The outer front (at right angles to the inner) is built against: the
inner stands in its beauty, neither disfigured nor concealed: it is
covered with the richest of those figures with which we are familiar,
under the name of Moresque, or Arabesque; not moulded in stucco, but
carved in stone. All is in ruins, or utterly effaced and levelled,
that this circuit of walls was raised to protect. From the platform
commanding the entrance of the river, we obtained a perfect idea of
the place; and after enjoying for a while the view landward, and the
lashing of the sea upon the bar, we proceeded towards the encampments,
which lay to the south, to visit the walls of the city. They might
seem the ruins of some unheard-of Carthage, rather than of an upstart
village on the extreme border of the world. Running in all directions,
it is puzzling to make out what they exclude or what they enclose--they
are now close--now far off--here intersecting a field--there skirting
the horizon. They are of Tapia; some parts are forty feet in height,
apparently of excessive thickness, and with square solid towers. At one
place they resembled the land wall of Constantinople. The space between
the first and second wall is filled with orange-groves or gardens; the
produce of some of them is 3,000 dollars (600_l._), which would be
doubled if the bar were passable. On our way back we were stopped in
one of the streets by some horsemen, galloping and discharging their
muskets. A little farther on I came suddenly upon Sir F. Palgraves’
likeness, leading a laden ass: a servant was walking behind him doing
nothing. The wealthiest disdain not to perform, like the patriarchs,
the humblest offices; and I was told that the late governor might have
been seen leading his own mules to water.
As we were passing through a narrow lane, the guard stopped and
muttered, “_El Caïd!_” I looked, expecting to see the great man’s
_cortège_, and it was some time before I distinguished the personage
pacing along alone, wrapped in his haïk. The soldiers inclined, and
saluted in a manner new to me. He stopped for a moment, uttered a
few words, and passed on. It seemed as if I had met the proconsul of
Mauritania Tangitana. The fasces only were wanting to the Roman toga
and the Roman port. On returning home I made inquiry concerning him.
The answer was, “He is a just man.” I asked, how then he came to be
governor? the answer was, “He was appointed by the Town.” Supposing
that my ears had deceived me, I repeated the question, and was answered
a second time, “He was appointed by the Town.” The story is as
follows:--
A REVOLUTION IN BARBARY.
The Caïd of Rabat, who had enjoyed his office for twelve years, was
one day surprised by the entrance of a “deputation,” to tell him that
the Town had despatched a messenger to the Sultan to solicit his (the
Caïd’s) removal; and that until they received an answer, their civility
could extend to no act of obedience. The Caïd retreated up stairs, put
his head out of a little top window, and seeing “who and how many”
there were, bowed to “public opinion.” The Caïd was deposed, and fined
40,000 dollars. It so happened that the new Caïd sent them, having been
before at Salee, was better known than trusted; he, therefore, on his
arrival, was informed by the people of Rabat, that they had already
despatched to the Sultan an envoy and this message:--“We do not want
a stranger to govern us, and particularly not this stranger; we have
plenty of our own people who can govern better both for the Sultan and
for us.” The complaisant Sultan on this revoked his second appointment,
and authorised them to choose a Caïd for themselves. Their first choice
fell on a rich merchant named Mike Brittel, who had taken the lead in
the revolt: he declined, and recommended the present Caïd, who was
thereupon chosen. This had happened within the last few weeks; and the
election had been confirmed by the Sultan only since his arrival.
Inquiring as to the security of life and property, I was informed that
at Rabat confiscation was not a penalty for treason. Here no real
property can be held by the Sultan. At Tangier there is confiscation:
the lands there are held of the Sultan, as he came into possession by
the evacuation of the English. At Arzela and Mazagan, the Sultan is
feudal superior, because these are conquered demesnes. This is our
ancient law of treason, based on fealty and homage--as depending upon
fief and benefice.
The following conversation occurred with my host:--
_Q._ Has there been any execution in Salee or Rabat since you have been
here?
_A._ No.
_Q._ Have there been any assassinations?
_A._ Four years ago there was a man killed at Rabat.
_Q._ Why was the murderer not executed?
_A._ Because the Emperor’s answer was, that he had done well: he killed
a man in his harem.
_Q._ Have there been, during these four years, any grave crimes, such
as breaking into houses, robbery, &c.?
_A._ No; not that I have heard of.
_Q._ What then are the crimes which are committed?
_A._ Vegetables and such things are often stolen in the market. Jews
are beaten going to Salee: they are required to give money; but then
that is when the wandering tribes are encamped here.
_Q._ Then you enjoy security and tranquillity?
_A._ Yes.
_Q._ Are the rich persecuted by the Government because of their wealth?
_A._ Yes, but only when they are in the Government service.
_Q._ During these four years, how often have irregular contributions
been raised in the town by the Government?
_A._ The only taxes are upon laden camels and merchandise.
_Q._ What are the exactions to which public servants are exposed?
_A._ They take everything from them.
_Q._ Does that often happen?
_A._ No, not very often.
_Q._ How many incidents of the kind do you recollect?
_A._ The late Caïd had been in office twelve years, and his father
twelve before him. The Emperor then fixed his demand at 40,000 dollars.
The Caïd said, he had not the money to pay. The present Caïd has shown
that he had as much in houses and gardens in Rabat alone.
_Q._ Since he could neither impose contributions on the town, nor
extort money from individuals, how did he accumulate wealth?
_A._ He was a very venal man, and you could do anything with him for
four dollars.
_Q._ His profits then consisted in the corrupt administration of
justice?
_A._ Yes.
_Q._ A Caïd in Rabat may then be guilty of corruption, but not of
violence?
_A._ Of corruption and violence too.
He then related to me the following story:--
“Four months ago, the boy now cooking in the _patio_ rushed in dressed
as a Moor, and throwing his cap on the ground called out, “I am a Jew.
I claim the protection of France and England.” Soldiers followed him,
but I would not let them take him from under my roof. His father was
a renegade. His property (3000 dollars) was placed, on his death, in
the hands of an executor, who--the children under nine years of age
being held to be of their father’s faith--forced him from his mother.
Refusing to profess Islamism, the mother and the boy were confined
apart, and she was beaten to induce her to influence her son. The boy
at last did pronounce the words “La Illah,” &c.; his head was shaved;
the Mussulman dress put on him, and he was about, as is the custom,
to be paraded on horseback through the town, but he recanted. This is
death by the Mussulman law. Those who were present describe the child’s
acts and words as wonderful. He said to the Caïd, “Mahomet has not had
power to convert me, and your acts make me hate his faith.” After this,
he made his escape to the consulate, and the door has been besieged by
persons seeking either to force, or to seduce him away. Frequently the
governor sent me messages about him. On one of these occasions, the
soldiers while sitting in the court, kept constantly calling to him by
the name of “Abdallah,” which they had given him. For some time he took
no notice, and returned no answer. At last he said, “Why do you call
Abdallah? The boy with that name is dead. There is only here Meshod.”
At my request the boy was sent for: he seemed dogged and stupid, and
made very light of his trials. It was with difficulty that I extracted
from him a bare corroboration of the story. On being repeatedly
urged by questions, he said he had answered the Caïd, “I won’t be a
Mussulman; for your religion has no strength. I forgive you my money
that I may be a Jew.” I said to him he ought to be very grateful to the
Consul for having befriended him: his answer was, “I am thankful to
God.”
