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.