. Moreover, among the rock-cut images of the African desert is the
+likeness of Theban Ammon crowned with the solar disk between serpents;
+and the old Berber religion, with its sun and animal worship, has many
+points of resemblance with Egyptian beliefs. All this implies trade
+contacts far below the horizon of history, and obscure comings and
+goings of restless throngs across incredible distances long before the
+Phenicians planted their first trading posts on the north African coast
+about 1200 B. C.
+
+Five hundred years before Christ, Carthage sent one of her admirals on a
+voyage of colonization beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Hannon set out
+with sixty fifty-oared galleys carrying thirty thousand people. Some of
+them settled at Mehedyia, at the mouth of the Sebou, where Phenician
+remains have been found; and apparently the exploration was pushed as
+far south as the coast of Guinea, for the inscription recording it
+relates that Hannon beheld elephants, hairy men and "savages called
+gorillas." At any rate, Carthage founded stable colonies at Melilla,
+Larache, Salé and Casablanca.
+
+Then came the Romans, who carried on the business, set up one of their
+easy tolerant protectorates over "Tingitanian Mauretania,"[23] and built
+one important military outpost, Volubilis in the Zerhoun, which a series
+of minor defenses probably connected with Salé on the west coast, thus
+guarding the Roman province against the unconquered Berbers to the
+south.
+
+Tingitanian Mauretania was one of the numerous African granaries of
+Rome. She also supplied the Imperial armies with their famous African
+cavalry; and among minor articles of exportation were guinea-hens,
+snails, honey, euphorbia, wild beasts, horses and pearls. The Roman
+dominion ceased at the line drawn between Volubilis and Salé. There was
+no interest in pushing farther south, since the ivory and slave trade
+with the Soudan was carried on by way of Tripoli. But the spirit of
+enterprise never slept in the race, and Pliny records the journey of a
+Roman general--Suetonius Paulinus--who appears to have crossed the
+Atlas, probably by the pass of Tizi-n-Telremt, which is even now so
+beset with difficulties that access by land to the Souss will remain an
+arduous undertaking until the way by Imintanout is safe for European
+travel.
+
+The Vandals swept away the Romans in the fifth century. The Lower Empire
+restored a brief period of civilization; but its authority finally
+dwindled to the half-legendary rule of Count Julian, shut up within his
+walls of Ceuta. Then Europe vanished from the shores of Africa; and
+though Christianity lingered here and there in vague Donatist colonies,
+and in the names of Roman bishoprics, its last faint hold went down in
+the eighth century before the irresistible cry: "There is no God but
+Allah!"
+
+
+III
+
+THE ARAB CONQUEST
+
+The first Arab invasion of Morocco is said to have reached the Atlantic
+coast; but it left no lasting traces, and the real Islamisation of
+Barbary did not happen till near the end of the eighth century, when a
+descendant of Ali, driven from Mesopotamia by the Caliphate, reached the
+mountains above Volubilis and there founded an empire. The Berbers,
+though indifferent in religious matters, had always, from a spirit of
+independence, tended to heresy and schism. Under the rule of Christian
+Rome they had been Donatists, as M. Bernard puts it, "out of opposition
+to the Empire"; and so, out of opposition to the Caliphate, they took up
+the cause of one Moslem schismatic after another. Their great popular
+movements have always had a religious basis, or perhaps it would be
+truer to say, a religious pretext; for they have been in reality the
+partly moral, partly envious revolt of hungry and ascetic warrior tribes
+against the fatness and corruption of the "cities of the plain."
+
+Idriss I became the first national saint and ruler of Morocco. His rule
+extended throughout northern Morocco, and his son, Idriss II, attacking
+a Berber tribe on the banks of the Oued Fez, routed them, took
+possession of their oasis and founded the city of Fez. Thither came
+schismatic refugees from Kairouan and Moors from Andalusia. The Islamite
+Empire of Morocco was founded, and Idriss II has become the legendary
+ancestor of all its subsequent rulers.
+
+The Idrissite rule is a welter of obscure struggles between rapidly
+melting groups of adherents. Its chief features are: the founding of
+Moulay Idriss and Fez, and the building of the mosques of El Andalous
+and Kairouiyin at Fez for the two groups of refugees from Tunisia and
+Spain. Meanwhile the Caliphate of Cordova had reached the height of its
+power, while that of the Fatimites extended from the Nile to western
+Morocco, and the little Idrissite empire, pulverized under the weight of
+these expanding powers, became once more a dust of disintegrated tribes.
+
+It was only in the eleventh century that the dust again conglomerated.
+Two Arab tribes from the desert of the Hedjaz, suddenly driven westward
+by the Fatimites, entered Morocco, not with a small military expedition,
+as the Arabs had hitherto done, but with a horde of emigrants reckoned
+as high as 200,000 families; and this first colonizing expedition was
+doubtless succeeded by others.
+
+To strengthen their hold in Morocco the Arab colonists embraced the
+dynastic feuds of the Berbers. They inaugurated a period of general
+havoc which destroyed what little prosperity had survived the break-up
+of the Idrissite rule, and many Berber tribes took refuge in the
+mountains; but others remained and were merged with the invaders,
+reforming into new tribes of mixed Berber and Arab blood. This invasion
+was almost purely destructive; it marks one of the most desolate periods
+in the progress of the "wasteful Empire" of Moghreb.
+
+
+IV
+
+ALMORAVIDS AND ALMOHADS
+
+While the Hilalian Arabs were conquering and destroying northern Morocco
+another but more fruitful invasion was upon her from the south. The
+Almoravids, one of the tribes of Veiled Men of the south, driven by the
+usual mixture of religious zeal and lust of booty, set out to invade the
+rich black kingdoms north of the Sahara. Thence they crossed the Atlas
+under their great chief, Youssef-ben-Tachfin, and founded the city of
+Marrakech in 1062. From Marrakech they advanced on Idrissite Fez and the
+valley of the Moulouya. Fez rose against her conquerors, and Youssef
+put all the male inhabitants to death. By 1084 he was master of Tangier
+and the Rif, and his rule stretched as far west as Tlemcen, Oran and
+finally Algiers.
+
+His ambition drove him across the straits to Spain, where he conquered
+one Moslem prince after another and wiped out the luxurious civilization
+of Moorish Andalusia. In 1086, at Zallarca, Youssef gave battle to
+Alphonso VI of Castile and Leon. The Almoravid army was a strange rabble
+of Arabs, Berbers, blacks, wild tribes of the Sahara and Christian
+mercenaries. They conquered the Spanish forces, and Youssef left to his
+successors an empire extending from the Ebro to Senegal and from the
+Atlantic coast of Africa to the borders of Tunisia. But the empire fell
+to pieces of its own weight, leaving little record of its brief and
+stormy existence. While Youssef was routing the forces of Christianity
+at Zallarca in Spain, another schismatic tribe of his own people was
+detaching Marrakech and the south from his rule.
+
+The leader of the new invasion was a Mahdi, one of the numerous Saviours
+of the World who have carried death and destruction throughout Islam.
+His name was Ibn-Toumert, and he had travelled in Egypt, Syria and
+Spain, and made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Preaching the doctrine of a
+purified monotheism, he called his followers the Almohads or Unitarians,
+to distinguish them from the polytheistic Almoravids, whose heresies he
+denounced. He fortified the city of Tinmel in the Souss, and built there
+a mosque of which the ruins still exist. When he died, in 1128, he
+designated as his successor Abd-el-Moumen, the son of a potter, who had
+been his disciple.
+
+Abd-el-Moumen carried on the campaign against the Almoravids. He fought
+them not only in Morocco but in Spain, taking Cadiz, Cordova, Granada as
+well as Tlemcen and Fez. In 1152 his African dominion reached from
+Tripoli to the Souss, and he had formed a disciplined army in which
+Christian mercenaries from France and Spain fought side by side with
+Berbers and Soudanese. This great captain was also a great
+administrator, and under his rule Africa was surveyed from the Souss to
+Barka, the country was policed, agriculture was protected, and the
+caravans journeyed safely over the trade-routes.
+
+Abd-el-Moumen died in 1163 and was followed by his son, who, though he
+suffered reverses in Spain, was also a great ruler. He died in 1184, and
+his son, Yacoub-el-Mansour, avenged his father's ill-success in Spain by
+the great victory of Alarcos and the conquest of Madrid.
+Yacoub-el-Mansour was the greatest of Moroccan Sultans. So far did his
+fame extend that the illustrious Saladin sent him presents and asked the
+help of his fleet. He was a builder as well as a fighter, and the
+noblest period of Arab art in Morocco and Spain coincides with his
+reign.
+
+After his death, the Almohad empire followed the downward curve to which
+all Oriental rule seems destined. In Spain, the Berber forces were
+beaten in the great Christian victory of Las-Navas-de Tolosa; and in
+Morocco itself the first stirrings of the Beni-Merins (a new tribe from
+the Sahara) were preparing the way for a new dynasty.
+
+
+V
+
+THE MERINIDS
+
+The Beni-Merins or Merinids were nomads who ranged the desert between
+Biskra and the Tafilelt. It was not a religious upheaval that drove them
+to the conquest of Morocco. The demoralized Almohads called them in as
+mercenaries to defend their crumbling empire; and the Merinids came,
+drove out the Almohads, and replaced them.
+
+They took Fez, Meknez, Salé, Rabat and Sidjilmassa in the Tafilelt; and
+their second Sultan, Abou-Youssef, built New Fez (Eldjid) on the height
+above the old Idrissite city. The Merinids renewed the struggle with the
+Sultan of Tlemcen, and carried the Holy War once more into Spain. The
+conflict with Tlemcen was long and unsuccessful, and one of the Merinid
+Sultans died assassinated under its walls. In the fourteenth century the
+Sultan Abou Hassan tried to piece together the scattered bits of the
+Almohad empire. Tlemcen was finally taken, and the whole of Algeria
+annexed. But in the plain of Kairouan, in Tunisia, Abou Hassan was
+defeated by the Arabs. Meanwhile one of his brothers had headed a revolt
+in Morocco, and the princes of Tlemcen won back their ancient kingdom.
+Constantine and Bougie rebelled in turn, and the kingdom of Abou Hassan
+vanished like a mirage. His successors struggled vainly to control
+their vassals in Morocco, and to keep their possessions beyond its
+borders. Before the end of the fourteenth century Morocco from end to
+end was a chaos of antagonistic tribes, owning no allegiance, abiding by
+no laws. The last of the Merinids, divided, diminished, bound by
+humiliating treaties with Christian Spain, kept up a semblance of
+sovereignty at Fez and Marrakech, at war with one another and with their
+neighbours; and Spain and Portugal seized this moment of internal
+dissolution to drive them from Spain, and carry the war into Morocco
+itself.
+
+The short and stormy passage of the Beni-Merins seems hardly to leave
+room for the development of the humaner qualities; yet the flowering of
+Moroccan art and culture coincided with those tumultuous years, and it
+was under the Merinid Sultans that Fez became the centre of Moroccan
+learning and industry, a kind of Oxford with Birmingham annexed.
+
+
+VI
+
+THE SAADIANS
+
+Meanwhile, behind all the Berber turmoil a secret work of religious
+propaganda was going on. The Arab element had been crushed but not
+extirpated. The crude idolatrous wealth-loving Berbers apparently
+dominated; but whenever there was a new uprising or a new invasion it
+was based on the religious discontent perpetually stirred up by
+Mahometan agents. The longing for a Mahdi, a Saviour, the craving for
+purification combined with an opportunity to murder and rob, always gave
+the Moslem apostle a ready opening; and the downfall of the Merinids was
+the result of a long series of religious movements to which the European
+invasion gave an object and a war-cry.
+
+The Saadians were Cherifian Arabs, newcomers from Arabia, to whom the
+lax Berber paganism was abhorrent. They preached a return to the creed
+of Mahomet, and proclaimed the Holy War against the hated Portuguese,
+who had set up fortified posts all along the west coast of Morocco.
+
+It is a mistake to suppose that hatred of the Christian has always
+existed among the North African Moslems. The earlier dynasties, and
+especially the great Almohad Sultans, were on friendly terms with the
+Catholic powers of Europe, and in the thirteenth century a treaty
+assured to Christians in Africa full religious liberty, excepting only
+the right to preach their doctrine in public places. There was a
+Catholic diocese at Fez, and afterward at Marrakech under Gregory IX,
+and there is a letter of the Pope thanking the "Miromilan" (the Emir El
+Moumenin) for his kindness to the Bishop and the friars living in his
+dominions. Another Bishop was recommended by Innocent IV to the Sultan
+of Morocco; the Pope even asked that certain strongholds should be
+assigned to the Christians in Morocco as places of refuge in times of
+disturbance. But the best proof of the friendly relations between
+Christians and infidels is the fact that the Christian armies which
+helped the Sultans of Morocco to defeat Spain and subjugate Algeria and
+Tunisia were not composed of "renegadoes" or captives, as is generally
+supposed, but of Christian mercenaries, French and English, led by
+knights and nobles, and fighting for the Sultan of Morocco exactly as
+they would have fought for the Duke of Burgundy, the Count of Flanders,
+or any other Prince who offered high pay and held out the hope of rich
+spoils. Any one who has read "Villehardouin" and "Joinville" will own
+that there is not much to choose between the motives animating these
+noble freebooters and those which caused the Crusaders to loot
+Constantinople "on the way" to the Holy Sepulchre. War in those days was
+regarded as a lucrative and legitimate form of business, exactly as it
+was when the earlier heroes started out to take the rich robber-town of
+Troy.
+
+The Berbers have never been religious fanatics, and the Vicomte de
+Foucauld, when he made his great journey of exploration in the Atlas in
+1883, remarked that antagonism to the foreigner was always due to the
+fear of military espionage and never to religious motives. This equally
+applies to the Berbers of the sixteenth century, when the Holy War
+against Catholic Spain and Portugal was preached. The real cause of the
+sudden deadly hatred of the foreigner was twofold. The Spaniards were
+detested because of the ferocious cruelty with which they had driven the
+Moors from Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella; and the Portuguese
+because of the arrogance and brutality of their military colonists in
+the fortified trading stations of the west coast. And both were feared
+as possible conquerors and overlords.
+
+There was a third incentive also: the Moroccans, dealing in black slaves
+for the European market, had discovered the value of white slaves in
+Moslem markets. The Sultan had his fleet, and each coast-town its
+powerful pirate vessels, and from pirate-nests like Salé and Tangier the
+raiders continued, till well on into the first half of the nineteenth
+century, to seize European ships and carry their passengers to the
+slave-markets of Fez and Marrakech.[24] The miseries endured by these
+captives, and so poignantly described in John Windus's travels, and in
+the "Naufrage du Brick Sophie" by Charles Cochelet,[25] show how savage
+the feeling against the foreigner had become.
+
+With the advent of the Cherifian dynasties, which coincided with this
+religious reform, and was in fact brought about by it, Morocco became a
+closed country, as fiercely guarded as Japan against European
+penetration. Cut off from civilizing influences, the Moslems isolated
+themselves in a lonely fanaticism, far more racial than religious, and
+the history of the country from the fall of the Merinids till the French
+annexation is mainly a dull tale of tribal warfare.
+
+The religious movement of the sixteenth century was led and fed by
+zealots from the Sahara. One of them took possession of Rabat and
+Azemmour, and preached the Holy War; other "feudal fiefs" (as M.
+Augustin Bernard has well called them) were founded at Tameslout, Ilegh,
+Tamgrout: the tombs of the _marabouts_ who led these revolts are
+scattered all along the west coast, and are still objects of popular
+veneration. The unorthodox saint worship which marks Moroccan Moslemism,
+and is commemorated by the countless white _koubbas_ throughout the
+country, grew up chiefly at the time of the religious revival under the
+Saadian dynasty, and almost all the "Moulays" and "Sidis" venerated
+between Tangier and the Atlas were warrior monks who issued forth from
+their fortified _Zaouïas_ to drive the Christians out of Africa.
+
+The Saadians were probably rather embarrassed by these fanatics, whom
+they found useful to oppose to the Merinids, but troublesome where their
+own plans were concerned. They were ambitious and luxury-loving princes,
+who invaded the wealthy kingdom of the Soudan, conquered the Sultan of
+Timbuctoo, and came back laden with slaves and gold to embellish
+Marrakech and spend their treasure in the usual demoralizing orgies.
+Their exquisite tombs at Marrakech commemorate in courtly language the
+superhuman virtues of a series of rulers whose debaucheries and vices
+were usually cut short by assassination. Finally another austere and
+fanatical mountain tribe surged down on them, wiped them out, and ruled
+in their stead.
+
+
+VII
+
+THE HASSANIANS
+
+The new rulers came from the Tafilelt, which has always been a
+troublesome corner of Morocco. The first two Hassanian Sultans were the
+usual tribal chiefs bent on taking advantage of Saadian misrule to loot
+and conquer. But the third was the great Moulay-Ismaël, the tale of
+whose long and triumphant rule (1672 to 1727) has already been told in
+the chapter on Meknez. This savage and enlightened old man once more
+drew order out of anarchy, and left, when he died, an organized and
+administered empire, as well as a progeny of seven hundred sons and
+unnumbered daughters.[26]
+
+The empire fell apart as usual, and no less quickly than usual, under
+his successors; and from his death until the strong hand of General
+Lyautey took over the direction of affairs the Hassanian rule in Morocco
+was little more than a tumult of incoherent ambitions. The successors of
+Moulay-Ismaël inherited his blood-lust and his passion for dominion
+without his capacity to govern. In 1757 Sidi-Mohammed, one of his sons,
+tried to put order into his kingdom, and drove the last Portuguese out
+of Morocco; but under his successors the country remained isolated and
+stagnant, making spasmodic efforts to defend itself against the
+encroachments of European influence, while its rulers wasted their
+energy in a policy of double-dealing and dissimulation. Early in the
+nineteenth century the government was compelled by the European powers
+to suppress piracy and the trade in Christian slaves; and in 1830 the
+French conquest of Algeria broke down the wall of isolation behind which
+the country was mouldering away by placing a European power on one of
+its frontiers.
+
+At first the conquest of Algeria tended to create a link between France
+and Morocco. The Dey of Algiers was a Turk, and, therefore, an
+hereditary enemy; and Morocco was disposed to favour the power which had
+broken Turkish rule in a neighbouring country. But the Sultan could not
+help trying to profit by the general disturbance to seize Tlemcen and
+raise insurrections in western Algeria; and presently Morocco was
+engaged in a Holy War against France. Abd-el-Kader, the Sultan of
+Algeria, had taken refuge in Morocco, and the Sultan of Morocco having
+furnished him with supplies and munitions, France sent an official
+remonstrance. At the same time Marshal Bugeaud landed at Mers-el-Kebir,
+and invited the Makhzen to discuss the situation. The offer was accepted
+and General Bedeau and the Caïd El Guennaoui met in an open place.
+Behind them their respective troops were drawn up, and almost as soon
+as the first salutes were exchanged the Caïd declared the negotiations
+broken off. The French troops accordingly withdrew to the coast, but
+during their retreat they were attacked by the Moroccans. This put an
+end to peaceful negotiations, and Tangier was besieged and taken. The
+following August Bugeaud brought his troops up from Oudjda, through the
+defile that leads from West Algeria, and routed the Moroccans. He wished
+to advance on Fez, but international politics interfered, and he was not
+allowed to carry out his plans. England looked unfavourably on the
+French penetration of Morocco, and it became necessary to conclude peace
+at once to prove that France had no territorial ambitions west of
+Oudjda.
+
+Meanwhile a great Sultan was once more to appear in the land.
+Moulay-el-Hassan, who ruled from 1873 to 1894, was an able and energetic
+administrator. He pieced together his broken empire, asserted his
+authority in Fez and Marrakech, and fought the rebellious tribes of the
+west. In 1877 he asked the French government to send him a permanent
+military mission to assist in organizing his army. He planned an
+expedition to the Souss, but the want of food and water in the
+wilderness traversed by the army caused the most cruel sufferings.
+Moulay-el-Hassan had provisions sent by sea, but the weather was too
+stormy to allow of a landing on the exposed Atlantic coast, and the
+Sultan, who had never seen the sea, was as surprised and indignant as
+Canute to find that the waves would not obey him.
+
+His son Abd-el-Aziz was only thirteen years old when he succeeded to the
+throne. For six years he remained under the guardianship of Ba-Ahmed,
+the black Vizier of Moulay-el-Hassan, who built the fairy palace of the
+Bahia at Marrakech, with its mysterious pale green padlocked door
+leading down to the secret vaults where his treasure was hidden. When
+the all-powerful Ba-Ahmed died the young Sultan was nineteen. He was
+intelligent, charming, and fond of the society of Europeans; but he was
+indifferent to religious questions and still more to military affairs,
+and thus doubly at the mercy of native mistrust and European intrigue.
+
+Some clumsy attempts at fiscal reform, and a too great leaning toward
+European habits and associates, roused the animosity of the people, and
+of the conservative party in the upper class. The Sultan's eldest
+brother, who had been set aside in his favour, was intriguing against
+him; the usual Cherifian Pretender was stirring up the factious tribes
+in the mountains; and the European powers were attempting, in the
+confusion of an ungoverned country, to assert their respective
+ascendencies.
+
+The demoralized condition of the country justified these attempts, and
+made European interference inevitable. But the powers were jealously
+watching each other, and Germany, already coveting the certain
+agricultural resources and the conjectured mineral wealth of Morocco,
+was above all determined that a French protectorate should not be set
+up.
+
+In 1908 another son of Moulay-Hassan, Abd-el-Hafid, was proclaimed
+Sultan by the reactionary Islamite faction, who accused Abd-el-Aziz of
+having sold his country to the Christians. Abd-el-Aziz was defeated in a
+battle near Marrakech, and retired to Tangier, where he still lives in
+futile state. Abd-el-Hafid, proclaimed Sultan at Fez, was recognized by
+the whole country; but he found himself unable to cope with the factious
+tribes (those outside the Blad-el-Makhzen, or _governed country_). These
+rebel tribes besieged Fez, and the Sultan had to ask France for aid.
+France sent troops to his relief, but as soon as the dissidents were
+routed, and he himself was safe, Abd-el-Hafid refused to give the French
+army his support, and in 1912, after the horrible massacres of Fez, he
+abdicated in favour of another brother, Moulay Youssef, the actual ruler
+of Morocco.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[23] East of the Moulouya, the African protectorate (now west Algeria
+and the Sud Oranais) was called the Mauretania of Cæsar.
+
+[24] The Moroccans being very poor seamen, these corsair-vessels were
+usually commanded and manned by Christian renegadoes and Turks.
+
+[25] Cochelet was wrecked on the coast near Agadir early in the
+nineteenth century and was taken with his fellow-travellers overland to
+El-Ksar and Tangier, enduring terrible hardships by the way.
+
+[26] Moulay-Ismaël was a learned theologian and often held religious
+discussions with the Fathers of the Order of Mercy and the Trinitarians.
+He was scrupulously orthodox in his religious observances, and wrote a
+treatise in defense of his faith which he sent to James II of England,
+urging him to become a Mahometan. He invented most of the most exquisite
+forms of torture which subsequent Sultans have applied to their victims
+(see Loti, _Au Maroc_), and was fond of flowers, and extremely simple
+and frugal in his personal habits.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+NOTE ON MOROCCAN ARCHITECTURE
+
+
+I
+
+M. H. Saladin, whose "Manual of Moslem Architecture" was published in
+1907, ends his chapter on Morocco with the words: "It is especially
+urgent that we should know, and penetrate into, Morocco as soon as
+possible, in order to study its monuments. It is the only country but
+Persia where Moslem art actually survives; and the tradition handed down
+to the present day will doubtless clear up many things."
+
+M. Saladin's wish has been partly realized. Much has been done since
+1912, when General Lyautey was appointed Resident-General, to clear up
+and classify the history of Moroccan art; but since 1914, though the
+work has never been dropped, it has necessarily been much delayed,
+especially as regards its published record; and as yet only a few
+monographs and articles have summed up some of the interesting
+investigations of the last five years.
+
+
+II
+
+When I was in Marrakech word was sent to Captain de S., who was with me,
+that a Caïd of the Atlas, whose prisoner he had been several years
+before, had himself been taken by the Pasha's troops, and was in
+Marrakech. Captain de S. was asked to identify several rifles which his
+old enemy had taken from him, and on receiving them found that, in the
+interval, they had been elaborately ornamented with the Arab niello work
+of which the tradition goes back to Damascus.
+
+This little incident is a good example of the degree to which the
+mediæval tradition alluded to by M. Saladin has survived in Moroccan
+life. Nowhere else in the world, except among the moribund
+fresco-painters of the Greek monasteries, has a formula of art persisted
+from the seventh or eighth century to the present day; and in Morocco
+the formula is not the mechanical expression of a petrified theology but
+the setting of the life of a people who have gone on wearing the same
+clothes, observing the same customs, believing in the same fetiches, and
+using the same saddles, ploughs, looms, and dye-stuffs as in the days
+when the foundations of the first mosque of El Kairouiyin were laid.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Marrakech--a street fountain]
+
+The origin of this tradition is confused and obscure. The Arabs have
+never been creative artists, nor are the Berbers known to have been so.
+As investigations proceed in Syria and Mesopotamia it seems more and
+more probable that the sources of inspiration of pre-Moslem art in North
+Africa are to be found in Egypt, Persia, and India. Each new
+investigation pushes these sources farther back and farther east; but it
+is not of much use to retrace these ancient vestiges, since Moroccan art
+has, so far, nothing to show of pre-Islamite art, save what is purely
+Phenician or Roman.
+
+In any case, however, it is not in Morocco that the clue to Moroccan art
+is to be sought; though interesting hints and mysterious reminiscences
+will doubtless be found in such places as Tinmel, in the gorges of the
+Atlas, where a ruined mosque of the earliest Almohad period has been
+photographed by M. Doutté, and in the curious Algerian towns of Sedrata
+and the Kalaa of the Beni Hammads. Both of these latter towns were rich
+and prosperous communities in the tenth century and both were destroyed
+in the eleventh, so that they survive as mediæval Pompeiis of a quite
+exceptional interest, since their architecture appears to have been
+almost unaffected by classic or Byzantine influences.
+
+Traces of a very old indigenous art are found in the designs on the
+modern white and black Berber pottery; but this work, specimens of which
+are to be seen in the Oriental Department of the Louvre, seems to go
+back, by way of Central America, Greece (sixth century  B. C.) and Susa
+(twelfth century B. C.), to the far-off period before the streams of
+human invention had divided, and when the same loops and ripples and
+spirals formed on the flowing surface of every current.
+
+It is a disputed question whether Spanish influence was foremost in
+developing the peculiarly Moroccan art of the earliest Moslem period, or
+whether European influences came by way of Syria and Palestine, and
+afterward met and were crossed with those of Moorish Spain. Probably
+both things happened, since the Almoravids were in Spain; and no doubt
+the currents met and mingled. At any rate, Byzantine, Greece, and the
+Palestine and Syria of the Crusaders, contributed as much as Rome and
+Greece to the formation of that peculiar Moslem art which, all the way
+from India to the Pillars of Hercules, built itself, with minor
+variations, out of the same elements.
+
+Arab conquerors always destroy as much as they can of the work of their
+predecessors, and nothing remains, as far as is known, of Almoravid
+architecture in Morocco. But the great Almohad Sultans covered Spain and
+Northwest Africa with their monuments, and no later buildings in Africa
+equal them in strength and majesty.
+
+It is no doubt because the Almohads built in stone that so much of what
+they made survives. The Merinids took to rubble and a soft tufa, and the
+Cherifian dynasties built in clay like the Spaniards in South America.
+And so seventeenth century Meknez has perished while the Almohad walls
+and towers of the tenth century still stand.
+
+The principal old buildings of Morocco are defensive and religious--and
+under the latter term the beautiful collegiate houses (the medersas) of
+Fez and Salé may fairly be included, since the educational system of
+Islam is essentially and fundamentally theological. Of old secular
+buildings, palaces or private houses, virtually none are known to
+exist; but their plan and decorations may easily be reconstituted from
+the early chronicles, and also from the surviving palaces built in the
+eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and even those which the wealthy
+nobles of modern Morocco are building to this day.
+
+The whole of civilian Moslem architecture from Persia to Morocco is
+based on four unchanging conditions: a hot climate, slavery, polygamy
+and the segregation of women. The private house in Mahometan countries
+is in fact a fortress, a convent and a temple: a temple of which the god
+(as in all ancient religions) frequently descends to visit his
+cloistered votaresses. For where slavery and polygamy exist every
+house-master is necessarily a god, and the house he inhabits a shrine
+built about his divinity.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Rabat--gate of the Kasbah of the Oudayas]
+
+The first thought of the Moroccan chieftain was always defensive. As
+soon as he pitched a camp or founded a city it had to be guarded against
+the hungry hordes who encompassed him on every side. Each little centre
+of culture and luxury in Moghreb was an islet in a sea of perpetual
+storms. The wonder is that, thus incessantly threatened from without and
+conspired against from within--with the desert at their doors, and
+their slaves on the threshold--these violent men managed to create about
+them an atmosphere of luxury and stability that astonished not only the
+obsequious native chronicler but travellers and captives from western
+Europe.
+
+The truth is, as has been often pointed out, that, even until the end of
+the seventeenth century, the refinements of civilization were in many
+respects no greater in France and England than in North Africa. North
+Africa had long been in more direct communication with the old Empires
+of immemorial luxury, and was therefore farther advanced in the arts of
+living than the Spain and France of the Dark Ages; and this is why, in a
+country that to the average modern European seems as savage as Ashantee,
+one finds traces of a refinement of life and taste hardly to be matched
+by Carlovingian and early Capetian Europe.
+
+
+III
+
+The brief Almoravid dynasty left no monuments behind it.
+
+Fez had already been founded by the Idrissites, and its first mosques
+(Kairouiyin and Les Andalous) existed. Of the Almoravid Fez and
+Marrakech the chroniclers relate great things; but the wild Hilalian
+invasion and the subsequent descent of the Almohads from the High Atlas
+swept away whatever the first dynasties had created.
+
+The Almohads were mighty builders, and their great monuments are all of
+stone. The earliest known example of their architecture which has
+survived is the ruined mosque of Tinmel, in the High Atlas, discovered
+and photographed by M. Doutté. This mosque was built by the inspired
+mystic, Ibn-Toumert, who founded the line. Following him came the great
+palace-making Sultans whose walled cities of splendid mosques and towers
+have Romanesque qualities of mass and proportion, and, as M. Raymond
+Koechlin has pointed out, inevitably recall the "robust simplicity of
+the master builders who at the very same moment were beginning in France
+the construction of the first Gothic cathedrals and the noblest feudal
+castles."
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Fez--Medersa Bouanyana]
+
+In the thirteenth century, with the coming of the Merinids, Moroccan
+architecture grew more delicate, more luxurious, and perhaps also more
+peculiarly itself. That interaction of Spanish and Arab art which
+produced the style known as Moorish reached, on the African side of the
+Straits, its greatest completeness in Morocco. It was under the Merinids
+that Moorish art grew into full beauty in Spain, and under the Merinids
+that Fez rebuilt the mosque Kairouiyin and that of the Andalusians, and
+created six of its nine _Medersas_, the most perfect surviving buildings
+of that unique moment of sober elegance and dignity.
+
+The Cherifian dynasties brought with them a decline in taste. A crude
+desire for immediate effect, and the tendency toward a more barbaric
+luxury, resulted in the piling up of frail palaces as impermanent as
+tents. Yet a last flower grew from the deformed and dying trunk of the
+old Empire. The Saadian Sultan who invaded the Soudan and came back
+laden with gold and treasure from the great black city of Timbuctoo
+covered Marrakech with hasty monuments of which hardly a trace survives.
+But there, in a nettle-grown corner of a ruinous quarter, lay hidden
+till yesterday the Chapel of the Tombs: the last emanation of pure
+beauty of a mysterious, incomplete, forever retrogressive and yet
+forever forward-straining people. The Merinid tombs of Fez have fallen;
+but those of their destroyers linger on in precarious grace, like a
+flower on the edge of a precipice.
+
+
+IV
+
+Moroccan architecture, then, is easily divided into four groups: the
+fortress, the mosque, the collegiate building and the private house.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Fez--the praying-chapel in the Medersa el Attarine]
+
+The kernel of the mosque is always the _mihrab_, or niche facing toward
+the Kasbah of Mecca, where the _imam_[27] stands to say the prayer. This
+arrangement, which enabled as many as possible of the faithful to kneel
+facing the _mihrab_, results in a ground-plan necessarily consisting of
+long aisles parallel with the wall of the _mihrab_, to which more and
+more aisles are added as the number of worshippers grows. Where there
+was not space to increase these lateral aisles they were lengthened at
+each end. This typical plan is modified in the Moroccan mosques by a
+wider transverse space, corresponding with the nave of a Christian
+church, and extending across the mosque from the praying niche to the
+principal door. To the right of the _mihrab_ is the _minbar_, the carved
+pulpit (usually of cedar-wood incrusted with mother-of-pearl and ebony)
+from which the Koran is read. In some Algerian and Egyptian mosques (and
+at Cordova, for instance) the _mihrab_ is enclosed in a sort of screen
+called the _maksoura_; but in Morocco this modification of the simpler
+plan was apparently not adopted.
+
+The interior construction of the mosque was no doubt usually affected by
+the nearness of Roman or Byzantine ruins. M. Saladin points out that
+there seem to be few instances of the use of columns made by native
+builders; but it does not therefore follow that all the columns used in
+the early mosques were taken from Roman temples or Christian basilicas.
+The Arab invaders brought their architects and engineers with them; and
+it is very possible that some of the earlier mosques were built by
+prisoners or fortune-hunters from Greece or Italy or Spain.
+
+At any rate, the column on which the arcades of the vaulting rests in
+the earlier mosques, as at Tunis and Kairouan, and the mosque El
+Kairouiyin at Fez, gives way later to the use of piers, foursquare, or
+with flanking engaged pilasters as at Algiers and Tlemcen. The exterior
+of the mosques, as a rule, is almost entirely hidden by a mushroom
+growth of buildings, lanes and covered bazaars; but where the outer
+walls have remained disengaged they show, as at Kairouan and Cordova,
+great masses of windowless masonry pierced at intervals with majestic
+gateways.
+
+Beyond the mosque, and opening into it by many wide doors of beaten
+bronze or carved cedar-wood, lies the Court of the Ablutions. The
+openings in the façade were multiplied in order that, on great days, the
+faithful who were not able to enter the mosque might hear the prayers
+and catch a glimpse of the _mihrab_.
+
+In a corner of the courts stands the minaret. It is the structure on
+which Moslem art has played the greatest number of variations, cutting
+off its angles, building it on a circular or polygonal plan, and
+endlessly modifying the pyramids and pendentives by which the
+ground-plan of one story passes into that of the next. These problems of
+transition, always fascinating to the architect, led in Persia,
+Mesopotamia and Egypt to many different compositions and ways of
+treatment; but in Morocco the minaret, till modern times, remained
+steadfastly square, and proved that no other plan is so beautiful as
+this simplest one of all.
+
+Surrounding the Court of the Ablutions are the school-rooms, libraries
+and other dependencies, which grew as the Mahometan religion prospered
+and Arab culture developed.
+
+The medersa was a farther extension of the mosque: it was the academy
+where the Moslem schoolman prepared his theology and the other branches
+of strange learning which, to the present day, make up the curriculum of
+the Mahometan university. The medersa is an adaptation of the private
+house to religious and educational ends; or, if one prefers another
+analogy, it is a _fondak_ built above a miniature mosque. The
+ground-plan is always the same: in the centre an arcaded court with a
+fountain, on one side the long narrow praying-chapel with the _mihrab_,
+on the other a class-room with the same ground-plan; and on the next
+story a series of cell-like rooms for the students, opening on carved
+cedar-wood balconies. This cloistered plan, where all the effect is
+reserved for the interior façades about the court, lends itself to a
+delicacy of detail that would be inappropriate on a street-front; and
+the medersas of Fez are endlessly varied in their fanciful but never
+exuberant decoration.
+
+M. Tranchant de Lunel has pointed out (in "France-Maroc") with what a
+sure sense of suitability the Merinid architects adapted this decoration
+to the uses of the buildings. On the lower floor, under the cloister, is
+a revêtement of marble (often alabaster) or of the almost indestructible
+ceramic mosaic.[28] On the floor above, massive cedar-wood corbels
+ending in monsters of almost Gothic inspiration support the fretted
+balconies; and above rise stucco interlacings, placed too high up to be
+injured by man, and guarded from the weather by projecting eaves.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Salé--interior court of the Medersa]
+
+The private house, whether merchant's dwelling or chieftain's palace, is
+laid out on the same lines, with the addition of the reserved quarters
+for women; and what remains in Spain and Sicily of Moorish secular
+architecture shows that, in the Merinid period, the play of ornament
+must have been--as was natural--even greater than in the medersas.
+
+The Arab chroniclers paint pictures of Merinid palaces, such as the
+House of the Favourite at Cordova, which the soberer modern imagination
+refused to accept until the medersas of Fez were revealed, and the old
+decorative tradition was shown in the eighteenth century Moroccan
+palaces. The descriptions given of the palaces of Fez and of Marrakech
+in the preceding articles, which make it unnecessary, in so slight a
+note as this, to go again into the detail of their planning and
+decoration, will serve to show how gracefully the art of the mosque and
+the medersa was lightened and domesticated to suit these cool chambers
+and flower-filled courts.
+
+With regard to the immense fortifications that are the most picturesque
+and noticeable architectural features of Morocco, the first thing to
+strike the traveller is the difficulty of discerning any difference in
+the probable date of their construction until certain structural
+peculiarities are examined, or the ornamental details of the great
+gateways are noted. Thus the Almohad portions of the walls of Fez and
+Rabat are built of stone, while later parts are of rubble; and the touch
+of European influence in certain gateways of Meknez and Fez at once
+situate them in the seventeenth century. But the mediæval outline of
+these great piles of masonry, and certain technicalities in their plan,
+such as the disposition of the towers, alternating in the inner and
+outer walls, continued unchanged throughout the different dynasties; and
+this immutability of the Moroccan military architecture enables the
+imagination to picture, not only what was the aspect of the fortified
+cities which the Greeks built in Palestine and Syria, and the Crusaders
+brought back to Europe, but even that of the far-off Assyrio-Chaldæan
+strongholds to which the whole fortified architecture of the Middle Ages
+in Europe seems to lead back.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Marrakech--the gate of the Portuguese]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[27] The "deacon" or elder of the Moslem religion, which has no order of
+priests.
+
+[28] These Moroccan mosaics are called _zellijes_.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+BOOKS CONSULTED
+
+
+     Afrique Française (L'), Bulletin Mensuel du Comité de l'Afrique
+     Française. Paris, 21, rue Cassette.
+
+     Bernard, Augustin. Le Maroc. Paris, F. Alcan, 1916.
+
+     Budgett-Meakin. The Land of the Moors. London, 1902.
+
+     Châtelain, L. Recherches archéologiques au Maroc. Volubilis.
+     (Published by the Military Command in Morocco.)
+
+     Les Fouilles de Volubilis. (Extrait du Bulletin Archéologique,
+     1916.)
+
+     Chevrillon, A. Crépuscule d'Islam.
+
+     Cochelet, Charles. Le Naufrage du Brick Sophie.
+
+     Conférences Marocaines. Paris, Plon-Nourrit.
+
+     Doutté, E. En Tribu. Paris, 1914.
+
+     Foucauld, Vicomte de. La Reconnaissance au Maroc. Paris, 1888.
+
+     France-Maroc. Revue Mensuelle, Paris, 4, rue Chauveau-Lagarde.
+
+     Gaillard. Une Ville d'Islam, Fez. Paris, 1909.
+
+     Gayet, Al. L'Art Arabe. Paris, 1906.
+
+     Houdas, O. Le Maroc de 1631 à 1812. Extrait d'une histoire du Maroc
+     intitulée "L'Interprète qui s'exprime clairement sur les dynasties
+     de l'Orient et de l'Occident" par Ezziani. Paris, E. Leroux, 1886.
+
+     Koechlin, Raymond. Une Exposition d'Art Marocain. (Gazette des
+     Beaux-Arts, Juillet-Septembre, 1917.)
+
+     Leo Africanus, Description of Africa.
+
+     Loti, Pierre. Au Maroc.
+
+     Migeon, Gaston. Manuel d'Art Musulman. II. Les Arts Plastiques et
+     Industriels. Paris, A. Picard et Fils, 1907.
+
+     Saladin, H. Manuel d'Art Musulman. I. L'Architecture. Paris, A.
+     Picard et Fils, 1907.
+
+     Segonzac, Marquis de. Voyages au Maroc. Paris, 1903. Au Coeur de
+     l'Atlas. Paris, 1910.
+
+     Tarde, A. de. Les Villes du Maroc: Fez, Marrakech, Rabat. (Journal
+     de l'Université des Annales, 15 Oct., 1 Nov., 1918.)
+
+     Windus. A Journey to Mequinez. London, 1721.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+Abdallah-ben-Aïssa, 59
+
+Abd-el-Aziz, 256-258
+
+Abd-el-Hafid, 209-211, 258
+
+Abd-el-Kader, 255
+
+Abd-el-Moumen, 30, 243, 244
+
+Abou-el-Abbas ("The Golden"), 152, 153
+
+Abou Hassan, 245, 246
+
+Abou-Youssef, 245
+
+Agdal, olive-yards of the, 139
+
+Ahmed-Baba, 152
+
+Ahmed-el-Hiba, 211, 212
+
+Aïd-el-Kebir, the, 164-170
+
+Aïssaouas, the, of Kairouan, 48
+  dance of, 52
+
+Algeria, French conquest of, 254-256
+
+Almohads, the, invasion of Morocco by, 243-245
+  architecture of, 265, 268
+
+Almoravids, the, invasion of Morocco by, 241-243
+  destruction of architecture of, 265, 268
+
+Andalusian Moors, the, mosque of, 101, 102, 240, 268, 269
+
+Arabs, conquest of Morocco by, 239-241
+
+Architecture, Moroccan, four basic conditions of, 266
+  four groups of, 270
+  of the Almohad dynasty, 268
+  of the Cherifian dynasties, 269
+  of the Merinid dynasty, 269, 274, 275
+  the Saadian mausoleum, 155
+  the collegiate building, 273-275
+  the fortress, 276
+  the mosque, 270-273
+  the private house, 275
+
+Art, Moroccan, sources of influence on, 104, 262-265
+  disappearance of treasures of, 86, 87
+  and Moorish art, 269
+
+
+Ba-Ahmed, builder of the Bahia, 129, 256, 257
+
+Bab F'touh cemetery, at Fez, 102-104
+
+Bahia, the, palace of, at Marrakech, 129-133
+  apartment of Grand Vizier's Favourite in, 131
+
+Bazaars, of Fez, 91, 107-109
+  of Marrakech, 135-138
+  of Salé, 24, 25
+
+Beni-Merins. _See_ Merinids
+
+Berbers, the, attack of, on Fez, 210, 211
+  origins of, 232
+  dialects of, 234
+  nomadic character of, 234, 235
+  heresy and schisms of, 239
+
+Bernard, M. Augustin, 69, 234, 235, 239, 251
+
+Black Guard, the Sultan's, 164-167
+  uniform of, 176
+  Moulay-Ismaël's method of raising, 44, 67-69
+
+Blue Men of the Sahara, the, 112
+
+Bou-Jeloud, palace of, 80, 81, 83
+
+Bugeaud, Marshal, 255
+
+
+Carthage, African colonies of, 236, 237
+
+Casablanca, exhibitions at, 219
+  port of, 222, 223
+
+Catholics, in Morocco, 248, 249
+
+Cemetery, El Alou, 17, 18
+  Bab F'touh, 102-104
+
+Châtelain, M. Louis, 46
+
+Chella, ruins of, 28-30
+
+Cherifian dynasties, the, 247, 251
+  architecture of, 269
+
+Children, Moroccan,
+  in the harem, 194
+  negro, 43, 44, 199-201
+  training of, for Black Guard, 67-69
+
+Chleuh boys, dance of, 148
+
+Christians, captive, and the building of Meknez, 69, 70, 73
+  religious liberty to, in Africa, 248, 249
+
+Clocks, in Sultan's harem at Rabat, 172, 173
+
+Cochelet, Charles, his "Naufrage du Brick Sophie," 250
+
+Colleges, at Fez, 97-100, 105-107
+  at Salé, 19-22, 25, 26
+  Moslem, 225
+  architecture of Moroccan, 273-275
+
+Colors, of North African towns, 50
+
+Commerce, Moroccan, 223
+
+Conti, Princesse de, 59
+
+Convention of Fez, the, 209
+
+Courts of Justice, Moroccan, 224
+
+Crowds, Moroccan street, 161, 162
+
+Culture, in North Africa, 104-106, 246, 267
+
+
+Dance, of Chleuh boys, 148
+  of the Hamadchas, 48, 49, 51-57
+
+Dawn, in Africa, 37
+
+Djebilets, the, 125
+
+Doutté, M., 264, 268
+
+Dust-storm, at Marrakech, 145-147
+
+
+Education, in Morocco, 225, 226
+
+Elakhdar, mosque of, 62
+
+El Alou, cemetery of, 17, 18
+
+El Andalous, mosque of, 101, 102, 240, 268, 269
+
+Elbali (Old Fez), 88 _et seq._
+  harems of, 188-196
+
+Eldjid (New Fez), 77, 80
+  palaces of, 84-87
+  founding of, 245
+
+El Kairouiyin, mosque of, 80, 83, 93, 95-100, 240, 263, 268, 269
+  the praying-hall of, 98
+  the court of ablutions of, 99, 100
+  legend of the tortoise of, 97
+
+El-Ksar, 11, 12, 152
+
+El-Mansour, Yacoub, 16, 30-33
+
+Elmansour, palace of, 63
+
+Empress Mother, the, 177, 178
+
+English emissaries, visit of, to Meknez, 71-73
+
+Exhibitions, planned by General Lyautey, 219-221
+
+Ezziani, chronicler of Moulay-Ismaël, 60, 61, 64, 66, 67, 70
+
+
+Fatimites, the, 240, 241
+
+Fez, the approach to, 77
+  unchanged character of, 78
+  ruins of Merinid tombs of, 78, 79
+  the upper or new, 80
+  old summer-palace at, 80-83
+  night in, 82, 116-119
+  antiquity of, 83
+  palaces of, 84-87
+  the inns at, 86, 94, 116, 117
+  streets of, 88-91
+  a city of wealth, 90
+  the merchant of, 90
+  bazaars of, 91, 92, 107-109
+  a melancholy city, 92, 109
+  twilight in, 93
+  the shrines of, 93
+  mosque of Moulay Idriss at, 94, 95
+  mosque of El Kairouiyinat, 95-100
+  the University of, 97, 100, 101
+  Medersas of, 99, 105-107, 274
+  mosque of El Andalous at, 101, 102
+  Bab F'touh cemetery of, 102-104
+  the potters of, 103
+  art and culture of, 104-106, 247
+  the Mellah of, 113
+  harems of Old, 188-196
+  the Convention of, 209
+  uprising in, 210
+  attack of Berbers on, 211
+  exhibitions at, 219
+  Moslem college at, 225
+  founding of, 240
+  Almoravid conquest of, 242
+  centre of Moroccan learning, 247
+  Catholic diocese at, 248
+  massacres at, 258
+
+Fez Elbali, 88 _et seq._, 188-196
+
+Fez Eldjid, 77, 80, 83-87, 245
+
+Fondak Nedjarine, the, at Fez, 94
+
+Fortifications, Moroccan, architecture of, 276
+
+Foucauld, Vicomte de, 110, 249
+
+Franco-German treaty of 1911, 212
+
+French Protectorate in Morocco, 209-222
+  work of, 222-227
+
+French, conquests in Morocco, 254-256
+  at Fez, 258
+
+Furniture, disappearance of Merinid, 86, 87
+
+
+Ghilis, the, 125
+
+Gouraud, General, 211
+
+
+Hamadch, tomb of, 49, 56
+
+Hamadchas, the, ritual dance of, 48, 49, 51-57
+
+Harem, in old Fez, 188-196
+  an Imperial, 170-181
+  in Marrakech, 197-205
+  in old Rabat, 182-187
+
+Hassan, Sultan, 129, 245, 246, 256
+
+Hassan, tower of, at Rabat, 31, 32
+
+Hassanians, the, rule of, 253-258
+
+Holy War, the, against France, 255,
+  against Spain and Portugal, 248-250
+
+Hospitals, in Morocco, 226, 227
+
+Houses, Moroccan, architecture of, 266, 275
+  color of, 50
+  plan of, 20
+  rich private, 86, 106
+
+
+Ibn-Toumert, 243, 268
+
+Idriss I, 94, 239
+
+Idriss II, 61, 80, 83, 94, 240
+
+Idrissite empire, the, 240, 241
+
+Inns, Moroccan, 86, 94, 116, 117
+
+
+Jews, of Sefrou, 113-116
+  treatment of North African, 114
+
+
+Kairouan, the Alïssaouas of, 48, 52
+  Great Mosque of, 93, 95, 272
+
+Kairouiyin, mosque of. _See_ El Kairouiyin
+
+Kalaa, ruins of, 264
+
+Kenitra, port of, 38, 223
+
+Koechlin, M. Raymond, 268
+
+Koutoubya, tower of the, 127, 128
+
+
+Lamothe, General, 218
+
+Land, area of cultivated, in Morocco, 224
+
+Louis XIV, and Moulay-Ismaël, 58, 59, 70
+
+Lunel, M. Tranchant de, 106, 274
+
+Lyautey, General, 23, 149, 150
+  at Sultan's court, 179
+  appointed Resident-General in Morocco, 210
+  military occupation of Morocco by, 211, 212
+  policy of, 213 _et seq._
+  economic development of Morocco achieved by, 218-222
+  summary of work of, 222-226
+
+
+Maclean, Sir Harry, 144
+
+Mamora, forest of, 14
+
+Mangin, General, 212
+
+Mansourah, mosque of, 150
+
+Market, of Marrakech, 144
+  in Moulay Idriss, 49
+  of Salé, 26, 27
+  of Sefrou, 111-113
+
+Marrakech, the road to, 123-126
+  founders of, 128, 129, 242
+  tower of the Koutoubya at, 127, 128
+  palace of the Bahia at, 129-133
+  the lamp-lighters of, 133
+  mixed population of, 134
+  bazaars of, 135-138
+  the "morocco" workers of, 137
+  olive-yards of, 139
+  the Menara of, 139, 140
+  a holiday of merchants of, 140-142
+  the Square of the Dead in, 143-145
+  French administration office at, 144
+  fruit-market of, 144
+  dance of Chleuh boys in, 148
+  Saadian tombs of, 149, 154-158, 252
+  a harem in, 197-205
+  taken by the French, 212
+  Catholic diocese at, 248
+  Chapel of the Tombs at, 270
+
+Medersa, the, of the Oudayas, 19-22
+  Attarine, 99
+  at Fez, 99, 105-107
+  at Salé, 25, 26
+  architecture of, 273-275
+
+Mehedyia, Phenician colony of, 38, 237
+
+Meknez, building of, 57-64, 69, 70
+  the Kasbah of, 62
+  palaces of, 63
+  stables of, 63
+  entrance into, 64
+  ruins of, 64-66
+  sunken gardens of, 72
+  visit of English emissaries to, 71-73
+
+Mellah, of Fez, 113
+  of Sefrou, 113-116
+
+Menara, the, in the Agdal, 139, 140
+
+Mequinez. _See_ Meknez
+
+Merinids, the, tombs of, at Fez, 78, 79
+  conquest of Morocco by, 245-247
+  architecture of, 269, 274, 275
+
+Mirador, the Imperial, 170-181
+
+Moorish art, 269
+
+Mosque, of Elakhador, 62
+  of El Andalous, 101, 102, 240, 268, 269
+  of El Kairouiyin, 80, 83, 93-100, 240, 263, 268, 269
+  of Kairouan, 93
+  of Mansourah, 150
+  of Rabat, 32
+  of Tinmel, 243, 268
+  of Tunisia, 96
+  architecture of Moroccan, 270-273
+
+Moulay Hafid, 81
+
+Moulay-el-Hassan, 129, 256
+
+Moulay Idriss I, rule of, 239
+  tomb of, 94
+
+Moulay Idriss II, tomb of, 61, 80, 83, 94
+  rule of, 240
+
+Moulay Idriss, Sacred City of, 5, 39, 45-57
+  Street of the Weavers in, 47
+  feast of the Hamadchas in, 48-57
+  market-place of, 49
+  whiteness of, 50
+  founding of, 240
+
+Moulay-Ismaël, and Louis XIV, 58, 59, 70
+  exploits of, 60-62
+  mausoleum of Moulay Idriss enlarged by, 61
+  Meknez built by, 62, 63, 69, 70
+  the Black Guard of, 44, 67-69
+  description of, 71
+  palaces of, 72
+  and English emissaries, 72, 73
+  death of, 73, 74
+  rule of, 253
+  successors of, 254
+
+Moulay Youssef, 180, 181, 258
+
+
+Nedjarine, fountain and inn of, 94
+
+Night, in Fez, 116-119
+
+
+Oases, Moroccan, 109, 110
+  Marrakech, 127 _et seq._
+  Sefrou, 110 _et seq._
+  Settat, 124
+
+Oudayas, the, Kasbah of, 16, 17
+  Medersa of, 19-22
+
+
+Palaces, Moroccan, the Bahia, 129-133
+  Bou-Jeloud, 80-83
+  at Fez, 80-87
+  at Meknez, 63
+  of Moulay-Ismaël, 72
+
+Phenicians, the, African explorations of, 236, 237
+
+Pilgrimage to Salé, a, 41
+
+Population, Moroccan, varied elements of, 89, 134
+
+Ports, Moroccan, 222, 223
+
+Portugal, the Holy War against, 248-250
+
+Pottery, Berber, 264
+
+Potters' Field, the, 104
+
+
+Rabat, 15, 16
+  Tower of Hassan at, 31, 32
+  ruins of mosque at, 32
+  called "Camp of Victory," 33
+  Sacrifice of the Sheep at, 163 _et seq._
+  Sultan's harem of, 170-181
+  visit to a harem in old, 182-187
+  exhibitions at, 219
+  port of, 223
+  Moslem college at, 225
+  Central Laboratory at, 226
+
+Railways, Moroccan, built by French Protectorate, 224
+
+Rarb, the, 38, 44
+
+Roads, Moroccan, built by French Protectorate, 224
+
+Romans, the, African explorations of, 237, 238
+
+
+Saadian Sultans, the, history of, 151-153
+  tombs of, 149, 154-158, 252
+  rule of, 247-252
+
+Sacrifice of the Sheep, the, 164-170
+
+Saint-Amand, M. de, 58
+
+Saladin, M. H., his "Manual of Moslem Architecture," 233, 261, 271
+
+Salé, first view of, 14
+  type of untouched Moroccan city, 23, 24
+  bazaar of, 24, 25
+  Medersas of, 19-22, 25, 26
+  market of, 26, 27
+  colors of, 50
+
+Schools, in Morocco, 225, 226
+
+Sedrata, ruins of, 264
+
+Sefrou, 110-116
+  market-place of, 111-113
+  men and women of, 112, 113
+  Jewish colony of, 113-116
+
+Senegal, 152
+
+Settat, oasis of, 124
+
+Sheep, sacrifice of the, 164-170
+
+Sidi-Mohammed, 254
+
+Slaves, Moroccan, 171, 191, 199-201
+  trade in white, 250
+
+_Sloughi_, bronze, at Volubilis, 46, 87
+
+Soudan, 152
+
+Spain, the Holy War against, 248-250
+
+Spanish zone, the, German intrigue in, 213, 218
+
+Stables, of Meknez, 63
+
+Stewart, Commodore, 71
+
+Street of the Weavers (Moulay Idriss), 47
+
+Streets, Moroccan, 47, 88-91, 161, 162
+
+
+Tangier, 3-8
+  colors of, 50
+  taken by the French, 255
+
+Tetuan, bronze chandelier of, 87
+
+Timbuctoo, the Sultanate of, 152
+
+Tingitanian Mauretania, 237
+
+Tinmel, ruins of mosque at, 243, 268
+
+Tlemcen, the conflict for, 245, 246
+
+Touaregs, the, 236
+
+Tower, of Hassan, 31, 32
+  of the Koutoubya, 127, 128
+
+Tunisia, Almohad sanctuary of, 96
+
+
+Vandals, the, African invasion by, 238
+
+Veiled Men, the, 236, 241
+
+Versailles and Meknez, 58
+
+Villages, "sedentary," 43
+
+Volubilis, ruins of, 44-46
+  bronze _sloughi_ of, 46, 87
+  founded by Romans, 237
+
+
+Wedding, Jewish, procession bringing gifts for, 108
+
+Windus, John, 70-72, 250
+
+Women, Moroccan, dress of, 51, 52
+  of Sefrou, 112, 113
+  of the harems, 187-189
+  in Sultan's harem, 173-175
+  in harems of Old Fez, 188, 192-194
+  in harem of Marrakech, 202-204
+  in harem of Rabat, 184-187
+  negro, 43, 191
+
+
+Yacoub-el-Mansour, 16, 30-33, 244
+
+Youssef-ben-Tachfin, 242
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_BY EDITH WHARTON_
+
+
+THE GREATER INCLINATION
+THE TOUCHSTONE
+CRUCIAL INSTANCES
+THE VALLEY OF DECISION
+SANCTUARY
+THE DESCENT OF MAN
+THE HOUSE OF MIRTH
+THE FRUIT OF THE TREE
+THE HERMIT AND THE WILD WOMAN
+TALES OF MEN AND GHOSTS
+ETHAN FROME
+THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY
+XINGU
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+IN MOROCCO
+FIGHTING FRANCE
+ITALIAN BACKGROUNDS
+A MOTOR FLIGHT THROUGH FRANCE
+ARTEMIS TO ACTÆON
+THE DECORATION OF HOUSES
+
+
+_CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS_
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of In Morocco, by Edith Wharton
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of In Morocco, by Edith Wharton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: In Morocco
+
+Author: Edith Wharton
+
+Release Date: March 4, 2012 [EBook #39042]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN MOROCCO ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<h1>IN MOROCCO</h1>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 429px;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="429" height="640" alt="" />
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+<p><a id="front"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/gs01.jpg" width="640" height="398" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc</i><br />
+
+Fez Elbali from the ramparts</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+
+<h1>IN MOROCCO</h1>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>EDITH WHARTON</h2>
+
+<h4>ILLUSTRATED</h4>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 229px;">
+<img src="images/tp_ill.jpg" width="229" height="314" alt="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">
+NEW YORK<br />
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS<br />
+1920<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Copyright, 1919, 1920, by</span><br />
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS<br />
+<br />
+Published October, 1920<br />
+<br />
+THE SCRIBNER PRESS<br />
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">
+TO<br />
+GENERAL LYAUTEY<br />
+<br />
+RESIDENT GENERAL OF FRANCE IN MOROCCO AND TO<br />
+MADAME LYAUTEY,<br />
+<br />
+THANKS TO WHOSE KINDNESS THE JOURNEY<br />
+I HAD SO LONG DREAMED OF<br />
+SURPASSED WHAT I HAD DREAMED<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>Having begun my book with the statement that Morocco still lacks a
+guide-book, I should have wished to take a first step toward remedying
+that deficiency.</p>
+
+<p>But the conditions in which I travelled, though full of unexpected and
+picturesque opportunities, were not suited to leisurely study of the
+places visited. The time was limited by the approach of the rainy
+season, which puts an end to motoring over the treacherous trails of the
+Spanish zone. In 1918, owing to the watchfulness of German submarines in
+the Straits and along the northwest coast of Africa, the trip by sea
+from Marseilles to Casablanca, ordinarily so easy, was not to be made
+without much discomfort and loss of time. Once on board the steamer,
+passengers were often kept in port (without leave to land) for six or
+eight days; therefore for any one bound by a time-limit, as most
+war-workers were, it was necessary to travel<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span> across country, and to be
+back at Tangier before the November rains.</p>
+
+<p>This left me only one month in which to visit Morocco from the
+Mediterranean to the High Atlas, and from the Atlantic to Fez, and even
+had there been a Djinn's carpet to carry me, the multiplicity of
+impressions received would have made precise observation difficult.</p>
+
+<p>The next best thing to a Djinn's carpet, a military motor, was at my
+disposal every morning; but war conditions imposed restrictions, and the
+wish to use the minimum of petrol often stood in the way of the second
+visit which alone makes it possible to carry away a definite and
+detailed impression.</p>
+
+<p>These drawbacks were more than offset by the advantage of making my
+quick trip at a moment unique in the history of the country; the brief
+moment of transition between its virtually complete subjection to
+European authority, and the fast approaching hour when it is thrown open
+to all the banalities and promiscuities of modern travel.</p>
+
+<p>Morocco is too curious, too beautiful, too rich<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span> in landscape and
+architecture, and above all too much of a novelty, not to attract one of
+the main streams of spring travel as soon as Mediterranean passenger
+traffic is resumed. Now that the war is over, only a few months' work on
+roads and railways divide it from the great torrent of "tourism"; and
+once that deluge is let loose, no eye will ever again see Moulay Idriss
+and Fez and Marrakech as I saw them.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the incessant efforts of the present French administration
+to preserve the old monuments of Morocco from injury, and her native
+arts and industries from the corruption of European bad taste, the
+impression of mystery and remoteness which the country now produces must
+inevitably vanish with the approach of the "Circular Ticket." Within a
+few years far more will be known of the past of Morocco, but that past
+will be far less visible to the traveller than it is to-day. Excavations
+will reveal fresh traces of Roman and Phenician occupation; the remote
+affinities between Copts and Berbers, between Bagdad and Fez, between
+Byzantine art and the architecture of the Souss, will be explored and
+elucidated; but,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span> while these successive discoveries are being made, the
+strange survival of mediæval life, of a life contemporary with the
+crusaders, with Saladin, even with the great days of the Caliphate of
+Bagdad, which now greets the astonished traveller, will gradually
+disappear, till at last even the mysterious autocthones of the Atlas
+will have folded their tents and silently stolen away.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>Authoritative utterances on Morocco are not wanting for those who can
+read them in French; but they are to be found mainly in large and often
+inaccessible books, like M. Doutté's "En Tribu," the Marquis de
+Segonzac's remarkable explorations in the Atlas, or Foucauld's classic
+(but unobtainable) "Reconnaissance au Maroc"; and few, if any, have been
+translated into English.</p>
+
+<p>M. Louis Châtelain has dealt with the Roman ruins of Volubilis and M.
+Tranchant de Lunel, M. Raymond Koechlin, M. Gaillard, M. Ricard, and
+many other French scholars, have written of Moslem architecture and art
+in articles published either in "France-Maroc," as introductions to
+catalogues<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span> of exhibitions, or in the reviews and daily papers. Pierre
+Loti and M. André Chevrillon have reflected, with the intensest visual
+sensibility, the romantic and ruinous Morocco of yesterday; and in the
+volumes of the "Conférences Marocaines," published by the French
+government, the experts gathered about the Resident-General have
+examined the industrial and agricultural Morocco of to-morrow. Lastly,
+one striking book sums up, with the clearness and consecutiveness of
+which French scholarship alone possesses the art, the chief things to be
+said on all these subjects, save that of art and archæology. This is M.
+Augustin Bernard's volume, "Le Maroc," the one portable and compact yet
+full and informing book since Leo Africanus described the bazaars of
+Fez. But M. Augustin Bernard deals only with the ethnology, the social,
+religious and political history, and the physical properties, of the
+country; and this, though "a large order," leaves out the visual and
+picturesque side, except in so far as the book touches on the always
+picturesque life of the people.</p>
+
+<p>For the use, therefore, of the happy wanderers who may be planning a
+Moroccan journey, I have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span> added to the record of my personal impressions
+a slight sketch of the history and art of the country. In extenuation of
+the attempt I must add that the chief merit of this sketch will be its
+absence of originality. Its facts will be chiefly drawn from the pages
+of M. Augustin Bernard, M. H. Saladin, and M. Gaston Migeon, and the
+rich sources of the "Conférences Marocaines" and the articles of
+"France-Maroc." It will also be deeply indebted to information given on
+the spot by the brilliant specialists of the French administration, to
+the Marquis de Segonzac, with whom I had the good luck to travel from
+Rabat to Marrakech and back; to M. Alfred de Tarde, editor of
+"France-Maroc"; to M. Tranchant de Lunel, director of the French School
+of Fine Arts in Morocco; to M. Goulven, the historian of Portuguese
+Mazagan; to M. Louis Châtelain, and to the many other cultivated and
+cordial French officials, military and civilian, who, at each stage of
+my journey, did their amiable best to answer my questions and open my
+eyes.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>NOTE</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the writing of proper names and of other Arab words the French
+spelling has been followed.</p>
+
+<p>In the case of proper names, and names of cities and districts, this
+seems justified by the fact that they occur in a French colony, where
+French usage naturally prevails; and to spell <i>Oudjda</i> in the French
+way, and <i>koubba</i>, for instance, in the English form of <i>kubba</i>, would
+cause needless confusion as to their respective pronunciation. It seems
+therefore simpler, in a book written for the ordinary traveller, to
+conform altogether to French usage.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>TABLE OF CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+<p>
+<span class="tocnum">PAGE</span><br />
+<br />
+PREFACE                                       <span class="tocnum"><a href="#Page_vii">vii</a></span><br />
+<br />
+I. RABAT AND SALÉ                              <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></span><br />
+<br />
+II. VOLUBILIS, MOULAY IDRISS AND MEKNEZ       <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_37'>35</a></span><br />
+<br />
+III. FEZ                                      <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_77'>75</a></span><br />
+<br />
+IV. MARRAKECH                                <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_123'>121</a></span><br />
+<br />
+V. HAREMS AND CEREMONIES                     <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_161'>159</a></span><br />
+<br />
+VI. GENERAL LYAUTEY'S WORK IN MOROCCO        <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_209'>207</a></span><br />
+<br />
+VII. A SKETCH OF MOROCCAN HISTORY            <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_231'>229</a></span><br />
+<br />
+VIII. NOTE ON MOROCCAN ARCHITECTURE          <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_261'>259</a></span><br />
+<br />
+IX. BOOKS CONSULTED                          <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_281'>279</a></span><br />
+<br />
+INDEX                                        <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_285'>283</a></span><br />
+</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[Pg xvii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+
+<p>
+FEZ ELBALI FROM THE RAMPARTS                 <span class="tocnum"><i><a href="#front">Frontispiece</a></i></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="tocnum">FACING PAGE</span><br />
+<br />
+GENERAL VIEW FROM THE KASBAH OF THE OUDAYAS&mdash;RABAT     <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_16'>16</a></span><br />
+<br />
+INTERIOR COURT OF THE MEDERSA OF THE OUDAYAS&mdash;RABAT    <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_20'>20</a></span><br />
+<br />
+ENTRANCE OF THE MEDERSA&mdash;SALÉ                          <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_24'>24</a></span><br />
+<br />
+MARKET-PLACE OUTSIDE THE TOWN&mdash;SALÉ                    <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_26'>26</a></span><br />
+<br />
+CHELLA-RUINS OF MOSQUE&mdash;SALÉ                           <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_30'>30</a></span><br />
+<br />
+THE WESTERN PORTICO OF THE BASILICA OF ANTONIUS PIUS&mdash;VOLUBILIS                                        <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_46'>46</a></span><br />
+<br />
+MOULAY IDRISS                                          <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_48'>48</a></span><br />
+<br />
+THE MARKET-PLACE&mdash;MOULAY IDRISS                        <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_50'>50</a></span><br />
+<br />
+MARKET-PLACE ON THE DAY OF THE RITUAL DANCE OF THE HAMADCHAS&mdash;MOULAY IDRISS                           <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_52'>52</a></span><br />
+<br />
+THE MARKET-PLACE. PROCESSION OF THE CONFRATERNITY OF THE HAMADCHAS&mdash;MOULAY IDRISS                        <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_56'>56</a></span><br />
+<br />
+GATE: "BAB-MANSOUR"&mdash;MEKNEZ                            <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_58'>58</a></span><br />
+<br />
+THE RUINS OF THE PALACE OF MOULAY-ISMAËL&mdash;MEKNEZ       <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_66'>66</a></span><br />
+<br />
+FEZ ELDJID                                             <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_84'>84</a></span><br />
+<br />
+A REED-ROOFED STREET&mdash;FEZ                              <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_88'>88</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[Pg xviii]</a></span>THE NEDJARINE FOUNTAIN&mdash;FEZ                            <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_94'>94</a></span><br />
+<br />
+THE BAZAARS. A VIEW OF THE SOUK EL ATTARINE AND THE QUAISARYA&mdash;FEZ                                     <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_108'>108</a></span><br />
+<br />
+THE "LITTLE GARDEN" IN BACKGROUND, PALACE OF THE BAHIA&mdash;MARRAKECH                                   <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_128'>128</a></span><br />
+<br />
+THE GREAT COURT, PALACE OF THE BAHIA&mdash;MARRAKECH        <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_130'>130</a></span><br />
+<br />
+APARTMENT OF THE GRAND VIZIER'S FAVORITE, PALACE OF THE BAHIA&mdash;MARRAKECH                                <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_132'>132</a></span><br />
+<br />
+A FONDAK&mdash;MARRAKECH                                    <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_144'>144</a></span><br />
+<br />
+MAUSOLEUM OF THE SAADIAN SULTANS SHOWING THE TOMBS&mdash;MARRAKECH                                       <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_156'>156</a></span><br />
+<br />
+THE SULTAN OF MOROCCO UNDER THE GREEN UMBRELLA         <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_168'>168</a></span><br />
+<br />
+A CLAN OF MOUNTAINEERS AND THEIR CAÏD                  <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_170'>170</a></span><br />
+<br />
+THE SULTAN ENTERING MARRAKECH IN STATE                 <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_176'>176</a></span><br />
+<br />
+WOMEN WATCHING A PROCESSION FROM A ROOF                <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_194'>194</a></span><br />
+<br />
+A STREET FOUNTAIN&mdash;MARRAKECH                           <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_262'>262</a></span><br />
+<br />
+GATE OF THE KASBAH OF THE OUDAYAS&mdash;RABAT               <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_266'>266</a></span><br />
+<br />
+MEDERSA BOUANYANA&mdash;FEZ                                 <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_268'>268</a></span><br />
+<br />
+THE PRAYING-CHAPEL IN THE MEDERSA EL ATTARINE&mdash;FEZ     <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_270'>270</a></span><br />
+<br />
+INTERIOR COURT OF THE MEDERSA&mdash;SALÉ                    <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_274'>274</a></span><br />
+<br />
+THE GATE OF THE PORTUGUESE&mdash;MARRAKECH                  <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_276'>276</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+MAP<br />
+<br />
+THE PART OF MOROCCO VISITED BY MRS. WHARTON              <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_8'>8</a></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>I</h2>
+
+<h3>RABAT AND SALÉ</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<h4>LEAVING TANGIER</h4>
+
+<p>To step on board a steamer in a Spanish port, and three hours later to
+land in <i>a country without a guide-book</i>, is a sensation to rouse the
+hunger of the repletest sight-seer.</p>
+
+<p>The sensation is attainable by any one who will take the trouble to row
+out into the harbour of Algeciras and scramble onto a little black boat
+headed across the straits. Hardly has the rock of Gibraltar turned to
+cloud when one's foot is on the soil of an almost unknown Africa.
+Tangier, indeed, is in the guide-books; but, cuckoo-like, it has had to
+lays its egg in strange nests, and the traveller who wants to find out
+about it must acquire a work dealing with some other country&mdash;Spain or
+Portugal or Algeria. There is no guide-book to Morocco, and no way of
+knowing, once one has left Tangier behind, where the long trail over
+the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> Rif is going to land one, in the sense understood by any one
+accustomed to European certainties. The air of the unforeseen blows on
+one from the roadless passes of the Atlas.</p>
+
+<p>This feeling of adventure is heightened by the contrast between
+Tangier&mdash;cosmopolitan, frowsy, familiar Tangier, that every tourist has
+visited for the last forty years&mdash;and the vast unknown just beyond. One
+has met, of course, travellers who have been to Fez; but they have gone
+there on special missions, under escort, mysteriously, perhaps
+perilously; the expedition has seemed, till lately, a considerable
+affair. And when one opens the records of Moroccan travellers written
+within the last twenty years, how many, even of the most adventurous,
+are found to have gone beyond Fez? And what, to this day, do the names
+of Meknez and Marrakech, of Mogador, Saffi or Rabat, signify to any but
+a few students of political history, a few explorers and naturalists?
+Not till within the last year has Morocco been open to travel from
+Tangier to the Great Atlas, and from Moulay Idriss to the Atlantic.
+Three years ago Christians were being massacred in the streets of Salé,
+the pirate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> town across the river from Rabat, and two years ago no
+European had been allowed to enter the Sacred City of Moulay Idriss, the
+burial-place of the lawful descendant of Ali, founder of the Idrissite
+dynasty. Now, thanks to the energy and the imagination of one of the
+greatest of colonial administrators, the country, at least in the French
+zone, is as safe and open as the opposite shore of Spain. All that
+remains is to tell the traveller how to find his way about it.</p>
+
+<p>Ten years ago there was not a wheeled vehicle in Morocco; now its
+thousands of miles of trail, and its hundreds of miles of firm French
+roads, are travelled by countless carts, omnibuses and motor-vehicles.
+There are light railways from Rabat to Fez in the west, and to a point
+about eighty-five kilometres from Marrakech in the south; and it is
+possible to say that within a year a regular railway system will connect
+eastern Morocco with western Algeria, and the ports of Tangier and
+Casablanca with the principal points of the interior.</p>
+
+<p>What, then, prevents the tourist from instantly taking ship at Bordeaux
+or Algeciras and letting loose his motor on this new world? Only the
+temporary<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> obstacles which the war has everywhere put in the way of
+travel. Till these are lifted it will hardly be possible to travel in
+Morocco except by favour of the Resident-General; but, normal conditions
+once restored, the country will be as accessible, from the straits of
+Gibraltar to the Great Atlas, as Algeria or Tunisia.</p>
+
+<p>To see Morocco during the war was therefore to see it in the last phase
+of its curiously abrupt transition from remoteness and danger to
+security and accessibility; at a moment when its aspect and its customs
+were still almost unaffected by European influences, and when the
+"Christian" might taste the transient joy of wandering unmolested in
+cities of ancient mystery and hostility, whose inhabitants seemed hardly
+aware of his intrusion.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<h4>THE TRAIL TO EL-KSAR</h4>
+
+<p>With such opportunities ahead it was impossible, that brilliant morning
+of September, 1917, not to be off quickly from Tangier, impossible to do
+justice to the pale-blue town piled up within brown<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> walls against the
+thickly-foliaged gardens of "the Mountain," to the animation of its
+market-place and the secret beauties of its steep Arab streets. For
+Tangier swarms with people in European clothes, there are English,
+French and Spanish signs above its shops, and cab-stands in its squares;
+it belongs, as much as Algiers, to the familiar dog-eared world of
+travel&mdash;and there, beyond the last dip of "the Mountain," lies the world
+of mystery, with the rosy dawn just breaking over it. The motor is at
+the door and we are off.</p>
+
+<p>The so-called Spanish zone, which encloses internationalized Tangier in
+a wide circuit of territory, extends southward for a distance of about a
+hundred and fifteen kilometres. Consequently, when good roads traverse
+it, French Morocco will be reached in less than two hours by
+motor-travellers bound for the south. But for the present Spanish
+enterprise dies out after a few miles of macadam (as it does even
+between Madrid and Toledo), and the tourist is committed to the <i>piste</i>.
+These <i>pistes</i>&mdash;the old caravan-trails from the south&mdash;are more
+available to motors in Morocco than in southern Algeria and Tunisia,
+since they run mostly over<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> soil which, though sandy in part, is bound
+together by a tough dwarf vegetation, and not over pure desert sand.
+This, however, is the utmost that can be said of the Spanish <i>pistes</i>.
+In the French protectorate constant efforts are made to keep the trails
+fit for wheeled traffic, but Spain shows no sense of a corresponding
+obligation.</p>
+
+<p>After leaving the macadamized road which runs south from Tangier one
+seems to have embarked on a petrified ocean in a boat hardly equal to
+the adventure. Then, as one leaps and plunges over humps and ruts, down
+sheer banks into rivers, and up precipices into sand-pits, one gradually
+gains faith in one's conveyance and in one's spinal column; but both
+must be sound in every joint to resist the strain of the long miles to
+Arbaoua, the frontier post of the French protectorate.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/map.png" width="640" height="409" alt="" />
+<span class="caption">The part of Morocco visited by Mrs. Wharton</span>
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Luckily there are other things to think about. At the first turn out of
+Tangier, Europe and the European disappear, and as soon as the motor
+begins to dip and rise over the arid little hills beyond to the last
+gardens one is sure that every figure on the road will be picturesque
+instead of prosaic, every garment graceful instead of grotesque. One
+knows, too, that there will be no more omnibuses or trams or
+motorcyclists, but only long lines of camels rising up in brown friezes
+against the sky, little black donkeys trotting across the scrub under
+bulging pack-saddles, and noble draped figures walking beside them or
+majestically perching on their rumps. And for miles and miles there will
+be no more towns&mdash;only, at intervals on the naked slopes, circles of
+rush-roofed huts in a blue stockade of cactus, or a hundred or two nomad
+tents of black camel's hair resting on walls of wattled thorn and
+grouped about a terebinth-tree and a well.</p>
+
+<p>Between these nomad colonies lies the <i>bled</i>, the immense waste of
+fallow land and palmetto desert: an earth as void of life as the sky
+above it of clouds. The scenery is always the same; but if one has the
+love of great emptinesses, and of the play of light on long stretches of
+parched earth and rock, the sameness is part of the enchantment. In such
+a scene every landmark takes on an extreme value. For miles one watches
+the little white dome of a saint's grave rising and disappearing with
+the undulations of the trail; at last one is abreast of it, and the
+solitary tomb, alone with its fig-tree and its broken<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> well-curb, puts a
+meaning into the waste. The same importance, but intensified, marks the
+appearance of every human figure. The two white-draped riders passing
+single file up the red slope to that ring of tents on the ridge have a
+mysterious and inexplicable importance: one follows their progress with
+eyes that ache with conjecture. More exciting still is the encounter of
+the first veiled woman heading a little cavalcade from the south. All
+the mystery that awaits us looks out through the eye-slits in the
+grave-clothes muffling her. Where have they come from, where are they
+going, all these slow wayfarers out of the unknown? Probably only from
+one thatched <i>douar</i><a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> to another; but interminable distances unroll
+behind them, they breathe of Timbuctoo and the farthest desert. Just
+such figures must swarm in the Saharan cities, in the Soudan and
+Senegal. There is no break in the links: these wanderers have looked on
+at the building of cities that were dust when the Romans pushed their
+outposts across the Atlas.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<h4>EL-KSAR TO RABAT</h4>
+
+<p>A town at last&mdash;its nearness announced by the multiplied ruts of the
+trail, the cactus hedges, the fig-trees weighed down by dust leaning
+over ruinous earthern walls. And here are the first houses of the
+European El-Ksar&mdash;neat white Spanish houses on the slope outside the old
+Arab settlement. Of the Arab town itself, above reed stockades and brown
+walls, only a minaret and a few flat roofs are visible. Under the walls
+drowse the usual gregarious Lazaruses; others, temporarily resuscitated,
+trail their grave-clothes after a line of camels and donkeys toward the
+olive-gardens outside the town.</p>
+
+<p>The way to Rabat is long and difficult, and there is no time to visit
+El-Ksar, though its minaret beckons so alluringly above the
+fruit-orchards; so we stop for luncheon outside the walls, at a canteen
+with a corrugated iron roof where skinny Spaniards are serving thick
+purple wine and eggs fried in oil to a party of French soldiers. The
+heat has suddenly become intolerable, and a flaming wind straight from
+the south brings in at the door,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> with a cloud of blue flies, the smell
+of camels and trampled herbs and the strong spices of the bazaars.</p>
+
+<p>Luncheon over, we hurry on between the cactus hedges, and then plunge
+back into the waste. Beyond El-Ksar the last hills of the Rif die away,
+and there is a stretch of wilderness without an outline till the Lesser
+Atlas begins to rise in the east. Once in the French protectorate the
+trail improves, but there are still difficult bits; and finally, on a
+high plateau, the chauffeur stops in a web of crisscross trails, throws
+up his hands, and confesses that he has lost his way. The heat is mortal
+at the moment. For the last hour the red breath of the sirocco has risen
+from every hollow into which we dipped; now it hangs about us in the
+open, as if we had caught it in our wheels and it had to pause above us
+when we paused.</p>
+
+<p>All around is the featureless wild land, palmetto scrub stretching away
+into eternity. A few yards off rises the inevitable ruined <i>koubba</i><a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>
+with its fig-tree: in the shade under its crumbling wall the buzz of the
+flies is like the sound of frying. Farther off,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> we discern a cluster of
+huts, and presently some Arab boys and a tall pensive shepherd come
+hurrying across the scrub. They are full of good-will, and no doubt of
+information; but our chauffeur speaks no Arabic and the talk dies down
+into shrugs and head-shakings. The Arabs retire to the shade of the
+wall, and we decide to start&mdash;for anywhere....</p>
+
+<p>The chauffeur turns the crank, but there is no responding quiver.