This was one of the occasions on which the religious feelings of the
people were liable to the extremest excitement. In no Mussulman
country have the Jews been subjected, as in Europe, to processes
for compelling conversion; but, on the other hand, to relapse
after pronouncing the fatal words is a crime for which there is no
forgiveness in the Law, and no power of mercy in the State. The whole
case here rested upon the boy’s having uttered the profession of faith;
yet in the official correspondence which I have perused, this fact is
suppressed.
The persecution in this case arose from the guardian, who would have
been remunerated for the management of the funds by one-third of the
property, had the boy been a Mussulman; but, being a Jew, he could not
inherit from his Mussulman father, and the whole of the property would
go to the Sultan. The Caïd’s profit was out of the counter-bribery of
the guardian and the mother. The circumstances becoming known, general
indignation was aroused against the Caïd. Immediately afterward the
application was made to the Sultan for his removal; and this was one of
the charges preferred against him.
A parallel incident, which occurred five or six years ago, has been
introduced and falsified on the Spanish stage. I repeat it as it was
narrated to me by the Jew, who detailed it to the Spanish Dramatists:--
“A Jewish girl, the daughter of an ill-tempered mother, having been
beaten and in great sorrow, one day ran into the adjoining Moorish
house (at Tangiers the Jews have no separate quarters). The Moorish
women were charmed with her beauty, spoke to her kindly, and advised
her to be like them, and live with them, and she preferring them to
her own people, repeated ‘La Illah,’ &c. The women thereupon went to
the Caïd, and told him that a Jewish girl whose name was Skemish, and
whose face was like her name (Sun), had come to them, and that God had
enlightened her. The Caïd was glad, and sent for her. When she came,
she said that the Moorish women had lied; but they having testified as
before, she was shut in a prison with water only and black bread. The
Caïd then, not knowing what to do, sent to tell the Sultan. Word came
that she should be sent to Fez. The Caïd then sent for the father of
the girl, and said, ‘You must pay me forty dollars for the expenses of
your daughter’s journey.’ But he was poor, and could not pay the money;
and he went lamenting through the streets, and so met the Spanish
Consul, who gave him the forty dollars, and the girl was sent away
with eight soldiers. A traveller overtook them on the way, and joining
company with them inquired her story, and said she deserved death; but
pitying her, he said he would converse with her; so they suffered him.
This was no Moor, but a Jew and a neighbour, who had disguised himself
as a Moor, in order to encourage her to remain steadfast and support
her affliction. When they had come near the city, she was made to halt,
and great honour was prepared for her. Four hundred young men, chosen
from out of the servants of the Sultan, played before her the ‘powder
game.’ Preceded by these, and followed by a great concourse of people,
she was conducted to the palace. Next day the lady of the Harem came
to her. She kissed her between the eyes; made her sit down by her side;
told her maidens to bring rich clothes, and clothed her with them;
and then taking her by the hand, they walked in the palace and the
gardens, and the lady said, ‘All these things shall be yours, and you
shall have a prince for a bridegroom.’ The Jewess answered to the lady,
‘What matters it to the bird whether its cage be of ivory or of reed,
or whether it be hung in a palace or a hut?’ After several days, word
was brought to her, that she must get ready and come to the Sultan.
She came before the Sultan, and he called her, ‘My dear Skemish,’
and made her sit down beside him, and he was eating kusscousoo, and
he said to her ”Eat.“ But she said, ‘I am a Jewess, and cannot eat
kusscousoo prepared by your people.’ The Sultan said, ‘Islam is true.’
But she answered him boldly. Then three baskets were brought, one with
embroidered clothes, in another precious stones, and in another pearls:
‘These,’ said he, ‘are the marriage gifts I had prepared for you, and
you shall choose a bridegroom of the sons of the Caïd’s.’ But she
answered him as before. He then became very angry, and said, ‘Now your
blood shall run like water on the earth;’ and she answered, ‘I am ready
to die.’ She was then given over to the Caïd to be judged according
to the law as an apostate. The Caïd, when he found that his words did
not persuade, nor his threats move her, assembled the rabbis and the
elders of the Jews, and said to them, ‘If this maiden, once a Jewess,
remain thus perverse, the Sultan will assuredly slay not her only, but
every Jew in Fez. Advise then what you shall do.’ So the elders went
to her in the prison, offering to absolve her of the sin, and telling
her that it was better for one soul to perish than the whole people.
She answered, ‘Every man must bear his own burden: the blood of all
the people will not save me: I will not do this thing.’ And the Jews
went out wondering. The Caïd then sent word, that on the next morning
he would come with a _crown of laurel_ (such was the word) in one
hand, and the (paper, for her execution,) in the other. On the morrow,
when the prison door was opened, she was kneeling on the ground, and
remembering the words of the Sultan, she said, ‘Let my blood now run
on the earth like water.’ So the Caïd was sorrowful, closed the door,
and came again on the morrow, and found her kneeling in the same place,
and again she repeated the same words; so it was appointed that she
should die on the next market-day. And when the day came, four criers
were sent forth to proclaim that a Jewish woman was to die, for she
had reviled the prophet. When she was brought to the market-place, in
the midst of a great concourse from the town and neighbouring country
assembled for the market, she prayed to have a pair of trowsers;
‘lest,’ said she, ‘in the struggles of death, I should expose my
nakedness; and some water, that I may wash and pray.’ Whilst she was
washing and clothing herself, the executioner waved before her eyes
a long knife, but she would not look on it, and having finished her
prayer, she offered to him her neck; but he cut with the edge only,
‘for,’ said he, ‘when she sees the blood she will love life;’ but she
called out ‘Your law commands you to kill, but not to torture me.’ And
on that word he struck off her head and spat upon it.
“The Jews of Fez obtained the body on the payment of 3000 dollars,
and gathering it up with the blood in a linen sheet, interred it with
great lamentation, and they built over it a tomb like that of a saint,
and those who are afflicted with disorders go to pray there, and are
cured.”[199]
Compare with this, the story in Maccabees of the mother and seven sons,
who suffered death rather than eat forbidden meat.
FOOTNOTES:
[198] From םרע haram, to heap up; the term was applied to the banks of
tombs and the dams of rivers. Avienus considers these Harmata to be
relics of the causeway which Hercules constructed to bring over the
oxen of Geryon.
[199] The name given to the girl was “_Sol_,” as the story was told me
in Spanish. It is the habit of those who themselves give descriptive
names, to translate the names of other languages. I have therefore
restored the Hebrew word and name, in which language the sun is
feminine.
CHAPTER II.
RABAT.
I went to-day up the river in a barge belonging to one of the schooners
in the harbour. We landed at the bottom of the harbour to visit the
great tower. It is about seventy feet square, and under two hundred in
height, but was never finished. The facing of one of the angles has
been stripped off by lightning, showing the interior of the masonry,
which is composed throughout of stones exactly squared. The wall at
the upper part is between six and seven feet thick. It is ascended by
an inclined plane, up which a carriage might be driven. The centre
is an inner tower composed of five stories of square halls, with the
roofs in stucco, like the Alhambra. The outside is figured and carved.
