TCLEMCEN.--THE GRANADA OF THE WEST.--ARAB POETS.--CHILDREN.--THE
MOKBARA.--MANSOURA.--PHILO-ARABES.--TEMPTATIONS TO TCLEMCEN.
At Tclemcen, we found ourselves in a second and hardly less beautiful
Granada--a Granada moreover peopled with those who had made it what it
was, a Granada not wholly dead, but teeming with happy, picturesque
Eastern life. The climate is delicious, and the whole atmosphere of the
place so gracious and sweet to live in, that one is never ready to come
away. We made up our minds to stay a week or ten days in this Capua of
Capuas, whose climate, scenery, and every element around us, gave wings
to the hours. We never knew how the time went; we only know that, like
Faust, we said to the hour, “Stay, for thou art fair,” and that it
escaped us like a vision. For those who wish to know what Tclemcen, the
“Queen of Marreb” (in Morocco), really is, and was, I refer them to the
beautiful and careful papers of M. Brosselard in the _Revue Africaine_.
If I were to say half what I want to say about Tclemcen, this little
book would swell into a big one; I will, therefore, do my utmost not to
be enthusiastic, since enthusiasm leads me into the rash use of so many
words.
The Arabs, who are enthusiastic about great things and small, have
described Tclemcen in language as brilliant as a bed of tulips. Listen,
for instance, to Abd-el-Kader, who made Tclemcen his capital after the
treaty of Tafna in 1837: “At sight of me,” says the great poet,
“Tclemcen gave me her hand to kiss; I love her as the child loves the
bosom of his mother. I raised the veil which covered her face, and my
heart palpitated with joy; her cheeks glowed like flames. Tclemcen has
had many masters, but she has showed indifference to all, turning from
them with drooping eyelids; only upon me has she smiled, rendering me
the happiest sultan in the world; she said to me, ‘Give me a kiss, my
beloved; shut my lips with thy lips, for I am thine.’”
Another Arab writer thus describes Tclemcen: “Tclemcen is a city
enjoying a pleasant climate, running waters, and a fertile soil. Built
on the side of a mountain, it reminds one of a fair young bride reposing
in beauty on her nuptial couch. The bright foliage which overshadows the
white roofs is like a green coronal circling her majestic brow. The
surrounding heights and the plain stretching below the town are made
verdant by running streams. Tclemcen is a city that fascinates the mind
and seduces the heart.” Thus wrote in the 15th century Ibn Khaldoun, the
Arab Prescott, whose work no one has completed; and though the sun of
Tclemcen has set, it is so beautiful as to fascinate the mind and seduce
the heart still.
It was under the bright, brief dynasty of the Abd-el-Ouadites that
Tclemcen was virtually the Queen of Morocco. Possessed of a large,
enlightened, and wealthy population, of commercial enterprise, of a
well-disciplined army, a brilliant court, munificent and cultivated
rulers, Tclemcen was one of the best governed and most polished capitals
in the world, as her monuments bear witness.
If you go farther back into history, you find Tclemcen was christened
“Pomaria” by the Romans, on account of its orchards and fruit-gardens,
but the Tclemcen of to-day is far more interesting. It is indeed the
Moorish Athens. The modern city lies at the foot of green hills, its
minarets standing out against the sky, its terraced houses surrounded by
belts of lustrous foliage, whilst beyond stretches a plain as grandly
covered with ruins as the seven hills of Toledo; only unlike the hills
of Toledo, green, and sunny, and gay.
The life of the streets is intoxicating to an artist. At every corner
you see children playing, as brightly dressed as little Prince Bedreddin
when he went with his slave to buy tarts; the boys wearing blue and
crimson vests, embroidered with yellow braid, scarlet Fez caps, and
spotlessly white trousers; the girls, such dainty, dark-eyed darlings!
in soft white dresses and haïks, their waists bound with broad silk
scarfs of many colours, and flowers stuck coquettishly behind their
little ears. Never were such children as those of Tclemcen, so pretty,
so frolicsome, so utterly kittenish and captivating. You could not help
stopping to play with them; one would like to adopt half-a-dozen of them
as nephews and nieces. The Negro and Jewish children are also very
pretty here. The Jewesses brighten the streets as much as the children.