+Something has gone wrong; we can't move, and it is not much comfort to
+remember that, if we could, we should not know where to go. At least we
+should be cooler in motion than sitting still under the blinding sky.</p>
+
+<p>Such an adventure initiates one at the outset into the stern facts of
+desert motoring. Every detail of our trip from Tangier to Rabat had been
+carefully planned to keep us in unbroken contact with civilization. We
+were to "tub" in one European hotel, and to dine in another, with just
+enough picnicking between to give a touch of local colour. But let one
+little cog slip and the whole plan falls to bits, and we are alone in
+the old untamed Moghreb, as remote from Europe as any mediæval
+adventurer. If one lose one's way in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> Morocco, civilization vanishes as
+though it were a magic carpet rolled up by a Djinn.</p>
+
+<p>It is a good thing to begin with such a mishap, not only because it
+develops the fatalism necessary to the enjoyment of Africa, but because
+it lets one at once into the mysterious heart of the country: a country
+so deeply conditioned by its miles and miles of uncitied wilderness that
+until one has known the wilderness one cannot begin to understand the
+cities.</p>
+
+<p>We came to one at length, after sunset on that first endless day. The
+motor, cleverly patched up, had found its way to a real road, and
+speeding along between the stunted cork-trees of the forest of Mamora
+brought us to a last rise from which we beheld in the dusk a line of
+yellow walls backed by the misty blue of the Atlantic. Salé, the fierce
+old pirate town, where Robinson Crusoe was so long a slave, lay before
+us, snow-white in its cheese-coloured ramparts skirted by fig and olive
+gardens. Below its gates a stretch of waste land, endlessly trailed over
+by mules and camels, sloped down to the mouth of the Bou-Regreg, the
+blue-brown river dividing it from Rabat. The motor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> stopped at the
+landing-stage of the steam-ferry; crowding about it were droves of
+donkeys, knots of camels, plump-faced merchants on crimson-saddled
+mules, with negro servants at their bridles, bare-legged water-carriers
+with hairy goat-skins slung over their shoulders, and Arab women in a
+heap of veils, cloaks, mufflings, all of the same ashy white, the
+caftans of clutched children peeping through in patches of old rose and
+lilac and pale green.</p>
+
+<p>Across the river the native town of Rabat lay piled up on an orange-red
+cliff beaten by the Atlantic. Its walls, red too, plunged into the
+darkening breakers at the mouth of the river; and behind it, stretching
+up to the mighty tower of Hassan, and the ruins of the Great Mosque, the
+scattered houses of the European city showed their many lights across
+the plain.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<h4>THE KASBAH OF THE OUDAYAS</h4>
+
+<p>Salé the white and Rabat the red frown at each other over the foaming
+bar of the Bou-Regreg, each walled, terraced, minareted, and presenting
+a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> singularly complete picture of the two types of Moroccan town, the
+snowy and the tawny. To the gates of both the Atlantic breakers roll in
+with the boom of northern seas, and under a misty northern sky. It is
+one of the surprises of Morocco to find the familiar African pictures
+bathed in this unfamiliar haze. Even the fierce midday sun does not
+wholly dispel it: the air remains thick, opalescent, like water slightly
+clouded by milk. One is tempted to say that Morocco is Tunisia seen by
+moonlight.</p>
+
+<p>The European town of Rabat, a rapidly developing community, lies almost
+wholly outside the walls of the old Arab city. The latter, founded in
+the twelfth century by the great Almohad conqueror of Spain,
+Yacoub-el-Mansour, stretches its mighty walls to the river's mouth.
+Thence they climb the cliff to enclose the Kasbah<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> of the Oudayas, a
+troublesome tribe whom one of the Almohad Sultans, mistrusting their
+good faith, packed up one day, flocks, tents and camels, and carried
+across the <i>bled</i> to stow them into these stout walls under his imperial
+eye. Great crenellated ramparts, cyclopean, superb, follow the curve of
+the cliff. On the landward side they are interrupted by a gate-tower
+resting on one of the most nobly decorated of the horseshoe arches that
+break the mighty walls of Moroccan cities. Underneath the tower the
+vaulted entrance turns, Arab fashion, at right angles, profiling its red
+arch against darkness and mystery. This bending of passages, so
+characteristic a device of the Moroccan builder, is like an
+architectural expression of the tortuous secret soul of the land.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/gs02.jpg" width="640" height="400" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc</i><br />
+
+Rabat&mdash;general view from the Kasbah of the Oudayas</span>
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Outside the Kasbah a narrow foot-path is squeezed between the walls and
+the edge of the cliff. Toward sunset it looks down on a strange scene.
+To the south of the citadel the cliff descends to a long dune sloping to
+a sand-beach; and dune and beach are covered with the slanting
+headstones of the immense Arab cemetery of El Alou. Acres and acres of
+graves fall away from the red ramparts to the grey sea; and breakers
+rolling straight from America send their spray across the lowest stones.</p>
+
+<p>There are always things going on toward evening in an Arab cemetery. In
+this one, travellers from the <i>bled</i> are camping in one corner, donkeys
+grazing (on heaven knows what), a camel dozing under<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> its pack; in
+another, about a new-made grave, there are ritual movements of muffled
+figures and wailings of a funeral hymn half drowned by the waves. Near
+us, on a fallen headstone, a man with a thoughtful face sits chatting
+with two friends and hugging to his breast a tiny boy who looks like a
+grasshopper in his green caftan; a little way off, a solitary
+philosopher, his eye fixed on the sunset, lies on another grave, smoking
+his long pipe of kif.</p>
+
+<p>There is infinite sadness in this scene under the fading sky, beside the
+cold welter of the Atlantic. One seems to be not in Africa itself, but
+in the Africa that northern crusaders may have dreamed of in snow-bound
+castles by colder shores of the same ocean. This is what Moghreb must
+have looked like to the confused imagination of the Middle Ages, to
+Norman knights burning to ransom the Holy Places, or Hansa merchants
+devising, in steep-roofed towns, of Barbary and the long caravans
+bringing apes and gold-powder from the south.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Inside the gate of the Kasbah one comes on more waste land and on other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+walls&mdash;for all Moroccan towns are enclosed in circuit within circuit of
+battlemented masonry. Then, unexpectedly, a gate in one of the inner
+walls lets one into a tiled court enclosed in a traceried cloister and
+overlooking an orange-grove that rises out of a carpet of roses. This
+peaceful and well-ordered place is the interior of the Medersa (the
+college) of the Oudayas. Morocco is full of these colleges, or rather
+lodging-houses of the students frequenting the mosques; for all
+Mahometan education is given in the mosque itself, only the preparatory
+work being done in the colleges. The most beautiful of the Medersas date
+from the earlier years of the long Merinid dynasty (1248-1548), the
+period at which Moroccan art, freed from too distinctively Spanish and
+Arab influences, began to develop a delicate grace of its own as far
+removed from the extravagance of Spanish ornament as from the
+inheritance of Roman-Byzantine motives that the first Moslem invasion
+had brought with it from Syria and Mesopotamia.</p>
+
+<p>These exquisite collegiate buildings, though still in use whenever they
+are near a well-known mosque, have all fallen into a state of sordid
+disrepair.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+fortunately to build in the old tradition, which has never been
+lost&mdash;has, like all Orientals, an invincible repugnance to repairing and
+restoring, and one after another the frail exposed Arab structures, with
+their open courts and badly constructed terrace-roofs, are crumbling
+into ruin. Happily the French Government has at last been asked to
+intervene, and all over Morocco the Medersas are being repaired with
+skill and discretion. That of the Oudayas is already completely
+restored, and as it had long fallen into disuse it has been transformed
+by the Ministry of Fine Arts into a museum of Moroccan art.</p>
+
+<p>The plan of the Medersas is always much the same: the eternal plan of
+the Arab house, built about one or more arcaded courts, with long narrow
+rooms enclosing them on the ground floor, and several stories above,
+reached by narrow stairs, and often opening on finely carved cedar
+galleries. The chief difference between the Medersa and the private
+house, or even the <i>fondak</i>,<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> lies in the use to which the rooms are
+put. In the Medersas, one of the ground-floor apartments is always
+fitted up as a chapel, and shut off from the court by carved cedar doors
+still often touched with old gilding and vermilion. There are always a
+few students praying in the chapel, while others sit in the doors of the
+upper rooms, their books on their knees, or lean over the carved
+galleries chatting with their companions who are washing their feet at
+the marble fountain in the court, preparatory to entering the chapel.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/gs03.jpg" width="640" height="398" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph by Schmitt, Rabat</i><br />
+
+Rabat&mdash;interior court of the Medersa of the Oudayas</span>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p>
+<p>In the Medersa of the Oudayas, these native activities have been
+replaced by the lifeless hush of a museum. The rooms are furnished with
+old rugs, pottery, brasses, the curious embroidered hangings which line
+the tents of the chiefs, and other specimens of Arab art. One room
+reproduces a barber's shop in the bazaar, its benches covered with fine
+matting, the hanging mirror inlaid with mother-of-pearl, the
+razor-handles of silver <i>niello</i>. The horseshoe arches of the outer
+gallery look out on orange-blossoms, roses and the sea. It is all
+beautiful, calm and harmonious; and if one is tempted to mourn the
+absence of life and local colour, one has only to visit an abandoned
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>Medersa to see that, but for French intervention, the charming
+colonnades and cedar chambers of the college of the Oudayas would by
+this time be a heap of undistinguished rubbish&mdash;for plaster and rubble
+do not "die in beauty" like the firm stones of Rome.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<h4>ROBINSON CRUSOE'S "SALLEE"</h4>
+
+<p>Before Morocco passed under the rule of the great governor who now
+administers it, the European colonists made short work of the beauty and
+privacy of the old Arab towns in which they established themselves.</p>
+
+<p>On the west coast, especially, where the Mediterranean peoples, from the
+Phenicians to the Portuguese, have had trading-posts for over two
+thousand years, the harm done to such seaboard towns as Tangier, Rabat
+and Casablanca is hard to estimate. The modern European colonist
+apparently imagined that to plant his warehouses, <i>cafés</i> and
+cinema-palaces within the walls which for so long had fiercely excluded
+him was the most impressive way of proclaiming his domination.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Under General Lyautey such views are no longer tolerated. Respect for
+native habits, native beliefs and native architecture is the first
+principle inculcated in the civil servants attached to his
+administration. Not only does he require that the native towns shall be
+kept intact, and no European building erected within them; a sense of
+beauty not often vouchsafed to Colonial governors causes him to place
+the administration buildings so far beyond the walls that the modern
+colony grouped around them remains entirely distinct from the old town,
+instead of growing out of it like an ugly excrescence.</p>
+
+<p>The Arab quarter of Rabat was already irreparably disfigured when
+General Lyautey came to Morocco; but ferocious old Salé, Phenician
+counting-house and breeder of Barbary pirates, had been saved from
+profanation by its Moslem fanaticism. Few Christian feet had entered its
+walls except those of the prisoners who, like Robinson Crusoe, slaved
+for the wealthy merchants in its mysterious terraced houses. Not till
+two or three years ago was it completely pacified; and when it opened
+its gates to the infidel it was still, as it is to-day,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> the type of the
+untouched Moroccan city&mdash;so untouched that, with the sunlight
+irradiating its cream-coloured walls and the blue-white domes above
+them, it rests on its carpet of rich fruit-gardens like some rare
+specimen of Arab art on a strip of old Oriental velvet.</p>
+
+<p>Within the walls, the magic persists: which does not always happen when
+one penetrates into the mirage-like cities of Arabian Africa. Salé has
+the charm of extreme compactness. Crowded between the river-mouth and
+the sea, its white and pale-blue houses almost touch across the narrow
+streets, and the reed-thatched bazaars seem like miniature reductions of
+the great trading labyrinths of Tunis or Fez.</p>
+
+<p>Everything that the reader of the Arabian Nights expects to find is
+here: the whitewashed niches wherein pale youths sit weaving the fine
+mattings for which the town is still famous; the tunnelled passages
+where indolent merchants with bare feet crouch in their little kennels
+hung with richly ornamented saddlery and arms, or with slippers of pale
+citron leather and bright embroidered <i>babouches</i>; the stalls with
+fruit, olives, tunny-fish, vague syrupy sweets, candles for saints'
+tombs, Mantegnesque garlands of red and green peppers, griddle-cakes
+sizzling on red-hot pans, and all the varied wares and cakes and
+condiments that the lady in the tale of the Three Calanders went out to
+buy, that memorable morning in the market of Bagdad.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 451px;">
+<img src="images/gs04.jpg" width="451" height="640" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc</i><br />
+Salé&mdash;entrance of the Medersa</span>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p>
+<p>Only at Salé all is on a small scale: there is not much of any one
+thing, except of the exquisite matting. The tide of commerce has ebbed
+from the intractable old city, and one feels, as one watches the
+listless purchasers in her little languishing bazaars, that her long
+animosity against the intruder has ended by destroying her own life.</p>
+
+<p>The feeling increases when one leaves the bazaar for the streets
+adjoining it. An even deeper hush than that which hangs over the
+well-to-do quarters of all Arab towns broods over these silent
+thorough-fares, with heavy-nailed doors barring half-ruined houses. In a
+steep deserted square one of these doors opens its panels of
+weather-silvered cedar on the court of the frailest, ghostliest of
+Medersas&mdash;mere carved and painted shell of a dead house of learning.
+Mystic interweavings of endless lines,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+patient patterns interminably
+repeated in wood and stone and clay, all are here, from the tessellated
+paving of the court to the honeycombing of the cedar roof through which
+a patch of sky shows here and there like an inset of turquoise tiling.</p>
+
+<p>This lovely ruin is in the safe hands of the French Fine Arts
+administration, and soon the wood-carvers and stucco-workers of Fez will
+have revived its old perfection; but it will never again be more than a
+show-Medersa, standing empty and unused beside the mosque behind whose
+guarded doors and high walls one guesses that the old religious
+fanaticism of Salé is dying also, as her learning and her commerce have
+died.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/gs05.jpg" width="640" height="399" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph by Schmitt, Rabat</i><br />
+
+Salé&mdash;market-place outside the town</span>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p>
+<p>In truth the only life in her is centred in the market-place outside the
+walls, where big expanding Rabat goes on certain days to provision
+herself. The market of Salé, though typical of all Moroccan markets, has
+an animation and picturesqueness of its own. Its rows of white tents
+pitched on a dusty square between the outer walls and the fruit-gardens
+make it look as though a hostile tribe had sat down to lay siege to the
+town; but the army is an army of hucksters, of farmers from the rich
+black lands along the river, of swarthy nomads and leather-gaitered
+peasant women from the hills, of slaves and servants and tradesmen from
+Rabat and Salé; a draped, veiled, turbaned mob shrieking, bargaining,
+fist-shaking, call on Allah to witness the monstrous villanies of the
+misbegotten miscreants they are trading with, and then, struck with the
+mysterious Eastern apathy, sinking down in languid heaps of muslin among
+the black figs, purple onions and rosy melons, the fluttering hens, the
+tethered goats, the whinnying foals, that are all enclosed in an outer
+circle of folded-up camels and of mules dozing under faded crimson
+saddles.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<h4>CHELLA AND THE GREAT MOSQUE</h4>
+
+<p>The Merinid Sultans of Rabat had a terribly troublesome neighbour across
+the Bou-Regreg, and they built Chella to keep an eye on the pirates of
+Salé. But Chella has fallen like a Babylonian city triumphed over by the
+prophets; while Salé, sly, fierce and irrepressible, continued till well
+on in the nineteenth century to breed pirates and fanatics.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
+The ruins of Chella lie on the farther side of the plateau above the
+native town of Rabat. The mighty wall enclosing them faces the city wall
+of Rabat, looking at it across one of those great red powdery wastes
+which seem, in this strange land, like death and the desert forever
+creeping up to overwhelm the puny works of man.</p>
+
+<p>The red waste is scored by countless trains of donkeys carrying water
+from the springs of Chella, by long caravans of mules and camels, and by
+the busy motors of the French administration; yet there emanates from it
+an impression of solitude and decay which even the prosaic tinkle of the
+trams jogging out from the European town to the Exhibition grounds above
+the sea cannot long dispel.</p>
+
+<p>Perpetually, even in the new thriving French Morocco, the outline of a
+ruin or the look in a pair of eyes shifts the scene, rends the thin veil
+of the European Illusion, and confronts one with the old grey Moslem
+reality. Passing under the gate of Chella, with its richly carved
+corbels and lofty crenellated towers, one feels one's self thus
+completely reabsorbed into the past.</p>
+
+<p>Below the gate the ground slopes away, bare
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+and blazing, to a hollow
+where a little blue-green minaret gleams through fig-trees, and
+fragments of arch and vaulting reveal the outline of a ruined mosque.</p>
+
+<p>Was ever shade so blue-black and delicious as that of the cork-tree near
+the spring where the donkey's water-cans are being filled? Under its
+branches a black man in a blue shirt lies immovably sleeping in the
+dust. Close by women and children splash and chatter about the spring,
+and the dome of a saint's tomb shines through lustreless leaves. The
+black man, the donkeys, the women and children, the saint's dome, are
+all part of the inimitable Eastern scene in which inertia and agitation
+are so curiously combined, and a surface of shrill noise flickers over
+depths of such unfathomable silence.</p>
+
+<p>The ruins of Chella belong to the purest period of Moroccan art. The
+tracery of the broken arches is all carved in stone or in glazed
+turquoise tiling, and the fragments of wall and vaulting have the firm
+elegance of a classic ruin. But what would even their beauty be without
+the leafy setting of the place? The "unimaginable touch of Time" gives
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+
+Chella its peculiar charm: the aged fig-tree clamped in uptorn tiles and
+thrusting gouty arms between the arches; the garlanding of vines flung
+from column to column; the secret pool to which childless women are
+brought to bathe, and where the tree springing from a cleft of the steps
+is always hung with the bright bits of stuff which are the votive
+offerings of Africa.</p>
+
+<p>The shade, the sound of springs, the terraced orange-garden with irises
+blooming along channels of running water, all this greenery and coolness
+in the hollow of a fierce red hill make Chella seem, to the traveller
+new to Africa, the very type and embodiment of its old contrasts of heat
+and freshness, of fire and languor. It is like a desert traveller's
+dream in his last fever.</p>
+
+<p>Yacoub-el-Mansour was the fourth of the great Almohad Sultans who, in
+the twelfth century, drove out the effete Almoravids, and swept their
+victorious armies from Marrakech to Tunis and from Tangier to Madrid.
+His grandfather, Abd-el-Moumen, had been occupied with conquest and
+civic administration. It was said of his rule that "he seized northern
+Africa to make order prevail there"; and in fact, out of a welter of
+wild tribes confusedly fighting and robbing he drew an empire firmly
+seated and securely governed, wherein caravans travelled from the Atlas
+to the Straits without fear of attack, and "a soldier wandering through
+the fields would not have dared to pluck an ear of wheat."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/gs06.jpg" width="640" height="392" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc</i><br />
+
+Chella&mdash;ruins of mosque</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His grandson, the great El-Mansour, was a conqueror too; but where he
+conquered he planted the undying seed of beauty. The victor of Alarcos,
+the soldier who subdued the north of Spain, dreamed a great dream of
+art. His ambition was to bestow on his three capitals, Seville, Rabat
+and Marrakech, the three most beautiful towers the world had ever seen;
+and if the tower of Rabat had been completed, and that of Seville had
+not been injured by Spanish embellishments, his dream would have been
+realized.</p>
+
+<p>The "Tower of Hassan," as the Sultan's tower is called, rises from the
+plateau above old Rabat, overlooking the steep cliff that drops down to
+the last winding of the Bou-Regreg. Truncated at half its height, it
+stands on the edge of the cliff, a far-off beacon to travellers by land
+and sea. It is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
+one of the world's great monuments, so sufficient in
+strength and majesty that until one has seen its fellow, the Koutoubya
+of Marrakech, one wonders if the genius of the builder could have
+carried such perfect balance of massive wall-spaces and traceried
+openings to a triumphant completion.</p>
+
+<p>Near the tower, the red-brown walls and huge piers of the mosque built
+at the same time stretch their roofless alignment beneath the sky. This
+mosque, before it was destroyed, must have been one of the finest
+monuments of Almohad architecture in Morocco: now, with its tumbled red
+masses of masonry and vast cisterns overhung by clumps of blue aloes, it
+still forms a ruin of Roman grandeur.</p>
+
+<p>The Mosque, the Tower, the citadel of the Oudayas, and the mighty walls
+and towers of Chella, compose an architectural group as noble and
+complete as that of some mediæval Tuscan city. All they need to make the
+comparison exact is that they should have been compactly massed on a
+steep hill, instead of lying scattered over the wide spaces between the
+promontory of the Oudayas and the hillside of Chella.</p>
+
+<p>The founder of Rabat, the great Yacoub-el-Mansour,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+The Moroccan Arab, though he continues to build&mdash;and
+ called it, in memory
+of the battle of Alarcos, "The Camp of Victory" (<i>Ribat-el-Path</i>), and
+the monuments he bestowed on it justified the name in another sense, by
+giving it the beauty that lives when battles are forgotten.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Village of tents. The village of mud-huts is called a
+<i>nourwal</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Saint's tomb. The saint himself is called a <i>marabout</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Citadel.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> The Moroccan inn or caravanserai.</p></div></div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p>
+<h2>II</h2>
+
+<h3>VOLUBILIS, MOULAY IDRISS AND MEKNEZ</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<h4>VOLUBILIS</h4>
+
+<p>One day before sunrise we set out from Rabat for the ruins of Roman
+Volubilis.</p>
+
+<p>From the ferry of the Bou-Regreg we looked backward on a last vision of
+orange ramparts under a night-blue sky sprinkled with stars; ahead, over
+gardens still deep in shadow, the walls of Salé were passing from drab
+to peach-colour in the eastern glow. Dawn is the romantic hour in
+Africa. Dirt and dilapidation disappear under a pearly haze, and a
+breeze from the sea blows away the memory of fetid markets and sordid
+heaps of humanity. At that hour the old Moroccan cities look like the
+ivory citadels in a Persian miniature, and the fat shopkeepers riding
+out to their vegetable-gardens<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> like Princes sallying forth to rescue
+captive maidens.</p>
+
+<p>Our way led along the highroad from Rabat to the modern port of Kenitra,
+near the ruins of the Phenician colony of Mehedyia. Just north of
+Kenitra we struck the trail, branching off eastward to a European
+village on the light railway between Rabat and Fez, and beyond the
+railway-sheds and flat-roofed stores the wilderness began, stretching
+away into clear distances bounded by the hills of the Rarb,<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> above
+which the sun was rising.</p>
+
+<p>Range after range these translucent hills rose before us; all around the
+solitude was complete. Village life, and even tent life, naturally
+gathers about a river-bank or a spring; and the waste we were crossing
+was of waterless sand bound together by a loose desert growth. Only an
+abandoned well-curb here and there cast its blue shadow on the yellow
+<i>bled</i>, or a saint's tomb hung like a bubble between sky and sand. The
+light had the preternatural purity which gives a foretaste of mirage: it
+was the light in which magic becomes real, and which helps to understand
+how, to people living in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> such an atmosphere, the boundary between fact
+and dream perpetually fluctuates.</p>
+
+<p>The sand was scored with tracks and ruts innumerable, for the road
+between Rabat and Fez is travelled not only by French government motors
+but by native caravans and trains of pilgrims to and from the sacred
+city of Moulay Idriss, the founder of the Idrissite dynasty, whose tomb
+is in the Zerhoun, the mountain ridge above Volubilis. To untrained eyes
+it was impossible to guess which of the trails one ought to follow; and
+without much surprise we suddenly found the motor stopping, while its
+wheels spun round vainly in the loose sand.</p>
+
+<p>The military chauffeur was not surprised either; nor was Captain de M.,
+the French staff-officer who accompanied us.</p>
+
+<p>"It often happens just here," they admitted philosophically. "When the
+General goes to Meknez he is always followed by a number of motors, so
+that if his own is stuck he may go on in another."</p>
+
+<p>This was interesting to know, but not particularly helpful, as the
+General and his motors were not travelling our way that morning. Nor was
+any one else, apparently. It is curious how<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> quickly the <i>bled</i> empties
+itself to the horizon if one happens to have an accident in it! But we
+had learned our lesson between Tangier and Rabat, and were able to
+produce a fair imitation of the fatalistic smile of the country.</p>
+
+<p>The officer remarked cheerfully that somebody might turn up, and we all
+sat down in the <i>bled</i>.</p>
+
+<p>A Berber woman, cropping up from nowhere, came and sat beside us. She
+had the thin sun-tanned face of her kind, brilliant eyes touched with
+<i>khol</i>, high cheek-bones, and the exceedingly short upper lip which
+gives such charm to the smile of the young nomad women. Her dress was
+the usual faded cotton shift, hooked on the shoulders with brass or
+silver clasps (still the antique <i>fibulæ</i>), and wound about with a vague
+drapery in whose folds a brown baby wriggled.</p>
+
+<p>The coolness of dawn had vanished and the sun beat down from a fierce
+sky. The village on the railway was too far off to be reached on foot,
+and there were probably no mules there to spare. Nearer at hand there
+was no sign of help: not a fortified farm, or even a circle of nomad
+tents. It was the unadulterated desert&mdash;and we waited.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Not in vain; for after an hour or two, from far off in the direction of
+the hills, there appeared an army with banners. We stared at it
+unbelievingly. The <i>mirage</i>, of course! We were too sophisticated to
+doubt it, and tales of sun-dazed travellers mocked by such visions rose
+in our well-stocked memories.</p>
+
+<p>The chauffeur thought otherwise. "Good! That's a pilgrimage from the
+mountains. They're going to Salé to pray at the tomb of the <i>marabout</i>;
+to-day is his feast-day."</p>
+
+<p>And so they were! And as we hung on their approach, and speculated as to
+the chances of their stopping to help, I had time to note the beauty of
+this long train winding toward us under parti-colored banners. There was
+something celestial, almost diaphanous, in the hundreds of figures
+turbaned and draped in white, marching slowly through the hot colorless
+radiance over the hot colorless sand.</p>
+
+<p>The most part were on foot, or bestriding tiny donkeys, but a stately
+Caïd rode alone at the end of the line on a horse saddled with crimson
+velvet; and to him our officer appealed.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Caïd courteously responded, and twenty or thirty pilgrims were
+ordered to harness themselves to the motor and haul it back to the
+trail, while the rest of the procession moved hieratically onward.</p>
+
+<p>I felt scruples at turning from their path even a fraction of this pious
+company; but they fell to with a saintly readiness, and before long the
+motor was on the trail. Then rewards were dispensed; and instantly those
+holy men became a prey to the darkest passions. Even in this land of
+contrasts the transition from pious serenity to rapacious rage can
+seldom have been more rapid. The devotees of the <i>marabout</i> fought,
+screamed, tore their garments and rolled over each other with sanguinary
+gestures in the struggle for our pesetas; then, perceiving our
+indifference, they suddenly remembered their religious duties, scrambled
+to their feet, tucked up their flying draperies, and raced after the
+tail-end of the procession.</p>
+
+<p>Through a golden heat-haze we struggled on to the hills. The country was
+fallow, and in great part too sandy for agriculture; but here and there
+we came on one of the deep-set Moroccan rivers,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> with a reddish-yellow
+course channelled between perpendicular banks of red earth, and marked
+by a thin line of verdure that widened to fruit-gardens wherever a
+village had sprung up. We traversed several of these "sedentary"<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a>
+villages, <i>nourwals</i> of clay houses with thatched conical roofs, in
+gardens of fig, apricot and pomegranate that must be so many pink and
+white paradises after the winter rains.</p>
+
+<p>One of these villages seemed to be inhabited entirely by blacks, big
+friendly creatures who came out to tell us by which trail to reach the
+bridge over the yellow <i>oued</i>. In the <i>oued</i> their womenkind were
+washing the variegated family rags. They were handsome blue-bronze
+creatures, bare to the waist, with tight black astrakhan curls and
+firmly sculptured legs and ankles; and all around them, like a swarm of
+gnats, danced countless jolly pickaninnies, naked as lizards, with the
+spindle legs and globular stomachs of children fed only on cereals.</p>
+
+<p>Half terrified but wholly interested, these infants<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> buzzed about the
+motor while we stopped to photograph them; and as we watched their
+antics we wondered whether they were the descendants of the little
+Soudanese boys whom the founder of Meknez, the terrible Sultan
+Moulay-Ismaël, used to carry off from beyond the Atlas and bring up in
+his military camps to form the nucleus of the Black Guard which defended
+his frontiers. We were on the line of travel between Meknez and the sea,
+and it seemed not unlikely that these <i>nourwals</i> were all that remained
+of scattered outposts of Moulay-Ismaël's legionaries.</p>
+
+<p>After a time we left <i>oueds</i> and villages behind us and were in the
+mountains of the Rarb, toiling across a high sandy plateau. Far off a
+fringe of vegetation showed promise of shade and water, and at last,
+against a pale mass of olive-trees, we saw the sight which, at whatever
+end of the world one comes upon it, wakes the same sense of awe: the
+ruin of a Roman city.</p>
+
+<p>Volubilis (called by the Arabs the Castle of the Pharaohs) is the only
+considerable Roman colony so far discovered in Morocco. It stands on the
+extreme ledge of a high plateau backed by the mountains of the Zerhoun.
+Below the plateau, the land<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> drops down precipitately to a narrow
+river-valley green with orchards and gardens, and in the neck of the
+valley, where the hills meet again, the conical white town of Moulay
+Idriss, the Sacred City of Morocco, rises sharply against a wooded
+background.</p>
+
+<p>So the two dominations look at each other across the valley: one, the
+lifeless Roman ruin, representing a system, an order, a social
+conception that still run through all our modern ways; the other, the
+untouched Moslem city, more dead and sucked back into an unintelligible
+past than any broken architrave of Greece or Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Volubilis seems to have had the extent and wealth of a great military
+outpost, such as Timgad in Algeria; but in the seventeenth century it
+was very nearly destroyed by Moulay-Ismaël, the Sultan of the Black
+Guard, who carried off its monuments piece-meal to build his new capital
+of Meknez, that Mequinez of contemporary travellers which was held to be
+one of the wonders of the age.</p>
+
+<p>Little remains to Volubilis in the way of important monuments: only the
+fragments of a basilica, part of an arch of triumph erected in honour of
+Caracalla, and the fallen columns and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> architraves which strew the path
+of Rome across the world. But its site is magnificent; and as the
+excavation of the ruins was interrupted by the war it is possible that
+subsequent search may bring forth other treasures comparable to the
+beautiful bronze <i>sloughi</i> (the African hound) which is now its
+principal possession.</p>
+
+<p>It was delicious, after seven hours of travel under the African sun, to
+sit on the shady terrace where the Curator of Volubilis, M. Louis
+Châtelain, welcomes his visitors. The French Fine Arts have built a
+charming house with gardens and pergolas for the custodian of the ruins,
+and have found in M. Châtelain an archæologist so absorbed in his task
+that, as soon as conditions permit, every inch of soil in the
+circumference of the city will be made to yield up whatever secrets it
+hides.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<h4>MOULAY IDRISS</h4>
+
+<p>We lingered under the pergolas of Volubilis till the heat grew less
+intolerable, and then our companions suggested a visit to Moulay
+Idriss.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 454px;">
+<img src="images/gs07.jpg" width="454" height="640" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc</i><br />
+
+Volubilis&mdash;the western portico of the basilica of Antonius Pius</span>
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Such a possibility had not occurred to us, and even Captain de M. seemed
+to doubt whether the expedition were advisable. Moulay Idriss was still
+said to be resentful of Christian intrusion: it was only a year before
+that the first French officers had entered it.</p>
+
+<p>But M. Châtelain was confident that there would be no opposition to our
+visit, and with the piled-up terraces and towers of the Sacred City
+growing golden in the afternoon light across the valley it was
+impossible to hesitate.</p>
+
+<p>We drove down through an olive-wood as ancient as those of Mitylene and
+Corfu, and then along the narrowing valley, between gardens luxuriant
+even in the parched Moroccan autumn. Presently the motor began to climb
+the steep road to the town, and at a gateway we got out and were met by
+the native chief of police. Instantly at the high windows of mysterious
+houses veiled heads appeared and sidelong eyes cautiously inspected us.
+But the quarter was deserted, and we walked on without meeting any one
+to the Street of the Weavers, a silent narrow way between low
+whitewashed niches like the cubicles in a convent. In<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> each niche sat a
+grave white-robed youth, forming a great amphora-shaped grain-basket out
+of closely plaited straw. Vine-leaves and tendrils hung through the reed
+roofing overhead, and grape-clusters cast their classic shadow at our
+feet. It was like walking on the unrolled frieze of a white Etruscan
+vase patterned with black vine garlands.</p>
+
+<p>The silence and emptiness of the place began to strike us: there was no
+sign of the Oriental crowd that usually springs out of the dust at the
+approach of strangers. But suddenly we heard close by the lament of the
+<i>rekka</i> (a kind of long fife), accompanied by a wild thrum-thrum of
+earthenware drums and a curious excited chanting of men's voices. I had
+heard such a chant before, at the other end of North Africa, in
+Kairouan, one of the other great Sanctuaries of Islam, where the sect of
+the Aïssaouas celebrate their sanguinary rites in the <i>Zaouïa</i><a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> of
+their confraternity. Yet it seemed incredible that if the Aïssaouas of
+Moulay Idriss were performing their ceremonies that day the chief of
+police should be placidly leading us through the streets in the very
+direction from which the chant was coming. The Moroccan, though he has
+no desire to get into trouble with the Christian, prefers to be left
+alone on feast-days, especially in such a stronghold of the faith as
+Moulay Idriss.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/gs08.jpg" width="640" height="396" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc</i><br />
+
+Moulay-Idriss (9,000 inhabitants)</span>
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But "Geschehen ist geschehen" is the sum of Oriental philosophy. For
+centuries Moulay Idriss had held out fanatically on its holy steep;
+then, suddenly, in 1916, its chiefs saw that the game was up, and
+surrendered without a pretense of resistance. Now the whole thing was
+over, the new conditions were accepted, and the chief of police assured
+us that with the French uniform at our side we should be safe anywhere.</p>
+
+<p>"The Aïssaouas?" he explained. "No, this is another sect, the Hamadchas,
+who are performing their ritual dance on the feast-day of their patron,
+the <i>marabout</i> Hamadch, whose tomb is in the Zerhoun. The feast is
+celebrated publicly in the market-place of Moulay Idriss."</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke we came out into the market-place, and understood why there
+had been no crowd at the gate. All the population was in the square and
+on the roofs that mount above it, tier by tier, against the wooded
+hillside: Moulay Idriss had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> better to do that day than to gape at a few
+tourists in dust-coats.</p>
+
+<p>Short of Sfax, and the other coast cities of eastern Tunisia, there is
+surely not another town in North Africa as white as Moulay Idriss. Some
+are pale blue and pinky yellow, like the Kasbah of Tangier, or cream and
+blue like Salé; but Tangier and Salé, for centuries continuously subject
+to European influences, have probably borrowed their colors from Genoa
+and the Italian Riviera. In the interior of the country, and especially
+in Morocco, where the whole color-scheme is much soberer than in Algeria
+and Tunisia, the color of the native houses is always a penitential
+shade of mud and ashes.</p>
+
+<p>But Moulay Idriss, that afternoon, was as white as if its arcaded square
+had been scooped out of a big cream cheese. The late sunlight lay like
+gold-leaf on one side of the square, the other was in pure blue shade;
+and above it, the crowded roofs, terraces and balconies packed with
+women in bright dresses looked like a flower-field on the edge of a
+marble quarry.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 462px;">
+<img src="images/gs09.jpg" width="462" height="640" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc</i><br />
+Moulay-Idriss&mdash;the market-place</span>
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The bright dresses were as unusual a sight as the white walls, for the
+average Moroccan crowd is the color of its houses. But the occasion was
+a special one, for these feasts of the Hamadchas occur only twice a
+year, in spring and autumn, and as the ritual dances take place out of
+doors, instead of being performed inside the building of the
+confraternity, the feminine population seizes the opportunity to burst
+into flower on the house-tops.</p>
+
+<p>It is rare, in Morocco, to see in the streets or the bazaars any women
+except of the humblest classes, household slaves, servants, peasants
+from the country or small tradesmen's wives; and even they (with the
+exception of the unveiled Berber women) are wrapped in the prevailing
+grave-clothes. The <i>filles de joie</i> and dancing-girls whose brilliant
+dresses enliven certain streets of the Algerian and Tunisian towns are
+invisible, or at least unnoticeable, in Morocco, where life, on the
+whole, seems so much less gay and brightly-tinted; and the women of the
+richer classes, mercantile or aristocratic, never leave their harems
+except to be married or buried. A throng of women dressed in light
+colors is therefore to be seen in public only when some street festival
+draws them to the roofs. Even then it is probable that the throng is
+mostly composed of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> slaves, household servants, and women of the lower
+<i>bourgeoisie</i>; but as they are all dressed in mauve and rose and pale
+green, with long earrings and jewelled head-bands flashing through their
+parted veils, the illusion, from a little distance, is as complete as
+though they were the ladies in waiting of the Queen of Sheba; and that
+radiant afternoon at Moulay Idriss, above the vine-garlanded square, and
+against the background of piled-up terraces, their vivid groups were in
+such contrast to the usual gray assemblages of the East that the scene
+seemed like a setting for some extravagantly staged ballet.</p>
+
+<p>For the same reason the spectacle unrolling itself below us took on a
+blessed air of unreality. Any normal person who has seen a dance of the
+Aïssaouas and watched them swallow thorns and hot coals, slash
+themselves with knives, and roll on the floor in epilepsy must have
+privately longed, after the first excitement was over, to fly from the
+repulsive scene. The Hamadchas are much more savage than Aïssaouas, and
+carry much farther their display of cataleptic anæsthesia; and, knowing
+this, I had wondered how long I should be able to stand the sight of
+what was going on below our terrace. But the beauty of the setting
+redeemed the bestial horror. In that unreal golden light the scene
+became merely symbolical: it was like one of those strange animal masks
+which the Middle Ages brought down from antiquity by way of the
+satyr-plays of Greece, and of which the half-human protagonists still
+grin and contort themselves among the Christian symbols of Gothic
+cathedrals.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/gs10.jpg" width="640" height="394" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph taken by Captain Henissart of the
+French Army</i><br />
+
+Moulay-Idriss&mdash;market-place on the day of the ritual dance of the
+Hamadchas</span>
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At one end of the square the musicians stood on a stone platform above
+the dancers. Like the musicians in a bas-relief they were flattened side
+by side against a wall, the fife-players with lifted arms and inflated
+cheeks, the drummers pounding frantically on long earthenware drums
+shaped like enormous hour-glasses and painted in barbaric patterns; and
+below, down the length of the market-place, the dance unrolled itself in
+a frenzied order that would have filled with envy a Paris or London
+impresario.</p>
+
+<p>In its centre an inspired-looking creature whirled about on his axis,
+the black ringlets standing out in snaky spirals from his haggard head,
+his cheek-muscles convulsively twitching. Around him, but a long way
+off, the dancers rocked and circled with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> long raucous cries dominated
+by the sobbing booming music; and in the sunlit space between dancers
+and holy man, two or three impish children bobbed about with fixed eyes
+and a grimace of comic frenzy, solemnly parodying his contortions.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile a tall grave personage in a doge-like cap, the only calm
+figure in the tumult, moved gravely here and there, regulating the
+dance, stimulating the frenzy, or calming some devotee who had broken
+the ranks and lay tossing and foaming on the stones. There was something
+far more sinister in this passionless figure, holding his hand on the
+key that let loose such crazy forces, than in the poor central whirligig
+who merely set the rhythm of the convulsions.</p>
+
+<p>The dancers were all dressed in white caftans or in the blue shirts of
+the lowest classes. In the sunlight something that looked like fresh red
+paint glistened on their shaved black or yellow skulls and made dark
+blotches on their garments. At first these stripes and stains suggested
+only a gaudy ritual ornament like the pattern on the drums; then one saw
+that the paint, or whatever it was, kept dripping down from the whirling
+caftans and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> forming fresh pools among the stones; that as one of the
+pools dried up another formed, redder and more glistening, and that
+these pools were fed from great gashes which the dancers hacked in their
+own skulls and breasts with hatchets and sharpened stones. The dance was
+a blood-rite, a great sacrificial symbol, in which blood flowed so
+freely that all the rocking feet were splashed with it.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually, however, it became evident that many of the dancers simply
+rocked and howled, without hacking themselves, and that most of the
+bleeding skulls and breasts belonged to negroes. Every now and then the
+circle widened to let in another figure, black or dark yellow, the
+figure of some humble blue-shirted spectator suddenly "getting religion"
+and rushing forward to snatch a weapon and baptize himself with his own
+blood; and as each new recruit joined the dancers the music shrieked
+louder and the devotees howled more wolfishly. And still, in the centre,
+the mad <i>marabout</i> spun, and the children bobbed and mimicked him and
+rolled their diamond eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Such is the dance of the Hamadchas, of the confraternity of the
+<i>marabout</i> Hamadch, a powerful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> saint of the seventeenth century, whose
+tomb is in the Zerhoun above Moulay Idriss. Hamadch, it appears, had a
+faithful slave, who, when his master died, killed himself in despair,
+and the self-inflicted wounds of the brotherhood are supposed to
+symbolize the slave's suicide; though no doubt the origin of the
+ceremony might be traced back to the depths of that ensanguined grove
+where Mr. Fraser plucked the Golden Bough.</p>
+
+<p>The more naïve interpretation, however, has its advantages, since it
+enables the devotees to divide their ritual duties into two classes, the
+devotions of the free men being addressed to the saint who died in his
+bed, while the slaves belong to the slave, and must therefore simulate
+his horrid end. And this is the reason why most of the white caftans
+simply rock and writhe, while the humble blue shirts drip with blood.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/gs11.jpg" width="640" height="396" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph taken by Captain Henissart of the
+French Army</i><br />
+
+Moulay-Idriss&mdash;the market-place. Procession of the confraternity of the
+Hamadchas</span>
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The sun was setting when we came down from our terrace above the
+market-place. To find a lodging for the night we had to press on to
+Meknez, where we were awaited at the French military post; therefore we
+were reluctantly obliged to refuse an invitation to take tea with the
+Caïd, whose high-perched house commands the whole white amphitheatre of
+the town. It was disappointing to leave Moulay Idriss with the Hamadchas
+howling their maddest, and so much besides to see; but as we drove away
+under the long shadows of the olives we counted ourselves lucky to have
+entered the sacred town, and luckier still to have been there on the day
+of the dance which, till a year ago, no foreigner had been allowed to
+see.</p>
+
+<p>A fine French road runs from Moulay Idriss to Meknez, and we flew on
+through the dusk between wooded hills and open stretches on which the
+fires of nomad camps put orange splashes in the darkness. Then the moon
+rose, and by its light we saw a widening valley, and gardens and
+orchards that stretched up to a great walled city outlined against the
+stars.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<h4>MEKNEZ</h4>
+
+<p>All that evening, from the garden of the Military Subdivision on the
+opposite height, we sat and looked across at the dark tree-clumps and
+moon-lit walls of Meknez, and listened to its fantastic history.</p>
+
+<p>Meknez was built by the Sultan Moulay-Ismaël,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> around the nucleus of a
+small town of which the site happened to please him, at the very moment
+when Louis XIV was creating Versailles. The coincidence of two
+contemporary autocrats calling cities out of the wilderness has caused
+persons with a taste for analogy to describe Meknez as the Versailles of
+Morocco: an epithet which is about as instructive as it would be to call
+Phidias the Benvenuto Cellini of Greece.</p>
+
+<p>There is, however, a pretext for the comparison in the fact that the two
+sovereigns took a lively interest in each other's affairs. Moulay-Ismaël
+sent several embassies to treat with Louis XIV on the eternal question
+of piracy and the ransom of Christian captives, and the two rulers were
+continually exchanging gifts and compliments.</p>
+
+<p>The governor of Tetouan, who was sent to Paris in 1680, having brought
+as presents to the French King a lion, a lioness, a tigress, and four
+ostriches, Louis XIV shortly afterward despatched M. de Saint-Amand to
+Morocco with two dozen watches, twelve pieces of gold brocade, a cannon
+six feet long and other firearms. After this the relations between the
+two courts remained friendly till 1693, at which time they were strained
+by the refusal of France to return the Moorish captives who were
+employed on the king's galleys, and who were probably as much needed
+there as the Sultan's Christian slaves for the building of Moorish
+palaces.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/gs12.jpg" width="640" height="396" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc</i><br />
+
+Meknez&mdash;gate: &quot;Bab-Mansour&quot;</span>
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Six years later the Sultan despatched Abdallah-ben-Aïssa to France to
+reopen negotiations. The ambassador was as brilliantly received and as
+eagerly run after as a modern statesman on an official mission, and his
+candidly expressed admiration for the personal charms of the Princesse
+de Conti, one of the French monarch's legitimatized children, is
+supposed to have been mistaken by the court for an offer of marriage
+from the Emperor of Barbary. But he came back without a treaty.</p>
+
+<p>Moulay-Ismaël, whose long reign (1673 to 1727) and extraordinary
+exploits make him already a legendary figure, conceived, early in his
+career, a passion for Meknez; and through all his troubled rule, with
+its alternations of barbaric warfare and far-reaching negotiations,
+palace intrigue, crazy bloodshed and great administrative reforms, his
+heart perpetually reverted to the wooded slopes on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> which he dreamed of
+building a city more splendid than Fez or Marrakech.</p>
+
+<p>"The Sultan" (writes his chronicler Aboul Kasim-ibn-Ahmad, called
+"Ezziani") "loved Meknez, the climate of which had enchanted him, and he
+would have liked never to leave it." He left it, indeed, often, left it
+perpetually, to fight with revolted tribes in the Atlas, to defeat one
+Berber army after another, to carry his arms across the High Atlas into
+the Souss, to adorn Fez with the heads of seven hundred vanquished
+chiefs, to put down his three rebellious brothers, to strip all the
+cities of his empire of their negroes and transport them to Meknez ("so
+that not a negro, man, woman or child, slave or free, was left in any
+part of the country"); to fight and defeat the Christians (1683); to
+take Tangier, to conduct a campaign on the Moulouya, to lead the holy
+war against the Spanish (1689), to take Larache, the Spanish commercial
+post on the west coast (which furnished eighteen hundred captives for
+Meknez); to lay siege to Ceuta, conduct a campaign against the Turks of
+Algiers, repress the pillage in his army, subdue more tribes, and build
+forts for his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> Black Legionaries from Oudjda to the Oued Noun. But
+almost each year's bloody record ends with the placid phrase: "Then the
+Sultan returned to Meknez."</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1701, Ezziani writes, the indomitable old man "deprived his
+rebellious sons of their principalities; after which date he consecrated
+himself exclusively to the building of his palaces and the planting of
+his gardens. And in 1720 (nineteen years later in this long reign!) he
+ordered the destruction of the mausoleum of Moulay Idriss for the
+purpose of enlarging it. And to gain the necessary space he bought all
+the adjacent land, and the workmen did not leave these new labors till
+they were entirely completed."</p>
+
+<p>In this same year there was levied on Fez a new tax which was so heavy
+that the inhabitants were obliged to abandon the city.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it is written of this terrible old monarch, who devastated whole
+districts, and sacrificed uncounted thousands of lives for his ruthless
+pleasure, that under his administration of his chaotic and turbulent
+empire "the country rejoiced in the most complete security. A Jew or a
+woman might travel<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> alone from Oudjda to the Oued Noun without any one's
+asking their business. Abundance reigned throughout the land: grain,
+food, cattle were to be bought for the lowest prices. Nowhere in the
+whole of Morocco was a highwayman or a robber to be found."</p>
+<p>And probably both sides of the picture are true.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>What, then, was the marvel across the valley, what were the "lordly
+pleasure-houses" to whose creation and enlargement Moulay-Ismaël
+returned again and again amid the throes and violences of a nearly
+centenarian life?</p>
+
+<p>The chronicler continues: "The Sultan caused all the houses near the
+Kasbah<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> to be demolished, <i>and compelled the inhabitants to carry away
+the ruins of their dwellings</i>. All the eastern end of the town was also
+torn down, and the ramparts were rebuilt. He also built the Great Mosque
+next to the palace of Nasr.... He occupied himself personally with the
+construction of his palaces, and before one was finished he caused
+another to be begun. He built the mosque of Elakhdar; the walls of the
+new town
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+
+were pierced with twenty fortified gates and surmounted with
+platforms for cannon. Within the walls he made a great artificial lake
+where one might row in boats. There was also a granary with immense
+subterranean reservoirs of water, and a stable <i>three miles long</i> for
+the Sultan's horses and mules; twelve thousand horses could be stabled
+in it. The flooring rested on vaults in which the grain for the horses
+was stored.... He also built the palace of Elmansour, which had twenty
+cupolas; from the top of each cupola one could look forth on the plain
+and the mountains around Meknez. All about the stables the rarest trees
+were planted. Within the walls were fifty palaces, each with its own
+mosque and its baths. Never was such a thing known in any country, Arab
+or foreign, pagan or Moslem. The guarding of the doors of these palaces
+was intrusted to twelve hundred black eunuchs."</p>
+
+<p>Such were the wonders that seventeenth century travellers toiled across
+the desert to see, and from which they came back dazzled and almost
+incredulous, as if half-suspecting that some djinn had deluded them with
+the vision of a phantom <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+city. But for the soberer European records, and
+the evidence of the ruins themselves (for the whole of the new Meknez is
+a ruin), one might indeed be inclined to regard Ezziani's statements as
+an Oriental fable; but the briefest glimpse of Moulay-Ismaël's Meknez
+makes it easy to believe all his chronicler tells of it, even to the
+three miles of stables.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning we drove across the valley and, skirting the old town on
+the hill, entered, by one of the twenty gates of Moulay-Ismaël, a long
+empty street lined with half-ruined arcades. Beyond was another street
+of beaten red earth bordered by high red walls blotched with gray and
+mauve. Ahead of us this road stretched out interminably (Meknez, before
+Washington, was the "city of magnificent distances"), and down its empty
+length only one or two draped figures passed, like shadows on the way to
+Shadowland. It was clear that the living held no further traffic with
+the Meknez of Moulay-Ismaël.</p>
+
+<p>Here it was at last. Another great gateway let us, under a resplendently
+bejewelled arch of turquoise-blue and green, into another walled
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+
+emptiness of red clay; a third gate opened into still vaster vacancies,
+and at their farther end rose a colossal red ruin, something like the
+lower stories of a Roman amphitheatre that should stretch out
+indefinitely instead of forming a circle, or like a series of Roman
+aqueducts built side by side and joined into one structure. Below this
+indescribable ruin the arid ground sloped down to an artificial water
+which was surely the lake that the Sultan had made for his
+boating-parties; and beyond it more red earth stretched away to more
+walls and gates, with glimpses of abandoned palaces and huge crumbling
+angle-towers.</p>
+
+<p>The vastness, the silence, the catastrophic desolation of the place,
+were all the more impressive because of the relatively recent date of
+the buildings. As Moulay-Ismaël had dealt with Volubilis, so time had
+dealt with his own Meknez; and the destruction which it had taken
+thousands of lash-driven slaves to inflict on the stout walls of the
+Roman city, neglect and abandonment had here rapidly accomplished. But
+though the sun-baked clay of which the impatient Sultan built his
+pleasure-houses will not suffer comparison with the firm stones of
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+
+Rome, "the high Roman fashion" is visible in the shape and outline of
+these ruins. What they are no one knows. In spite of Ezziani's text
+(written when the place was already partly destroyed) archæologists
+disagree as to the uses of the crypt of rose-flushed clay whose twenty
+rows of gigantic arches are so like an alignment of Roman aqueducts.
+Were these the vaulted granaries, or the subterranean reservoirs under
+the three miles of stabling which housed the twelve thousand horses? The
+stables, at any rate, were certainly near this spot, for the lake
+adjoins the ruins as in the chronicler's description; and between it and
+old Meknez, behind walls within walls, lie all that remains of the fifty
+palaces with their cupolas, gardens, mosques and baths.</p>
+
+<p>This inner region is less ruined than the mysterious vaulted structure,
+and one of the palaces, being still reserved for the present Sultan's
+use, cannot be visited; but we wandered unchallenged through desert
+courts, gardens of cypress and olive where dried fountains and painted
+summer-houses are falling into dust, and barren spaces enclosed in long
+empty façades. It was all the work of an eager and imperious old man,
+who, to realize his dream quickly, built in perishable materials; but
+the design, the dimensions, the whole conception, show that he had not
+only heard of Versailles but had looked with his own eyes on Volubilis.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/gs13.jpg" width="640" height="395" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc</i><br />
+
+Meknez&mdash;the ruins of the palace of Moulay-Ismaël</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>To build on such a scale, and finish the work in a single lifetime, even
+if the materials be malleable and the life a long one, implies a command
+of human labor that the other Sultan at Versailles must have envied. The
+imposition of the <i>corvée</i> was of course even simpler in Morocco than in
+France, since the material to draw on was unlimited, provided one could
+assert one's power over it; and for that purpose Ismaël had his Black
+Army, the hundred and fifty thousand disciplined legionaries who enabled
+him to enforce his rule over all the wild country from Algiers to
+Agadir.</p>
+
+<p>The methods by which this army were raised and increased are worth
+recounting in Ezziani's words:</p>
+
+<p>"A <i>taleb</i><a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> of Marrakech having shown the Sultan a register containing
+the names of the negroes who had formed part of the army of El-Mansour,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+Moulay-Ismaël ordered his agents to collect all that remained of these
+negroes and their children.... He also sent to the tribes of the
+Beni-Hasen, and into the mountains, to purchase all the negroes to be
+found there. Thus all that were in the whole of Moghreb were assembled,
+from the cities and the countryside, till not one was left, slave or
+free.</p>
+
+<p>"These negroes were armed and clothed, and sent to Mechra Erremel (north
+of Meknez) where they were ordered to build themselves houses, plant
+gardens and remain till their children were ten years old. Then the
+Sultan caused all the children to be brought to him, both boys and
+girls. The boys were apprenticed to masons, carpenters, and other
+tradesmen; others were employed to make mortar. The next year they were
+taught to drive the mules, the third to make <i>adobe</i> for building; the
+fourth year they learned to ride horses bareback, the fifth they were
+taught to ride in the saddle while using firearms. At the age of sixteen
+these boys became soldiers. They were then married to the young
+negresses who had meanwhile been taught cooking and washing in the
+Sultan's palaces&mdash;except those who were pretty, and these were given a
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>
+musical education, after which each one received a wedding-dress and a
+marriage settlement, and was handed over to her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"All the children of these couples were in due time destined for the
+Black Army, or for domestic service in the palaces. Every year the
+Sultan went to the camp at Mechra Erremel and brought back the children.
+The Black Army numbered one hundred and fifty thousand men, of whom part
+were at Erremel, part at Meknez, and the rest in the seventy-six forts
+which the Sultan built for them throughout his domain. May the Lord be
+merciful to his memory!"</p>
+
+<p>Such was the army by means of which Ismaël enforced the <i>corvée</i> on his
+undisciplined tribes. Many thousands of lives went to the building of
+imperial Meknez; but his subjects would scarcely have sufficed if he had
+not been able to add to them twenty-five thousand Christian captives.</p>
+
+<p>M. Augustin Bernard, in his admirable book on Morocco, says that the
+seventeenth century was "the golden age of piracy" in Morocco; and the
+great Ismaël was no doubt one of its chief promoters. One understands
+his unwillingness to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
+come to an agreement with his great friend and
+competitor, Louis XIV, on the difficult subject of the ransom of
+Christian captives when one reads in the admiring Ezziani that it took
+fifty-five thousand prisoners and captives to execute his architectural
+conceptions.</p>
+
+<p>"These prisoners, by day, were occupied on various tasks; at night they
+were locked into subterranean dungeons. Any prisoner who died at his
+task was <i>built into the wall he was building</i>." (This statement is
+confirmed by John Windus, the English traveller who visited the court of
+Moulay-Ismaël in the Sultan's old age.) Many Europeans must have
+succumbed quickly to the heat and the lash, for the wall-builders were
+obliged to make each stroke in time with their neighbors, and were
+bastinadoed mercilessly if they broke the rhythm; and there is little
+doubt that the expert artisans of France, Italy and Spain were even
+dearer to the old architectural madman than the friendship of the
+palace-building despot across the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Ezziani's chronicle dates from the first part of the nineteenth century,
+and is an Arab's colorless panegyric of a great Arab ruler; but John
+Windus,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+the Englishman who accompanied Commodore Stewart's embassy to
+Meknez in 1721, saw the imperial palaces and their builder with his own
+eyes, and described them with the vivacity of a foreigner struck by
+every contrast.</p>
+
+<p>Moulay-Ismaël was then about eighty-seven years old, "a middle-sized
+man, who has the remains of a good face, with nothing of a negro's
+features, though his mother was a black. He has a high nose, which is
+pretty long from the eye-brows downward, and thin. He has lost all his
+teeth, and breathes short, as if his lungs were bad, coughs and spits
+pretty often, which never falls to the ground, men being always ready
+with handkerchiefs to receive it. His beard is thin and very white, his
+eyes seem to have been sparkling, but their vigor decayed through age,
+and his cheeks very much sunk in."</p>
+
+<p>Such was the appearance of this extraordinary man, who deceived,
+tortured, betrayed, assassinated, terrorized and mocked his slaves, his
+subjects, his women and children and his ministers like any other
+half-savage Arab despot, but who yet managed through his long reign to
+maintain a barbarous empire,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
+to police the wilderness, and give at
+least an appearance of prosperity and security where all had before been
+chaos.</p>
+
+<p>The English emissaries appear to have been much struck by the
+magnificence of his palaces, then in all the splendor of novelty, and
+gleaming with marbles brought from Volubilis and Salé. Windus extols in
+particular the sunken gardens of cypress, pomegranate and orange trees,
+some of them laid out seventy feet below the level of the palace-courts;
+the exquisite plaster fretwork; the miles of tessellated walls and
+pavement made in the finely patterned mosaic work of Fez; and the long
+terrace walk trellised with "vines and other greens" leading from the
+palace to the famous stables, and over which it was the Sultan's custom
+to drive in a chariot drawn by women and eunuchs.</p>
+
+<p>Moulay-Ismaël received the English ambassador with every show of pomp
+and friendship, and immediately "made him a present" of a handful of
+young English captives; but just as the negotiations were about to be
+concluded Commodore Stewart was privately advised that the Sultan had no
+intention of allowing the rest of the English to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> be ransomed. Luckily a
+diplomatically composed letter, addressed by the English envoy to one of
+the favorite wives, resulted in Ismaël's changing his mind, and the
+captives were finally given up, and departed with their rescuers. As one
+stands in the fiery sun, among the monstrous ruins of those tragic
+walls, one pictures the other Christian captives pausing for a second,
+at the risk of death, in the rhythmic beat of their labor, to watch the
+little train of their companions winding away across the desert to
+freedom.</p>
+
+<p>On the way back through the long streets that lead to the ruins we
+noticed, lying by the roadside, the shafts of fluted columns, blocks of
+marble, Roman capitals: fragments of the long loot of Salé and
+Volubilis. We asked how they came there, and were told that, according
+to a tradition still believed in the country, when the prisoners and
+captives who were dragging the building materials toward the palace
+under the blistering sun heard of the old Sultan's death, they dropped
+their loads with one accord and fled. At the same moment every worker on
+the walls flung down his trowel or hod, every slave of the palaces
+stopped grinding or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> scouring or drawing water or carrying faggots or
+polishing the miles of tessellated floors; so that, when the tyrant's
+heart stopped beating, at that very instant life ceased to circulate in
+the huge house he had built, and in all its members it became a carcass
+for his carcass.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> The high plateau-and-hill formation between Tangier and
+Fez.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> So called to distinguish them from the tent villages of the
+less settled groups.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Sacred college.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> The citadal of old Meknez.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Learned man.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>III</h2>
+
+<h3>FEZ</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<h4>THE FIRST VISION</h4>
+
+<p>Many-walled Fez rose up before us out of the plain toward the end of the
+day.</p>
+
+<p>The walls and towers we saw were those of the upper town, Fez Eldjid
+(the New), which lies on the edge of the plateau and hides from view Old
+Fez tumbling down below it into the ravine of the Oued Fez. Thus
+approached, the city presents to view only a long line of ramparts and
+fortresses, merging into the wide, tawny plain and framed in barren
+mountains. Not a house is visible outside the walls, except, at a
+respectful distance, the few unobtrusive buildings of the European
+colony; and not a village breaks the desolation of the landscape.</p>
+
+<p>As we drew nearer, the walls towered close over us, and skirting them we
+came to a bare space outside<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> a great horseshoe gate, and found
+ourselves suddenly in the foreground of a picture by Carpaccio or
+Bellini. Where else had one seen just those rows of white-turbaned
+majestic figures, squatting in the dust under lofty walls, all the pale
+faces ringed in curling beards turned to the story-teller in the centre
+of the group? Transform the story-teller into a rapt young Venetian, and
+you have the audience and the foreground of Carpaccio's "Preaching of
+St. Stephen," even to the camels craning inquisitive necks above the
+turbans. Every step of the way in North Africa corroborates the close
+observation of the early travellers, whether painters or narrators, and
+shows the unchanged character of the Oriental life that the Venetians
+pictured, and Leo Africanus and Windus and Charles Cochelet described.</p>
+
+<p>There was time, before sunset, to go up to the hill, from which the
+ruined tombs of the Merinid Sultans look down over the city they made
+glorious. After the savage massacre of foreign residents in 1912 the
+French encircled the heights commanding Fez with one of their admirably
+engineered military roads, and in a few minutes our motor had climbed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+to the point from which the great dynasty of artist-Sultans dreamed of
+looking down forever on their capital.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing endures in Islam, except what human inertia has left standing
+and its own solidity has preserved from the elements. Or rather, nothing
+remains intact, and nothing wholly perishes, but the architecture, like
+all else, lingers on half-ruined and half-unchanged. The Merinid tombs,
+however, are only hollow shells and broken walls, grown part of the
+brown cliff they cling to. No one thinks of them save as an added touch
+of picturesqueness where all is picturesque: they survive as the best
+point from which to look down at Fez.</p>
+
+<p>There it lies, outspread in golden light, roofs, terraces, and towers
+sliding over the plain's edge in a rush dammed here and there by
+barriers of cypress and ilex, but growing more precipitous as the ravine
+of the Fez narrows downward with the fall of the river. It is as though
+some powerful enchanter, after decreeing that the city should be hurled
+into the depths, had been moved by its beauty, and with a wave of his
+wand held it suspended above destruction.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At first the eye takes in only this impression of a great city over a
+green abyss; then the complex scene begins to define itself. All around
+are the outer lines of ramparts, walls beyond walls, their crenellations
+climbing the heights, their angle fortresses dominating the precipices.
+Almost on a level with us lies the upper city, the aristocratic Fez
+Eldjid of painted palaces and gardens; then, as the houses close in and
+descend more abruptly, terraces, minarets, domes, and long reed-thatched
+roofs of the bazaars, all gather around the green-tiled tomb of Moulay
+Idriss, and the tower of the Almohad mosque of El Kairouiyin, which
+adjoin each other in the depths of Fez, and form its central sanctuary.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>From the Merinid hill we had noticed a long façade among the cypresses
+and fruit-trees of Eldjid. This was Bou-Jeloud, the old summer-palace of
+the Sultan's harem, now the house of the Resident-General, where
+lodgings had been prepared for us.</p>
+
+<p>The road descended again, crossing the Oued Fez by one of the fine old
+single-arch bridges that mark the architectural link between Morocco<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
+and Spain. We skirted high walls, wayside pools, and dripping
+mill-wheels; then one of the city gates engulfed us, and we were in the
+waste spaces of intramural Fez, formerly the lines of defense of a rich
+and perpetually menaced city, now chiefly used for refuse-heaps,
+open-air fondaks, and dreaming-places for rows of Lazaruses rolled in
+their cerements in the dust.</p>
+
+<p>Through another gate and more walls we came to an arch in the inner line
+of defense. Beyond that, the motor paused before a green door, where a
+Cadi in a silken caftan received us. Across squares of orange-trees
+divided by running water we were led to an arcaded apartment hung with
+Moroccan embroideries and lined with wide divans; the hall of reception
+of the Resident-General. Through its arches were other tiled distances,
+fountains, arcades; beyond, in greener depths, the bright blossoms of a
+flower-garden. Such was our first sight of Bou-Jeloud, once the
+summer-palace of the wives of Moulay Hafid.</p>
+
+<p>Upstairs, from a room walled and ceiled with cedar, and decorated with
+the bold rose-pink embroideries of Salé and the intricate old
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>needlework of Fez, I looked out over the upper city toward the mauve and
+tawny mountains.</p>
+
+<p>Just below the window the flat roofs of a group of little houses
+descended like the steps of an irregular staircase. Between them rose a
+few cypresses and a green minaret; out of the court of one house an
+ancient fig-tree thrust its twisted arms. The sun had set, and one after
+another bright figures appeared on the roofs. The children came first,
+hung with silver amulets and amber beads, and pursued by negresses in
+striped turbans, who bustled up with rugs and matting; then the mothers
+followed more indolently, released from their ashy mufflings and
+showing, under their light veils, long earrings from the <i>Mellah</i><a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a>
+and caftans of pale green or peach color.</p>
+
+<p>The houses were humble ones, such as grow up in the cracks of a wealthy
+quarter, and their inhabitants doubtless small folk; but in the
+enchanted African twilight the terraces blossomed like gardens, and when
+the moon rose and the muezzin called from the minaret, the domestic
+squabbles and the shrill cries from roof to roof became part of a story
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
+in Bagdad, overheard a thousand years ago by that arch-detective
+Haroun-al-Raschid.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<h4>FEZ ELDJID</h4>
+
+<p>It is usual to speak of Fez as very old, and the term seems justified
+when one remembers that the palace of Bou-Jeloud stands on the site of
+an Almoravid Kasbah of the eleventh century, that when that Kasbah was
+erected Fez Elbali had already existed for three hundred years, that El
+Kairouiyin is the contemporary of Sant' Ambrogio of Milan, and that the
+original mosque of Moulay Idriss II was built over his grave in the
+eighth century.</p>
+
+<p>Fez is, in fact, the oldest city in Morocco without a Phenician or a
+Roman past, and has preserved more traces than any other of its
+architectural flowering-time; yet it would be truer to say of it, as of
+all Moroccan cities, that it has no age, since its seemingly immutable
+shape is forever crumbling and being renewed on the old lines.</p>
+
+<p>When we rode forth the next day to visit some of the palaces of Eldjid
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>
+our pink-saddled mules carried us at once out of the bounds of time. How
+associate anything so precise and Occidental as years or centuries with
+these visions of frail splendor seen through cypresses and roses? The
+Cadis in their multiple muslins, who received us in secret doorways and
+led us by many passages into the sudden wonder of gardens and fountains;
+the bright-earringed negresses peering down from painted balconies; the
+pilgrims and clients dozing in the sun against hot walls; the deserted
+halls with plaster lace-work and gold pendentives in tiled niches; the
+Venetian chandeliers and tawdry rococo beds; the terraces from which
+pigeons whirled up in a white cloud while we walked on a carpet of their
+feathers&mdash;were all these the ghosts of vanished state, or the actual
+setting of the life of some rich merchant with "business connections" in
+Liverpool and Lyons, or some government official at that very moment
+speeding to Meknez or Casablanca in his sixty h. p. motor?</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/gs14.jpg" width="640" height="392" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc</i><br />
+
+Fez Eldjid (the upper city)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>We visited old palaces and new, inhabited and abandoned, and over all
+lay the same fine dust of oblivion, like the silvery mould on an
+overripe fruit. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>Overripeness is indeed the characteristic of this rich
+and stagnant civilization. Buildings, people, customs, seem all about to
+crumble and fall of their own weight: the present is a perpetually
+prolonged past. To touch the past with one's hands is realized only in
+dreams; and in Morocco the dream-feeling envelopes one at every step.
+One trembles continually lest the "Person from Porlock" should step in.</p>
+
+<p>He is undoubtedly on the way; but Fez had not heard of him when we rode
+out that morning. Fez Eldjid, the "New Fez" of palaces and government
+buildings, was founded in the fourteenth century by the Merinid princes,
+and probably looks much as it did then. The palaces in their overgrown
+gardens, with pale-green trellises dividing the rose-beds from the
+blue-and-white tiled paths, and fountains in fluted basins of Italian
+marble, all had the same drowsy charm; yet the oldest were built not
+more than a century or two ago, others within the last fifty years; and
+at Marrakech, later in our journey, we were to visit a sumptuous
+dwelling where plaster-cutters and ceramists from Fez were actually
+repeating with wonderful skill and spontaneity, the old ornamentation
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
+of which the threads run back to Rome and Damascus.</p>
+
+<p>Of really old private dwellings, palaces or rich men's houses, there are
+surprisingly few in Morocco. It is hard to guess the age of some of the
+featureless houses propping each other's flanks in old Fez or old Salé;
+but people rich enough to rebuild have always done so, and the passion
+for building seems allied, in this country of inconsequences, to the
+supine indifference that lets existing constructions crumble back to
+clay. "Dust to dust" should have been the motto of the Moroccan
+palace-builders.</p>
+
+<p>Fez possesses one old secular building, a fine fondak of the fifteenth
+century; but in Morocco, as a rule, only mosques and the tombs of saints
+are preserved&mdash;none too carefully&mdash;and even the strong stone buildings
+of the Almohads have been allowed to fall to ruin, as at Chella and
+Rabat. This indifference to the completed object&mdash;which is like a kind
+of collective exaggeration of the artist's indifference to his completed
+work&mdash;has resulted in the total disappearance of the furniture and works
+of art which must have filled the beautiful buildings of the Merinid
+period. Neither pottery nor brass-work nor enamels nor fine hangings
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
+
+survive; there is no parallel in Morocco to the textiles of Syria, the
+potteries of Persia, the Byzantine ivories or enamels. It has been said
+that the Moroccan is always a nomad, who lives in his house as if it
+were a tent; but this is not a conclusive answer to any one who knows
+the passion of the modern Moroccan for European furniture. When one
+reads the list of the treasures contained in the palaces of the mediæval
+Sultans of Egypt one feels sure that, if artists were lacking in
+Morocco, the princes and merchants who brought skilled craftsmen across
+the desert to build their cities must also have imported treasures to
+adorn them. Yet, as far as is known, the famous fourteenth-century
+bronze chandelier of Tetuan, and the fine old ritual furniture reported
+to be contained in certain mosques, are the only important works of art
+in Morocco later in date than the Roman <i>sloughi</i> of Volubilis.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<h4>FEZ ELBALI</h4>
+
+<p>The distances in Fez are so great and the streets so narrow, and in some
+quarters so crowded, that all but saints or humble folk go about on
+mule-back.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon, accordingly, the pink mules came again, and we set out
+for the long tunnel-like street that leads down the hill to the Fez
+Elbali.</p>
+
+<p>"Look out&mdash;'ware heads!" our leader would call back at every turn, as
+our way shrank to a black passage under a house bestriding the street,
+or a caravan of donkeys laden with obstructive reeds or branches of
+dates made the passers-by flatten themselves against the walls.</p>
+
+<p>On each side of the street the houses hung over us like fortresses,
+leaning across the narrow strip of blue and throwing out great beams and
+buttresses to prop each other's bulging sides. Windows there were none
+on the lower floors; only here and there an iron-barred slit stuffed
+with rags and immemorial filth, from which a lean cat would suddenly
+spring out, and scuttle off under an archway like a witch's familiar.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 478px;">
+<img src="images/gs15.jpg" width="478" height="640" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc</i><br />
+Fez&mdash;a reed-roofed street</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Some of these descending lanes were packed with people, others as
+deserted as a cemetery; and it was strange to pass from the thronged
+streets leading to the bazaars to the profound and secretive silence of
+a quarter of well-to-do dwelling-houses, where only a few veiled women
+attended by negro slaves moved noiselessly over the clean cobblestones,
+and the sound of fountains and runnels came from hidden courtyards and
+over garden-walls.</p>
+
+<p>This noise of water is as characteristic of Fez as of Damascus. The Oued
+Fez rushes through the heart of the town, bridged, canalized, built
+over, and ever and again bursting out into tumultuous falls and pools
+shadowed with foliage. The central artery of the city is not a street
+but a waterfall; and tales are told of the dark uses to which, even now,
+the underground currents are put by some of the dwellers behind the
+blank walls and scented gardens of those highly respectable streets.</p>
+
+<p>The crowd in Oriental cities is made up of many elements, and in Morocco
+Turks, Jews and infidels, Berbers of the mountains, fanatics of the
+confraternities, Soudanese blacks and haggard Blue Men of the Souss,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+
+jostle the merchants and government officials with that democratic
+familiarity which goes side by side with abject servility in this land
+of perpetual contradictions. But Fez is above all the city of wealth and
+learning, of universities and counting-houses, and the merchant and the
+<i>oulama</i><a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a>&mdash;the sedentary and luxurious types&mdash;prevail.</p>
+
+<p>The slippered Fazi merchant, wrapped in white muslins and securely
+mounted on a broad velvet saddle-cloth anchored to the back of a broad
+mule, is as unlike the Arab horseman of the desert as Mr. Tracy Tupman
+was unlike the Musketeers of Dumas. Ease, music, money-making, the
+affairs of his harem and the bringing-up of his children, are his chief
+interests, and his plump pale face with long-lashed hazel eyes, his
+curling beard and fat womanish hands, recall the portly potentates of
+Hindu miniatures, dreaming among houris beside lotus-tanks.</p>
+
+<p>These personages, when they ride abroad, are preceded by a swarthy
+footman, who keeps his hand on the embroidered bridle; and the
+government officers and dignitaries of the <i>Makhzen</i><a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> are usually
+escorted by several mounted officers of their household, with a servant
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>
+
+to each mule. The cry of the runners scatters the crowd, and even the
+panniered donkeys and perpetually astonished camels somehow contrive to
+become two-dimensional while the white procession goes by.</p>
+
+<p>Then the populace closes in again, so quickly and densely that it seems
+impossible it could ever have been parted, and negro water-carriers,
+muffled women, beggars streaming with sores, sinewy and greasy "saints,"
+Soudanese sorcerers hung with amulets made of sardine-boxes and
+hares'-feet, long-lashed boys of the Chleuh in clean embroidered
+caftans, Jews in black robes and skull-caps, university students
+carrying their prayer-carpets, bangled and spangled black women,
+scrofulous children with gazelle eyes and mangy skulls, and blind men
+tapping along with linked arms and howling out verses of the Koran,
+surge together in a mass drawn by irresistible suction to the point
+where the bazaars converge about the mosques of Moulay Idriss and El
+Kairouiyin.</p>
+
+<p>Seen from a terrace of the upper town, the long thatched roofing of El
+Attarine, the central bazaar of Fez, promises fantastic revelations of
+native life; but the dun-colored crowds moving through its checkered
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>
+
+twilight, the lack of carved shop-fronts and gaily adorned
+coffee-houses, and the absence of the painted coffers and vivid
+embroideries of Tunis, remind one that Morocco is a melancholy country,
+and Fez a profoundly melancholy city.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dust and ashes, dust and ashes</i>, echoes from the gray walls, the
+mouldering thatch of the <i>souks</i>, the long lamentable song of the blind
+beggars sitting in rows under the feet of the camels and asses. No young
+men stroll through the bazaar in bright caftans, with roses and jasmine
+behind their ears, no pedlars offer lemonade and sweetmeats and golden
+fritters, no flower-sellers pursue one with tight bunches of
+orange-blossom and little pink roses. The well-to-do ride by in white,
+and the rest of the population goes mournfully in earth-color.</p>
+
+<p>But gradually one falls under the spell of another influence&mdash;the
+influence of the Atlas and the desert. Unknown Africa seems much nearer
+to Morocco than to the white towns of Tunis and the smiling oases of
+South Algeria. One feels the nearness of Marrakech at Fez, and at
+Marrakech that of Timbuctoo.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Fez is sombre, and the bazaars clustered about its holiest sanctuaries
+form its most sombre quarter. Dusk falls there early, and oil-lanterns
+twinkle in the merchants' niches while the clear African daylight still
+lies on the gardens of upper Fez. This twilight adds to the mystery of
+the <i>souks</i>, making them, in spite of profane noise and crowding and
+filth, an impressive approach to the sacred places.</p>
+
+<p>Until a year or two ago, the precincts around Moulay Idriss and El
+Kairouiyin were <i>horm</i>, that is, cut off from the unbeliever. Heavy
+beams of wood barred the end of each <i>souk</i>, shutting off the
+sanctuaries, and the Christian could only conjecture what lay beyond.
+Now he knows in part; for, though the beams have not been lowered, all
+comers may pass under them to the lanes about the mosques, and even
+pause a moment in their open doorways. Farther one may not go, for the
+shrines of Morocco are still closed to unbelievers; but whoever knows
+Cordova, or has stood under the arches of the Great Mosque of Kairouan,
+can reconstruct something of the hidden beauties of its namesake, the
+"Mosque Kairouan" of western Africa.</p>
+
+<p>Once under the bars, the richness of the old Moorish Fez presses upon
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>
+one with unexpected beauty. Here is the graceful tiled fountain of
+Nedjarine, glittering with the unapproachable blues and greens of
+ceramic mosaics; near it, the courtyard of the Fondak Nedjarine, oldest
+and stateliest of Moroccan inns, with triple galleries of sculptured
+cedar rising above arcades of stone. A little farther on lights and
+incense draw one to a threshold where it is well not to linger unduly.