In simplicity and grace, “Hassan” exceeds the Giralda no less than in
dimensions. Whoever has seen the Giralda, will know how much the name
enhances the charm of that structure. This personification, which to
us is an abnormal effort, and belongs to an ecstatic state, is part
of their daily life. We may be poetic; they are poetry. The sword of
Antor, the sword of Amra Ibn Maad,[200] the horn of Timour had each
its name; and I never hear a bugle without a thrill, having, as a
child, delighted in the history of the latter hero. Those who gave a
man’s name to a tower, would be horror-struck at a man’s name given to
a dog. The tower “Hassan” calls up the siege of Jerusalem and Lower
Antonia. There all the towers had names--Hippicus, Piphunis, Mariamne:
so the gates had names, as Genuath; but the gates, like those of Rabat,
were probably structures exceeding the towers in dimensions.
The staircase has been rendered impracticable both at the entrance and
near the top, but we clambered up by the aid of holes in the walls.
We could now take in the fortifications of Rabat. The whole forms a
triangle, the sides of which are the river and the sea-coast; the
apex is the Cazata on the point of Rabat. It covers a space of ground
considerably larger than Granada.
Adjoining the tower there is a large cistern with ten parallel walls
running half through it, and beyond this, the extensive area of
a mosque with many of the columns standing. They are of granite,
unpolished. A century ago a missionary mentions the mosque as unroofed,
with three hundred and sixty columns. This group of buildings is
surrounded by massive walls in _Tapia_ with turrets.
Wherever elsewhere are found monuments of past splendour, the race
has disappeared, or it lives in subjection to some other people. Here
the descendants of the people who reared these edifices, still dwell
unconquered around. They gaze upon them with stupid wonder, knowing not
whether they are the works of genii or their fathers.
The magnificent remains spread around were the creation of a single
reign, and had one date of maturity and desolation. What measure do
they not give of the power of Morocco, in the time of our Henry I.?
Like the pyramids, they were reared by captive hands; they were bedewed
with Gothic blood, and Christian sweat and tears. To forty thousand of
the Christian slaves employed in them, the Emperor had promised freedom
on their completion, and he gave them liberty to choose a district for
their habitation. His ministers represented that such a colony would
be dangerous. “My word,” said the Emir el Moslemin (Miramolin) “is
passed for freedom, and what is freedom without the means of protecting
it?” They were settled in the mountains to the east of Fez. Wives were
given to them, and they were called _Shabanets_, from Shaban, the name
of the month in which the removal took place. For some generations
they preserved their language and religion, and three hundred years
afterwards we find them a powerful tribe at war with the Moorish
sovereign. The Shabanets were at that time undistinguished from the
surrounding population in manners, languages, and _religion_. There
is no trace of persecution for religion, and their contests with the
princes of Morocco were for their civil rights.
That war of borders and of centuries between Moor and Goth, must have
been, in part, the image of the kidnapping of Africa as carried on
to-day. The common prisoner for us is an encumbrance, for them he was
the chief booty. The estimating of the value, and the distribution of
the shares amongst the captors, were defined and arranged by a peculiar
code. A captive, for instance, made from a fortress within cross-bow
range, belonged to the captor on payment of a fifth of the value to the
king. Beyond cross-bow range the captor received a third of the value
from the governor who got the slave.
This treatment of a captive shocks our sense of military honour, and so
the lesson which war ought to teach is lost--that each is answerable in
his person and fortune for his nation’s acts. The judicial and sacred
character of war remains so long only as the captive is treated as a
guilty man. Our civilization respects in the prisoner the professional
man, because it has converted war from the execution of a sentence into
a trade. Riley relates a conversation with some of the tribe on the
borders of the Timbuctoo desert. “We cannot,” said they, in answer to
his remonstrances, “give quarter, because they ought to die who give
us cause to use our weapons. We will not take quarter if vanquished,
because we will not be beholden for life to such men.” He describes the
tribe as peculiarly harmless.
From the tower we proceeded two or three miles up the river to orange
groves on the low ground, belonging to the late governor, which
appeared utterly deserted, and the fruit lay rotting under the trees.
Our European sailors loaded their boats with fruit, and decorated it
with branches bearing fruit and flowers. I fancied the companions of
Hercules must have done something of the same kind.
We found here a party of the Sultan’s troops, who were giving and
receiving a treat from each other. There were various little fires and
round trays of tea: they hailed us and made us land, and we had to
drink tea with them. There was a nephew of the Emperor amongst them, a
fine lad, almost black, with beautiful Greek features approaching to
that Abyssinian cast, some individuals of which have appeared to me to
be the most wonderful specimens of the human race. Homer was of the
same opinion.
Several Spanish renegades were pointed out to me: they were criminals
who had escaped from the Spanish presidio. The Moors spoke of them
without contempt; the Jews told me they were much esteemed. I had
been told at Ceuta that few attempted to escape, and that, when they
did, they came back again, in consequence of the bad treatment they
received. The Spaniards have an “extradition” treaty with the Moors,
but here that modern infamy meets its reward--the deserters become
Mussulmans. How different the present practice of converting the
fortresses on the frontier into depôts for culprits, from that ancient
practice of the Spanish kings, by which the frontier fortresses were
sanctuaries. When reading those old charters, I had imagined that the
object was to people them, and such is the explanation given by the
Spanish legal writers; but now I saw the real purpose,--which was
to afford the malefactor, who had already escaped from punishment,
relief from apostacy. The malefactor was sheltered for a year and a
day, and was then free. He would have been kept there for life, had
the object been to people the fortresses. This is further confirmed by
the singular privilege of these sanctuaries to receive women who had
run away from their husbands, and once within them they are freed from
the bonds of matrimony. These provisions will be found in the Charter
of Ferdinand IV., granted to Gibraltar, and afterwards confirmed by
Alonzo XI. From the benefits of the sanctuary were excepted only
traitors--those who had delivered up castles--those who had broken the
king’s peace, or seduced their lord’s wife.
Thus Moses separated three cities of refuge “on this side Jordan
towards the sun’s rising;”[201] that is, on the side of the enemy and
on his border. The period of sojourn was contingent on the life of the
high-priest.
Among the renegades are to be found the scourings from all regions of
the earth; Spain, France, Russia, Belgium, Prussia, Turkey, Tartary,
Egypt, and the whole coast of Africa. Nigritia and Central Africa may
be added to the list; as the slaves may rather be considered outcasts
who find a home, than free men reduced to servitude. Poles they have
here in Africa, it is true; but as “_condottieri_” only. There are
representatives of every race, and records of every conspiracy and
rebellion. They number four hundred in the camp, and two thousand
throughout Morocco. The police is so strict, that it is impossible
that one of them should ever return. Dante might here have got the
suggestion for his inscription over the gates of hell.