They are handsomer here than in Algiers, and wear outside their brocades
and silks haïks of soft, bright crimson cloth, which envelope them from
head to foot. The Arab type is handsomer too; I should say much purer.
There was a boy of fifteen at the hotel whose face I shall never forget.
It was the face one should copy for a Christ in the Temple; perfectly
oval, the features refined and pensive; the eyes soft, dark, and full of
expression; the mouth sweet and serious. This boy acted as our guide,
and as soon as we had arranged our sketch-books and shawls, would lose
himself in a reverie. His face then was perfect.
We used to divide our days between the Arab village of Sidi Bou Medin
and the mines of Mansooua.
The way to Sidi Bou Medin lies amid one vast cemetery called the
_Mokbara_, where the Tclemcenites have been buried for hundreds of
years. A French guide-book has this remark upon the horrible condition
of this cemetery,--“Ici s’amoncellent depuis des siècles les tombes des
Tclemcéniens; le temps les a peu respectés:” but is it time alone that
has so mishandled the dead?
There was hardly a spot where time (or the road-maker?) had not laid
bare some skeleton, and in some places the bones lay in heaps. Some
pretty little Marabouts lie scattered about these acres of grave-yard,
and near one we saw a ragged Bedouin at afternoon prayer. The kneeling
man, the white temple peeping amid olive-trees, the long lines of the
cemetery, the yellow evening light bathing all, made a touching picture.
The dry bones preached to us. We thought of the Moors driven thither
from Spain, and of the sad hearts they brought into exile.
The village of Sidi Bou Medin covers a hill terrace-wise, and is
overtopped by a graceful minaret. It has a gracious and sunny aspect,
with its hanging gardens of myrtle, and orange, and pomegranate, its
running streams, its vineyards and olive-groves, its shining white domes
and minarets. Not a French element has entered the place; and when we
had climbed the precipitous shady path and entered the court of the
great Mosque, we felt as far from France as if Abd-el-Kader’s dream of a
new Mahomedan dynasty at Tclemcen were realised, and the Nureddin was
summoning, not Bedouins and beggars only, but turbaned princes and
rulers to prayer.
Sidi Bou Medin, from whom the village is called, was a great saint, and
his tomb (_koubba_) is considered the sight to see, it being very richly
decorated with draperies of cloth and gold, ostrich’s eggs set in
silver, chains and amulets of gold and beads, arabesques, mirrors in
mother-of-pearl frames, lustres and lamps. To enter this _koubba_, you
first descend into a little court, around which runs a graceful arcade
supported on pillars of onyx; the panels are decorated with
inscriptions, and hung with cages of singing birds, and the whole place
is wonderfully rich and fantastic.
The Arabs heap up wealth on the shrines of their favourites with a zeal
unequalled by Romanists, however fervent, and Bou Medin is the favourite
saint here. There are many strange, touching, and also--for even saints
have humour--comic stories about him. He was born in Spain, and was
brought up, first to arms, then to the profession of science; but, after
many wanderings to Cordova, to Bagdad, to Mecca, to Constantine, came to
Tclemcen, finding it, as he said, “a place in which the eternal sleep
must be sweet,” where he died with these noble words on his lips,--“God
alone is the Eternal Truth.”
His life, as are all the lives of Mahomedan saints, was meditative and
active, miraculous and ordinary, and abounds in legends. He could read
the most secret thoughts of men, in testimony of which the Arabs tell
this story:--“A certain Sheikh was angry with his wife, and wishing to
be separated from her, without feeling quite sure that he had reasonable
grounds for doing so, went one day without saying a word to anybody to
consult Sidi Bou Medin. Hardly, however, had he entered the room when
the Marabout looking at him, called out sharply,--
“‘Fear God, and don’t put away your wife!’
“Of course the Sheikh was at a loss to understand how the saint came to
quote the Koran so _à propos_, to which Sidi Bou Medin replied,--
“‘When you came in, I saw, as it were, the words of the Koran written on
your person, and I guessed at once what was in your mind.’”