+Under a deep archway, between booths where gay votive candles are sold,
+the glimmer of hanging lamps falls on patches of gilding and mosaic, and
+on veiled women prostrating themselves before an invisible shrine&mdash;for
+this is the vestibule of the mosque of Moulay Idriss, where, on certain
+days of the week, women are admitted to pray.</p>
+
+<p>Moulay Idriss was not built over the grave of the Fatimite prophet,
+first of the name, whose bones lie in the Zerhoun above his sacred town.
+The mosque of Fez grew up around the tomb of his posthumous son, Moulay
+Idriss II, who, descending from the hills, fell upon a camp of Berbers
+on an affluent of the Sebou, and there laid the foundations of Fez, and
+of the Moroccan Empire.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 478px;">
+<img src="images/gs16.jpg" width="478" height="640" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc</i><br />
+
+Fez&mdash;the Nedjarine fountain</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Of the original monument it is said that little remains. The
+<i>zaouïa</i><a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> which encloses it dates from the reign of Moulay-Ismaël,
+the seventeenth-century Sultan of Meknez, and the mosque itself, and the
+green minaret shooting up from the very centre of old Fez, were not
+built until 1820. But a rich surface of age has already formed on all
+these disparate buildings, and the over-gorgeous details of the shrines
+and fountains set in their outer walls are blended into harmony by a
+film of incense-smoke, and the grease of countless venerating lips and
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>Featureless walls of mean houses close in again at the next turn; but a
+few steps farther another archway reveals another secret scene. This
+time it is a corner of the jealously guarded court of ablutions in the
+great mosque El Kairouiyin, with the twin green-roofed pavilions that
+are so like those of the Alhambra.</p>
+
+<p>Those who have walked around the outer walls of the mosque of the other
+Kairouan, and recall the successive doors opening into the forecourt and
+into the mosque itself, will be able to guess at the plan of the church
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
+
+of Fez. The great Almohad sanctuary of Tunisia is singularly free from
+parasitic buildings, and may be approached as easily as that of Cordova;
+but the approaches of El Kairouiyin are so built up that one never knows
+at which turn of the labyrinth one may catch sight of its court of
+fountains, or peep down the endless colonnades of which the Arabs say:
+"The man who should try to count the columns of Kairouiyin would go
+mad."</p>
+
+<p>Marble floors, heavy whitewashed piers, prostrate figures in the
+penumbra, rows of yellow slippers outside in the sunlight&mdash;out of such
+glimpses one must reconstruct a vision of the long vistas of arches, the
+blues and golds of the <i>mirhab</i>,<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> the lustre of bronze chandeliers,
+and the ivory inlaying of the twelfth-century <i>minbar</i><a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> of ebony and
+sandalwood.</p>
+
+<p>No Christian footstep has yet profaned Kairouiyin, but fairly definite
+information as to its plan has been gleaned by students of Moroccan art.
+The number of its "countless" columns has been counted, and it is known
+that, to the right of the <i>mirhab</i>, carved cedar doors open into a
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
+mortuary chapel called "the mosque of the dead"&mdash;and also that in this
+chapel, on Fridays, old books and precious manuscripts are sold by
+auction.</p>
+
+<p>This odd association of uses recalls the fact that Kairouiyin is not
+only a church but a library, the University of Fez as well as its
+cathedral. The beautiful Medersas with which the Merinids adorned the
+city are simply the lodging-houses of the students; the classes are all
+held in the courts and galleries adjoining the mosque.</p>
+
+<p>El Kairouiyin was originally an oratory built in the ninth century by
+Fatmah, whose father had migrated from Kairouan to Fez. Later it was
+enlarged, and its cupola was surmounted by the talismans which protect
+sacred edifices against rats, scorpions and serpents; but in spite of
+these precautions all animal life was not successfully exorcised from
+it. In the twelfth century, when the great gate Ech Chemmâïn was
+building, a well was discovered under its foundations. The mouth of the
+well was obstructed by an immense tortoise; but when the workmen
+attempted to take the tortoise out she said: "Burn me rather than take
+me away from here." They respected her wishes and built her into the
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+foundations; and since then women who suffer from the back-ache have
+only to come and sit on the bench above the well to be cured.</p>
+
+<p>The actual mosque, or "praying-hall," is said to be formed of a
+rectangle or double cube of 90 metres by 45, and this vast space is
+equally divided by rows of horseshoe arches resting on whitewashed piers
+on which the lower part is swathed in finely patterned matting from
+Salé. Fifteen monumental doorways lead into the mosque. Their doors are
+of cedar, heavily barred and ornamented with wrought iron, and one of
+them bears the name of the artisan, and the date 531 of the Hegira (the
+first half of the twelfth century). The mosque also contains the two
+halls of audience of the Cadi, of which one has a graceful exterior
+façade with coupled lights under horseshoe arches; the library, whose
+20,000 volumes are reported to have dwindled to about a thousand; the
+chapel where the Masters of the Koran recite the sacred text in
+fulfilment of pious bequests; the "museum" in the upper part of the
+minaret, wherein a remarkable collection of ancient astronomical
+instruments is said to be preserved; and the <i>mestonda</i>, or raised hall
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>
+above the court, where women come to pray.</p>
+
+<p>But the crown of El Kairouiyin is the Merinid court of ablutions. This
+inaccessible wonder lies close under the Medersa Attarine, one of the
+oldest and most beautiful collegiate buildings of Fez; and through the
+kindness of the Director of Fine Arts, who was with us, we were taken up
+to the roof of the Medersa and allowed to look down into the enclosure.</p>
+
+<p>It is so closely guarded from below that from our secret of vantage we
+seemed to be looking down into the heart of forbidden things. Spacious
+and serene the great tiled cloister lay beneath us, water spilling over
+from a central basin of marble with a cool sound to which lesser
+fountains made answer from under the pyramidal green roofs of the twin
+pavilions. It was near the prayer-hour, and worshippers were flocking
+in, laying off their shoes and burnouses, washing their faces at the
+fountains and their feet in the central tank, or stretching themselves
+out in the shadow of the enclosing arcade.</p>
+
+<p>This, then, was the famous court "so cool in the great heats that
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+seated by thy beautiful jet of water I feel the perfection of bliss"&mdash;as
+the learned doctor Abou Abd Allah el Maghili sang of it; the court in
+which the students gather from the adjoining halls after having
+committed to memory the principals of grammar in prose and verse, the
+"science of the reading of the Koran," the invention, exposition and
+ornaments of style, law, medicine, theology, metaphysics and astronomy,
+as well as the talismanic numbers, and the art of ascertaining by
+calculation the influences of the angels, the spirits and the heavenly
+bodies, "the names of the victor and the vanquished, and of the desired
+object and the person who desires it."</p>
+
+<p>Such is the twentieth-century curriculum of the University of Fez.
+Repetition is the rule of Arab education as it is of Arab ornament. The
+teaching of the University is based entirely on the mediæval principle
+of mnemonics; and as there are no examinations, no degrees, no limits to
+the duration of any given course, nor is any disgrace attached to
+slowness in learning, it is not surprising that many students, coming as
+youths, linger by the fountain of Kairouiyin till their hair is gray.
+One well-known <i>oulama</i> has lately finished his studies after
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
+twenty-seven years at the University, and is justly proud of the length
+of his stay. The life of the scholar is easy, the way of knowledge is
+long, the contrast exquisite between the foul lanes and noisy bazaars
+outside and this cool heaven of learning. No wonder the students of
+Kairouiyin say with the tortoise: "Burn me rather than take me away."</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<h4>EL ANDALOUS AND THE POTTERS' FIELD</h4>
+
+<p>Outside the sacred precincts of Moulay Idriss and Kairouiyin, on the
+other side of the Oued Fez, lies El Andalous, the mosque which the
+Andalusian Moors built when they settled in Fez in the ninth century.</p>
+
+<p>It stands apart from the bazaars, on higher ground, and though it is not
+<i>horm</i> we found it less easy to see than the more famous mosques, since
+the Christian loiterer in its doorways is more quickly noticed. The Fazi
+are not yet used to seeing unbelievers near their sacred places. It is
+only in the tumult and confusion of the <i>souks</i> that one can linger on
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
+the edge of the inner mysteries without becoming aware of attracting
+sullen looks; and my only impression of El Andalous is of a magnificent
+Almohad door and the rich blur of an interior in which there was no time
+to single out the details.</p>
+
+<p>Turning from its forbidden and forbidding threshold we rode on through a
+poor quarter which leads to the great gate of Bab F'touh. Beyond the
+gate rises a dusty rocky slope extending to the outer walls&mdash;one of
+those grim intramural deserts that girdle Fez with desolation. This one
+is strewn with gravestones, not enclosed, but, as in most Moroccan
+cemeteries, simply cropping up like nettles between the rocks and out of
+the flaming dust. Here and there among the slabs rises a well-curb or a
+crumbling <i>koubba</i>. A solitary palm shoots up beside one of the shrines.
+And between the crowded graves the caravan trail crosses from the outer
+to the inner gate, and perpetual lines of camels and donkeys trample the
+dead a little deeper into the dusty earth.</p>
+
+<p>This Bab F'touh cemetery is also a kind of fondak. Poor caravans camp
+there under the walls in a mire of offal and chicken-feathers and
+stripped date-branches prowled through by wolfish dogs and buzzed over
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
+by fat blue flies. Camel-drivers squat beside iron kettles over heaps of
+embers, sorcerers from the Sahara offer their amulets to negro women,
+peddlers with portable wooden booths sell greasy cakes that look as if
+they had been made out of the garbage of the caravans, and in and out
+among the unknown dead and sleeping saints circulates the squalid
+indifferent life of the living poor.</p>
+
+<p>A walled lane leads down from Bab F'touh to a lower slope, where the
+Fazi potters have their baking-kilns. Under a series of grassy terraces
+overgrown with olives we saw the archaic ovens and dripping wheels which
+produce the earthenware sold in the <i>souks</i>. It is a primitive and
+homely ware, still fine in shape, though dull in color and monotonous in
+pattern; and stacked on the red earth under the olives, the rows of jars
+and cups, in their unglazed and unpainted state, showed their classical
+descent more plainly than after they have been decorated.</p>
+
+<p>This green quiet hollow, where turbaned figures were moving attentively
+among the primitive ovens, so near to the region of flies and offal we
+had just left, woke an old phrase in our memories, and as our mules
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+stumbled back over the graves of Bab F'touh we understood the grim
+meaning of the words: "They carried him out and buried him in the
+Potters' Field."</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<h4>MEDERSAS, BAZAARS AND AN OASIS</h4>
+
+<p>Fez, for two centuries and more, was in a double sense the capital of
+Morocco: the centre of its trade as well as of its culture.</p>
+
+<p>Culture, in fact, came to northwest Africa chiefly through the Merinid
+princes. The Almohads had erected great monuments from Rabat to
+Marrakech, and had fortified Fez; but their "mighty wasteful empire"
+fell apart like those that had preceded it. Stability had to come from
+the west; it was not till the Arabs had learned it through the Moors
+that Morocco produced a dynasty strong and enlightened enough to carry
+out the dream of its founders.</p>
+
+<p>Whichever way the discussion sways as to the priority of eastern or
+western influences on Moroccan art&mdash;whether it came to her from Syria,
+and was thence passed on to Spain, or was first formed in Spain, and
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+afterward modified by the Moroccan imagination&mdash;there can at least be no
+doubt that Fazi art and culture, in their prime, are partly the
+reflection of European civilization.</p>
+
+<p>Fugitives from Spain came to the new city when Moulay Idriss founded it.
+One part of the town was given to them, and the river divided the Elbali
+of the Almohads into the two quarters of Kairouiyin and Andalous, which
+still retain their old names. But the full intellectual and artistic
+flowering of Fez was delayed till the thirteenth and fourteenth
+centuries. It seems as though the seeds of the new springtime of art,
+blown across the sea from reawakening Europe, had at last given the
+weltering tribes of the desert the force to create their own type of
+beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Nine Medersas sprang up in Fez, six of them built by the princes who
+were also creating the exquisite collegiate buildings of Salé, Rabat and
+old Meknez, and the enchanting mosque and minaret of Chella. The power
+of these rulers also was in perpetual flux; they were always at war with
+the Sultans of Tlemeen, the Christians of Spain, the princes of
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+northern Algeria and Tunis. But during the fourteenth century they
+established a rule wide and firm enough to permit of the great outburst
+of art and learning which produced the Medersas of Fez.</p>
+
+<p>Until a year or two ago these collegiate buildings were as inaccessible
+as the mosques; but now that the French government has undertaken their
+restoration strangers may visit them under the guidance of the Fine Arts
+Department.</p>
+
+<p>All are built on the same plan, the plan of Salé and Rabat, which (as M.
+Tranchant de Lunel<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> has pointed out) became, with slight
+modifications, that of the rich private houses of Morocco. But
+interesting as they are in plan and the application of ornament, their
+main beauty lies in their details: in the union of chiselled plaster
+with the delicate mosaic work of niches and revêtements; the web-like
+arabesques of the upper walls and the bold, almost Gothic sculpture of
+the cedar architraves and corbels supporting them. And when all these
+details are enumerated, and also the fretted panels of cedar, the bronze
+doors with their great shield-like bosses, and the honeycombings and
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>rufflings of the gilded ceilings, there still remains the general tinge
+of dry disintegration, as though all were perishing of a desert
+fever&mdash;that, and the final wonder of seeing before one, in such a
+setting, the continuance of the very life that went on there when the
+tiles were set and the gold was new on the ceilings.</p>
+
+<p>For these tottering Medersas, already in the hands of the restorers, are
+still inhabited. As long as the stairway holds and the balcony has not
+rotted from its corbels, the students of the University see no reason
+for abandoning their lodgings above the cool fountain and the house of
+prayer. The strange men giving incomprehensible orders for unnecessary
+repairs need not disturb their meditations; and when the hammering grows
+too loud the <i>oulamas</i> have only to pass through the silk market or the
+<i>souk</i> of the embroiderers to the mosque of Kairouiyin, and go on
+weaving the pattern of their dreams by the fountain of perfect bliss.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>One reads of the bazaars of Fez that they have been for centuries the
+central market of the country. Here are to be found not only the silks
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
+
+and pottery, the Jewish goldsmiths' work, the arms and embroidered
+saddlery which the city itself produces, but "morocco" from Marrakech,
+rugs, tent-hangings and matting from Rabat and Salé, grain baskets from
+Moulay Idriss, daggers from the Souss, and whatever European wares the
+native markets consume. One looks, on the plan of Fez, at the space
+covered by the bazaars; one breasts the swarms that pour through them
+from dawn to dusk&mdash;and one remains perplexed, disappointed. They are
+less "Oriental" than one had expected, if "Oriental" means color and
+gaiety.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, on occasion, it does mean that: as, for instance, when a
+procession passes bearing the gifts for a Jewish wedding. The gray crowd
+makes way for a group of musicians in brilliant caftans, and following
+them comes a long file of women with uncovered faces and bejewelled
+necks, balancing on their heads the dishes the guests have sent to the
+feast&mdash;<i>kouskous</i>, sweet creams and syrups, "gazelles' horns" of sugar
+and almonds&mdash;in delicately woven baskets, each covered with several
+squares of bright gauze edged with gold. Then one remembers the
+marketing of the Lady of "The Three Calendars," and Fez again becomes
+the Bagdad of Al Raschid.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/gs17.jpg" width="640" height="393" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc</i><br />
+
+Fez&mdash;the bazaars. A view of the Souk el Attarine and the Quaisarya (silk
+market)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p>
+<p>But when no exceptional events, processions, ceremonies and the like
+brighten the underworld of the <i>souks</i>, their look is uniformly
+melancholy. The gay bazaars, the gaily-painted houses, the flowers and
+flute-playing of North Africa, are found in her Mediterranean ports, in
+contact with European influences. The farther west she extends, the more
+she becomes self-contained, sombre, uninfluenced, a gloomy fanatic with
+her back to the walls of the Atlantic and the Atlas. Color and laughter
+lie mostly along the trade-routes, where the peoples of the world come
+and go in curiosity and rivalry. This ashen crowd swarming gloomily
+through the dark tunnels represents the real Moghreb that is close to
+the wild tribes of the "hinterland" and the grim feudal fortresses of
+the Atlas. How close, one has only to go out to Sefrou on a market-day
+to see.</p>
+
+<p>Sefrou is a military outpost in an oasis under the Atlas, about forty
+miles south of Fez. To most people the word "oasis" evokes palms and
+sand; but though Morocco possesses many oases it has no pure sand and
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+
+few palms. I remember it as a considerable event when I discovered one
+from my lofty window at Bou-Jeloud.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>bled</i> is made of very different stuff from the sand-ocean of the
+Sahara. The light plays few tricks with it. Its monotony is wearisome
+rather than impressive, and the fact that it is seldom without some form
+of dwarfish vegetation makes the transition less startling when the
+alluvial green is finally reached. One had always half expected it, and
+it does not spring at a djinn's wave out of sterile gold.</p>
+
+<p>But the fact brings its own compensations. Moroccan oases differ one
+from another far more than those of South Algeria and Tunisia. Some have
+no palms, others but a few, others are real palm-oases, though even in
+the south (at least on the hither side of the great Atlas) none spreads
+out a dense uniform roofing of metal-blue fronds like the date-oases of
+Biskra or Tozeur. As for Sefrou, which Foucauld called the most
+beautiful oasis of Morocco, it is simply an extremely fertile valley
+with vineyards and orchards stretching up to a fine background of
+mountains. But the fact that it lies just below the Atlas makes it an
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
+important market-place and centre of caravans.</p>
+
+<p>Though so near Fez it is still almost on the disputed border between the
+loyal and the "unsubmissive" tribes, those that are <i>Blad-Makhzen</i> (of
+the Sultan's government) and those that are against it. Until recently,
+therefore, it has been inaccessible to visitors, and even now a strongly
+fortified French post dominates the height above the town. Looking down
+from the fort, one distinguishes, through masses of many-tinted green, a
+suburb of Arab houses in gardens, and below, on the river, Sefrou
+itself, a stout little walled town with angle-towers defiantly thrust
+forth toward the Atlas. It is just outside these walls that the market
+is held.</p>
+
+<p>It was swarming with hill-people the day we were there, and strange was
+the contrast between the crowd inside the circle of picketed horses and
+the white-robed cockneys from Rabat who fill the market-place of Salé.
+Here at last we were in touch with un-Arab Morocco, with Berbers of the
+<i>bled</i> and the hills, whose women know no veils and no seclusion, and
+who, under a thin surface of Mahometanism, preserve their old stone and
+animal worship, and all the gross fetichistic beliefs from which
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
+
+Mahomet dreamed of freeing Africa.</p>
+
+<p>The men were lean and weather-bitten, some with negroid lips, others
+with beaked noses and gaunt cheek-bones, all muscular and
+fierce-looking. Some were wrapped in the black cloaks worn by the Blue
+Men of the Sahara,<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> with a great orange sun embroidered on the back;
+some tunicked like the Egyptian fellah, under a rough striped outer
+garment trimmed with bright tufts and tassels of wool. The men of the
+Rif had a braided lock on the shoulder, those of the Atlas a ringlet
+over each ear, and brown woollen scarfs wound round their temples,
+leaving the shaven crown bare.</p>
+
+<p>The women, squatting among their kids and poultry and cheeses, glanced
+at us with brilliant hennaed eyes and smiles that lifted their short
+upper lips maliciously. Their thin faces were painted in stripes and
+patterns of indigo. Silver necklets covered their throats, long earrings
+dangled under the wool-embroidered kerchiefs bound about their temples
+with a twist of camel's hair, and below the cotton shifts fastened on
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+their shoulders with silver clasps their legs were bare to the knee, or
+covered with leather leggings to protect them from the thorny <i>bled</i>.</p>
+
+<p>They seemed abler bargainers than the men, and the play of expression on
+their dramatic and intensely feminine faces as they wheedled the price
+of a calf out of a fierce hillsman, or haggled over a heap of dates that
+a Jew with greasy ringlets was trying to secure for his secret
+distillery, showed that they knew their superiority and enjoyed it.</p>
+
+<p>Jews abounded in the market-place and also in the town. Sefrou contains
+a large Israelite colony, and after we had wandered through the steep
+streets, over gushing waterfalls spanned by "ass-backed" Spanish
+bridges, and through a thatched <i>souk</i> smelling strong of camels and the
+desert, the French commissioner (the only European in Sefrou) suggested
+that it might interest us to visit the <i>Mellah</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It was our first sight of a typical Jewish quarter in Africa. The
+<i>Mellah</i> of Fez was almost entirely destroyed during the massacres of
+1912 (which incidentally included a <i>pogrom</i>), and its distinctive
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+character, happily for the inhabitants, has disappeared in the
+rebuilding. North African Jews are still compelled to live in ghettos,
+into which they are locked at night, as in France and Germany in the
+Middle Ages; and until lately the men have been compelled to go unarmed,
+to wear black gabardines and black slippers, to take off their shoes
+when they passed near a mosque or a saint's tomb, and in various other
+ways to manifest their subjection to the ruling race. Nowhere else do
+they live in conditions of such demoralizing promiscuity as in some of
+the cities of Morocco. They have so long been subject to unrestricted
+extortion on the part of the Moslems that even the wealthy Jews (who are
+numerous) have sunk to the habits and appearance of the poorest; and
+Sefrou, which has come so recently under French control, offers a good
+specimen of a <i>Mellah</i> before foreign sanitation has lighted up its dark
+places.</p>
+
+<p>Dark indeed they were. After wandering through narrow and malodorous
+lanes, and slipping about in the offal of the <i>souks</i>, we were suddenly
+led under an arch over which should have been written "All light
+abandon&mdash;" and which made all we had seen before seem clean and bright
+and airy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The beneficent African sun dries up and purifies the immemorial filth of
+Africa; where that sun enters there is none of the foulness of damp. But
+into the <i>Mellah</i> of Sefrou it never comes, for the streets form a sort
+of subterranean rabbit-warren under the upper stories of a solid
+agglomeration of tall houses&mdash;a buried city lit even at midday by
+oil-lamps hanging in the goldsmiths' shops and under the archways of the
+black and reeking staircases.</p>
+
+<p>It was a Jewish feast-day. The Hebrew stalls in the <i>souks</i> were closed,
+and the whole population of the <i>Mellah</i> thronged its tunnels in holiday
+dress. Hurrying past us were young women with plump white faces and
+lovely eyes, turbaned in brilliant gauzes, with draperies of dirty
+curtain muslin over tawdry brocaded caftans. Their paler children
+swarmed about them, little long-earringed girls like wax dolls dressed
+in scraps of old finery, little boys in tattered caftans with
+long-lashed eyes and wily smiles; and, waddling in the rear, their
+unwieldy grandmothers, huge lumps of tallowy flesh who were probably
+still in the thirties.</p>
+
+<p>With them were the men of the family, in black gabardines and
+skull-caps: sallow striplings, incalculably aged ancestors,
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+round-bellied husbands and fathers bumping along like black balloons;
+all hastening to the low doorways dressed with lamps and paper garlands
+behind which the feast was spread.</p>
+
+<p>One is told that in cities like Fez and Marrakech the Hebrew quarter
+conceals flowery patios and gilded rooms with the heavy European
+furniture that rich Jews delight in. Perhaps even in the <i>Mellah</i> of
+Sefrou, among the ragged figures shuffling past us, there were some few
+with bags of gold in their walls and rich stuffs hid away in painted
+coffers; but for patios and flowers and daylight there seemed no room in
+the dark <i>bolgia</i> they inhabit. No wonder the babies of the Moroccan
+ghettos are nursed on date-brandy, and their elders doze away to death
+under its consoling spell.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<h4>THE LAST GLIMPSE</h4>
+
+<p>It is well to bid good-by to Fez at night&mdash;a moonlight night for choice.</p>
+
+<p>Then, after dining at the Arab inn of Fez Eldjid&mdash;where it might be
+inconvenient to lodge, but where it is extremely pleasant to eat
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>
+<i>kouskous</i> under a grape-trellis in a tiled and fountained patio&mdash;this
+pleasure over, one may set out on foot and stray down the lanes toward
+Fez Elbali.</p>
+
+<p>Not long ago the gates between the different quarters of the city used
+to be locked every night at nine o'clock, and the merchant who went out
+to dine in another part of the town had to lodge with his host. Now this
+custom has been given up, and one may roam about untroubled through the
+old quarters, grown as silent as the grave after the intense life of the
+bazaars has ceased at nightfall.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody is in the streets: wandering from ghostly passage to passage, one
+hears no step but that of the watchman with staff and lantern. Presently
+there appears, far off, a light like a low-flying firefly; as it comes
+nearer, it is seen to proceed from the <i>Mellah</i> lamp of open-work brass
+that a servant carries ahead of two merchants on their way home from
+Elbali. The merchants are grave men: they move softly and slowly on
+their fat slippered feet, pausing from time to time in confidential
+talk. At last they stop before a house wall with a low blue door barred
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
+by heavy hasps of iron. The servant lifts the lamp and knocks. There is
+a long delay; then, with infinite caution, the door is opened a few
+inches, and another lifted light shines faintly on lustrous tiled walls,
+and on the face of a woman slave who quickly veils herself. Evidently
+the master is a man of standing, and the house well guarded. The two
+merchants touch each other on the right shoulder, one of them passes in,
+and his friend goes on through the moonlight, his servant's lantern
+dancing ahead.</p>
+
+<p>But here we are in an open space looking down one of the descents to El
+Attarine. A misty radiance washes the tall houses, the garden-walls, the
+archways; even the moonlight does not whiten Fez, but only turns its
+gray to tarnished silver. Overhead in a tower window a single light
+twinkles: women's voices rise and fall on the roofs. In a rich man's
+doorway slaves are sleeping, huddled on the tiles. A cock crows from
+somebody's dunghill; a skeleton dog prowls by for garbage.</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere is the loud rush or the low crooning of water, and over every
+wall comes the scent of jasmine and rose. Far off, from the red
+purgatory between the walls, sounds the savage thrum-thrum of a negro
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
+orgy; here all is peace and perfume. A minaret springs up between the
+roof like a palm, and from its balcony the little white figure bends
+over and drops a blessing on all the loveliness and all the squalor.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> The Ghetto in African towns. All the jewellers in Morocco
+are Jews.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Learned man, doctor of the university.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> The Sultan's government.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Moslem monastery.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Niche in the sanctuary of mosques.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Movable pulpit.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> In <i>France-Maroc</i>, <i>No.</i> 1.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> So called because of the indigo dye of their tunics, which
+leaves a permanent stain on their bodies.</p></div></div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p>
+<h2>IV</h2>
+
+<h3>MARRAKECH</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<h4>THE WAY THERE</h4>
+
+<p>There are countless Arab tales of evil Djinns who take the form of
+sandstorms and hot winds to overwhelm exhausted travellers.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the new French road between Rabat and Marrakech the memory
+of such tales rises up insistently from every mile of the level red
+earth and the desolate stony stretches of the <i>bled</i>. As long as the
+road runs in sight of the Atlantic breakers they give the scene
+freshness and life; but when it bends inland and stretches away across
+the wilderness the sense of the immensity and immobility of Africa
+descends on one with an intolerable oppression.</p>
+
+<p>The road traverses no villages, and not even a ring of nomad tents is
+visible in the distance on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> wide stretches of arable land. At
+infrequent intervals our motor passed a train of laden mules, or a group
+of peasants about a well, and sometimes, far off, a fortified farm
+profiled its thick-set angle-towers against the sky, or a white <i>koubba</i>
+floated like a mirage above the brush; but these rare signs of life
+intensified the solitude of the long miles between.</p>
+
+<p>At midday we were refreshed by the sight of the little oasis around the
+military-post of Settat. We lunched there with the commanding officer,
+in a cool Arab house about a flowery patio; but that brief interval
+over, the fiery plain began again. After Settat the road runs on for
+miles across the waste to the gorge of the Oued Ouem; and beyond the
+river it climbs to another plain so desperate in its calcined aridity
+that the prickly scrub of the wilderness we had left seemed like the
+vegetation of an oasis. For fifty kilometres the earth under our wheels
+was made up of a kind of glistening red slag covered with pebbles and
+stones. Not the scantest and toughest of rock-growths thrust a leaf
+through its brassy surface; not a well-head or a darker depression of
+the rock gave sign of a trickle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> of water. Everything around us
+glittered with the same unmerciful dryness.</p>
+
+<p>A long way ahead loomed the line of the Djebilets, the Djinn-haunted
+mountains guarding Marrakech on the north. When at last we reached them
+the wicked glister of their purple flanks seemed like a volcanic
+upheaval of the plain. For some time we had watched the clouds gathering
+over them, and as we got to the top of the defile rain was falling from
+a fringe of thunder to the south. Then the vapours lifted, and we saw
+below us another red plain with an island of palms in its centre.
+Mysteriously, from the heart of the palms, a tower shot up, as if alone
+in the wilderness; behind it stood the sun-streaked cliffs of the Atlas,
+with snow summits appearing and vanishing through the storm.</p>
+
+<p>As we drove downward the rock gradually began to turn to red earth
+fissured by yellow streams, and stray knots of palms sprang up, lean and
+dishevelled, about well-heads where people were watering camels and
+donkeys. To the east, dominating the oasis, the twin peaked hills of the
+Ghilis, fortified to the crest, mounted guard over invisible Marrakech;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+but still, above the palms, we saw only that lonely and triumphant
+tower.</p>
+
+<p>Presently we crossed the Oued Tensif on an old bridge built by Moroccan
+engineers. Beyond the river were more palms, then olive-orchards, then
+the vague sketch of the new European settlement, with a few shops and
+cafés on avenues ending suddenly in clay pits, and at last Marrakech
+itself appeared to us, in the form of a red wall across a red
+wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>We passed through a gate and were confronted by other ramparts. Then we
+entered an outskirt of dusty red lanes bordered by clay hovels with
+draped figures slinking by like ghosts. After that more walls, more
+gates, more endlessly winding lanes, more gates again, more turns, a
+dusty open space with donkeys and camels and negroes; a final wall with
+a great door under a lofty arch&mdash;and suddenly we were in the palace of
+the Bahia, among flowers and shadows and falling water.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<h4>THE BAHIA</h4>
+
+<p>Whoever would understand Marrakech must begin by mounting at sunset to
+the roof of the Bahia.</p>
+
+<p>Outspread below lies the oasis-city of the south, flat and vast as the
+great nomad camp it really is, its low roofs extending on all sides to a
+belt of blue palms ringed with desert. Only two or three minarets and a
+few noblemen's houses among gardens break the general flatness; but they
+are hardly noticeable, so irresistibly is the eye drawn toward two
+dominant objects&mdash;the white wall of the Atlas and the red tower of the
+Koutoubya.</p>
+
+<p>Foursquare, untapering, the great tower lifts its flanks of ruddy stone.
+Its large spaces of unornamented wall, its triple tier of clustered
+openings, lightening as they rise from the severe rectangular lights of
+the first stage to the graceful arcade below the parapet, have the stern
+harmony of the noblest architecture. The Koutoubya would be magnificent
+anywhere; in this flat desert it is grand enough to face the Atlas.</p>
+
+<p>The Almohad conquerors who built the Koutoubya<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> and embellished
+Marrakech dreamed a dream of beauty that extended from the Guadalquivir
+to the Sahara; and at its two extremes they placed their watch-towers.
+The Giralda watched over civilized enemies in a land of ancient Roman
+culture; the Koutoubya stood at the edge of the world, facing the hordes
+of the desert.</p>
+
+<p>The Almoravid princes who founded Marrakech came from the black desert
+of Senegal; themselves were leaders of wild hordes. In the history of
+North Africa the same cycle has perpetually repeated itself. Generation
+after generation of chiefs have flowed in from the desert or the
+mountains, overthrown their predecessors, massacred, plundered, grown
+rich, built sudden palaces, encouraged their great servants to do the
+same; then fallen on them, and taken their wealth and their palaces.
+Usually some religious fury, some ascetic wrath against the
+self-indulgence of the cities, has been the motive of these attacks; but
+invariably the same results followed, as they followed when the Germanic
+barbarians descended on Italy. The conquerors, infected with luxury and
+mad with power, built vaster palaces, planned grander cities; but
+Sultans and Viziers camped in their golden houses as if on the march,
+and the mud huts of the tribesmen within their walls were but one degree
+removed from the mud-walled tents of the <i>bled</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 453px;">
+<img src="images/gs18.jpg" width="453" height="640" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc</i><br />
+
+Marrakech&mdash;The &quot;Little Garden&quot; (with painted doors) in background,
+Palace of the Bahia</span>
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This was more especially the case with Marrakech, a city of Berbers and
+blacks, and the last outpost against the fierce black world beyond the
+Atlas from which its founders came. When one looks at its site, and
+considers its history, one can only marvel at the height of civilization
+it attained.</p>
+
+<p>The Bahia itself, now the palace of the Resident General, though built
+less than a hundred years ago, is typical of the architectural
+megalomania of the great southern chiefs. It was built by Ba-Ahmed, the
+all-powerful black Vizier of the Sultan Moulay-el-Hassan.<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> Ba-Ahmed
+was evidently an artist and an archæologist. His ambition was to
+re-create a Palace of Beauty such as the Moors had built in the prime of
+Arab art, and he brought to Marrakech skilled artificers of Fez, the
+last surviving masters of the mystery of chiselled plaster and ceramic
+mosaics and honeycombing of gilded cedar. They came, they built the
+Bahia, and it remains<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> the loveliest and most fantastic of Moroccan
+palaces.</p>
+
+<p>Court within court, garden beyond garden, reception halls, private
+apartments, slaves' quarters, sunny prophets' chambers on the roofs and
+baths in vaulted crypts, the labyrinth of passages and rooms stretches
+away over several acres of ground. A long court enclosed in pale-green
+trellis-work, where pigeons plume themselves about a great tank and the
+dripping tiles glitter with refracted sunlight, leads to the fresh gloom
+of a cypress garden, or under jasmine tunnels bordered with running
+water; and these again open on arcaded apartments faced with tiles and
+stucco-work, where, in a languid twilight, the hours drift by to the
+ceaseless music of the fountains.</p>
+
+<p>The beauty of Moroccan palaces is made up of details of ornament and
+refinements of sensuous delight too numerous to record; but to get an
+idea of their general character it is worth while to cross the Court of
+Cypresses at the Bahia and follow a series of low-studded passages that
+turn on themselves till they reach the centre of the labyrinth. Here,
+passing by a low padlocked door leading to a crypt, and known as the
+"Door of the Vizier's Treasure-House," one comes on a painted portal
+that opens into a still more secret sanctuary: The apartment of the
+Grand Vizier's Favourite.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/gs19.jpg" width="640" height="429" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph by Felix, Marrakech</i><br />
+
+Marrakech&mdash;the great court, Palace of the Bahia</span>
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This lovely prison, from which all sight and sound of the outer world
+are excluded, is built about an atrium paved with disks of turquoise and
+black and white. Water trickles from a central <i>vasca</i> of alabaster into
+a hexagonal mosaic channel in the pavement. The walls, which are at
+least twenty-five feet high, are roofed with painted beams resting on
+panels of traceried stucco in which is set a clerestory of jewelled
+glass. On each side of the atrium are long recessed rooms closed by
+vermilion doors painted with gold arabesques and vases of spring
+flowers; and into these shadowy inner rooms, spread with rugs and divans
+and soft pillows, no light comes except when their doors are opened into
+the atrium. In this fabulous place it was my good luck to be lodged
+while I was at Marrakech.</p>
+
+<p>In a climate where, after the winter snow has melted from the Atlas,
+every breath of air for long months is a flame of fire, these enclosed
+rooms in the middle of the palaces are the only places of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> refuge from
+the heat. Even in October the temperature of the favourite's apartment
+was deliciously reviving after a morning in the bazaars or the dusty
+streets, and I never came back to its wet tiles and perpetual twilight
+without the sense of plunging into a deep sea-pool.</p>
+
+<p>From far off, through circuitous corridors, came the scent of
+citron-blossom and jasmine, with sometimes a bird's song before dawn,
+sometimes a flute's wail at sunset, and always the call of the muezzin
+in the night; but no sunlight reached the apartment except in remote
+rays through the clerestory, and no air except through one or two broken
+panes.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, lying on my divan, and looking out through the vermilion
+doors, I used to surprise a pair of swallows dropping down from their
+nest in the cedar-beams to preen themselves on the fountain's edge or in
+the channels of the pavement; for the roof was full of birds who came
+and went through the broken panes of the clerestory. Usually they were
+my only visitors; but one morning just at daylight I was waked by a soft
+tramp of bare feet, and saw, silhouetted against the cream-coloured
+walls, a procession of eight tall negroes in linen tunics, who filed
+noiselessly across the atrium like a moving frieze of bronze. In that
+fantastic setting, and the hush of that twilight hour, the vision was so
+like the picture of a "Seraglio Tragedy," some fragment of a Delacroix
+or Decamps floating up into the drowsy brain, that I almost fancied I
+had seen the ghosts of Ba-Ahmed's executioners revisiting with dagger
+and bowstring the scene of an unavenged crime.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/gs20.jpg" width="640" height="425" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph taken by Mme. la Marquis de Segonzac</i><br />
+
+Marrakech&mdash;apartment of the grand vizier&#39;s favorite, Palace of the
+Bahia</span>
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A cock crew, and they vanished ... and when I made the mistake of asking
+what they had been doing in my room at that hour I was told (as though
+it were the most natural thing in the world) that they were the
+municipal lamp-lighters of Marrakech, whose duty it is to refill every
+morning the two hundred acetylene lamps lighting the palace of the
+Resident General. Such unforeseen aspects, in this mysterious city, do
+the most ordinary domestic functions wear.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<h4>THE BAZAARS</h4>
+
+<p>Passing out of the enchanted circle of the Bahia it is startling to
+plunge into the native life about its gates.</p>
+
+<p>Marrakech is the great market of the south; and the south means not only
+the Atlas with its feudal chiefs and their wild clansmen, but all that
+lies beyond of heat and savagery: the Sahara of the veiled Touaregs,
+Dakka, Timbuctoo, Senegal and the Soudan. Here come the camel caravans
+from Demnat and Tameslout, from the Moulouya and the Souss, and those
+from the Atlantic ports and the confines of Algeria. The population of
+this old city of the southern march has always been even more mixed than
+that of the northerly Moroccan towns. It is made up of the descendants
+of all the peoples conquered by a long line of Sultans who brought their
+trains of captives across the sea from Moorish Spain and across the
+Sahara from Timbuctoo. Even in the highly cultivated region on the lower
+slopes of the Atlas there are groups of varied ethnic origin, the
+descendants of tribes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> transplanted by long-gone rulers and still
+preserving many of their original characteristics.</p>
+
+<p>In the bazaars all these peoples meet and mingle: cattle-dealers,
+olive-growers, peasants from the Atlas, the Souss and the Draa, Blue Men
+of the Sahara, blacks from Senegal and the Soudan, coming in to trade
+with the wool-merchants, tanners, leather-merchants, silk-weavers,
+armourers, and makers of agricultural implements.</p>
+
+<p>Dark, fierce and fanatical are these narrow <i>souks</i> of Marrakech. They
+are mere mud lanes roofed with rushes, as in South Tunisia and
+Timbuctoo, and the crowds swarming in them are so dense that it is
+hardly possible, at certain hours, to approach the tiny raised kennels
+where the merchants sit like idols among their wares. One feels at once
+that something more than the thought of bargaining&mdash;dear as this is to
+the African heart&mdash;animates these incessantly moving throngs. The Souks
+of Marrakech seem, more than any others, the central organ of a native
+life that extends far beyond the city walls into secret clefts of the
+mountains and far-off oases where plots are hatched and holy wars
+fomented&mdash;farther still, to yellow deserts whence<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> negroes are secretly
+brought across the Atlas to that inmost recess of the bazaar where the
+ancient traffic in flesh and blood still surreptitiously goes on.</p>
+
+<p>All these many threads of the native life, woven of greed and lust, of
+fetichism and fear and blind hate of the stranger, form, in the <i>souks</i>,
+a thick network in which at times one's feet seem literally to stumble.
+Fanatics in sheepskins glowering from the guarded thresholds of the
+mosques, fierce tribesmen with inlaid arms in their belts and the
+fighters' tufts of wiry hair escaping from camel's-hair turbans, mad
+negroes standing stark naked in niches of the walls and pouring down
+Soudanese incantations upon the fascinated crowd, consumptive Jews with
+pathos and cunning in their large eyes and smiling lips, lusty
+slave-girls with earthen oil-jars resting against swaying hips,
+almond-eyed boys leading fat merchants by the hand, and bare-legged
+Berber women, tattooed and insolently gay, trading their striped
+blankets, or bags of dried roses and irises, for sugar, tea or
+Manchester cottons&mdash;from all these hundreds of unknown and unknowable
+people, bound together by secret affinities, or intriguing against each
+other with secret hate, there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> emanates an atmosphere of mystery and
+menace more stifling than the smell of camels and spices and black
+bodies and smoking fry which hangs like a fog under the close roofing of
+the <i>souks</i>.</p>
+
+<p>And suddenly one leaves the crowd and the turbid air for one of those
+quiet corners that are like the back-waters of the bazaars: a small
+square where a vine stretches across a shop-front and hangs ripe
+clusters of grapes through the reeds. In the patterning of grape-shadows
+a very old donkey, tethered to a stone-post, dozes under a pack-saddle
+that is never taken off; and near by, in a matted niche, sits a very old
+man in white. This is the chief of the Guild of "morocco" workers of
+Marrakech, the most accomplished craftsman in Morocco in the preparing
+and using of the skins to which the city gives its name. Of these sleek
+moroccos, cream-white or dyed with cochineal or pomegranate skins, are
+made the rich bags of the Chleuh dancing-boys, the embroidered slippers
+for the harem, the belts and harnesses that figure so largely in
+Moroccan trade&mdash;and of the finest, in old days, were made the
+pomegranate-red morocco bindings of European bibliophiles.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>From this peaceful corner one passes into the barbaric splendor of a
+<i>souk</i> hung with innumerable plumy bunches of floss silk&mdash;skeins of
+citron yellow, crimson, grasshopper green and pure purple. This is the
+silk-spinners' quarter, and next to it comes that of the dyers, with
+great seething vats into which the raw silk is plunged, and ropes
+overhead where the rainbow masses are hung out to dry.</p>
+
+<p>Another turn leads into the street of the metalworkers and armourers,
+where the sunlight through the thatch flames on round flanks of beaten
+copper or picks out the silver bosses of ornate powder-flasks and
+pistols; and near by is the <i>souk</i> of the plough-shares, crowded with
+peasants in rough Chleuh cloaks who are waiting to have their archaic
+ploughs repaired, and that of the smiths, in an outer lane of mud huts
+where negroes squat in the dust and sinewy naked figures in tattered
+loincloths bend over blazing coals. And here ends the maze of the
+bazaars.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<h4>THE AGDAL</h4>
+
+<p>One of the Almohad Sultans who, during their hundred years of empire,
+scattered such great monuments from Seville to the Atlas, felt the need
+of coolness about his southern capital, and laid out the olive-yards of
+the Agdal.</p>
+
+<p>To the south of Marrakech the Agdal extends for many acres between the
+outer walls of the city and the edge of the palm-oasis&mdash;a continuous
+belt of silver foliage traversed by deep red lanes, and enclosing a
+wide-spreading summer palace and two immense reservoirs walled with
+masonry; and the vision of these serene sheets of water, in which the
+olives and palms are motionlessly reflected, is one of the most poetic
+impressions in that city of inveterate poetry.</p>
+
+<p>On the edge of one of the reservoirs a sentimental Sultan built in the
+last century a little pleasure-house called the Menara. It is composed
+of a few rooms with a two-storied loggia looking across the water to the
+palm-groves, and surrounded by a garden of cypresses and orange-trees.
+The Menara,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> long since abandoned, is usually uninhabited; but on the
+day when we drove through the Agdal we noticed, at the gate, a group of
+well-dressed servants holding mules with embroidered saddle-clothes.</p>
+
+<p>The French officer who was with us asked the porter what was going on,
+and he replied that the Chief of the Guild of Wool-Merchants had hired
+the pavilion for a week and invited a few friends to visit him. They
+were now, the porter added, taking tea in the loggia above the lake; and
+the host, being informed of our presence, begged that we should do him
+and his friends the honour of visiting the pavilion.</p>
+
+<p>In reply to this amiable invitation we crossed an empty saloon
+surrounded with divans and passed out onto the loggia where the
+wool-merchant and his guests were seated. They were evidently persons of
+consequence: large bulky men wrapped in fresh muslins and reclining side
+by side on muslin-covered divans and cushions. Black slaves had placed
+before them brass trays with pots of mint-tea, glasses in filigree
+stands, and dishes of gazelles' horns and sugar-plums; and they sat
+serenely absorbing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> these refreshments and gazing with large calm eyes
+upon the motionless water and the reflected trees.</p>
+
+<p>So, we were told, they would probably spend the greater part of their
+holiday. The merchant's cooks had taken possession of the kitchens, and
+toward sunset a sumptuous repast of many courses would be carried into
+the saloon on covered trays, and the guests would squat about it on rugs
+of Rabat, tearing with their fingers the tender chicken wings and small
+artichokes cooked in oil, plunging their fat white hands to the wrist
+into huge mounds of saffron and rice, and washing off the traces of each
+course in the brass basin of perfumed water carried about by a young
+black slave-girl with hoop-earrings and a green-and-gold scarf about her
+hips.</p>
+
+<p>Then the singing-girls would come out from Marrakech, squat round-faced
+young women heavily hennaed and bejewelled, accompanied by gaunt
+musicians in bright caftans; and for hours they would sing sentimental
+or obscene ballads to the persistent maddening twang of violin and flute
+and drum. Meanwhile fiery brandy or sweet champagne would probably be
+passed around between<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> the steaming glasses of mint-tea which the slaves
+perpetually refilled; or perhaps the sultry air, the heavy meal, the
+scent of the garden and the vertiginous repetition of the music would
+suffice to plunge these sedentary worthies into the delicious coma in
+which every festive evening in Morocco ends.</p>
+
+<p>The next day would be spent in the same manner, except that probably the
+Chleuh boys with sidelong eyes and clean caftans would come instead of
+the singing-girls, and weave the arabesque of their dance in place of
+the runic pattern of the singing. But the result would always be the
+same: a prolonged state of obese ecstasy culminating in the collapse of
+huge heaps of snoring muslin on the divans against the wall. Finally at
+the week's end the wool-merchant and his friends would all ride back
+with dignity to the bazaar.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<h4>ON THE ROOFS</h4>
+
+<p>"Should you like to see the Chleuh boys dance?" some one asked.</p>
+
+<p>"There they are," another of our companions added, pointing to a dense
+ring of spectators on one side of the immense dusty square at the
+entrance of the <i>souks</i>&mdash;the "Square of the Dead" as it is called, in
+memory of the executions that used to take place under one of its grim
+red gates.</p>
+
+<p>It is the square of the living now, the centre of all the life,
+amusement and gossip of Marrakech, and the spectators are so thickly
+packed about the story-tellers, snake-charmers and dancers who frequent
+it that one can guess what is going on within each circle only by the
+wailing monologue or the persistent drum-beat that proceeds from it.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, yes&mdash;we should indeed like to see the Chleuh boys dance; we who,
+since we had been in Morocco, had seen no dancing, heard no singing,
+caught no single glimpse of merry-making! But how were we to get within
+sight of them?</p>
+
+<p>On one side of the "Square of the Dead" stands<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> a large house, of
+European build, but modelled on Oriental lines: the office of the French
+municipal administration. The French Government no longer allows its
+offices to be built within the walls of Moroccan towns, and this house
+goes back to the epic days of the Caïd Sir Harry Maclean, to whom it was
+presented by the fantastic Abd-el-Aziz when the Caïd was his favourite
+companion as well as his military adviser.</p>
+
+<p>At the suggestion of the municipal officials we mounted the stairs and
+looked down on the packed square. There can be no more Oriental sight
+this side of the Atlas and the Sahara. The square is surrounded by low
+mud-houses, fondaks, cafés, and the like. In one corner, near the
+archway leading into the <i>souks</i>, is the fruit-market, where the
+red-gold branches of unripe dates<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> for animal fodder are piled up in
+great stacks, and dozens of donkeys are coming and going, their panniers
+laden with fruits and vegetables which are being heaped on the ground in
+gorgeous pyramids: purple egg-plants, melons, cucumbers, bright orange
+pumpkins, mauve and pink and violet onions, rusty crimson pomegranates
+and the gold grapes of Sefrou and Salé, all mingled with fresh green
+sheaves of mint and wormwood.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/gs21.jpg" width="640" height="397" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph from &quot;France-Maroc&quot;</i><br />
+
+Marrakech&mdash;a fondak</span>
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the middle of the square sit the story-tellers' turbaned audiences.
+Beyond these are the humbler crowds about the wild-ringleted
+snake-charmers with their epileptic gestures and hissing incantations,
+and farther off, in the densest circle of all, we could just discern the
+shaved heads and waving surpliced arms of the dancing-boys. Under an
+archway near by an important personage in white muslin, mounted on a
+handsome mule and surrounded by his attendants, sat with motionless face
+and narrowed eyes gravely following the movements of the dancers.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, as we stood watching the extraordinary animation of the scene,
+a reddish light overspread it, and one of our companions exclaimed:
+"Ah&mdash;a dust-storm!"</p>
+
+<p>In that very moment it was upon us: a red cloud rushing across the
+square out of nowhere, whirling the date-branches over the heads of the
+squatting throngs, tumbling down the stacks of fruits and vegetables,
+rooting up the canvas awnings over the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> lemonade-sellers' stalls and
+before the café doors, huddling the blinded donkeys under the walls of
+the fondak, and stripping to the hips the black slave-girls scudding
+home from the <i>souks</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Such a blast would instantly have scattered any western crowd, but "the
+patient East" remained undisturbed, rounding its shoulders before the
+storm and continuing to follow attentively the motions of the dancers
+and the turns of the story-tellers. By and bye, however, the gale grew
+too furious, and the spectators were so involved in collapsing tents,
+eddying date-branches and stampeding mules that the square began to
+clear, save for the listeners about the most popular story-teller, who
+continued to sit on unmoved. And then, at the height of the storm, they
+too were abruptly scattered by the rush of a cavalcade across the
+square. First came a handsomely dressed man, carrying before him on his
+peaked saddle a tiny boy in a gold-embroidered orange caftan, in front
+of whom he held an open book; and behind them a train of white-draped
+men on showily harnessed mules, followed by musicians in bright dresses.
+It was only a Circumcision procession on its way to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> the mosque; but the
+dust-enveloped rider in his rich dress, clutching the bewildered child
+to his breast, looked like some Oriental prince trying to escape with
+his son from the fiery embraces of desert Erl-maidens.</p>
+
+<p>As swiftly as it rose the storm subsided, leaving the fruit-market in
+ruins under a sky as clear and innocent as an infant's eye. The Chleuh
+boys had vanished with the rest, like marionettes swept into a drawer by
+an impatient child; but presently, toward sunset, we were told that we
+were to see them after all, and our hosts led us up to the roof of the
+Caïd's house.</p>
+
+<p>The city lay stretched before us like one immense terrace circumscribed
+by palms. The sky was pure blue, verging to turquoise green where the
+Atlas floated above mist; and facing the celestial snows stood the
+Koutoubya, red in the sunset.</p>
+
+<p>People were beginning to come out on the roofs: it was the hour of
+peace, of ablutions, of family life on the house-tops. Groups of women
+in pale tints and floating veils spoke to each other from terrace to
+terrace, through the chatter of children and the guttural calls of
+bedizened negresses. And presently,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> on the roof adjoining ours,
+appeared the slim dancing-boys with white caftans and hennaed feet.</p>
+
+<p>The three swarthy musicians who accompanied them crossed their lean legs
+on the tiles and set up their throb-throb and thrum-thrum, and on a
+narrow strip of terrace the youths began their measured steps.</p>
+
+<p>It was a grave static dance, such as David may have performed before the
+Ark; untouched by mirth or folly, as beseemed a dance in that sombre
+land, and borrowing its magic from its gravity. Even when the pace
+quickened with the stress of the music the gestures still continued to
+be restrained and hieratic; only when, one by one, the performers
+detached themselves from the round and knelt before us for the <i>peseta</i>
+it is customary to press on their foreheads, did one see, by the
+moisture which made the coin adhere, how quick and violent their
+movements had been.</p>
+
+<p>The performance, like all things Oriental, like the life, the patterns,
+the stories, seemed to have no beginning and no end: it just went
+monotonously and indefatigably on till fate snipped its thread by
+calling us away to dinner. And so at last we went<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> down into the dust of
+the streets refreshed by that vision of white youths dancing on the
+house-tops against the gold of a sunset that made them look&mdash;in spite of
+ankle-bracelets and painted eyes&mdash;almost as guileless and happy as the
+round of angels on the roof of Fra Angelico's Nativity.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<h4>THE SAADIAN TOMBS</h4>
+
+<p>On one of the last days of our stay in Marrakech we were told, almost
+mysteriously, that permission was to be given us to visit the tombs of
+the Saadian Sultans.</p>
+
+<p>Though Marrakech has been in the hands of the French since 1912, the
+very existence of these tombs was unknown to the authorities till 1917.
+Then the Sultan's government privately informed the Resident General
+that an unsuspected treasure of Moroccan art was falling into ruin, and
+after some hesitation it was agreed that General Lyautey and the
+Director of Fine Arts should be admitted to the mosque containing the
+tombs, on the express condition that the French Government undertook<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> to
+repair them. While we were at Rabat General Lyautey had described his
+visit to us, and it was at his request that the Sultan authorized us to
+see the mosque, to which no travellers had as yet been admitted.</p>
+
+<p>With a good deal of ceremony, and after the customary <i>pourparlers</i> with
+the great Pasha who controls native affairs at Marrakech, an hour was
+fixed for our visit, and we drove through long lanes of mud-huts to a
+lost quarter near the walls. At last we came to a deserted square on one
+side of which stands the long low mosque of Mansourah with a
+turquoise-green minaret embroidered with traceries of sculptured terra
+cotta. Opposite the mosque is a gate in a crumbling wall; and at this
+gate the Pasha's Cadi was to meet us with the keys of the mausoleum. But
+we waited in vain. Oriental dilatoriness, or a last secret reluctance to
+admit unbelievers to a holy place, had caused the Cadi to forget his
+appointment; and we drove away disappointed.</p>
+
+<p>The delay drove us to wondering about these mysterious Saadian Sultans,
+who, though coming so late in the annals of Morocco, had left at least<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+one monument said to be worthy of the Merinid tradition. And the tale of
+the Saadians is worth telling.</p>
+
+<p>They came from Arabia to the Draa (the fruitful country south of the
+Great Atlas) early in the fifteenth century, when the Merinid empire was
+already near disintegration. Like all previous invaders they preached
+the doctrine of a pure Islamism to the polytheistic and indifferent
+Berbers, and found a ready hearing because they denounced the evils of a
+divided empire, and also because the whole of Morocco was in revolt
+against the Christian colonies of Spain and Portugal, which had
+encircled the coast from Ceuta to Agadir with a chain of fortified
+counting-houses. To <i>bouter dehors</i> the money-making unbeliever was an
+object that found adherents from the Rif to the Sahara, and the Saadian
+cherifs soon rallied a mighty following to their standard. Islam, though
+it never really gave a creed to the Berbers, supplied them with a
+war-cry as potent to-day as when it first rang across Barbary.</p>
+
+<p>The history of the Saadians is a foreshortened record of that of all
+their predecessors. They overthrew<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> the artistic and luxurious Merinids,
+and in their turn became artistic and luxurious. Their greatest Sultan,
+Abou-el-Abbas, surnamed "The Golden," after defeating the Merinids and
+putting an end to Christian rule in Morocco by the crushing victory of
+El-Ksar (1578), bethought him in his turn of enriching himself and
+beautifying his capital, and with this object in view turned his
+attention to the black kingdoms of the south.</p>
+
+<p>Senegal and the Soudan, which had been Mohammedan since the eleventh
+century, had attained in the sixteenth century a high degree of
+commercial wealth and artistic civilization. The Sultanate of Timbuctoo
+seems in reality to have been a thriving empire, and if Timbuctoo was
+not the Claude-like vision of Carthaginian palaces which it became in
+the tales of imaginative travellers, it apparently had something of the
+magnificence of Fez and Marrakech.</p>
+
+<p>The Saadian army, after a march of four and a half months across the
+Sahara, conquered the whole black south. Senegal, the Soudan and Bornou
+submitted to Abou-el-Abbas, the Sultan of Timbuctoo was dethroned, and
+the celebrated negro jurist Ahmed-Baba was brought a prisoner to
+Marrakech,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> where his chief sorrow appears to have been for the loss of
+his library of 1,600 volumes&mdash;though he declared that, of all the
+numerous members of his family, it was he who possessed the smallest
+number of books.</p>
+
+<p>Besides this learned bibliophile, the Sultan Abou-el-Abbas brought back
+with him an immense booty, principally of ingots of gold, from which he
+took his surname of "The Golden"; and as the result of the expedition
+Marrakech was embellished with mosques and palaces for which the Sultan
+brought marble from Carrara, paying for it with loaves of sugar from the
+sugar-cane that the Saadians grew in the Souss.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of these brilliant beginnings the rule of the dynasty was short
+and without subsequent interest. Based on a fanatical antagonism against
+the foreigner, and fed by the ever-wakeful hatred of the Moors for their
+Spanish conquerors, it raised ever higher the Chinese walls of
+exclusiveness which the more enlightened Almohads and Merinids had
+sought to overthrow. Henceforward less and less daylight and fresh air
+were to penetrate into the <i>souks</i> of Morocco.</p>
+
+<p>The day after our unsuccessful attempt to see<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> the tombs of these
+ephemeral rulers we received another message, naming an hour for our
+visit; and this time the Pasha's representative was waiting in the
+archway. We followed his lead, under the openly mistrustful glances of
+the Arabs who hung about the square, and after picking our way through a
+twisting land between walls we came out into a filthy nettle-grown space
+against the ramparts. At intervals of about thirty feet splendid square
+towers rose from the walls, and facing one of them lay a group of
+crumbling buildings masked behind other ruins.</p>
+
+<p>We were led first into a narrow mosque or praying-chapel, like those of
+the Medersas, with a coffered cedar ceiling resting on four marble
+columns, and traceried walls of unusually beautiful design. From this
+chapel we passed into the hall of the tombs, a cube about forty feet
+square. Fourteen columns of colored marble sustain a domed ceiling of
+gilded cedar, with an exterior deambulatory under a tunnel-vaulting also
+roofed with cedar. The walls are, as usual, of chiselled stucco, above
+revêtements of ceramic mosaic, and between the columns lie the white
+marble cenotaphs of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> Saadian Sultans, covered with Arabic
+inscriptions in the most delicate low-relief. Beyond this central
+mausoleum, and balancing the praying-chapel, lies another long narrow
+chamber, gold-ceilinged also, and containing a few tombs.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult, in describing the architecture of Morocco, to avoid
+producing an impression of monotony. The ground-plan of mosques and
+Medersas is always practically the same; and the same elements, few in
+number and endlessly repeated, make up the materials and the form of the
+ornament. The effect upon the eye is not monotonous, for a patient art
+has infinitely varied the combinations of pattern and the juxtapositions
+of color; while the depth of undercutting of the stucco, and the
+treatment of the bronze doors and of the carved cedar corbels,
+necessarily varies with the periods which produced them.</p>
+
+<p>But in the Saadian mausoleum a new element has been introduced which
+makes this little monument a thing apart. The marble columns supporting
+the roof appear to be unique in Moroccan architecture, and they lend
+themselves to a new roof-plan which relates the building rather to the
+tradition<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> of Venice or Byzantine by way of Kairouan and Cordova.</p>
+
+<p>The late date of the monument precludes any idea of a direct artistic
+tradition. The most probable explanation seems to be that the architect
+of the mausoleum was familiar with European Renaissance architecture,
+and saw the beauty to be derived from using precious marbles not merely
+as ornament, but in the Roman and Italian way, as a structural element.
+Panels and fountain-basins are ornament, and ornament changes nothing
+essential in architecture; but when, for instance, heavy square piers
+are replaced by detached columns, a new style results.</p>
+
+<p>It is not only the novelty of its plan that makes the Saadian mausoleum
+singular among Moroccan monuments. The details of its ornament are of
+the most intricate refinement: it seems as though the last graces of the
+expiring Merinid art had been gathered up into this rare blossom. And
+the slant of sunlight on lustrous columns, the depths of fretted gold,
+the dusky ivory of the walls and the pure white of the cenotaphs, so
+classic in spareness of ornament and simplicity of design&mdash;this subtle
+harmony of form and color gives to the dim rich chapel an air of
+dream-like unreality.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 454px;">
+<img src="images/gs22.jpg" width="454" height="640" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph by M. André Chevrillon</i><br />
+
+Marrakech&mdash;Mausoleum of the Saadian Sultans (sixteenth century) showing
+the tombs</span>
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And how can it seem other than a dream? Who can have conceived, in the
+heart of a savage Saharan camp, the serenity and balance of this hidden
+place? And how came such fragile loveliness to survive, preserving,
+behind a screen of tumbling walls, of nettles and offal and dead beasts,
+every curve of its traceries and every cell of its honeycombing?</p>
+
+<p>Such questions inevitably bring one back to the central riddle of the
+mysterious North African civilization: the perpetual flux and the
+immovable stability, the barbarous customs and sensuous refinements, the
+absence of artistic originality and the gift for regrouping borrowed
+motives, the patient and exquisite workmanship and the immediate neglect
+and degradation of the thing once made.</p>
+
+<p>Revering the dead and camping on their graves, elaborating exquisite
+monuments only to abandon and defile them, venerating scholarship and
+wisdom and living in ignorance and grossness, these gifted races,
+perpetually struggling to reach some higher level of culture from which
+they have always been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> swept down by a fresh wave of barbarism, are
+still only a people in the making.</p>
+
+<p>It may be that the political stability which France is helping them to
+acquire will at last give their higher qualities time for fruition; and
+when one looks at the mausoleum of Marrakech and the Medersas of Fez one
+feels that, were the experiment made on artistic grounds alone, it would
+yet be well worth making.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Moulay-el-Hassan reigned from 1873 to 1894.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> Dates do not ripen in Morocco.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p>
+<h2>V</h2>
+
+<h3>HAREMS AND CEREMONIES</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<h4>THE CROWD IN THE STREET</h4>
+
+<p>To occidental travellers the most vivid impression produced by a first
+contact with the Near East is the surprise of being in a country where
+the human element increases instead of diminishing the delight of the
+eye.</p>
+
+<p>After all, then, the intimate harmony between nature and architecture
+and the human body that is revealed in Greek art was not an artist's
+counsel of perfection but an honest rendering of reality: there were,
+there still are, privileged scenes where the fall of a green-grocer's
+draperies or a milkman's cloak or a beggar's rags are part of the
+composition, distinctly related to it in line and colour, and where the
+natural unstudied attitudes of the human body are correspondingly
+harmonious, however hum-drum<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> the acts it is engaged in. The discovery,
+to the traveller returning from the East, robs the most romantic scenes
+of western Europe of half their charm: in the Piazza of San Marco, in
+the market-place of Siena, where at least the robes of the Procurators
+or the gay tights of Pinturicchio's striplings once justified man's
+presence among his works, one can see, at first, only the outrage
+inflicted on beauty by the "plentiful strutting manikins" of the modern
+world.</p>
+
+<p>Moroccan crowds are always a feast to the eye. The instinct of skilful
+drapery, the sense of colour (subdued by custom, but breaking out in
+subtle glimpses under the universal ashy tints) make the humblest
+assemblage of donkey-men and water-carriers an ever-renewed delight. But
+it is only on rare occasions, and in the court ceremonies to which so
+few foreigners have had access, that the hidden sumptuousness of the
+native life is revealed. Even then, the term sumptuousness may seem
+ill-chosen, since the nomadic nature of African life persists in spite
+of palaces and chamberlains and all the elaborate ritual of the Makhzen,
+and the most pompous rites are likely to end in a dusty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> gallop of wild
+tribesmen, and the most princely processions to tail off in a string of
+half-naked urchins riding bareback on donkeys.</p>
+
+<p>As in all Oriental countries, the contact between prince and beggar,
+vizier and serf is disconcertingly free and familiar, and one must see
+the highest court officials kissing the hem of the Sultan's robe, and
+hear authentic tales of slaves given by one merchant to another at the
+end of a convivial evening, to be reminded that nothing is as democratic
+in appearance as a society of which the whole structure hangs on the
+whim of one man.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<h4>AÏD-EL-KEBIR</h4>
+
+<p>In the verandah of the Residence of Rabat I stood looking out between
+posts festooned with gentian-blue ipomeas at the first shimmer of light
+on black cypresses and white tobacco-flowers, on the scattered roofs of
+the new town, and the plain stretching away to the Sultan's palace above
+the sea.</p>
+
+<p>We had been told, late the night before, that the Sultan would allow
+Madame Lyautey, with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> the three ladies of her party, to be present at
+the great religious rite of the Aïd-el-Kebir (the Sacrifice of the
+Sheep). The honour was an unprecedented one, a favour probably conceded
+only at the last moment: for as a rule no women are admitted to these
+ceremonies. It was an opportunity not to be missed; and all through the
+short stifling night I had lain awake wondering if I should be ready
+early enough. Presently the motors assembled, and we set out with the
+French officers in attendance on the Governor's wife.</p>
+
+<p>The Sultan's palace, a large modern building on the familiar Arab lines,
+lies in a treeless and gardenless waste enclosed by high walls and close
+above the blue Atlantic. We motored past the gates, where the Sultan's
+Black Guard was drawn up, and out to the <i>msalla</i>,<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> a sort of common
+adjacent to all the Sultan's residences where public ceremonies are
+usually performed. The sun was already beating down on the great plain
+thronged with horsemen and with the native population of Rabat on
+mule-back and foot. Within an open<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> space in the centre of the crowd a
+canvas palissade dyed with a bold black pattern surrounded the Sultan's
+tents. The Black Guard, in scarlet tunics and white and green turbans,
+were drawn up on the edge of the open space, keeping the spectators at a
+distance; but under the guidance of our companions we penetrated to the
+edge of the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>The palissade was open on one side, and within it we could see moving
+about among the snowy-robed officials a group of men in straight narrow
+gowns of almond-green, peach-blossom, lilac and pink; they were the
+Sultan's musicians, whose coloured dresses always flower out
+conspicuously among the white draperies of all the other court
+attendants.</p>
+
+<p>In the tent nearest the opening, against a background of embroidered
+hangings, a circle of majestic turbaned old men squatted placidly on
+Rabat rugs. Presently the circle broke up, there was an agitated coming
+and going, and some one said: "The Sultan has gone to the tent at the
+back of the enclosure to kill the sheep."</p>
+
+<p>A sense of the impending solemnity ran through the crowd. The mysterious
+rumour which is the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> Voice of the Bazaar rose about us like the wind in
+a palm-oasis; the Black Guard fired a salute from an adjoining hillock;
+the clouds of red dust flung up by wheeling horsemen thickened and then
+parted, and a white-robed rider sprang out from the tent of the
+Sacrifice with something red and dripping across his saddle-bow, and
+galloped away toward Rabat through the shouting. A little shiver ran
+over the group of occidental spectators, who knew that the dripping red
+thing was a sheep with its throat so skilfully slit that, if the omen
+were favourable, it would live on through the long race to Rabat and
+gasp out its agonized life on the tiles of the Mosque.</p>
+
+<p>The Sacrifice of the Sheep, one of the four great Moslem rites, is
+simply the annual propitiatory offering made by every Mahometan head of
+a family, and by the Sultan as such. It is based not on a Koranic
+injunction, but on the "Souna" or record of the Prophet's "custom" or
+usages, which forms an authoritative precedent in Moslem ritual. So far
+goes the Moslem exegesis. In reality, of course, the Moslem
+blood-sacrifice comes, by way of the Semitic ritual, from far beyond and
+behind<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> it; and the belief that the Sultan's prosperity for the coming
+year depends on the animal's protracted agony seems to relate the
+ceremony to the dark magic so deeply rooted in the mysterious tribes
+peopling North Africa long ages before the first Phoenician prows had
+rounded its coast.</p>
+
+<p>Between the Black Guard and the tents, five or six horses were being led
+up and down by muscular grooms in snowy tunics. They were handsome
+animals, as Moroccan horses go, and each of a different colour; and on
+the bay horse was a red saddle embroidered in gold, on the piebald a
+saddle of peach-colour and silver, on the chestnut, grass-green
+encrusted with seed-pearls, on the white mare purple housings, and
+orange velvet on the grey. The Sultan's band had struck up a shrill
+hammering and twanging, the salute of the Black Guard continued at
+intervals, and the caparisoned steeds began to rear and snort and drag
+back from the cruel Arab bits with their exquisite <i>niello</i>
+incrustations. Some one whispered that these were His Majesty's
+horses&mdash;and that it was never known till he appeared which one he would
+mount.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Presently the crowd about the tents thickened, and when it divided again
+there emerged from it a grey horse bearing a motionless figure swathed
+in blinding white. Marching at the horse's bridle, lean brown grooms in
+white tunics rhythmically waved long strips of white linen to keep off
+the flies from the Imperial Presence; and beside the motionless rider,
+in a line with his horse's flank, rode the Imperial Parasol-bearer, who
+held above the sovereign's head a great sunshade of bright green velvet.
+Slowly the grey horse advanced a few yards before the tent; behind rode
+the court dignitaries, followed by the musicians, who looked, in their
+bright scant caftans, like the slender music-making angels of a
+Florentine fresco.</p>
+
+<p>The Sultan, pausing beneath his velvet dome, waited to receive the
+homage of the assembled tribes. An official, riding forward, drew bridle
+and called out a name. Instantly there came storming across the plain a
+wild cavalcade of tribesmen, with rifles slung across their shoulders,
+pistols and cutlasses in their belts, and twists of camel's-hair bound
+about their turbans. Within a few feet of the Sultan they drew in, their
+leader uttered a cry and sprang forward, bending to the saddle-bow, and
+with a great shout the tribe galloped by, each man bowed over his
+horse's neck as he flew past the hieratic figure on the grey horse.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/gs23.jpg" width="640" height="427" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph from &quot;France-Maroc&quot;</i><br />
+
+The Sultan of Morocco under the green umbrella (at Meknez, 1916)</span>
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Again and again this ceremony was repeated, the Sultan advancing a few
+feet as each new group thundered toward him. There were more than ten
+thousand horsemen and chieftains from the Atlas and the wilderness, and
+as the ceremony continued the dust-clouds grew denser and more
+fiery-golden, till at last the forward-surging lines showed through them
+like blurred images in a tarnished mirror.</p>
+
+<p>As the Sultan advanced we followed, abreast of him and facing the
+oncoming squadrons. The contrast between his motionless figure and the
+wild waves of cavalry beating against it typified the strange soul of
+Islam, with its impetuosity forever culminating in impassiveness. The
+sun hung high, a brazen ball in a white sky, darting down metallic
+shafts on the dust-enveloped plain and the serene white figure under its
+umbrella. The fat man with a soft round beard-fringed face, wrapped in
+spirals of pure white, one plump hand<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> on his embroidered bridle, his
+yellow-slippered feet thrust heel-down in big velvet-lined stirrups,
+became, through sheer immobility, a symbol, a mystery, a God. The human
+flux beat against him, dissolved, ebbed away, another spear-crested wave
+swept up behind it and dissolved in turn; and he sat on, hour after
+hour, under the white-hot sky, unconscious of the heat, the dust, the
+tumult, embodying to the wild factious precipitate hordes a long
+tradition of serene aloofness.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<h4>THE IMPERIAL MIRADOR</h4>
+
+<p>As the last riders galloped up to do homage we were summoned to our
+motors and driven rapidly to the palace. The Sultan had sent word to
+Mme. Lyautey that the ladies of the Imperial harem would entertain her
+and her guests while his Majesty received the Resident General, and we
+had to hasten back in order not to miss the next act of the spectacle.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/gs24.jpg" width="640" height="426" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph from &quot;France-Maroc&quot;</i><br />
+
+A clan of mountaineers and their caïd.</span>
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
+
+We walked across a long court lined with the Black Guard, passed under a
+gateway, and were met by a shabbily dressed negress. Traversing a hot
+dazzle of polychrome tiles we reached another archway guarded by the
+chief eunuch, a towering black with the enamelled eyes of a basalt bust.
+The eunuch delivered us to other negresses, and we entered a labyrinth
+of inner passages and patios, all murmuring and dripping with water.
+Passing down long corridors where slaves in dim greyish garments
+flattened themselves against the walls, we caught glimpses of great dark
+rooms, laundries, pantries, bakeries, kitchens, where savoury things
+were brewing and stewing, and where more negresses, abandoning their
+pots and pans, came to peep at us from the threshold. In one corner, on
+a bench against a wall hung with matting, grey parrots in tall cages
+were being fed by a slave.</p>
+
+<p>A narrow staircase mounted to a landing where a princess out of an Arab
+fairy-tale awaited us. Stepping softly on her embroidered slippers she
+led us to the next landing, where another golden-slippered being smiled
+out on us, a little girl this one, blushing and dimpling under a
+jewelled diadem and pearl-woven braids. On a third landing a third
+damsel appeared, and encircled by the three<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> graces we mounted to the
+tall <i>mirador</i> in the central tower from which we were to look down at
+the coming ceremony. One by one, our little guides, kicking off their
+golden shoes, which a slave laid neatly outside the door, led us on soft
+bare feet into the upper chamber of the harem.</p>
+
+<p>It was a large room, enclosed on all sides by a balcony glazed with
+panes of brightly-coloured glass. On a gaudy modern Rabat carpet stood
+gilt armchairs of florid design and a table bearing a commercial bronze
+of the "art goods" variety. Divans with muslin-covered cushions were
+ranged against the walls and down an adjoining gallery-like apartment
+which was otherwise furnished only with clocks. The passion for clocks
+and other mechanical contrivances is common to all unmechanical races,
+and every chief's palace in North Africa contains a collection of
+time-pieces which might be called striking if so many had not ceased to
+go. But those in the Sultan's harem of Rabat are remarkable for the fact
+that, while designed on current European models, they are proportioned
+in size to the Imperial dignity, so that a Dutch "grandfather" becomes a
+wardrobe, and the box-clock<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> of the European mantelpiece a cupboard that
+has to be set on the floor. At the end of this avenue of time-pieces a
+European double-bed with a bright silk quilt covered with Nottingham
+lace stood majestically on a carpeted platform.</p>
+
+<p>But for the enchanting glimpses of sea and plain through the lattices of
+the gallery, the apartment of the Sultan's ladies falls far short of
+occidental ideas of elegance. But there was hardly time to think of
+this, for the door of the <i>mirador</i> was always opening to let in another
+fairy-tale figure, till at last we were surrounded by a dozen houris,
+laughing, babbling, taking us by the hand, and putting shy questions
+while they looked at us with caressing eyes. They were all (our
+interpretess whispered) the Sultan's "favourites," round-faced
+apricot-tinted girls in their teens, with high cheek-bones, full red
+lips, surprised brown eyes between curved-up Asiatic lids, and little
+brown hands fluttering out like birds from their brocaded sleeves.</p>
+
+<p>In honour of the ceremony, and of Mme. Lyautey's visit, they had put on
+their finest clothes, and their freedom of movement was somewhat
+hampered by their narrow sumptuous gowns,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> with over-draperies of gold
+and silver brocade and pale rosy gauze held in by corset-like sashes of
+gold tissue of Fez, and the heavy silken cords that looped their
+voluminous sleeves. Above their foreheads the hair was shaven like that
+of an Italian fourteenth-century beauty, and only a black line as narrow
+as a pencilled eyebrow showed through the twist of gauze fastened by a
+jewelled clasp above the real eye-brows. Over the forehead-jewel rose
+the complicated structure of the head-dress. Ropes of black wool were
+plaited through the hair, forming, at the back, a double loop that stood
+out above the nape like the twin handles of a vase, the upper veiled in
+airy shot gauzes and fastened with jewelled bands and ornaments. On each
+side of the red cheeks other braids were looped over the ears hung with
+broad earrings of filigree set with rough pearls and emeralds, or gold
+hoops and pendants of coral; and an unexpected tulle ruff, like that of
+a Watteau shepherdess, framed the round chin above a torrent of
+necklaces, necklaces of amber, coral, baroque pearls, hung with
+mysterious barbaric amulets and fetiches. As the young things moved
+about us on soft hennaed feet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> the light played on shifting gleams of
+gold and silver, blue and violet and apple-green, all harmonized and
+bemisted by clouds of pink and sky-blue; and through the changing group
+capered a little black picaninny in a caftan of silver-shot purple with
+a sash of raspberry red.</p>
+
+<p>But presently there was a flutter in the aviary. A fresh pair of
+<i>babouches</i> clicked on the landing, and a young girl, less brilliantly
+dressed and less brilliant of face than the others, came in on bare
+painted feet. Her movements were shy and hesitating, her large lips
+pale, her eye-brows less vividly dark, her head less jewelled. But all
+the little humming-birds gathered about her with respectful rustlings as
+she advanced toward us leaning on one of the young girls, and holding
+out her ringed hand to Mme. Lyautey's curtsey. It was the young
+Princess, the Sultan's legitimate daughter. She examined us with sad
+eyes, spoke a few compliments through the interpretess, and seated
+herself in silence, letting the others sparkle and chatter.</p>
+
+<p>Conversation with the shy Princess was flagging when one of the
+favourites beckoned us to the balcony. We were told we might push open
+the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> painted panes a few inches, but as we did so the butterfly group
+drew back lest they should be seen looking out on the forbidden world.</p>
+
+<p>Salutes were crashing out again from the direction of the <i>msalla</i>:
+puffs of smoke floated over the slopes like thistle-down. Farther off, a
+pall of red vapour veiled the gallop of the last horsemen wheeling away
+toward Rabat. The vapour subsided, and moving out of it we discerned a
+slow procession. First rode a detachment of the Black Guard, mounted on
+black horses, and, comically fierce in their British scarlet and Meccan
+green, a uniform invented at the beginning of the nineteenth century by
+a retired English army officer. After the Guard came the
+standard-bearers and the great dignitaries, then the Sultan, still
+aloof, immovable, as if rapt in the contemplation of his mystic office.
+More court officials followed, then the bright-gowned musicians on foot,
+then a confused irrepressible crowd of pilgrims, beggars, saints,
+mountebanks, and the other small folk of the Bazaar, ending in a line of
+boys jamming their naked heels into the ribs of world-weary donkeys.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/gs25.jpg" width="640" height="427" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph from &quot;France-Maroc&quot;</i><br />
+
+The Sultan entering Marrakech in state</span>
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Sultan rode into the court below us, and Vizier and chamberlains,
+snowy-white against the scarlet line of the Guards, hurried forward to
+kiss his draperies, his shoes, his stirrup. Descending from his velvet
+saddle, still entranced, he paced across the tiles between a double line
+of white servitors bowing to the ground. White pigeons circled over him
+like petals loosed from a great orchard, and he disappeared with his
+retinue under the shadowy arcade of the audience chamber at the back of
+the court.</p>
+
+<p>At this point one of the favourites called us in from the <i>mirador</i>. The
+door had just opened to admit an elderly woman preceded by a respectful
+group of girls. From the newcomer's round ruddy face, her short round
+body, the round hands emerging from her round wrists, an inexplicable
+majesty emanated; and though she too was less richly arrayed than the
+favourites she carried her head-dress of striped gauze like a crown.</p>
+
+<p>This impressive old lady was the Sultan's mother. As she held out her
+plump wrinkled hand to Mme. Lyautey and spoke a few words through the
+interpretess one felt that at last a painted window of the <i>mirador</i> had
+been broken, and a thought let<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> into the vacuum of the harem. What
+thought, it would have taken deep insight into the processes of the Arab
+mind to discover; but its honesty was manifest in the old Empress's
+voice and smile. Here at last was a woman beyond the trivial
+dissimulations, the childish cunning, the idle cruelties of the harem.