There were formerly a great many emigrants from Algiers. They have
died and wasted away: as the French colonization has advanced, they
have retreated before it: they have preferred abandoning the graves of
their fathers, their homes, their substance, their friends, to living
where the Fih ruled. Such an emigration must not be compared to that of
Poland, or to the victims of any European revolution. There was here
no dread of vengeance and no proscription. They departed in anguish of
heart, and Morocco for them was no land of promise. Of many who had
acknowledged themselves as Fih subjects, that have come to Gibraltar in
a state of destitution, not one has ever applied at the consulate for
pecuniary relief. The Consul has repeatedly proffered assistance; it
has in every case been declined. This getting out of the way of their
conquerors is strikingly pictured in the address of an old Moor to the
captor of Gibraltar:--
“SIRE,--What have I done to your race? I lived in Seville when your
great-grandfather, the King Don Fernando, besieged and took that
place, and I went to Xerez. Then came your grandfather, Don Alonzo,
and conquered Xerez, and I went to live at Tarifa. Then came your
father, Don Sancho, and took Tarifa. Finding that we could not live
in any city of Spain, I came to Gibraltar: now you have come by sea,
besieged and taken it. I beg that you will order a vessel for me, that
I may cross the sea, and not see so much sorrow before my eyes.”[202]
Christian slavery in Morocco, and the intercourse resulting from it
with the princes and religious orders of Europe, would form a very
interesting volume. It ought not, however, to be forgotten that
the Christians set the example.[203] In Morocco the Rovers were no
tractable subjects. Even when they were reduced to obedience, and one
of the Sultans applied to Charles XII. for aid in quelling those of
Tunis and Algiers,[204] who had supported the fraternity of Salee
against himself, these princes, who would not recognize the Sultans of
Constantinople, entered into friendly relations with the Roman Pontiff.
Even on religious matters, the following extract will show, and will
confirm, what I have elsewhere asserted, that the disappearance
of Christianity from the soil of Africa is not attributable to
persecution. While Henry, the first of European monarchs, was putting
himself in open opposition to the Church, and setting her highest
recognised authority at defiance, that authority received an unexpected
recognition and homage from a Saracen and semi-barbarian sovereign
in Africa. Annazir, the Mahometan ruler of Mauritania Sitifensis,
sent to Rome a Christian priest, Servandus by name, with the request
that he might be consecrated bishop of the church then existing at
Hippo. Gregory’s answer to this prince announced his compliance with
the Saracen’s desire, and the due consecration of the designated
prelate. He thanked Annazir for his liberation of many Christians in
his kingdom from slavery, and for his promised manumission of more.
“This goodness,” he said, “God the Creator of all things, without whom
we cannot do, or even think anything that is good, hath breathed into
thine heart. He that lighteth every man that cometh into the world,
hath in this thy purpose enlightened thy mind, for there is nothing
of which the Almighty God, who would have all men to be saved, and
who is not willing that any should perish, more highly approves than
that, next to the love of his Maker, a man should cultivate that of
his neighbour, and do nought to others which he would not that they
should do to him; and this charity, due from and to all men, is more
especially required between you and ourselves; who believe and confess,
though in a different way, one God; and who both daily praise and adore
Him, as the Creator of all ages, and the governor of the world.”[205]
If religious fanaticism was displayed in the acts which provoked the
retaliation of the Moors, never was Christian charity more fervently
exhibited than in the efforts made, and the suffering undergone, to
redeem the captives. For this work of redemption two monastic orders
were established. “The Trinitarians,” was founded by one Matta, and by
Felix de Valois, in 1198. Innocent III. confirmed and encouraged the
institution. It was a mendicant order. The friars wore a white habit,
with a red and blue cross on the breast. The rule was that of St.
Augustine, “to gather and carry alms into Barbary for the redemption
of slaves,” to which purpose one-third of the revenue of each house
was to be applied. They had thirty-nine houses in England, and nine in
Scotland.
The “Merced,” or more properly the military religious order of “Our
Lady of Mercy for the Redemption of Captives,” was founded in 1225 by
Peter of Nolasco, who had served under De Montfort. It consisted of
knights and friars. The friars were in holy orders, and therefore could
not shed blood. The knights guarded the coast against the Saracens,
but were obliged to keep choir when not on duty. The friars wore a
white habit: the knights were dressed like seculars, but wore a white
scapular on which, as on the habits of the friars, were embroidered
the royal arms of Arragon. To the three religious vows this order
added a fourth,--to devote their whole substance, and their liberty,
if necessary, to the ransoming of slaves; remaining in the place of a
slave if they could not otherwise obtain his release. This order being
relieved from certain domestic austerities, they were obliged to go
barefoot, and were called Das Calsos,[206] observing the strictest
poverty, solitude, and abstinence.
In former times there was in these regions a most extraordinary traffic
in Russian slaves of both sexes, and eunuchs. The Arabs called them
Siklah (Silaavo). Abderachman III. had a body guard of them, splendidly
accoutred. They rose to high offices in the State. One, named Wadha,
was vizier to Hisham II. of Cordova; another, Naga, to Ibn Edris,
Sultan of Ceuta, and Malaga. They even attained to sovereign power, and
founded dynasties, as Lahayr and Keyran, both of Valentia.
5th of December.
This being Friday, the Sultan went in state to the mosque at the
Alcazar. He passed between two lines of troops from his country box, a
distance of three miles. I had an opportunity of seeing him from the
roof of the consulate, as he passed along the brow of the hill to the
Alcazar gate. He rode a white horse. When he came in sight there was
a general exclamation from those on the roofs. “A white horse!” They
all turned round and smiled, and beckoned to each other, and general
joy seemed to be diffused. The Sultan rides a white horse! The colour
of the horse denotes the humour of the prince; white being, of course,
that of joy and gladness, and the other shades accordingly. Muley
Ismael distinguished thus:--when he rode a red horse, he had a lance or
sabre; when he rode a black one, a musket and gunpowder. In the Arabian
Nights there is something like this,[207] in commenting on which Mr.
Lane mentions (and I can also confirm), that the Turks signify anger
against any class of their tributaries by issuing the Harutch papers of
a red colour, and adds, “To exhibit the striking and dramatic spectacle
described by our author may, I conceive, be more effective than any
words could be.” In this way the black flag of the pirate has been
selected, and the red flag of the rover. Next to the flag the war-horse
is the shield for this blazon. Thus we have in the Revelation the pale
horse of death. The idea is beautifully paraphrased in a sentence of
the old Chevalier Fabian Phillips. “The pale horse of death, and the
red of destruction, rode up to their bridles in blood.”
The Sultan wore a green bournous with the hood up. A man on each side
fanned him. This hooded people had thrown back the capes of their
sulams and the folds of the haïk from off their heads, so that the
aspect of the crowd was suddenly changed, and the universal white was
now considerably mingled with red and blue.[208]
I was much gratified at seeing, even from a distance, the chief of
this singular empire, the manner of his march, and the greeting of
his people, which is by bending down and raising up the body, and
continuing to do so until he has passed.
I received a message to say, that orders had been given to conduct me
over every place, not excepting his own residence. This was a most
acceptable communication, as I found myself gradually falling into the
condition of a prisoner.
After the ceremony of the mosque was over, several of the chief men
came in. These visits were uninterrupted till night. I have seldom
passed so interesting a day.
The revolution in the town, I suspect, _is not yet completed_. The
Sultan has been now a month here. He never remained so long before, and
this is a season of the year when it has been the undeviating practice
of Moorish Sultans to be at the capital. The Baïram approaches; on the
day after which, the list of functionaries for the ensuing year is
published. The changes are then made. Then comes the reckoning between
the Sultan and his servants. The chiefs are assembled, with their
retainers, from all parts of the empire, so that he has the opportunity
and the means of taking vengeance. The forms of a _placitium_ prevail,
and there may be points of real, as well as traces of apparent,
resemblance between a divan of a Moorish Sultan, and the Wittenagemotte
of a Saxon King. The Sultan publicly alleges his charges against the
governors who are removed, and the people on their part have free
access, and can accuse and petition.