From the court you enter the _koubba_ itself. The cenotaph, which is of
richly sculptured wood, lies under a dusky dome, only lighted by small
panes of coloured glass. A blessed disciple and friend of the saint lies
by his side.
But it is the beauty of the mosque that those who are not devotees at
Sidi Bou Medin’s shrine, care most to look at. Here you see _azulejos_
and _artesonados_ as original in design and as perfect in finish as any
in Grenada, and probably of the same period. The tiles of the three
primary colours, red, yellow, and blue, within, the sculptured red tiles
without, the sculptured porticoes and walls, are quite of the same
style, and in no degree unequal to the finest Moorish work we had seen
in Spain. There are intact some of those gorgeous inscriptions,
historical and religious, such as crowd the seat of the Caliph in the
mosque of Cordova, and I do not remember to have seen any defacement or
dilapidation anywhere. The building is a perfect specimen of Moorish
art, which is always simple where simplicity has its use, and always
profuse of ornament, where ornament is in place. Take, for instance, the
outer court where the Arabs perform their ablutions before prayer; there
you have a marble basin, a floor of _faïence_ in bright colours, all
shut in by an airy arcade and overhead a bright blue sky. What could you
add that would not spoil the purpose of the place?--a purifying place
that ought to be unadorned. But within, where the devout man has the
right to worship, having purified himself, flesh and spirit by the
outward and visible sign as well as the inward and spiritual grace, the
Mahomedan makes his temple magnificent for the one God and His Prophet.
Neither wealth nor workmanship is spared, and the result is what we see,
walls covered with ornamentation, most delicate both as to colour and
design, pillars of jasper and onyx, arcades of lovely fret-work, the
priestly seat or pulpit of cedar-wood richly sculptured--lavishness of
labour and perfection of form and colour everywhere.
The ruins of Mansourah, once the rival of Tclemcen, lie about two miles
off the town. It is now six centuries since this city was one vast
congeries of palaces, public buildings, gardens, baths, hospitals, and
mosques. Nothing remains now but ruined walls and the minaret, though
these alone are quite sufficient to show what Mansourah once was.
Photographs might help you a little to imagine the place, but, having
looked at them, you must shut your eyes and colour the minaret and the
walls with richest, reddest ochre, you must clothe the hills in living
green, fill the space between hill and sky with soft warm skies of
southern blue, and then set the whole picture floating and palpitating
in golden mist.
This minaret is unlike anything else in the whole world. It is like a
gigantic monolith of solid Indian gold, and is as wonderful as the
Pyramids. When you come closer you see what a ruin it is now, and what a
splendour it once was; it has been cleft in two like a pomegranate. The
construction is of a rich reddish-coloured tile, and these tiles are
arranged in panels sculptured and coloured. Some of the colour remains
wonderfully bright still, but the whole building would hardly stand the
shock of an earthquake, I think. Looking at the inner side, you see the
traces of inclined stairs by which mounted horsemen could ride to the
top, and by dint of a little patience, you are able to master the
original ground-plan of the place. The exquisite columns of jasper and
marble have been removed to the museums of Tclemcen, Algiers, and Paris,
where are also to be seen many beautiful mosaics, enamelled tiles,
shafts, and pedestals.
Whilst sitting at the foot of this minaret and looking from one scene of
ruin to another, we found some fragments of coloured glass, blue, green,
amber and red, which alone sufficed to show how splendid the mosque must
have been. We looked at these bits of broken glass which were brilliant
as jewels, and from them to the half-buried portico and the shattered
minaret; and gradually the past became vivid as a dream, the dry bones
were covered with flesh, the flesh palpitated with happy life, and the
city of Mansourah was young and fair and gay again!
But we did not live wholly in the Tclemcen of yesterday. There is quite
a little Protestant colony here, and we found ourselves taking up
threads of interests long laid aside, and here, in a remote corner of
Africa, discussing all those questions dear to the well-wisher of the
English Church. We talked naturally a good deal of the Arabs and
discovered that we were in a nucleus of what French writers on Algerian
affairs call _Philo-Arabes_. One gentleman, a German, I think, but of
whatever nation a most intelligent person, worked himself into quite a
passion of indignant eloquence.