+It was not a surprise to be told that she was her son's most trusted
+adviser, and the chief authority in the palace. If such a woman deceived
+and intrigued it would be for great purposes and for ends she believed
+in: the depth of her soul had air and daylight in it, and she would
+never willingly shut them out.</p>
+
+<p>The Empress Mother chatted for a while with Mme. Lyautey, asking about
+the Resident General's health, enquiring for news of the war, and
+saying, with an emotion perceptible even through the unintelligible
+words: "All is well with Morocco as long as all is well with France."
+Then she withdrew, and we were summoned again to the <i>mirador</i>.</p>
+
+<p>This time it was to see a company of officers in brilliant uniforms
+advancing at a trot across the plain from Rabat. At sight of the figure
+that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> headed them, so slim, erect and young on his splendid chestnut,
+with a pale blue tunic barred by the wide orange ribbon of the Cherifian
+Order, salutes pealed forth again from the slope above the palace and
+the Black Guard presented arms. A moment later General Lyautey and his
+staff were riding in at the gates below us. On the threshold of the
+inner court they dismounted, and moving to the other side of our balcony
+we followed the next stage of the ceremony. The Sultan was still seated
+in the audience chamber. The court officials still stood drawn up in a
+snow-white line against the snow-white walls. The great dignitaries
+advanced across the tiles to greet the General; then they fell aside,
+and he went forward alone, followed at a little distance by his staff. A
+third of the way across the court he paused, in accordance with the
+Moroccan court ceremonial, and bowed in the direction of the arcaded
+room; a few steps farther he bowed again, and a third time on the
+threshold of the room. Then French uniforms and Moroccan draperies
+closed in about him, and all vanished into the shadows of the audience
+hall.</p>
+
+<p>Our audience too seemed to be over. We had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> exhausted the limited small
+talk of the harem, had learned from the young beauties that, though they
+were forbidden to look on at the ceremony, the dancers and singers would
+come to entertain them presently, and had begun to take leave when a
+negress hurried in to say that his Majesty begged Mme. Lyautey and her
+friends to await his arrival. This was the crowning incident of our
+visit, and I wondered with what Byzantine ritual the Anointed One fresh
+from the exercise of his priestly functions would be received among his
+women.</p>
+
+<p>The door opened, and without any announcement or other preliminary
+flourish a fat man with a pleasant face, his djellabah stretched over a
+portly front, walked in holding a little boy by the hand. Such was his
+Majesty the Sultan Moulay Youssef, despoiled of sacramental burnouses
+and turban, and shuffling along on bare yellow-slippered feet with the
+gait of a stout elderly gentleman who has taken off his boots in the
+passage preparatory to a domestic evening.</p>
+
+<p>The little Prince, one of his two legitimate sons, was dressed with
+equal simplicity, for silken garments are worn in Morocco only by
+musicians,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> boy-dancers and other hermaphrodite fry. With his ceremonial
+raiment the Sultan had put off his air of superhuman majesty, and the
+expression of his round pale face corresponded with the plainness of his
+dress. The favourites fluttered about him, respectful but by no means
+awestruck, and the youngest began to play with the little Prince. We
+could well believe the report that his was the happiest harem in
+Morocco, as well as the only one into which a breath of the outer world
+ever came.</p>
+
+<p>Moulay Youssef greeted Mme. Lyautey with friendly simplicity, made the
+proper speeches to her companions, and then, with the air of the
+business-man who has forgotten to give an order before leaving his
+office, he walked up to a corner of the room, and while the
+flower-maidens ruffled about him, and through the windows we saw the
+last participants in the mystic rites galloping away toward the
+crenellated walls of Rabat, his Majesty the Priest and Emperor of the
+Faithful unhooked a small instrument from the wall and applied his
+sacred lips to the telephone.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<h4>IN OLD RABAT</h4>
+
+<p>Before General Lyautey came to Morocco Rabat had been subjected to the
+indignity of European "improvements," and one must traverse boulevards
+scored with tram-lines, and pass between hotel-terraces and cafés and
+cinema-palaces, to reach the surviving nucleus of the once beautiful
+native town. Then, at the turn of a commonplace street, one comes upon
+it suddenly. The shops and cafés cease, the jingle of trams and the
+trumpeting of motor-horns die out, and here, all at once, are silence
+and solitude, and the dignified reticence of the windowless Arab
+house-fronts.</p>
+
+<p>We were bound for the house of a high government official, a Moroccan
+dignitary of the old school, who had invited us to tea, and added a
+message to the effect that the ladies of his household would be happy to
+receive me.</p>
+
+<p>The house we sought was some distance down the quietest of white-walled
+streets. Our companion knocked at a low green door, and we were admitted
+to a passage into which a wooden stairway<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> descended. A brother-in-law
+of our host was waiting for us: in his wake we mounted the ladder-like
+stairs and entered a long room with a florid French carpet and a set of
+gilt furniture to match. There were no fretted walls, no painted cedar
+doors, no fountains rustling in unseen courts: the house was squeezed in
+between others, and such traces of old ornament as it may have possessed
+had vanished.</p>
+
+<p>But presently we saw why its inhabitants were indifferent to such
+details. Our host, a handsome white-bearded old man, welcomed us in the
+doorway; then he led us to a raised oriel window at one end of the room,
+and seated us in the gilt armchairs face to face with one of the most
+beautiful views in Morocco.</p>
+
+<p>Below us lay the white and blue terrace-roofs of the native town, with
+palms and minarets shooting up between them, or the shadows of a
+vine-trellis patterning a quiet lane. Beyond, the Atlantic sparkled,
+breaking into foam at the mouth of the Bou-Regreg and under the towering
+ramparts of the Kasbah of the Oudayas. To the right, the ruins of the
+great Mosque rose from their plateau over the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> river; and, on the
+farther side of the troubled flood, old Salé, white and wicked, lay like
+a jewel in its gardens. With such a scene beneath their eyes, the
+inhabitants of the house could hardly feel its lack of architectural
+interest.</p>
+
+<p>After exchanging the usual compliments, and giving us time to enjoy the
+view, our host withdrew, taking with him the men of our party. A moment
+later he reappeared with a rosy fair-haired girl, dressed in Arab
+costume, but evidently of European birth. The brother-in-law explained
+that this young woman, who had "studied in Algeria," and whose mother
+was French, was the intimate friend of the ladies of the household, and
+would act as interpreter. Our host then again left us, joining the men
+visitors in another room, and the door opened to admit his wife and
+daughters-in-law.</p>
+
+<p>The mistress of the house was a handsome Algerian with sad expressive
+eyes: the younger women were pale, fat and amiable. They all wore sober
+dresses, in keeping with the simplicity of the house, and but for the
+vacuity of their faces the group might have been that of a Professor's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>
+family in an English or American University town, decently costumed for
+an Arabian Nights' pageant in the college grounds. I was never more
+vividly reminded of the fact that human nature, from one pole to the
+other, falls naturally into certain categories, and that Respectability
+wears the same face in an Oriental harem as in England or America.</p>
+
+<p>My hostesses received me with the utmost amiability, we seated ourselves
+in the oriel facing the view, and the interchange of questions and
+compliments began.</p>
+
+<p>Had I any children? (They asked it all at once.)</p>
+
+<p>Alas, no.</p>
+
+<p>"In Islam" (one of the ladies ventured) "a woman without children is
+considered the most unhappy being in the world."</p>
+
+<p>I replied that in the western world also childless women were pitied.
+(The brother-in-law smiled incredulously.)</p>
+
+<p>Knowing that European fashions are of absorbing interest to the harem I
+next enquired: "What do these ladies think of our stiff tailor-dresses?
+Don't they find them excessively ugly?"</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, they do;" (it was again the brother-in-law who replied.) "But they
+suppose that in your own homes you dress less badly."</p>
+
+<p>"And have they never any desire to travel, or to visit the Bazaars, as
+the Turkish ladies do?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed. They are too busy to give such matters a thought. In <i>our
+country</i> women of the highest class occupy themselves with their
+household and their children, and the rest of their time is devoted to
+needlework." (At this statement I gave the brother-in-law a smile as
+incredulous as his own.)</p>
+
+<p>All this time the fair-haired interpretess had not been allowed by the
+vigilant guardian of the harem to utter a word.</p>
+
+<p>I turned to her with a question.</p>
+
+<p>"So your mother is French, <i>Mademoiselle</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Oui, Madame.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"From what part of France did she come?"</p>
+
+<p>A bewildered pause. Finally: "I don't know ... from Switzerland, I
+think," brought out this shining example of the Higher Education. In
+spite of Algerian "advantages" the poor girl could speak only a few
+words of her mother's tongue. She had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> kept the European features and
+complexion, but her soul was the soul of Islam. The harem had placed its
+powerful imprint upon her, and she looked at me with the same remote and
+passive eyes as the daughters of the house.</p>
+
+<p>After struggling for a while longer with a conversation which the
+watchful brother-in-law continued to direct as he pleased. I felt my own
+lips stiffening into the resigned smile of the harem, and it was a
+relief when at last their guardian drove the pale flock away, and the
+handsome old gentleman who owned them reappeared on the scene, bringing
+back my friends, and followed by slaves and tea.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<h4>IN FEZ</h4>
+
+<p>What thoughts, what speculations, one wonders, go on under the narrow
+veiled brows of the little creatures destined to the high honour of
+marriage or concubinage in Moroccan palaces?</p>
+
+<p>Some are brought down from mountains and cedar forests, from the free
+life of the tents where the nomad women go unveiled. Others come from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
+harems in the turreted cities beyond the Atlas, where blue palm-groves
+beat all night against the stars and date-caravans journey across the
+desert from Timbuctoo. Some, born and bred in an airy palace among
+pomegranate gardens and white terraces, pass thence to one of the feudal
+fortresses near the snows, where for half the year the great chiefs of
+the south live in their clan, among fighting men and falconers and packs
+of <i>sloughis</i>. And still others grow up in a stifling Mellah, trip
+unveiled on its blue terraces overlooking the gardens of the great, and,
+seen one day at sunset by a fat vizier or his pale young master, are
+acquired for a handsome sum and transferred to the painted sepulchre of
+the harem.</p>
+
+<p>Worst of all must be the fate of those who go from tents and cedar
+forests, or from some sea-blown garden above Rabat, into one of the
+houses of Old Fez. They are well-nigh impenetrable, these palaces of
+Elbali: the Fazi dignitaries do not welcome the visits of strange women.
+On the rare occasions when they are received, a member of the family
+(one of the sons, or a brother-in-law who has "studied in Algeria")
+usually acts as interpreter;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> and perhaps it is as well that no one from
+the outer world should come to remind these listless creatures that
+somewhere the gulls dance on the Atlantic and the wind murmurs through
+olive-yards and clatters the metallic fronds of palm-groves.</p>
+
+<p>We had been invited, one day, to visit the harem of one of the chief
+dignitaries of the Makhzen at Fez, and these thoughts came to me as I
+sat among the pale women in their mouldering prison. The descent through
+the steep tunnelled streets gave one the sense of being lowered into the
+shaft of a mine. At each step the strip of sky grew narrower, and was
+more often obscured by the low vaulted passages into which we plunged.
+The noises of the Bazaar had died out, and only the sound of fountains
+behind garden walls and the clatter of our mules' hoofs on the stones
+went with us. Then fountains and gardens ceased also, the towering
+masonry closed in, and we entered an almost subterranean labyrinth which
+sun and air never reach. At length our mules turned into a <i>cul-de-sac</i>
+blocked by a high building. On the right was another building, one of
+those blind mysterious house-fronts of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> Fez that seem like a fragment of
+its ancient fortifications. Clients and servants lounged on the stone
+benches built into the wall; it was evidently the house of an important
+person. A charming youth with intelligent eyes waited on the threshold
+to receive us: he was one of the sons of the house, the one who had
+"studied in Algeria" and knew how to talk to visitors. We followed him
+into a small arcaded <i>patio</i> hemmed in by the high walls of the house.
+On the right was the usual long room with archways giving on the court.
+Our host, a patriarchal personage, draped in fat as in a toga, came
+toward us, a mountain of majestic muslins, his eyes sparkling in a
+swarthy silver-bearded face. He seated us on divans and lowered his
+voluminous person to a heap of cushions on the step leading into the
+court; and the son who had studied in Algeria instructed a negress to
+prepare the tea.</p>
+
+<p>Across the <i>patio</i> was another arcade closely hung with unbleached
+cotton. From behind it came the sound of chatter, and now and then a
+bare brown child in a scant shirt would escape, and be hurriedly pulled
+back with soft explosions of laughter, while a black woman came out to
+readjust the curtains.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There were three of these negresses, splendid bronze creatures, wearing
+white djellabahs over bright-coloured caftans, striped scarves knotted
+about their large hips, and gauze turbans on their crinkled hair. Their
+wrists clinked with heavy silver bracelets, and big circular earrings
+danced in their purple ear-lobes. A languor lay on all the other inmates
+of the household, on the servants and hangers-on squatting in the shade
+under the arcade, on our monumental host and his smiling son; but the
+three negresses, vibrating with activity, rushed continually from the
+curtained chamber to the kitchen, and from the kitchen to the master's
+reception-room, bearing on their pinky-blue palms trays of Britannia
+metal with tall glasses and fresh bunches of mint, shouting orders to
+dozing menials, and calling to each other from opposite ends of the
+court; and finally the stoutest of the three, disappearing from view,
+reappeared suddenly on a pale green balcony overhead, where, profiled
+against a square of blue sky, she leaned over in a Veronese attitude and
+screamed down to the others like an excited parrot.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of their febrile activity and tropical bird-shrieks, we waited
+in vain for tea; and after<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> a while our host suggested to his son that I
+might like to visit the ladies of the household. As I had expected, the
+young man led me across the <i>patio</i>, lifted the cotton hanging and
+introduced me into an apartment exactly like the one we had just left.
+Divans covered with striped mattress-ticking stood against the white
+walls, and on them sat seven or eight passive-looking women over whom a
+number of pale children scrambled.</p>
+
+<p>The eldest of the group, and evidently the mistress of the house, was an
+Algerian lady, probably of about fifty, with a sad and
+delicately-modelled face; the others were daughters, daughters-in-law
+and concubines. The latter word evokes to occidental ears images of
+sensual seduction which the Moroccan harem seldom realizes. All the
+ladies of this dignified official household wore the same look of
+somewhat melancholy respectability. In their stuffy curtained apartment
+they were like cellar-grown flowers, pale, heavy, fuller but frailer
+than the garden sort. Their dresses, rich but sober, the veils and
+diadems put on in honour of my visit, had a dignified dowdiness in odd
+contrast to the frivolity of the Imperial harem. But what chiefly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
+struck me was the apathy of the younger women. I asked them if they had
+a garden, and they shook their heads wistfully, saying that there were
+no gardens in Old Fez. The roof was therefore their only escape: a roof
+overlooking acres and acres of other roofs, and closed in by the naked
+fortified mountains which stand about Fez like prison-walls.</p>
+
+<p>After a brief exchange of compliments silence fell. Conversing through
+interpreters is a benumbing process, and there are few points of contact
+between the open-air occidental mind and beings imprisoned in a
+conception of sexual and domestic life based on slave-service and
+incessant espionage. These languid women on their muslin cushions toil
+not, neither do they spin. The Moroccan lady knows little of cooking,
+needlework or any household arts. When her child is ill she can only
+hang it with amulets and wail over it; the great lady of the Fazi palace
+is as ignorant of hygiene as the peasant-woman of the <i>bled</i>. And all
+these colourless eventless lives depend on the favour of one fat
+tyrannical man, bloated with good living and authority, himself almost
+as inert and sedentary as his women, and accustomed to impose his whims<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
+on them ever since he ran about the same <i>patio</i> as a little
+short-smocked boy.</p>
+
+<p>The redeeming point in this stagnant domesticity is the tenderness of
+the parents for their children, and western writers have laid so much
+stress on this that one would suppose children could be loved only by
+inert and ignorant parents. It is in fact charming to see the heavy eyes
+of the Moroccan father light up when a brown grasshopper baby jumps on
+his knee, and the unfeigned tenderness with which the childless women of
+the harem caress the babies of their happier rivals. But the
+sentimentalist moved by this display of family feeling would do well to
+consider the lives of these much-petted children. Ignorance,
+unhealthiness and a precocious sexual initiation prevail in all classes.
+Education consists in learning by heart endless passages of the Koran,
+and amusement in assisting at spectacles that would be unintelligible to
+western children, but that the pleasantries of the harem make perfectly
+comprehensible to Moroccan infancy. At eight or nine the little girls
+are married, at twelve the son of the house is "given his first
+negress"; and thereafter, in the rich and leisured class, both sexes
+live till old age in an atmosphere of sensuality without seduction.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/gs26.jpg" width="640" height="429" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph from &quot;France-Maroc&quot;</i><br />
+
+Women watching a procession from a roof</span>
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The young son of the house led me back across the court, where the
+negresses were still shrieking and scurrying, and passing to and fro
+like a stage-procession with the vain paraphernalia of a tea that never
+came. Our host still smiled from his cushions, resigned to Oriental
+delays. To distract the impatient westerners, a servant unhooked from
+the wall the cage of a gently-cooing dove. It was brought to us, still
+cooing, and looked at me with the same resigned and vacant eyes as the
+ladies I had just left. As it was being restored to its hook the slaves
+lolling about the entrance scattered respectfully at the approach of a
+handsome man of about thirty, with delicate features and a black beard.
+Crossing the court, he stooped to kiss the shoulder of our host, who
+introduced him as his eldest son, the husband of one or two of the
+little pale wives with whom I had been exchanging platitudes.</p>
+
+<p>From the increasing agitation of the negresses it became evident that
+the ceremony of tea-making had been postponed till his arrival. A metal
+tray<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> bearing a Britannia samovar and tea-pot was placed on the tiles of
+the court, and squatting beside it the newcomer gravely proceeded to
+infuse the mint. Suddenly the cotton hangings fluttered again, and a
+tiny child in the scantest of smocks rushed out and scampered across the
+court. Our venerable host, stretching out rapturous arms, caught the
+fugitive to his bosom, where the little boy lay like a squirrel,
+watching us with great sidelong eyes. He was the last-born of the
+patriarch, and the youngest brother of the majestic bearded gentleman
+engaged in tea-making. While he was still in his father's arms two more
+sons appeared: charming almond-eyed schoolboys returning from their
+Koran-class, escorted by their slaves. All the sons greeted each other
+affectionately, and caressed with almost feminine tenderness the dancing
+baby so lately added to their ranks; and finally, to crown this scene of
+domestic intimacy, the three negresses, their gigantic effort at last
+accomplished, passed about glasses of steaming mint and trays of
+gazelles' horns and white sugar-cakes.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<h4>IN MARRAKECH</h4>
+
+<p>The farther one travels from the Mediterranean and Europe the closer the
+curtains of the women's quarters are drawn. The only harem in which we
+were allowed an interpreter was that of the Sultan himself; in the
+private harems of Fez and Rabat a French-speaking relative transmitted
+(or professed to transmit) our remarks; in Marrakech, the great nobleman
+and dignitary who kindly invited me to visit his household was deaf to
+our hint that the presence of a lady from one of the French government
+schools might facilitate our intercourse.</p>
+
+<p>When we drove up to his palace, one of the stateliest in Marrakech, the
+street was thronged with clansmen and clients. Dignified merchants in
+white muslin, whose grooms held white mules saddled with rose-coloured
+velvet, warriors from the Atlas wearing the corkscrew ringlets which are
+a sign of military prowess, Jewish traders in black gabardines,
+leather-gaitered peasant-women with chickens and cheese, and beggars
+rolling their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> blind eyes or exposing their fly-plastered sores, were
+gathered in Oriental promiscuity about the great man's door; while under
+the archway stood a group of youths and warlike-looking older men who
+were evidently of his own clan.</p>
+
+<p>The Caïd's chamberlain, a middle-aged man of dignified appearance,
+advanced to meet us between bowing clients and tradesmen. He led us
+through cool passages lined with the intricate mosaic-work of Fez, past
+beggars who sat on stone benches whining out their blessings, and pale
+Fazi craftsmen laying a floor of delicate tiles. The Caïd is a lover of
+old Arab architecture. His splendid house, which is not yet finished,
+has been planned and decorated on the lines of the old Imperial palaces,
+and when a few years of sun and rain and Oriental neglect have worked
+their way on its cedar-wood and gilding and ivory stucco it will have
+the same faded loveliness as the fairy palaces of Fez.</p>
+
+<p>In a garden where fountains splashed and roses climbed among cypresses,
+the Caïd himself awaited us. This great fighter and loyal friend of
+France is a magnificent eagle-beaked man, brown, lean and sinewy, with
+vigilant eyes looking out under<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> his carefully draped muslin turban, and
+negroid lips half-hidden by a close black beard.</p>
+
+<p>Tea was prepared in the familiar setting; a long arcaded room with
+painted ceiling and richly stuccoed walls. All around were ranged the
+usual mattresses covered with striped ticking and piled with muslin
+cushions. A bedstead of brass, imitating a Louis XVI cane bed, and
+adorned with brass garlands and bows, throned on the usual platform; and
+the only other ornaments were a few clocks and bunches of wax flowers
+under glass. Like all Orientals, this hero of the Atlas, who spends half
+his life with his fighting clansmen in a mediæval stronghold among the
+snows, and the other half rolling in a 60 h.p. motor over smooth French
+roads, seems unaware of any degrees of beauty or appropriateness in
+objects of European design, and places against the exquisite mosaics and
+traceries of his Fazi craftsmen the tawdriest bric-à-brac of the cheap
+department-store.</p>
+
+<p>While tea was being served I noticed a tiny negress, not more than six
+or seven years old, who stood motionless in the embrasure of an archway.
+Like most of the Moroccan slaves, even in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> greatest households, she
+was shabbily, almost raggedly, dressed. A dirty <i>gandourah</i> of striped
+muslin covered her faded caftan, and a cheap kerchief was wound above
+her grave and precocious little face. With preternatural vigilance she
+watched each movement of the Caïd, who never spoke to her, looked at
+her, or made her the slightest perceptible sign, but whose least wish
+she instantly divined, refilling his tea-cup, passing the plates of
+sweets, or removing our empty glasses, in obedience to some secret
+telegraphy on which her whole being hung.</p>
+
+<p>The Caïd is a great man. He and his famous elder brother, holding the
+southern marches of Morocco against alien enemies and internal
+rebellion, played a preponderant part in the defence of the French
+colonies in North Africa during the long struggle of the war.
+Enlightened, cultivated, a friend of the arts, a scholar and
+diplomatist, he seems, unlike many Orientals, to have selected the best
+in assimilating European influences. Yet when I looked at the tiny
+creature watching him with those anxious joyless eyes I felt once more
+the abyss that slavery and the seraglio put between<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> the most
+Europeanized Mahometan and the western conception of life. The Caïd's
+little black slaves are well-known in Morocco, and behind the sad child
+leaning in the archway stood all the shadowy evils of the social system
+that hangs like a millstone about the neck of Islam.</p>
+
+<p>Presently a handsome tattered negress came across the garden to invite
+me to the harem. Captain de S. and his wife, who had accompanied me,
+were old friends of the Chief's, and it was owing to this that the
+jealously-guarded doors of the women's quarters were opened to Mme de S.
+and myself. We followed the negress to a marble-paved court where
+pigeons fluttered and strutted about the central fountain. From under a
+trellised arcade hung with linen curtains several ladies came forward.
+They greeted my companion with exclamations of delight; then they led us
+into the usual commonplace room with divans and whitewashed walls. Even
+in the most sumptuous Moroccan palaces little care seems to be expended
+on the fittings of the women's quarters: unless, indeed, the room in
+which visitors are received corresponds with a boarding-school
+"parlour," and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> the personal touch is reserved for the private
+apartments.</p>
+
+<p>The ladies who greeted us were more richly dressed than any I had seen
+except the Sultan's favourites; but their faces were more distinguished,
+more European in outline, than those of the round-cheeked beauties of
+Rabat. My companions had told me that the Caïd's harem was recruited
+from Georgia, and that the ladies receiving us had been brought up in
+the relative freedom of life in Constantinople; and it was easy to read
+in their wistfully smiling eyes memories of a life unknown to the
+passive daughters of Morocco.</p>
+
+<p>They appeared to make no secret of their regrets, for presently one of
+them, with a smile, called my attention to some faded photographs
+hanging over the divan. They represented groups of plump
+provincial-looking young women in dowdy European ball-dresses; and it
+required an effort of the imagination to believe that the lovely
+creatures in velvet caftans, with delicately tattooed temples under
+complicated head-dresses, and hennaed feet crossed on muslin cushions,
+were the same as the beaming frumps in the photographs. But to the
+sumptuously-clad<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> exiles these faded photographs and ugly dresses
+represented freedom, happiness, and all they had forfeited when fate
+(probably in the shape of an opulent Hebrew couple "travelling with
+their daughters") carried them from the Bosphorus to the Atlas.</p>
+
+<p>As in the other harems I had visited, perfect equality seemed to prevail
+between the ladies, and while they chatted with Mme de S. whose few
+words of Arabic had loosed their tongues, I tried to guess which was the
+favourite, or at least the first in rank. My choice wavered between the
+pretty pale creature with a <i>ferronnière</i> across her temples and a
+tea-rose caftan veiled in blue gauze, and the nut-brown beauty in red
+velvet hung with pearls whose languid attitudes and long-lidded eyes
+were so like the Keepsake portraits of Byron's Haïdee. Or was it perhaps
+the third, less pretty but more vivid and animated, who sat behind the
+tea-tray, and mimicked so expressively a soldier shouldering his rifle,
+and another falling dead, in her effort to ask us "when the dreadful war
+would be over"? Perhaps ... unless, indeed, it were the handsome
+octoroon, slightly older than the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> others, but even more richly dressed,
+so free and noble in her movements, and treated by the others with such
+friendly deference.</p>
+
+<p>I was struck by the fact that among them all there was not a child; it
+was the first harem without babies that I had seen in that prolific
+land. Presently one of the ladies asked Mme. de S. about her children;
+in reply, she enquired for the Caïd's little boy, the son of his wife
+who had died. The ladies' faces lit up wistfully, a slave was given an
+order, and presently a large-eyed ghost of a child was brought into the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly all the bracelet-laden arms were held out to the dead woman's
+son; and as I watched the weak little body hung with amulets and the
+heavy head covered with thin curls pressed against a brocaded bosom, I
+was reminded of one of the coral-hung child-Christs of Crivelli,
+standing livid and waxen on the knee of a splendidly dressed Madonna.</p>
+
+<p>The poor baby on whom such hopes and ambitions hung stared at us with a
+solemn unamused gaze. Would all his pretty mothers, his eyes seemed to
+ask, succeed in bringing him to maturity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> in spite of the parched
+summers of the south and the stifling existence of the harem? It was
+evident that no precaution had been neglected to protect him from
+maleficent influences and the danger that walks by night, for his frail
+neck and wrists were hung with innumerable charms: Koranic verses,
+Soudanese incantations, and images of forgotten idols in amber and coral
+and horn and ambergris. Perhaps they will ward off the powers of evil,
+and let him grow up to shoulder the burden of the great Caïds of the
+south.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> The <i>msalla</i> is used for the performance of religious
+ceremonies when the crowd is too great to be contained in the court of
+the mosque.</p></div>
+</div>
+<hr class="chap" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>VI</h2>
+
+<h3>GENERAL LYAUTEY'S WORK IN MOROCCO</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>It is not too much to say that General Lyautey has twice saved Morocco
+from destruction: once in 1912, when the inertia and double-dealing of
+Abd-el-Hafid abandoned the country to the rebellious tribes who had
+attacked him in Fez, and the second time in August, 1914, when Germany
+declared war on France.</p>
+
+<p>In 1912, in consequence of the threatening attitude of the dissident
+tribes and the generally disturbed condition of the country, the Sultan
+Abd-el-Hafid had asked France to establish a protectorate in Morocco.
+The agreement entered into, called the "Convention of Fez," stipulated
+that a French Resident-General should be sent to Morocco with authority
+to act as the Sultan's sole representative in treating with the other
+powers. The convention<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> was signed in March, 1912, and a few days
+afterward an uprising more serious than any that had gone before took
+place in Fez. This sudden outbreak was due in part to purely local and
+native difficulties, in part to the intrinsic weakness of the French
+situation. The French government had imagined that a native army
+commanded by French officers could be counted on to support the Makhzen
+and maintain order; but Abd-el-Hafid's growing unpopularity had
+estranged his own people from him, and the army turned on the government
+and on the French. On the 17th of April, 1912, the Moroccan soldiers
+massacred their French officers after inflicting horrible tortures on
+them; the population of Fez rose against the European civilians, and for
+a fortnight the Oued Fez ran red with the blood of harmless French
+colonists. It was then that France appointed General Lyautey
+Resident-General in Morocco.</p>
+
+<p>When he reached Fez it was besieged by twenty thousand Berbers. Rebel
+tribes were flocking in to their support, to the cry of the Holy War;
+and the terrified Sultan, who had already announced his intention of
+resigning, warned the French troops<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> who were trying to protect him that
+unless they guaranteed to get him safely to Rabat he would turn his
+influence against them. Two days afterward the Berbers attacked Fez and
+broke in at two gates. The French drove them out and forced them back
+twenty miles. The outskirts of the city were rapidly fortified, and a
+few weeks later General Gouraud, attacking the rebels in the valley of
+the Sebou, completely disengaged Fez.</p>
+
+<p>The military danger overcome, General Lyautey began his great task of
+civilian administration. His aim was to support and strengthen the
+existing government, to reassure and pacify the distrustful and
+antagonistic elements, and to assert French authority without irritating
+or discouraging native ambitions.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile a new Mahdi (Ahmed-el-Hiba) had risen in the south.
+Treacherously supported by Abd-el-Hafid, he was proclaimed Sultan at
+Tiznit, and acknowledged by the whole of the Souss. In Marrakech, native
+unrest had caused the Europeans to fly to the coast, and in the north a
+new group of rebellious tribes menaced Fez.</p>
+
+<p>El-Hiba entered Marrakech in August, 1912, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> the French consul and
+several other French residents were taken prisoner. El-Hiba's forces
+then advanced to a point half way between Marrakech and Mazagan, where
+General Mangin, at that time a colonial colonel, met and utterly routed
+them. The disorder in the south, and the appeals of the native
+population for protection against the savage depredations of the new
+Mahdist rebels, made it necessary for the French troops to follow up
+their success; and in September Marrakech was taken.</p>
+
+<p>Such were the swift and brilliant results of General Lyautey's
+intervention. The first difficulties had been quickly overcome; others,
+far more complicated, remained. The military occupation of Morocco had
+to be followed up by its civil reorganization. By the Franco-German
+treaty of 1911 Germany had finally agreed to recognize the French
+protectorate in Morocco; but in spite of an apparently explicit
+acknowledgment of this right, Germany, as usual, managed to slip into
+the contract certain ambiguities of form that were likely to lead to
+future trouble.</p>
+
+<p>To obtain even this incomplete treaty France had had to sacrifice part
+of her colonies in equatorial Africa; and in addition to the uncertain
+relation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> with Germany there remained the dead weight of the Spanish
+zone and the confused international administration of Tangier. The
+disastrously misgoverned Spanish zone has always been a centre for
+German intrigue and native conspiracies, as well as a permanent obstacle
+to the economic development of Morocco.</p>
+
+<p>Such were the problems that General Lyautey found awaiting him. A long
+colonial experience, and an unusual combination of military and
+administrative talents, prepared him for the almost impossible task of
+dealing with them. Swift and decisive when military action is required,
+he has above all the long views and endless patience necessary to the
+successful colonial governor. The policy of France in Morocco has been
+weak and spasmodic; in his hands it became firm and consecutive. A
+sympathetic understanding of the native prejudices, and a real affection
+for the native character, made him try to build up an administration
+which should be, not an application of French ideas to African
+conditions, but a development of the best native aspirations. The
+difficulties were immense. The attempt to govern as far as possible
+through the Great Chiefs was a wise one; but it was hampered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> by the
+fact that these powerful leaders, however loyal to the Protectorate,
+knew no methods of administration but those based on extortion. It was
+necessary at once to use them and to educate them; and one of General
+Lyautey's greatest achievements has been the successful employment of
+native ability in the government of the country.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>The first thing to do was to create a strong frontier against the
+dissident tribes of the Blad-es-Siba. To do this it was necessary that
+the French should hold the natural defenses of the country, the
+foothills of the Little and of the Great Atlas, and the valley of the
+Moulouya, which forms the corridor between western Algeria and Morocco.
+This was nearly accomplished in 1914 when war broke out.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the home government cabled the Resident-General to send
+all his available troops to France, abandoning the whole of conquered
+territory except the coast towns. To do so would have been to give
+France's richest colonies<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> outright to Germany at a moment when what
+they could supply&mdash;meat and wheat&mdash;was exactly what the enemy most
+needed.</p>
+
+<p>General Lyautey took forty-eight hours to consider. He then decided to
+"empty the egg without breaking the shell"; and the reply he sent was
+that of a great patriot and a great general. In effect he said: "I will
+give you all the troops you ask, but instead of abandoning the interior
+of the country I will hold what we have already taken, and fortify and
+enlarge our boundaries." No other military document has so nearly that
+ring as Marshal Foch's immortal Marne despatch (written only a few weeks
+later): "My centre is broken, my right wing is wavering, the situation
+is favorable and I am about to attack."</p>
+
+<p>General Lyautey had framed his answer in a moment of patriotic
+exaltation, when the soul of every Frenchman was strung up to a
+superhuman pitch. But the pledge once made, it had to be carried out;
+and even those who most applauded his decision wondered how he would
+meet the almost insuperable difficulties it involved. Morocco, when he
+was called there, was already honey-combed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> by German trading interests
+and secret political intrigue, and the fruit seemed ready to fall when
+the declaration of war shook the bough. The only way to save the colony
+for France was to keep its industrial and agricultural life going, and
+give to the famous "business as usual" a really justifiable application.</p>
+
+<p>General Lyautey completely succeeded, and the first impression of all
+travellers arriving in Morocco two years later was that of suddenly
+returning to a world in normal conditions. There was even, so complete
+was the illusion, a first moment of almost painful surprise on entering
+an active prosperous community, seemingly absorbed in immediate material
+interests to the exclusion of all thought of the awful drama that was
+being played out in the mother country; and it was only on reflection
+that this absorption in the day's task, and this air of smiling faith in
+the future, were seen to be Morocco's truest way of serving France.</p>
+
+<p>For not only was France to be supplied with provisions, but the
+confidence in her ultimate triumph was at all costs to be kept up in the
+native mind. German influence was as deep-seated as a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> cancer: to cut it
+out required the most drastic of operations. And that operation
+consisted precisely in letting it be seen that France was strong and
+prosperous enough for her colonies to thrive and expand without fear
+while she held at bay on her own frontier the most formidable foe the
+world has ever seen. Such was the "policy of the smile," consistently
+advocated by General Lyautey from the beginning of the war, and of which
+he and his household were the first to set the example.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>The General had said that he would not "break the egg-shell"; but he
+knew that this was not enough, and that he must make it appear
+unbreakable if he were to retain the confidence of the natives.</p>
+
+<p>How this was achieved, with the aid of the few covering troops left him,
+is still almost incomprehensible. To hold the line was virtually
+impossible: therefore he pushed it forward. An anonymous writer in
+<i>L'Afrique Française</i> (January, 1917) has thus described the
+man&oelig;uvre: "General Henrys was instructed to watch for storm-signals
+on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> front, to stop up the cracks, to strengthen weak points and to
+rectify doubtful lines. Thanks to these operations, which kept the
+rebels perpetually harassed by always forestalling their own plans, the
+occupied territory was enlarged by a succession of strongly fortified
+positions." While this was going on in the north, General Lamothe was
+extending and strengthening, by means of pacific negotiations, the
+influence of the Great Chiefs in the south; and other agents of the
+Residency were engaged in watching and thwarting the incessant German
+intrigues in the Spanish zone.</p>
+
+<p>General Lyautey is quoted as having said that "a work-shop is worth a
+battalion." This precept he managed to put into action even during the
+first dark days of 1914, and the interior development of Morocco
+proceeded side by side with the strengthening of its defenses. Germany
+had long foreseen what an asset northwest Africa would be during the
+war; and General Lyautey was determined to prove how right Germany had
+been. He did so by getting the government, to whom he had given nearly
+all his troops, to give him in exchange an agricultural and industrial
+army, or at least enough<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> specialists to form such an army out of the
+available material in the country. For every battle fought a road was
+made;<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> for every rebel fortress shelled a factory was built, a harbor
+developed, or more miles of fallow land ploughed and sown.</p>
+
+<p>But this economic development did not satisfy the Resident. He wished
+Morocco to enlarge her commercial relations with France and the other
+allied countries, and with this object in view he organized and carried
+out with brilliant success a series of exhibitions at Casablanca, Fez
+and Rabat. The result of this bold policy surpassed even its creator's
+hopes. The Moroccans of the plain are an industrious and money-loving
+people, and the sight of these rapidly improvised exhibitions, where the
+industrial and artistic products of France and other European countries
+were shown in picturesque buildings grouped about flower-filled gardens,
+fascinated their imagination and strengthened their confidence in the
+country that could find time for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> such an effort in the midst of a great
+war. The Voice of the Bazaar carried the report to the farthest confines
+of Moghreb, and one by one the notabilities of the different tribes
+arrived, with delegations from Algeria and Tunisia. It was even said
+that several rebel chiefs had submitted to the Makhzen in order not to
+miss the Exhibition.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time as the "Miracle of the Marne" another, less famous but
+almost as vital to France, was being silently performed at the other end
+of her dominions. It will not seem an exaggeration to speak of General
+Lyautey's achievement during the first year of the war as the "Miracle
+of Morocco" if one considers the immense importance of doing what he did
+at the moment when he did it. And to understand this it is only needful
+to reckon what Germany could have drawn in supplies and men from a
+German North Africa, and what would have been the situation of France
+during the war with a powerful German colony in control of the western
+Mediterranean.</p>
+
+<p>General Lyautey has always been one of the clear-sighted administrators
+who understand that the successful government of a foreign country
+depends on many little things, and not least on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> administrator's
+genuine sympathy with the traditions, habits and tastes of the people. A
+keen feeling for beauty had prepared him to appreciate all that was most
+exquisite and venerable in the Arab art of Morocco, and even in the
+first struggle with political and military problems he found time to
+gather about him a group of archæologists and artists who were charged
+with the inspection and preservation of the national monuments and the
+revival of the languishing native art-industries. The old pottery,
+jewelry, metal-work, rugs and embroideries of the different regions were
+carefully collected and classified; schools of decorative art were
+founded, skilled artisans sought out, and every effort was made to urge
+European residents to follow native models and use native artisans in
+building and furnishing.</p>
+
+<p>At the various Exhibitions much space was allotted to these revived
+industries, and the matting of Salé, the rugs of Rabat, the embroideries
+of Fez and Marrakech have already found a ready market in France,
+besides awakening in the educated class of colonists an appreciation of
+the old buildings and the old arts of the country that will be its
+surest safeguard against the destructive effects of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> colonial expansion.
+It is only necessary to see the havoc wrought in Tunisia and Algeria by
+the heavy hand of the colonial government to know what General Lyautey
+has achieved in saving Morocco from this form of destruction, also.</p>
+
+<p>All this has been accomplished by the Resident-General during five years
+of unexampled and incessant difficulty; and probably the true
+explanation of the miracle is that which he himself gives when he says,
+with the quiet smile that typifies his Moroccan war-policy: "It was easy
+to do because I loved the people."</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE WORK OF THE FRENCH PROTECTORATE, 1912-1918</h4>
+
+
+<h4>PORTS</h4>
+
+<p>Owing to the fact that the neglected and roadless Spanish zone
+intervened between the French possessions and Tangier, which is the
+natural port of Morocco, one of the first pre-occupations of General
+Lyautey was to make ports along the inhospitable Atlantic coast, where
+there are no natural harbours.</p>
+
+<p>Since 1912, in spite of the immense cost and the difficulty of obtaining
+labour, the following has been done:</p>
+
+<p><i>Casablanca.</i> A jetty 1900 metres long has been planned: 824 metres
+finished December, 1917.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Small jetty begun 1916, finished 1917: length 330 metres. Small harbour
+thus created shelters small boats (150 tons) in all weathers.</p>
+
+<p>Quays 747 metres long already finished.</p>
+
+<p>16 steam-cranes working.</p>
+
+<p>Warehouses and depots covering 41,985 square metres completed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rabat.</i> Work completed December, 1917.</p>
+
+<p>A quay 200 metres long, to which boats with a draught of three metres
+can tie up.</p>
+
+<p>Two groups of warehouses, steam-cranes, etc., covering 22,600 square
+metres.</p>
+
+<p>A quay 100 metres long on the Salé side of the river.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kenitra.</i> The port of Kenitra is at the mouth of the Sebou River, and
+is capable of becoming a good river port.</p>
+
+<p>The work up to December, 1917, comprises:</p>
+
+<p>A channel 100 metres long and three metres deep, cut through the bar of
+the Sebou.</p>
+
+<p>Jetties built on each side of the channel.</p>
+
+<p>Quay 100 metres long.</p>
+
+<p>Building of sheds, depots, warehouses, steam-cranes, etc.</p>
+
+<p>At the ports of Fedalah, Mazagan, Safi, Mogador and Agadir similar plans
+are in course of execution.</p>
+
+
+<h4>COMMERCE</h4>
+
+<h4>COMPARATIVE TABLES</h4>
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align="center">1912</td><td align="center">1918</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Total Commerce</td><td align="left">Total Commerce</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Fcs. 177,737,723</td><td align="left">Fcs. 386,238,618</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">Exports</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Fcs. 67,080,383</td><td align="left">Fcs. 116,148,081</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4>ROADS BUILT</h4>
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align="left">National roads</td><td align="left">2,074 kilometres</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Secondary roads</td><td align="left">569 "</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<h4>RAILWAYS BUILT</h4>
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align="left">622 kilometres</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<h4>LAND CULTIVATED</h4>
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align="center">1915  </td><td align="center"> 1918</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Approximate area</td><td align="left">Approximate area</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">21,165.17 hectares</td><td align="left">1,681,308.03 hectares</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<h4>JUSTICE</h4>
+
+<p>1. Creation of French courts for French nationals and those under French
+protection. These take cognizance of civil cases where both parties, or
+even one, are amenable to French jurisdiction.</p>
+
+<p>2. Moroccan law is Moslem, and administered by Moslem magistrates.
+Private law, including that of inheritance, is based on the Koran. The
+Sultan has maintained the principle whereby real property and
+administrative cases fall under native law. These courts are as far as
+possible supervised and controlled by the establishment of a Cherifian
+Ministry of Justice to which the native Judges are responsible. Special
+care is taken to prevent the alienation of property held collectively,
+or any similar transactions likely to produce political and economic
+disturbances.</p>
+
+<p>3. Criminal jurisdiction is delegated to Pashas and Cadis by the Sultan,
+except of offenses committed against, or in conjunction with, French
+nationals and those under French protection. Such cases come before the
+tribunals of the French Protectorate.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4>EDUCATION</h4>
+
+<p>The object of the Protectorate has been, on the one hand, to give to the
+children of French colonists in Morocco the same education as they would
+have received at elementary and secondary schools in France; on the
+other, to provide the indigenous population with a system of education
+that shall give to the young Moroccans an adequate commercial or manual
+training, or prepare them for administrative posts, but without
+interfering with their native customs or beliefs.</p>
+
+<p>Before 1912 there existed in Morocco only a few small schools supported
+by the French Legation at Tangier and by the Alliance Française, and a
+group of Hebrew schools in the Mellahs, maintained by the Universal
+Israelite Alliance.</p>
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align="left">1912.</td><td align="left">Total</td><td align="left">number</td><td align="left">of</td><td align="left">schools</td><td align="left">37</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1918.</td><td align="center">"</td><td align="center">"</td><td align="center">"</td><td align="center">"</td><td align="left">191</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1912.</td><td align="left">Total</td><td align="left">number</td><td align="left">of</td><td align="left">pupils</td><td align="left">3006</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1918.</td><td align="center">"</td><td align="center">"</td><td align="center">"</td><td align="center">"</td><td align="left">21,520</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1912.</td><td align="left">Total</td><td align="left">number</td><td align="left">of</td><td align="center">teachers</td><td align="left">61</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1918.</td><td align="center">"</td><td align="center">"</td><td align="center">"</td><td align="center">"</td><td align="left">668</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>In addition to the French and indigenous schools, sewing-schools have
+been formed for the native girls and have been exceptionally successful.</p>
+
+<p>Moslem colleges have been founded at Rabat and Fez in order to
+supplement the native education of young Mahometans of the upper
+classes, who intend to take up wholesale business or banking, or prepare
+for political, judicial or administrative posts under the Sultan's
+government. The course lasts four years and comprises: Arabic, French,
+mathematics,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> history, geography, religious (Mahometan) instruction, and
+the law of the Koran.</p>
+
+<p>The "Ecole Supérieure de la langue arabe et des dialectes berbères" at
+Rabat receives European and Moroccan students. The courses are: Arabic,
+the Berber dialects, Arab literature, ethnography, administrative
+Moroccan law, Moslem law, Berber customary law.</p>
+
+
+<h4>MEDICAL AID</h4>
+
+<p>The Protectorate has established 113 medical centres for the native
+population, ranging from simple dispensaries and small native
+infirmaries to the important hospitals of Rabat, Fez, Meknez, Marrakech,
+and Casablanca.</p>
+
+<p>Mobile sanitary formations supplied with light motor ambulances travel
+about the country, vaccinating, making tours of sanitary inspection,
+investigating infected areas, and giving general hygienic education
+throughout the remoter regions.</p>
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align="left">Native </td><td align="left">patients</td><td align="left"> treated in</td><td align="left"> 1916</td><td align="left">over</td><td align="left">900,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="center">"</td><td align="center">"</td><td align="left">1917</td><td align="center">"</td><td align="left"> 1,220,800</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>Night-shelters in towns. Every town is provided with a shelter for the
+indigent wayfarers so numerous in Morocco. These shelters are used as
+disinfection centres, from which suspicious cases are sent to quarantine
+camp at the gates of the towns.</p>
+
+<p><i>Central Laboratory at Rabat.</i> This is a kind of Pasteur Institute. In
+1917, 210,000 persons were vaccinated throughout the country and 356
+patients treated at the Laboratory for rabies.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>Clinics for venereal diseases</i> have been established at Casablanca,
+Fez, Rabat, and Marrakech.</p>
+
+<p>More than 15,000 cases were treated in 1917.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ophthalmic clinics</i> in the same cities gave in 1917, 44,600
+consultations.</p>
+
+<p><i>Radiotherapy.</i> Clinics have been opened at Fez and Rabat for the
+treatment of skin diseases of the head, from which the native children
+habitually suffer.</p>
+
+<p>The French Department of Health distributes annually immense quantities
+of quinine in the malarial districts.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Lyautey's private charities comprise admirably administered
+child-welfare centres in the principal cities, with dispensaries for the
+native mothers and children.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> The loss of Morocco would inevitably have been followed by
+that of the whole of French North Africa.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> During the first year of the war roads were built in
+Morocco by German prisoners; and it was because Germany was so
+thoroughly aware of the economic value of the country, and so anxious
+not to have her prestige diminished, that she immediately protested, on
+the absurd plea of the unwholesomeness of the climate, and threatened
+reprisals unless the prisoners were withdrawn.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>VII</h2>
+
+<h3>A SKETCH OF MOROCCAN HISTORY</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Note.</span>&mdash;In the chapters on Moroccan history and art I have tried to set
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>down a slight and superficial outline of a large and confused subject.
+In extenuation of this summary attempt I hasten to explain that its
+chief merit is its lack of originality.</p>
+
+<p>Its facts are chiefly drawn from the books mentioned in the short
+bibliography at the end of the volume; in addition to which I am deeply
+indebted for information given on the spot to the group of remarkable
+specialists attached to the French administration, and to the cultivated
+and cordial French officials, military and civilian, who, at each stage
+of my rapid journey, did their best to answer my questions and open my
+eyes.</p>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<h4>THE BERBERS</h4>
+
+<p>In the briefest survey of the Moroccan past account must first of all be
+taken of the factor which, from the beginning of recorded events, has
+conditioned the whole history of North Africa: the existence, from the
+Sahara to the Mediterranean, of a mysterious irreducible indigenous race
+with which every successive foreign rule, from Carthage to France, has
+had to reckon, and which has but imperfectly and partially assimilated
+the language, the religion, and the culture that successive
+civilizations have tried to impose upon it.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>This race, the race of Berbers, has never, modern explorers tell us,
+become really Islamite, any more than it ever really became Phenician,
+Roman or Vandal. It has imposed its habits while it appeared to adopt
+those of its invaders, and has perpetually represented, outside the
+Ismalitic and Hispano-Arabic circle of the Makhzen, the vast tormenting
+element of the dissident, the rebellious, the unsubdued tribes of the
+Blad-es-Siba.</p>
+
+<p>Who were these indigenous tribes with whom the Phenicians, when they
+founded their first counting-houses on the north and west coast of
+Africa, exchanged stuffs and pottery and arms for ivory,
+ostrich-feathers and slaves?</p>
+
+<p>Historians frankly say they do not know. All sorts of material obstacles
+have hitherto hampered the study of Berber origins; but it seems clear
+that from the earliest historic times they were a mixed race, and the
+ethnologist who attempts to define them is faced by the same problem as
+the historian of modern America who should try to find the racial
+definition of an "American." For centuries, for ages, North Africa has
+been what America now is: the clearing-house of the world. When at
+length it occurred to the explorer that the natives of North Africa were
+not all Arabs or Moors, he was bewildered by the many vistas of all they
+were or might be: so many and tangled were the threads leading up to
+them, so interwoven was their pre-Islamite culture with worn-out shreds
+of older and richer societies.</p>
+
+<p>M. Saladin, in his "Manuel d'Architecture Musulmane," after attempting
+to unravel the influences which went to the making of the mosque of
+Kairouan, the walls of Marrakech, the Medersas of Fez&mdash;influences that
+lead him back to Chaldæan branch-huts, to the walls of Babylon and the
+embroideries of Coptic Egypt&mdash;somewhat despairingly sums up the result:
+"The principal elements contributed to Moslem art by the styles
+preceding it may be thus enumerated: from India, floral ornament; from
+Persia, the structural principles of the Acheminedes, and the Sassanian
+vault. Mesopotamia contributes a system of vaulting, incised ornament,
+and proportion; the Copts, ornamental detail in general; Egypt, mass
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
+and unbroken wall-spaces; Spain, construction and Romano-Iberian
+ornament; Africa, decorative detail and Romano-Berber traditions (with
+Byzantine influences in Persia); Asia Minor, a mixture of Byzantine and
+Persian characteristics."</p>
+
+<p>As with the art of North Africa, so with its supposedly indigenous
+population. The Berber dialects extend from the Lybian desert to
+Senegal. Their language was probably related to Coptic, itself related
+to the ancient Egyptian and the non-Semitic dialects of Abyssinia and
+Nubia. Yet philologists have discovered what appears to be a far-off
+link between the Berber and Semitic languages, and the Chleuhs of the
+Draa and the Souss, with their tall slim Egyptian-looking bodies and
+hooked noses, may have a strain of Semitic blood. M. Augustin Bernard,
+in speaking of the natives of North Africa, ends, much on the same note
+as M. Saladin in speaking of Moslem art: "In their blood are the
+sediments of many races, Phenician, Punic, Egyptian and Arab."</p>
+
+<p>They were not, like the Arabs, wholly nomadic; but the tent, the flock,
+the tribe always entered into their conception of life. M. Augustin
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
+Bernard has pointed out that, in North Africa, the sedentary and nomadic
+habit do not imply a permanent difference, but rather a temporary one of
+situation and opportunity. The sedentary Berbers are nomadic in certain
+conditions; and from the earliest times the invading nomad Berbers
+tended to become sedentary when they reached the rich plains north of
+the Atlas. But when they built cities it was as their ancestors and
+their neighbours pitched tents; and they destroyed or abandoned them as
+lightly as their desert forbears packed their camel-bags and moved to
+new pastures. Everywhere behind the bristling walls and rock-clamped
+towers of old Morocco lurks the shadowy spirit of instability. Every new
+Sultan builds himself a new house and lets his predecessors' palaces
+fall into decay; and as with the Sultan so with his vassals and
+officials. Change is the rule in this apparently unchanged civilization,
+where "nought may abide but Mutability."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<h4>PHENICIANS, ROMANS AND VANDALS</h4>
+
+<p>Far to the south of the Anti-Atlas, in the yellow deserts that lead to
+Timbuctoo, live the wild Touaregs, the Veiled Men of the south, who ride
+to war with their faces covered by linen masks.</p>
+
+<p>These Veiled Men are Berbers; but their alphabet is composed of Lybian
+characters, and these are closely related to the signs engraved on
+certain vases of the Nile valley that are probably six thousand years
+old. Moreover, among the rock-cut images of the African desert is the
+likeness of Theban Ammon crowned with the solar disk between serpents;
+and the old Berber religion, with its sun and animal worship, has many
+points of resemblance with Egyptian beliefs. All this implies trade
+contacts far below the horizon of history, and obscure comings and
+goings of restless throngs across incredible distances long before the
+Phenicians planted their first trading posts on the north African coast
+about 1200 <span class="smcap">B. C.</span></p>
+
+<p>Five hundred years before Christ, Carthage sent one of her admirals on a
+voyage of colonization beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Hannon set out
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>
+with sixty fifty-oared galleys carrying thirty thousand people. Some of
+them settled at Mehedyia, at the mouth of the Sebou, where Phenician
+remains have been found; and apparently the exploration was pushed as
+far south as the coast of Guinea, for the inscription recording it
+relates that Hannon beheld elephants, hairy men and "savages called
+gorillas." At any rate, Carthage founded stable colonies at Melilla,
+Larache, Salé and Casablanca.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the Romans, who carried on the business, set up one of their
+easy tolerant protectorates over "Tingitanian Mauretania,"<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> and built
+one important military outpost, Volubilis in the Zerhoun, which a series
+of minor defenses probably connected with Salé on the west coast, thus
+guarding the Roman province against the unconquered Berbers to the
+south.</p>
+
+<p>Tingitanian Mauretania was one of the numerous African granaries of
+Rome. She also supplied the Imperial armies with their famous African
+cavalry; and among minor articles of exportation were guinea-hens,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
+snails, honey, euphorbia, wild beasts, horses and pearls. The Roman
+dominion ceased at the line drawn between Volubilis and Salé. There was
+no interest in pushing farther south, since the ivory and slave trade
+with the Soudan was carried on by way of Tripoli. But the spirit of
+enterprise never slept in the race, and Pliny records the journey of a
+Roman general&mdash;Suetonius Paulinus&mdash;who appears to have crossed the
+Atlas, probably by the pass of Tizi-n-Telremt, which is even now so
+beset with difficulties that access by land to the Souss will remain an
+arduous undertaking until the way by Imintanout is safe for European
+travel.</p>
+
+<p>The Vandals swept away the Romans in the fifth century. The Lower Empire
+restored a brief period of civilization; but its authority finally
+dwindled to the half-legendary rule of Count Julian, shut up within his
+walls of Ceuta. Then Europe vanished from the shores of Africa; and
+though Christianity lingered here and there in vague Donatist colonies,
+and in the names of Roman bishoprics, its last faint hold went down in
+the eighth century before the irresistible cry: "There is no God but
+Allah!"</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<h4>THE ARAB CONQUEST</h4>
+
+<p>The first Arab invasion of Morocco is said to have reached the Atlantic
+coast; but it left no lasting traces, and the real Islamisation of
+Barbary did not happen till near the end of the eighth century, when a
+descendant of Ali, driven from Mesopotamia by the Caliphate, reached the
+mountains above Volubilis and there founded an empire. The Berbers,
+though indifferent in religious matters, had always, from a spirit of
+independence, tended to heresy and schism. Under the rule of Christian
+Rome they had been Donatists, as M. Bernard puts it, "out of opposition
+to the Empire"; and so, out of opposition to the Caliphate, they took up
+the cause of one Moslem schismatic after another. Their great popular
+movements have always had a religious basis, or perhaps it would be
+truer to say, a religious pretext; for they have been in reality the
+partly moral, partly envious revolt of hungry and ascetic warrior tribes
+against the fatness and corruption of the "cities of the plain."</p>
+
+<p>Idriss I became the first national saint and ruler of Morocco. His rule
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
+extended throughout northern Morocco, and his son, Idriss II, attacking
+a Berber tribe on the banks of the Oued Fez, routed them, took
+possession of their oasis and founded the city of Fez. Thither came
+schismatic refugees from Kairouan and Moors from Andalusia. The Islamite
+Empire of Morocco was founded, and Idriss II has become the legendary
+ancestor of all its subsequent rulers.</p>
+
+<p>The Idrissite rule is a welter of obscure struggles between rapidly
+melting groups of adherents. Its chief features are: the founding of
+Moulay Idriss and Fez, and the building of the mosques of El Andalous
+and Kairouiyin at Fez for the two groups of refugees from Tunisia and
+Spain. Meanwhile the Caliphate of Cordova had reached the height of its
+power, while that of the Fatimites extended from the Nile to western
+Morocco, and the little Idrissite empire, pulverized under the weight of
+these expanding powers, became once more a dust of disintegrated tribes.</p>
+
+<p>It was only in the eleventh century that the dust again conglomerated.
+Two Arab tribes from the desert of the Hedjaz, suddenly driven westward
+by the Fatimites, entered Morocco, not with a small military
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>
+expedition, as the Arabs had hitherto done, but with a horde of
+emigrants reckoned as high as 200,000 families; and this first
+colonizing expedition was doubtless succeeded by others.</p>
+
+<p>To strengthen their hold in Morocco the Arab colonists embraced the
+dynastic feuds of the Berbers. They inaugurated a period of general
+havoc which destroyed what little prosperity had survived the break-up
+of the Idrissite rule, and many Berber tribes took refuge in the
+mountains; but others remained and were merged with the invaders,
+reforming into new tribes of mixed Berber and Arab blood. This invasion
+was almost purely destructive; it marks one of the most desolate periods
+in the progress of the "wasteful Empire" of Moghreb.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<h4>ALMORAVIDS AND ALMOHADS</h4>
+
+<p>While the Hilalian Arabs were conquering and destroying northern Morocco
+another but more fruitful invasion was upon her from the south. The
+Almoravids, one of the tribes of Veiled Men of the south, driven by the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
+usual mixture of religious zeal and lust of booty, set out to invade the
+rich black kingdoms north of the Sahara. Thence they crossed the Atlas
+under their great chief, Youssef-ben-Tachfin, and founded the city of
+Marrakech in 1062. From Marrakech they advanced on Idrissite Fez and the
+valley of the Moulouya. Fez rose against her conquerors, and Youssef put
+all the male inhabitants to death. By 1084 he was master of Tangier and
+the Rif, and his rule stretched as far west as Tlemcen, Oran and finally
+Algiers.</p>
+
+<p>His ambition drove him across the straits to Spain, where he conquered
+one Moslem prince after another and wiped out the luxurious civilization
+of Moorish Andalusia. In 1086, at Zallarca, Youssef gave battle to
+Alphonso VI of Castile and Leon. The Almoravid army was a strange rabble
+of Arabs, Berbers, blacks, wild tribes of the Sahara and Christian
+mercenaries. They conquered the Spanish forces, and Youssef left to his
+successors an empire extending from the Ebro to Senegal and from the
+Atlantic coast of Africa to the borders of Tunisia. But the empire fell
+to pieces of its own weight, leaving little record of its brief and
+stormy existence. While Youssef was routing the forces of Christianity
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>
+at Zallarca in Spain, another schismatic tribe of his own people was
+detaching Marrakech and the south from his rule.</p>
+
+<p>The leader of the new invasion was a Mahdi, one of the numerous Saviours
+of the World who have carried death and destruction throughout Islam.
+His name was Ibn-Toumert, and he had travelled in Egypt, Syria and
+Spain, and made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Preaching the doctrine of a
+purified monotheism, he called his followers the Almohads or Unitarians,
+to distinguish them from the polytheistic Almoravids, whose heresies he
+denounced. He fortified the city of Tinmel in the Souss, and built there
+a mosque of which the ruins still exist. When he died, in 1128, he
+designated as his successor Abd-el-Moumen, the son of a potter, who had
+been his disciple.</p>
+
+<p>Abd-el-Moumen carried on the campaign against the Almoravids. He fought
+them not only in Morocco but in Spain, taking Cadiz, Cordova, Granada as
+well as Tlemcen and Fez. In 1152 his African dominion reached from
+Tripoli to the Souss, and he had formed a disciplined army in which
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>
+Christian mercenaries from France and Spain fought side by side with
+Berbers and Soudanese. This great captain was also a great
+administrator, and under his rule Africa was surveyed from the Souss to
+Barka, the country was policed, agriculture was protected, and the
+caravans journeyed safely over the trade-routes.</p>
+
+<p>Abd-el-Moumen died in 1163 and was followed by his son, who, though he
+suffered reverses in Spain, was also a great ruler. He died in 1184, and
+his son, Yacoub-el-Mansour, avenged his father's ill-success in Spain by
+the great victory of Alarcos and the conquest of Madrid.
+Yacoub-el-Mansour was the greatest of Moroccan Sultans. So far did his
+fame extend that the illustrious Saladin sent him presents and asked the
+help of his fleet. He was a builder as well as a fighter, and the
+noblest period of Arab art in Morocco and Spain coincides with his
+reign.</p>
+
+<p>After his death, the Almohad empire followed the downward curve to which
+all Oriental rule seems destined. In Spain, the Berber forces were
+beaten in the great Christian victory of Las-Navas-de Tolosa; and in
+Morocco itself the first stirrings of the Beni-Merins (a new tribe from
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>
+the Sahara) were preparing the way for a new dynasty.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<h4>THE MERINIDS</h4>
+
+<p>The Beni-Merins or Merinids were nomads who ranged the desert between
+Biskra and the Tafilelt. It was not a religious upheaval that drove them
+to the conquest of Morocco. The demoralized Almohads called them in as
+mercenaries to defend their crumbling empire; and the Merinids came,
+drove out the Almohads, and replaced them.</p>
+
+<p>They took Fez, Meknez, Salé, Rabat and Sidjilmassa in the Tafilelt; and
+their second Sultan, Abou-Youssef, built New Fez (Eldjid) on the height
+above the old Idrissite city. The Merinids renewed the struggle with the
+Sultan of Tlemcen, and carried the Holy War once more into Spain. The
+conflict with Tlemcen was long and unsuccessful, and one of the Merinid
+Sultans died assassinated under its walls. In the fourteenth century the
+Sultan Abou Hassan tried to piece together the scattered bits of the
+Almohad empire. Tlemcen was finally taken, and the whole of Algeria
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+annexed. But in the plain of Kairouan, in Tunisia, Abou Hassan was
+defeated by the Arabs. Meanwhile one of his brothers had headed a revolt
+in Morocco, and the princes of Tlemcen won back their ancient kingdom.
+Constantine and Bougie rebelled in turn, and the kingdom of Abou Hassan
+vanished like a mirage. His successors struggled vainly to control their
+vassals in Morocco, and to keep their possessions beyond its borders.
+Before the end of the fourteenth century Morocco from end to end was a
+chaos of antagonistic tribes, owning no allegiance, abiding by no laws.
+The last of the Merinids, divided, diminished, bound by humiliating
+treaties with Christian Spain, kept up a semblance of sovereignty at Fez
+and Marrakech, at war with one another and with their neighbours; and
+Spain and Portugal seized this moment of internal dissolution to drive
+them from Spain, and carry the war into Morocco itself.</p>
+
+<p>The short and stormy passage of the Beni-Merins seems hardly to leave
+room for the development of the humaner qualities; yet the flowering of
+Moroccan art and culture coincided with those tumultuous years, and it
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
+was under the Merinid Sultans that Fez became the centre of Moroccan
+learning and industry, a kind of Oxford with Birmingham annexed.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<h4>THE SAADIANS</h4>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, behind all the Berber turmoil a secret work of religious
+propaganda was going on. The Arab element had been crushed but not
+extirpated. The crude idolatrous wealth-loving Berbers apparently
+dominated; but whenever there was a new uprising or a new invasion it
+was based on the religious discontent perpetually stirred up by
+Mahometan agents. The longing for a Mahdi, a Saviour, the craving for
+purification combined with an opportunity to murder and rob, always gave
+the Moslem apostle a ready opening; and the downfall of the Merinids was
+the result of a long series of religious movements to which the European
+invasion gave an object and a war-cry.</p>
+
+<p>The Saadians were Cherifian Arabs, newcomers from Arabia, to whom the
+lax Berber paganism was abhorrent. They preached a return to the creed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>
+of Mahomet, and proclaimed the Holy War against the hated Portuguese,
+who had set up fortified posts all along the west coast of Morocco.</p>
+
+<p>It is a mistake to suppose that hatred of the Christian has always
+existed among the North African Moslems. The earlier dynasties, and
+especially the great Almohad Sultans, were on friendly terms with the
+Catholic powers of Europe, and in the thirteenth century a treaty
+assured to Christians in Africa full religious liberty, excepting only
+the right to preach their doctrine in public places. There was a
+Catholic diocese at Fez, and afterward at Marrakech under Gregory IX,
+and there is a letter of the Pope thanking the "Miromilan" (the Emir El
+Moumenin) for his kindness to the Bishop and the friars living in his
+dominions. Another Bishop was recommended by Innocent IV to the Sultan
+of Morocco; the Pope even asked that certain strongholds should be
+assigned to the Christians in Morocco as places of refuge in times of
+disturbance. But the best proof of the friendly relations between
+Christians and infidels is the fact that the Christian armies which
+helped the Sultans of Morocco to defeat Spain and subjugate Algeria and
+Tunisia were not composed of "renegadoes" or captives, as is generally
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>
+supposed, but of Christian mercenaries, French and English, led by
+knights and nobles, and fighting for the Sultan of Morocco exactly as
+they would have fought for the Duke of Burgundy, the Count of Flanders,
+or any other Prince who offered high pay and held out the hope of rich
+spoils. Any one who has read "Villehardouin" and "Joinville" will own
+that there is not much to choose between the motives animating these
+noble freebooters and those which caused the Crusaders to loot
+Constantinople "on the way" to the Holy Sepulchre. War in those days was
+regarded as a lucrative and legitimate form of business, exactly as it
+was when the earlier heroes started out to take the rich robber-town of
+Troy.</p>
+
+<p>The Berbers have never been religious fanatics, and the Vicomte de
+Foucauld, when he made his great journey of exploration in the Atlas in
+1883, remarked that antagonism to the foreigner was always due to the
+fear of military espionage and never to religious motives. This equally
+applies to the Berbers of the sixteenth century, when the Holy War
+against Catholic Spain and Portugal was preached. The real cause of the
+sudden deadly hatred of the foreigner was twofold. The Spaniards were
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>
+detested because of the ferocious cruelty with which they had driven the
+Moors from Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella; and the Portuguese
+because of the arrogance and brutality of their military colonists in
+the fortified trading stations of the west coast. And both were feared
+as possible conquerors and overlords.</p>
+
+<p>There was a third incentive also: the Moroccans, dealing in black slaves
+for the European market, had discovered the value of white slaves in
+Moslem markets. The Sultan had his fleet, and each coast-town its
+powerful pirate vessels, and from pirate-nests like Salé and Tangier the
+raiders continued, till well on into the first half of the nineteenth
+century, to seize European ships and carry their passengers to the
+slave-markets of Fez and Marrakech.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> The miseries endured by these
+captives, and so poignantly described in John Windus's travels, and in
+the "Naufrage du Brick Sophie" by Charles Cochelet,<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> show how savage
+the feeling against the foreigner had become.</p>
+
+<p>With the advent of the Cherifian dynasties, which coincided with this
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>
+religious reform, and was in fact brought about by it, Morocco became a
+closed country, as fiercely guarded as Japan against European
+penetration. Cut off from civilizing influences, the Moslems isolated
+themselves in a lonely fanaticism, far more racial than religious, and
+the history of the country from the fall of the Merinids till the French
+annexation is mainly a dull tale of tribal warfare.</p>
+
+<p>The religious movement of the sixteenth century was led and fed by
+zealots from the Sahara. One of them took possession of Rabat and
+Azemmour, and preached the Holy War; other "feudal fiefs" (as M.
+Augustin Bernard has well called them) were founded at Tameslout, Ilegh,
+Tamgrout: the tombs of the <i>marabouts</i> who led these revolts are
+scattered all along the west coast, and are still objects of popular
+veneration. The unorthodox saint worship which marks Moroccan Moslemism,
+and is commemorated by the countless white <i>koubbas</i> throughout the
+country, grew up chiefly at the time of the religious revival under the
+Saadian dynasty, and almost all the "Moulays" and "Sidis" venerated
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>
+between Tangier and the Atlas were warrior monks who issued forth from
+their fortified <i>Zaouïas</i> to drive the Christians out of Africa.</p>
+
+<p>The Saadians were probably rather embarrassed by these fanatics, whom
+they found useful to oppose to the Merinids, but troublesome where their
+own plans were concerned. They were ambitious and luxury-loving princes,
+who invaded the wealthy kingdom of the Soudan, conquered the Sultan of
+Timbuctoo, and came back laden with slaves and gold to embellish
+Marrakech and spend their treasure in the usual demoralizing orgies.
+Their exquisite tombs at Marrakech commemorate in courtly language the
+superhuman virtues of a series of rulers whose debaucheries and vices
+were usually cut short by assassination. Finally another austere and
+fanatical mountain tribe surged down on them, wiped them out, and ruled
+in their stead.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4>VII</h4>
+
+<h4>THE HASSANIANS</h4>
+
+<p>The new rulers came from the Tafilelt, which has always been a
+troublesome corner of Morocco. The first two Hassanian Sultans were the
+usual tribal chiefs bent on taking advantage of Saadian misrule to loot
+and conquer. But the third was the great Moulay-Ismaël, the tale of
+whose long and triumphant rule (1672 to 1727) has already been told in
+the chapter on Meknez. This savage and enlightened old man once more
+drew order out of anarchy, and left, when he died, an organized and
+administered empire, as well as a progeny of seven hundred sons and
+unnumbered daughters.<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></p>
+
+<p>The empire fell apart as usual, and no less quickly than usual, under
+his successors; and from his death until the strong hand of General
+Lyautey took over the direction of affairs the Hassanian rule in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>
+Morocco was little more than a tumult of incoherent ambitions. The
+successors of Moulay-Ismaël inherited his blood-lust and his passion for
+dominion without his capacity to govern. In 1757 Sidi-Mohammed, one of
+his sons, tried to put order into his kingdom, and drove the last
+Portuguese out of Morocco; but under his successors the country remained
+isolated and stagnant, making spasmodic efforts to defend itself against
+the encroachments of European influence, while its rulers wasted their
+energy in a policy of double-dealing and dissimulation. Early in the
+nineteenth century the government was compelled by the European powers
+to suppress piracy and the trade in Christian slaves; and in 1830 the
+French conquest of Algeria broke down the wall of isolation behind which
+the country was mouldering away by placing a European power on one of
+its frontiers.</p>
+
+<p>At first the conquest of Algeria tended to create a link between France
+and Morocco. The Dey of Algiers was a Turk, and, therefore, an
+hereditary enemy; and Morocco was disposed to favour the power which had
+broken Turkish rule in a neighbouring country. But the Sultan could not
+help trying to profit by the general disturbance to seize Tlemcen and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
+raise insurrections in western Algeria; and presently Morocco was
+engaged in a Holy War against France. Abd-el-Kader, the Sultan of
+Algeria, had taken refuge in Morocco, and the Sultan of Morocco having
+furnished him with supplies and munitions, France sent an official
+remonstrance. At the same time Marshal Bugeaud landed at Mers-el-Kebir,
+and invited the Makhzen to discuss the situation. The offer was accepted
+and General Bedeau and the Caïd El Guennaoui met in an open place.
+Behind them their respective troops were drawn up, and almost as soon as
+the first salutes were exchanged the Caïd declared the negotiations
+broken off. The French troops accordingly withdrew to the coast, but
+during their retreat they were attacked by the Moroccans. This put an
+end to peaceful negotiations, and Tangier was besieged and taken. The
+following August Bugeaud brought his troops up from Oudjda, through the
+defile that leads from West Algeria, and routed the Moroccans. He wished
+to advance on Fez, but international politics interfered, and he was not
+allowed to carry out his plans. England looked unfavourably on the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>
+French penetration of Morocco, and it became necessary to conclude peace
+at once to prove that France had no territorial ambitions west of
+Oudjda.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile a great Sultan was once more to appear in the land.
+Moulay-el-Hassan, who ruled from 1873 to 1894, was an able and energetic
+administrator. He pieced together his broken empire, asserted his
+authority in Fez and Marrakech, and fought the rebellious tribes of the
+west. In 1877 he asked the French government to send him a permanent
+military mission to assist in organizing his army. He planned an
+expedition to the Souss, but the want of food and water in the
+wilderness traversed by the army caused the most cruel sufferings.
+Moulay-el-Hassan had provisions sent by sea, but the weather was too
+stormy to allow of a landing on the exposed Atlantic coast, and the
+Sultan, who had never seen the sea, was as surprised and indignant as
+Canute to find that the waves would not obey him.</p>
+
+<p>His son Abd-el-Aziz was only thirteen years old when he succeeded to the
+throne. For six years he remained under the guardianship of Ba-Ahmed,
+the black Vizier of Moulay-el-Hassan, who built the fairy palace of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>
+Bahia at Marrakech, with its mysterious pale green padlocked door
+leading down to the secret vaults where his treasure was hidden. When
+the all-powerful Ba-Ahmed died the young Sultan was nineteen. He was
+intelligent, charming, and fond of the society of Europeans; but he was
+indifferent to religious questions and still more to military affairs,
+and thus doubly at the mercy of native mistrust and European intrigue.</p>
+
+<p>Some clumsy attempts at fiscal reform, and a too great leaning toward
+European habits and associates, roused the animosity of the people, and
+of the conservative party in the upper class. The Sultan's eldest
+brother, who had been set aside in his favour, was intriguing against
+him; the usual Cherifian Pretender was stirring up the factious tribes
+in the mountains; and the European powers were attempting, in the
+confusion of an ungoverned country, to assert their respective
+ascendencies.</p>
+
+<p>The demoralized condition of the country justified these attempts, and
+made European interference inevitable. But the powers were jealously
+watching each other, and Germany, already coveting the certain
+agricultural resources and the conjectured mineral wealth of Morocco,
+was above all determined that a French protectorate should not be set
+up.</p>
+
+<p>In 1908 another son of Moulay-Hassan, Abd-el-Hafid, was proclaimed
+Sultan by the reactionary Islamite faction, who accused Abd-el-Aziz of
+having sold his country to the Christians. Abd-el-Aziz was defeated in a
+battle near Marrakech, and retired to Tangier, where he still lives in
+futile state. Abd-el-Hafid, proclaimed Sultan at Fez, was recognized by
+the whole country; but he found himself unable to cope with the factious
+tribes (those outside the Blad-el-Makhzen, or <i>governed country</i>). These
+rebel tribes besieged Fez, and the Sultan had to ask France for aid.
+France sent troops to his relief, but as soon as the dissidents were
+routed, and he himself was safe, Abd-el-Hafid refused to give the French
+army his support, and in 1912, after the horrible massacres of Fez, he
+abdicated in favour of another brother, Moulay Youssef, the actual ruler
+of Morocco.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> East of the Moulouya, the African protectorate (now west
+Algeria and the Sud Oranais) was called the Mauretania of Cæsar.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> The Moroccans being very poor seamen, these
+corsair-vessels were usually commanded and manned by Christian
+renegadoes and Turks.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> Cochelet was wrecked on the coast near Agadir early in the
+nineteenth century and was taken with his fellow-travellers overland to
+El-Ksar and Tangier, enduring terrible hardships by the way.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Moulay-Ismaël was a learned theologian and often held
+religious discussions with the Fathers of the Order of Mercy and the
+Trinitarians. He was scrupulously orthodox in his religious observances,
+and wrote a treatise in defense of his faith which he sent to James II
+of England, urging him to become a Mahometan. He invented most of the
+most exquisite forms of torture which subsequent Sultans have applied to
+their victims (see Loti, <i>Au Maroc</i>), and was fond of flowers, and
+extremely simple and frugal in his personal habits.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>NOTE ON MOROCCAN ARCHITECTURE</h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>M. H. Saladin, whose "Manual of Moslem Architecture" was published in
+1907, ends his chapter on Morocco with the words: "It is especially
+urgent that we should know, and penetrate into, Morocco as soon as
+possible, in order to study its monuments. It is the only country but
+Persia where Moslem art actually survives; and the tradition handed down
+to the present day will doubtless clear up many things."</p>
+
+<p>M. Saladin's wish has been partly realized. Much has been done since
+1912, when General Lyautey was appointed Resident-General, to clear up
+and classify the history of Moroccan art; but since 1914, though the
+work has never been dropped, it has necessarily been much delayed,
+especially as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> regards its published record; and as yet only a few
+monographs and articles have summed up some of the interesting
+investigations of the last five years.</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>When I was in Marrakech word was sent to Captain de S., who was with me,
+that a Caïd of the Atlas, whose prisoner he had been several years
+before, had himself been taken by the Pasha's troops, and was in
+Marrakech. Captain de S. was asked to identify several rifles which his
+old enemy had taken from him, and on receiving them found that, in the
+interval, they had been elaborately ornamented with the Arab niello work
+of which the tradition goes back to Damascus.</p>
+
+<p>This little incident is a good example of the degree to which the
+mediæval tradition alluded to by M. Saladin has survived in Moroccan
+life. Nowhere else in the world, except among the moribund
+fresco-painters of the Greek monasteries, has a formula of art persisted
+from the seventh or eighth century to the present day; and in Morocco
+the formula is not the mechanical expression of a petrified theology but
+the setting of the life of a people who have gone on wearing the same
+clothes, observing the same customs, believing in the same fetiches, and
+using the same saddles, ploughs, looms, and dye-stuffs as in the days
+when the foundations of the first mosque of El Kairouiyin were laid.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 456px;">
+<img src="images/gs27.jpg" width="456" height="640" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc</i><br />
+
+Marrakech&mdash;a street fountain</span>
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The origin of this tradition is confused and obscure. The Arabs have
+never been creative artists, nor are the Berbers known to have been so.