The holding of the Baïram here, and not at Fez or Morocco, seems to
be a case of Mahomet coming to the mountain. It is not a rebellious
governor, but a refractory town. Rabat has the reputation of
stubbornness. This perhaps renders it more difficult and dangerous for
the Sultan to overlook the recent events, while it imposes on him the
necessity of taking his measures with precaution. Without exciting
alarm, or at least justifying measures of resistance, or even of
precaution, he collects 50,000 men round the town.
One of my visitors this day was Mike Brittel. If I am to judge by his
words or his air, never was city in the enjoyment of profounder repose,
or man of more perfect felicity.
In the time of the late Emperor, Muley Mahomet, they killed and
quartered their Caïd, and made the Jew butchers hang up the flesh
in the shambles. It was so exposed for three days, ticketed at two
blanquillos a pound. Then they came in troops to cheapen it, and haggle
with the Jews who were instructed to maintain the two blanquillos.
The Sultan marched against the city, but the people withdrew into the
Alcazaba, and presented so imposing a front that he was content with an
accommodation.
Civilized and philosophical Germany can riddle the body of a minister;
but let us not compare such an act with the shambles of Rabat. The
one is the frenzy of a people which cannot help itself; the other is
vengeance--savage, if you like--but vengeance for crimes, applying a
salutary lesson to those who are to follow. Such is the difference
between the two conditions of existence. No reactions and no vengeance
can profit where social evil springs from theory and legislation. Where
the evil is the act of man, vengeance comes, like the storm, to clear
the atmosphere, thus compensating for the ruin it has wrought.
I met at a house where I was visiting to-day, the governor of El Garb,
whose encampment lies opposite our windows. I was told that he is
chief of two millions of souls. His rule extends from the river to the
neighbourhood of Tangier. There was nothing in his outward appearance
to distinguish him from any other Moor: he went away unceremoniously,
followed by a single attendant. The master of the house served me
with coffee himself, and fancying that I liked milk, went down to the
kitchen and brought up in his hands a basin of curds. Coffee is not in
use, but it was especially prepared for me as a Turkish compliment. The
coffee about which the French papers made so merry, as finding it all
ready at Isly, was no proof that Marshal Bugeaud was unexpected, but
the reverse.
The sellers of water use a little bell, which carries us back to
Canaan. The Jews had bells to their garments; bells are still used
in their synagogues, and ring every time the Bible is produced. The
bells of the Etruscans were not to the Roman taste. Bells did not
pass with Christianity from Judæa through Greece to Europe. In Greece
they are not in common use, and wherever they are found, are a modern
innovation. In all the primitive districts, a bar of metal, or a
sounding board, supplies their place; and a small one is beaten by the
hand through the streets, before matins and vespers. The Spaniards have
bells to their churches; but not, as the mode of ringing them shows,
derived from us. They strike them with the tongue, just as the Greeks
do their sounding board with the hammer, and a peal from the bells of
a Spanish town recalls a manufactory of steam-boilers, and a street of
coppersmiths. There is no indication of bells amongst the Arabs, nor in
any other ancient country: they belong to the Jews and Etruscans.
Barbary has furnished with caps the Western World. From the Atlantic
to the frontiers of Persia, a cap is known by no other name than
_Fez_. In Europe it goes by the name of _Tunis_ (_Bonnet de Tunis_),
in Morocco it is called _Shashia_. It is pointed like a sugar-loaf,
with a small blue tuft at the top. Throughout the East it is worn under
the turban. In Constantinople, now that they have dropped the turban,
they wear it large and full; but the Shashia of Barbary is precisely
that worn by the Flamens of Rome. With the slightest modification--and
a modification which is not at present unknown here--it becomes the
Phrygian cap. Phœnicia being the link between Phrygia[209] and Barbary,
the cap and its colour would seem to belong to Tyre. It is singular
that to the Easterns our head-dress should be the symbol of license,
while theirs to us is the emblem of liberty; and still more so to find
that both have come from a people who are the type of barbarism; for
Barbary has given hats to the women as well as caps to the men. These
hats are made of straw, like Leghorn bonnets, and with little tufts
of many-coloured silks: thence, probably, the metaphor of women being
crowns of glory to their husbands.
They have another usage which renders it more complete and distinct.
When I was first at Tetuan I met a brother of the Caïd, who
subsequently was ambassador at Paris. His haïk was over his head, but
he threw it off, and then came out a bald pate. Being the first time
that I had seen a shaved head in public,--I was very much astonished,
and inquired into the reason, and it was told me that _he was not
married_,[210] and in Barbary, is not permitted to put on a cap till
then. In the Sock at this place, I had subsequently seen men from the
interior with bald heads, and a rope of camel’s hair round them. It
is remarkable and picturesque, and suggests the idea of the crown of
thorns. It did not at the time occur to me, that the rope or band round
the head,--for I have afterwards seen it a band of platted palmetto
leaf--was the distinctive sign of the single, as the cap was of the
married, so that I cannot affirm it to be so: the usage may now,
indeed, have worn out. At all events, it is singular to find here the
fillet round the bare head, and the cap only worn after marriage, while
in the Highlands, there is the _snood_, or fillet, for the unmarried
girls, and the cap, or _much_ for the married woman. The Gaelic name
for the cap, is properly _carachd_ (cruch), but _much_ is common
north and south: now _much_ is a Hebrew word applying to some soft
and delicate but unknown substance.[211] It is supposed to mean silk;
the snood has always the epithet of “silken,” and a peculiar silken
kerchief completes the head-dress of the Jewesses of Barbary. The name
for the stuff has therefore been given to the dress when adopted by the
Galatean women in India, just as the name of the dress in the case of
cotton,[212] has been transferred to the substance.
In Solomon’s Song it appears that the practice of the Jews was for
the mother to crown the son on his marriage-day; but the word which
we translate crown, conveys also the idea of covering the head, or
putting a cap upon it. That some similar usage must have prevailed in
ancient Greece, or some rite been introduced amongst the Greeks with
Christianity, is shown in the expressions at present in use. Instead
of saying “He married such a one,” they say, “He _crowned_ such a one.”
In Servia the bride wears a crown, or rather, a cap of flowers, and she
preserves it--not the same flowers,--for a whole year.
The connection of the fillet and the snood, is rendered more probable
by that of the Shashia and the Highland bonnet. These are the two
kinds, the flat, (liena) and the point (viruch). The latter has been
nicknamed “Glengarry.” It owes its peculiarity to the slit; something
very like it may be seen in the tombs of Egypt. The flat one has now
generally got the addition of a chequered border, but that variation
was introduced by the Regent Murray. It is, however, still worn without
the border, and then it is a variety of the Shashia. It has preserved
the two original colours, though it has exchanged them, the bonnet
being blue, and the tassel red. Amongst the Basques it may be still
seen red with a tassel blue.