“I assure you, Madame,” he said, “that much as I love Tclemcen, and well
as my affairs are thriving here, I do not know how to stay. The
treatment of the Arabs enrages me--who am a peaceable man--fifty times
a-day. You will hear wherever you go that the Arab is a sensual,
unprincipled wretch, given to slaying, stealing, and all kinds of vice.
You must not believe half what you hear, Madame; I have lived long
enough among the Arabs to know what they are, and this is what they
are,--harmless, generous, patient, hospitable, religious; they are all
this and often much more. If I go from Tclemcen to Oran, do you think I
want a pistol? Madame, I need never bear the expense of going to an
hotel; every Arab tent or house is open to me; at any man’s table I am
welcome to a meal; his children will play with me; his own sons will
tend or saddle my horse; at parting he will wring my hands and bid me
come again.”
“We don’t hear such things from everyone,” we said.
“Ay, because you have doubtless had more talk with the soldier rather
than the civilian, the ruler of the Arab than his fellow-man. But when a
Colonel, or a Major, or a _Chef du Bureau Arabe_, tells you how wicked
the Arabs are, and how necessary it is to beat them (_leur donner coups
de bâton_), he does not tell you all the story, Madame. He does not tell
you how there are some who make their fortune by bleeding the poor
Arabs, and then go back to Paris to live grandly. He does not tell you
how he administers justice, and that is worth your while to hear. I am a
_Chef du Bureau Arabe_, so we will suppose, and I want something, no
matter what,--a few jackal-skins for my wife’s drawing-room, a little
money, sheep, horses, anything. What do I do? The Arabs have all these
things, skins, money, cattle, so I call my Sheikhs together, and tell
them what I want, and they get it: what do I care how? and then people
wonder that the Arabs rob in their turn! I tell you, Madame, that the
Arab is unfairly treated in every way, and that those who treat him so
will suffer for it hereafter. He would assimilate with us if we would
only let him. To-day, for instance, I met a friend of mine, an Arab who
lives in Tclemcen, and I told him that I would bring some English
travellers to see his pretty Moorish house. He was as delighted as if he
had been a countryman of yours. ‘I will prepare a _diffa_ (feast),’ he
said; ‘there shall be a good _cous-cous-son_ to regale your friends,’
and if you go, you will find him, in every sense, a gentleman--polished,
kindly, and intelligent. Our boys play together. Do you suppose those
young Bedouins will not be influenced by the companionship? If I were to
leave Tclemcen to-morrow, there are some Arabs I should part from as
from my brothers.”
“And then,” said his young wife, treating the subject from a romantic
point of view, “there is something so poetic about everything they do!
If you ask a simple question, they answer you with parables and figures
of speech. It is like reading the Scriptures. Oh, Madame! my husband is
right in advocating the cause of the poor Arabs! I think they would
teach us Christians many a lesson of piety and resignation. If a parent
loses his child he says, ‘It is the will of Allah. Allah’s will be
done!’ The name of God is ever in their mouths, and I do believe in
their hearts.”
We heard a great deal more about the Arabs during our stay, and,
curiously enough, every one here spoke hopefully of them. I could write
a long chapter of the stories that were told us by these warm
_Philo-Arabes_, but they carry double weight when told with flashing
eyes and trembling lips. One hardly knows what to believe.
There are a good many Jews at Tclemcen, and it is consolatory to find
them--as indeed you find them all over Algeria--living happily among
their former enemies. The French conquest has certainly done a great
deal for the Jews, who, under the Turkish rule, suffered inexpressible
persecutions and hardships. Now they thrive, and thrive deservedly,
without any fear that their honestly earned gains will be snatched from
them, or that their derelictions will receive harsher punishment than
those of their Christian neighbours.
If any one wants to renew his health, or forget his troubles, let him
come to North Africa, and breathe the sweet, biblical, sunny atmosphere
of Tclemcen. You will find no more tourists there than you would do in
the heart of the Great Sahara; and whilst you enjoy all the charm of
romantic, isolated Eastern life, none of the material comforts of modern
civilization are missing.
[Illustration: text decoration]
[Illustration: text decoration]