+As investigations proceed in Syria and Mesopotamia it seems more and
+more probable that the sources of inspiration of pre-Moslem art in North
+Africa are to be found in Egypt, Persia, and India. Each new
+investigation pushes these sources farther back and farther east; but it
+is not of much use to retrace these ancient vestiges, since Moroccan art
+has, so far, nothing to show of pre-Islamite art, save what is purely
+Phenician or Roman.</p>
+
+<p>In any case, however, it is not in Morocco that the clue to Moroccan art
+is to be sought; though interesting hints and mysterious reminiscences
+will doubtless be found in such places as Tinmel, in the gorges of the
+Atlas, where a ruined mosque of the earliest Almohad period has been
+photographed by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> M. Doutté, and in the curious Algerian towns of Sedrata
+and the Kalaa of the Beni Hammads. Both of these latter towns were rich
+and prosperous communities in the tenth century and both were destroyed
+in the eleventh, so that they survive as mediæval Pompeiis of a quite
+exceptional interest, since their architecture appears to have been
+almost unaffected by classic or Byzantine influences.</p>
+
+<p>Traces of a very old indigenous art are found in the designs on the
+modern white and black Berber pottery; but this work, specimens of which
+are to be seen in the Oriental Department of the Louvre, seems to go
+back, by way of Central America, Greece (sixth century <span class="smcap"> b. c.</span>) and Susa
+(twelfth century <span class="smcap">b. c.</span>), to the far-off period before the streams of
+human invention had divided, and when the same loops and ripples and
+spirals formed on the flowing surface of every current.</p>
+
+<p>It is a disputed question whether Spanish influence was foremost in
+developing the peculiarly Moroccan art of the earliest Moslem period, or
+whether European influences came by way of Syria and Palestine, and
+afterward met and were crossed with those of Moorish Spain. Probably
+both things<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> happened, since the Almoravids were in Spain; and no doubt
+the currents met and mingled. At any rate, Byzantine, Greece, and the
+Palestine and Syria of the Crusaders, contributed as much as Rome and
+Greece to the formation of that peculiar Moslem art which, all the way
+from India to the Pillars of Hercules, built itself, with minor
+variations, out of the same elements.</p>
+
+<p>Arab conquerors always destroy as much as they can of the work of their
+predecessors, and nothing remains, as far as is known, of Almoravid
+architecture in Morocco. But the great Almohad Sultans covered Spain and
+Northwest Africa with their monuments, and no later buildings in Africa
+equal them in strength and majesty.</p>
+
+<p>It is no doubt because the Almohads built in stone that so much of what
+they made survives. The Merinids took to rubble and a soft tufa, and the
+Cherifian dynasties built in clay like the Spaniards in South America.
+And so seventeenth century Meknez has perished while the Almohad walls
+and towers of the tenth century still stand.</p>
+
+<p>The principal old buildings of Morocco are defensive and religious&mdash;and
+under the latter term<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> the beautiful collegiate houses (the medersas) of
+Fez and Salé may fairly be included, since the educational system of
+Islam is essentially and fundamentally theological. Of old secular
+buildings, palaces or private houses, virtually none are known to exist;
+but their plan and decorations may easily be reconstituted from the
+early chronicles, and also from the surviving palaces built in the
+eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and even those which the wealthy
+nobles of modern Morocco are building to this day.</p>
+
+<p>The whole of civilian Moslem architecture from Persia to Morocco is
+based on four unchanging conditions: a hot climate, slavery, polygamy
+and the segregation of women. The private house in Mahometan countries
+is in fact a fortress, a convent and a temple: a temple of which the god
+(as in all ancient religions) frequently descends to visit his
+cloistered votaresses. For where slavery and polygamy exist every
+house-master is necessarily a god, and the house he inhabits a shrine
+built about his divinity.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 457px;">
+<img src="images/gs28.jpg" width="457" height="640" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc</i><br />
+
+Rabat&mdash;gate of the Kasbah of the Oudayas</span>
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The first thought of the Moroccan chieftain was always defensive. As
+soon as he pitched a camp or founded a city it had to be guarded against
+the hungry hordes who encompassed him on every side. Each little centre
+of culture and luxury in Moghreb was an islet in a sea of perpetual
+storms. The wonder is that, thus incessantly threatened from without and
+conspired against from within&mdash;with the desert at their doors, and their
+slaves on the threshold&mdash;these violent men managed to create about them
+an atmosphere of luxury and stability that astonished not only the
+obsequious native chronicler but travellers and captives from western
+Europe.</p>
+
+<p>The truth is, as has been often pointed out, that, even until the end of
+the seventeenth century, the refinements of civilization were in many
+respects no greater in France and England than in North Africa. North
+Africa had long been in more direct communication with the old Empires
+of immemorial luxury, and was therefore farther advanced in the arts of
+living than the Spain and France of the Dark Ages; and this is why, in a
+country that to the average modern European seems as savage as Ashantee,
+one finds traces of a refinement of life and taste hardly to be matched
+by Carlovingian and early Capetian Europe.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>The brief Almoravid dynasty left no monuments behind it.</p>
+
+<p>Fez had already been founded by the Idrissites, and its first mosques
+(Kairouiyin and Les Andalous) existed. Of the Almoravid Fez and
+Marrakech the chroniclers relate great things; but the wild Hilalian
+invasion and the subsequent descent of the Almohads from the High Atlas
+swept away whatever the first dynasties had created.</p>
+
+<p>The Almohads were mighty builders, and their great monuments are all of
+stone. The earliest known example of their architecture which has
+survived is the ruined mosque of Tinmel, in the High Atlas, discovered
+and photographed by M. Doutté. This mosque was built by the inspired
+mystic, Ibn-Toumert, who founded the line. Following him came the great
+palace-making Sultans whose walled cities of splendid mosques and towers
+have Romanesque qualities of mass and proportion, and, as M. Raymond
+Koechlin has pointed out, inevitably recall the "robust simplicity of
+the master builders who at the very same moment were beginning in France
+the construction of the first Gothic cathedrals and the noblest feudal
+castles."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 474px;">
+<img src="images/gs29.jpg" width="474" height="640" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc</i><br />
+
+Fez&mdash;Medersa Bouanyana</span>
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the thirteenth century, with the coming of the Merinids, Moroccan
+architecture grew more delicate, more luxurious, and perhaps also more
+peculiarly itself. That interaction of Spanish and Arab art which
+produced the style known as Moorish reached, on the African side of the
+Straits, its greatest completeness in Morocco. It was under the Merinids
+that Moorish art grew into full beauty in Spain, and under the Merinids
+that Fez rebuilt the mosque Kairouiyin and that of the Andalusians, and
+created six of its nine <i>Medersas</i>, the most perfect surviving buildings
+of that unique moment of sober elegance and dignity.</p>
+
+<p>The Cherifian dynasties brought with them a decline in taste. A crude
+desire for immediate effect, and the tendency toward a more barbaric
+luxury, resulted in the piling up of frail palaces as impermanent as
+tents. Yet a last flower grew from the deformed and dying trunk of the
+old Empire. The Saadian Sultan who invaded the Soudan and came back
+laden with gold and treasure from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> the great black city of Timbuctoo
+covered Marrakech with hasty monuments of which hardly a trace survives.
+But there, in a nettle-grown corner of a ruinous quarter, lay hidden
+till yesterday the Chapel of the Tombs: the last emanation of pure
+beauty of a mysterious, incomplete, forever retrogressive and yet
+forever forward-straining people. The Merinid tombs of Fez have fallen;
+but those of their destroyers linger on in precarious grace, like a
+flower on the edge of a precipice.</p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>Moroccan architecture, then, is easily divided into four groups: the
+fortress, the mosque, the collegiate building and the private house.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 465px;">
+<img src="images/gs30.jpg" width="465" height="640" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc</i><br />
+
+Fez&mdash;the praying-chapel in the Medersa el Attarine</span>
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The kernel of the mosque is always the <i>mihrab</i>, or niche facing toward
+the Kasbah of Mecca, where the <i>imam</i><a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> stands to say the prayer. This
+arrangement, which enabled as many as possible of the faithful to kneel
+facing the <i>mihrab</i>, results in a ground-plan necessarily consisting of
+long aisles parallel with the wall of the <i>mihrab</i>, to which more and
+more aisles are added as the number of worshippers grows. Where there
+was not space to increase these lateral aisles they were lengthened at
+each end. This typical plan is modified in the Moroccan mosques by a
+wider transverse space, corresponding with the nave of a Christian
+church, and extending across the mosque from the praying niche to the
+principal door. To the right of the <i>mihrab</i> is the <i>minbar</i>, the carved
+pulpit (usually of cedar-wood incrusted with mother-of-pearl and ebony)
+from which the Koran is read. In some Algerian and Egyptian mosques (and
+at Cordova, for instance) the <i>mihrab</i> is enclosed in a sort of screen
+called the <i>maksoura</i>; but in Morocco this modification of the simpler
+plan was apparently not adopted.</p>
+
+<p>The interior construction of the mosque was no doubt usually affected by
+the nearness of Roman or Byzantine ruins. M. Saladin points out that
+there seem to be few instances of the use of columns made by native
+builders; but it does not therefore follow that all the columns used in
+the early mosques were taken from Roman temples or Christian basilicas.
+The Arab invaders brought their architects<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> and engineers with them; and
+it is very possible that some of the earlier mosques were built by
+prisoners or fortune-hunters from Greece or Italy or Spain.</p>
+
+<p>At any rate, the column on which the arcades of the vaulting rests in
+the earlier mosques, as at Tunis and Kairouan, and the mosque El
+Kairouiyin at Fez, gives way later to the use of piers, foursquare, or
+with flanking engaged pilasters as at Algiers and Tlemcen. The exterior
+of the mosques, as a rule, is almost entirely hidden by a mushroom
+growth of buildings, lanes and covered bazaars; but where the outer
+walls have remained disengaged they show, as at Kairouan and Cordova,
+great masses of windowless masonry pierced at intervals with majestic
+gateways.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the mosque, and opening into it by many wide doors of beaten
+bronze or carved cedar-wood, lies the Court of the Ablutions. The
+openings in the façade were multiplied in order that, on great days, the
+faithful who were not able to enter the mosque might hear the prayers
+and catch a glimpse of the <i>mihrab</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In a corner of the courts stands the minaret. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> is the structure on
+which Moslem art has played the greatest number of variations, cutting
+off its angles, building it on a circular or polygonal plan, and
+endlessly modifying the pyramids and pendentives by which the
+ground-plan of one story passes into that of the next. These problems of
+transition, always fascinating to the architect, led in Persia,
+Mesopotamia and Egypt to many different compositions and ways of
+treatment; but in Morocco the minaret, till modern times, remained
+steadfastly square, and proved that no other plan is so beautiful as
+this simplest one of all.</p>
+
+<p>Surrounding the Court of the Ablutions are the school-rooms, libraries
+and other dependencies, which grew as the Mahometan religion prospered
+and Arab culture developed.</p>
+
+<p>The medersa was a farther extension of the mosque: it was the academy
+where the Moslem schoolman prepared his theology and the other branches
+of strange learning which, to the present day, make up the curriculum of
+the Mahometan university. The medersa is an adaptation of the private
+house to religious and educational ends; or, if one prefers another
+analogy, it is a <i>fondak</i> built<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> above a miniature mosque. The
+ground-plan is always the same: in the centre an arcaded court with a
+fountain, on one side the long narrow praying-chapel with the <i>mihrab</i>,
+on the other a class-room with the same ground-plan; and on the next
+story a series of cell-like rooms for the students, opening on carved
+cedar-wood balconies. This cloistered plan, where all the effect is
+reserved for the interior façades about the court, lends itself to a
+delicacy of detail that would be inappropriate on a street-front; and
+the medersas of Fez are endlessly varied in their fanciful but never
+exuberant decoration.</p>
+
+<p>M. Tranchant de Lunel has pointed out (in "France-Maroc") with what a
+sure sense of suitability the Merinid architects adapted this decoration
+to the uses of the buildings. On the lower floor, under the cloister, is
+a revêtement of marble (often alabaster) or of the almost indestructible
+ceramic mosaic.<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> On the floor above, massive cedar-wood corbels
+ending in monsters of almost Gothic inspiration support the fretted
+balconies; and above rise stucco interlacings, placed too high up to be
+injured by man, and guarded from the weather by projecting eaves.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 480px;">
+<img src="images/gs31.jpg" width="480" height="637" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc</i><br />
+
+Salé&mdash;interior court of the Medersa</span>
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The private house, whether merchant's dwelling or chieftain's palace, is
+laid out on the same lines, with the addition of the reserved quarters
+for women; and what remains in Spain and Sicily of Moorish secular
+architecture shows that, in the Merinid period, the play of ornament
+must have been&mdash;as was natural&mdash;even greater than in the medersas.</p>
+
+<p>The Arab chroniclers paint pictures of Merinid palaces, such as the
+House of the Favourite at Cordova, which the soberer modern imagination
+refused to accept until the medersas of Fez were revealed, and the old
+decorative tradition was shown in the eighteenth century Moroccan
+palaces. The descriptions given of the palaces of Fez and of Marrakech
+in the preceding articles, which make it unnecessary, in so slight a
+note as this, to go again into the detail of their planning and
+decoration, will serve to show how gracefully the art of the mosque and
+the medersa was lightened and domesticated<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> to suit these cool chambers
+and flower-filled courts.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to the immense fortifications that are the most picturesque
+and noticeable architectural features of Morocco, the first thing to
+strike the traveller is the difficulty of discerning any difference in
+the probable date of their construction until certain structural
+peculiarities are examined, or the ornamental details of the great
+gateways are noted. Thus the Almohad portions of the walls of Fez and
+Rabat are built of stone, while later parts are of rubble; and the touch
+of European influence in certain gateways of Meknez and Fez at once
+situate them in the seventeenth century. But the mediæval outline of
+these great piles of masonry, and certain technicalities in their plan,
+such as the disposition of the towers, alternating in the inner and
+outer walls, continued unchanged throughout the different dynasties; and
+this immutability of the Moroccan military architecture enables the
+imagination to picture, not only what was the aspect of the fortified
+cities which the Greeks built in Palestine and Syria, and the Crusaders
+brought back to Europe, but even that of the far-off Assyrio-Chaldæan
+strongholds to which the whole fortified architecture of the Middle Ages
+in Europe seems to lead back.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/gs32.jpg" width="640" height="426" alt="" />
+<span class="caption"><i>From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc</i><br />
+
+Marrakech&mdash;the gate of the Portuguese</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> The "deacon" or elder of the Moslem religion, which has no
+order of priests.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> These Moroccan mosaics are called <i>zellijes</i>.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span></p>
+<h2>IX</h2>
+
+<h3>BOOKS CONSULTED</h3>
+
+
+<blockquote><p>Afrique Française (L'), Bulletin Mensuel du Comité de l'Afrique
+Française. Paris, 21, rue Cassette.</p>
+
+<p>Bernard, Augustin. Le Maroc. Paris, F. Alcan, 1916.</p>
+
+<p>Budgett-Meakin. The Land of the Moors. London, 1902.</p>
+
+<p>Châtelain, L. Recherches archéologiques au Maroc. Volubilis.
+(Published by the Military Command in Morocco.)</p>
+
+<p>Les Fouilles de Volubilis. (Extrait du Bulletin Archéologique,
+1916.)</p>
+
+<p>Chevrillon, A. Crépuscule d'Islam.</p>
+
+<p>Cochelet, Charles. Le Naufrage du Brick Sophie.</p>
+
+<p>Conférences Marocaines. Paris, Plon-Nourrit.</p>
+
+<p>Doutté, E. En Tribu. Paris, 1914.</p>
+
+<p>Foucauld, Vicomte de. La Reconnaissance au Maroc. Paris, 1888.</p>
+
+<p>France-Maroc. Revue Mensuelle, Paris, 4, rue Chauveau-Lagarde.</p>
+
+<p>Gaillard. Une Ville d'Islam, Fez. Paris, 1909.</p>
+
+<p>Gayet, Al. L'Art Arabe. Paris, 1906.</p>
+
+<p>Houdas, O. Le Maroc de 1631 à 1812. Extrait d'une histoire du Maroc
+intitulée "L'Interprète qui s'exprime clairement sur les dynasties
+de l'Orient et de l'Occident" par Ezziani. Paris, E. Leroux, 1886.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Koechlin, Raymond. Une Exposition d'Art Marocain. (Gazette des
+Beaux-Arts, Juillet-Septembre, 1917.)</p>
+
+<p>Leo Africanus, Description of Africa.</p>
+
+<p>Loti, Pierre. Au Maroc.</p>
+
+<p>Migeon, Gaston. Manuel d'Art Musulman. II. Les Arts Plastiques et
+Industriels. Paris, A. Picard et Fils, 1907.</p>
+
+<p>Saladin, H. Manuel d'Art Musulman. I. L'Architecture. Paris, A.
+Picard et Fils, 1907.</p>
+
+<p>Segonzac, Marquis de. Voyages au Maroc. Paris, 1903. Au C&oelig;ur de
+l'Atlas. Paris, 1910.</p>
+
+<p>Tarde, A. de. Les Villes du Maroc: Fez, Marrakech, Rabat. (Journal
+de l'Université des Annales, 15 Oct., 1 Nov., 1918.)</p>
+
+<p>Windus. A Journey to Mequinez. London, 1721.</p></blockquote><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>INDEX</h2>
+
+
+<p>
+Abdallah-ben-Aïssa, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a><br />
+<br />
+Abd-el-Aziz, <a href='#Page_256'>256</a>-258<br />
+<br />
+Abd-el-Hafid, <a href='#Page_209'>209</a>-211, <a href='#Page_258'>258</a><br />
+<br />
+Abd-el-Kader, <a href='#Page_255'>255</a><br />
+<br />
+Abd-el-Moumen, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a>, <a href='#Page_243'>243</a>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a><br />
+<br />
+Abou-el-Abbas ("The Golden"), <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a><br />
+<br />
+Abou Hassan, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a>, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a><br />
+<br />
+Abou-Youssef, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a><br />
+<br />
+Agdal, olive-yards of the, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a><br />
+<br />
+Ahmed-Baba, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a><br />
+<br />
+Ahmed-el-Hiba, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a>, <a href='#Page_212'>212</a><br />
+<br />
+Aïd-el-Kebir, the, <a href='#Page_164'>164</a>-170<br />
+<br />
+Aïssaouas, the, of Kairouan, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">dance of, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Algeria, French conquest of, <a href='#Page_254'>254</a>-256<br />
+<br />
+Almohads, the, invasion of Morocco by, <a href='#Page_243'>243</a>-245<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">architecture of, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a>, <a href='#Page_268'>268</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Almoravids, the, invasion of Morocco by, <a href='#Page_241'>241</a>-243<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">destruction of architecture of, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a>, <a href='#Page_268'>268</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Andalusian Moors, the, mosque of, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>, <a href='#Page_268'>268</a>, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a><br />
+<br />
+Arabs, conquest of Morocco by, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a>-241<br />
+<br />
+Architecture, Moroccan, four basic conditions of, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">four groups of, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of the Almohad dynasty, <a href='#Page_268'>268</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of the Cherifian dynasties, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of the Merinid dynasty, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Saadian mausoleum, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the collegiate building, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>-275</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the fortress, <a href='#Page_276'>276</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the mosque, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a>-273</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the private house, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Art, Moroccan, sources of influence on, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a>-265<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">disappearance of treasures of, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and Moorish art, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Ba-Ahmed, builder of the Bahia, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a>, <a href='#Page_256'>256</a>, <a href='#Page_257'>257</a><br />
+<br />
+Bab F'touh cemetery, at Fez, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>-104<br />
+<br />
+Bahia, the, palace of, at Marrakech, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a>-133<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">apartment of Grand Vizier's Favourite in, <a href='#Page_131'>131</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Bazaars, of Fez, <a href='#Page_91'>91</a>, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>-109<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Marrakech, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a>-138</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Salé, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a>, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Beni-Merins. <i>See</i> Merinids<br />
+<br />
+Berbers, the, attack of, on Fez, <a href='#Page_210'>210</a>, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">origins of, <a href='#Page_232'>232</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">dialects of, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">nomadic character of, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">heresy and schisms of, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Bernard, M. Augustin, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a>, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a>, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a><br />
+<br />
+Black Guard, the Sultan's, <a href='#Page_164'>164</a>-167<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">uniform of, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Moulay-Ismaël's method of raising, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>-69</span><br />
+<br />
+Blue Men of the Sahara, the, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a><br />
+<br />
+Bou-Jeloud, palace of, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>Bugeaud, Marshal, <a href='#Page_255'>255</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Carthage, African colonies of, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>, <a href='#Page_237'>237</a><br />
+<br />
+Casablanca, exhibitions at, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">port of, <a href='#Page_222'>222</a>, <a href='#Page_223'>223</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Catholics, in Morocco, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a><br />
+<br />
+Cemetery, El Alou, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bab F'touh, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>-104</span><br />
+<br />
+Châtelain, M. Louis, <a href='#Page_46'>46</a><br />
+<br />
+Chella, ruins of, <a href='#Page_28'>28</a>-30<br />
+<br />
+Cherifian dynasties, the, <a href='#Page_247'>247</a>, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">architecture of, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Children, Moroccan,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in the harem, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">negro, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>-201</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">training of, for Black Guard, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>-69</span><br />
+<br />
+Chleuh boys, dance of, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a><br />
+<br />
+Christians, captive, and the building of Meknez, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">religious liberty to, in Africa, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Clocks, in Sultan's harem at Rabat, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a>, <a href='#Page_173'>173</a><br />
+<br />
+Cochelet, Charles, his "Naufrage du Brick Sophie," 250<br />
+<br />
+Colleges, at Fez, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>-100, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>-107<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">at Salé, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>-22, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Moslem, <a href='#Page_225'>225</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">architecture of Moroccan, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>-275</span><br />
+<br />
+Colors, of North African towns, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a><br />
+<br />
+Commerce, Moroccan, <a href='#Page_223'>223</a><br />
+<br />
+Conti, Princesse de, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a><br />
+<br />
+Convention of Fez, the, <a href='#Page_209'>209</a><br />
+<br />
+Courts of Justice, Moroccan, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a><br />
+<br />
+Crowds, Moroccan street, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a><br />
+<br />
+Culture, in North Africa, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>-106, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a>, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Dance, of Chleuh boys, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of the Hamadchas, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>-57</span><br />
+<br />
+Dawn, in Africa, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a><br />
+<br />
+Djebilets, the, <a href='#Page_125'>125</a><br />
+<br />
+Doutté, M., <a href='#Page_264'>264</a>, <a href='#Page_268'>268</a><br />
+<br />
+Dust-storm, at Marrakech, <a href='#Page_145'>145</a>-147<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Education, in Morocco, <a href='#Page_225'>225</a>, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a><br />
+<br />
+Elakhdar, mosque of, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a><br />
+<br />
+El Alou, cemetery of, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a><br />
+<br />
+El Andalous, mosque of, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>, <a href='#Page_268'>268</a>, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a><br />
+<br />
+Elbali (Old Fez), <a href='#Page_88'>88</a> <i>et seq.</i><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">harems of, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a>-196</span><br />
+<br />
+Eldjid (New Fez), <a href='#Page_77'>77</a>, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">palaces of, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>-87</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">founding of, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a></span><br />
+<br />
+El Kairouiyin, mosque of, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>, <a href='#Page_95'>95</a>-100, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>, <a href='#Page_263'>263</a>, <a href='#Page_268'>268</a>, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the praying-hall of, <a href='#Page_98'>98</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the court of ablutions of, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">legend of the tortoise of, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a></span><br />
+<br />
+El-Ksar, <a href='#Page_11'>11</a>, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a>, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a><br />
+<br />
+El-Mansour, Yacoub, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a>-33<br />
+<br />
+Elmansour, palace of, <a href='#Page_63'>63</a><br />
+<br />
+Empress Mother, the, <a href='#Page_177'>177</a>, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a><br />
+<br />
+English emissaries, visit of, to Meknez, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>-73<br />
+<br />
+Exhibitions, planned by General Lyautey, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>-221<br />
+<br />
+Ezziani, chronicler of Moulay-Ismaël, <a href='#Page_60'>60</a>, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a>, <a href='#Page_64'>64</a>, <a href='#Page_66'>66</a>, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Fatimites, the, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>, <a href='#Page_241'>241</a><br />
+<br />
+Fez, the approach to, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">unchanged character of, <a href='#Page_78'>78</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">ruins of Merinid tombs of, <a href='#Page_78'>78</a>, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the upper or new, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">old summer-palace at, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>-83</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">night in, <a href='#Page_82'>82</a>, <a href='#Page_116'>116</a>-119</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">antiquity of, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">palaces of, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>-87</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the inns at, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>, <a href='#Page_116'>116</a>, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">streets of, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a>-91</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">a city of wealth, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the merchant of, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">bazaars of, <a href='#Page_91'>91</a>, <a href='#Page_92'>92</a>, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>-109</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">a melancholy city, <a href='#Page_92'>92</a>, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">twilight in, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a></span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">the shrines of, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">mosque of Moulay Idriss at, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>, <a href='#Page_95'>95</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">mosque of El Kairouiyinat, <a href='#Page_95'>95</a>-100</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the University of, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Medersas of, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>-107, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">mosque of El Andalous at, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bab F'touh cemetery of, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>-104</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the potters of, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">art and culture of, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>-106, <a href='#Page_247'>247</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Mellah of, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">harems of Old, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a>-196</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Convention of, <a href='#Page_209'>209</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">uprising in, <a href='#Page_210'>210</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">attack of Berbers on, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">exhibitions at, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Moslem college at, <a href='#Page_225'>225</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">founding of, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Almoravid conquest of, <a href='#Page_242'>242</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">centre of Moroccan learning, <a href='#Page_247'>247</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Catholic diocese at, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">massacres at, <a href='#Page_258'>258</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Fez Elbali, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a>-196<br />
+<br />
+Fez Eldjid, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a>, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>-87, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a><br />
+<br />
+Fondak Nedjarine, the, at Fez, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a><br />
+<br />
+Fortifications, Moroccan, architecture of, <a href='#Page_276'>276</a><br />
+<br />
+Foucauld, Vicomte de, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a><br />
+<br />
+Franco-German treaty of 1911, <a href='#Page_212'>212</a><br />
+<br />
+French Protectorate in Morocco, <a href='#Page_209'>209</a>-222<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">work of, <a href='#Page_222'>222</a>-227</span><br />
+<br />
+French, conquests in Morocco, <a href='#Page_254'>254</a>-256<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">at Fez, <a href='#Page_258'>258</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Furniture, disappearance of Merinid, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Ghilis, the, <a href='#Page_125'>125</a><br />
+<br />
+Gouraud, General, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Hamadch, tomb of, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a><br />
+<br />
+Hamadchas, the, ritual dance of, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>-57<br />
+<br />
+Harem, in old Fez, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a>-196<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">an Imperial, <a href='#Page_170'>170</a>-181</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in Marrakech, <a href='#Page_197'>197</a>-205</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in old Rabat, <a href='#Page_182'>182</a>-187</span><br />
+<br />
+Hassan, Sultan, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a>, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a>, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a>, <a href='#Page_256'>256</a><br />
+<br />
+Hassan, tower of, at Rabat, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a>, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a><br />
+<br />
+Hassanians, the, rule of, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>-258<br />
+<br />
+Holy War, the, against France, <a href='#Page_255'>255</a>,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">against Spain and Portugal, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>-250</span><br />
+<br />
+Hospitals, in Morocco, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a><br />
+<br />
+Houses, Moroccan, architecture of, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">color of, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">plan of, <a href='#Page_20'>20</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">rich private, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Ibn-Toumert, <a href='#Page_243'>243</a>, <a href='#Page_268'>268</a><br />
+<br />
+Idriss I, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a><br />
+<br />
+Idriss II, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a>, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a><br />
+<br />
+Idrissite empire, the, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>, <a href='#Page_241'>241</a><br />
+<br />
+Inns, Moroccan, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>, <a href='#Page_116'>116</a>, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Jews, of Sefrou, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a>-116<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">treatment of North African, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Kairouan, the Alïssaouas of, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Great Mosque of, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>, <a href='#Page_95'>95</a>, <a href='#Page_272'>272</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Kairouiyin, mosque of. <i>See</i> El Kairouiyin<br />
+<br />
+Kalaa, ruins of, <a href='#Page_264'>264</a><br />
+<br />
+Kenitra, port of, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>, <a href='#Page_223'>223</a><br />
+<br />
+Koechlin, M. Raymond, <a href='#Page_268'>268</a><br />
+<br />
+Koutoubya, tower of the, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a>, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Lamothe, General, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a><br />
+<br />
+Land, area of cultivated, in Morocco, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a><br />
+<br />
+Louis XIV, and Moulay-Ismaël, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a><br />
+<br />
+Lunel, M. Tranchant de, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a><br />
+<br />
+Lyautey, General, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a>, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a>, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">at Sultan's court, <a href='#Page_179'>179</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">appointed Resident-General in Morocco, <a href='#Page_210'>210</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">military occupation of Morocco by, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a>, <a href='#Page_212'>212</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">policy of, <a href='#Page_213'>213</a> <i>et seq.</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">economic development of Morocco achieved by, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a>-222</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">summary of work of, <a href='#Page_222'>222</a>-226</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Maclean, Sir Harry, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a><br />
+<br />
+Mamora, forest of, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a><br />
+<br />
+Mangin, General, <a href='#Page_212'>212</a><br />
+<br />
+Mansourah, mosque of, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a><br />
+<br />
+Market, of Marrakech, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in Moulay Idriss, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Salé, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_27'>27</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Sefrou, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a>-113</span><br />
+<br />
+Marrakech, the road to, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>-126<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">founders of, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a>, <a href='#Page_242'>242</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">tower of the Koutoubya at, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a>, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">palace of the Bahia at, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a>-133</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the lamp-lighters of, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">mixed population of, <a href='#Page_134'>134</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">bazaars of, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a>-138</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the "morocco" workers of, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">olive-yards of, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Menara of, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a>, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">a holiday of merchants of, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>-142</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Square of the Dead in, <a href='#Page_143'>143</a>-145</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">French administration office at, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">fruit-market of, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">dance of Chleuh boys in, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Saadian tombs of, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a>, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>-158, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">a harem in, <a href='#Page_197'>197</a>-205</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">taken by the French, <a href='#Page_212'>212</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Catholic diocese at, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chapel of the Tombs at, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Medersa, the, of the Oudayas, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>-22<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Attarine, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">at Fez, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>-107</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">at Salé, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">architecture of, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>-275</span><br />
+<br />
+Mehedyia, Phenician colony of, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>, <a href='#Page_237'>237</a><br />
+<br />
+Meknez, building of, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>-64, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Kasbah of, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">palaces of, <a href='#Page_63'>63</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">stables of, <a href='#Page_63'>63</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">entrance into, <a href='#Page_64'>64</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">ruins of, <a href='#Page_64'>64</a>-66</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sunken gardens of, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">visit of English emissaries to, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>-73</span><br />
+<br />
+Mellah, of Fez, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Sefrou, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a>-116</span><br />
+<br />
+Menara, the, in the Agdal, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a>, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a><br />
+<br />
+Mequinez. <i>See</i> Meknez<br />
+<br />
+Merinids, the, tombs of, at Fez, <a href='#Page_78'>78</a>, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">conquest of Morocco by, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a>-247</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">architecture of, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a>, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Mirador, the Imperial, <a href='#Page_170'>170</a>-181<br />
+<br />
+Moorish art, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a><br />
+<br />
+Mosque, of Elakhador, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of El Andalous, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>, <a href='#Page_268'>268</a>, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of El Kairouiyin, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>-100, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>, <a href='#Page_263'>263</a>, <a href='#Page_268'>268</a>, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Kairouan, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Mansourah, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Rabat, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Tinmel, <a href='#Page_243'>243</a>, <a href='#Page_268'>268</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Tunisia, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">architecture of Moroccan, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a>-273</span><br />
+<br />
+Moulay Hafid, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a><br />
+<br />
+Moulay-el-Hassan, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a>, <a href='#Page_256'>256</a><br />
+<br />
+Moulay Idriss I, rule of, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">tomb of, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Moulay Idriss II, tomb of, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a>, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">rule of, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Moulay Idriss, Sacred City of, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a>, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a>-57<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Street of the Weavers in, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">feast of the Hamadchas in, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>-57</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">market-place of, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">whiteness of, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">founding of, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Moulay-Ismaël, and Louis XIV, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">exploits of, <a href='#Page_60'>60</a>-62</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">mausoleum of Moulay Idriss enlarged by, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Meknez built by, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a>, <a href='#Page_63'>63</a>, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Black Guard of, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>-69</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">description of, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">palaces of, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and English emissaries, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">death of, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a>, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">rule of, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">successors of, <a href='#Page_254'>254</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Moulay Youssef, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a>, <a href='#Page_181'>181</a>, <a href='#Page_258'>258</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Nedjarine, fountain and inn of, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a><br />
+<br />
+Night, in Fez, <a href='#Page_116'>116</a>-119<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Oases, Moroccan, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a>, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Marrakech, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a> <i>et seq.</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sefrou, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a> <i>et seq.</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Settat, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Oudayas, the, Kasbah of, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Medersa of, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>-22</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Palaces, Moroccan, the Bahia, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a>-133<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bou-Jeloud, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>-83</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">at Fez, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>-87</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">at Meknez, <a href='#Page_63'>63</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Moulay-Ismaël, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Phenicians, the, African explorations of, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>, <a href='#Page_237'>237</a><br />
+<br />
+Pilgrimage to Salé, a, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a><br />
+<br />
+Population, Moroccan, varied elements of, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_134'>134</a><br />
+<br />
+Ports, Moroccan, <a href='#Page_222'>222</a>, <a href='#Page_223'>223</a><br />
+<br />
+Portugal, the Holy War against, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>-250<br />
+<br />
+Pottery, Berber, <a href='#Page_264'>264</a><br />
+<br />
+Potters' Field, the, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Rabat, <a href='#Page_15'>15</a>, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tower of Hassan at, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a>, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">ruins of mosque at, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">called "Camp of Victory," 33</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sacrifice of the Sheep at, <a href='#Page_163'>163</a> <i>et seq.</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sultan's harem of, <a href='#Page_170'>170</a>-181</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">visit to a harem in old, <a href='#Page_182'>182</a>-187</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">exhibitions at, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">port of, <a href='#Page_223'>223</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Moslem college at, <a href='#Page_225'>225</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Central Laboratory at, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Railways, Moroccan, built by French Protectorate, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a><br />
+<br />
+Rarb, the, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a><br />
+<br />
+Roads, Moroccan, built by French Protectorate, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a><br />
+<br />
+Romans, the, African explorations of, <a href='#Page_237'>237</a>, <a href='#Page_238'>238</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Saadian Sultans, the, history of, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>-153<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">tombs of, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a>, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>-158, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">rule of, <a href='#Page_247'>247</a>-252</span><br />
+<br />
+Sacrifice of the Sheep, the, <a href='#Page_164'>164</a>-170<br />
+<br />
+Saint-Amand, M. de, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a><br />
+<br />
+Saladin, M. H., his "Manual of Moslem Architecture," 233, <a href='#Page_261'>261</a>, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a><br />
+<br />
+Salé, first view of, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">type of untouched Moroccan city, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a>, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">bazaar of, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a>, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Medersas of, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>-22, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">market of, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_27'>27</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">colors of, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Schools, in Morocco, <a href='#Page_225'>225</a>, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a><br />
+<br />
+Sedrata, ruins of, <a href='#Page_264'>264</a><br />
+<br />
+Sefrou, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>-116<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">market-place of, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a>-113</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">men and women of, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Jewish colony of, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a>-116</span><br />
+<br />
+Senegal, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a><br />
+<br />
+Settat, oasis of, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a><br />
+<br />
+Sheep, sacrifice of the, <a href='#Page_164'>164</a>-170<br />
+<br />
+Sidi-Mohammed, <a href='#Page_254'>254</a><br />
+<br />
+Slaves, Moroccan, <a href='#Page_171'>171</a>, <a href='#Page_191'>191</a>, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>-201<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">trade in white, <a href='#Page_250'>250</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Sloughi</i>, bronze, at Volubilis, <a href='#Page_46'>46</a>, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a><br />
+<br />
+Soudan, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a><br />
+<br />
+Spain, the Holy War against, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>-250<br />
+<br />
+Spanish zone, the, German intrigue in, <a href='#Page_213'>213</a>, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a><br />
+<br />
+Stables, of Meknez, <a href='#Page_63'>63</a><br />
+<br />
+Stewart, Commodore, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a><br />
+<br />
+Street of the Weavers (Moulay Idriss), <a href='#Page_47'>47</a><br />
+<br />
+Streets, Moroccan, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a>, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a>-91, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Tangier, <a href='#Page_1'>3</a>-8<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">colors of, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">taken by the French, <a href='#Page_255'>255</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Tetuan, bronze chandelier of, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a><br />
+<br />
+Timbuctoo, the Sultanate of, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a><br />
+<br />
+Tingitanian Mauretania, <a href='#Page_237'>237</a><br />
+<br />
+Tinmel, ruins of mosque at, <a href='#Page_243'>243</a>, <a href='#Page_268'>268</a><br />
+<br />
+Tlemcen, the conflict for, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a>, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a><br />
+<br />
+Touaregs, the, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a><br />
+<br />
+Tower, of Hassan, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a>, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of the Koutoubya, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a>, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Tunisia, Almohad sanctuary of, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Vandals, the, African invasion by, <a href='#Page_238'>238</a><br />
+<br />
+Veiled Men, the, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>, <a href='#Page_241'>241</a><br />
+<br />
+Versailles and Meknez, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a><br />
+<br />
+Villages, "sedentary," 43<br />
+<br />
+Volubilis, ruins of, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>-46<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">bronze <i>sloughi</i> of, <a href='#Page_46'>46</a>, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">founded by Romans, <a href='#Page_237'>237</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Wedding, Jewish, procession bringing gifts for, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a><br />
+<br />
+Windus, John, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>-72, <a href='#Page_250'>250</a><br />
+<br />
+Women, Moroccan, dress of, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Sefrou, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of the harems, <a href='#Page_187'>187</a>-189</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in Sultan's harem, <a href='#Page_173'>173</a>-175</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in harems of Old Fez, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a>, <a href='#Page_192'>192</a>-194</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in harem of Marrakech, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>-204</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in harem of Rabat, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>-187</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">negro, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>, <a href='#Page_191'>191</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Yacoub-el-Mansour, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a>-33, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a><br />
+<br />
+Youssef-ben-Tachfin, <a href='#Page_242'>242</a><br />
+</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<h3><i>BY EDITH WHARTON</i></h3>
+
+
+<p class="center">
+THE GREATER INCLINATION<br />
+THE TOUCHSTONE<br />
+CRUCIAL INSTANCES<br />
+THE VALLEY OF DECISION<br />
+SANCTUARY<br />
+THE DESCENT OF MAN<br />
+THE HOUSE OF MIRTH<br />
+THE FRUIT OF THE TREE<br />
+THE HERMIT AND THE WILD WOMAN<br />
+TALES OF MEN AND GHOSTS<br />
+ETHAN FROME<br />
+THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY<br />
+XINGU</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p class="center">IN MOROCCO<br />
+FIGHTING FRANCE<br />
+ITALIAN BACKGROUNDS<br />
+A MOTOR FLIGHT THROUGH FRANCE<br />
+ARTEMIS TO ACTÆON<br />
+THE DECORATION OF HOUSES<br />
+</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS</i></h4>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of In Morocco, by Edith Wharton
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of In Morocco, by Edith Wharton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: In Morocco
+
+Author: Edith Wharton
+
+Release Date: March 4, 2012 [EBook #39042]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN MOROCCO ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IN MOROCCO
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Fez Elbali from the ramparts]
+
+
+
+
+IN MOROCCO
+
+BY
+
+EDITH WHARTON
+
+ILLUSTRATED
+
+[Illustration]
+
+NEW YORK
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+1920
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1919, 1920, BY
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+Published October, 1920
+
+THE SCRIBNER PRESS
+
+
+TO
+GENERAL LYAUTEY
+
+RESIDENT GENERAL OF FRANCE IN MOROCCO AND TO
+MADAME LYAUTEY,
+
+THANKS TO WHOSE KINDNESS THE JOURNEY
+I HAD SO LONG DREAMED OF
+SURPASSED WHAT I HAD DREAMED
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+I
+
+Having begun my book with the statement that Morocco still lacks a
+guide-book, I should have wished to take a first step toward remedying
+that deficiency.
+
+But the conditions in which I travelled, though full of unexpected and
+picturesque opportunities, were not suited to leisurely study of the
+places visited. The time was limited by the approach of the rainy
+season, which puts an end to motoring over the treacherous trails of the
+Spanish zone. In 1918, owing to the watchfulness of German submarines in
+the Straits and along the northwest coast of Africa, the trip by sea
+from Marseilles to Casablanca, ordinarily so easy, was not to be made
+without much discomfort and loss of time. Once on board the steamer,
+passengers were often kept in port (without leave to land) for six or
+eight days; therefore for any one bound by a time-limit, as most
+war-workers were, it was necessary to travel across country, and to be
+back at Tangier before the November rains.
+
+This left me only one month in which to visit Morocco from the
+Mediterranean to the High Atlas, and from the Atlantic to Fez, and even
+had there been a Djinn's carpet to carry me, the multiplicity of
+impressions received would have made precise observation difficult.
+
+The next best thing to a Djinn's carpet, a military motor, was at my
+disposal every morning; but war conditions imposed restrictions, and the
+wish to use the minimum of petrol often stood in the way of the second
+visit which alone makes it possible to carry away a definite and
+detailed impression.
+
+These drawbacks were more than offset by the advantage of making my
+quick trip at a moment unique in the history of the country; the brief
+moment of transition between its virtually complete subjection to
+European authority, and the fast approaching hour when it is thrown open
+to all the banalities and promiscuities of modern travel.
+
+Morocco is too curious, too beautiful, too rich in landscape and
+architecture, and above all too much of a novelty, not to attract one of
+the main streams of spring travel as soon as Mediterranean passenger
+traffic is resumed. Now that the war is over, only a few months' work on
+roads and railways divide it from the great torrent of "tourism"; and
+once that deluge is let loose, no eye will ever again see Moulay Idriss
+and Fez and Marrakech as I saw them.
+
+In spite of the incessant efforts of the present French administration
+to preserve the old monuments of Morocco from injury, and her native
+arts and industries from the corruption of European bad taste, the
+impression of mystery and remoteness which the country now produces must
+inevitably vanish with the approach of the "Circular Ticket." Within a
+few years far more will be known of the past of Morocco, but that past
+will be far less visible to the traveller than it is to-day. Excavations
+will reveal fresh traces of Roman and Phenician occupation; the remote
+affinities between Copts and Berbers, between Bagdad and Fez, between
+Byzantine art and the architecture of the Souss, will be explored and
+elucidated; but, while these successive discoveries are being made, the
+strange survival of mediaeval life, of a life contemporary with the
+crusaders, with Saladin, even with the great days of the Caliphate of
+Bagdad, which now greets the astonished traveller, will gradually
+disappear, till at last even the mysterious autocthones of the Atlas
+will have folded their tents and silently stolen away.
+
+
+II
+
+Authoritative utterances on Morocco are not wanting for those who can
+read them in French; but they are to be found mainly in large and often
+inaccessible books, like M. Doutte's "En Tribu," the Marquis de
+Segonzac's remarkable explorations in the Atlas, or Foucauld's classic
+(but unobtainable) "Reconnaissance au Maroc"; and few, if any, have been
+translated into English.
+
+M. Louis Chatelain has dealt with the Roman ruins of Volubilis and M.
+Tranchant de Lunel, M. Raymond Koechlin, M. Gaillard, M. Ricard, and
+many other French scholars, have written of Moslem architecture and art
+in articles published either in "France-Maroc," as introductions to
+catalogues of exhibitions, or in the reviews and daily papers. Pierre
+Loti and M. Andre Chevrillon have reflected, with the intensest visual
+sensibility, the romantic and ruinous Morocco of yesterday; and in the
+volumes of the "Conferences Marocaines," published by the French
+government, the experts gathered about the Resident-General have
+examined the industrial and agricultural Morocco of to-morrow. Lastly,
+one striking book sums up, with the clearness and consecutiveness of
+which French scholarship alone possesses the art, the chief things to be
+said on all these subjects, save that of art and archaeology. This is M.
+Augustin Bernard's volume, "Le Maroc," the one portable and compact yet
+full and informing book since Leo Africanus described the bazaars of
+Fez. But M. Augustin Bernard deals only with the ethnology, the social,
+religious and political history, and the physical properties, of the
+country; and this, though "a large order," leaves out the visual and
+picturesque side, except in so far as the book touches on the always
+picturesque life of the people.
+
+For the use, therefore, of the happy wanderers who may be planning a
+Moroccan journey, I have added to the record of my personal impressions
+a slight sketch of the history and art of the country. In extenuation of
+the attempt I must add that the chief merit of this sketch will be its
+absence of originality. Its facts will be chiefly drawn from the pages
+of M. Augustin Bernard, M. H. Saladin, and M. Gaston Migeon, and the
+rich sources of the "Conferences Marocaines" and the articles of
+"France-Maroc." It will also be deeply indebted to information given on
+the spot by the brilliant specialists of the French administration, to
+the Marquis de Segonzac, with whom I had the good luck to travel from
+Rabat to Marrakech and back; to M. Alfred de Tarde, editor of
+"France-Maroc"; to M. Tranchant de Lunel, director of the French School
+of Fine Arts in Morocco; to M. Goulven, the historian of Portuguese
+Mazagan; to M. Louis Chatelain, and to the many other cultivated and
+cordial French officials, military and civilian, who, at each stage of
+my journey, did their amiable best to answer my questions and open my
+eyes.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+
+In the writing of proper names and of other Arab words the French
+spelling has been followed.
+
+In the case of proper names, and names of cities and districts, this
+seems justified by the fact that they occur in a French colony, where
+French usage naturally prevails; and to spell _Oudjda_ in the French
+way, and _koubba_, for instance, in the English form of _kubba_, would
+cause needless confusion as to their respective pronunciation. It seems
+therefore simpler, in a book written for the ordinary traveller, to
+conform altogether to French usage.
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+
+
+                                             PAGE
+
+PREFACE                                       vii
+
+I. RABAT AND SALE                               1
+
+II. VOLUBILIS, MOULAY IDRISS AND MEKNEZ        35
+
+III. FEZ                                       75
+
+IV. MARRAKECH                                 121
+
+V. HAREMS AND CEREMONIES                      159
+
+VI. GENERAL LYAUTEY'S WORK IN MOROCCO         207
+
+VII. A SKETCH OF MOROCCAN HISTORY             229
+
+VIII. NOTE ON MOROCCAN ARCHITECTURE           259
+
+IX. BOOKS CONSULTED                           279
+
+INDEX                                         283
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+FEZ ELBALI FROM THE RAMPARTS                 _Frontispiece_
+
+                                               FACING PAGE
+
+GENERAL VIEW FROM THE KASBAH OF THE OUDAYAS--RABAT      16
+
+INTERIOR COURT OF THE MEDERSA OF THE OUDAYAS--RABAT     20
+
+ENTRANCE OF THE MEDERSA--SALE                           24
+
+MARKET-PLACE OUTSIDE THE TOWN--SALE                     26
+
+CHELLA-RUINS OF MOSQUE--SALE                            30
+
+THE WESTERN PORTICO OF THE BASILICA OF ANTONIUS
+PIUS--VOLUBILIS                                         46
+
+MOULAY IDRISS                                           48
+
+THE MARKET-PLACE--MOULAY IDRISS                         50
+
+MARKET-PLACE ON THE DAY OF THE RITUAL DANCE OF
+THE HAMADCHAS--MOULAY IDRISS                            52
+
+THE MARKET-PLACE. PROCESSION OF THE CONFRATERNITY
+OF THE HAMADCHAS--MOULAY IDRISS                         56
+
+GATE: "BAB-MANSOUR"--MEKNEZ                             58
+
+THE RUINS OF THE PALACE OF MOULAY-ISMAEL--MEKNEZ        66
+
+FEZ ELDJID                                              84
+
+A REED-ROOFED STREET--FEZ                               88
+
+THE NEDJARINE FOUNTAIN--FEZ                             94
+
+THE BAZAARS. A VIEW OF THE SOUK EL ATTARINE AND
+THE QUAISARYA--FEZ                                      108
+
+THE "LITTLE GARDEN" IN BACKGROUND, PALACE OF
+THE BAHIA--MARRAKECH                                    128
+
+THE GREAT COURT, PALACE OF THE BAHIA--MARRAKECH         130
+
+APARTMENT OF THE GRAND VIZIER'S FAVORITE, PALACE
+OF THE BAHIA--MARRAKECH                                 132
+
+A FONDAK--MARRAKECH                                     144
+
+MAUSOLEUM OF THE SAADIAN SULTANS SHOWING THE
+TOMBS--MARRAKECH                                        156
+
+THE SULTAN OF MOROCCO UNDER THE GREEN UMBRELLA          168
+
+A CLAN OF MOUNTAINEERS AND THEIR CAID                   170
+
+THE SULTAN ENTERING MARRAKECH IN STATE                  176
+
+WOMEN WATCHING A PROCESSION FROM A ROOF                 194
+
+A STREET FOUNTAIN--MARRAKECH                            262
+
+GATE OF THE KASBAH OF THE OUDAYAS--RABAT                266
+
+MEDERSA BOUANYANA--FEZ                                  268
+
+THE PRAYING-CHAPEL IN THE MEDERSA EL ATTARINE--FEZ      270
+
+INTERIOR COURT OF THE MEDERSA--SALE                     274
+
+THE GATE OF THE PORTUGUESE--MARRAKECH                   276
+
+
+MAP
+
+THE PART OF MOROCCO VISITED BY MRS. WHARTON               8
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+RABAT AND SALE
+
+
+I
+
+LEAVING TANGIER
+
+To step on board a steamer in a Spanish port, and three hours later to
+land in _a country without a guide-book_, is a sensation to rouse the
+hunger of the repletest sight-seer.
+
+The sensation is attainable by any one who will take the trouble to row
+out into the harbour of Algeciras and scramble onto a little black boat
+headed across the straits. Hardly has the rock of Gibraltar turned to
+cloud when one's foot is on the soil of an almost unknown Africa.
+Tangier, indeed, is in the guide-books; but, cuckoo-like, it has had to
+lays its egg in strange nests, and the traveller who wants to find out
+about it must acquire a work dealing with some other country--Spain or
+Portugal or Algeria. There is no guide-book to Morocco, and no way of
+knowing, once one has left Tangier behind, where the long trail over the
+Rif is going to land one, in the sense understood by any one accustomed
+to European certainties. The air of the unforeseen blows on one from the
+roadless passes of the Atlas.
+
+This feeling of adventure is heightened by the contrast between
+Tangier--cosmopolitan, frowsy, familiar Tangier, that every tourist has
+visited for the last forty years--and the vast unknown just beyond. One
+has met, of course, travellers who have been to Fez; but they have gone
+there on special missions, under escort, mysteriously, perhaps
+perilously; the expedition has seemed, till lately, a considerable
+affair. And when one opens the records of Moroccan travellers written
+within the last twenty years, how many, even of the most adventurous,
+are found to have gone beyond Fez? And what, to this day, do the names
+of Meknez and Marrakech, of Mogador, Saffi or Rabat, signify to any but
+a few students of political history, a few explorers and naturalists?
+Not till within the last year has Morocco been open to travel from
+Tangier to the Great Atlas, and from Moulay Idriss to the Atlantic.
+Three years ago Christians were being massacred in the streets of Sale,
+the pirate town across the river from Rabat, and two years ago no
+European had been allowed to enter the Sacred City of Moulay Idriss, the
+burial-place of the lawful descendant of Ali, founder of the Idrissite
+dynasty. Now, thanks to the energy and the imagination of one of the
+greatest of colonial administrators, the country, at least in the French
+zone, is as safe and open as the opposite shore of Spain. All that
+remains is to tell the traveller how to find his way about it.
+
+Ten years ago there was not a wheeled vehicle in Morocco; now its
+thousands of miles of trail, and its hundreds of miles of firm French
+roads, are travelled by countless carts, omnibuses and motor-vehicles.
+There are light railways from Rabat to Fez in the west, and to a point
+about eighty-five kilometres from Marrakech in the south; and it is
+possible to say that within a year a regular railway system will connect
+eastern Morocco with western Algeria, and the ports of Tangier and
+Casablanca with the principal points of the interior.
+
+What, then, prevents the tourist from instantly taking ship at Bordeaux
+or Algeciras and letting loose his motor on this new world? Only the
+temporary obstacles which the war has everywhere put in the way of
+travel. Till these are lifted it will hardly be possible to travel in
+Morocco except by favour of the Resident-General; but, normal conditions
+once restored, the country will be as accessible, from the straits of
+Gibraltar to the Great Atlas, as Algeria or Tunisia.
+
+To see Morocco during the war was therefore to see it in the last phase
+of its curiously abrupt transition from remoteness and danger to
+security and accessibility; at a moment when its aspect and its customs
+were still almost unaffected by European influences, and when the
+"Christian" might taste the transient joy of wandering unmolested in
+cities of ancient mystery and hostility, whose inhabitants seemed hardly
+aware of his intrusion.
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE TRAIL TO EL-KSAR
+
+With such opportunities ahead it was impossible, that brilliant morning
+of September, 1917, not to be off quickly from Tangier, impossible to do
+justice to the pale-blue town piled up within brown walls against the
+thickly-foliaged gardens of "the Mountain," to the animation of its
+market-place and the secret beauties of its steep Arab streets. For
+Tangier swarms with people in European clothes, there are English,
+French and Spanish signs above its shops, and cab-stands in its squares;
+it belongs, as much as Algiers, to the familiar dog-eared world of
+travel--and there, beyond the last dip of "the Mountain," lies the world
+of mystery, with the rosy dawn just breaking over it. The motor is at
+the door and we are off.
+
+The so-called Spanish zone, which encloses internationalized Tangier in
+a wide circuit of territory, extends southward for a distance of about a
+hundred and fifteen kilometres. Consequently, when good roads traverse
+it, French Morocco will be reached in less than two hours by
+motor-travellers bound for the south. But for the present Spanish
+enterprise dies out after a few miles of macadam (as it does even
+between Madrid and Toledo), and the tourist is committed to the _piste_.
+These _pistes_--the old caravan-trails from the south--are more
+available to motors in Morocco than in southern Algeria and Tunisia,
+since they run mostly over soil which, though sandy in part, is bound
+together by a tough dwarf vegetation, and not over pure desert sand.
+This, however, is the utmost that can be said of the Spanish _pistes_.
+In the French protectorate constant efforts are made to keep the trails
+fit for wheeled traffic, but Spain shows no sense of a corresponding
+obligation.
+
+After leaving the macadamized road which runs south from Tangier one
+seems to have embarked on a petrified ocean in a boat hardly equal to
+the adventure. Then, as one leaps and plunges over humps and ruts, down
+sheer banks into rivers, and up precipices into sand-pits, one gradually
+gains faith in one's conveyance and in one's spinal column; but both
+must be sound in every joint to resist the strain of the long miles to
+Arbaoua, the frontier post of the French protectorate.
+
+[Illustration: The part of Morocco visited by Mrs. Wharton]
+
+Luckily there are other things to think about. At the first turn out of
+Tangier, Europe and the European disappear, and as soon as the motor
+begins to dip and rise over the arid little hills beyond to the last
+gardens one is sure that every figure on the road will be picturesque
+instead of prosaic, every garment graceful instead of grotesque. One
+knows, too, that there will be no more omnibuses or trams or
+motorcyclists, but only long lines of camels rising up in brown friezes
+against the sky, little black donkeys trotting across the scrub under
+bulging pack-saddles, and noble draped figures walking beside them or
+majestically perching on their rumps. And for miles and miles there will
+be no more towns--only, at intervals on the naked slopes, circles of
+rush-roofed huts in a blue stockade of cactus, or a hundred or two nomad
+tents of black camel's hair resting on walls of wattled thorn and
+grouped about a terebinth-tree and a well.
+
+Between these nomad colonies lies the _bled_, the immense waste of
+fallow land and palmetto desert: an earth as void of life as the sky
+above it of clouds. The scenery is always the same; but if one has the
+love of great emptinesses, and of the play of light on long stretches of
+parched earth and rock, the sameness is part of the enchantment. In such
+a scene every landmark takes on an extreme value. For miles one watches
+the little white dome of a saint's grave rising and disappearing with
+the undulations of the trail; at last one is abreast of it, and the
+solitary tomb, alone with its fig-tree and its broken well-curb, puts a
+meaning into the waste. The same importance, but intensified, marks the
+appearance of every human figure. The two white-draped riders passing
+single file up the red slope to that ring of tents on the ridge have a
+mysterious and inexplicable importance: one follows their progress with
+eyes that ache with conjecture. More exciting still is the encounter of
+the first veiled woman heading a little cavalcade from the south. All
+the mystery that awaits us looks out through the eye-slits in the
+grave-clothes muffling her. Where have they come from, where are they
+going, all these slow wayfarers out of the unknown? Probably only from
+one thatched _douar_[1] to another; but interminable distances unroll
+behind them, they breathe of Timbuctoo and the farthest desert. Just
+such figures must swarm in the Saharan cities, in the Soudan and
+Senegal. There is no break in the links: these wanderers have looked on
+at the building of cities that were dust when the Romans pushed their
+outposts across the Atlas.
+
+
+III
+
+EL-KSAR TO RABAT
+
+A town at last--its nearness announced by the multiplied ruts of the
+trail, the cactus hedges, the fig-trees weighed down by dust leaning
+over ruinous earthern walls. And here are the first houses of the
+European El-Ksar--neat white Spanish houses on the slope outside the old
+Arab settlement. Of the Arab town itself, above reed stockades and brown
+walls, only a minaret and a few flat roofs are visible. Under the walls
+drowse the usual gregarious Lazaruses; others, temporarily resuscitated,
+trail their grave-clothes after a line of camels and donkeys toward the
+olive-gardens outside the town.
+
+The way to Rabat is long and difficult, and there is no time to visit
+El-Ksar, though its minaret beckons so alluringly above the
+fruit-orchards; so we stop for luncheon outside the walls, at a canteen
+with a corrugated iron roof where skinny Spaniards are serving thick
+purple wine and eggs fried in oil to a party of French soldiers. The
+heat has suddenly become intolerable, and a flaming wind straight from
+the south brings in at the door, with a cloud of blue flies, the smell
+of camels and trampled herbs and the strong spices of the bazaars.
+
+Luncheon over, we hurry on between the cactus hedges, and then plunge
+back into the waste. Beyond El-Ksar the last hills of the Rif die away,
+and there is a stretch of wilderness without an outline till the Lesser
+Atlas begins to rise in the east. Once in the French protectorate the
+trail improves, but there are still difficult bits; and finally, on a
+high plateau, the chauffeur stops in a web of crisscross trails, throws
+up his hands, and confesses that he has lost his way. The heat is mortal
+at the moment. For the last hour the red breath of the sirocco has
+risen from every hollow into which we dipped; now it hangs about us in
+the open, as if we had caught it in our wheels and it had to pause above
+us when we paused.
+
+All around is the featureless wild land, palmetto scrub stretching away
+into eternity. A few yards off rises the inevitable ruined _koubba_[2]
+with its fig-tree: in the shade under its crumbling wall the buzz of the
+flies is like the sound of frying. Farther off, we discern a cluster of
+huts, and presently some Arab boys and a tall pensive shepherd come
+hurrying across the scrub. They are full of good-will, and no doubt of
+information; but our chauffeur speaks no Arabic and the talk dies down
+into shrugs and head-shakings. The Arabs retire to the shade of the
+wall, and we decide to start--for anywhere....
+
+The chauffeur turns the crank, but there is no responding quiver.
+Something has gone wrong; we can't move, and it is not much comfort to
+remember that, if we could, we should not know where to go. At least we
+should be cooler in motion than sitting still under the blinding sky.
+
+Such an adventure initiates one at the outset into the stern facts of
+desert motoring. Every detail of our trip from Tangier to Rabat had been
+carefully planned to keep us in unbroken contact with civilization. We
+were to "tub" in one European hotel, and to dine in another, with just
+enough picnicking between to give a touch of local colour. But let one
+little cog slip and the whole plan falls to bits, and we are alone in
+the old untamed Moghreb, as remote from Europe as any mediaeval
+adventurer. If one lose one's way in Morocco, civilization vanishes as
+though it were a magic carpet rolled up by a Djinn.
+
+It is a good thing to begin with such a mishap, not only because it
+develops the fatalism necessary to the enjoyment of Africa, but because
+it lets one at once into the mysterious heart of the country: a country
+so deeply conditioned by its miles and miles of uncitied wilderness that
+until one has known the wilderness one cannot begin to understand the
+cities.
+
+We came to one at length, after sunset on that first endless day. The
+motor, cleverly patched up, had found its way to a real road, and
+speeding along between the stunted cork-trees of the forest of Mamora
+brought us to a last rise from which we beheld in the dusk a line of
+yellow walls backed by the misty blue of the Atlantic. Sale, the fierce
+old pirate town, where Robinson Crusoe was so long a slave, lay before
+us, snow-white in its cheese-coloured ramparts skirted by fig and olive
+gardens. Below its gates a stretch of waste land, endlessly trailed over
+by mules and camels, sloped down to the mouth of the Bou-Regreg, the
+blue-brown river dividing it from Rabat. The motor stopped at the
+landing-stage of the steam-ferry; crowding about it were droves of
+donkeys, knots of camels, plump-faced merchants on crimson-saddled
+mules, with negro servants at their bridles, bare-legged water-carriers
+with hairy goat-skins slung over their shoulders, and Arab women in a
+heap of veils, cloaks, mufflings, all of the same ashy white, the
+caftans of clutched children peeping through in patches of old rose and
+lilac and pale green.
+
+Across the river the native town of Rabat lay piled up on an orange-red
+cliff beaten by the Atlantic. Its walls, red too, plunged into the
+darkening breakers at the mouth of the river; and behind it, stretching
+up to the mighty tower of Hassan, and the ruins of the Great Mosque, the
+scattered houses of the European city showed their many lights across
+the plain.
+
+
+IV
+
+THE KASBAH OF THE OUDAYAS
+
+Sale the white and Rabat the red frown at each other over the foaming
+bar of the Bou-Regreg, each walled, terraced, minareted, and presenting
+a singularly complete picture of the two types of Moroccan town, the
+snowy and the tawny. To the gates of both the Atlantic breakers roll in
+with the boom of northern seas, and under a misty northern sky. It is
+one of the surprises of Morocco to find the familiar African pictures
+bathed in this unfamiliar haze. Even the fierce midday sun does not
+wholly dispel it: the air remains thick, opalescent, like water slightly
+clouded by milk. One is tempted to say that Morocco is Tunisia seen by
+moonlight.
+
+The European town of Rabat, a rapidly developing community, lies almost
+wholly outside the walls of the old Arab city. The latter, founded in
+the twelfth century by the great Almohad conqueror of Spain,
+Yacoub-el-Mansour, stretches its mighty walls to the river's mouth.
+Thence they climb the cliff to enclose the Kasbah[3] of the Oudayas, a
+troublesome tribe whom one of the Almohad Sultans, mistrusting their
+good faith, packed up one day, flocks, tents and camels, and carried
+across the _bled_ to stow them into these stout walls under his
+imperial eye. Great crenellated ramparts, cyclopean, superb, follow the
+curve of the cliff. On the landward side they are interrupted by a
+gate-tower resting on one of the most nobly decorated of the horseshoe
+arches that break the mighty walls of Moroccan cities. Underneath the
+tower the vaulted entrance turns, Arab fashion, at right angles,
+profiling its red arch against darkness and mystery. This bending of
+passages, so characteristic a device of the Moroccan builder, is like an
+architectural expression of the tortuous secret soul of the land.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Rabat--general view from the Kasbah of the Oudayas]
+
+Outside the Kasbah a narrow foot-path is squeezed between the walls and
+the edge of the cliff. Toward sunset it looks down on a strange scene.
+To the south of the citadel the cliff descends to a long dune sloping to
+a sand-beach; and dune and beach are covered with the slanting
+headstones of the immense Arab cemetery of El Alou. Acres and acres of
+graves fall away from the red ramparts to the grey sea; and breakers
+rolling straight from America send their spray across the lowest stones.
+
+There are always things going on toward evening in an Arab cemetery. In
+this one, travellers from the _bled_ are camping in one corner, donkeys
+grazing (on heaven knows what), a camel dozing under its pack; in
+another, about a new-made grave, there are ritual movements of muffled
+figures and wailings of a funeral hymn half drowned by the waves. Near
+us, on a fallen headstone, a man with a thoughtful face sits chatting
+with two friends and hugging to his breast a tiny boy who looks like a
+grasshopper in his green caftan; a little way off, a solitary
+philosopher, his eye fixed on the sunset, lies on another grave, smoking
+his long pipe of kif.
+
+There is infinite sadness in this scene under the fading sky, beside the
+cold welter of the Atlantic. One seems to be not in Africa itself, but
+in the Africa that northern crusaders may have dreamed of in snow-bound
+castles by colder shores of the same ocean. This is what Moghreb must
+have looked like to the confused imagination of the Middle Ages, to
+Norman knights burning to ransom the Holy Places, or Hansa merchants
+devising, in steep-roofed towns, of Barbary and the long caravans
+bringing apes and gold-powder from the south.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Inside the gate of the Kasbah one comes on more waste land and on other
+walls--for all Moroccan towns are enclosed in circuit within circuit of
+battlemented masonry. Then, unexpectedly, a gate in one of the inner
+walls lets one into a tiled court enclosed in a traceried cloister and
+overlooking an orange-grove that rises out of a carpet of roses. This
+peaceful and well-ordered place is the interior of the Medersa (the
+college) of the Oudayas. Morocco is full of these colleges, or rather
+lodging-houses of the students frequenting the mosques; for all
+Mahometan education is given in the mosque itself, only the preparatory
+work being done in the colleges. The most beautiful of the Medersas date
+from the earlier years of the long Merinid dynasty (1248-1548), the
+period at which Moroccan art, freed from too distinctively Spanish and
+Arab influences, began to develop a delicate grace of its own as far
+removed from the extravagance of Spanish ornament as from the
+inheritance of Roman-Byzantine motives that the first Moslem invasion
+had brought with it from Syria and Mesopotamia.
+
+These exquisite collegiate buildings, though still in use whenever they
+are near a well-known mosque, have all fallen into a state of sordid
+disrepair. The Moroccan Arab, though he continues to build--and
+fortunately to build in the old tradition, which has never been
+lost--has, like all Orientals, an invincible repugnance to repairing and
+restoring, and one after another the frail exposed Arab structures, with
+their open courts and badly constructed terrace-roofs, are crumbling
+into ruin. Happily the French Government has at last been asked to
+intervene, and all over Morocco the Medersas are being repaired with
+skill and discretion. That of the Oudayas is already completely
+restored, and as it had long fallen into disuse it has been transformed
+by the Ministry of Fine Arts into a museum of Moroccan art.
+
+The plan of the Medersas is always much the same: the eternal plan of
+the Arab house, built about one or more arcaded courts, with long narrow
+rooms enclosing them on the ground floor, and several stories above,
+reached by narrow stairs, and often opening on finely carved cedar
+galleries. The chief difference between the Medersa and the private
+house, or even the _fondak_,[4] lies in the use to which the rooms are
+put. In the Medersas, one of the ground-floor apartments is always
+fitted up as a chapel, and shut off from the court by carved cedar doors
+still often touched with old gilding and vermilion. There are always a
+few students praying in the chapel, while others sit in the doors of the
+upper rooms, their books on their knees, or lean over the carved
+galleries chatting with their companions who are washing their feet at
+the marble fountain in the court, preparatory to entering the chapel.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph by Schmitt, Rabat_
+
+Rabat--interior court of the Medersa of the Oudayas]
+
+In the Medersa of the Oudayas, these native activities have been
+replaced by the lifeless hush of a museum. The rooms are furnished with
+old rugs, pottery, brasses, the curious embroidered hangings which line
+the tents of the chiefs, and other specimens of Arab art. One room
+reproduces a barber's shop in the bazaar, its benches covered with fine
+matting, the hanging mirror inlaid with mother-of-pearl, the
+razor-handles of silver _niello_. The horseshoe arches of the outer
+gallery look out on orange-blossoms, roses and the sea. It is all
+beautiful, calm and harmonious; and if one is tempted to mourn the
+absence of life and local colour, one has only to visit an abandoned
+Medersa to see that, but for French intervention, the charming
+colonnades and cedar chambers of the college of the Oudayas would by
+this time be a heap of undistinguished rubbish--for plaster and rubble
+do not "die in beauty" like the firm stones of Rome.
+
+
+V
+
+ROBINSON CRUSOE'S "SALLEE"
+
+Before Morocco passed under the rule of the great governor who now
+administers it, the European colonists made short work of the beauty and
+privacy of the old Arab towns in which they established themselves.
+
+On the west coast, especially, where the Mediterranean peoples, from the
+Phenicians to the Portuguese, have had trading-posts for over two
+thousand years, the harm done to such seaboard towns as Tangier, Rabat
+and Casablanca is hard to estimate. The modern European colonist
+apparently imagined that to plant his warehouses, _cafes_ and
+cinema-palaces within the walls which for so long had fiercely excluded
+him was the most impressive way of proclaiming his domination.
+
+Under General Lyautey such views are no longer tolerated. Respect for
+native habits, native beliefs and native architecture is the first
+principle inculcated in the civil servants attached to his
+administration. Not only does he require that the native towns shall be
+kept intact, and no European building erected within them; a sense of
+beauty not often vouchsafed to Colonial governors causes him to place
+the administration buildings so far beyond the walls that the modern
+colony grouped around them remains entirely distinct from the old town,
+instead of growing out of it like an ugly excrescence.
+
+The Arab quarter of Rabat was already irreparably disfigured when
+General Lyautey came to Morocco; but ferocious old Sale, Phenician
+counting-house and breeder of Barbary pirates, had been saved from
+profanation by its Moslem fanaticism. Few Christian feet had entered its
+walls except those of the prisoners who, like Robinson Crusoe, slaved
+for the wealthy merchants in its mysterious terraced houses. Not till
+two or three years ago was it completely pacified; and when it opened
+its gates to the infidel it was still, as it is to-day, the type of the
+untouched Moroccan city--so untouched that, with the sunlight
+irradiating its cream-coloured walls and the blue-white domes above
+them, it rests on its carpet of rich fruit-gardens like some rare
+specimen of Arab art on a strip of old Oriental velvet.
+
+Within the walls, the magic persists: which does not always happen when
+one penetrates into the mirage-like cities of Arabian Africa. Sale has
+the charm of extreme compactness. Crowded between the river-mouth and
+the sea, its white and pale-blue houses almost touch across the narrow
+streets, and the reed-thatched bazaars seem like miniature reductions of
+the great trading labyrinths of Tunis or Fez.
+
+Everything that the reader of the Arabian Nights expects to find is
+here: the whitewashed niches wherein pale youths sit weaving the fine
+mattings for which the town is still famous; the tunnelled passages
+where indolent merchants with bare feet crouch in their little kennels
+hung with richly ornamented saddlery and arms, or with slippers of pale
+citron leather and bright embroidered _babouches_; the stalls with
+fruit, olives, tunny-fish, vague syrupy sweets, candles for saints'
+tombs, Mantegnesque garlands of red and green peppers, griddle-cakes
+sizzling on red-hot pans, and all the varied wares and cakes and
+condiments that the lady in the tale of the Three Calanders went out to
+buy, that memorable morning in the market of Bagdad.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Sale--entrance of the Medersa]
+
+Only at Sale all is on a small scale: there is not much of any one
+thing, except of the exquisite matting. The tide of commerce has ebbed
+from the intractable old city, and one feels, as one watches the
+listless purchasers in her little languishing bazaars, that her long
+animosity against the intruder has ended by destroying her own life.
+
+The feeling increases when one leaves the bazaar for the streets
+adjoining it. An even deeper hush than that which hangs over the
+well-to-do quarters of all Arab towns broods over these silent
+thorough-fares, with heavy-nailed doors barring half-ruined houses. In a
+steep deserted square one of these doors opens its panels of
+weather-silvered cedar on the court of the frailest, ghostliest of
+Medersas--mere carved and painted shell of a dead house of learning.
+Mystic interweavings of endless lines, patient patterns interminably
+repeated in wood and stone and clay, all are here, from the tessellated
+paving of the court to the honeycombing of the cedar roof through which
+a patch of sky shows here and there like an inset of turquoise tiling.
+
+This lovely ruin is in the safe hands of the French Fine Arts
+administration, and soon the wood-carvers and stucco-workers of Fez will
+have revived its old perfection; but it will never again be more than a
+show-Medersa, standing empty and unused beside the mosque behind whose
+guarded doors and high walls one guesses that the old religious
+fanaticism of Sale is dying also, as her learning and her commerce have
+died.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph by Schmitt, Rabat_
+
+Sale--market-place outside the town]
+
+In truth the only life in her is centred in the market-place outside the
+walls, where big expanding Rabat goes on certain days to provision
+herself. The market of Sale, though typical of all Moroccan markets, has
+an animation and picturesqueness of its own. Its rows of white tents
+pitched on a dusty square between the outer walls and the fruit-gardens
+make it look as though a hostile tribe had sat down to lay siege to the
+town; but the army is an army of hucksters, of farmers from the rich
+black lands along the river, of swarthy nomads and leather-gaitered
+peasant women from the hills, of slaves and servants and tradesmen from
+Rabat and Sale; a draped, veiled, turbaned mob shrieking, bargaining,
+fist-shaking, call on Allah to witness the monstrous villanies of the
+misbegotten miscreants they are trading with, and then, struck with the
+mysterious Eastern apathy, sinking down in languid heaps of muslin among
+the black figs, purple onions and rosy melons, the fluttering hens, the
+tethered goats, the whinnying foals, that are all enclosed in an outer
+circle of folded-up camels and of mules dozing under faded crimson
+saddles.
+
+
+VI
+
+CHELLA AND THE GREAT MOSQUE
+
+The Merinid Sultans of Rabat had a terribly troublesome neighbour across
+the Bou-Regreg, and they built Chella to keep an eye on the pirates of
+Sale. But Chella has fallen like a Babylonian city triumphed over by the
+prophets; while Sale, sly, fierce and irrepressible, continued till well
+on in the nineteenth century to breed pirates and fanatics.
+
+The ruins of Chella lie on the farther side of the plateau above the
+native town of Rabat. The mighty wall enclosing them faces the city wall
+of Rabat, looking at it across one of those great red powdery wastes
+which seem, in this strange land, like death and the desert forever
+creeping up to overwhelm the puny works of man.
+
+The red waste is scored by countless trains of donkeys carrying water
+from the springs of Chella, by long caravans of mules and camels, and
+by the busy motors of the French administration; yet there emanates from
+it an impression of solitude and decay which even the prosaic tinkle of
+the trams jogging out from the European town to the Exhibition grounds
+above the sea cannot long dispel.
+
+Perpetually, even in the new thriving French Morocco, the outline of a
+ruin or the look in a pair of eyes shifts the scene, rends the thin veil
+of the European Illusion, and confronts one with the old grey Moslem
+reality. Passing under the gate of Chella, with its richly carved
+corbels and lofty crenellated towers, one feels one's self thus
+completely reabsorbed into the past.
+
+Below the gate the ground slopes away, bare and blazing, to a hollow
+where a little blue-green minaret gleams through fig-trees, and
+fragments of arch and vaulting reveal the outline of a ruined mosque.
+
+Was ever shade so blue-black and delicious as that of the cork-tree near
+the spring where the donkey's water-cans are being filled? Under its
+branches a black man in a blue shirt lies immovably sleeping in the
+dust. Close by women and children splash and chatter about the spring,
+and the dome of a saint's tomb shines through lustreless leaves. The
+black man, the donkeys, the women and children, the saint's dome, are
+all part of the inimitable Eastern scene in which inertia and agitation
+are so curiously combined, and a surface of shrill noise flickers over
+depths of such unfathomable silence.
+
+The ruins of Chella belong to the purest period of Moroccan art. The
+tracery of the broken arches is all carved in stone or in glazed
+turquoise tiling, and the fragments of wall and vaulting have the firm
+elegance of a classic ruin. But what would even their beauty be without
+the leafy setting of the place? The "unimaginable touch of Time" gives
+Chella its peculiar charm: the aged fig-tree clamped in uptorn tiles and
+thrusting gouty arms between the arches; the garlanding of vines flung
+from column to column; the secret pool to which childless women are
+brought to bathe, and where the tree springing from a cleft of the steps
+is always hung with the bright bits of stuff which are the votive
+offerings of Africa.
+
+The shade, the sound of springs, the terraced orange-garden with irises
+blooming along channels of running water, all this greenery and coolness
+in the hollow of a fierce red hill make Chella seem, to the traveller
+new to Africa, the very type and embodiment of its old contrasts of heat
+and freshness, of fire and languor. It is like a desert traveller's
+dream in his last fever.
+
+Yacoub-el-Mansour was the fourth of the great Almohad Sultans who, in
+the twelfth century, drove out the effete Almoravids, and swept their
+victorious armies from Marrakech to Tunis and from Tangier to Madrid.
+His grandfather, Abd-el-Moumen, had been occupied with conquest and
+civic administration. It was said of his rule that "he seized northern
+Africa to make order prevail there"; and in fact, out of a welter of
+wild tribes confusedly fighting and robbing he drew an empire firmly
+seated and securely governed, wherein caravans travelled from the Atlas
+to the Straits without fear of attack, and "a soldier wandering through
+the fields would not have dared to pluck an ear of wheat."
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Chella--ruins of mosque]
+
+His grandson, the great El-Mansour, was a conqueror too; but where he
+conquered he planted the undying seed of beauty. The victor of Alarcos,
+the soldier who subdued the north of Spain, dreamed a great dream of
+art. His ambition was to bestow on his three capitals, Seville, Rabat
+and Marrakech, the three most beautiful towers the world had ever seen;
+and if the tower of Rabat had been completed, and that of Seville had
+not been injured by Spanish embellishments, his dream would have been
+realized.
+
+The "Tower of Hassan," as the Sultan's tower is called, rises from the
+plateau above old Rabat, overlooking the steep cliff that drops down to
+the last winding of the Bou-Regreg. Truncated at half its height, it
+stands on the edge of the cliff, a far-off beacon to travellers by land
+and sea. It is one of the world's great monuments, so sufficient in
+strength and majesty that until one has seen its fellow, the Koutoubya
+of Marrakech, one wonders if the genius of the builder could have
+carried such perfect balance of massive wall-spaces and traceried
+openings to a triumphant completion.
+
+Near the tower, the red-brown walls and huge piers of the mosque built
+at the same time stretch their roofless alignment beneath the sky. This
+mosque, before it was destroyed, must have been one of the finest
+monuments of Almohad architecture in Morocco: now, with its tumbled red
+masses of masonry and vast cisterns overhung by clumps of blue aloes, it
+still forms a ruin of Roman grandeur.
+
+The Mosque, the Tower, the citadel of the Oudayas, and the mighty walls
+and towers of Chella, compose an architectural group as noble and
+complete as that of some mediaeval Tuscan city. All they need to make the
+comparison exact is that they should have been compactly massed on a
+steep hill, instead of lying scattered over the wide spaces between the
+promontory of the Oudayas and the hillside of Chella.
+
+The founder of Rabat, the great Yacoub-el-Mansour, called it, in memory
+of the battle of Alarcos, "The Camp of Victory" (_Ribat-el-Path_), and
+the monuments he bestowed on it justified the name in another sense, by
+giving it the beauty that lives when battles are forgotten.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Village of tents. The village of mud-huts is called a _nourwal_.
+
+[2] Saint's tomb. The saint himself is called a _marabout_.
+
+[3] Citadel.
+
+[4] The Moroccan inn or caravanserai.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+VOLUBILIS, MOULAY IDRISS AND MEKNEZ
+
+
+I
+
+VOLUBILIS
+
+One day before sunrise we set out from Rabat for the ruins of Roman
+Volubilis.