On my return home, I found the colonel of the regular troops, who
had come to pay me a visit. He was pacing the cancellaria; he was
smoking a cigar, and he was spitting on the floor:--I recoiled from
the triple abomination. I am perfectly aware that an Englishman will
see nothing extraordinary in the former two, as they would not be
so in himself, nor an American in the third. I supposed he must be
a renegade, but he was only an Algerian who had lived some time at
Gibraltar. Having served at Constantinople, he opened at once his
heart to me, and poured forth complaints against the Moors. No one
had shown him civility, and he could not even get a bath (there are
no public ones). This unburdening of his mind was followed by a flow
of spirits: he sent for his uniform, displayed it, dressed in it, and
then sate down to dinner. While seated on a chair at a table, with a
tumbler of wine in his raised hand, in walked two attendants of Mustafa
Ducaly, bearing the usual dish or tray of kuscoussoo. He was struck
mute and motionless; the untouched goblet was replaced on the table,
and presently he arose and withdrew.
The uniform which is to displace this ancient and magnificent costume,
is a caricature of us, as much as a scandal to the Moors; yet it is
paraded as a necessary condition of learning the use of arms. In the
last century, the Spanish army, indignant at the introduction of the
Prussian discipline, exclaimed, “With the old tactics we raised Charles
V. to the throne of Germany, and Philip V. to that of Spain; we put Don
Carlos on the throne of Naples, and conquered Parma and Oran:” no doubt
the argument was inconclusive. But to tell the Saracens that their
costume is unfit for military purposes, was reserved for the genius of
the nineteenth century. Shoe-strings at Versailles announced that the
revolution was accomplished; a neckcloth sealed the fate of the khans
of the Crimea; so button-holes at Rabat seem to presage, not that a
barrier is raised in Morocco to the French, but that the sceptre of
the Sheriffs is passing away.
Mehemet Ali’s uniform at least followed, while it disfigured, the dress
in use. This one is a complete change; the bare leg, the distinctive
mark of the Moor, has disappeared. The cap, their own original
shashia,--the peaked cap of liberty,--is, for “fashion’s sake,” changed
to the round shallow one of Egypt; cuffs and collars, the gracefulness
of which so struck Napoleon, when he saw Eastern clothing, are the
salient features of this tailoring invasion; which, after desolating
Spain, has now fallen upon Morocco. Tertullian, in his letter on the
“Toga and the Pallium,” ridicules the Africans of his day, for copying
from Italy a dress which the ancestors of those Italians had borrowed
from their own: what would he have said now?
The new uniform was of course of all sorts of tints and colours, from
chocolate to pink.
FOOTNOTES:
[200] Jamsamia.
[201] Deut. iv. 41-43.
[202] Ayala, p. 1333.
[203] Al Makbari, passing by Malta, exclaims, “That accursed island,
from the neighbourhood of which whoever escapes may well say, that he
has deserved favour;--that dreaded spot, which throws its deadly shade
on the pleasant waters of the Mediterranean--that den of iniquity and
treason, that place of ambush, which is like a net to circumvent the
Moslems that sail the seas!”
[204] “The regal power allotted to us makes us common servants to our
Creator; then of those persons whom we govern; so that, observing
the duties we owe to God, we distribute blessings to the world. In
providing for the public good of our states, we magnify the honour
of God, like the celestial bodies, which, though they have much
honour, yet only serve for the benefit of men. It is the excellence
of our office to be instruments whereby happiness is distributed to
the nations. Pardon me, sir, this is not to instruct; for I know I
speak to one of a more clear and quick sight than myself; but I speak
thus because God hath been pleased to grant me a happy victory over
some part of those rebellious pirates that have so long molested the
peaceful trade of Europe.”
[205] Bowden’s Life of Gregory VII., ii. 158.
[206] See Mahomedan Dynasties of Spain, pp. 74-381.
[207] “Now when the morning came, the Khaleefeh went into the saloon
(his sitting-room), and found the eunuchs stupified with _benj_. So he
awoke them, and, putting his hand upon the chair, he found not the suit
of apparel, nor the signet, nor the rosary, nor the dagger, nor the
handkerchief, nor the lamp; whereupon he was violently enraged, and put
on the apparel of anger, which was a suit of _Red_, and seated himself
in the council-chamber.”
[208] So in Spain, the men on entering the church drop the cloak from
the shoulder, and likewise when speaking to a superior. In Southern
Africa they bare the upper part of the body. The Abyssinian, as a sign
of respect, throws off his clothing to the waist.--_See the captives on
Egyptian monuments._
[209] The Phrygians were, I imagine, of the same race. They were
also called Brebers, and thence the Greek word _barbarians_, which
originally was no word of reproach, but designated that _other_ people
of Asia Minor (Phrygians, Mysians, Lydians, &c.), whom we are now
beginning to know in the marbles of Xanthus.
[210] “The young men,” says Marmol, writing in the middle of the
sixteenth century, “shave the head and beard until they are married,
when they allow the beard to grow, and the tuft of hair on the crown of
the head.”--_Africa_, vol. ii. p. 3.
“Men of all ranks and conditions,” says a writer at the beginning of
the last century, “are obliged to wear caps after they are married; and
till then all their youths, even the king’s sons themselves, commonly
go bareheaded. They wear no hair under their red caps (but are close
shaved), except a lock upon the top of their heads.”--_An Account of
Barbary_, p. 42.
[211] “Baal Aruc יצבנב ועלבו ךימ _Much Hebraice et vernaculo sermone
Bambace_. ךפ in materiâ vestium est mollior omnis lanæ “linique et
gossifii lanugo”.”--BOCHART, _Chan._ lib. i. ch. 45.
[212] תנתכ (Gen. xxxvii. 3), whence χιτών. Gaelic, _coot_, from which
the English _coat_, which never is of cotton.
CHAPTER III.
THE JEWS AND JEWRY IN RABAT.
December 7th.
The Cazaba, the fortress with the beautiful gate, has a separate
government, and is inhabited by a distinct people; a remnant of
a tribe, the Oudaïah, which, on the failure of the plans of the
Sultan against Clemcen, in 1832, was sacrificed to the public
indignation--against himself. They furnish an instance of the tenacity
with which these races, or rather families, cling to life. The shred
of the broken tribe settled in these ruins has still friends, as they
told me, but a long way off, in the desert beyond Timbuctoo. After the
revolution of Rabat, they were seized by the like fancy, when their
Caïd, apprehending mischief, took sanctuary in the tomb of a saint.
The Sultan, Spartan-like, would not violate it, but converted it into
a prison. Prisons, without doors or guards, were to be seen, in the
time of Muley Ismael; it being customary with him to order a culprit to
gaol, as with us an officer is put under arrest.
The beautiful quarter of the Cazaba had been offered to the Jews, but
refused, for fear of exposure in case of war. They selected the eastern
angle of the town nearest to the great tower, for the Jewry, and it
is impossible to imagine any thing more filthy. The narrow passages
between the houses are divided into heaps of dung, and holes of rats.
The first house I visited contained no less than fifty souls. It was
a hollow square with columns, and bright colours, and mosaics; with
fragments of Gothic fret-work and corridors; and so small and neat, and
so densely peopled with heads stuck out from every pigeon-hole above,
below, and around, that it was like a toy-shop or a piece of mechanism
brought on the stage, or a little gem theatre of itself. I defy the
most active and pains-taking imagination to picture to itself a Moorish
house; it is quite impossible to describe it, yet equally so to resist
making the attempt: I will, however, await a more fit occasion, or a
more congenial humour.