+
+From the ferry of the Bou-Regreg we looked backward on a last vision of
+orange ramparts under a night-blue sky sprinkled with stars; ahead, over
+gardens still deep in shadow, the walls of Sale were passing from drab
+to peach-colour in the eastern glow. Dawn is the romantic hour in
+Africa. Dirt and dilapidation disappear under a pearly haze, and a
+breeze from the sea blows away the memory of fetid markets and sordid
+heaps of humanity. At that hour the old Moroccan cities look like the
+ivory citadels in a Persian miniature, and the fat shopkeepers riding
+out to their vegetable-gardens like Princes sallying forth to rescue
+captive maidens.
+
+Our way led along the highroad from Rabat to the modern port of Kenitra,
+near the ruins of the Phenician colony of Mehedyia. Just north of
+Kenitra we struck the trail, branching off eastward to a European
+village on the light railway between Rabat and Fez, and beyond the
+railway-sheds and flat-roofed stores the wilderness began, stretching
+away into clear distances bounded by the hills of the Rarb,[5] above
+which the sun was rising.
+
+Range after range these translucent hills rose before us; all around the
+solitude was complete. Village life, and even tent life, naturally
+gathers about a river-bank or a spring; and the waste we were crossing
+was of waterless sand bound together by a loose desert growth. Only an
+abandoned well-curb here and there cast its blue shadow on the yellow
+_bled_, or a saint's tomb hung like a bubble between sky and sand. The
+light had the preternatural purity which gives a foretaste of mirage: it
+was the light in which magic becomes real, and which helps to understand
+how, to people living in such an atmosphere, the boundary between fact
+and dream perpetually fluctuates.
+
+The sand was scored with tracks and ruts innumerable, for the road
+between Rabat and Fez is travelled not only by French government motors
+but by native caravans and trains of pilgrims to and from the sacred
+city of Moulay Idriss, the founder of the Idrissite dynasty, whose tomb
+is in the Zerhoun, the mountain ridge above Volubilis. To untrained eyes
+it was impossible to guess which of the trails one ought to follow; and
+without much surprise we suddenly found the motor stopping, while its
+wheels spun round vainly in the loose sand.
+
+The military chauffeur was not surprised either; nor was Captain de M.,
+the French staff-officer who accompanied us.
+
+"It often happens just here," they admitted philosophically. "When the
+General goes to Meknez he is always followed by a number of motors, so
+that if his own is stuck he may go on in another."
+
+This was interesting to know, but not particularly helpful, as the
+General and his motors were not travelling our way that morning. Nor was
+any one else, apparently. It is curious how quickly the _bled_ empties
+itself to the horizon if one happens to have an accident in it! But we
+had learned our lesson between Tangier and Rabat, and were able to
+produce a fair imitation of the fatalistic smile of the country.
+
+The officer remarked cheerfully that somebody might turn up, and we all
+sat down in the _bled_.
+
+A Berber woman, cropping up from nowhere, came and sat beside us. She
+had the thin sun-tanned face of her kind, brilliant eyes touched with
+_khol_, high cheek-bones, and the exceedingly short upper lip which
+gives such charm to the smile of the young nomad women. Her dress was
+the usual faded cotton shift, hooked on the shoulders with brass or
+silver clasps (still the antique _fibulae_), and wound about with a vague
+drapery in whose folds a brown baby wriggled.
+
+The coolness of dawn had vanished and the sun beat down from a fierce
+sky. The village on the railway was too far off to be reached on foot,
+and there were probably no mules there to spare. Nearer at hand there
+was no sign of help: not a fortified farm, or even a circle of nomad
+tents. It was the unadulterated desert--and we waited.
+
+Not in vain; for after an hour or two, from far off in the direction of
+the hills, there appeared an army with banners. We stared at it
+unbelievingly. The _mirage_, of course! We were too sophisticated to
+doubt it, and tales of sun-dazed travellers mocked by such visions rose
+in our well-stocked memories.
+
+The chauffeur thought otherwise. "Good! That's a pilgrimage from the
+mountains. They're going to Sale to pray at the tomb of the _marabout_;
+to-day is his feast-day."
+
+And so they were! And as we hung on their approach, and speculated as to
+the chances of their stopping to help, I had time to note the beauty of
+this long train winding toward us under parti-colored banners. There was
+something celestial, almost diaphanous, in the hundreds of figures
+turbaned and draped in white, marching slowly through the hot colorless
+radiance over the hot colorless sand.
+
+The most part were on foot, or bestriding tiny donkeys, but a stately
+Caid rode alone at the end of the line on a horse saddled with crimson
+velvet; and to him our officer appealed.
+
+The Caid courteously responded, and twenty or thirty pilgrims were
+ordered to harness themselves to the motor and haul it back to the
+trail, while the rest of the procession moved hieratically onward.
+
+I felt scruples at turning from their path even a fraction of this pious
+company; but they fell to with a saintly readiness, and before long the
+motor was on the trail. Then rewards were dispensed; and instantly those
+holy men became a prey to the darkest passions. Even in this land of
+contrasts the transition from pious serenity to rapacious rage can
+seldom have been more rapid. The devotees of the _marabout_ fought,
+screamed, tore their garments and rolled over each other with sanguinary
+gestures in the struggle for our pesetas; then, perceiving our
+indifference, they suddenly remembered their religious duties, scrambled
+to their feet, tucked up their flying draperies, and raced after the
+tail-end of the procession.
+
+Through a golden heat-haze we struggled on to the hills. The country was
+fallow, and in great part too sandy for agriculture; but here and there
+we came on one of the deep-set Moroccan rivers, with a reddish-yellow
+course channelled between perpendicular banks of red earth, and marked
+by a thin line of verdure that widened to fruit-gardens wherever a
+village had sprung up. We traversed several of these "sedentary"[6]
+villages, _nourwals_ of clay houses with thatched conical roofs, in
+gardens of fig, apricot and pomegranate that must be so many pink and
+white paradises after the winter rains.
+
+One of these villages seemed to be inhabited entirely by blacks, big
+friendly creatures who came out to tell us by which trail to reach the
+bridge over the yellow _oued_. In the _oued_ their womenkind were
+washing the variegated family rags. They were handsome blue-bronze
+creatures, bare to the waist, with tight black astrakhan curls and
+firmly sculptured legs and ankles; and all around them, like a swarm of
+gnats, danced countless jolly pickaninnies, naked as lizards, with the
+spindle legs and globular stomachs of children fed only on cereals.
+
+Half terrified but wholly interested, these infants buzzed about the
+motor while we stopped to photograph them; and as we watched their
+antics we wondered whether they were the descendants of the little
+Soudanese boys whom the founder of Meknez, the terrible Sultan
+Moulay-Ismael, used to carry off from beyond the Atlas and bring up in
+his military camps to form the nucleus of the Black Guard which defended
+his frontiers. We were on the line of travel between Meknez and the sea,
+and it seemed not unlikely that these _nourwals_ were all that remained
+of scattered outposts of Moulay-Ismael's legionaries.
+
+After a time we left _oueds_ and villages behind us and were in the
+mountains of the Rarb, toiling across a high sandy plateau. Far off a
+fringe of vegetation showed promise of shade and water, and at last,
+against a pale mass of olive-trees, we saw the sight which, at whatever
+end of the world one comes upon it, wakes the same sense of awe: the
+ruin of a Roman city.
+
+Volubilis (called by the Arabs the Castle of the Pharaohs) is the only
+considerable Roman colony so far discovered in Morocco. It stands on the
+extreme ledge of a high plateau backed by the mountains of the Zerhoun.
+Below the plateau, the land drops down precipitately to a narrow
+river-valley green with orchards and gardens, and in the neck of the
+valley, where the hills meet again, the conical white town of Moulay
+Idriss, the Sacred City of Morocco, rises sharply against a wooded
+background.
+
+So the two dominations look at each other across the valley: one, the
+lifeless Roman ruin, representing a system, an order, a social
+conception that still run through all our modern ways; the other, the
+untouched Moslem city, more dead and sucked back into an unintelligible
+past than any broken architrave of Greece or Rome.
+
+Volubilis seems to have had the extent and wealth of a great military
+outpost, such as Timgad in Algeria; but in the seventeenth century it
+was very nearly destroyed by Moulay-Ismael, the Sultan of the Black
+Guard, who carried off its monuments piece-meal to build his new capital
+of Meknez, that Mequinez of contemporary travellers which was held to be
+one of the wonders of the age.
+
+Little remains to Volubilis in the way of important monuments: only the
+fragments of a basilica, part of an arch of triumph erected in honour of
+Caracalla, and the fallen columns and architraves which strew the path
+of Rome across the world. But its site is magnificent; and as the
+excavation of the ruins was interrupted by the war it is possible that
+subsequent search may bring forth other treasures comparable to the
+beautiful bronze _sloughi_ (the African hound) which is now its
+principal possession.
+
+It was delicious, after seven hours of travel under the African sun, to
+sit on the shady terrace where the Curator of Volubilis, M. Louis
+Chatelain, welcomes his visitors. The French Fine Arts have built a
+charming house with gardens and pergolas for the custodian of the ruins,
+and have found in M. Chatelain an archaeologist so absorbed in his task
+that, as soon as conditions permit, every inch of soil in the
+circumference of the city will be made to yield up whatever secrets it
+hides.
+
+
+II
+
+MOULAY IDRISS
+
+We lingered under the pergolas of Volubilis till the heat grew less
+intolerable, and then our companions suggested a visit to Moulay Idriss.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Volubilis--the western portico of the basilica of Antonius Pius]
+
+Such a possibility had not occurred to us, and even Captain de M. seemed
+to doubt whether the expedition were advisable. Moulay Idriss was still
+said to be resentful of Christian intrusion: it was only a year before
+that the first French officers had entered it.
+
+But M. Chatelain was confident that there would be no opposition to our
+visit, and with the piled-up terraces and towers of the Sacred City
+growing golden in the afternoon light across the valley it was
+impossible to hesitate.
+
+We drove down through an olive-wood as ancient as those of Mitylene and
+Corfu, and then along the narrowing valley, between gardens luxuriant
+even in the parched Moroccan autumn. Presently the motor began to climb
+the steep road to the town, and at a gateway we got out and were met by
+the native chief of police. Instantly at the high windows of mysterious
+houses veiled heads appeared and sidelong eyes cautiously inspected us.
+But the quarter was deserted, and we walked on without meeting any one
+to the Street of the Weavers, a silent narrow way between low
+whitewashed niches like the cubicles in a convent. In each niche sat a
+grave white-robed youth, forming a great amphora-shaped grain-basket out
+of closely plaited straw. Vine-leaves and tendrils hung through the reed
+roofing overhead, and grape-clusters cast their classic shadow at our
+feet. It was like walking on the unrolled frieze of a white Etruscan
+vase patterned with black vine garlands.
+
+The silence and emptiness of the place began to strike us: there was no
+sign of the Oriental crowd that usually springs out of the dust at the
+approach of strangers. But suddenly we heard close by the lament of the
+_rekka_ (a kind of long fife), accompanied by a wild thrum-thrum of
+earthenware drums and a curious excited chanting of men's voices. I had
+heard such a chant before, at the other end of North Africa, in
+Kairouan, one of the other great Sanctuaries of Islam, where the sect of
+the Aissaouas celebrate their sanguinary rites in the _Zaouia_[7] of
+their confraternity. Yet it seemed incredible that if the Aissaouas of
+Moulay Idriss were performing their ceremonies that day the chief of
+police should be placidly leading us through the streets in the very
+direction from which the chant was coming. The Moroccan, though he has
+no desire to get into trouble with the Christian, prefers to be left
+alone on feast-days, especially in such a stronghold of the faith as
+Moulay Idriss.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Moulay-Idriss (9,000 inhabitants)]
+
+But "Geschehen ist geschehen" is the sum of Oriental philosophy. For
+centuries Moulay Idriss had held out fanatically on its holy steep;
+then, suddenly, in 1916, its chiefs saw that the game was up, and
+surrendered without a pretense of resistance. Now the whole thing was
+over, the new conditions were accepted, and the chief of police assured
+us that with the French uniform at our side we should be safe anywhere.
+
+"The Aissaouas?" he explained. "No, this is another sect, the Hamadchas,
+who are performing their ritual dance on the feast-day of their patron,
+the _marabout_ Hamadch, whose tomb is in the Zerhoun. The feast is
+celebrated publicly in the market-place of Moulay Idriss."
+
+As he spoke we came out into the market-place, and understood why there
+had been no crowd at the gate. All the population was in the square and
+on the roofs that mount above it, tier by tier, against the wooded
+hillside: Moulay Idriss had better to do that day than to gape at a few
+tourists in dust-coats.
+
+Short of Sfax, and the other coast cities of eastern Tunisia, there is
+surely not another town in North Africa as white as Moulay Idriss. Some
+are pale blue and pinky yellow, like the Kasbah of Tangier, or cream and
+blue like Sale; but Tangier and Sale, for centuries continuously
+subject to European influences, have probably borrowed their colors from
+Genoa and the Italian Riviera. In the interior of the country, and
+especially in Morocco, where the whole color-scheme is much soberer than
+in Algeria and Tunisia, the color of the native houses is always a
+penitential shade of mud and ashes.
+
+But Moulay Idriss, that afternoon, was as white as if its arcaded square
+had been scooped out of a big cream cheese. The late sunlight lay like
+gold-leaf on one side of the square, the other was in pure blue shade;
+and above it, the crowded roofs, terraces and balconies packed with
+women in bright dresses looked like a flower-field on the edge of a
+marble quarry.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Moulay-Idriss--the market-place]
+
+The bright dresses were as unusual a sight as the white walls, for the
+average Moroccan crowd is the color of its houses. But the occasion was
+a special one, for these feasts of the Hamadchas occur only twice a
+year, in spring and autumn, and as the ritual dances take place out of
+doors, instead of being performed inside the building of the
+confraternity, the feminine population seizes the opportunity to burst
+into flower on the house-tops.
+
+It is rare, in Morocco, to see in the streets or the bazaars any women
+except of the humblest classes, household slaves, servants, peasants
+from the country or small tradesmen's wives; and even they (with the
+exception of the unveiled Berber women) are wrapped in the prevailing
+grave-clothes. The _filles de joie_ and dancing-girls whose brilliant
+dresses enliven certain streets of the Algerian and Tunisian towns are
+invisible, or at least unnoticeable, in Morocco, where life, on the
+whole, seems so much less gay and brightly-tinted; and the women of the
+richer classes, mercantile or aristocratic, never leave their harems
+except to be married or buried. A throng of women dressed in light
+colors is therefore to be seen in public only when some street festival
+draws them to the roofs. Even then it is probable that the throng is
+mostly composed of slaves, household servants, and women of the lower
+_bourgeoisie_; but as they are all dressed in mauve and rose and pale
+green, with long earrings and jewelled head-bands flashing through their
+parted veils, the illusion, from a little distance, is as complete as
+though they were the ladies in waiting of the Queen of Sheba; and that
+radiant afternoon at Moulay Idriss, above the vine-garlanded square, and
+against the background of piled-up terraces, their vivid groups were in
+such contrast to the usual gray assemblages of the East that the scene
+seemed like a setting for some extravagantly staged ballet.
+
+For the same reason the spectacle unrolling itself below us took on a
+blessed air of unreality. Any normal person who has seen a dance of the
+Aissaouas and watched them swallow thorns and hot coals, slash
+themselves with knives, and roll on the floor in epilepsy must have
+privately longed, after the first excitement was over, to fly from the
+repulsive scene. The Hamadchas are much more savage than Aissaouas, and
+carry much farther their display of cataleptic anaesthesia; and, knowing
+this, I had wondered how long I should be able to stand the sight of
+what was going on below our terrace. But the beauty of the setting
+redeemed the bestial horror. In that unreal golden light the scene
+became merely symbolical: it was like one of those strange animal masks
+which the Middle Ages brought down from antiquity by way of the
+satyr-plays of Greece, and of which the half-human protagonists still
+grin and contort themselves among the Christian symbols of Gothic
+cathedrals.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph taken by Captain Henissart of the
+French Army_
+
+Moulay-Idriss--market-place on the day of the ritual dance of the
+Hamadchas]
+
+At one end of the square the musicians stood on a stone platform above
+the dancers. Like the musicians in a bas-relief they were flattened
+side by side against a wall, the fife-players with lifted arms and
+inflated cheeks, the drummers pounding frantically on long earthenware
+drums shaped like enormous hour-glasses and painted in barbaric
+patterns; and below, down the length of the market-place, the dance
+unrolled itself in a frenzied order that would have filled with envy a
+Paris or London impresario.
+
+In its centre an inspired-looking creature whirled about on his axis,
+the black ringlets standing out in snaky spirals from his haggard head,
+his cheek-muscles convulsively twitching. Around him, but a long way
+off, the dancers rocked and circled with long raucous cries dominated by
+the sobbing booming music; and in the sunlit space between dancers and
+holy man, two or three impish children bobbed about with fixed eyes and
+a grimace of comic frenzy, solemnly parodying his contortions.
+
+Meanwhile a tall grave personage in a doge-like cap, the only calm
+figure in the tumult, moved gravely here and there, regulating the
+dance, stimulating the frenzy, or calming some devotee who had broken
+the ranks and lay tossing and foaming on the stones. There was
+something far more sinister in this passionless figure, holding his hand
+on the key that let loose such crazy forces, than in the poor central
+whirligig who merely set the rhythm of the convulsions.
+
+The dancers were all dressed in white caftans or in the blue shirts of
+the lowest classes. In the sunlight something that looked like fresh red
+paint glistened on their shaved black or yellow skulls and made dark
+blotches on their garments. At first these stripes and stains suggested
+only a gaudy ritual ornament like the pattern on the drums; then one saw
+that the paint, or whatever it was, kept dripping down from the whirling
+caftans and forming fresh pools among the stones; that as one of the
+pools dried up another formed, redder and more glistening, and that
+these pools were fed from great gashes which the dancers hacked in their
+own skulls and breasts with hatchets and sharpened stones. The dance was
+a blood-rite, a great sacrificial symbol, in which blood flowed so
+freely that all the rocking feet were splashed with it.
+
+Gradually, however, it became evident that many of the dancers simply
+rocked and howled, without hacking themselves, and that most of the
+bleeding skulls and breasts belonged to negroes. Every now and then the
+circle widened to let in another figure, black or dark yellow, the
+figure of some humble blue-shirted spectator suddenly "getting religion"
+and rushing forward to snatch a weapon and baptize himself with his own
+blood; and as each new recruit joined the dancers the music shrieked
+louder and the devotees howled more wolfishly. And still, in the centre,
+the mad _marabout_ spun, and the children bobbed and mimicked him and
+rolled their diamond eyes.
+
+Such is the dance of the Hamadchas, of the confraternity of the
+_marabout_ Hamadch, a powerful saint of the seventeenth century, whose
+tomb is in the Zerhoun above Moulay Idriss. Hamadch, it appears, had a
+faithful slave, who, when his master died, killed himself in despair,
+and the self-inflicted wounds of the brotherhood are supposed to
+symbolize the slave's suicide; though no doubt the origin of the
+ceremony might be traced back to the depths of that ensanguined grove
+where Mr. Fraser plucked the Golden Bough.
+
+The more naive interpretation, however, has its advantages, since it
+enables the devotees to divide their ritual duties into two classes, the
+devotions of the free men being addressed to the saint who died in his
+bed, while the slaves belong to the slave, and must therefore simulate
+his horrid end. And this is the reason why most of the white caftans
+simply rock and writhe, while the humble blue shirts drip with blood.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph taken by Captain Henissart of the
+French Army_
+
+Moulay-Idriss--the market-place. Procession of the confraternity of the
+Hamadchas]
+
+The sun was setting when we came down from our terrace above the
+market-place. To find a lodging for the night we had to press on to
+Meknez, where we were awaited at the French military post; therefore we
+were reluctantly obliged to refuse an invitation to take tea with the
+Caid, whose high-perched house commands the whole white amphitheatre of
+the town. It was disappointing to leave Moulay Idriss with the Hamadchas
+howling their maddest, and so much besides to see; but as we drove away
+under the long shadows of the olives we counted ourselves lucky to have
+entered the sacred town, and luckier still to have been there on the day
+of the dance which, till a year ago, no foreigner had been allowed to
+see.
+
+A fine French road runs from Moulay Idriss to Meknez, and we flew on
+through the dusk between wooded hills and open stretches on which the
+fires of nomad camps put orange splashes in the darkness. Then the moon
+rose, and by its light we saw a widening valley, and gardens and
+orchards that stretched up to a great walled city outlined against the
+stars.
+
+
+III
+
+MEKNEZ
+
+All that evening, from the garden of the Military Subdivision on the
+opposite height, we sat and looked across at the dark tree-clumps and
+moon-lit walls of Meknez, and listened to its fantastic history.
+
+Meknez was built by the Sultan Moulay-Ismael, around the nucleus of a
+small town of which the site happened to please him, at the very moment
+when Louis XIV was creating Versailles. The coincidence of two
+contemporary autocrats calling cities out of the wilderness has caused
+persons with a taste for analogy to describe Meknez as the Versailles of
+Morocco: an epithet which is about as instructive as it would be to call
+Phidias the Benvenuto Cellini of Greece.
+
+There is, however, a pretext for the comparison in the fact that the two
+sovereigns took a lively interest in each other's affairs. Moulay-Ismael
+sent several embassies to treat with Louis XIV on the eternal question
+of piracy and the ransom of Christian captives, and the two rulers were
+continually exchanging gifts and compliments.
+
+The governor of Tetouan, who was sent to Paris in 1680, having brought
+as presents to the French King a lion, a lioness, a tigress, and four
+ostriches, Louis XIV shortly afterward despatched M. de Saint-Amand to
+Morocco with two dozen watches, twelve pieces of gold brocade, a cannon
+six feet long and other firearms. After this the relations between the
+two courts remained friendly till 1693, at which time they were strained
+by the refusal of France to return the Moorish captives who were
+employed on the king's galleys, and who were probably as much needed
+there as the Sultan's Christian slaves for the building of Moorish
+palaces.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Meknez--gate: "Bab-Mansour"]
+
+Six years later the Sultan despatched Abdallah-ben-Aissa to France to
+reopen negotiations. The ambassador was as brilliantly received and as
+eagerly run after as a modern statesman on an official mission, and his
+candidly expressed admiration for the personal charms of the Princesse
+de Conti, one of the French monarch's legitimatized children, is
+supposed to have been mistaken by the court for an offer of marriage
+from the Emperor of Barbary. But he came back without a treaty.
+
+Moulay-Ismael, whose long reign (1673 to 1727) and extraordinary
+exploits make him already a legendary figure, conceived, early in his
+career, a passion for Meknez; and through all his troubled rule, with
+its alternations of barbaric warfare and far-reaching negotiations,
+palace intrigue, crazy bloodshed and great administrative reforms, his
+heart perpetually reverted to the wooded slopes on which he dreamed of
+building a city more splendid than Fez or Marrakech.
+
+"The Sultan" (writes his chronicler Aboul Kasim-ibn-Ahmad, called
+"Ezziani") "loved Meknez, the climate of which had enchanted him, and he
+would have liked never to leave it." He left it, indeed, often, left it
+perpetually, to fight with revolted tribes in the Atlas, to defeat one
+Berber army after another, to carry his arms across the High Atlas into
+the Souss, to adorn Fez with the heads of seven hundred vanquished
+chiefs, to put down his three rebellious brothers, to strip all the
+cities of his empire of their negroes and transport them to Meknez ("so
+that not a negro, man, woman or child, slave or free, was left in any
+part of the country"); to fight and defeat the Christians (1683); to
+take Tangier, to conduct a campaign on the Moulouya, to lead the holy
+war against the Spanish (1689), to take Larache, the Spanish commercial
+post on the west coast (which furnished eighteen hundred captives for
+Meknez); to lay siege to Ceuta, conduct a campaign against the Turks of
+Algiers, repress the pillage in his army, subdue more tribes, and build
+forts for his Black Legionaries from Oudjda to the Oued Noun. But almost
+each year's bloody record ends with the placid phrase: "Then the Sultan
+returned to Meknez."
+
+In the year 1701, Ezziani writes, the indomitable old man "deprived his
+rebellious sons of their principalities; after which date he consecrated
+himself exclusively to the building of his palaces and the planting of
+his gardens. And in 1720 (nineteen years later in this long reign!) he
+ordered the destruction of the mausoleum of Moulay Idriss for the
+purpose of enlarging it. And to gain the necessary space he bought all
+the adjacent land, and the workmen did not leave these new labors till
+they were entirely completed."
+
+In this same year there was levied on Fez a new tax which was so heavy
+that the inhabitants were obliged to abandon the city.
+
+Yet it is written of this terrible old monarch, who devastated whole
+districts, and sacrificed uncounted thousands of lives for his ruthless
+pleasure, that under his administration of his chaotic and turbulent
+empire "the country rejoiced in the most complete security. A Jew or a
+woman might travel alone from Oudjda to the Oued Noun without any one's
+asking their business. Abundance reigned throughout the land: grain,
+food, cattle were to be bought for the lowest prices. Nowhere in the
+whole of Morocco was a highwayman or a robber to be found."
+
+And probably both sides of the picture are true.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What, then, was the marvel across the valley, what were the "lordly
+pleasure-houses" to whose creation and enlargement Moulay-Ismael
+returned again and again amid the throes and violences of a nearly
+centenarian life?
+
+The chronicler continues: "The Sultan caused all the houses near the
+Kasbah[8] to be demolished, _and compelled the inhabitants to carry away
+the ruins of their dwellings_. All the eastern end of the town was also
+torn down, and the ramparts were rebuilt. He also built the Great Mosque
+next to the palace of Nasr.... He occupied himself personally with the
+construction of his palaces, and before one was finished he caused
+another to be begun. He built the mosque of Elakhdar; the walls of the
+new town were pierced with twenty fortified gates and surmounted with
+platforms for cannon. Within the walls he made a great artificial lake
+where one might row in boats. There was also a granary with immense
+subterranean reservoirs of water, and a stable _three miles long_ for
+the Sultan's horses and mules; twelve thousand horses could be stabled
+in it. The flooring rested on vaults in which the grain for the horses
+was stored.... He also built the palace of Elmansour, which had twenty
+cupolas; from the top of each cupola one could look forth on the plain
+and the mountains around Meknez. All about the stables the rarest trees
+were planted. Within the walls were fifty palaces, each with its own
+mosque and its baths. Never was such a thing known in any country, Arab
+or foreign, pagan or Moslem. The guarding of the doors of these palaces
+was intrusted to twelve hundred black eunuchs."
+
+Such were the wonders that seventeenth century travellers toiled across
+the desert to see, and from which they came back dazzled and almost
+incredulous, as if half-suspecting that some djinn had deluded them with
+the vision of a phantom city. But for the soberer European records, and
+the evidence of the ruins themselves (for the whole of the new Meknez is
+a ruin), one might indeed be inclined to regard Ezziani's statements as
+an Oriental fable; but the briefest glimpse of Moulay-Ismael's Meknez
+makes it easy to believe all his chronicler tells of it, even to the
+three miles of stables.
+
+Next morning we drove across the valley and, skirting the old town on
+the hill, entered, by one of the twenty gates of Moulay-Ismael, a long
+empty street lined with half-ruined arcades. Beyond was another street
+of beaten red earth bordered by high red walls blotched with gray and
+mauve. Ahead of us this road stretched out interminably (Meknez, before
+Washington, was the "city of magnificent distances"), and down its empty
+length only one or two draped figures passed, like shadows on the way to
+Shadowland. It was clear that the living held no further traffic with
+the Meknez of Moulay-Ismael.
+
+Here it was at last. Another great gateway let us, under a resplendently
+bejewelled arch of turquoise-blue and green, into another walled
+emptiness of red clay; a third gate opened into still vaster vacancies,
+and at their farther end rose a colossal red ruin, something like the
+lower stories of a Roman amphitheatre that should stretch out
+indefinitely instead of forming a circle, or like a series of Roman
+aqueducts built side by side and joined into one structure. Below this
+indescribable ruin the arid ground sloped down to an artificial water
+which was surely the lake that the Sultan had made for his
+boating-parties; and beyond it more red earth stretched away to more
+walls and gates, with glimpses of abandoned palaces and huge crumbling
+angle-towers.
+
+The vastness, the silence, the catastrophic desolation of the place,
+were all the more impressive because of the relatively recent date of
+the buildings. As Moulay-Ismael had dealt with Volubilis, so time had
+dealt with his own Meknez; and the destruction which it had taken
+thousands of lash-driven slaves to inflict on the stout walls of the
+Roman city, neglect and abandonment had here rapidly accomplished. But
+though the sun-baked clay of which the impatient Sultan built his
+pleasure-houses will not suffer comparison with the firm stones of Rome,
+"the high Roman fashion" is visible in the shape and outline of these
+ruins. What they are no one knows. In spite of Ezziani's text (written
+when the place was already partly destroyed) archaeologists disagree as
+to the uses of the crypt of rose-flushed clay whose twenty rows of
+gigantic arches are so like an alignment of Roman aqueducts. Were these
+the vaulted granaries, or the subterranean reservoirs under the three
+miles of stabling which housed the twelve thousand horses? The stables,
+at any rate, were certainly near this spot, for the lake adjoins the
+ruins as in the chronicler's description; and between it and old
+Meknez, behind walls within walls, lie all that remains of the fifty
+palaces with their cupolas, gardens, mosques and baths.
+
+This inner region is less ruined than the mysterious vaulted structure,
+and one of the palaces, being still reserved for the present Sultan's
+use, cannot be visited; but we wandered unchallenged through desert
+courts, gardens of cypress and olive where dried fountains and painted
+summer-houses are falling into dust, and barren spaces enclosed in long
+empty facades. It was all the work of an eager and imperious old man,
+who, to realize his dream quickly, built in perishable materials; but
+the design, the dimensions, the whole conception, show that he had not
+only heard of Versailles but had looked with his own eyes on Volubilis.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Meknez--the ruins of the palace of Moulay-Ismael]
+
+To build on such a scale, and finish the work in a single lifetime, even
+if the materials be malleable and the life a long one, implies a command
+of human labor that the other Sultan at Versailles must have envied.
+The imposition of the _corvee_ was of course even simpler in Morocco
+than in France, since the material to draw on was unlimited, provided
+one could assert one's power over it; and for that purpose Ismael had
+his Black Army, the hundred and fifty thousand disciplined legionaries
+who enabled him to enforce his rule over all the wild country from
+Algiers to Agadir.
+
+The methods by which this army were raised and increased are worth
+recounting in Ezziani's words:
+
+"A _taleb_[9] of Marrakech having shown the Sultan a register containing
+the names of the negroes who had formed part of the army of El-Mansour,
+Moulay-Ismael ordered his agents to collect all that remained of these
+negroes and their children.... He also sent to the tribes of the
+Beni-Hasen, and into the mountains, to purchase all the negroes to be
+found there. Thus all that were in the whole of Moghreb were assembled,
+from the cities and the countryside, till not one was left, slave or
+free.
+
+"These negroes were armed and clothed, and sent to Mechra Erremel (north
+of Meknez) where they were ordered to build themselves houses, plant
+gardens and remain till their children were ten years old. Then the
+Sultan caused all the children to be brought to him, both boys and
+girls. The boys were apprenticed to masons, carpenters, and other
+tradesmen; others were employed to make mortar. The next year they were
+taught to drive the mules, the third to make _adobe_ for building; the
+fourth year they learned to ride horses bareback, the fifth they were
+taught to ride in the saddle while using firearms. At the age of sixteen
+these boys became soldiers. They were then married to the young
+negresses who had meanwhile been taught cooking and washing in the
+Sultan's palaces--except those who were pretty, and these were given a
+musical education, after which each one received a wedding-dress and a
+marriage settlement, and was handed over to her husband.
+
+"All the children of these couples were in due time destined for the
+Black Army, or for domestic service in the palaces. Every year the
+Sultan went to the camp at Mechra Erremel and brought back the
+children. The Black Army numbered one hundred and fifty thousand men, of
+whom part were at Erremel, part at Meknez, and the rest in the
+seventy-six forts which the Sultan built for them throughout his domain.
+May the Lord be merciful to his memory!"
+
+Such was the army by means of which Ismael enforced the _corvee_ on his
+undisciplined tribes. Many thousands of lives went to the building of
+imperial Meknez; but his subjects would scarcely have sufficed if he had
+not been able to add to them twenty-five thousand Christian captives.
+
+M. Augustin Bernard, in his admirable book on Morocco, says that the
+seventeenth century was "the golden age of piracy" in Morocco; and the
+great Ismael was no doubt one of its chief promoters. One understands
+his unwillingness to come to an agreement with his great friend and
+competitor, Louis XIV, on the difficult subject of the ransom of
+Christian captives when one reads in the admiring Ezziani that it took
+fifty-five thousand prisoners and captives to execute his architectural
+conceptions.
+
+"These prisoners, by day, were occupied on various tasks; at night they
+were locked into subterranean dungeons. Any prisoner who died at his
+task was _built into the wall he was building_." (This statement is
+confirmed by John Windus, the English traveller who visited the court of
+Moulay-Ismael in the Sultan's old age.) Many Europeans must have
+succumbed quickly to the heat and the lash, for the wall-builders were
+obliged to make each stroke in time with their neighbors, and were
+bastinadoed mercilessly if they broke the rhythm; and there is little
+doubt that the expert artisans of France, Italy and Spain were even
+dearer to the old architectural madman than the friendship of the
+palace-building despot across the sea.
+
+Ezziani's chronicle dates from the first part of the nineteenth century,
+and is an Arab's colorless panegyric of a great Arab ruler; but John
+Windus, the Englishman who accompanied Commodore Stewart's embassy to
+Meknez in 1721, saw the imperial palaces and their builder with his own
+eyes, and described them with the vivacity of a foreigner struck by
+every contrast.
+
+Moulay-Ismael was then about eighty-seven years old, "a middle-sized
+man, who has the remains of a good face, with nothing of a negro's
+features, though his mother was a black. He has a high nose, which is
+pretty long from the eye-brows downward, and thin. He has lost all his
+teeth, and breathes short, as if his lungs were bad, coughs and spits
+pretty often, which never falls to the ground, men being always ready
+with handkerchiefs to receive it. His beard is thin and very white, his
+eyes seem to have been sparkling, but their vigor decayed through age,
+and his cheeks very much sunk in."
+
+Such was the appearance of this extraordinary man, who deceived,
+tortured, betrayed, assassinated, terrorized and mocked his slaves, his
+subjects, his women and children and his ministers like any other
+half-savage Arab despot, but who yet managed through his long reign to
+maintain a barbarous empire, to police the wilderness, and give at least
+an appearance of prosperity and security where all had before been
+chaos.
+
+The English emissaries appear to have been much struck by the
+magnificence of his palaces, then in all the splendor of novelty, and
+gleaming with marbles brought from Volubilis and Sale. Windus extols in
+particular the sunken gardens of cypress, pomegranate and orange trees,
+some of them laid out seventy feet below the level of the palace-courts;
+the exquisite plaster fretwork; the miles of tessellated walls and
+pavement made in the finely patterned mosaic work of Fez; and the long
+terrace walk trellised with "vines and other greens" leading from the
+palace to the famous stables, and over which it was the Sultan's custom
+to drive in a chariot drawn by women and eunuchs.
+
+Moulay-Ismael received the English ambassador with every show of pomp
+and friendship, and immediately "made him a present" of a handful of
+young English captives; but just as the negotiations were about to be
+concluded Commodore Stewart was privately advised that the Sultan had no
+intention of allowing the rest of the English to be ransomed. Luckily a
+diplomatically composed letter, addressed by the English envoy to one of
+the favorite wives, resulted in Ismael's changing his mind, and the
+captives were finally given up, and departed with their rescuers. As one
+stands in the fiery sun, among the monstrous ruins of those tragic
+walls, one pictures the other Christian captives pausing for a second,
+at the risk of death, in the rhythmic beat of their labor, to watch the
+little train of their companions winding away across the desert to
+freedom.
+
+On the way back through the long streets that lead to the ruins we
+noticed, lying by the roadside, the shafts of fluted columns, blocks of
+marble, Roman capitals: fragments of the long loot of Sale and
+Volubilis. We asked how they came there, and were told that, according
+to a tradition still believed in the country, when the prisoners and
+captives who were dragging the building materials toward the palace
+under the blistering sun heard of the old Sultan's death, they dropped
+their loads with one accord and fled. At the same moment every worker on
+the walls flung down his trowel or hod, every slave of the palaces
+stopped grinding or scouring or drawing water or carrying faggots or
+polishing the miles of tessellated floors; so that, when the tyrant's
+heart stopped beating, at that very instant life ceased to circulate in
+the huge house he had built, and in all its members it became a carcass
+for his carcass.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[5] The high plateau-and-hill formation between Tangier and Fez.
+
+[6] So called to distinguish them from the tent villages of the less
+settled groups.
+
+[7] Sacred college.
+
+[8] The citadal of old Meknez.
+
+[9] Learned man.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+FEZ
+
+
+I
+
+THE FIRST VISION
+
+Many-walled Fez rose up before us out of the plain toward the end of the
+day.
+
+The walls and towers we saw were those of the upper town, Fez Eldjid
+(the New), which lies on the edge of the plateau and hides from view Old
+Fez tumbling down below it into the ravine of the Oued Fez. Thus
+approached, the city presents to view only a long line of ramparts and
+fortresses, merging into the wide, tawny plain and framed in barren
+mountains. Not a house is visible outside the walls, except, at a
+respectful distance, the few unobtrusive buildings of the European
+colony; and not a village breaks the desolation of the landscape.
+
+As we drew nearer, the walls towered close over us, and skirting them we
+came to a bare space outside a great horseshoe gate, and found ourselves
+suddenly in the foreground of a picture by Carpaccio or Bellini. Where
+else had one seen just those rows of white-turbaned majestic figures,
+squatting in the dust under lofty walls, all the pale faces ringed in
+curling beards turned to the story-teller in the centre of the group?
+Transform the story-teller into a rapt young Venetian, and you have the
+audience and the foreground of Carpaccio's "Preaching of St. Stephen,"
+even to the camels craning inquisitive necks above the turbans. Every
+step of the way in North Africa corroborates the close observation of
+the early travellers, whether painters or narrators, and shows the
+unchanged character of the Oriental life that the Venetians pictured,
+and Leo Africanus and Windus and Charles Cochelet described.
+
+There was time, before sunset, to go up to the hill, from which the
+ruined tombs of the Merinid Sultans look down over the city they made
+glorious. After the savage massacre of foreign residents in 1912 the
+French encircled the heights commanding Fez with one of their admirably
+engineered military roads, and in a few minutes our motor had climbed to
+the point from which the great dynasty of artist-Sultans dreamed of
+looking down forever on their capital.
+
+Nothing endures in Islam, except what human inertia has left standing
+and its own solidity has preserved from the elements. Or rather, nothing
+remains intact, and nothing wholly perishes, but the architecture, like
+all else, lingers on half-ruined and half-unchanged. The Merinid tombs,
+however, are only hollow shells and broken walls, grown part of the
+brown cliff they cling to. No one thinks of them save as an added touch
+of picturesqueness where all is picturesque: they survive as the best
+point from which to look down at Fez.
+
+There it lies, outspread in golden light, roofs, terraces, and towers
+sliding over the plain's edge in a rush dammed here and there by
+barriers of cypress and ilex, but growing more precipitous as the
+ravine of the Fez narrows downward with the fall of the river. It is as
+though some powerful enchanter, after decreeing that the city should be
+hurled into the depths, had been moved by its beauty, and with a wave of
+his wand held it suspended above destruction.
+
+At first the eye takes in only this impression of a great city over a
+green abyss; then the complex scene begins to define itself. All around
+are the outer lines of ramparts, walls beyond walls, their crenellations
+climbing the heights, their angle fortresses dominating the precipices.
+Almost on a level with us lies the upper city, the aristocratic Fez
+Eldjid of painted palaces and gardens; then, as the houses close in and
+descend more abruptly, terraces, minarets, domes, and long reed-thatched
+roofs of the bazaars, all gather around the green-tiled tomb of Moulay
+Idriss, and the tower of the Almohad mosque of El Kairouiyin, which
+adjoin each other in the depths of Fez, and form its central sanctuary.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From the Merinid hill we had noticed a long facade among the cypresses
+and fruit-trees of Eldjid. This was Bou-Jeloud, the old summer-palace
+of the Sultan's harem, now the house of the Resident-General, where
+lodgings had been prepared for us.
+
+The road descended again, crossing the Oued Fez by one of the fine old
+single-arch bridges that mark the architectural link between Morocco and
+Spain. We skirted high walls, wayside pools, and dripping mill-wheels;
+then one of the city gates engulfed us, and we were in the waste spaces
+of intramural Fez, formerly the lines of defense of a rich and
+perpetually menaced city, now chiefly used for refuse-heaps, open-air
+fondaks, and dreaming-places for rows of Lazaruses rolled in their
+cerements in the dust.
+
+Through another gate and more walls we came to an arch in the inner line
+of defense. Beyond that, the motor paused before a green door, where a
+Cadi in a silken caftan received us. Across squares of orange-trees
+divided by running water we were led to an arcaded apartment hung with
+Moroccan embroideries and lined with wide divans; the hall of reception
+of the Resident-General. Through its arches were other tiled distances,
+fountains, arcades; beyond, in greener depths, the bright blossoms of a
+flower-garden. Such was our first sight of Bou-Jeloud, once the
+summer-palace of the wives of Moulay Hafid.
+
+Upstairs, from a room walled and ceiled with cedar, and decorated with
+the bold rose-pink embroideries of Sale and the intricate old needlework
+of Fez, I looked out over the upper city toward the mauve and tawny
+mountains.
+
+Just below the window the flat roofs of a group of little houses
+descended like the steps of an irregular staircase. Between them rose a
+few cypresses and a green minaret; out of the court of one house an
+ancient fig-tree thrust its twisted arms. The sun had set, and one after
+another bright figures appeared on the roofs. The children came first,
+hung with silver amulets and amber beads, and pursued by negresses in
+striped turbans, who bustled up with rugs and matting; then the mothers
+followed more indolently, released from their ashy mufflings and
+showing, under their light veils, long earrings from the _Mellah_[10]
+and caftans of pale green or peach color.
+
+The houses were humble ones, such as grow up in the cracks of a wealthy
+quarter, and their inhabitants doubtless small folk; but in the
+enchanted African twilight the terraces blossomed like gardens, and when
+the moon rose and the muezzin called from the minaret, the domestic
+squabbles and the shrill cries from roof to roof became part of a story
+in Bagdad, overheard a thousand years ago by that arch-detective
+Haroun-al-Raschid.
+
+
+II
+
+FEZ ELDJID
+
+It is usual to speak of Fez as very old, and the term seems justified
+when one remembers that the palace of Bou-Jeloud stands on the site of
+an Almoravid Kasbah of the eleventh century, that when that Kasbah was
+erected Fez Elbali had already existed for three hundred years, that El
+Kairouiyin is the contemporary of Sant' Ambrogio of Milan, and that the
+original mosque of Moulay Idriss II was built over his grave in the
+eighth century.
+
+Fez is, in fact, the oldest city in Morocco without a Phenician or a
+Roman past, and has preserved more traces than any other of its
+architectural flowering-time; yet it would be truer to say of it, as of
+all Moroccan cities, that it has no age, since its seemingly immutable
+shape is forever crumbling and being renewed on the old lines.
+
+When we rode forth the next day to visit some of the palaces of Eldjid
+our pink-saddled mules carried us at once out of the bounds of time. How
+associate anything so precise and Occidental as years or centuries with
+these visions of frail splendor seen through cypresses and roses? The
+Cadis in their multiple muslins, who received us in secret doorways and
+led us by many passages into the sudden wonder of gardens and fountains;
+the bright-earringed negresses peering down from painted balconies; the
+pilgrims and clients dozing in the sun against hot walls; the deserted
+halls with plaster lace-work and gold pendentives in tiled niches; the
+Venetian chandeliers and tawdry rococo beds; the terraces from which
+pigeons whirled up in a white cloud while we walked on a carpet of their
+feathers--were all these the ghosts of vanished state, or the actual
+setting of the life of some rich merchant with "business connections"
+in Liverpool and Lyons, or some government official at that very moment
+speeding to Meknez or Casablanca in his sixty h. p. motor?
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Fez Eldjid (the upper city)]
+
+We visited old palaces and new, inhabited and abandoned, and over all
+lay the same fine dust of oblivion, like the silvery mould on an
+overripe fruit. Overripeness is indeed the characteristic of this rich
+and stagnant civilization. Buildings, people, customs, seem all about to
+crumble and fall of their own weight: the present is a perpetually
+prolonged past. To touch the past with one's hands is realized only in
+dreams; and in Morocco the dream-feeling envelopes one at every step.
+One trembles continually lest the "Person from Porlock" should step in.
+
+He is undoubtedly on the way; but Fez had not heard of him when we rode
+out that morning. Fez Eldjid, the "New Fez" of palaces and government
+buildings, was founded in the fourteenth century by the Merinid princes,
+and probably looks much as it did then. The palaces in their overgrown
+gardens, with pale-green trellises dividing the rose-beds from the
+blue-and-white tiled paths, and fountains in fluted basins of Italian
+marble, all had the same drowsy charm; yet the oldest were built not
+more than a century or two ago, others within the last fifty years; and
+at Marrakech, later in our journey, we were to visit a sumptuous
+dwelling where plaster-cutters and ceramists from Fez were actually
+repeating with wonderful skill and spontaneity, the old ornamentation of
+which the threads run back to Rome and Damascus.
+
+Of really old private dwellings, palaces or rich men's houses, there are
+surprisingly few in Morocco. It is hard to guess the age of some of the
+featureless houses propping each other's flanks in old Fez or old Sale;
+but people rich enough to rebuild have always done so, and the passion
+for building seems allied, in this country of inconsequences, to the
+supine indifference that lets existing constructions crumble back to
+clay. "Dust to dust" should have been the motto of the Moroccan
+palace-builders.
+
+Fez possesses one old secular building, a fine fondak of the fifteenth
+century; but in Morocco, as a rule, only mosques and the tombs of saints
+are preserved--none too carefully--and even the strong stone buildings
+of the Almohads have been allowed to fall to ruin, as at Chella and
+Rabat. This indifference to the completed object--which is like a kind
+of collective exaggeration of the artist's indifference to his completed
+work--has resulted in the total disappearance of the furniture and works
+of art which must have filled the beautiful buildings of the Merinid
+period. Neither pottery nor brass-work nor enamels nor fine hangings
+survive; there is no parallel in Morocco to the textiles of Syria, the
+potteries of Persia, the Byzantine ivories or enamels. It has been said
+that the Moroccan is always a nomad, who lives in his house as if it
+were a tent; but this is not a conclusive answer to any one who knows
+the passion of the modern Moroccan for European furniture. When one
+reads the list of the treasures contained in the palaces of the mediaeval
+Sultans of Egypt one feels sure that, if artists were lacking in
+Morocco, the princes and merchants who brought skilled craftsmen across
+the desert to build their cities must also have imported treasures to
+adorn them. Yet, as far as is known, the famous fourteenth-century
+bronze chandelier of Tetuan, and the fine old ritual furniture reported
+to be contained in certain mosques, are the only important works of art
+in Morocco later in date than the Roman _sloughi_ of Volubilis.
+
+
+III
+
+FEZ ELBALI
+
+The distances in Fez are so great and the streets so narrow, and in some
+quarters so crowded, that all but saints or humble folk go about on
+mule-back.
+
+In the afternoon, accordingly, the pink mules came again, and we set out
+for the long tunnel-like street that leads down the hill to the Fez
+Elbali.
+
+"Look out--'ware heads!" our leader would call back at every turn, as
+our way shrank to a black passage under a house bestriding the street,
+or a caravan of donkeys laden with obstructive reeds or branches of
+dates made the passers-by flatten themselves against the walls.
+
+On each side of the street the houses hung over us like fortresses,
+leaning across the narrow strip of blue and throwing out great beams and
+buttresses to prop each other's bulging sides. Windows there were none
+on the lower floors; only here and there an iron-barred slit stuffed
+with rags and immemorial filth, from which a lean cat would suddenly
+spring out, and scuttle off under an archway like a witch's familiar.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Fez--a reed-roofed street]
+
+Some of these descending lanes were packed with people, others as
+deserted as a cemetery; and it was strange to pass from the thronged
+streets leading to the bazaars to the profound and secretive silence of
+a quarter of well-to-do dwelling-houses, where only a few veiled women
+attended by negro slaves moved noiselessly over the clean cobblestones,
+and the sound of fountains and runnels came from hidden courtyards and
+over garden-walls.
+
+This noise of water is as characteristic of Fez as of Damascus. The Oued
+Fez rushes through the heart of the town, bridged, canalized, built
+over, and ever and again bursting out into tumultuous falls and pools
+shadowed with foliage. The central artery of the city is not a street
+but a waterfall; and tales are told of the dark uses to which, even
+now, the underground currents are put by some of the dwellers behind the
+blank walls and scented gardens of those highly respectable streets.
+
+The crowd in Oriental cities is made up of many elements, and in Morocco
+Turks, Jews and infidels, Berbers of the mountains, fanatics of the
+confraternities, Soudanese blacks and haggard Blue Men of the Souss,
+jostle the merchants and government officials with that democratic
+familiarity which goes side by side with abject servility in this land
+of perpetual contradictions. But Fez is above all the city of wealth and
+learning, of universities and counting-houses, and the merchant and the
+_oulama_[11]--the sedentary and luxurious types--prevail.
+
+The slippered Fazi merchant, wrapped in white muslins and securely
+mounted on a broad velvet saddle-cloth anchored to the back of a broad
+mule, is as unlike the Arab horseman of the desert as Mr. Tracy Tupman
+was unlike the Musketeers of Dumas. Ease, music, money-making, the
+affairs of his harem and the bringing-up of his children, are his chief
+interests, and his plump pale face with long-lashed hazel eyes, his
+curling beard and fat womanish hands, recall the portly potentates of
+Hindu miniatures, dreaming among houris beside lotus-tanks.
+
+These personages, when they ride abroad, are preceded by a swarthy
+footman, who keeps his hand on the embroidered bridle; and the
+government officers and dignitaries of the _Makhzen_[12] are usually
+escorted by several mounted officers of their household, with a servant
+to each mule. The cry of the runners scatters the crowd, and even the
+panniered donkeys and perpetually astonished camels somehow contrive to
+become two-dimensional while the white procession goes by.
+
+Then the populace closes in again, so quickly and densely that it seems
+impossible it could ever have been parted, and negro water-carriers,
+muffled women, beggars streaming with sores, sinewy and greasy "saints,"
+Soudanese sorcerers hung with amulets made of sardine-boxes and
+hares'-feet, long-lashed boys of the Chleuh in clean embroidered
+caftans, Jews in black robes and skull-caps, university students
+carrying their prayer-carpets, bangled and spangled black women,
+scrofulous children with gazelle eyes and mangy skulls, and blind men
+tapping along with linked arms and howling out verses of the Koran,
+surge together in a mass drawn by irresistible suction to the point
+where the bazaars converge about the mosques of Moulay Idriss and El
+Kairouiyin.
+
+Seen from a terrace of the upper town, the long thatched roofing of El
+Attarine, the central bazaar of Fez, promises fantastic revelations of
+native life; but the dun-colored crowds moving through its checkered
+twilight, the lack of carved shop-fronts and gaily adorned
+coffee-houses, and the absence of the painted coffers and vivid
+embroideries of Tunis, remind one that Morocco is a melancholy country,
+and Fez a profoundly melancholy city.
+
+_Dust and ashes, dust and ashes_, echoes from the gray walls, the
+mouldering thatch of the _souks_, the long lamentable song of the blind
+beggars sitting in rows under the feet of the camels and asses. No young
+men stroll through the bazaar in bright caftans, with roses and jasmine
+behind their ears, no pedlars offer lemonade and sweetmeats and golden
+fritters, no flower-sellers pursue one with tight bunches of
+orange-blossom and little pink roses. The well-to-do ride by in white,
+and the rest of the population goes mournfully in earth-color.
+
+But gradually one falls under the spell of another influence--the
+influence of the Atlas and the desert. Unknown Africa seems much nearer
+to Morocco than to the white towns of Tunis and the smiling oases of
+South Algeria. One feels the nearness of Marrakech at Fez, and at
+Marrakech that of Timbuctoo.
+
+Fez is sombre, and the bazaars clustered about its holiest sanctuaries
+form its most sombre quarter. Dusk falls there early, and oil-lanterns
+twinkle in the merchants' niches while the clear African daylight still
+lies on the gardens of upper Fez. This twilight adds to the mystery of
+the _souks_, making them, in spite of profane noise and crowding and
+filth, an impressive approach to the sacred places.
+
+Until a year or two ago, the precincts around Moulay Idriss and El
+Kairouiyin were _horm_, that is, cut off from the unbeliever. Heavy
+beams of wood barred the end of each _souk_, shutting off the
+sanctuaries, and the Christian could only conjecture what lay beyond.
+Now he knows in part; for, though the beams have not been lowered, all
+comers may pass under them to the lanes about the mosques, and even
+pause a moment in their open doorways. Farther one may not go, for the
+shrines of Morocco are still closed to unbelievers; but whoever knows
+Cordova, or has stood under the arches of the Great Mosque of Kairouan,
+can reconstruct something of the hidden beauties of its namesake, the
+"Mosque Kairouan" of western Africa.
+
+Once under the bars, the richness of the old Moorish Fez presses upon
+one with unexpected beauty. Here is the graceful tiled fountain of
+Nedjarine, glittering with the unapproachable blues and greens of
+ceramic mosaics; near it, the courtyard of the Fondak Nedjarine, oldest
+and stateliest of Moroccan inns, with triple galleries of sculptured
+cedar rising above arcades of stone. A little farther on lights and
+incense draw one to a threshold where it is well not to linger unduly.
+Under a deep archway, between booths where gay votive candles are sold,
+the glimmer of hanging lamps falls on patches of gilding and mosaic, and
+on veiled women prostrating themselves before an invisible shrine--for
+this is the vestibule of the mosque of Moulay Idriss, where, on certain
+days of the week, women are admitted to pray.
+
+Moulay Idriss was not built over the grave of the Fatimite prophet,
+first of the name, whose bones lie in the Zerhoun above his sacred town.
+The mosque of Fez grew up around the tomb of his posthumous son, Moulay
+Idriss II, who, descending from the hills, fell upon a camp of Berbers
+on an affluent of the Sebou, and there laid the foundations of Fez, and
+of the Moroccan Empire.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Fez--the Nedjarine fountain]
+
+Of the original monument it is said that little remains. The
+_zaouia_[13] which encloses it dates from the reign of Moulay-Ismael,
+the seventeenth-century Sultan of Meknez, and the mosque itself, and the
+green minaret shooting up from the very centre of old Fez, were not
+built until 1820. But a rich surface of age has already formed on all
+these disparate buildings, and the over-gorgeous details of the shrines
+and fountains set in their outer walls are blended into harmony by a
+film of incense-smoke, and the grease of countless venerating lips and
+hands.
+
+Featureless walls of mean houses close in again at the next turn; but a
+few steps farther another archway reveals another secret scene. This
+time it is a corner of the jealously guarded court of ablutions in the
+great mosque El Kairouiyin, with the twin green-roofed pavilions that
+are so like those of the Alhambra.
+
+Those who have walked around the outer walls of the mosque of the other
+Kairouan, and recall the successive doors opening into the forecourt and
+into the mosque itself, will be able to guess at the plan of the church
+of Fez. The great Almohad sanctuary of Tunisia is singularly free from
+parasitic buildings, and may be approached as easily as that of Cordova;
+but the approaches of El Kairouiyin are so built up that one never knows
+at which turn of the labyrinth one may catch sight of its court of
+fountains, or peep down the endless colonnades of which the Arabs say:
+"The man who should try to count the columns of Kairouiyin would go
+mad."
+
+Marble floors, heavy whitewashed piers, prostrate figures in the
+penumbra, rows of yellow slippers outside in the sunlight--out of such
+glimpses one must reconstruct a vision of the long vistas of arches, the
+blues and golds of the _mirhab_,[14] the lustre of bronze chandeliers,
+and the ivory inlaying of the twelfth-century _minbar_[15] of ebony and
+sandalwood.
+
+No Christian footstep has yet profaned Kairouiyin, but fairly definite
+information as to its plan has been gleaned by students of Moroccan art.
+The number of its "countless" columns has been counted, and it is known
+that, to the right of the _mirhab_, carved cedar doors open into a
+mortuary chapel called "the mosque of the dead"--and also that in this
+chapel, on Fridays, old books and precious manuscripts are sold by
+auction.
+
+This odd association of uses recalls the fact that Kairouiyin is not
+only a church but a library, the University of Fez as well as its
+cathedral. The beautiful Medersas with which the Merinids adorned the
+city are simply the lodging-houses of the students; the classes are all
+held in the courts and galleries adjoining the mosque.
+
+El Kairouiyin was originally an oratory built in the ninth century by
+Fatmah, whose father had migrated from Kairouan to Fez. Later it was
+enlarged, and its cupola was surmounted by the talismans which protect
+sacred edifices against rats, scorpions and serpents; but in spite of
+these precautions all animal life was not successfully exorcised from
+it. In the twelfth century, when the great gate Ech Chemmain was
+building, a well was discovered under its foundations. The mouth of the
+well was obstructed by an immense tortoise; but when the workmen
+attempted to take the tortoise out she said: "Burn me rather than take
+me away from here." They respected her wishes and built her into the
+foundations; and since then women who suffer from the back-ache have
+only to come and sit on the bench above the well to be cured.
+
+The actual mosque, or "praying-hall," is said to be formed of a
+rectangle or double cube of 90 metres by 45, and this vast space is
+equally divided by rows of horseshoe arches resting on whitewashed piers
+on which the lower part is swathed in finely patterned matting from
+Sale. Fifteen monumental doorways lead into the mosque. Their doors are
+of cedar, heavily barred and ornamented with wrought iron, and one of
+them bears the name of the artisan, and the date 531 of the Hegira (the
+first half of the twelfth century). The mosque also contains the two
+halls of audience of the Cadi, of which one has a graceful exterior
+facade with coupled lights under horseshoe arches; the library, whose
+20,000 volumes are reported to have dwindled to about a thousand; the
+chapel where the Masters of the Koran recite the sacred text in
+fulfilment of pious bequests; the "museum" in the upper part of the
+minaret, wherein a remarkable collection of ancient astronomical
+instruments is said to be preserved; and the _mestonda_, or raised hall
+above the court, where women come to pray.
+
+But the crown of El Kairouiyin is the Merinid court of ablutions. This
+inaccessible wonder lies close under the Medersa Attarine, one of the
+oldest and most beautiful collegiate buildings of Fez; and through the
+kindness of the Director of Fine Arts, who was with us, we were taken
+up to the roof of the Medersa and allowed to look down into the
+enclosure.
+
+It is so closely guarded from below that from our secret of vantage we
+seemed to be looking down into the heart of forbidden things. Spacious
+and serene the great tiled cloister lay beneath us, water spilling over
+from a central basin of marble with a cool sound to which lesser
+fountains made answer from under the pyramidal green roofs of the twin
+pavilions. It was near the prayer-hour, and worshippers were flocking
+in, laying off their shoes and burnouses, washing their faces at the
+fountains and their feet in the central tank, or stretching themselves
+out in the shadow of the enclosing arcade.
+
+This, then, was the famous court "so cool in the great heats that seated
+by thy beautiful jet of water I feel the perfection of bliss"--as the
+learned doctor Abou Abd Allah el Maghili sang of it; the court in which
+the students gather from the adjoining halls after having committed to
+memory the principals of grammar in prose and verse, the "science of
+the reading of the Koran," the invention, exposition and ornaments of
+style, law, medicine, theology, metaphysics and astronomy, as well as
+the talismanic numbers, and the art of ascertaining by calculation the
+influences of the angels, the spirits and the heavenly bodies, "the
+names of the victor and the vanquished, and of the desired object and
+the person who desires it."
+
+Such is the twentieth-century curriculum of the University of Fez.
+Repetition is the rule of Arab education as it is of Arab ornament. The
+teaching of the University is based entirely on the mediaeval principle
+of mnemonics; and as there are no examinations, no degrees, no limits to
+the duration of any given course, nor is any disgrace attached to
+slowness in learning, it is not surprising that many students, coming as
+youths, linger by the fountain of Kairouiyin till their hair is gray.
+One well-known _oulama_ has lately finished his studies after
+twenty-seven years at the University, and is justly proud of the length
+of his stay. The life of the scholar is easy, the way of knowledge is
+long, the contrast exquisite between the foul lanes and noisy bazaars
+outside and this cool heaven of learning. No wonder the students of
+Kairouiyin say with the tortoise: "Burn me rather than take me away."
+
+
+IV
+
+EL ANDALOUS AND THE POTTERS' FIELD
+
+Outside the sacred precincts of Moulay Idriss and Kairouiyin, on the
+other side of the Oued Fez, lies El Andalous, the mosque which the
+Andalusian Moors built when they settled in Fez in the ninth century.
+
+It stands apart from the bazaars, on higher ground, and though it is not
+_horm_ we found it less easy to see than the more famous mosques, since
+the Christian loiterer in its doorways is more quickly noticed. The Fazi
+are not yet used to seeing unbelievers near their sacred places. It is
+only in the tumult and confusion of the _souks_ that one can linger on
+the edge of the inner mysteries without becoming aware of attracting
+sullen looks; and my only impression of El Andalous is of a magnificent
+Almohad door and the rich blur of an interior in which there was no time
+to single out the details.
+
+Turning from its forbidden and forbidding threshold we rode on through
+a poor quarter which leads to the great gate of Bab F'touh. Beyond the
+gate rises a dusty rocky slope extending to the outer walls--one of
+those grim intramural deserts that girdle Fez with desolation. This one
+is strewn with gravestones, not enclosed, but, as in most Moroccan
+cemeteries, simply cropping up like nettles between the rocks and out of
+the flaming dust. Here and there among the slabs rises a well-curb or a
+crumbling _koubba_. A solitary palm shoots up beside one of the shrines.
+And between the crowded graves the caravan trail crosses from the outer
+to the inner gate, and perpetual lines of camels and donkeys trample the
+dead a little deeper into the dusty earth.
+
+This Bab F'touh cemetery is also a kind of fondak. Poor caravans camp
+there under the walls in a mire of offal and chicken-feathers and
+stripped date-branches prowled through by wolfish dogs and buzzed over
+by fat blue flies. Camel-drivers squat beside iron kettles over heaps of
+embers, sorcerers from the Sahara offer their amulets to negro women,
+peddlers with portable wooden booths sell greasy cakes that look as if
+they had been made out of the garbage of the caravans, and in and out
+among the unknown dead and sleeping saints circulates the squalid
+indifferent life of the living poor.
+
+A walled lane leads down from Bab F'touh to a lower slope, where the
+Fazi potters have their baking-kilns. Under a series of grassy terraces
+overgrown with olives we saw the archaic ovens and dripping wheels which
+produce the earthenware sold in the _souks_. It is a primitive and
+homely ware, still fine in shape, though dull in color and monotonous in
+pattern; and stacked on the red earth under the olives, the rows of jars
+and cups, in their unglazed and unpainted state, showed their classical
+descent more plainly than after they have been decorated.
+
+This green quiet hollow, where turbaned figures were moving attentively
+among the primitive ovens, so near to the region of flies and offal we
+had just left, woke an old phrase in our memories, and as our mules
+stumbled back over the graves of Bab F'touh we understood the grim
+meaning of the words: "They carried him out and buried him in the
+Potters' Field."
+
+
+V
+
+MEDERSAS, BAZAARS AND AN OASIS
+
+Fez, for two centuries and more, was in a double sense the capital of
+Morocco: the centre of its trade as well as of its culture.
+
+Culture, in fact, came to northwest Africa chiefly through the Merinid
+princes. The Almohads had erected great monuments from Rabat to
+Marrakech, and had fortified Fez; but their "mighty wasteful empire"
+fell apart like those that had preceded it. Stability had to come from
+the west; it was not till the Arabs had learned it through the Moors
+that Morocco produced a dynasty strong and enlightened enough to carry
+out the dream of its founders.
+
+Whichever way the discussion sways as to the priority of eastern or
+western influences on Moroccan art--whether it came to her from Syria,
+and was thence passed on to Spain, or was first formed in Spain, and
+afterward modified by the Moroccan imagination--there can at least be no
+doubt that Fazi art and culture, in their prime, are partly the
+reflection of European civilization.
+
+Fugitives from Spain came to the new city when Moulay Idriss founded
+it. One part of the town was given to them, and the river divided the
+Elbali of the Almohads into the two quarters of Kairouiyin and Andalous,
+which still retain their old names. But the full intellectual and
+artistic flowering of Fez was delayed till the thirteenth and fourteenth
+centuries. It seems as though the seeds of the new springtime of art,
+blown across the sea from reawakening Europe, had at last given the
+weltering tribes of the desert the force to create their own type of
+beauty.
+
+Nine Medersas sprang up in Fez, six of them built by the princes who
+were also creating the exquisite collegiate buildings of Sale, Rabat and
+old Meknez, and the enchanting mosque and minaret of Chella. The power
+of these rulers also was in perpetual flux; they were always at war with
+the Sultans of Tlemeen, the Christians of Spain, the princes of northern
+Algeria and Tunis. But during the fourteenth century they established a
+rule wide and firm enough to permit of the great outburst of art and
+learning which produced the Medersas of Fez.
+
+Until a year or two ago these collegiate buildings were as inaccessible
+as the mosques; but now that the French government has undertaken their
+restoration strangers may visit them under the guidance of the Fine Arts
+Department.
+
+All are built on the same plan, the plan of Sale and Rabat, which (as M.
+Tranchant de Lunel[16] has pointed out) became, with slight
+modifications, that of the rich private houses of Morocco. But
+interesting as they are in plan and the application of ornament, their
+main beauty lies in their details: in the union of chiselled plaster
+with the delicate mosaic work of niches and revetements; the web-like
+arabesques of the upper walls and the bold, almost Gothic sculpture of
+the cedar architraves and corbels supporting them. And when all these
+details are enumerated, and also the fretted panels of cedar, the bronze
+doors with their great shield-like bosses, and the honeycombings and
+rufflings of the gilded ceilings, there still remains the general tinge
+of dry disintegration, as though all were perishing of a desert
+fever--that, and the final wonder of seeing before one, in such a
+setting, the continuance of the very life that went on there when the
+tiles were set and the gold was new on the ceilings.
+
+For these tottering Medersas, already in the hands of the restorers, are
+still inhabited. As long as the stairway holds and the balcony has not
+rotted from its corbels, the students of the University see no reason
+for abandoning their lodgings above the cool fountain and the house of
+prayer. The strange men giving incomprehensible orders for unnecessary
+repairs need not disturb their meditations; and when the hammering grows
+too loud the _oulamas_ have only to pass through the silk market or the
+_souk_ of the embroiderers to the mosque of Kairouiyin, and go on
+weaving the pattern of their dreams by the fountain of perfect bliss.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One reads of the bazaars of Fez that they have been for centuries the
+central market of the country. Here are to be found not only the silks
+and pottery, the Jewish goldsmiths' work, the arms and embroidered
+saddlery which the city itself produces, but "morocco" from Marrakech,
+rugs, tent-hangings and matting from Rabat and Sale, grain baskets from
+Moulay Idriss, daggers from the Souss, and whatever European wares the
+native markets consume. One looks, on the plan of Fez, at the space
+covered by the bazaars; one breasts the swarms that pour through them
+from dawn to dusk--and one remains perplexed, disappointed. They are
+less "Oriental" than one had expected, if "Oriental" means color and
+gaiety.
+
+Sometimes, on occasion, it does mean that: as, for instance, when a
+procession passes bearing the gifts for a Jewish wedding. The gray crowd
+makes way for a group of musicians in brilliant caftans, and following
+them comes a long file of women with uncovered faces and bejewelled
+necks, balancing on their heads the dishes the guests have sent to the
+feast--_kouskous_, sweet creams and syrups, "gazelles' horns" of sugar
+and almonds--in delicately woven baskets, each covered with several
+squares of bright gauze edged with gold. Then one remembers the
+marketing of the Lady of "The Three Calendars," and Fez again becomes
+the Bagdad of Al Raschid.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Fez--the bazaars. A view of the Souk el Attarine and the Quaisarya (silk
+market)]
+
+But when no exceptional events, processions, ceremonies and the like
+brighten the underworld of the _souks_, their look is uniformly
+melancholy. The gay bazaars, the gaily-painted houses, the flowers and
+flute-playing of North Africa, are found in her Mediterranean ports, in
+contact with European influences. The farther west she extends, the more
+she becomes self-contained, sombre, uninfluenced, a gloomy fanatic with
+her back to the walls of the Atlantic and the Atlas. Color and laughter
+lie mostly along the trade-routes, where the peoples of the world come
+and go in curiosity and rivalry. This ashen crowd swarming gloomily
+through the dark tunnels represents the real Moghreb that is close to
+the wild tribes of the "hinterland" and the grim feudal fortresses of
+the Atlas. How close, one has only to go out to Sefrou on a market-day
+to see.
+
+Sefrou is a military outpost in an oasis under the Atlas, about forty
+miles south of Fez. To most people the word "oasis" evokes palms and
+sand; but though Morocco possesses many oases it has no pure sand and
+few palms. I remember it as a considerable event when I discovered one
+from my lofty window at Bou-Jeloud.
+
+The _bled_ is made of very different stuff from the sand-ocean of the
+Sahara. The light plays few tricks with it. Its monotony is wearisome
+rather than impressive, and the fact that it is seldom without some form
+of dwarfish vegetation makes the transition less startling when the
+alluvial green is finally reached. One had always half expected it, and
+it does not spring at a djinn's wave out of sterile gold.
+
+But the fact brings its own compensations. Moroccan oases differ one
+from another far more than those of South Algeria and Tunisia. Some have
+no palms, others but a few, others are real palm-oases, though even in
+the south (at least on the hither side of the great Atlas) none spreads
+out a dense uniform roofing of metal-blue fronds like the date-oases of
+Biskra or Tozeur. As for Sefrou, which Foucauld called the most
+beautiful oasis of Morocco, it is simply an extremely fertile valley
+with vineyards and orchards stretching up to a fine background of
+mountains. But the fact that it lies just below the Atlas makes it an
+important market-place and centre of caravans.
+
+Though so near Fez it is still almost on the disputed border between the
+loyal and the "unsubmissive" tribes, those that are _Blad-Makhzen_ (of
+the Sultan's government) and those that are against it. Until recently,
+therefore, it has been inaccessible to visitors, and even now a strongly
+fortified French post dominates the height above the town. Looking down
+from the fort, one distinguishes, through masses of many-tinted green, a
+suburb of Arab houses in gardens, and below, on the river, Sefrou
+itself, a stout little walled town with angle-towers defiantly thrust
+forth toward the Atlas. It is just outside these walls that the market
+is held.
+
+It was swarming with hill-people the day we were there, and strange was
+the contrast between the crowd inside the circle of picketed horses and
+the white-robed cockneys from Rabat who fill the market-place of Sale.
+Here at last we were in touch with un-Arab Morocco, with Berbers of the
+_bled_ and the hills, whose women know no veils and no seclusion, and
+who, under a thin surface of Mahometanism, preserve their old stone and
+animal worship, and all the gross fetichistic beliefs from which Mahomet
+dreamed of freeing Africa.
+
+The men were lean and weather-bitten, some with negroid lips, others
+with beaked noses and gaunt cheek-bones, all muscular and
+fierce-looking. Some were wrapped in the black cloaks worn by the Blue
+Men of the Sahara,[17] with a great orange sun embroidered on the back;
+some tunicked like the Egyptian fellah, under a rough striped outer
+garment trimmed with bright tufts and tassels of wool. The men of the
+Rif had a braided lock on the shoulder, those of the Atlas a ringlet
+over each ear, and brown woollen scarfs wound round their temples,
+leaving the shaven crown bare.
+
+The women, squatting among their kids and poultry and cheeses, glanced
+at us with brilliant hennaed eyes and smiles that lifted their short
+upper lips maliciously. Their thin faces were painted in stripes and
+patterns of indigo. Silver necklets covered their throats, long earrings
+dangled under the wool-embroidered kerchiefs bound about their temples
+with a twist of camel's hair, and below the cotton shifts fastened on
+their shoulders with silver clasps their legs were bare to the knee, or
+covered with leather leggings to protect them from the thorny _bled_.
+
+They seemed abler bargainers than the men, and the play of expression on
+their dramatic and intensely feminine faces as they wheedled the price
+of a calf out of a fierce hillsman, or haggled over a heap of dates that
+a Jew with greasy ringlets was trying to secure for his secret
+distillery, showed that they knew their superiority and enjoyed it.
+
+Jews abounded in the market-place and also in the town. Sefrou contains
+a large Israelite colony, and after we had wandered through the steep
+streets, over gushing waterfalls spanned by "ass-backed" Spanish
+bridges, and through a thatched _souk_ smelling strong of camels and the
+desert, the French commissioner (the only European in Sefrou) suggested
+that it might interest us to visit the _Mellah_.
+
+It was our first sight of a typical Jewish quarter in Africa. The
+_Mellah_ of Fez was almost entirely destroyed during the massacres of
+1912 (which incidentally included a _pogrom_), and its distinctive
+character, happily for the inhabitants, has disappeared in the
+rebuilding. North African Jews are still compelled to live in ghettos,
+into which they are locked at night, as in France and Germany in the
+Middle Ages; and until lately the men have been compelled to go unarmed,
+to wear black gabardines and black slippers, to take off their shoes
+when they passed near a mosque or a saint's tomb, and in various other
+ways to manifest their subjection to the ruling race. Nowhere else do
+they live in conditions of such demoralizing promiscuity as in some of
+the cities of Morocco. They have so long been subject to unrestricted
+extortion on the part of the Moslems that even the wealthy Jews (who are
+numerous) have sunk to the habits and appearance of the poorest; and
+Sefrou, which has come so recently under French control, offers a good
+specimen of a _Mellah_ before foreign sanitation has lighted up its dark
+places.
+
+Dark indeed they were. After wandering through narrow and malodorous
+lanes, and slipping about in the offal of the _souks_, we were suddenly
+led under an arch over which should have been written "All light
+abandon--" and which made all we had seen before seem clean and bright
+and airy.
+
+The beneficent African sun dries up and purifies the immemorial filth
+of Africa; where that sun enters there is none of the foulness of damp.
+But into the _Mellah_ of Sefrou it never comes, for the streets form a
+sort of subterranean rabbit-warren under the upper stories of a solid
+agglomeration of tall houses--a buried city lit even at midday by
+oil-lamps hanging in the goldsmiths' shops and under the archways of the
+black and reeking staircases.
+
+It was a Jewish feast-day. The Hebrew stalls in the _souks_ were closed,
+and the whole population of the _Mellah_ thronged its tunnels in holiday
+dress. Hurrying past us were young women with plump white faces and
+lovely eyes, turbaned in brilliant gauzes, with draperies of dirty
+curtain muslin over tawdry brocaded caftans. Their paler children
+swarmed about them, little long-earringed girls like wax dolls dressed
+in scraps of old finery, little boys in tattered caftans with
+long-lashed eyes and wily smiles; and, waddling in the rear, their
+unwieldy grandmothers, huge lumps of tallowy flesh who were probably
+still in the thirties.
+
+With them were the men of the family, in black gabardines and
+skull-caps: sallow striplings, incalculably aged ancestors,
+round-bellied husbands and fathers bumping along like black balloons;
+all hastening to the low doorways dressed with lamps and paper garlands
+behind which the feast was spread.
+
+One is told that in cities like Fez and Marrakech the Hebrew quarter
+conceals flowery patios and gilded rooms with the heavy European
+furniture that rich Jews delight in. Perhaps even in the _Mellah_ of
+Sefrou, among the ragged figures shuffling past us, there were some few
+with bags of gold in their walls and rich stuffs hid away in painted
+coffers; but for patios and flowers and daylight there seemed no room in
+the dark _bolgia_ they inhabit. No wonder the babies of the Moroccan
+ghettos are nursed on date-brandy, and their elders doze away to death
+under its consoling spell.
+
+
+VI
+
+THE LAST GLIMPSE
+
+It is well to bid good-by to Fez at night--a moonlight night for choice.
+
+Then, after dining at the Arab inn of Fez Eldjid--where it might be
+inconvenient to lodge, but where it is extremely pleasant to eat
+_kouskous_ under a grape-trellis in a tiled and fountained patio--this
+pleasure over, one may set out on foot and stray down the lanes toward
+Fez Elbali.
+
+Not long ago the gates between the different quarters of the city used
+to be locked every night at nine o'clock, and the merchant who went out
+to dine in another part of the town had to lodge with his host. Now this
+custom has been given up, and one may roam about untroubled through the
+old quarters, grown as silent as the grave after the intense life of the
+bazaars has ceased at nightfall.
+
+Nobody is in the streets: wandering from ghostly passage to passage, one
+hears no step but that of the watchman with staff and lantern. Presently
+there appears, far off, a light like a low-flying firefly; as it comes
+nearer, it is seen to proceed from the _Mellah_ lamp of open-work brass
+that a servant carries ahead of two merchants on their way home from
+Elbali. The merchants are grave men: they move softly and slowly on
+their fat slippered feet, pausing from time to time in confidential
+talk. At last they stop before a house wall with a low blue door barred
+by heavy hasps of iron. The servant lifts the lamp and knocks. There is
+a long delay; then, with infinite caution, the door is opened a few
+inches, and another lifted light shines faintly on lustrous tiled walls,
+and on the face of a woman slave who quickly veils herself. Evidently
+the master is a man of standing, and the house well guarded. The two
+merchants touch each other on the right shoulder, one of them passes in,
+and his friend goes on through the moonlight, his servant's lantern
+dancing ahead.
+
+But here we are in an open space looking down one of the descents to El
+Attarine. A misty radiance washes the tall houses, the garden-walls, the
+archways; even the moonlight does not whiten Fez, but only turns its
+gray to tarnished silver. Overhead in a tower window a single light
+twinkles: women's voices rise and fall on the roofs. In a rich man's
+doorway slaves are sleeping, huddled on the tiles. A cock crows from
+somebody's dunghill; a skeleton dog prowls by for garbage.
+
+Everywhere is the loud rush or the low crooning of water, and over every
+wall comes the scent of jasmine and rose. Far off, from the red
+purgatory between the walls, sounds the savage thrum-thrum of a negro
+orgy; here all is peace and perfume. A minaret springs up between the
+roof like a palm, and from its balcony the little white figure bends
+over and drops a blessing on all the loveliness and all the squalor.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[10] The Ghetto in African towns. All the jewellers in Morocco are Jews.
+
+[11] Learned man, doctor of the university.
+
+[12] The Sultan's government.
+
+[13] Moslem monastery.
+
+[14] Niche in the sanctuary of mosques.
+
+[15] Movable pulpit.
+
+[16] In _France-Maroc_, _No._ 1.
+
+[17] So called because of the indigo dye of their tunics, which leaves a
+permanent stain on their bodies.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+MARRAKECH
+
+
+I
+
+THE WAY THERE
+
+There are countless Arab tales of evil Djinns who take the form of
+sandstorms and hot winds to overwhelm exhausted travellers.
+
+In spite of the new French road between Rabat and Marrakech the memory
+of such tales rises up insistently from every mile of the level red
+earth and the desolate stony stretches of the _bled_. As long as the
+road runs in sight of the Atlantic breakers they give the scene
+freshness and life; but when it bends inland and stretches away across
+the wilderness the sense of the immensity and immobility of Africa
+descends on one with an intolerable oppression.