From the roof (for like that of Rahab at Jericho, it was built on the
city wall) we had a good view of the tower. On my expressing a desire
to go to it, they uttered exclamation on exclamation, and could not
have been more dismayed, had I proposed to them to wade to the dreaded
bar. They told me that a Jew, if he ventured into the grounds below,
would be shot like a duck or a dog, and that a Christian would fare no
better. There are nineteen places of, or rather rooms for, worship.
They do not use the word synagogue;--they say, Beth-el-Elim, House of
Knowledge. This carries these settlements to a period antecedent to the
Greek rule, when the term synagogue was introduced.
They are governed by a _Gistar_,[213] or council of twelve elders. The
sheikh collects the taxes; and for this purpose is aided by two Moorish
soldiers: he sends the refractory to the public prison. In every
Mussulman country which I have hitherto visited, the chiefs of tribes
are themselves responsible to the goab, and are imprisoned in case of
default: the people then pay to save them. Amongst the Brebers the Jews
wear arms, and dress like the rest: a Jew going there will not be able
to distinguish his co-religionists from the Mussulman. Each has his
patron, who resents an injury done to his Jew as if done to himself. So
recently as the beginning of the seventeenth century, there was a Jew
prince in the mountains of Ref.[214] An old Jew gravely assured me that
the river Sabation was near Tunis.
The difference of their treatment by the Moors may partly be the result
of their own manners: it could not be of ancient date. The Jews
invited the Moors over to Spain. On the growth of Gothic power, the
Jews and Moors were treated as one people: they were persecuted and
expelled together. They found refuge in Barbary, and preferred it to
any other country.
The Jewish ablutions consist in washing the hands and face. The water
is poured from a jug; the left hand performs the service to the right
as the most honourable, then the right does the same to the left. So
far it is the same as the Mussulman _abdest_, only it does not extend
to the feet, and is performed three times a day, while the Mussulman
repeats it five times. Soap is not used in the religious ablution of
either; but the Mussulman washes with soap, or gayule, in the morning,
and before and after each of his two meals. The Jew has to wash all his
body on Fridays, but without soap: this is no offset to the weekly bath
of the Mussulman, established by custom though not enjoined by law, and
repeated besides upon other occasions.
They have to take off their shoes in passing a mosque, which is not
without its influence on their apartments. No traveller in the East
can have failed to remark the establishments attached to the mosque
for purification, &c., or the cleanliness and peculiarities of the
corresponding parts of private houses. In washing, the Mussulmans
use only the left hand, and reserve the right pure for eating. The
Spaniard, Ali Bey, lost his life by breaking this rule: master as he
was of the language and the religious ceremonies, his _corns_ led to
suspicion of his origin. He was watched, and, being observed to use his
right hand in washing, when a Mussulman would not have used it, he was
at once proved to be an impostor feigning Islamism, and shot. I was
informed that the Jews are not more particular, and for the portions
of the house where water is constantly splashing about, they do not
use wooden pattens.[215] The relative position of two races living
intermixed, cannot fail to be influenced by their relative cleanliness;
and the contempt in which the Jews are held in the towns must, in part
at least, be owing to this cause.
The Jews of Barbary look down upon the Jews of Christendom,[216] whom
they call _Ers Edom_. A rabbi, referring to the conversion of the
rich, said, “We have only to undergo the temptations of poverty and
danger--they have to endure those of ease and wealth.”
They tax themselves for the Holy Land to the amount of one half their
tax to the Moorish Government. I saw one of the collectors from
Jerusalem, who told me that their people in Morocco amounted to one
million.[217]
The Jews are the only portion of the people not, therefore, subject
to the haratch, or poll-tax: _they do not pay it_. This fact entirely
confirms what I have said respecting the original conquest. The tax
now paid by the Jews is of modern introduction;[218] formerly, they
presented to the Sovereign a golden hen with twelve chickens in
enamelled work, and this was their quit-rent. At Tunis and Tripoli
they do so still. The vexations to which they are subject are of this
nature:--A son of the Sultan being resident here, and for a time really
the governor, sent to them a young lion to keep, directing that a
certain quantity of meat should be given him daily, and fixing four
hundred dollars as his weir geldt in case of death. The Jews supplied
him so plentifully, that he died of indigestion. The Prince then sent
a hyena, fixing six pounds of beef, “besides the bones,” as his daily
allowance, and settling his head-money at one thousand dollars: the
Jews began again by giving him ten pounds “besides the bones.” The
Prince was, however, soon after disgraced and imprisoned, and the Jews
since then have led a quiet life.
They are subject to blows from any one and every one, and the occasion
is afforded by every holy place, where the shoes have to be taken off.
Still, I have not remarked that they suffer much. Up to the present
time, I have not seen a Jew beaten or insulted, and I have witnessed
on several occasions their reception by Moors of the first rank, in
which it would have been impossible, but for the dress, to have known
the difference. Besides, the Moors are not proficients in the art of
“self-defence,” and could not plant a blow if they set about it.
At a Jewish marriage I was standing beside the bridegroom when the
bride entered: as she crossed the threshold, he stooped down and
slipped off his shoe, and struck her with the heel on the nape
of the neck. I at once saw the interpretation of the passage in
Scripture, respecting the transfer of the shoe to another, in case the
brother-in-law did not exercise his privilege.
The slipper in the East being taken off in-doors, or if not, left
outside the apartment, is placed at the edge of the small carpets upon
which you sit, and is at hand to administer correction, and is here
used in sign of the obedience of the wife, and of the supremacy of the
husband. The Highland custom is to strike, for “good luck,” as they
say, the bride with an old slipper. Little do they suspect the meaning
implied. The regalia of Morocco is enriched with a pair of embroidered
slippers, which are, or used to be, carried before the Sultan, as
amongst us the sceptre or sword of state.
This superstition of the old slipper reminds me of another. In the
Highlands the great festivity is the ushering in of the new year. The
moment is watched for with the utmost anxiety; every one then rushes
into the streets, with posset in hand, embracing whoever he meets,
and shouting “Huy meneh!” This word has puzzled the traveller and
antiquary; it was the very word which the Greeks repeated, no more
knowing its meaning than the Highlander: Hymenea or Hymeneu! and out of
which come, _Hymen_, Hymn, &c. _Meneh_ was Jesboal among the Sabeans,
from minah or minik, fortifications, the procession going round the
walls. _Men_ is habitation in Egyptian and Coptic--_minith_ contracted
to _met_, is the name for a village in Egypt; it is preserved in the
Highlands in _midden_. From this word come many names of places in
Spain, Italy, Africa, Greece, and Asia Minor. It gives the names to
founders, as Menes, Minos, Maon, &c.; thence are derived a multiplicity
of the terms in common use,--manes, ammunition, mansion; manitoni,
month, maniac, &c., and of course the words in Greek and Latin, through
which they have reached us. Minoïa Gaza meant the Walled Gaza.
The Sabbath commences on Friday evening, when the shadow ceases, or
when three stars can be seen, and lasts to the same period of Saturday.