+
+The road traverses no villages, and not even a ring of nomad tents is
+visible in the distance on the wide stretches of arable land. At
+infrequent intervals our motor passed a train of laden mules, or a group
+of peasants about a well, and sometimes, far off, a fortified farm
+profiled its thick-set angle-towers against the sky, or a white _koubba_
+floated like a mirage above the brush; but these rare signs of life
+intensified the solitude of the long miles between.
+
+At midday we were refreshed by the sight of the little oasis around the
+military-post of Settat. We lunched there with the commanding officer,
+in a cool Arab house about a flowery patio; but that brief interval
+over, the fiery plain began again. After Settat the road runs on for
+miles across the waste to the gorge of the Oued Ouem; and beyond the
+river it climbs to another plain so desperate in its calcined aridity
+that the prickly scrub of the wilderness we had left seemed like the
+vegetation of an oasis. For fifty kilometres the earth under our wheels
+was made up of a kind of glistening red slag covered with pebbles and
+stones. Not the scantest and toughest of rock-growths thrust a leaf
+through its brassy surface; not a well-head or a darker depression of
+the rock gave sign of a trickle of water. Everything around us glittered
+with the same unmerciful dryness.
+
+A long way ahead loomed the line of the Djebilets, the Djinn-haunted
+mountains guarding Marrakech on the north. When at last we reached them
+the wicked glister of their purple flanks seemed like a volcanic
+upheaval of the plain. For some time we had watched the clouds gathering
+over them, and as we got to the top of the defile rain was falling from
+a fringe of thunder to the south. Then the vapours lifted, and we saw
+below us another red plain with an island of palms in its centre.
+Mysteriously, from the heart of the palms, a tower shot up, as if alone
+in the wilderness; behind it stood the sun-streaked cliffs of the Atlas,
+with snow summits appearing and vanishing through the storm.
+
+As we drove downward the rock gradually began to turn to red earth
+fissured by yellow streams, and stray knots of palms sprang up, lean and
+dishevelled, about well-heads where people were watering camels and
+donkeys. To the east, dominating the oasis, the twin peaked hills of the
+Ghilis, fortified to the crest, mounted guard over invisible Marrakech;
+but still, above the palms, we saw only that lonely and triumphant
+tower.
+
+Presently we crossed the Oued Tensif on an old bridge built by Moroccan
+engineers. Beyond the river were more palms, then olive-orchards, then
+the vague sketch of the new European settlement, with a few shops and
+cafes on avenues ending suddenly in clay pits, and at last Marrakech
+itself appeared to us, in the form of a red wall across a red
+wilderness.
+
+We passed through a gate and were confronted by other ramparts. Then we
+entered an outskirt of dusty red lanes bordered by clay hovels with
+draped figures slinking by like ghosts. After that more walls, more
+gates, more endlessly winding lanes, more gates again, more turns, a
+dusty open space with donkeys and camels and negroes; a final wall with
+a great door under a lofty arch--and suddenly we were in the palace of
+the Bahia, among flowers and shadows and falling water.
+
+
+II
+
+THE BAHIA
+
+Whoever would understand Marrakech must begin by mounting at sunset to
+the roof of the Bahia.
+
+Outspread below lies the oasis-city of the south, flat and vast as the
+great nomad camp it really is, its low roofs extending on all sides to a
+belt of blue palms ringed with desert. Only two or three minarets and a
+few noblemen's houses among gardens break the general flatness; but they
+are hardly noticeable, so irresistibly is the eye drawn toward two
+dominant objects--the white wall of the Atlas and the red tower of the
+Koutoubya.
+
+Foursquare, untapering, the great tower lifts its flanks of ruddy stone.
+Its large spaces of unornamented wall, its triple tier of clustered
+openings, lightening as they rise from the severe rectangular lights of
+the first stage to the graceful arcade below the parapet, have the
+stern harmony of the noblest architecture. The Koutoubya would be
+magnificent anywhere; in this flat desert it is grand enough to face the
+Atlas.
+
+The Almohad conquerors who built the Koutoubya and embellished Marrakech
+dreamed a dream of beauty that extended from the Guadalquivir to the
+Sahara; and at its two extremes they placed their watch-towers. The
+Giralda watched over civilized enemies in a land of ancient Roman
+culture; the Koutoubya stood at the edge of the world, facing the hordes
+of the desert.
+
+The Almoravid princes who founded Marrakech came from the black desert
+of Senegal; themselves were leaders of wild hordes. In the history of
+North Africa the same cycle has perpetually repeated itself. Generation
+after generation of chiefs have flowed in from the desert or the
+mountains, overthrown their predecessors, massacred, plundered, grown
+rich, built sudden palaces, encouraged their great servants to do the
+same; then fallen on them, and taken their wealth and their palaces.
+Usually some religious fury, some ascetic wrath against the
+self-indulgence of the cities, has been the motive of these attacks; but
+invariably the same results followed, as they followed when the Germanic
+barbarians descended on Italy. The conquerors, infected with luxury and
+mad with power, built vaster palaces, planned grander cities; but
+Sultans and Viziers camped in their golden houses as if on the march,
+and the mud huts of the tribesmen within their walls were but one degree
+removed from the mud-walled tents of the _bled_.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Marrakech--The "Little Garden" (with painted doors) in background,
+Palace of the Bahia]
+
+This was more especially the case with Marrakech, a city of Berbers and
+blacks, and the last outpost against the fierce black world beyond the
+Atlas from which its founders came. When one looks at its site, and
+considers its history, one can only marvel at the height of civilization
+it attained.
+
+The Bahia itself, now the palace of the Resident General, though built
+less than a hundred years ago, is typical of the architectural
+megalomania of the great southern chiefs. It was built by Ba-Ahmed, the
+all-powerful black Vizier of the Sultan Moulay-el-Hassan.[18] Ba-Ahmed
+was evidently an artist and an archaeologist. His ambition was to
+re-create a Palace of Beauty such as the Moors had built in the prime of
+Arab art, and he brought to Marrakech skilled artificers of Fez, the
+last surviving masters of the mystery of chiselled plaster and ceramic
+mosaics and honeycombing of gilded cedar. They came, they built the
+Bahia, and it remains the loveliest and most fantastic of Moroccan
+palaces.
+
+Court within court, garden beyond garden, reception halls, private
+apartments, slaves' quarters, sunny prophets' chambers on the roofs and
+baths in vaulted crypts, the labyrinth of passages and rooms stretches
+away over several acres of ground. A long court enclosed in pale-green
+trellis-work, where pigeons plume themselves about a great tank and the
+dripping tiles glitter with refracted sunlight, leads to the fresh gloom
+of a cypress garden, or under jasmine tunnels bordered with running
+water; and these again open on arcaded apartments faced with tiles and
+stucco-work, where, in a languid twilight, the hours drift by to the
+ceaseless music of the fountains.
+
+The beauty of Moroccan palaces is made up of details of ornament and
+refinements of sensuous delight too numerous to record; but to get an
+idea of their general character it is worth while to cross the Court of
+Cypresses at the Bahia and follow a series of low-studded passages that
+turn on themselves till they reach the centre of the labyrinth. Here,
+passing by a low padlocked door leading to a crypt, and known as the
+"Door of the Vizier's Treasure-House," one comes on a painted portal
+that opens into a still more secret sanctuary: The apartment of the
+Grand Vizier's Favourite.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph by Felix, Marrakech_
+
+Marrakech--the great court, Palace of the Bahia]
+
+This lovely prison, from which all sight and sound of the outer world
+are excluded, is built about an atrium paved with disks of turquoise and
+black and white. Water trickles from a central _vasca_ of alabaster into
+a hexagonal mosaic channel in the pavement. The walls, which are at
+least twenty-five feet high, are roofed with painted beams resting on
+panels of traceried stucco in which is set a clerestory of jewelled
+glass. On each side of the atrium are long recessed rooms closed by
+vermilion doors painted with gold arabesques and vases of spring
+flowers; and into these shadowy inner rooms, spread with rugs and divans
+and soft pillows, no light comes except when their doors are opened
+into the atrium. In this fabulous place it was my good luck to be lodged
+while I was at Marrakech.
+
+In a climate where, after the winter snow has melted from the Atlas,
+every breath of air for long months is a flame of fire, these enclosed
+rooms in the middle of the palaces are the only places of refuge from
+the heat. Even in October the temperature of the favourite's apartment
+was deliciously reviving after a morning in the bazaars or the dusty
+streets, and I never came back to its wet tiles and perpetual twilight
+without the sense of plunging into a deep sea-pool.
+
+From far off, through circuitous corridors, came the scent of
+citron-blossom and jasmine, with sometimes a bird's song before dawn,
+sometimes a flute's wail at sunset, and always the call of the muezzin
+in the night; but no sunlight reached the apartment except in remote
+rays through the clerestory, and no air except through one or two broken
+panes.
+
+Sometimes, lying on my divan, and looking out through the vermilion
+doors, I used to surprise a pair of swallows dropping down from their
+nest in the cedar-beams to preen themselves on the fountain's edge or in
+the channels of the pavement; for the roof was full of birds who came
+and went through the broken panes of the clerestory. Usually they were
+my only visitors; but one morning just at daylight I was waked by a soft
+tramp of bare feet, and saw, silhouetted against the cream-coloured
+walls, a procession of eight tall negroes in linen tunics, who filed
+noiselessly across the atrium like a moving frieze of bronze. In that
+fantastic setting, and the hush of that twilight hour, the vision was so
+like the picture of a "Seraglio Tragedy," some fragment of a Delacroix
+or Decamps floating up into the drowsy brain, that I almost fancied I
+had seen the ghosts of Ba-Ahmed's executioners revisiting with dagger
+and bowstring the scene of an unavenged crime.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph taken by Mme. la Marquis de Segonzac_
+
+Marrakech--apartment of the grand vizier's favorite, Palace of the
+Bahia]
+
+A cock crew, and they vanished ... and when I made the mistake of
+asking what they had been doing in my room at that hour I was told (as
+though it were the most natural thing in the world) that they were the
+municipal lamp-lighters of Marrakech, whose duty it is to refill every
+morning the two hundred acetylene lamps lighting the palace of the
+Resident General. Such unforeseen aspects, in this mysterious city, do
+the most ordinary domestic functions wear.
+
+
+III
+
+THE BAZAARS
+
+Passing out of the enchanted circle of the Bahia it is startling to
+plunge into the native life about its gates.
+
+Marrakech is the great market of the south; and the south means not only
+the Atlas with its feudal chiefs and their wild clansmen, but all that
+lies beyond of heat and savagery: the Sahara of the veiled Touaregs,
+Dakka, Timbuctoo, Senegal and the Soudan. Here come the camel caravans
+from Demnat and Tameslout, from the Moulouya and the Souss, and those
+from the Atlantic ports and the confines of Algeria. The population of
+this old city of the southern march has always been even more mixed
+than that of the northerly Moroccan towns. It is made up of the
+descendants of all the peoples conquered by a long line of Sultans who
+brought their trains of captives across the sea from Moorish Spain and
+across the Sahara from Timbuctoo. Even in the highly cultivated region
+on the lower slopes of the Atlas there are groups of varied ethnic
+origin, the descendants of tribes transplanted by long-gone rulers and
+still preserving many of their original characteristics.
+
+In the bazaars all these peoples meet and mingle: cattle-dealers,
+olive-growers, peasants from the Atlas, the Souss and the Draa, Blue Men
+of the Sahara, blacks from Senegal and the Soudan, coming in to trade
+with the wool-merchants, tanners, leather-merchants, silk-weavers,
+armourers, and makers of agricultural implements.
+
+Dark, fierce and fanatical are these narrow _souks_ of Marrakech. They
+are mere mud lanes roofed with rushes, as in South Tunisia and
+Timbuctoo, and the crowds swarming in them are so dense that it is
+hardly possible, at certain hours, to approach the tiny raised kennels
+where the merchants sit like idols among their wares. One feels at once
+that something more than the thought of bargaining--dear as this is to
+the African heart--animates these incessantly moving throngs. The Souks
+of Marrakech seem, more than any others, the central organ of a native
+life that extends far beyond the city walls into secret clefts of the
+mountains and far-off oases where plots are hatched and holy wars
+fomented--farther still, to yellow deserts whence negroes are secretly
+brought across the Atlas to that inmost recess of the bazaar where the
+ancient traffic in flesh and blood still surreptitiously goes on.
+
+All these many threads of the native life, woven of greed and lust, of
+fetichism and fear and blind hate of the stranger, form, in the _souks_,
+a thick network in which at times one's feet seem literally to stumble.
+Fanatics in sheepskins glowering from the guarded thresholds of the
+mosques, fierce tribesmen with inlaid arms in their belts and the
+fighters' tufts of wiry hair escaping from camel's-hair turbans, mad
+negroes standing stark naked in niches of the walls and pouring down
+Soudanese incantations upon the fascinated crowd, consumptive Jews with
+pathos and cunning in their large eyes and smiling lips, lusty
+slave-girls with earthen oil-jars resting against swaying hips,
+almond-eyed boys leading fat merchants by the hand, and bare-legged
+Berber women, tattooed and insolently gay, trading their striped
+blankets, or bags of dried roses and irises, for sugar, tea or
+Manchester cottons--from all these hundreds of unknown and unknowable
+people, bound together by secret affinities, or intriguing against each
+other with secret hate, there emanates an atmosphere of mystery and
+menace more stifling than the smell of camels and spices and black
+bodies and smoking fry which hangs like a fog under the close roofing of
+the _souks_.
+
+And suddenly one leaves the crowd and the turbid air for one of those
+quiet corners that are like the back-waters of the bazaars: a small
+square where a vine stretches across a shop-front and hangs ripe
+clusters of grapes through the reeds. In the patterning of grape-shadows
+a very old donkey, tethered to a stone-post, dozes under a pack-saddle
+that is never taken off; and near by, in a matted niche, sits a very old
+man in white. This is the chief of the Guild of "morocco" workers of
+Marrakech, the most accomplished craftsman in Morocco in the preparing
+and using of the skins to which the city gives its name. Of these sleek
+moroccos, cream-white or dyed with cochineal or pomegranate skins, are
+made the rich bags of the Chleuh dancing-boys, the embroidered slippers
+for the harem, the belts and harnesses that figure so largely in
+Moroccan trade--and of the finest, in old days, were made the
+pomegranate-red morocco bindings of European bibliophiles.
+
+From this peaceful corner one passes into the barbaric splendor of a
+_souk_ hung with innumerable plumy bunches of floss silk--skeins of
+citron yellow, crimson, grasshopper green and pure purple. This is the
+silk-spinners' quarter, and next to it comes that of the dyers, with
+great seething vats into which the raw silk is plunged, and ropes
+overhead where the rainbow masses are hung out to dry.
+
+Another turn leads into the street of the metalworkers and armourers,
+where the sunlight through the thatch flames on round flanks of beaten
+copper or picks out the silver bosses of ornate powder-flasks and
+pistols; and near by is the _souk_ of the plough-shares, crowded with
+peasants in rough Chleuh cloaks who are waiting to have their archaic
+ploughs repaired, and that of the smiths, in an outer lane of mud huts
+where negroes squat in the dust and sinewy naked figures in tattered
+loincloths bend over blazing coals. And here ends the maze of the
+bazaars.
+
+
+IV
+
+THE AGDAL
+
+One of the Almohad Sultans who, during their hundred years of empire,
+scattered such great monuments from Seville to the Atlas, felt the need
+of coolness about his southern capital, and laid out the olive-yards of
+the Agdal.
+
+To the south of Marrakech the Agdal extends for many acres between the
+outer walls of the city and the edge of the palm-oasis--a continuous
+belt of silver foliage traversed by deep red lanes, and enclosing a
+wide-spreading summer palace and two immense reservoirs walled with
+masonry; and the vision of these serene sheets of water, in which the
+olives and palms are motionlessly reflected, is one of the most poetic
+impressions in that city of inveterate poetry.
+
+On the edge of one of the reservoirs a sentimental Sultan built in the
+last century a little pleasure-house called the Menara. It is composed
+of a few rooms with a two-storied loggia looking across the water to the
+palm-groves, and surrounded by a garden of cypresses and orange-trees.
+The Menara, long since abandoned, is usually uninhabited; but on the day
+when we drove through the Agdal we noticed, at the gate, a group of
+well-dressed servants holding mules with embroidered saddle-clothes.
+
+The French officer who was with us asked the porter what was going on,
+and he replied that the Chief of the Guild of Wool-Merchants had hired
+the pavilion for a week and invited a few friends to visit him. They
+were now, the porter added, taking tea in the loggia above the lake; and
+the host, being informed of our presence, begged that we should do him
+and his friends the honour of visiting the pavilion.
+
+In reply to this amiable invitation we crossed an empty saloon
+surrounded with divans and passed out onto the loggia where the
+wool-merchant and his guests were seated. They were evidently persons of
+consequence: large bulky men wrapped in fresh muslins and reclining side
+by side on muslin-covered divans and cushions. Black slaves had placed
+before them brass trays with pots of mint-tea, glasses in filigree
+stands, and dishes of gazelles' horns and sugar-plums; and they sat
+serenely absorbing these refreshments and gazing with large calm eyes
+upon the motionless water and the reflected trees.
+
+So, we were told, they would probably spend the greater part of their
+holiday. The merchant's cooks had taken possession of the kitchens, and
+toward sunset a sumptuous repast of many courses would be carried into
+the saloon on covered trays, and the guests would squat about it on rugs
+of Rabat, tearing with their fingers the tender chicken wings and small
+artichokes cooked in oil, plunging their fat white hands to the wrist
+into huge mounds of saffron and rice, and washing off the traces of each
+course in the brass basin of perfumed water carried about by a young
+black slave-girl with hoop-earrings and a green-and-gold scarf about her
+hips.
+
+Then the singing-girls would come out from Marrakech, squat round-faced
+young women heavily hennaed and bejewelled, accompanied by gaunt
+musicians in bright caftans; and for hours they would sing sentimental
+or obscene ballads to the persistent maddening twang of violin and flute
+and drum. Meanwhile fiery brandy or sweet champagne would probably be
+passed around between the steaming glasses of mint-tea which the slaves
+perpetually refilled; or perhaps the sultry air, the heavy meal, the
+scent of the garden and the vertiginous repetition of the music would
+suffice to plunge these sedentary worthies into the delicious coma in
+which every festive evening in Morocco ends.
+
+The next day would be spent in the same manner, except that probably the
+Chleuh boys with sidelong eyes and clean caftans would come instead of
+the singing-girls, and weave the arabesque of their dance in place of
+the runic pattern of the singing. But the result would always be the
+same: a prolonged state of obese ecstasy culminating in the collapse of
+huge heaps of snoring muslin on the divans against the wall. Finally at
+the week's end the wool-merchant and his friends would all ride back
+with dignity to the bazaar.
+
+
+V
+
+ON THE ROOFS
+
+"Should you like to see the Chleuh boys dance?" some one asked.
+
+"There they are," another of our companions added, pointing to a dense
+ring of spectators on one side of the immense dusty square at the
+entrance of the _souks_--the "Square of the Dead" as it is called, in
+memory of the executions that used to take place under one of its grim
+red gates.
+
+It is the square of the living now, the centre of all the life,
+amusement and gossip of Marrakech, and the spectators are so thickly
+packed about the story-tellers, snake-charmers and dancers who frequent
+it that one can guess what is going on within each circle only by the
+wailing monologue or the persistent drum-beat that proceeds from it.
+
+Ah, yes--we should indeed like to see the Chleuh boys dance; we who,
+since we had been in Morocco, had seen no dancing, heard no singing,
+caught no single glimpse of merry-making! But how were we to get within
+sight of them?
+
+On one side of the "Square of the Dead" stands a large house, of
+European build, but modelled on Oriental lines: the office of the French
+municipal administration. The French Government no longer allows its
+offices to be built within the walls of Moroccan towns, and this house
+goes back to the epic days of the Caid Sir Harry Maclean, to whom it was
+presented by the fantastic Abd-el-Aziz when the Caid was his favourite
+companion as well as his military adviser.
+
+At the suggestion of the municipal officials we mounted the stairs and
+looked down on the packed square. There can be no more Oriental sight
+this side of the Atlas and the Sahara. The square is surrounded by low
+mud-houses, fondaks, cafes, and the like. In one corner, near the
+archway leading into the _souks_, is the fruit-market, where the
+red-gold branches of unripe dates[19] for animal fodder are piled up in
+great stacks, and dozens of donkeys are coming and going, their
+panniers laden with fruits and vegetables which are being heaped on the
+ground in gorgeous pyramids: purple egg-plants, melons, cucumbers,
+bright orange pumpkins, mauve and pink and violet onions, rusty crimson
+pomegranates and the gold grapes of Sefrou and Sale, all mingled with
+fresh green sheaves of mint and wormwood.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from "France-Maroc"_
+
+Marrakech--a fondak]
+
+In the middle of the square sit the story-tellers' turbaned audiences.
+Beyond these are the humbler crowds about the wild-ringleted
+snake-charmers with their epileptic gestures and hissing incantations,
+and farther off, in the densest circle of all, we could just discern the
+shaved heads and waving surpliced arms of the dancing-boys. Under an
+archway near by an important personage in white muslin, mounted on a
+handsome mule and surrounded by his attendants, sat with motionless face
+and narrowed eyes gravely following the movements of the dancers.
+
+Suddenly, as we stood watching the extraordinary animation of the scene,
+a reddish light overspread it, and one of our companions exclaimed:
+"Ah--a dust-storm!"
+
+In that very moment it was upon us: a red cloud rushing across the
+square out of nowhere, whirling the date-branches over the heads of the
+squatting throngs, tumbling down the stacks of fruits and vegetables,
+rooting up the canvas awnings over the lemonade-sellers' stalls and
+before the cafe doors, huddling the blinded donkeys under the walls of
+the fondak, and stripping to the hips the black slave-girls scudding
+home from the _souks_.
+
+Such a blast would instantly have scattered any western crowd, but "the
+patient East" remained undisturbed, rounding its shoulders before the
+storm and continuing to follow attentively the motions of the dancers
+and the turns of the story-tellers. By and bye, however, the gale grew
+too furious, and the spectators were so involved in collapsing tents,
+eddying date-branches and stampeding mules that the square began to
+clear, save for the listeners about the most popular story-teller, who
+continued to sit on unmoved. And then, at the height of the storm, they
+too were abruptly scattered by the rush of a cavalcade across the
+square. First came a handsomely dressed man, carrying before him on his
+peaked saddle a tiny boy in a gold-embroidered orange caftan, in front
+of whom he held an open book; and behind them a train of white-draped
+men on showily harnessed mules, followed by musicians in bright dresses.
+It was only a Circumcision procession on its way to the mosque; but the
+dust-enveloped rider in his rich dress, clutching the bewildered child
+to his breast, looked like some Oriental prince trying to escape with
+his son from the fiery embraces of desert Erl-maidens.
+
+As swiftly as it rose the storm subsided, leaving the fruit-market in
+ruins under a sky as clear and innocent as an infant's eye. The Chleuh
+boys had vanished with the rest, like marionettes swept into a drawer by
+an impatient child; but presently, toward sunset, we were told that we
+were to see them after all, and our hosts led us up to the roof of the
+Caid's house.
+
+The city lay stretched before us like one immense terrace circumscribed
+by palms. The sky was pure blue, verging to turquoise green where the
+Atlas floated above mist; and facing the celestial snows stood the
+Koutoubya, red in the sunset.
+
+People were beginning to come out on the roofs: it was the hour of
+peace, of ablutions, of family life on the house-tops. Groups of women
+in pale tints and floating veils spoke to each other from terrace to
+terrace, through the chatter of children and the guttural calls of
+bedizened negresses. And presently, on the roof adjoining ours, appeared
+the slim dancing-boys with white caftans and hennaed feet.
+
+The three swarthy musicians who accompanied them crossed their lean legs
+on the tiles and set up their throb-throb and thrum-thrum, and on a
+narrow strip of terrace the youths began their measured steps.
+
+It was a grave static dance, such as David may have performed before the
+Ark; untouched by mirth or folly, as beseemed a dance in that sombre
+land, and borrowing its magic from its gravity. Even when the pace
+quickened with the stress of the music the gestures still continued to
+be restrained and hieratic; only when, one by one, the performers
+detached themselves from the round and knelt before us for the _peseta_
+it is customary to press on their foreheads, did one see, by the
+moisture which made the coin adhere, how quick and violent their
+movements had been.
+
+The performance, like all things Oriental, like the life, the patterns,
+the stories, seemed to have no beginning and no end: it just went
+monotonously and indefatigably on till fate snipped its thread by
+calling us away to dinner. And so at last we went down into the dust of
+the streets refreshed by that vision of white youths dancing on the
+house-tops against the gold of a sunset that made them look--in spite of
+ankle-bracelets and painted eyes--almost as guileless and happy as the
+round of angels on the roof of Fra Angelico's Nativity.
+
+
+VI
+
+THE SAADIAN TOMBS
+
+On one of the last days of our stay in Marrakech we were told, almost
+mysteriously, that permission was to be given us to visit the tombs of
+the Saadian Sultans.
+
+Though Marrakech has been in the hands of the French since 1912, the
+very existence of these tombs was unknown to the authorities till 1917.
+Then the Sultan's government privately informed the Resident General
+that an unsuspected treasure of Moroccan art was falling into ruin, and
+after some hesitation it was agreed that General Lyautey and the
+Director of Fine Arts should be admitted to the mosque containing the
+tombs, on the express condition that the French Government undertook to
+repair them. While we were at Rabat General Lyautey had described his
+visit to us, and it was at his request that the Sultan authorized us to
+see the mosque, to which no travellers had as yet been admitted.
+
+With a good deal of ceremony, and after the customary _pourparlers_ with
+the great Pasha who controls native affairs at Marrakech, an hour was
+fixed for our visit, and we drove through long lanes of mud-huts to a
+lost quarter near the walls. At last we came to a deserted square on one
+side of which stands the long low mosque of Mansourah with a
+turquoise-green minaret embroidered with traceries of sculptured terra
+cotta. Opposite the mosque is a gate in a crumbling wall; and at this
+gate the Pasha's Cadi was to meet us with the keys of the mausoleum. But
+we waited in vain. Oriental dilatoriness, or a last secret reluctance to
+admit unbelievers to a holy place, had caused the Cadi to forget his
+appointment; and we drove away disappointed.
+
+The delay drove us to wondering about these mysterious Saadian Sultans,
+who, though coming so late in the annals of Morocco, had left at least
+one monument said to be worthy of the Merinid tradition. And the tale of
+the Saadians is worth telling.
+
+They came from Arabia to the Draa (the fruitful country south of the
+Great Atlas) early in the fifteenth century, when the Merinid empire was
+already near disintegration. Like all previous invaders they preached
+the doctrine of a pure Islamism to the polytheistic and indifferent
+Berbers, and found a ready hearing because they denounced the evils of a
+divided empire, and also because the whole of Morocco was in revolt
+against the Christian colonies of Spain and Portugal, which had
+encircled the coast from Ceuta to Agadir with a chain of fortified
+counting-houses. To _bouter dehors_ the money-making unbeliever was an
+object that found adherents from the Rif to the Sahara, and the Saadian
+cherifs soon rallied a mighty following to their standard. Islam, though
+it never really gave a creed to the Berbers, supplied them with a
+war-cry as potent to-day as when it first rang across Barbary.
+
+The history of the Saadians is a foreshortened record of that of all
+their predecessors. They overthrew the artistic and luxurious Merinids,
+and in their turn became artistic and luxurious. Their greatest Sultan,
+Abou-el-Abbas, surnamed "The Golden," after defeating the Merinids and
+putting an end to Christian rule in Morocco by the crushing victory of
+El-Ksar (1578), bethought him in his turn of enriching himself and
+beautifying his capital, and with this object in view turned his
+attention to the black kingdoms of the south.
+
+Senegal and the Soudan, which had been Mohammedan since the eleventh
+century, had attained in the sixteenth century a high degree of
+commercial wealth and artistic civilization. The Sultanate of Timbuctoo
+seems in reality to have been a thriving empire, and if Timbuctoo was
+not the Claude-like vision of Carthaginian palaces which it became in
+the tales of imaginative travellers, it apparently had something of the
+magnificence of Fez and Marrakech.
+
+The Saadian army, after a march of four and a half months across the
+Sahara, conquered the whole black south. Senegal, the Soudan and Bornou
+submitted to Abou-el-Abbas, the Sultan of Timbuctoo was dethroned, and
+the celebrated negro jurist Ahmed-Baba was brought a prisoner to
+Marrakech, where his chief sorrow appears to have been for the loss of
+his library of 1,600 volumes--though he declared that, of all the
+numerous members of his family, it was he who possessed the smallest
+number of books.
+
+Besides this learned bibliophile, the Sultan Abou-el-Abbas brought back
+with him an immense booty, principally of ingots of gold, from which he
+took his surname of "The Golden"; and as the result of the expedition
+Marrakech was embellished with mosques and palaces for which the Sultan
+brought marble from Carrara, paying for it with loaves of sugar from the
+sugar-cane that the Saadians grew in the Souss.
+
+In spite of these brilliant beginnings the rule of the dynasty was short
+and without subsequent interest. Based on a fanatical antagonism
+against the foreigner, and fed by the ever-wakeful hatred of the Moors
+for their Spanish conquerors, it raised ever higher the Chinese walls of
+exclusiveness which the more enlightened Almohads and Merinids had
+sought to overthrow. Henceforward less and less daylight and fresh air
+were to penetrate into the _souks_ of Morocco.
+
+The day after our unsuccessful attempt to see the tombs of these
+ephemeral rulers we received another message, naming an hour for our
+visit; and this time the Pasha's representative was waiting in the
+archway. We followed his lead, under the openly mistrustful glances of
+the Arabs who hung about the square, and after picking our way through a
+twisting land between walls we came out into a filthy nettle-grown space
+against the ramparts. At intervals of about thirty feet splendid square
+towers rose from the walls, and facing one of them lay a group of
+crumbling buildings masked behind other ruins.
+
+We were led first into a narrow mosque or praying-chapel, like those of
+the Medersas, with a coffered cedar ceiling resting on four marble
+columns, and traceried walls of unusually beautiful design. From this
+chapel we passed into the hall of the tombs, a cube about forty feet
+square. Fourteen columns of colored marble sustain a domed ceiling of
+gilded cedar, with an exterior deambulatory under a tunnel-vaulting also
+roofed with cedar. The walls are, as usual, of chiselled stucco, above
+revetements of ceramic mosaic, and between the columns lie the white
+marble cenotaphs of the Saadian Sultans, covered with Arabic
+inscriptions in the most delicate low-relief. Beyond this central
+mausoleum, and balancing the praying-chapel, lies another long narrow
+chamber, gold-ceilinged also, and containing a few tombs.
+
+It is difficult, in describing the architecture of Morocco, to avoid
+producing an impression of monotony. The ground-plan of mosques and
+Medersas is always practically the same; and the same elements, few in
+number and endlessly repeated, make up the materials and the form of the
+ornament. The effect upon the eye is not monotonous, for a patient art
+has infinitely varied the combinations of pattern and the juxtapositions
+of color; while the depth of undercutting of the stucco, and the
+treatment of the bronze doors and of the carved cedar corbels,
+necessarily varies with the periods which produced them.
+
+But in the Saadian mausoleum a new element has been introduced which
+makes this little monument a thing apart. The marble columns supporting
+the roof appear to be unique in Moroccan architecture, and they lend
+themselves to a new roof-plan which relates the building rather to the
+tradition of Venice or Byzantine by way of Kairouan and Cordova.
+
+The late date of the monument precludes any idea of a direct artistic
+tradition. The most probable explanation seems to be that the architect
+of the mausoleum was familiar with European Renaissance architecture,
+and saw the beauty to be derived from using precious marbles not merely
+as ornament, but in the Roman and Italian way, as a structural element.
+Panels and fountain-basins are ornament, and ornament changes nothing
+essential in architecture; but when, for instance, heavy square piers
+are replaced by detached columns, a new style results.
+
+It is not only the novelty of its plan that makes the Saadian mausoleum
+singular among Moroccan monuments. The details of its ornament are of
+the most intricate refinement: it seems as though the last graces of the
+expiring Merinid art had been gathered up into this rare blossom. And
+the slant of sunlight on lustrous columns, the depths of fretted gold,
+the dusky ivory of the walls and the pure white of the cenotaphs, so
+classic in spareness of ornament and simplicity of design--this subtle
+harmony of form and color gives to the dim rich chapel an air of
+dream-like unreality.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph by M. Andre Chevrillon_
+
+Marrakech--Mausoleum of the Saadian Sultans (sixteenth century) showing
+the tombs]
+
+And how can it seem other than a dream? Who can have conceived, in the
+heart of a savage Saharan camp, the serenity and balance of this hidden
+place? And how came such fragile loveliness to survive, preserving,
+behind a screen of tumbling walls, of nettles and offal and dead beasts,
+every curve of its traceries and every cell of its honeycombing?
+
+Such questions inevitably bring one back to the central riddle of the
+mysterious North African civilization: the perpetual flux and the
+immovable stability, the barbarous customs and sensuous refinements, the
+absence of artistic originality and the gift for regrouping borrowed
+motives, the patient and exquisite workmanship and the immediate neglect
+and degradation of the thing once made.
+
+Revering the dead and camping on their graves, elaborating exquisite
+monuments only to abandon and defile them, venerating scholarship and
+wisdom and living in ignorance and grossness, these gifted races,
+perpetually struggling to reach some higher level of culture from which
+they have always been swept down by a fresh wave of barbarism, are still
+only a people in the making.
+
+It may be that the political stability which France is helping them to
+acquire will at last give their higher qualities time for fruition; and
+when one looks at the mausoleum of Marrakech and the Medersas of Fez one
+feels that, were the experiment made on artistic grounds alone, it would
+yet be well worth making.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[18] Moulay-el-Hassan reigned from 1873 to 1894.
+
+[19] Dates do not ripen in Morocco.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+HAREMS AND CEREMONIES
+
+
+I
+
+THE CROWD IN THE STREET
+
+To occidental travellers the most vivid impression produced by a first
+contact with the Near East is the surprise of being in a country where
+the human element increases instead of diminishing the delight of the
+eye.
+
+After all, then, the intimate harmony between nature and architecture
+and the human body that is revealed in Greek art was not an artist's
+counsel of perfection but an honest rendering of reality: there were,
+there still are, privileged scenes where the fall of a green-grocer's
+draperies or a milkman's cloak or a beggar's rags are part of the
+composition, distinctly related to it in line and colour, and where the
+natural unstudied attitudes of the human body are correspondingly
+harmonious, however hum-drum the acts it is engaged in. The discovery,
+to the traveller returning from the East, robs the most romantic scenes
+of western Europe of half their charm: in the Piazza of San Marco, in
+the market-place of Siena, where at least the robes of the Procurators
+or the gay tights of Pinturicchio's striplings once justified man's
+presence among his works, one can see, at first, only the outrage
+inflicted on beauty by the "plentiful strutting manikins" of the modern
+world.
+
+Moroccan crowds are always a feast to the eye. The instinct of skilful
+drapery, the sense of colour (subdued by custom, but breaking out in
+subtle glimpses under the universal ashy tints) make the humblest
+assemblage of donkey-men and water-carriers an ever-renewed delight. But
+it is only on rare occasions, and in the court ceremonies to which so
+few foreigners have had access, that the hidden sumptuousness of the
+native life is revealed. Even then, the term sumptuousness may seem
+ill-chosen, since the nomadic nature of African life persists in spite
+of palaces and chamberlains and all the elaborate ritual of the Makhzen,
+and the most pompous rites are likely to end in a dusty gallop of wild
+tribesmen, and the most princely processions to tail off in a string of
+half-naked urchins riding bareback on donkeys.
+
+As in all Oriental countries, the contact between prince and beggar,
+vizier and serf is disconcertingly free and familiar, and one must see
+the highest court officials kissing the hem of the Sultan's robe, and
+hear authentic tales of slaves given by one merchant to another at the
+end of a convivial evening, to be reminded that nothing is as democratic
+in appearance as a society of which the whole structure hangs on the
+whim of one man.
+
+
+II
+
+AID-EL-KEBIR
+
+In the verandah of the Residence of Rabat I stood looking out between
+posts festooned with gentian-blue ipomeas at the first shimmer of light
+on black cypresses and white tobacco-flowers, on the scattered roofs of
+the new town, and the plain stretching away to the Sultan's palace
+above the sea.
+
+We had been told, late the night before, that the Sultan would allow
+Madame Lyautey, with the three ladies of her party, to be present at the
+great religious rite of the Aid-el-Kebir (the Sacrifice of the Sheep).
+The honour was an unprecedented one, a favour probably conceded only at
+the last moment: for as a rule no women are admitted to these
+ceremonies. It was an opportunity not to be missed; and all through the
+short stifling night I had lain awake wondering if I should be ready
+early enough. Presently the motors assembled, and we set out with the
+French officers in attendance on the Governor's wife.
+
+The Sultan's palace, a large modern building on the familiar Arab lines,
+lies in a treeless and gardenless waste enclosed by high walls and close
+above the blue Atlantic. We motored past the gates, where the Sultan's
+Black Guard was drawn up, and out to the _msalla_,[20] a sort of common
+adjacent to all the Sultan's residences where public ceremonies are
+usually performed. The sun was already beating down on the great plain
+thronged with horsemen and with the native population of Rabat on
+mule-back and foot. Within an open space in the centre of the crowd a
+canvas palissade dyed with a bold black pattern surrounded the Sultan's
+tents. The Black Guard, in scarlet tunics and white and green turbans,
+were drawn up on the edge of the open space, keeping the spectators at a
+distance; but under the guidance of our companions we penetrated to the
+edge of the crowd.
+
+The palissade was open on one side, and within it we could see moving
+about among the snowy-robed officials a group of men in straight narrow
+gowns of almond-green, peach-blossom, lilac and pink; they were the
+Sultan's musicians, whose coloured dresses always flower out
+conspicuously among the white draperies of all the other court
+attendants.
+
+In the tent nearest the opening, against a background of embroidered
+hangings, a circle of majestic turbaned old men squatted placidly on
+Rabat rugs. Presently the circle broke up, there was an agitated coming
+and going, and some one said: "The Sultan has gone to the tent at the
+back of the enclosure to kill the sheep."
+
+A sense of the impending solemnity ran through the crowd. The mysterious
+rumour which is the Voice of the Bazaar rose about us like the wind in a
+palm-oasis; the Black Guard fired a salute from an adjoining hillock;
+the clouds of red dust flung up by wheeling horsemen thickened and then
+parted, and a white-robed rider sprang out from the tent of the
+Sacrifice with something red and dripping across his saddle-bow, and
+galloped away toward Rabat through the shouting. A little shiver ran
+over the group of occidental spectators, who knew that the dripping red
+thing was a sheep with its throat so skilfully slit that, if the omen
+were favourable, it would live on through the long race to Rabat and
+gasp out its agonized life on the tiles of the Mosque.
+
+The Sacrifice of the Sheep, one of the four great Moslem rites, is
+simply the annual propitiatory offering made by every Mahometan head of
+a family, and by the Sultan as such. It is based not on a Koranic
+injunction, but on the "Souna" or record of the Prophet's "custom" or
+usages, which forms an authoritative precedent in Moslem ritual. So far
+goes the Moslem exegesis. In reality, of course, the Moslem
+blood-sacrifice comes, by way of the Semitic ritual, from far beyond and
+behind it; and the belief that the Sultan's prosperity for the coming
+year depends on the animal's protracted agony seems to relate the
+ceremony to the dark magic so deeply rooted in the mysterious tribes
+peopling North Africa long ages before the first Phoenician prows had
+rounded its coast.
+
+Between the Black Guard and the tents, five or six horses were being led
+up and down by muscular grooms in snowy tunics. They were handsome
+animals, as Moroccan horses go, and each of a different colour; and on
+the bay horse was a red saddle embroidered in gold, on the piebald a
+saddle of peach-colour and silver, on the chestnut, grass-green
+encrusted with seed-pearls, on the white mare purple housings, and
+orange velvet on the grey. The Sultan's band had struck up a shrill
+hammering and twanging, the salute of the Black Guard continued at
+intervals, and the caparisoned steeds began to rear and snort and drag
+back from the cruel Arab bits with their exquisite _niello_
+incrustations. Some one whispered that these were His Majesty's
+horses--and that it was never known till he appeared which one he would
+mount.
+
+Presently the crowd about the tents thickened, and when it divided again
+there emerged from it a grey horse bearing a motionless figure swathed
+in blinding white. Marching at the horse's bridle, lean brown grooms in
+white tunics rhythmically waved long strips of white linen to keep off
+the flies from the Imperial Presence; and beside the motionless rider,
+in a line with his horse's flank, rode the Imperial Parasol-bearer, who
+held above the sovereign's head a great sunshade of bright green velvet.
+Slowly the grey horse advanced a few yards before the tent; behind rode
+the court dignitaries, followed by the musicians, who looked, in their
+bright scant caftans, like the slender music-making angels of a
+Florentine fresco.
+
+The Sultan, pausing beneath his velvet dome, waited to receive the
+homage of the assembled tribes. An official, riding forward, drew bridle
+and called out a name. Instantly there came storming across the plain a
+wild cavalcade of tribesmen, with rifles slung across their shoulders,
+pistols and cutlasses in their belts, and twists of camel's-hair bound
+about their turbans. Within a few feet of the Sultan they drew in, their
+leader uttered a cry and sprang forward, bending to the saddle-bow, and
+with a great shout the tribe galloped by, each man bowed over his
+horse's neck as he flew past the hieratic figure on the grey horse.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from "France-Maroc"_
+
+The Sultan of Morocco under the green umbrella (at Meknez, 1916)]
+
+Again and again this ceremony was repeated, the Sultan advancing a few
+feet as each new group thundered toward him. There were more than ten
+thousand horsemen and chieftains from the Atlas and the wilderness, and
+as the ceremony continued the dust-clouds grew denser and more
+fiery-golden, till at last the forward-surging lines showed through them
+like blurred images in a tarnished mirror.
+
+As the Sultan advanced we followed, abreast of him and facing the
+oncoming squadrons. The contrast between his motionless figure and the
+wild waves of cavalry beating against it typified the strange soul of
+Islam, with its impetuosity forever culminating in impassiveness. The
+sun hung high, a brazen ball in a white sky, darting down metallic
+shafts on the dust-enveloped plain and the serene white figure under its
+umbrella. The fat man with a soft round beard-fringed face, wrapped in
+spirals of pure white, one plump hand on his embroidered bridle, his
+yellow-slippered feet thrust heel-down in big velvet-lined stirrups,
+became, through sheer immobility, a symbol, a mystery, a God. The human
+flux beat against him, dissolved, ebbed away, another spear-crested wave
+swept up behind it and dissolved in turn; and he sat on, hour after
+hour, under the white-hot sky, unconscious of the heat, the dust, the
+tumult, embodying to the wild factious precipitate hordes a long
+tradition of serene aloofness.
+
+
+III
+
+THE IMPERIAL MIRADOR
+
+As the last riders galloped up to do homage we were summoned to our
+motors and driven rapidly to the palace. The Sultan had sent word to
+Mme. Lyautey that the ladies of the Imperial harem would entertain her
+and her guests while his Majesty received the Resident General, and we
+had to hasten back in order not to miss the next act of the spectacle.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from "France-Maroc"_
+
+A clan of mountaineers and their caid.]
+
+We walked across a long court lined with the Black Guard, passed under a
+gateway, and were met by a shabbily dressed negress. Traversing a hot
+dazzle of polychrome tiles we reached another archway guarded by the
+chief eunuch, a towering black with the enamelled eyes of a basalt bust.
+The eunuch delivered us to other negresses, and we entered a labyrinth
+of inner passages and patios, all murmuring and dripping with water.
+Passing down long corridors where slaves in dim greyish garments
+flattened themselves against the walls, we caught glimpses of great dark
+rooms, laundries, pantries, bakeries, kitchens, where savoury things
+were brewing and stewing, and where more negresses, abandoning their
+pots and pans, came to peep at us from the threshold. In one corner, on
+a bench against a wall hung with matting, grey parrots in tall cages
+were being fed by a slave.
+
+A narrow staircase mounted to a landing where a princess out of an Arab
+fairy-tale awaited us. Stepping softly on her embroidered slippers she
+led us to the next landing, where another golden-slippered being smiled
+out on us, a little girl this one, blushing and dimpling under a
+jewelled diadem and pearl-woven braids. On a third landing a third
+damsel appeared, and encircled by the three graces we mounted to the
+tall _mirador_ in the central tower from which we were to look down at
+the coming ceremony. One by one, our little guides, kicking off their
+golden shoes, which a slave laid neatly outside the door, led us on soft
+bare feet into the upper chamber of the harem.
+
+It was a large room, enclosed on all sides by a balcony glazed with
+panes of brightly-coloured glass. On a gaudy modern Rabat carpet stood
+gilt armchairs of florid design and a table bearing a commercial bronze
+of the "art goods" variety. Divans with muslin-covered cushions were
+ranged against the walls and down an adjoining gallery-like apartment
+which was otherwise furnished only with clocks. The passion for clocks
+and other mechanical contrivances is common to all unmechanical races,
+and every chief's palace in North Africa contains a collection of
+time-pieces which might be called striking if so many had not ceased to
+go. But those in the Sultan's harem of Rabat are remarkable for the fact
+that, while designed on current European models, they are proportioned
+in size to the Imperial dignity, so that a Dutch "grandfather" becomes a
+wardrobe, and the box-clock of the European mantelpiece a cupboard that
+has to be set on the floor. At the end of this avenue of time-pieces a
+European double-bed with a bright silk quilt covered with Nottingham
+lace stood majestically on a carpeted platform.
+
+But for the enchanting glimpses of sea and plain through the lattices of
+the gallery, the apartment of the Sultan's ladies falls far short of
+occidental ideas of elegance. But there was hardly time to think of
+this, for the door of the _mirador_ was always opening to let in another
+fairy-tale figure, till at last we were surrounded by a dozen houris,
+laughing, babbling, taking us by the hand, and putting shy questions
+while they looked at us with caressing eyes. They were all (our
+interpretess whispered) the Sultan's "favourites," round-faced
+apricot-tinted girls in their teens, with high cheek-bones, full red
+lips, surprised brown eyes between curved-up Asiatic lids, and little
+brown hands fluttering out like birds from their brocaded sleeves.
+
+In honour of the ceremony, and of Mme. Lyautey's visit, they had put on
+their finest clothes, and their freedom of movement was somewhat
+hampered by their narrow sumptuous gowns, with over-draperies of gold
+and silver brocade and pale rosy gauze held in by corset-like sashes of
+gold tissue of Fez, and the heavy silken cords that looped their
+voluminous sleeves. Above their foreheads the hair was shaven like that
+of an Italian fourteenth-century beauty, and only a black line as narrow
+as a pencilled eyebrow showed through the twist of gauze fastened by a
+jewelled clasp above the real eye-brows. Over the forehead-jewel rose
+the complicated structure of the head-dress. Ropes of black wool were
+plaited through the hair, forming, at the back, a double loop that stood
+out above the nape like the twin handles of a vase, the upper veiled in
+airy shot gauzes and fastened with jewelled bands and ornaments. On each
+side of the red cheeks other braids were looped over the ears hung with
+broad earrings of filigree set with rough pearls and emeralds, or gold
+hoops and pendants of coral; and an unexpected tulle ruff, like that of
+a Watteau shepherdess, framed the round chin above a torrent of
+necklaces, necklaces of amber, coral, baroque pearls, hung with
+mysterious barbaric amulets and fetiches. As the young things moved
+about us on soft hennaed feet the light played on shifting gleams of
+gold and silver, blue and violet and apple-green, all harmonized and
+bemisted by clouds of pink and sky-blue; and through the changing group
+capered a little black picaninny in a caftan of silver-shot purple with
+a sash of raspberry red.
+
+But presently there was a flutter in the aviary. A fresh pair of
+_babouches_ clicked on the landing, and a young girl, less brilliantly
+dressed and less brilliant of face than the others, came in on bare
+painted feet. Her movements were shy and hesitating, her large lips
+pale, her eye-brows less vividly dark, her head less jewelled. But all
+the little humming-birds gathered about her with respectful rustlings as
+she advanced toward us leaning on one of the young girls, and holding
+out her ringed hand to Mme. Lyautey's curtsey. It was the young
+Princess, the Sultan's legitimate daughter. She examined us with sad
+eyes, spoke a few compliments through the interpretess, and seated
+herself in silence, letting the others sparkle and chatter.
+
+Conversation with the shy Princess was flagging when one of the
+favourites beckoned us to the balcony. We were told we might push open
+the painted panes a few inches, but as we did so the butterfly group
+drew back lest they should be seen looking out on the forbidden world.
+
+Salutes were crashing out again from the direction of the _msalla_:
+puffs of smoke floated over the slopes like thistle-down. Farther off, a
+pall of red vapour veiled the gallop of the last horsemen wheeling away
+toward Rabat. The vapour subsided, and moving out of it we discerned a
+slow procession. First rode a detachment of the Black Guard, mounted on
+black horses, and, comically fierce in their British scarlet and Meccan
+green, a uniform invented at the beginning of the nineteenth century by
+a retired English army officer. After the Guard came the
+standard-bearers and the great dignitaries, then the Sultan, still
+aloof, immovable, as if rapt in the contemplation of his mystic office.
+More court officials followed, then the bright-gowned musicians on
+foot, then a confused irrepressible crowd of pilgrims, beggars, saints,
+mountebanks, and the other small folk of the Bazaar, ending in a line of
+boys jamming their naked heels into the ribs of world-weary donkeys.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from "France-Maroc"_
+
+The Sultan entering Marrakech in state]
+
+The Sultan rode into the court below us, and Vizier and chamberlains,
+snowy-white against the scarlet line of the Guards, hurried forward to
+kiss his draperies, his shoes, his stirrup. Descending from his velvet
+saddle, still entranced, he paced across the tiles between a double line
+of white servitors bowing to the ground. White pigeons circled over him
+like petals loosed from a great orchard, and he disappeared with his
+retinue under the shadowy arcade of the audience chamber at the back of
+the court.
+
+At this point one of the favourites called us in from the _mirador_. The
+door had just opened to admit an elderly woman preceded by a respectful
+group of girls. From the newcomer's round ruddy face, her short round
+body, the round hands emerging from her round wrists, an inexplicable
+majesty emanated; and though she too was less richly arrayed than the
+favourites she carried her head-dress of striped gauze like a crown.
+
+This impressive old lady was the Sultan's mother. As she held out her
+plump wrinkled hand to Mme. Lyautey and spoke a few words through the
+interpretess one felt that at last a painted window of the _mirador_ had
+been broken, and a thought let into the vacuum of the harem. What
+thought, it would have taken deep insight into the processes of the Arab
+mind to discover; but its honesty was manifest in the old Empress's
+voice and smile. Here at last was a woman beyond the trivial
+dissimulations, the childish cunning, the idle cruelties of the harem.
+It was not a surprise to be told that she was her son's most trusted
+adviser, and the chief authority in the palace. If such a woman deceived
+and intrigued it would be for great purposes and for ends she believed
+in: the depth of her soul had air and daylight in it, and she would
+never willingly shut them out.
+
+The Empress Mother chatted for a while with Mme. Lyautey, asking about
+the Resident General's health, enquiring for news of the war, and
+saying, with an emotion perceptible even through the unintelligible
+words: "All is well with Morocco as long as all is well with France."
+Then she withdrew, and we were summoned again to the _mirador_.
+
+This time it was to see a company of officers in brilliant uniforms
+advancing at a trot across the plain from Rabat. At sight of the figure
+that headed them, so slim, erect and young on his splendid chestnut,
+with a pale blue tunic barred by the wide orange ribbon of the Cherifian
+Order, salutes pealed forth again from the slope above the palace and
+the Black Guard presented arms. A moment later General Lyautey and his
+staff were riding in at the gates below us. On the threshold of the
+inner court they dismounted, and moving to the other side of our balcony
+we followed the next stage of the ceremony. The Sultan was still seated
+in the audience chamber. The court officials still stood drawn up in a
+snow-white line against the snow-white walls. The great dignitaries
+advanced across the tiles to greet the General; then they fell aside,
+and he went forward alone, followed at a little distance by his staff. A
+third of the way across the court he paused, in accordance with the
+Moroccan court ceremonial, and bowed in the direction of the arcaded
+room; a few steps farther he bowed again, and a third time on the
+threshold of the room. Then French uniforms and Moroccan draperies
+closed in about him, and all vanished into the shadows of the audience
+hall.
+
+Our audience too seemed to be over. We had exhausted the limited small
+talk of the harem, had learned from the young beauties that, though they
+were forbidden to look on at the ceremony, the dancers and singers would
+come to entertain them presently, and had begun to take leave when a
+negress hurried in to say that his Majesty begged Mme. Lyautey and her
+friends to await his arrival. This was the crowning incident of our
+visit, and I wondered with what Byzantine ritual the Anointed One fresh
+from the exercise of his priestly functions would be received among his
+women.
+
+The door opened, and without any announcement or other preliminary
+flourish a fat man with a pleasant face, his djellabah stretched over a
+portly front, walked in holding a little boy by the hand. Such was his
+Majesty the Sultan Moulay Youssef, despoiled of sacramental burnouses
+and turban, and shuffling along on bare yellow-slippered feet with the
+gait of a stout elderly gentleman who has taken off his boots in the
+passage preparatory to a domestic evening.
+
+The little Prince, one of his two legitimate sons, was dressed with
+equal simplicity, for silken garments are worn in Morocco only by
+musicians, boy-dancers and other hermaphrodite fry. With his ceremonial
+raiment the Sultan had put off his air of superhuman majesty, and the
+expression of his round pale face corresponded with the plainness of his
+dress. The favourites fluttered about him, respectful but by no means
+awestruck, and the youngest began to play with the little Prince. We
+could well believe the report that his was the happiest harem in
+Morocco, as well as the only one into which a breath of the outer world
+ever came.
+
+Moulay Youssef greeted Mme. Lyautey with friendly simplicity, made the
+proper speeches to her companions, and then, with the air of the
+business-man who has forgotten to give an order before leaving his
+office, he walked up to a corner of the room, and while the
+flower-maidens ruffled about him, and through the windows we saw the
+last participants in the mystic rites galloping away toward the
+crenellated walls of Rabat, his Majesty the Priest and Emperor of the
+Faithful unhooked a small instrument from the wall and applied his
+sacred lips to the telephone.
+
+
+IV
+
+IN OLD RABAT
+
+Before General Lyautey came to Morocco Rabat had been subjected to the
+indignity of European "improvements," and one must traverse boulevards
+scored with tram-lines, and pass between hotel-terraces and cafes and
+cinema-palaces, to reach the surviving nucleus of the once beautiful
+native town. Then, at the turn of a commonplace street, one comes upon
+it suddenly. The shops and cafes cease, the jingle of trams and the
+trumpeting of motor-horns die out, and here, all at once, are silence
+and solitude, and the dignified reticence of the windowless Arab
+house-fronts.
+
+We were bound for the house of a high government official, a Moroccan
+dignitary of the old school, who had invited us to tea, and added a
+message to the effect that the ladies of his household would be happy to
+receive me.
+
+The house we sought was some distance down the quietest of white-walled
+streets. Our companion knocked at a low green door, and we were admitted
+to a passage into which a wooden stairway descended. A brother-in-law of
+our host was waiting for us: in his wake we mounted the ladder-like
+stairs and entered a long room with a florid French carpet and a set of
+gilt furniture to match. There were no fretted walls, no painted cedar
+doors, no fountains rustling in unseen courts: the house was squeezed in
+between others, and such traces of old ornament as it may have possessed
+had vanished.
+
+But presently we saw why its inhabitants were indifferent to such
+details. Our host, a handsome white-bearded old man, welcomed us in the
+doorway; then he led us to a raised oriel window at one end of the room,
+and seated us in the gilt armchairs face to face with one of the most
+beautiful views in Morocco.
+
+Below us lay the white and blue terrace-roofs of the native town, with
+palms and minarets shooting up between them, or the shadows of a
+vine-trellis patterning a quiet lane. Beyond, the Atlantic sparkled,
+breaking into foam at the mouth of the Bou-Regreg and under the towering
+ramparts of the Kasbah of the Oudayas. To the right, the ruins of the
+great Mosque rose from their plateau over the river; and, on the farther
+side of the troubled flood, old Sale, white and wicked, lay like a jewel
+in its gardens. With such a scene beneath their eyes, the inhabitants of
+the house could hardly feel its lack of architectural interest.
+
+After exchanging the usual compliments, and giving us time to enjoy the
+view, our host withdrew, taking with him the men of our party. A moment
+later he reappeared with a rosy fair-haired girl, dressed in Arab
+costume, but evidently of European birth. The brother-in-law explained
+that this young woman, who had "studied in Algeria," and whose mother
+was French, was the intimate friend of the ladies of the household, and
+would act as interpreter. Our host then again left us, joining the men
+visitors in another room, and the door opened to admit his wife and
+daughters-in-law.
+
+The mistress of the house was a handsome Algerian with sad expressive
+eyes: the younger women were pale, fat and amiable. They all wore sober
+dresses, in keeping with the simplicity of the house, and but for the
+vacuity of their faces the group might have been that of a Professor's
+family in an English or American University town, decently costumed for
+an Arabian Nights' pageant in the college grounds. I was never more
+vividly reminded of the fact that human nature, from one pole to the
+other, falls naturally into certain categories, and that Respectability
+wears the same face in an Oriental harem as in England or America.
+
+My hostesses received me with the utmost amiability, we seated ourselves
+in the oriel facing the view, and the interchange of questions and
+compliments began.
+
+Had I any children? (They asked it all at once.)
+
+Alas, no.
+
+"In Islam" (one of the ladies ventured) "a woman without children is
+considered the most unhappy being in the world."
+
+I replied that in the western world also childless women were pitied.
+(The brother-in-law smiled incredulously.)
+
+Knowing that European fashions are of absorbing interest to the harem I
+next enquired: "What do these ladies think of our stiff tailor-dresses?
+Don't they find them excessively ugly?"
+
+"Yes, they do;" (it was again the brother-in-law who replied.) "But they
+suppose that in your own homes you dress less badly."
+
+"And have they never any desire to travel, or to visit the Bazaars, as
+the Turkish ladies do?"
+
+"No, indeed. They are too busy to give such matters a thought. In _our
+country_ women of the highest class occupy themselves with their
+household and their children, and the rest of their time is devoted to
+needlework." (At this statement I gave the brother-in-law a smile as
+incredulous as his own.)
+
+All this time the fair-haired interpretess had not been allowed by the
+vigilant guardian of the harem to utter a word.
+
+I turned to her with a question.
+
+"So your mother is French, _Mademoiselle_?"
+
+"_Oui, Madame._"
+
+"From what part of France did she come?"
+
+A bewildered pause. Finally: "I don't know ... from Switzerland, I
+think," brought out this shining example of the Higher Education. In
+spite of Algerian "advantages" the poor girl could speak only a few
+words of her mother's tongue. She had kept the European features and
+complexion, but her soul was the soul of Islam. The harem had placed its
+powerful imprint upon her, and she looked at me with the same remote and
+passive eyes as the daughters of the house.
+
+After struggling for a while longer with a conversation which the
+watchful brother-in-law continued to direct as he pleased. I felt my own
+lips stiffening into the resigned smile of the harem, and it was a
+relief when at last their guardian drove the pale flock away, and the
+handsome old gentleman who owned them reappeared on the scene, bringing
+back my friends, and followed by slaves and tea.
+
+
+V
+
+IN FEZ
+
+What thoughts, what speculations, one wonders, go on under the narrow
+veiled brows of the little creatures destined to the high honour of
+marriage or concubinage in Moroccan palaces?
+
+Some are brought down from mountains and cedar forests, from the free
+life of the tents where the nomad women go unveiled. Others come from
+harems in the turreted cities beyond the Atlas, where blue palm-groves
+beat all night against the stars and date-caravans journey across the
+desert from Timbuctoo. Some, born and bred in an airy palace among
+pomegranate gardens and white terraces, pass thence to one of the feudal
+fortresses near the snows, where for half the year the great chiefs of
+the south live in their clan, among fighting men and falconers and packs
+of _sloughis_. And still others grow up in a stifling Mellah, trip
+unveiled on its blue terraces overlooking the gardens of the great, and,
+seen one day at sunset by a fat vizier or his pale young master, are
+acquired for a handsome sum and transferred to the painted sepulchre of
+the harem.
+
+Worst of all must be the fate of those who go from tents and cedar
+forests, or from some sea-blown garden above Rabat, into one of the
+houses of Old Fez. They are well-nigh impenetrable, these palaces of
+Elbali: the Fazi dignitaries do not welcome the visits of strange women.
+On the rare occasions when they are received, a member of the family
+(one of the sons, or a brother-in-law who has "studied in Algeria")
+usually acts as interpreter; and perhaps it is as well that no one from
+the outer world should come to remind these listless creatures that
+somewhere the gulls dance on the Atlantic and the wind murmurs through
+olive-yards and clatters the metallic fronds of palm-groves.
+
+We had been invited, one day, to visit the harem of one of the chief
+dignitaries of the Makhzen at Fez, and these thoughts came to me as I
+sat among the pale women in their mouldering prison. The descent through
+the steep tunnelled streets gave one the sense of being lowered into the
+shaft of a mine. At each step the strip of sky grew narrower, and was
+more often obscured by the low vaulted passages into which we plunged.
+The noises of the Bazaar had died out, and only the sound of fountains
+behind garden walls and the clatter of our mules' hoofs on the stones
+went with us. Then fountains and gardens ceased also, the towering
+masonry closed in, and we entered an almost subterranean labyrinth which
+sun and air never reach. At length our mules turned into a _cul-de-sac_
+blocked by a high building. On the right was another building, one of
+those blind mysterious house-fronts of Fez that seem like a fragment of
+its ancient fortifications. Clients and servants lounged on the stone
+benches built into the wall; it was evidently the house of an important
+person. A charming youth with intelligent eyes waited on the threshold
+to receive us: he was one of the sons of the house, the one who had
+"studied in Algeria" and knew how to talk to visitors. We followed him
+into a small arcaded _patio_ hemmed in by the high walls of the house.
+On the right was the usual long room with archways giving on the court.
+Our host, a patriarchal personage, draped in fat as in a toga, came
+toward us, a mountain of majestic muslins, his eyes sparkling in a
+swarthy silver-bearded face. He seated us on divans and lowered his
+voluminous person to a heap of cushions on the step leading into the
+court; and the son who had studied in Algeria instructed a negress to
+prepare the tea.
+
+Across the _patio_ was another arcade closely hung with unbleached
+cotton. From behind it came the sound of chatter, and now and then a
+bare brown child in a scant shirt would escape, and be hurriedly pulled
+back with soft explosions of laughter, while a black woman came out to
+readjust the curtains.
+
+There were three of these negresses, splendid bronze creatures, wearing
+white djellabahs over bright-coloured caftans, striped scarves knotted
+about their large hips, and gauze turbans on their crinkled hair. Their
+wrists clinked with heavy silver bracelets, and big circular earrings
+danced in their purple ear-lobes. A languor lay on all the other inmates
+of the household, on the servants and hangers-on squatting in the shade
+under the arcade, on our monumental host and his smiling son; but the
+three negresses, vibrating with activity, rushed continually from the
+curtained chamber to the kitchen, and from the kitchen to the master's
+reception-room, bearing on their pinky-blue palms trays of Britannia
+metal with tall glasses and fresh bunches of mint, shouting orders to
+dozing menials, and calling to each other from opposite ends of the
+court; and finally the stoutest of the three, disappearing from view,
+reappeared suddenly on a pale green balcony overhead, where, profiled
+against a square of blue sky, she leaned over in a Veronese attitude and
+screamed down to the others like an excited parrot.
+
+In spite of their febrile activity and tropical bird-shrieks, we waited
+in vain for tea; and after a while our host suggested to his son that I
+might like to visit the ladies of the household. As I had expected, the
+young man led me across the _patio_, lifted the cotton hanging and
+introduced me into an apartment exactly like the one we had just left.
+Divans covered with striped mattress-ticking stood against the white
+walls, and on them sat seven or eight passive-looking women over whom a
+number of pale children scrambled.
+
+The eldest of the group, and evidently the mistress of the house,
+was an Algerian lady, probably of about fifty, with a sad and
+delicately-modelled face; the others were daughters, daughters-in-law
+and concubines. The latter word evokes to occidental ears images of
+sensual seduction which the Moroccan harem seldom realizes. All the
+ladies of this dignified official household wore the same look of
+somewhat melancholy respectability. In their stuffy curtained apartment
+they were like cellar-grown flowers, pale, heavy, fuller but frailer
+than the garden sort. Their dresses, rich but sober, the veils and
+diadems put on in honour of my visit, had a dignified dowdiness in odd
+contrast to the frivolity of the Imperial harem. But what chiefly struck
+me was the apathy of the younger women. I asked them if they had a
+garden, and they shook their heads wistfully, saying that there were no
+gardens in Old Fez. The roof was therefore their only escape: a roof
+overlooking acres and acres of other roofs, and closed in by the naked
+fortified mountains which stand about Fez like prison-walls.
+
+After a brief exchange of compliments silence fell. Conversing through
+interpreters is a benumbing process, and there are few points of contact
+between the open-air occidental mind and beings imprisoned in a
+conception of sexual and domestic life based on slave-service and
+incessant espionage. These languid women on their muslin cushions toil
+not, neither do they spin. The Moroccan lady knows little of cooking,
+needlework or any household arts. When her child is ill she can only
+hang it with amulets and wail over it; the great lady of the Fazi palace
+is as ignorant of hygiene as the peasant-woman of the _bled_. And all
+these colourless eventless lives depend on the favour of one fat
+tyrannical man, bloated with good living and authority, himself almost
+as inert and sedentary as his women, and accustomed to impose his whims
+on them ever since he ran about the same _patio_ as a little
+short-smocked boy.
+
+The redeeming point in this stagnant domesticity is the tenderness of
+the parents for their children, and western writers have laid so much
+stress on this that one would suppose children could be loved only by
+inert and ignorant parents. It is in fact charming to see the heavy eyes
+of the Moroccan father light up when a brown grasshopper baby jumps on
+his knee, and the unfeigned tenderness with which the childless women of
+the harem caress the babies of their happier rivals. But the
+sentimentalist moved by this display of family feeling would do well to
+consider the lives of these much-petted children. Ignorance,
+unhealthiness and a precocious sexual initiation prevail in all classes.
+Education consists in learning by heart endless passages of the Koran,
+and amusement in assisting at spectacles that would be unintelligible
+to western children, but that the pleasantries of the harem make
+perfectly comprehensible to Moroccan infancy. At eight or nine the
+little girls are married, at twelve the son of the house is "given his
+first negress"; and thereafter, in the rich and leisured class, both
+sexes live till old age in an atmosphere of sensuality without
+seduction.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from "France-Maroc"_
+
+Women watching a procession from a roof]
+
+The young son of the house led me back across the court, where the
+negresses were still shrieking and scurrying, and passing to and fro
+like a stage-procession with the vain paraphernalia of a tea that never
+came. Our host still smiled from his cushions, resigned to Oriental
+delays. To distract the impatient westerners, a servant unhooked from
+the wall the cage of a gently-cooing dove. It was brought to us, still
+cooing, and looked at me with the same resigned and vacant eyes as the
+ladies I had just left. As it was being restored to its hook the slaves
+lolling about the entrance scattered respectfully at the approach of a
+handsome man of about thirty, with delicate features and a black beard.
+Crossing the court, he stooped to kiss the shoulder of our host, who
+introduced him as his eldest son, the husband of one or two of the
+little pale wives with whom I had been exchanging platitudes.
+
+From the increasing agitation of the negresses it became evident that
+the ceremony of tea-making had been postponed till his arrival. A metal
+tray bearing a Britannia samovar and tea-pot was placed on the tiles of
+the court, and squatting beside it the newcomer gravely proceeded to
+infuse the mint. Suddenly the cotton hangings fluttered again, and a
+tiny child in the scantest of smocks rushed out and scampered across the
+court. Our venerable host, stretching out rapturous arms, caught the
+fugitive to his bosom, where the little boy lay like a squirrel,
+watching us with great sidelong eyes. He was the last-born of the
+patriarch, and the youngest brother of the majestic bearded gentleman
+engaged in tea-making. While he was still in his father's arms two more
+sons appeared: charming almond-eyed schoolboys returning from their
+Koran-class, escorted by their slaves. All the sons greeted each other
+affectionately, and caressed with almost feminine tenderness the dancing
+baby so lately added to their ranks; and finally, to crown this scene of
+domestic intimacy, the three negresses, their gigantic effort at last
+accomplished, passed about glasses of steaming mint and trays of
+gazelles' horns and white sugar-cakes.
+
+
+VI
+
+IN MARRAKECH
+
+The farther one travels from the Mediterranean and Europe the closer the
+curtains of the women's quarters are drawn. The only harem in which we
+were allowed an interpreter was that of the Sultan himself; in the
+private harems of Fez and Rabat a French-speaking relative transmitted
+(or professed to transmit) our remarks; in Marrakech, the great nobleman
+and dignitary who kindly invited me to visit his household was deaf to
+our hint that the presence of a lady from one of the French government
+schools might facilitate our intercourse.
+
+When we drove up to his palace, one of the stateliest in Marrakech, the
+street was thronged with clansmen and clients. Dignified merchants in
+white muslin, whose grooms held white mules saddled with rose-coloured
+velvet, warriors from the Atlas wearing the corkscrew ringlets which are
+a sign of military prowess, Jewish traders in black gabardines,
+leather-gaitered peasant-women with chickens and cheese, and beggars
+rolling their blind eyes or exposing their fly-plastered sores, were
+gathered in Oriental promiscuity about the great man's door; while under
+the archway stood a group of youths and warlike-looking older men who
+were evidently of his own clan.
+
+The Caid's chamberlain, a middle-aged man of dignified appearance,
+advanced to meet us between bowing clients and tradesmen. He led us
+through cool passages lined with the intricate mosaic-work of Fez, past
+beggars who sat on stone benches whining out their blessings, and pale
+Fazi craftsmen laying a floor of delicate tiles. The Caid is a lover of
+old Arab architecture. His splendid house, which is not yet finished,
+has been planned and decorated on the lines of the old Imperial palaces,
+and when a few years of sun and rain and Oriental neglect have worked
+their way on its cedar-wood and gilding and ivory stucco it will have
+the same faded loveliness as the fairy palaces of Fez.
+
+In a garden where fountains splashed and roses climbed among cypresses,
+the Caid himself awaited us. This great fighter and loyal friend of
+France is a magnificent eagle-beaked man, brown, lean and sinewy, with
+vigilant eyes looking out under his carefully draped muslin turban, and
+negroid lips half-hidden by a close black beard.
+
+Tea was prepared in the familiar setting; a long arcaded room with
+painted ceiling and richly stuccoed walls. All around were ranged the
+usual mattresses covered with striped ticking and piled with muslin
+cushions. A bedstead of brass, imitating a Louis XVI cane bed, and
+adorned with brass garlands and bows, throned on the usual platform; and
+the only other ornaments were a few clocks and bunches of wax flowers
+under glass. Like all Orientals, this hero of the Atlas, who spends half
+his life with his fighting clansmen in a mediaeval stronghold among the
+snows, and the other half rolling in a 60 h.p. motor over smooth French
+roads, seems unaware of any degrees of beauty or appropriateness in
+objects of European design, and places against the exquisite mosaics
+and traceries of his Fazi craftsmen the tawdriest bric-a-brac of the
+cheap department-store.
+
+While tea was being served I noticed a tiny negress, not more than six
+or seven years old, who stood motionless in the embrasure of an archway.
+Like most of the Moroccan slaves, even in the greatest households, she
+was shabbily, almost raggedly, dressed. A dirty _gandourah_ of striped
+muslin covered her faded caftan, and a cheap kerchief was wound above
+her grave and precocious little face. With preternatural vigilance she
+watched each movement of the Caid, who never spoke to her, looked at
+her, or made her the slightest perceptible sign, but whose least wish
+she instantly divined, refilling his tea-cup, passing the plates of
+sweets, or removing our empty glasses, in obedience to some secret
+telegraphy on which her whole being hung.
+
+The Caid is a great man. He and his famous elder brother, holding the
+southern marches of Morocco against alien enemies and internal
+rebellion, played a preponderant part in the defence of the French
+colonies in North Africa during the long struggle of the war.
+Enlightened, cultivated, a friend of the arts, a scholar and
+diplomatist, he seems, unlike many Orientals, to have selected the best
+in assimilating European influences. Yet when I looked at the tiny
+creature watching him with those anxious joyless eyes I felt once more
+the abyss that slavery and the seraglio put between the most
+Europeanized Mahometan and the western conception of life. The Caid's
+little black slaves are well-known in Morocco, and behind the sad child
+leaning in the archway stood all the shadowy evils of the social system
+that hangs like a millstone about the neck of Islam.
+
+Presently a handsome tattered negress came across the garden to invite
+me to the harem. Captain de S. and his wife, who had accompanied me,
+were old friends of the Chief's, and it was owing to this that the
+jealously-guarded doors of the women's quarters were opened to Mme de S.
+and myself. We followed the negress to a marble-paved court where
+pigeons fluttered and strutted about the central fountain. From under a
+trellised arcade hung with linen curtains several ladies came forward.
+They greeted my companion with exclamations of delight; then they led us
+into the usual commonplace room with divans and whitewashed walls. Even
+in the most sumptuous Moroccan palaces little care seems to be expended
+on the fittings of the women's quarters: unless, indeed, the room in
+which visitors are received corresponds with a boarding-school
+"parlour," and the personal touch is reserved for the private
+apartments.
+
+The ladies who greeted us were more richly dressed than any I had seen
+except the Sultan's favourites; but their faces were more distinguished,
+more European in outline, than those of the round-cheeked beauties of
+Rabat. My companions had told me that the Caid's harem was recruited
+from Georgia, and that the ladies receiving us had been brought up in
+the relative freedom of life in Constantinople; and it was easy to read
+in their wistfully smiling eyes memories of a life unknown to the
+passive daughters of Morocco.
+
+They appeared to make no secret of their regrets, for presently one of
+them, with a smile, called my attention to some faded photographs
+hanging over the divan. They represented groups of plump
+provincial-looking young women in dowdy European ball-dresses; and it
+required an effort of the imagination to believe that the lovely
+creatures in velvet caftans, with delicately tattooed temples under
+complicated head-dresses, and hennaed feet crossed on muslin cushions,
+were the same as the beaming frumps in the photographs. But to the
+sumptuously-clad exiles these faded photographs and ugly dresses
+represented freedom, happiness, and all they had forfeited when fate
+(probably in the shape of an opulent Hebrew couple "travelling with
+their daughters") carried them from the Bosphorus to the Atlas.
+
+As in the other harems I had visited, perfect equality seemed to prevail
+between the ladies, and while they chatted with Mme de S. whose few
+words of Arabic had loosed their tongues, I tried to guess which was the
+favourite, or at least the first in rank. My choice wavered between the
+pretty pale creature with a _ferronniere_ across her temples and a
+tea-rose caftan veiled in blue gauze, and the nut-brown beauty in red
+velvet hung with pearls whose languid attitudes and long-lidded eyes
+were so like the Keepsake portraits of Byron's Haidee. Or was it perhaps
+the third, less pretty but more vivid and animated, who sat behind the
+tea-tray, and mimicked so expressively a soldier shouldering his rifle,
+and another falling dead, in her effort to ask us "when the dreadful war
+would be over"? Perhaps ... unless, indeed, it were the handsome
+octoroon, slightly older than the others, but even more richly dressed,
+so free and noble in her movements, and treated by the others with such
+friendly deference.
+
+I was struck by the fact that among them all there was not a child; it
+was the first harem without babies that I had seen in that prolific
+land. Presently one of the ladies asked Mme. de S. about her children;
+in reply, she enquired for the Caid's little boy, the son of his wife
+who had died. The ladies' faces lit up wistfully, a slave was given an
+order, and presently a large-eyed ghost of a child was brought into the
+room.
+
+Instantly all the bracelet-laden arms were held out to the dead woman's
+son; and as I watched the weak little body hung with amulets and the
+heavy head covered with thin curls pressed against a brocaded bosom, I
+was reminded of one of the coral-hung child-Christs of Crivelli,
+standing livid and waxen on the knee of a splendidly dressed Madonna.
+
+The poor baby on whom such hopes and ambitions hung stared at us with a
+solemn unamused gaze. Would all his pretty mothers, his eyes seemed to
+ask, succeed in bringing him to maturity in spite of the parched summers
+of the south and the stifling existence of the harem? It was evident
+that no precaution had been neglected to protect him from maleficent
+influences and the danger that walks by night, for his frail neck and
+wrists were hung with innumerable charms: Koranic verses, Soudanese
+incantations, and images of forgotten idols in amber and coral and horn
+and ambergris. Perhaps they will ward off the powers of evil, and let
+him grow up to shoulder the burden of the great Caids of the south.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[20] The _msalla_ is used for the performance of religious ceremonies
+when the crowd is too great to be contained in the court of the mosque.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+GENERAL LYAUTEY'S WORK IN MOROCCO
+
+
+I
+
+It is not too much to say that General Lyautey has twice saved Morocco
+from destruction: once in 1912, when the inertia and double-dealing of
+Abd-el-Hafid abandoned the country to the rebellious tribes who had
+attacked him in Fez, and the second time in August, 1914, when Germany
+declared war on France.
+
+In 1912, in consequence of the threatening attitude of the dissident
+tribes and the generally disturbed condition of the country, the Sultan
+Abd-el-Hafid had asked France to establish a protectorate in Morocco.
+The agreement entered into, called the "Convention of Fez," stipulated
+that a French Resident-General should be sent to Morocco with authority
+to act as the Sultan's sole representative in treating with the other
+powers. The convention was signed in March, 1912, and a few days
+afterward an uprising more serious than any that had gone before took
+place in Fez. This sudden outbreak was due in part to purely local and
+native difficulties, in part to the intrinsic weakness of the French
+situation. The French government had imagined that a native army
+commanded by French officers could be counted on to support the Makhzen
+and maintain order; but Abd-el-Hafid's growing unpopularity had
+estranged his own people from him, and the army turned on the government
+and on the French. On the 17th of April, 1912, the Moroccan soldiers
+massacred their French officers after inflicting horrible tortures on
+them; the population of Fez rose against the European civilians, and for
+a fortnight the Oued Fez ran red with the blood of harmless French
+colonists. It was then that France appointed General Lyautey
+Resident-General in Morocco.
+
+When he reached Fez it was besieged by twenty thousand Berbers. Rebel
+tribes were flocking in to their support, to the cry of the Holy War;
+and the terrified Sultan, who had already announced his intention of
+resigning, warned the French troops who were trying to protect him that
+unless they guaranteed to get him safely to Rabat he would turn his
+influence against them. Two days afterward the Berbers attacked Fez and
+broke in at two gates. The French drove them out and forced them back
+twenty miles. The outskirts of the city were rapidly fortified, and a
+few weeks later General Gouraud, attacking the rebels in the valley of
+the Sebou, completely disengaged Fez.
+
+The military danger overcome, General Lyautey began his great task of
+civilian administration. His aim was to support and strengthen the
+existing government, to reassure and pacify the distrustful and
+antagonistic elements, and to assert French authority without irritating
+or discouraging native ambitions.
+
+Meanwhile a new Mahdi (Ahmed-el-Hiba) had risen in the south.
+Treacherously supported by Abd-el-Hafid, he was proclaimed Sultan at
+Tiznit, and acknowledged by the whole of the Souss. In Marrakech, native
+unrest had caused the Europeans to fly to the coast, and in the north a
+new group of rebellious tribes menaced Fez.
+
+El-Hiba entered Marrakech in August, 1912, and the French consul and
+several other French residents were taken prisoner. El-Hiba's forces
+then advanced to a point half way between Marrakech and Mazagan, where
+General Mangin, at that time a colonial colonel, met and utterly routed
+them. The disorder in the south, and the appeals of the native
+population for protection against the savage depredations of the new
+Mahdist rebels, made it necessary for the French troops to follow up
+their success; and in September Marrakech was taken.
+
+Such were the swift and brilliant results of General Lyautey's
+intervention. The first difficulties had been quickly overcome; others,
+far more complicated, remained. The military occupation of Morocco had
+to be followed up by its civil reorganization. By the Franco-German
+treaty of 1911 Germany had finally agreed to recognize the French
+protectorate in Morocco; but in spite of an apparently explicit
+acknowledgment of this right, Germany, as usual, managed to slip into
+the contract certain ambiguities of form that were likely to lead to
+future trouble.
+
+To obtain even this incomplete treaty France had had to sacrifice part
+of her colonies in equatorial Africa; and in addition to the uncertain
+relation with Germany there remained the dead weight of the Spanish zone
+and the confused international administration of Tangier. The
+disastrously misgoverned Spanish zone has always been a centre for
+German intrigue and native conspiracies, as well as a permanent obstacle
+to the economic development of Morocco.
+
+Such were the problems that General Lyautey found awaiting him. A long
+colonial experience, and an unusual combination of military and
+administrative talents, prepared him for the almost impossible task of
+dealing with them. Swift and decisive when military action is required,
+he has above all the long views and endless patience necessary to the
+successful colonial governor. The policy of France in Morocco has been
+weak and spasmodic; in his hands it became firm and consecutive. A
+sympathetic understanding of the native prejudices, and a real affection
+for the native character, made him try to build up an administration
+which should be, not an application of French ideas to African
+conditions, but a development of the best native aspirations. The
+difficulties were immense. The attempt to govern as far as possible
+through the Great Chiefs was a wise one; but it was hampered by the fact
+that these powerful leaders, however loyal to the Protectorate, knew no
+methods of administration but those based on extortion. It was necessary
+at once to use them and to educate them; and one of General Lyautey's
+greatest achievements has been the successful employment of native
+ability in the government of the country.
+
+
+II
+
+The first thing to do was to create a strong frontier against the
+dissident tribes of the Blad-es-Siba. To do this it was necessary that
+the French should hold the natural defenses of the country, the
+foothills of the Little and of the Great Atlas, and the valley of the
+Moulouya, which forms the corridor between western Algeria and Morocco.
+This was nearly accomplished in 1914 when war broke out.
+
+At that moment the home government cabled the Resident-General to send
+all his available troops to France, abandoning the whole of conquered
+territory except the coast towns. To do so would have been to give
+France's richest colonies[21] outright to Germany at a moment when what
+they could supply--meat and wheat--was exactly what the enemy most
+needed.
+
+General Lyautey took forty-eight hours to consider. He then decided to
+"empty the egg without breaking the shell"; and the reply he sent was
+that of a great patriot and a great general. In effect he said: "I will
+give you all the troops you ask, but instead of abandoning the interior
+of the country I will hold what we have already taken, and fortify and
+enlarge our boundaries." No other military document has so nearly that
+ring as Marshal Foch's immortal Marne despatch (written only a few weeks
+later): "My centre is broken, my right wing is wavering, the situation
+is favorable and I am about to attack."
+
+General Lyautey had framed his answer in a moment of patriotic
+exaltation, when the soul of every Frenchman was strung up to a
+superhuman pitch. But the pledge once made, it had to be carried out;
+and even those who most applauded his decision wondered how he would
+meet the almost insuperable difficulties it involved. Morocco, when he
+was called there, was already honey-combed by German trading interests
+and secret political intrigue, and the fruit seemed ready to fall when
+the declaration of war shook the bough. The only way to save the colony
+for France was to keep its industrial and agricultural life going, and
+give to the famous "business as usual" a really justifiable application.
+
+General Lyautey completely succeeded, and the first impression of all
+travellers arriving in Morocco two years later was that of suddenly
+returning to a world in normal conditions. There was even, so complete
+was the illusion, a first moment of almost painful surprise on entering
+an active prosperous community, seemingly absorbed in immediate material
+interests to the exclusion of all thought of the awful drama that was
+being played out in the mother country; and it was only on reflection
+that this absorption in the day's task, and this air of smiling faith
+in the future, were seen to be Morocco's truest way of serving France.
+
+For not only was France to be supplied with provisions, but the
+confidence in her ultimate triumph was at all costs to be kept up in the
+native mind. German influence was as deep-seated as a cancer: to cut it
+out required the most drastic of operations. And that operation
+consisted precisely in letting it be seen that France was strong and
+prosperous enough for her colonies to thrive and expand without fear
+while she held at bay on her own frontier the most formidable foe the
+world has ever seen. Such was the "policy of the smile," consistently
+advocated by General Lyautey from the beginning of the war, and of which
+he and his household were the first to set the example.
+
+
+III
+
+The General had said that he would not "break the egg-shell"; but he
+knew that this was not enough, and that he must make it appear
+unbreakable if he were to retain the confidence of the natives.
+
+How this was achieved, with the aid of the few covering troops left him,
+is still almost incomprehensible. To hold the line was virtually
+impossible: therefore he pushed it forward. An anonymous writer in
+_L'Afrique Francaise_ (January, 1917) has thus described the
+manoeuvre: "General Henrys was instructed to watch for storm-signals
+on the front, to stop up the cracks, to strengthen weak points and to
+rectify doubtful lines. Thanks to these operations, which kept the
+rebels perpetually harassed by always forestalling their own plans, the
+occupied territory was enlarged by a succession of strongly fortified
+positions." While this was going on in the north, General Lamothe was
+extending and strengthening, by means of pacific negotiations, the
+influence of the Great Chiefs in the south; and other agents of the
+Residency were engaged in watching and thwarting the incessant German
+intrigues in the Spanish zone.
+
+General Lyautey is quoted as having said that "a work-shop is worth a
+battalion." This precept he managed to put into action even during the
+first dark days of 1914, and the interior development of Morocco
+proceeded side by side with the strengthening of its defenses. Germany
+had long foreseen what an asset northwest Africa would be during the
+war; and General Lyautey was determined to prove how right Germany had
+been. He did so by getting the government, to whom he had given nearly
+all his troops, to give him in exchange an agricultural and industrial
+army, or at least enough specialists to form such an army out of the
+available material in the country. For every battle fought a road was
+made;[22] for every rebel fortress shelled a factory was built, a harbor
+developed, or more miles of fallow land ploughed and sown.
+
+But this economic development did not satisfy the Resident. He wished
+Morocco to enlarge her commercial relations with France and the other
+allied countries, and with this object in view he organized and carried
+out with brilliant success a series of exhibitions at Casablanca, Fez
+and Rabat. The result of this bold policy surpassed even its creator's
+hopes. The Moroccans of the plain are an industrious and money-loving
+people, and the sight of these rapidly improvised exhibitions, where the
+industrial and artistic products of France and other European countries
+were shown in picturesque buildings grouped about flower-filled gardens,
+fascinated their imagination and strengthened their confidence in the
+country that could find time for such an effort in the midst of a great
+war. The Voice of the Bazaar carried the report to the farthest confines
+of Moghreb, and one by one the notabilities of the different tribes
+arrived, with delegations from Algeria and Tunisia. It was even said
+that several rebel chiefs had submitted to the Makhzen in order not to
+miss the Exhibition.
+
+At the same time as the "Miracle of the Marne" another, less famous but
+almost as vital to France, was being silently performed at the other
+end of her dominions. It will not seem an exaggeration to speak of
+General Lyautey's achievement during the first year of the war as the
+"Miracle of Morocco" if one considers the immense importance of doing
+what he did at the moment when he did it. And to understand this it is
+only needful to reckon what Germany could have drawn in supplies and men
+from a German North Africa, and what would have been the situation of
+France during the war with a powerful German colony in control of the
+western Mediterranean.
+
+General Lyautey has always been one of the clear-sighted administrators
+who understand that the successful government of a foreign country
+depends on many little things, and not least on the administrator's
+genuine sympathy with the traditions, habits and tastes of the people. A
+keen feeling for beauty had prepared him to appreciate all that was most
+exquisite and venerable in the Arab art of Morocco, and even in the
+first struggle with political and military problems he found time to
+gather about him a group of archaeologists and artists who were charged
+with the inspection and preservation of the national monuments and the
+revival of the languishing native art-industries. The old pottery,
+jewelry, metal-work, rugs and embroideries of the different regions were
+carefully collected and classified; schools of decorative art were
+founded, skilled artisans sought out, and every effort was made to urge
+European residents to follow native models and use native artisans in
+building and furnishing.
+
+At the various Exhibitions much space was allotted to these revived
+industries, and the matting of Sale, the rugs of Rabat, the embroideries
+of Fez and Marrakech have already found a ready market in France,
+besides awakening in the educated class of colonists an appreciation of
+the old buildings and the old arts of the country that will be its
+surest safeguard against the destructive effects of colonial expansion.
+It is only necessary to see the havoc wrought in Tunisia and Algeria by
+the heavy hand of the colonial government to know what General Lyautey
+has achieved in saving Morocco from this form of destruction, also.
+
+All this has been accomplished by the Resident-General during five years
+of unexampled and incessant difficulty; and probably the true
+explanation of the miracle is that which he himself gives when he says,
+with the quiet smile that typifies his Moroccan war-policy: "It was easy
+to do because I loved the people."
+
+
+
+THE WORK OF THE FRENCH PROTECTORATE, 1912-1918
+
+
+PORTS
+
+Owing to the fact that the neglected and roadless Spanish zone
+intervened between the French possessions and Tangier, which is the
+natural port of Morocco, one of the first pre-occupations of General
+Lyautey was to make ports along the inhospitable Atlantic coast, where
+there are no natural harbours.
+
+Since 1912, in spite of the immense cost and the difficulty of obtaining
+labour, the following has been done:
+
+_Casablanca._ A jetty 1900 metres long has been planned: 824 metres
+finished December, 1917.
+
+Small jetty begun 1916, finished 1917: length 330 metres. Small harbour
+thus created shelters small boats (150 tons) in all weathers.
+
+Quays 747 metres long already finished.
+
+16 steam-cranes working.
+
+Warehouses and depots covering 41,985 square metres completed.
+
+_Rabat._ Work completed December, 1917.
+
+A quay 200 metres long, to which boats with a draught of three metres
+can tie up.
+
+Two groups of warehouses, steam-cranes, etc., covering 22,600 square
+metres.
+
+A quay 100 metres long on the Sale side of the river.
+
+_Kenitra._ The port of Kenitra is at the mouth of the Sebou River, and
+is capable of becoming a good river port.
+
+The work up to December, 1917, comprises:
+
+A channel 100 metres long and three metres deep, cut through the bar of
+the Sebou.
+
+Jetties built on each side of the channel.
+
+Quay 100 metres long.
+
+Building of sheds, depots, warehouses, steam-cranes, etc.
+
+At the ports of Fedalah, Mazagan, Safi, Mogador and Agadir similar plans
+are in course of execution.
+
+
+COMMERCE
+
+COMPARATIVE TABLES
+
+     1912                 1918
+
+Total Commerce       Total Commerce
+Fcs. 177,737,723     Fcs. 386,238,618
+
+    Exports              Exports
+Fcs. 67,080,383      Fcs. 116,148,081
+
+
+ROADS BUILT
+
+National roads        2,074 kilometres
+
+Secondary roads         569    "
+
+
+RAILWAYS BUILT
+
+622 kilometres
+
+
+LAND CULTIVATED
+
+     1915                  1918
+
+Approximate area      Approximate area
+
+21,165.17 hectares    1,681,308.03 hectares
+
+
+JUSTICE
+
+1. Creation of French courts for French nationals and those under French
+protection. These take cognizance of civil cases where both parties, or
+even one, are amenable to French jurisdiction.
+
+2. Moroccan law is Moslem, and administered by Moslem magistrates.
+Private law, including that of inheritance, is based on the Koran. The
+Sultan has maintained the principle whereby real property and
+administrative cases fall under native law. These courts are as far as
+possible supervised and controlled by the establishment of a Cherifian
+Ministry of Justice to which the native Judges are responsible. Special
+care is taken to prevent the alienation of property held collectively,
+or any similar transactions likely to produce political and economic
+disturbances.
+
+3. Criminal jurisdiction is delegated to Pashas and Cadis by the Sultan,
+except of offenses committed against, or in conjunction with, French
+nationals and those under French protection. Such cases come before the
+tribunals of the French Protectorate.
+
+
+EDUCATION
+
+The object of the Protectorate has been, on the one hand, to give to the
+children of French colonists in Morocco the same education as they would
+have received at elementary and secondary schools in France; on the
+other, to provide the indigenous population with a system of education
+that shall give to the young Moroccans an adequate commercial or manual
+training, or prepare them for administrative posts, but without
+interfering with their native customs or beliefs.
+
+Before 1912 there existed in Morocco only a few small schools supported
+by the French Legation at Tangier and by the Alliance Francaise, and a
+group of Hebrew schools in the Mellahs, maintained by the Universal
+Israelite Alliance.
+
+1912.  Total number of schools             37
+1918.    "     "    "     "               191
+1912.  Total number of pupils            3006
+1918.    "     "    "     "            21,520
+1912.  Total number of teachers            61
+1918.    "     "    "     "               668
+
+In addition to the French and indigenous schools, sewing-schools have
+been formed for the native girls and have been exceptionally successful.
+
+Moslem colleges have been founded at Rabat and Fez in order to
+supplement the native education of young Mahometans of the upper
+classes, who intend to take up wholesale business or banking, or prepare
+for political, judicial or administrative posts under the Sultan's
+government. The course lasts four years and comprises: Arabic, French,
+mathematics, history, geography, religious (Mahometan) instruction, and
+the law of the Koran.
+
+The "Ecole Superieure de la langue arabe et des dialectes berberes" at
+Rabat receives European and Moroccan students. The courses are: Arabic,
+the Berber dialects, Arab literature, ethnography, administrative
+Moroccan law, Moslem law, Berber customary law.
+
+
+MEDICAL AID
+
+The Protectorate has established 113 medical centres for the native
+population, ranging from simple dispensaries and small native
+infirmaries to the important hospitals of Rabat, Fez, Meknez, Marrakech,
+and Casablanca.
+
+Mobile sanitary formations supplied with light motor ambulances travel
+about the country, vaccinating, making tours of sanitary inspection,
+investigating infected areas, and giving general hygienic education
+throughout the remoter regions.
+
+Native patients treated in 1916     over  900,000
+   "      "        "    "  1917       " 1,220,800
+
+Night-shelters in towns. Every town is provided with a shelter for the
+indigent wayfarers so numerous in Morocco. These shelters are used as
+disinfection centres, from which suspicious cases are sent to
+quarantine camp at the gates of the towns.
+
+_Central Laboratory at Rabat._ This is a kind of Pasteur Institute. In
+1917, 210,000 persons were vaccinated throughout the country and 356
+patients treated at the Laboratory for rabies.
+
+_Clinics for venereal diseases_ have been established at Casablanca,
+Fez, Rabat, and Marrakech.
+
+More than 15,000 cases were treated in 1917.
+
+_Ophthalmic clinics_ in the same cities gave in 1917, 44,600
+consultations.
+
+_Radiotherapy._ Clinics have been opened at Fez and Rabat for the
+treatment of skin diseases of the head, from which the native children
+habitually suffer.
+
+The French Department of Health distributes annually immense quantities
+of quinine in the malarial districts.
+
+Madame Lyautey's private charities comprise admirably administered
+child-welfare centres in the principal cities, with dispensaries for the
+native mothers and children.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[21] The loss of Morocco would inevitably have been followed by that of
+the whole of French North Africa.
+
+[22] During the first year of the war roads were built in Morocco by
+German prisoners; and it was because Germany was so thoroughly aware of
+the economic value of the country, and so anxious not to have her
+prestige diminished, that she immediately protested, on the absurd plea
+of the unwholesomeness of the climate, and threatened reprisals unless
+the prisoners were withdrawn.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+A SKETCH OF MOROCCAN HISTORY
+
+NOTE.--In the chapters on Moroccan history and art I have tried to set
+down a slight and superficial outline of a large and confused subject.
+In extenuation of this summary attempt I hasten to explain that its
+chief merit is its lack of originality.
+
+Its facts are chiefly drawn from the books mentioned in the short
+bibliography at the end of the volume; in addition to which I am deeply
+indebted for information given on the spot to the group of remarkable
+specialists attached to the French administration, and to the cultivated
+and cordial French officials, military and civilian, who, at each stage
+of my rapid journey, did their best to answer my questions and open my
+eyes.
+
+
+I
+
+THE BERBERS
+
+In the briefest survey of the Moroccan past account must first of all be
+taken of the factor which, from the beginning of recorded events, has
+conditioned the whole history of North Africa: the existence, from the
+Sahara to the Mediterranean, of a mysterious irreducible indigenous race
+with which every successive foreign rule, from Carthage to France, has
+had to reckon, and which has but imperfectly and partially assimilated
+the language, the religion, and the culture that successive
+civilizations have tried to impose upon it.
+
+This race, the race of Berbers, has never, modern explorers tell us,
+become really Islamite, any more than it ever really became Phenician,
+Roman or Vandal. It has imposed its habits while it appeared to adopt
+those of its invaders, and has perpetually represented, outside the
+Ismalitic and Hispano-Arabic circle of the Makhzen, the vast tormenting
+element of the dissident, the rebellious, the unsubdued tribes of the
+Blad-es-Siba.
+
+Who were these indigenous tribes with whom the Phenicians, when they
+founded their first counting-houses on the north and west coast of
+Africa, exchanged stuffs and pottery and arms for ivory,
+ostrich-feathers and slaves?
+
+Historians frankly say they do not know. All sorts of material obstacles
+have hitherto hampered the study of Berber origins; but it seems clear
+that from the earliest historic times they were a mixed race, and the
+ethnologist who attempts to define them is faced by the same problem as
+the historian of modern America who should try to find the racial
+definition of an "American." For centuries, for ages, North Africa has
+been what America now is: the clearing-house of the world. When at
+length it occurred to the explorer that the natives of North Africa were
+not all Arabs or Moors, he was bewildered by the many vistas of all they
+were or might be: so many and tangled were the threads leading up to
+them, so interwoven was their pre-Islamite culture with worn-out shreds
+of older and richer societies.
+
+M. Saladin, in his "Manuel d'Architecture Musulmane," after attempting
+to unravel the influences which went to the making of the mosque of
+Kairouan, the walls of Marrakech, the Medersas of Fez--influences that
+lead him back to Chaldaean branch-huts, to the walls of Babylon and the
+embroideries of Coptic Egypt--somewhat despairingly sums up the result:
+"The principal elements contributed to Moslem art by the styles
+preceding it may be thus enumerated: from India, floral ornament; from
+Persia, the structural principles of the Acheminedes, and the Sassanian
+vault. Mesopotamia contributes a system of vaulting, incised ornament,
+and proportion; the Copts, ornamental detail in general; Egypt, mass and
+unbroken wall-spaces; Spain, construction and Romano-Iberian ornament;
+Africa, decorative detail and Romano-Berber traditions (with Byzantine
+influences in Persia); Asia Minor, a mixture of Byzantine and Persian
+characteristics."
+
+As with the art of North Africa, so with its supposedly indigenous
+population. The Berber dialects extend from the Lybian desert to
+Senegal. Their language was probably related to Coptic, itself related
+to the ancient Egyptian and the non-Semitic dialects of Abyssinia and
+Nubia. Yet philologists have discovered what appears to be a far-off
+link between the Berber and Semitic languages, and the Chleuhs of the
+Draa and the Souss, with their tall slim Egyptian-looking bodies and
+hooked noses, may have a strain of Semitic blood. M. Augustin Bernard,
+in speaking of the natives of North Africa, ends, much on the same note
+as M. Saladin in speaking of Moslem art: "In their blood are the
+sediments of many races, Phenician, Punic, Egyptian and Arab."
+
+They were not, like the Arabs, wholly nomadic; but the tent, the flock,
+the tribe always entered into their conception of life. M. Augustin
+Bernard has pointed out that, in North Africa, the sedentary and nomadic
+habit do not imply a permanent difference, but rather a temporary one of
+situation and opportunity. The sedentary Berbers are nomadic in certain
+conditions; and from the earliest times the invading nomad Berbers
+tended to become sedentary when they reached the rich plains north of
+the Atlas. But when they built cities it was as their ancestors and
+their neighbours pitched tents; and they destroyed or abandoned them as
+lightly as their desert forbears packed their camel-bags and moved to
+new pastures. Everywhere behind the bristling walls and rock-clamped
+towers of old Morocco lurks the shadowy spirit of instability. Every new
+Sultan builds himself a new house and lets his predecessors' palaces
+fall into decay; and as with the Sultan so with his vassals and
+officials. Change is the rule in this apparently unchanged civilization,
+where "nought may abide but Mutability."
+
+
+II
+
+PHENICIANS, ROMANS AND VANDALS
+
+Far to the south of the Anti-Atlas, in the yellow deserts that lead to
+Timbuctoo, live the wild Touaregs, the Veiled Men of the south, who ride
+to war with their faces covered by linen masks.
+
+These Veiled Men are Berbers; but their alphabet is composed of Lybian
+characters, and these are closely related to the signs engraved on
+certain vases of the Nile valley that are probably six thousand years
+old. Moreover, among the rock-cut images of the African desert is the
+likeness of Theban Ammon crowned with the solar disk between serpents;
+and the old Berber religion, with its sun and animal worship, has many
+points of resemblance with Egyptian beliefs. All this implies trade
+contacts far below the horizon of history, and obscure comings and
+goings of restless throngs across incredible distances long before the
+Phenicians planted their first trading posts on the north African coast
+about 1200 B. C.
+
+Five hundred years before Christ, Carthage sent one of her admirals on a
+voyage of colonization beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Hannon set out
+with sixty fifty-oared galleys carrying thirty thousand people. Some of
+them settled at Mehedyia, at the mouth of the Sebou, where Phenician
+remains have been found; and apparently the exploration was pushed as
+far south as the coast of Guinea, for the inscription recording it
+relates that Hannon beheld elephants, hairy men and "savages called
+gorillas." At any rate, Carthage founded stable colonies at Melilla,
+Larache, Sale and Casablanca.
+
+Then came the Romans, who carried on the business, set up one of their
+easy tolerant protectorates over "Tingitanian Mauretania,"[23] and built
+one important military outpost, Volubilis in the Zerhoun, which a series
+of minor defenses probably connected with Sale on the west coast, thus
+guarding the Roman province against the unconquered Berbers to the
+south.
+
+Tingitanian Mauretania was one of the numerous African granaries of
+Rome. She also supplied the Imperial armies with their famous African
+cavalry; and among minor articles of exportation were guinea-hens,
+snails, honey, euphorbia, wild beasts, horses and pearls. The Roman
+dominion ceased at the line drawn between Volubilis and Sale. There was
+no interest in pushing farther south, since the ivory and slave trade
+with the Soudan was carried on by way of Tripoli. But the spirit of
+enterprise never slept in the race, and Pliny records the journey of a
+Roman general--Suetonius Paulinus--who appears to have crossed the
+Atlas, probably by the pass of Tizi-n-Telremt, which is even now so
+beset with difficulties that access by land to the Souss will remain an
+arduous undertaking until the way by Imintanout is safe for European
+travel.
+
+The Vandals swept away the Romans in the fifth century. The Lower Empire
+restored a brief period of civilization; but its authority finally
+dwindled to the half-legendary rule of Count Julian, shut up within his
+walls of Ceuta. Then Europe vanished from the shores of Africa; and
+though Christianity lingered here and there in vague Donatist colonies,
+and in the names of Roman bishoprics, its last faint hold went down in
+the eighth century before the irresistible cry: "There is no God but
+Allah!"
+
+
+III
+
+THE ARAB CONQUEST
+
+The first Arab invasion of Morocco is said to have reached the Atlantic
+coast; but it left no lasting traces, and the real Islamisation of
+Barbary did not happen till near the end of the eighth century, when a
+descendant of Ali, driven from Mesopotamia by the Caliphate, reached the
+mountains above Volubilis and there founded an empire. The Berbers,
+though indifferent in religious matters, had always, from a spirit of
+independence, tended to heresy and schism. Under the rule of Christian
+Rome they had been Donatists, as M. Bernard puts it, "out of opposition
+to the Empire"; and so, out of opposition to the Caliphate, they took up
+the cause of one Moslem schismatic after another. Their great popular
+movements have always had a religious basis, or perhaps it would be
+truer to say, a religious pretext; for they have been in reality the
+partly moral, partly envious revolt of hungry and ascetic warrior tribes
+against the fatness and corruption of the "cities of the plain."
+
+Idriss I became the first national saint and ruler of Morocco. His rule
+extended throughout northern Morocco, and his son, Idriss II, attacking
+a Berber tribe on the banks of the Oued Fez, routed them, took
+possession of their oasis and founded the city of Fez. Thither came
+schismatic refugees from Kairouan and Moors from Andalusia. The Islamite
+Empire of Morocco was founded, and Idriss II has become the legendary
+ancestor of all its subsequent rulers.
+
+The Idrissite rule is a welter of obscure struggles between rapidly
+melting groups of adherents. Its chief features are: the founding of
+Moulay Idriss and Fez, and the building of the mosques of El Andalous
+and Kairouiyin at Fez for the two groups of refugees from Tunisia and
+Spain. Meanwhile the Caliphate of Cordova had reached the height of its
+power, while that of the Fatimites extended from the Nile to western
+Morocco, and the little Idrissite empire, pulverized under the weight of
+these expanding powers, became once more a dust of disintegrated tribes.
+
+It was only in the eleventh century that the dust again conglomerated.
+Two Arab tribes from the desert of the Hedjaz, suddenly driven westward
+by the Fatimites, entered Morocco, not with a small military expedition,
+as the Arabs had hitherto done, but with a horde of emigrants reckoned
+as high as 200,000 families; and this first colonizing expedition was
+doubtless succeeded by others.
+
+To strengthen their hold in Morocco the Arab colonists embraced the
+dynastic feuds of the Berbers. They inaugurated a period of general
+havoc which destroyed what little prosperity had survived the break-up
+of the Idrissite rule, and many Berber tribes took refuge in the
+mountains; but others remained and were merged with the invaders,
+reforming into new tribes of mixed Berber and Arab blood. This invasion
+was almost purely destructive; it marks one of the most desolate periods
+in the progress of the "wasteful Empire" of Moghreb.
+
+
+IV
+
+ALMORAVIDS AND ALMOHADS
+
+While the Hilalian Arabs were conquering and destroying northern Morocco
+another but more fruitful invasion was upon her from the south. The
+Almoravids, one of the tribes of Veiled Men of the south, driven by the
+usual mixture of religious zeal and lust of booty, set out to invade the
+rich black kingdoms north of the Sahara. Thence they crossed the Atlas
+under their great chief, Youssef-ben-Tachfin, and founded the city of
+Marrakech in 1062. From Marrakech they advanced on Idrissite Fez and the
+valley of the Moulouya. Fez rose against her conquerors, and Youssef
+put all the male inhabitants to death. By 1084 he was master of Tangier
+and the Rif, and his rule stretched as far west as Tlemcen, Oran and
+finally Algiers.
+
+His ambition drove him across the straits to Spain, where he conquered
+one Moslem prince after another and wiped out the luxurious civilization
+of Moorish Andalusia. In 1086, at Zallarca, Youssef gave battle to
+Alphonso VI of Castile and Leon. The Almoravid army was a strange rabble
+of Arabs, Berbers, blacks, wild tribes of the Sahara and Christian
+mercenaries. They conquered the Spanish forces, and Youssef left to his
+successors an empire extending from the Ebro to Senegal and from the
+Atlantic coast of Africa to the borders of Tunisia. But the empire fell
+to pieces of its own weight, leaving little record of its brief and
+stormy existence. While Youssef was routing the forces of Christianity
+at Zallarca in Spain, another schismatic tribe of his own people was
+detaching Marrakech and the south from his rule.
+
+The leader of the new invasion was a Mahdi, one of the numerous Saviours
+of the World who have carried death and destruction throughout Islam.
+His name was Ibn-Toumert, and he had travelled in Egypt, Syria and
+Spain, and made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Preaching the doctrine of a
+purified monotheism, he called his followers the Almohads or Unitarians,
+to distinguish them from the polytheistic Almoravids, whose heresies he
+denounced. He fortified the city of Tinmel in the Souss, and built there
+a mosque of which the ruins still exist. When he died, in 1128, he
+designated as his successor Abd-el-Moumen, the son of a potter, who had
+been his disciple.
+
+Abd-el-Moumen carried on the campaign against the Almoravids. He fought
+them not only in Morocco but in Spain, taking Cadiz, Cordova, Granada as
+well as Tlemcen and Fez. In 1152 his African dominion reached from
+Tripoli to the Souss, and he had formed a disciplined army in which
+Christian mercenaries from France and Spain fought side by side with
+Berbers and Soudanese. This great captain was also a great
+administrator, and under his rule Africa was surveyed from the Souss to
+Barka, the country was policed, agriculture was protected, and the
+caravans journeyed safely over the trade-routes.
+
+Abd-el-Moumen died in 1163 and was followed by his son, who, though he
+suffered reverses in Spain, was also a great ruler. He died in 1184, and
+his son, Yacoub-el-Mansour, avenged his father's ill-success in Spain by
+the great victory of Alarcos and the conquest of Madrid.
+Yacoub-el-Mansour was the greatest of Moroccan Sultans. So far did his
+fame extend that the illustrious Saladin sent him presents and asked the
+help of his fleet. He was a builder as well as a fighter, and the
+noblest period of Arab art in Morocco and Spain coincides with his
+reign.
+
+After his death, the Almohad empire followed the downward curve to which
+all Oriental rule seems destined. In Spain, the Berber forces were
+beaten in the great Christian victory of Las-Navas-de Tolosa; and in
+Morocco itself the first stirrings of the Beni-Merins (a new tribe from
+the Sahara) were preparing the way for a new dynasty.
+
+
+V
+
+THE MERINIDS
+
+The Beni-Merins or Merinids were nomads who ranged the desert between
+Biskra and the Tafilelt. It was not a religious upheaval that drove them
+to the conquest of Morocco. The demoralized Almohads called them in as
+mercenaries to defend their crumbling empire; and the Merinids came,
+drove out the Almohads, and replaced them.
+
+They took Fez, Meknez, Sale, Rabat and Sidjilmassa in the Tafilelt; and
+their second Sultan, Abou-Youssef, built New Fez (Eldjid) on the height
+above the old Idrissite city. The Merinids renewed the struggle with the
+Sultan of Tlemcen, and carried the Holy War once more into Spain. The
+conflict with Tlemcen was long and unsuccessful, and one of the Merinid
+Sultans died assassinated under its walls. In the fourteenth century the
+Sultan Abou Hassan tried to piece together the scattered bits of the
+Almohad empire. Tlemcen was finally taken, and the whole of Algeria
+annexed. But in the plain of Kairouan, in Tunisia, Abou Hassan was
+defeated by the Arabs. Meanwhile one of his brothers had headed a revolt
+in Morocco, and the princes of Tlemcen won back their ancient kingdom.
+Constantine and Bougie rebelled in turn, and the kingdom of Abou Hassan
+vanished like a mirage. His successors struggled vainly to control
+their vassals in Morocco, and to keep their possessions beyond its
+borders. Before the end of the fourteenth century Morocco from end to
+end was a chaos of antagonistic tribes, owning no allegiance, abiding by
+no laws. The last of the Merinids, divided, diminished, bound by
+humiliating treaties with Christian Spain, kept up a semblance of
+sovereignty at Fez and Marrakech, at war with one another and with their
+neighbours; and Spain and Portugal seized this moment of internal
+dissolution to drive them from Spain, and carry the war into Morocco
+itself.
+
+The short and stormy passage of the Beni-Merins seems hardly to leave
+room for the development of the humaner qualities; yet the flowering of
+Moroccan art and culture coincided with those tumultuous years, and it
+was under the Merinid Sultans that Fez became the centre of Moroccan
+learning and industry, a kind of Oxford with Birmingham annexed.
+
+
+VI
+
+THE SAADIANS
+
+Meanwhile, behind all the Berber turmoil a secret work of religious
+propaganda was going on. The Arab element had been crushed but not
+extirpated. The crude idolatrous wealth-loving Berbers apparently
+dominated; but whenever there was a new uprising or a new invasion it
+was based on the religious discontent perpetually stirred up by
+Mahometan agents. The longing for a Mahdi, a Saviour, the craving for
+purification combined with an opportunity to murder and rob, always gave
+the Moslem apostle a ready opening; and the downfall of the Merinids was
+the result of a long series of religious movements to which the European
+invasion gave an object and a war-cry.
+
+The Saadians were Cherifian Arabs, newcomers from Arabia, to whom the
+lax Berber paganism was abhorrent. They preached a return to the creed
+of Mahomet, and proclaimed the Holy War against the hated Portuguese,
+who had set up fortified posts all along the west coast of Morocco.
+
+It is a mistake to suppose that hatred of the Christian has always
+existed among the North African Moslems. The earlier dynasties, and
+especially the great Almohad Sultans, were on friendly terms with the
+Catholic powers of Europe, and in the thirteenth century a treaty
+assured to Christians in Africa full religious liberty, excepting only
+the right to preach their doctrine in public places. There was a
+Catholic diocese at Fez, and afterward at Marrakech under Gregory IX,
+and there is a letter of the Pope thanking the "Miromilan" (the Emir El
+Moumenin) for his kindness to the Bishop and the friars living in his
+dominions. Another Bishop was recommended by Innocent IV to the Sultan
+of Morocco; the Pope even asked that certain strongholds should be
+assigned to the Christians in Morocco as places of refuge in times of
+disturbance. But the best proof of the friendly relations between
+Christians and infidels is the fact that the Christian armies which
+helped the Sultans of Morocco to defeat Spain and subjugate Algeria and
+Tunisia were not composed of "renegadoes" or captives, as is generally
+supposed, but of Christian mercenaries, French and English, led by
+knights and nobles, and fighting for the Sultan of Morocco exactly as
+they would have fought for the Duke of Burgundy, the Count of Flanders,
+or any other Prince who offered high pay and held out the hope of rich
+spoils. Any one who has read "Villehardouin" and "Joinville" will own
+that there is not much to choose between the motives animating these
+noble freebooters and those which caused the Crusaders to loot
+Constantinople "on the way" to the Holy Sepulchre. War in those days was
+regarded as a lucrative and legitimate form of business, exactly as it
+was when the earlier heroes started out to take the rich robber-town of
+Troy.
+
+The Berbers have never been religious fanatics, and the Vicomte de
+Foucauld, when he made his great journey of exploration in the Atlas in
+1883, remarked that antagonism to the foreigner was always due to the
+fear of military espionage and never to religious motives. This equally
+applies to the Berbers of the sixteenth century, when the Holy War
+against Catholic Spain and Portugal was preached. The real cause of the
+sudden deadly hatred of the foreigner was twofold. The Spaniards were
+detested because of the ferocious cruelty with which they had driven the
+Moors from Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella; and the Portuguese
+because of the arrogance and brutality of their military colonists in
+the fortified trading stations of the west coast. And both were feared
+as possible conquerors and overlords.
+
+There was a third incentive also: the Moroccans, dealing in black slaves
+for the European market, had discovered the value of white slaves in
+Moslem markets. The Sultan had his fleet, and each coast-town its
+powerful pirate vessels, and from pirate-nests like Sale and Tangier the
+raiders continued, till well on into the first half of the nineteenth
+century, to seize European ships and carry their passengers to the
+slave-markets of Fez and Marrakech.[24] The miseries endured by these
+captives, and so poignantly described in John Windus's travels, and in
+the "Naufrage du Brick Sophie" by Charles Cochelet,[25] show how savage
+the feeling against the foreigner had become.
+
+With the advent of the Cherifian dynasties, which coincided with this
+religious reform, and was in fact brought about by it, Morocco became a
+closed country, as fiercely guarded as Japan against European
+penetration. Cut off from civilizing influences, the Moslems isolated
+themselves in a lonely fanaticism, far more racial than religious, and
+the history of the country from the fall of the Merinids till the French
+annexation is mainly a dull tale of tribal warfare.
+
+The religious movement of the sixteenth century was led and fed by
+zealots from the Sahara. One of them took possession of Rabat and
+Azemmour, and preached the Holy War; other "feudal fiefs" (as M.
+Augustin Bernard has well called them) were founded at Tameslout, Ilegh,
+Tamgrout: the tombs of the _marabouts_ who led these revolts are
+scattered all along the west coast, and are still objects of popular
+veneration. The unorthodox saint worship which marks Moroccan Moslemism,
+and is commemorated by the countless white _koubbas_ throughout the
+country, grew up chiefly at the time of the religious revival under the
+Saadian dynasty, and almost all the "Moulays" and "Sidis" venerated
+between Tangier and the Atlas were warrior monks who issued forth from
+their fortified _Zaouias_ to drive the Christians out of Africa.
+
+The Saadians were probably rather embarrassed by these fanatics, whom
+they found useful to oppose to the Merinids, but troublesome where their
+own plans were concerned. They were ambitious and luxury-loving princes,
+who invaded the wealthy kingdom of the Soudan, conquered the Sultan of
+Timbuctoo, and came back laden with slaves and gold to embellish
+Marrakech and spend their treasure in the usual demoralizing orgies.
+Their exquisite tombs at Marrakech commemorate in courtly language the
+superhuman virtues of a series of rulers whose debaucheries and vices
+were usually cut short by assassination. Finally another austere and
+fanatical mountain tribe surged down on them, wiped them out, and ruled
+in their stead.
+
+
+VII
+
+THE HASSANIANS
+
+The new rulers came from the Tafilelt, which has always been a
+troublesome corner of Morocco. The first two Hassanian Sultans were the
+usual tribal chiefs bent on taking advantage of Saadian misrule to loot
+and conquer. But the third was the great Moulay-Ismael, the tale of
+whose long and triumphant rule (1672 to 1727) has already been told in
+the chapter on Meknez. This savage and enlightened old man once more
+drew order out of anarchy, and left, when he died, an organized and
+administered empire, as well as a progeny of seven hundred sons and
+unnumbered daughters.[26]
+
+The empire fell apart as usual, and no less quickly than usual, under
+his successors; and from his death until the strong hand of General
+Lyautey took over the direction of affairs the Hassanian rule in Morocco
+was little more than a tumult of incoherent ambitions. The successors of
+Moulay-Ismael inherited his blood-lust and his passion for dominion
+without his capacity to govern. In 1757 Sidi-Mohammed, one of his sons,
+tried to put order into his kingdom, and drove the last Portuguese out
+of Morocco; but under his successors the country remained isolated and
+stagnant, making spasmodic efforts to defend itself against the
+encroachments of European influence, while its rulers wasted their
+energy in a policy of double-dealing and dissimulation. Early in the
+nineteenth century the government was compelled by the European powers
+to suppress piracy and the trade in Christian slaves; and in 1830 the
+French conquest of Algeria broke down the wall of isolation behind which
+the country was mouldering away by placing a European power on one of
+its frontiers.
+
+At first the conquest of Algeria tended to create a link between France
+and Morocco. The Dey of Algiers was a Turk, and, therefore, an
+hereditary enemy; and Morocco was disposed to favour the power which had
+broken Turkish rule in a neighbouring country. But the Sultan could not
+help trying to profit by the general disturbance to seize Tlemcen and
+raise insurrections in western Algeria; and presently Morocco was
+engaged in a Holy War against France. Abd-el-Kader, the Sultan of
+Algeria, had taken refuge in Morocco, and the Sultan of Morocco having
+furnished him with supplies and munitions, France sent an official
+remonstrance. At the same time Marshal Bugeaud landed at Mers-el-Kebir,
+and invited the Makhzen to discuss the situation. The offer was accepted
+and General Bedeau and the Caid El Guennaoui met in an open place.
+Behind them their respective troops were drawn up, and almost as soon
+as the first salutes were exchanged the Caid declared the negotiations
+broken off. The French troops accordingly withdrew to the coast, but
+during their retreat they were attacked by the Moroccans. This put an
+end to peaceful negotiations, and Tangier was besieged and taken. The
+following August Bugeaud brought his troops up from Oudjda, through the
+defile that leads from West Algeria, and routed the Moroccans. He wished
+to advance on Fez, but international politics interfered, and he was not
+allowed to carry out his plans. England looked unfavourably on the
+French penetration of Morocco, and it became necessary to conclude peace
+at once to prove that France had no territorial ambitions west of
+Oudjda.
+
+Meanwhile a great Sultan was once more to appear in the land.
+Moulay-el-Hassan, who ruled from 1873 to 1894, was an able and energetic
+administrator. He pieced together his broken empire, asserted his
+authority in Fez and Marrakech, and fought the rebellious tribes of the
+west. In 1877 he asked the French government to send him a permanent
+military mission to assist in organizing his army. He planned an
+expedition to the Souss, but the want of food and water in the
+wilderness traversed by the army caused the most cruel sufferings.
+Moulay-el-Hassan had provisions sent by sea, but the weather was too
+stormy to allow of a landing on the exposed Atlantic coast, and the
+Sultan, who had never seen the sea, was as surprised and indignant as
+Canute to find that the waves would not obey him.
+
+His son Abd-el-Aziz was only thirteen years old when he succeeded to the
+throne. For six years he remained under the guardianship of Ba-Ahmed,
+the black Vizier of Moulay-el-Hassan, who built the fairy palace of the
+Bahia at Marrakech, with its mysterious pale green padlocked door
+leading down to the secret vaults where his treasure was hidden. When
+the all-powerful Ba-Ahmed died the young Sultan was nineteen. He was
+intelligent, charming, and fond of the society of Europeans; but he was
+indifferent to religious questions and still more to military affairs,
+and thus doubly at the mercy of native mistrust and European intrigue.
+
+Some clumsy attempts at fiscal reform, and a too great leaning toward
+European habits and associates, roused the animosity of the people, and
+of the conservative party in the upper class. The Sultan's eldest
+brother, who had been set aside in his favour, was intriguing against
+him; the usual Cherifian Pretender was stirring up the factious tribes
+in the mountains; and the European powers were attempting, in the
+confusion of an ungoverned country, to assert their respective
+ascendencies.
+
+The demoralized condition of the country justified these attempts, and
+made European interference inevitable. But the powers were jealously
+watching each other, and Germany, already coveting the certain
+agricultural resources and the conjectured mineral wealth of Morocco,
+was above all determined that a French protectorate should not be set
+up.
+
+In 1908 another son of Moulay-Hassan, Abd-el-Hafid, was proclaimed
+Sultan by the reactionary Islamite faction, who accused Abd-el-Aziz of
+having sold his country to the Christians. Abd-el-Aziz was defeated in a
+battle near Marrakech, and retired to Tangier, where he still lives in
+futile state. Abd-el-Hafid, proclaimed Sultan at Fez, was recognized by
+the whole country; but he found himself unable to cope with the factious
+tribes (those outside the Blad-el-Makhzen, or _governed country_). These
+rebel tribes besieged Fez, and the Sultan had to ask France for aid.
+France sent troops to his relief, but as soon as the dissidents were
+routed, and he himself was safe, Abd-el-Hafid refused to give the French
+army his support, and in 1912, after the horrible massacres of Fez, he
+abdicated in favour of another brother, Moulay Youssef, the actual ruler
+of Morocco.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[23] East of the Moulouya, the African protectorate (now west Algeria
+and the Sud Oranais) was called the Mauretania of Caesar.
+
+[24] The Moroccans being very poor seamen, these corsair-vessels were
+usually commanded and manned by Christian renegadoes and Turks.
+
+[25] Cochelet was wrecked on the coast near Agadir early in the
+nineteenth century and was taken with his fellow-travellers overland to
+El-Ksar and Tangier, enduring terrible hardships by the way.
+
+[26] Moulay-Ismael was a learned theologian and often held religious
+discussions with the Fathers of the Order of Mercy and the Trinitarians.
+He was scrupulously orthodox in his religious observances, and wrote a
+treatise in defense of his faith which he sent to James II of England,
+urging him to become a Mahometan. He invented most of the most exquisite
+forms of torture which subsequent Sultans have applied to their victims
+(see Loti, _Au Maroc_), and was fond of flowers, and extremely simple
+and frugal in his personal habits.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+NOTE ON MOROCCAN ARCHITECTURE
+
+
+I
+
+M. H. Saladin, whose "Manual of Moslem Architecture" was published in
+1907, ends his chapter on Morocco with the words: "It is especially
+urgent that we should know, and penetrate into, Morocco as soon as
+possible, in order to study its monuments. It is the only country but
+Persia where Moslem art actually survives; and the tradition handed down
+to the present day will doubtless clear up many things."
+
+M. Saladin's wish has been partly realized. Much has been done since
+1912, when General Lyautey was appointed Resident-General, to clear up
+and classify the history of Moroccan art; but since 1914, though the
+work has never been dropped, it has necessarily been much delayed,
+especially as regards its published record; and as yet only a few
+monographs and articles have summed up some of the interesting
+investigations of the last five years.
+
+
+II
+
+When I was in Marrakech word was sent to Captain de S., who was with me,
+that a Caid of the Atlas, whose prisoner he had been several years
+before, had himself been taken by the Pasha's troops, and was in
+Marrakech. Captain de S. was asked to identify several rifles which his
+old enemy had taken from him, and on receiving them found that, in the
+interval, they had been elaborately ornamented with the Arab niello work
+of which the tradition goes back to Damascus.
+
+This little incident is a good example of the degree to which the
+mediaeval tradition alluded to by M. Saladin has survived in Moroccan
+life. Nowhere else in the world, except among the moribund
+fresco-painters of the Greek monasteries, has a formula of art persisted
+from the seventh or eighth century to the present day; and in Morocco
+the formula is not the mechanical expression of a petrified theology but
+the setting of the life of a people who have gone on wearing the same
+clothes, observing the same customs, believing in the same fetiches, and
+using the same saddles, ploughs, looms, and dye-stuffs as in the days
+when the foundations of the first mosque of El Kairouiyin were laid.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Marrakech--a street fountain]
+
+The origin of this tradition is confused and obscure. The Arabs have
+never been creative artists, nor are the Berbers known to have been so.
+As investigations proceed in Syria and Mesopotamia it seems more and
+more probable that the sources of inspiration of pre-Moslem art in North
+Africa are to be found in Egypt, Persia, and India. Each new
+investigation pushes these sources farther back and farther east; but it
+is not of much use to retrace these ancient vestiges, since Moroccan art
+has, so far, nothing to show of pre-Islamite art, save what is purely
+Phenician or Roman.
+
+In any case, however, it is not in Morocco that the clue to Moroccan art
+is to be sought; though interesting hints and mysterious reminiscences
+will doubtless be found in such places as Tinmel, in the gorges of the
+Atlas, where a ruined mosque of the earliest Almohad period has been
+photographed by M. Doutte, and in the curious Algerian towns of Sedrata
+and the Kalaa of the Beni Hammads. Both of these latter towns were rich
+and prosperous communities in the tenth century and both were destroyed
+in the eleventh, so that they survive as mediaeval Pompeiis of a quite
+exceptional interest, since their architecture appears to have been
+almost unaffected by classic or Byzantine influences.
+
+Traces of a very old indigenous art are found in the designs on the
+modern white and black Berber pottery; but this work, specimens of which
+are to be seen in the Oriental Department of the Louvre, seems to go
+back, by way of Central America, Greece (sixth century  B. C.) and Susa
+(twelfth century B. C.), to the far-off period before the streams of
+human invention had divided, and when the same loops and ripples and
+spirals formed on the flowing surface of every current.
+
+It is a disputed question whether Spanish influence was foremost in
+developing the peculiarly Moroccan art of the earliest Moslem period, or
+whether European influences came by way of Syria and Palestine, and
+afterward met and were crossed with those of Moorish Spain. Probably
+both things happened, since the Almoravids were in Spain; and no doubt
+the currents met and mingled. At any rate, Byzantine, Greece, and the
+Palestine and Syria of the Crusaders, contributed as much as Rome and
+Greece to the formation of that peculiar Moslem art which, all the way
+from India to the Pillars of Hercules, built itself, with minor
+variations, out of the same elements.
+
+Arab conquerors always destroy as much as they can of the work of their
+predecessors, and nothing remains, as far as is known, of Almoravid
+architecture in Morocco. But the great Almohad Sultans covered Spain and
+Northwest Africa with their monuments, and no later buildings in Africa
+equal them in strength and majesty.
+
+It is no doubt because the Almohads built in stone that so much of what
+they made survives. The Merinids took to rubble and a soft tufa, and the
+Cherifian dynasties built in clay like the Spaniards in South America.
+And so seventeenth century Meknez has perished while the Almohad walls
+and towers of the tenth century still stand.
+
+The principal old buildings of Morocco are defensive and religious--and
+under the latter term the beautiful collegiate houses (the medersas) of
+Fez and Sale may fairly be included, since the educational system of
+Islam is essentially and fundamentally theological. Of old secular
+buildings, palaces or private houses, virtually none are known to
+exist; but their plan and decorations may easily be reconstituted from
+the early chronicles, and also from the surviving palaces built in the
+eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and even those which the wealthy
+nobles of modern Morocco are building to this day.
+
+The whole of civilian Moslem architecture from Persia to Morocco is
+based on four unchanging conditions: a hot climate, slavery, polygamy
+and the segregation of women. The private house in Mahometan countries
+is in fact a fortress, a convent and a temple: a temple of which the god
+(as in all ancient religions) frequently descends to visit his
+cloistered votaresses. For where slavery and polygamy exist every
+house-master is necessarily a god, and the house he inhabits a shrine
+built about his divinity.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Rabat--gate of the Kasbah of the Oudayas]
+
+The first thought of the Moroccan chieftain was always defensive. As
+soon as he pitched a camp or founded a city it had to be guarded against
+the hungry hordes who encompassed him on every side. Each little centre
+of culture and luxury in Moghreb was an islet in a sea of perpetual
+storms. The wonder is that, thus incessantly threatened from without and
+conspired against from within--with the desert at their doors, and
+their slaves on the threshold--these violent men managed to create about
+them an atmosphere of luxury and stability that astonished not only the
+obsequious native chronicler but travellers and captives from western
+Europe.
+
+The truth is, as has been often pointed out, that, even until the end of
+the seventeenth century, the refinements of civilization were in many
+respects no greater in France and England than in North Africa. North
+Africa had long been in more direct communication with the old Empires
+of immemorial luxury, and was therefore farther advanced in the arts of
+living than the Spain and France of the Dark Ages; and this is why, in a
+country that to the average modern European seems as savage as Ashantee,
+one finds traces of a refinement of life and taste hardly to be matched
+by Carlovingian and early Capetian Europe.
+
+
+III
+
+The brief Almoravid dynasty left no monuments behind it.
+
+Fez had already been founded by the Idrissites, and its first mosques
+(Kairouiyin and Les Andalous) existed. Of the Almoravid Fez and
+Marrakech the chroniclers relate great things; but the wild Hilalian
+invasion and the subsequent descent of the Almohads from the High Atlas
+swept away whatever the first dynasties had created.
+
+The Almohads were mighty builders, and their great monuments are all of
+stone. The earliest known example of their architecture which has
+survived is the ruined mosque of Tinmel, in the High Atlas, discovered
+and photographed by M. Doutte. This mosque was built by the inspired
+mystic, Ibn-Toumert, who founded the line. Following him came the great
+palace-making Sultans whose walled cities of splendid mosques and towers
+have Romanesque qualities of mass and proportion, and, as M. Raymond
+Koechlin has pointed out, inevitably recall the "robust simplicity of
+the master builders who at the very same moment were beginning in France
+the construction of the first Gothic cathedrals and the noblest feudal
+castles."
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Fez--Medersa Bouanyana]
+
+In the thirteenth century, with the coming of the Merinids, Moroccan
+architecture grew more delicate, more luxurious, and perhaps also more
+peculiarly itself. That interaction of Spanish and Arab art which
+produced the style known as Moorish reached, on the African side of the
+Straits, its greatest completeness in Morocco. It was under the Merinids
+that Moorish art grew into full beauty in Spain, and under the Merinids
+that Fez rebuilt the mosque Kairouiyin and that of the Andalusians, and
+created six of its nine _Medersas_, the most perfect surviving buildings
+of that unique moment of sober elegance and dignity.
+
+The Cherifian dynasties brought with them a decline in taste. A crude
+desire for immediate effect, and the tendency toward a more barbaric
+luxury, resulted in the piling up of frail palaces as impermanent as
+tents. Yet a last flower grew from the deformed and dying trunk of the
+old Empire. The Saadian Sultan who invaded the Soudan and came back
+laden with gold and treasure from the great black city of Timbuctoo
+covered Marrakech with hasty monuments of which hardly a trace survives.
+But there, in a nettle-grown corner of a ruinous quarter, lay hidden
+till yesterday the Chapel of the Tombs: the last emanation of pure
+beauty of a mysterious, incomplete, forever retrogressive and yet
+forever forward-straining people. The Merinid tombs of Fez have fallen;
+but those of their destroyers linger on in precarious grace, like a
+flower on the edge of a precipice.
+
+
+IV
+
+Moroccan architecture, then, is easily divided into four groups: the
+fortress, the mosque, the collegiate building and the private house.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Fez--the praying-chapel in the Medersa el Attarine]
+
+The kernel of the mosque is always the _mihrab_, or niche facing toward
+the Kasbah of Mecca, where the _imam_[27] stands to say the prayer. This
+arrangement, which enabled as many as possible of the faithful to kneel
+facing the _mihrab_, results in a ground-plan necessarily consisting of
+long aisles parallel with the wall of the _mihrab_, to which more and
+more aisles are added as the number of worshippers grows. Where there
+was not space to increase these lateral aisles they were lengthened at
+each end. This typical plan is modified in the Moroccan mosques by a
+wider transverse space, corresponding with the nave of a Christian
+church, and extending across the mosque from the praying niche to the
+principal door. To the right of the _mihrab_ is the _minbar_, the carved
+pulpit (usually of cedar-wood incrusted with mother-of-pearl and ebony)
+from which the Koran is read. In some Algerian and Egyptian mosques (and
+at Cordova, for instance) the _mihrab_ is enclosed in a sort of screen
+called the _maksoura_; but in Morocco this modification of the simpler
+plan was apparently not adopted.
+
+The interior construction of the mosque was no doubt usually affected by
+the nearness of Roman or Byzantine ruins. M. Saladin points out that
+there seem to be few instances of the use of columns made by native
+builders; but it does not therefore follow that all the columns used in
+the early mosques were taken from Roman temples or Christian basilicas.
+The Arab invaders brought their architects and engineers with them; and
+it is very possible that some of the earlier mosques were built by
+prisoners or fortune-hunters from Greece or Italy or Spain.
+
+At any rate, the column on which the arcades of the vaulting rests in
+the earlier mosques, as at Tunis and Kairouan, and the mosque El
+Kairouiyin at Fez, gives way later to the use of piers, foursquare, or
+with flanking engaged pilasters as at Algiers and Tlemcen. The exterior
+of the mosques, as a rule, is almost entirely hidden by a mushroom
+growth of buildings, lanes and covered bazaars; but where the outer
+walls have remained disengaged they show, as at Kairouan and Cordova,
+great masses of windowless masonry pierced at intervals with majestic
+gateways.
+
+Beyond the mosque, and opening into it by many wide doors of beaten
+bronze or carved cedar-wood, lies the Court of the Ablutions. The
+openings in the facade were multiplied in order that, on great days, the
+faithful who were not able to enter the mosque might hear the prayers
+and catch a glimpse of the _mihrab_.
+
+In a corner of the courts stands the minaret. It is the structure on
+which Moslem art has played the greatest number of variations, cutting
+off its angles, building it on a circular or polygonal plan, and
+endlessly modifying the pyramids and pendentives by which the
+ground-plan of one story passes into that of the next. These problems of
+transition, always fascinating to the architect, led in Persia,
+Mesopotamia and Egypt to many different compositions and ways of
+treatment; but in Morocco the minaret, till modern times, remained
+steadfastly square, and proved that no other plan is so beautiful as
+this simplest one of all.
+
+Surrounding the Court of the Ablutions are the school-rooms, libraries
+and other dependencies, which grew as the Mahometan religion prospered
+and Arab culture developed.
+
+The medersa was a farther extension of the mosque: it was the academy
+where the Moslem schoolman prepared his theology and the other branches
+of strange learning which, to the present day, make up the curriculum of
+the Mahometan university. The medersa is an adaptation of the private
+house to religious and educational ends; or, if one prefers another
+analogy, it is a _fondak_ built above a miniature mosque. The
+ground-plan is always the same: in the centre an arcaded court with a
+fountain, on one side the long narrow praying-chapel with the _mihrab_,
+on the other a class-room with the same ground-plan; and on the next
+story a series of cell-like rooms for the students, opening on carved
+cedar-wood balconies. This cloistered plan, where all the effect is
+reserved for the interior facades about the court, lends itself to a
+delicacy of detail that would be inappropriate on a street-front; and
+the medersas of Fez are endlessly varied in their fanciful but never
+exuberant decoration.
+
+M. Tranchant de Lunel has pointed out (in "France-Maroc") with what a
+sure sense of suitability the Merinid architects adapted this decoration
+to the uses of the buildings. On the lower floor, under the cloister, is
+a revetement of marble (often alabaster) or of the almost indestructible
+ceramic mosaic.[28] On the floor above, massive cedar-wood corbels
+ending in monsters of almost Gothic inspiration support the fretted
+balconies; and above rise stucco interlacings, placed too high up to be
+injured by man, and guarded from the weather by projecting eaves.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Sale--interior court of the Medersa]
+
+The private house, whether merchant's dwelling or chieftain's palace, is
+laid out on the same lines, with the addition of the reserved quarters
+for women; and what remains in Spain and Sicily of Moorish secular
+architecture shows that, in the Merinid period, the play of ornament
+must have been--as was natural--even greater than in the medersas.
+
+The Arab chroniclers paint pictures of Merinid palaces, such as the
+House of the Favourite at Cordova, which the soberer modern imagination
+refused to accept until the medersas of Fez were revealed, and the old
+decorative tradition was shown in the eighteenth century Moroccan
+palaces. The descriptions given of the palaces of Fez and of Marrakech
+in the preceding articles, which make it unnecessary, in so slight a
+note as this, to go again into the detail of their planning and
+decoration, will serve to show how gracefully the art of the mosque and
+the medersa was lightened and domesticated to suit these cool chambers
+and flower-filled courts.
+
+With regard to the immense fortifications that are the most picturesque
+and noticeable architectural features of Morocco, the first thing to
+strike the traveller is the difficulty of discerning any difference in
+the probable date of their construction until certain structural
+peculiarities are examined, or the ornamental details of the great
+gateways are noted. Thus the Almohad portions of the walls of Fez and
+Rabat are built of stone, while later parts are of rubble; and the touch
+of European influence in certain gateways of Meknez and Fez at once
+situate them in the seventeenth century. But the mediaeval outline of
+these great piles of masonry, and certain technicalities in their plan,
+such as the disposition of the towers, alternating in the inner and
+outer walls, continued unchanged throughout the different dynasties; and
+this immutability of the Moroccan military architecture enables the
+imagination to picture, not only what was the aspect of the fortified
+cities which the Greeks built in Palestine and Syria, and the Crusaders
+brought back to Europe, but even that of the far-off Assyrio-Chaldaean
+strongholds to which the whole fortified architecture of the Middle Ages
+in Europe seems to lead back.
+
+[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
+Maroc_
+
+Marrakech--the gate of the Portuguese]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[27] The "deacon" or elder of the Moslem religion, which has no order of
+priests.
+
+[28] These Moroccan mosaics are called _zellijes_.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+BOOKS CONSULTED
+
+
+     Afrique Francaise (L'), Bulletin Mensuel du Comite de l'Afrique
+     Francaise. Paris, 21, rue Cassette.
+
+     Bernard, Augustin. Le Maroc. Paris, F. Alcan, 1916.
+
+     Budgett-Meakin. The Land of the Moors. London, 1902.
+
+     Chatelain, L. Recherches archeologiques au Maroc. Volubilis.
+     (Published by the Military Command in Morocco.)
+
+     Les Fouilles de Volubilis. (Extrait du Bulletin Archeologique,
+     1916.)
+
+     Chevrillon, A. Crepuscule d'Islam.
+
+     Cochelet, Charles. Le Naufrage du Brick Sophie.
+
+     Conferences Marocaines. Paris, Plon-Nourrit.
+
+     Doutte, E. En Tribu. Paris, 1914.
+
+     Foucauld, Vicomte de. La Reconnaissance au Maroc. Paris, 1888.
+
+     France-Maroc. Revue Mensuelle, Paris, 4, rue Chauveau-Lagarde.
+
+     Gaillard. Une Ville d'Islam, Fez. Paris, 1909.
+
+     Gayet, Al. L'Art Arabe. Paris, 1906.
+
+     Houdas, O. Le Maroc de 1631 a 1812. Extrait d'une histoire du Maroc
+     intitulee "L'Interprete qui s'exprime clairement sur les dynasties
+     de l'Orient et de l'Occident" par Ezziani. Paris, E. Leroux, 1886.
+
+     Koechlin, Raymond. Une Exposition d'Art Marocain. (Gazette des
+     Beaux-Arts, Juillet-Septembre, 1917.)
+
+     Leo Africanus, Description of Africa.
+
+     Loti, Pierre. Au Maroc.
+
+     Migeon, Gaston. Manuel d'Art Musulman. II. Les Arts Plastiques et
+     Industriels. Paris, A. Picard et Fils, 1907.
+
+     Saladin, H. Manuel d'Art Musulman. I. L'Architecture. Paris, A.
+     Picard et Fils, 1907.
+
+     Segonzac, Marquis de. Voyages au Maroc. Paris, 1903. Au Coeur de
+     l'Atlas. Paris, 1910.
+
+     Tarde, A. de. Les Villes du Maroc: Fez, Marrakech, Rabat. (Journal
+     de l'Universite des Annales, 15 Oct., 1 Nov., 1918.)
+
+     Windus. A Journey to Mequinez. London, 1721.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+Abdallah-ben-Aissa, 59
+
+Abd-el-Aziz, 256-258
+
+Abd-el-Hafid, 209-211, 258
+
+Abd-el-Kader, 255
+
+Abd-el-Moumen, 30, 243, 244
+
+Abou-el-Abbas ("The Golden"), 152, 153
+
+Abou Hassan, 245, 246
+
+Abou-Youssef, 245
+
+Agdal, olive-yards of the, 139
+
+Ahmed-Baba, 152
+
+Ahmed-el-Hiba, 211, 212
+
+Aid-el-Kebir, the, 164-170
+
+Aissaouas, the, of Kairouan, 48
+  dance of, 52
+
+Algeria, French conquest of, 254-256
+
+Almohads, the, invasion of Morocco by, 243-245
+  architecture of, 265, 268
+
+Almoravids, the, invasion of Morocco by, 241-243
+  destruction of architecture of, 265, 268
+
+Andalusian Moors, the, mosque of, 101, 102, 240, 268, 269
+
+Arabs, conquest of Morocco by, 239-241
+
+Architecture, Moroccan, four basic conditions of, 266
+  four groups of, 270
+  of the Almohad dynasty, 268
+  of the Cherifian dynasties, 269
+  of the Merinid dynasty, 269, 274, 275
+  the Saadian mausoleum, 155
+  the collegiate building, 273-275
+  the fortress, 276
+  the mosque, 270-273
+  the private house, 275
+
+Art, Moroccan, sources of influence on, 104, 262-265
+  disappearance of treasures of, 86, 87
+  and Moorish art, 269
+
+
+Ba-Ahmed, builder of the Bahia, 129, 256, 257
+
+Bab F'touh cemetery, at Fez, 102-104
+
+Bahia, the, palace of, at Marrakech, 129-133
+  apartment of Grand Vizier's Favourite in, 131
+
+Bazaars, of Fez, 91, 107-109
+  of Marrakech, 135-138
+  of Sale, 24, 25
+
+Beni-Merins. _See_ Merinids
+
+Berbers, the, attack of, on Fez, 210, 211
+  origins of, 232
+  dialects of, 234
+  nomadic character of, 234, 235
+  heresy and schisms of, 239
+
+Bernard, M. Augustin, 69, 234, 235, 239, 251
+
+Black Guard, the Sultan's, 164-167
+  uniform of, 176
+  Moulay-Ismael's method of raising, 44, 67-69
+
+Blue Men of the Sahara, the, 112
+
+Bou-Jeloud, palace of, 80, 81, 83
+
+Bugeaud, Marshal, 255
+
+
+Carthage, African colonies of, 236, 237
+
+Casablanca, exhibitions at, 219
+  port of, 222, 223
+
+Catholics, in Morocco, 248, 249
+
+Cemetery, El Alou, 17, 18
+  Bab F'touh, 102-104
+
+Chatelain, M. Louis, 46
+
+Chella, ruins of, 28-30
+
+Cherifian dynasties, the, 247, 251
+  architecture of, 269
+
+Children, Moroccan,
+  in the harem, 194
+  negro, 43, 44, 199-201
+  training of, for Black Guard, 67-69
+
+Chleuh boys, dance of, 148
+
+Christians, captive, and the building of Meknez, 69, 70, 73
+  religious liberty to, in Africa, 248, 249
+
+Clocks, in Sultan's harem at Rabat, 172, 173
+
+Cochelet, Charles, his "Naufrage du Brick Sophie," 250
+
+Colleges, at Fez, 97-100, 105-107
+  at Sale, 19-22, 25, 26
+  Moslem, 225
+  architecture of Moroccan, 273-275
+
+Colors, of North African towns, 50
+
+Commerce, Moroccan, 223
+
+Conti, Princesse de, 59
+
+Convention of Fez, the, 209
+
+Courts of Justice, Moroccan, 224
+
+Crowds, Moroccan street, 161, 162
+
+Culture, in North Africa, 104-106, 246, 267
+
+
+Dance, of Chleuh boys, 148
+  of the Hamadchas, 48, 49, 51-57
+
+Dawn, in Africa, 37
+
+Djebilets, the, 125
+
+Doutte, M., 264, 268
+
+Dust-storm, at Marrakech, 145-147
+
+
+Education, in Morocco, 225, 226
+
+Elakhdar, mosque of, 62
+
+El Alou, cemetery of, 17, 18
+
+El Andalous, mosque of, 101, 102, 240, 268, 269
+
+Elbali (Old Fez), 88 _et seq._
+  harems of, 188-196
+
+Eldjid (New Fez), 77, 80
+  palaces of, 84-87
+  founding of, 245
+
+El Kairouiyin, mosque of, 80, 83, 93, 95-100, 240, 263, 268, 269
+  the praying-hall of, 98
+  the court of ablutions of, 99, 100
+  legend of the tortoise of, 97
+
+El-Ksar, 11, 12, 152
+
+El-Mansour, Yacoub, 16, 30-33
+
+Elmansour, palace of, 63
+
+Empress Mother, the, 177, 178
+
+English emissaries, visit of, to Meknez, 71-73
+
+Exhibitions, planned by General Lyautey, 219-221
+
+Ezziani, chronicler of Moulay-Ismael, 60, 61, 64, 66, 67, 70
+
+
+Fatimites, the, 240, 241
+
+Fez, the approach to, 77
+  unchanged character of, 78
+  ruins of Merinid tombs of, 78, 79
+  the upper or new, 80
+  old summer-palace at, 80-83
+  night in, 82, 116-119
+  antiquity of, 83
+  palaces of, 84-87
+  the inns at, 86, 94, 116, 117
+  streets of, 88-91
+  a city of wealth, 90
+  the merchant of, 90
+  bazaars of, 91, 92, 107-109
+  a melancholy city, 92, 109
+  twilight in, 93
+  the shrines of, 93
+  mosque of Moulay Idriss at, 94, 95
+  mosque of El Kairouiyinat, 95-100
+  the University of, 97, 100, 101
+  Medersas of, 99, 105-107, 274
+  mosque of El Andalous at, 101, 102
+  Bab F'touh cemetery of, 102-104
+  the potters of, 103
+  art and culture of, 104-106, 247
+  the Mellah of, 113
+  harems of Old, 188-196
+  the Convention of, 209
+  uprising in, 210
+  attack of Berbers on, 211
+  exhibitions at, 219
+  Moslem college at, 225
+  founding of, 240
+  Almoravid conquest of, 242
+  centre of Moroccan learning, 247
+  Catholic diocese at, 248
+  massacres at, 258
+
+Fez Elbali, 88 _et seq._, 188-196
+
+Fez Eldjid, 77, 80, 83-87, 245
+
+Fondak Nedjarine, the, at Fez, 94
+
+Fortifications, Moroccan, architecture of, 276
+
+Foucauld, Vicomte de, 110, 249
+
+Franco-German treaty of 1911, 212
+
+French Protectorate in Morocco, 209-222
+  work of, 222-227
+
+French, conquests in Morocco, 254-256
+  at Fez, 258
+
+Furniture, disappearance of Merinid, 86, 87
+
+
+Ghilis, the, 125
+
+Gouraud, General, 211
+
+
+Hamadch, tomb of, 49, 56
+
+Hamadchas, the, ritual dance of, 48, 49, 51-57
+
+Harem, in old Fez, 188-196
+  an Imperial, 170-181
+  in Marrakech, 197-205
+  in old Rabat, 182-187
+
+Hassan, Sultan, 129, 245, 246, 256
+
+Hassan, tower of, at Rabat, 31, 32
+
+Hassanians, the, rule of, 253-258
+
+Holy War, the, against France, 255,
+  against Spain and Portugal, 248-250
+
+Hospitals, in Morocco, 226, 227
+
+Houses, Moroccan, architecture of, 266, 275
+  color of, 50
+  plan of, 20
+  rich private, 86, 106
+
+
+Ibn-Toumert, 243, 268
+
+Idriss I, 94, 239
+
+Idriss II, 61, 80, 83, 94, 240
+
+Idrissite empire, the, 240, 241
+
+Inns, Moroccan, 86, 94, 116, 117
+
+
+Jews, of Sefrou, 113-116
+  treatment of North African, 114
+
+
+Kairouan, the Alissaouas of, 48, 52
+  Great Mosque of, 93, 95, 272
+
+Kairouiyin, mosque of. _See_ El Kairouiyin
+
+Kalaa, ruins of, 264
+
+Kenitra, port of, 38, 223
+
+Koechlin, M. Raymond, 268
+
+Koutoubya, tower of the, 127, 128
+
+
+Lamothe, General, 218
+
+Land, area of cultivated, in Morocco, 224
+
+Louis XIV, and Moulay-Ismael, 58, 59, 70
+
+Lunel, M. Tranchant de, 106, 274
+
+Lyautey, General, 23, 149, 150
+  at Sultan's court, 179
+  appointed Resident-General in Morocco, 210
+  military occupation of Morocco by, 211, 212
+  policy of, 213 _et seq._
+  economic development of Morocco achieved by, 218-222
+  summary of work of, 222-226
+
+
+Maclean, Sir Harry, 144
+
+Mamora, forest of, 14
+
+Mangin, General, 212
+
+Mansourah, mosque of, 150
+
+Market, of Marrakech, 144
+  in Moulay Idriss, 49
+  of Sale, 26, 27
+  of Sefrou, 111-113
+
+Marrakech, the road to, 123-126
+  founders of, 128, 129, 242
+  tower of the Koutoubya at, 127, 128
+  palace of the Bahia at, 129-133
+  the lamp-lighters of, 133
+  mixed population of, 134
+  bazaars of, 135-138
+  the "morocco" workers of, 137
+  olive-yards of, 139
+  the Menara of, 139, 140
+  a holiday of merchants of, 140-142
+  the Square of the Dead in, 143-145
+  French administration office at, 144
+  fruit-market of, 144
+  dance of Chleuh boys in, 148
+  Saadian tombs of, 149, 154-158, 252
+  a harem in, 197-205
+  taken by the French, 212
+  Catholic diocese at, 248
+  Chapel of the Tombs at, 270
+
+Medersa, the, of the Oudayas, 19-22
+  Attarine, 99
+  at Fez, 99, 105-107
+  at Sale, 25, 26
+  architecture of, 273-275
+
+Mehedyia, Phenician colony of, 38, 237
+
+Meknez, building of, 57-64, 69, 70
+  the Kasbah of, 62
+  palaces of, 63
+  stables of, 63
+  entrance into, 64
+  ruins of, 64-66
+  sunken gardens of, 72
+  visit of English emissaries to, 71-73
+
+Mellah, of Fez, 113
+  of Sefrou, 113-116
+
+Menara, the, in the Agdal, 139, 140
+
+Mequinez. _See_ Meknez
+
+Merinids, the, tombs of, at Fez, 78, 79
+  conquest of Morocco by, 245-247
+  architecture of, 269, 274, 275
+
+Mirador, the Imperial, 170-181
+
+Moorish art, 269
+
+Mosque, of Elakhador, 62
+  of El Andalous, 101, 102, 240, 268, 269
+  of El Kairouiyin, 80, 83, 93-100, 240, 263, 268, 269
+  of Kairouan, 93
+  of Mansourah, 150
+  of Rabat, 32
+  of Tinmel, 243, 268
+  of Tunisia, 96
+  architecture of Moroccan, 270-273
+
+Moulay Hafid, 81
+
+Moulay-el-Hassan, 129, 256
+
+Moulay Idriss I, rule of, 239
+  tomb of, 94
+
+Moulay Idriss II, tomb of, 61, 80, 83, 94
+  rule of, 240
+
+Moulay Idriss, Sacred City of, 5, 39, 45-57
+  Street of the Weavers in, 47
+  feast of the Hamadchas in, 48-57
+  market-place of, 49
+  whiteness of, 50
+  founding of, 240
+
+Moulay-Ismael, and Louis XIV, 58, 59, 70
+  exploits of, 60-62
+  mausoleum of Moulay Idriss enlarged by, 61
+  Meknez built by, 62, 63, 69, 70
+  the Black Guard of, 44, 67-69
+  description of, 71
+  palaces of, 72
+  and English emissaries, 72, 73
+  death of, 73, 74
+  rule of, 253
+  successors of, 254
+
+Moulay Youssef, 180, 181, 258
+
+
+Nedjarine, fountain and inn of, 94
+
+Night, in Fez, 116-119
+
+
+Oases, Moroccan, 109, 110
+  Marrakech, 127 _et seq._
+  Sefrou, 110 _et seq._
+  Settat, 124
+
+Oudayas, the, Kasbah of, 16, 17
+  Medersa of, 19-22
+
+
+Palaces, Moroccan, the Bahia, 129-133
+  Bou-Jeloud, 80-83
+  at Fez, 80-87
+  at Meknez, 63
+  of Moulay-Ismael, 72
+
+Phenicians, the, African explorations of, 236, 237
+
+Pilgrimage to Sale, a, 41
+
+Population, Moroccan, varied elements of, 89, 134
+
+Ports, Moroccan, 222, 223
+
+Portugal, the Holy War against, 248-250
+
+Pottery, Berber, 264
+
+Potters' Field, the, 104
+
+
+Rabat, 15, 16
+  Tower of Hassan at, 31, 32
+  ruins of mosque at, 32
+  called "Camp of Victory," 33
+  Sacrifice of the Sheep at, 163 _et seq._
+  Sultan's harem of, 170-181
+  visit to a harem in old, 182-187
+  exhibitions at, 219
+  port of, 223
+  Moslem college at, 225
+  Central Laboratory at, 226
+
+Railways, Moroccan, built by French Protectorate, 224
+
+Rarb, the, 38, 44
+
+Roads, Moroccan, built by French Protectorate, 224
+
+Romans, the, African explorations of, 237, 238
+
+
+Saadian Sultans, the, history of, 151-153
+  tombs of, 149, 154-158, 252
+  rule of, 247-252
+
+Sacrifice of the Sheep, the, 164-170
+
+Saint-Amand, M. de, 58
+
+Saladin, M. H., his "Manual of Moslem Architecture," 233, 261, 271
+
+Sale, first view of, 14
+  type of untouched Moroccan city, 23, 24
+  bazaar of, 24, 25
+  Medersas of, 19-22, 25, 26
+  market of, 26, 27
+  colors of, 50
+
+Schools, in Morocco, 225, 226
+
+Sedrata, ruins of, 264
+
+Sefrou, 110-116
+  market-place of, 111-113
+  men and women of, 112, 113
+  Jewish colony of, 113-116
+
+Senegal, 152
+
+Settat, oasis of, 124
+
+Sheep, sacrifice of the, 164-170
+
+Sidi-Mohammed, 254
+
+Slaves, Moroccan, 171, 191, 199-201
+  trade in white, 250
+
+_Sloughi_, bronze, at Volubilis, 46, 87
+
+Soudan, 152
+
+Spain, the Holy War against, 248-250
+
+Spanish zone, the, German intrigue in, 213, 218
+
+Stables, of Meknez, 63
+
+Stewart, Commodore, 71
+
+Street of the Weavers (Moulay Idriss), 47
+
+Streets, Moroccan, 47, 88-91, 161, 162
+
+
+Tangier, 3-8
+  colors of, 50
+  taken by the French, 255
+
+Tetuan, bronze chandelier of, 87
+
+Timbuctoo, the Sultanate of, 152
+
+Tingitanian Mauretania, 237
+
+Tinmel, ruins of mosque at, 243, 268
+
+Tlemcen, the conflict for, 245, 246
+
+Touaregs, the, 236
+
+Tower, of Hassan, 31, 32
+  of the Koutoubya, 127, 128
+
+Tunisia, Almohad sanctuary of, 96
+
+
+Vandals, the, African invasion by, 238
+
+Veiled Men, the, 236, 241
+
+Versailles and Meknez, 58
+
+Villages, "sedentary," 43
+
+Volubilis, ruins of, 44-46
+  bronze _sloughi_ of, 46, 87
+  founded by Romans, 237
+
+
+Wedding, Jewish, procession bringing gifts for, 108
+
+Windus, John, 70-72, 250
+
+Women, Moroccan, dress of, 51, 52
+  of Sefrou, 112, 113
+  of the harems, 187-189
+  in Sultan's harem, 173-175
+  in harems of Old Fez, 188, 192-194
+  in harem of Marrakech, 202-204
+  in harem of Rabat, 184-187
+  negro, 43, 191
+
+
+Yacoub-el-Mansour, 16, 30-33, 244
+
+Youssef-ben-Tachfin, 242
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_BY EDITH WHARTON_
+
+
+THE GREATER INCLINATION
+THE TOUCHSTONE
+CRUCIAL INSTANCES
+THE VALLEY OF DECISION
+SANCTUARY
+THE DESCENT OF MAN
+THE HOUSE OF MIRTH
+THE FRUIT OF THE TREE
+THE HERMIT AND THE WILD WOMAN
+TALES OF MEN AND GHOSTS
+ETHAN FROME
+THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY
+XINGU
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+IN MOROCCO
+FIGHTING FRANCE
+ITALIAN BACKGROUNDS
+A MOTOR FLIGHT THROUGH FRANCE
+ARTEMIS TO ACTAEON
+THE DECORATION OF HOUSES
+
+
+_CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS_
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of In Morocco, by Edith Wharton
+
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