During these hours the Jew cannot spread an umbrella; it would be
pitching a tent:--he cannot mount on horseback; it would be going a
journey:--he cannot smoke; it would be lighting a fire:--he cannot
put one out, even if it caught the house:--he cannot buy or bring any
thing, nor speak of any worldly concern, nor break the seal of a letter.
The most remarkable practices are the Phylacteries and the mystical
garments. As to the first, I had hoped here to find some traces of
an earlier origin than that which is assigned to it--the Babylonian
Captivity; but was disappointed. The Phylacteries are not as our
Guercinos and Rembrandts make them,--a scroll of parchment habitually
paraded on the forehead. They are small boxes covered with leather,
containing passages from Exodus and Deuteronomy,[219] bound by long
narrow straps, one upon the forehead, and another upon the left arm, at
the time of prayer. The box is placed on the forehead as the seat of
the senses, and upon the arm nearest the heart, as the seat of life.
The strap is twisted seven times round the arm, three times round the
hand, and three times round the second finger. Two peculiar knots are
used for tying them, one to represent Dalif, and the other Ud. The
Mazonza (Mystery of the Covenant) is a small roll of parchment with the
same passages put in a piece of cane and nailed to the door-post, on
the right side as you go out.
The Phylactery, and the Mazonza are to the Jews what amulets are to
the Moors; with, however, this difference, that they protect against
sin as well as against evil. One of the Talmudists writes:--“Whoever
has Phylacteries on his head, Mazonza on his door, and fringes on his
garment, is assured that he will not sin; for it is written, ‘And the
threefold cord is not easily rent.’”[220]
The mystical vestments have a very different interest, and are so
connected with the costume of this country that I shall reserve this
subject till I come to the Moorish haïk. The following passage from the
_Baal Haturim_, expresses the preservative influence of these usages
upon the Jewish people:--
“Israel is son of the Holy King, for they are all marked by Him, in
their bodies, with the sacred mark (circumcision); in their garments by
robes of merit (Taleth and fringes); on their heads, by the Phylactery
boxes with the name of the Lord; in their hands by the sacred straps;
in their houses by the Mazonza. They are marked in every thing that
they are the sons of the most High Being.”
The indifference of the Jews to apostacy may seem incompatible with the
instance I have quoted in a former chapter: age makes the difference.
The Moors are not doctrinal: they possess blandishments. The Jews do
not fear them as contending with age, but as seducing youth; and their
instinct appears, alike in yielding in the one case, and resisting in
the other. They are gainers in both, for in the one they would lose by
apostacy, in the other by martyrdom.
I have several times visited the wife of the renegade, and the mother
of the Jewish boy. Speaking the Spanish of the sixteenth century as
the Jews of Barbary do, she recalled the condition of the Jews in
Spain, as the fate of her husband and child did something of the cause
of their expulsion. The peninsula, which did not share in the frenzy
of the Crusaders, remained a stranger to the religious fanaticism
which resulted from them. At the time when the Jews were proscribed
throughout the rest of Europe, they were, in Spain, the favourites of
monarchs, princes, and rulers--they were possessors of land--they had
most of the wealth and commerce of the different kingdoms in their
hands, and appear to have been twice as numerous as their forefathers
when they entered the Holy Land.[221] Then did the persecutions here
assume a savage character unknown elsewhere.
No cause has been assigned for the sudden and bitter spirit of
persecution which, at so late a period, arose against them. It may
have taken its rise in their being the fiscal agents for king, bishop,
monastery, and proprietor. First assailed from social animosities,
their manner of screening themselves (which was afforded in no other
country) aroused the inextinguishable hatred of the Christians. That
part of their history, suggested by circumstances before me, is their
facility in receiving baptism, then, of course, relapsing; and there
can be no doubt that many of these nominally conforming Christians, and
their children and descendants, filled every grade of the priesthood,
and occupied the episcopal thrones of Spain. Out of this again grew the
Inquisition, the most artful instrument of despotic power, and which,
in Europe, has been mistaken for a religious institution. Finding
that conversions were worthless, the proof of apostacy was sought in
the traces of blood. The processes of the Inquisition were afterwards
imitated by Parliament in England, when, fabricating a church by-law,
it framed articles to catch consciences, as it now does resolutions to
catch votes. The two great events are the emancipation from bondage,
and the conquest of a territory. Promises, rights, obligations, and
commandments, are all understood with reference to these. The stranger
within their gates was to obey the commandments. He partook of
necessity in certain ceremonies: he might at his option be admitted to
all, unless excepted, like the Philistines, Amalekites, &c., because of
historical events. Hence the difference with Mussulmans and Christians,
whose bond is wholly religious, and who aim at extinguishing all
distinctions derived from birth and race. The Jews having no idea of
converting others, estimate differently from us an apparent conformity
with the creeds of the people among whom they sojourn.[222]
The Jews have in common with the Mussulmans everything like
doctrine--the unity of the Godhead--the attributes of God--the
inspiration of the Sacred Books, the Creation, the scheme of
Providence, the prophets on earth, the chosen people, the law of Sinai
and of Horeb, the ceremony--the abhorrence of idolatry. There is
nothing the Jew believes that the Mussulman does not believe; there
is no ceremony the Jew performs that the Mussulman does not respect,
or meat that he prepares, which the Mussulman cannot eat.[223] The
passage, therefore, from Judaism to Islamism appears easy. It was
amongst the Jews that Islamism first and most rapidly spread: fifty
thousand were converted in one day, yet in its subsequent stages it has
been by them most uncompromisingly resisted. Millions of Christians
have become Mussulmans; of the Jews, no influx has taken place. I
know but of two cases of apparent conformity: the one is a tribe at
Thessalonica, who are called the Changed (Dunmeh). The other a tribe
in Suz, also known by the name of the Changed.[224] In both cases they
live as a distinct race; do not intermarry with the Mussulmans; and,
though enjoying the privileges of Islamism, are not looked upon by the
Jews as renegades.
The father of the boy whose story I have told, professed Islamism to
escape popular vengeance, aroused by the extortions of a governor at
Dar el Baida, whose agent he was. He nevertheless continued to live in
the Jews’ quarter with his wife and child: instead of bringing up the
child in his new faith, he sedulously inculcated on him the observance
of the law. The Jews seem to have looked upon him as one who had
incurred a misfortune. His Islamism was rather a disease, for which he
had to be pitied, than an apostacy for which he was to be abhorred; and
as the Jews took no offence at his religious profession, so the Moors
took none at his domestic habits.
The Mussulmans accept the practices of the Jews, but not so the latter.
Both cut the throats of animals, and allow “the blood to run like
water on the earth;” but the Mussulman does not inspect the bowels of
the ox or the sheep to determine whether it be _kaser_ (imperfect)
or _tarefa_ (forbidden); he does not, before and after the operation,
observe whether there be a flaw or jag in the knife. He does not
examine whether the windpipe of the animal be completely severed--he
does not abstain from “seething the kid in its mother’s milk;” that is,
from mixing meat, or the juice of meat, in the same dish with butter,
or from eating the internal fat. The food, therefore, of the Mussulman,
is rejected by the Jews, even to the dishes from which they have eaten.
The great obstacle to their amalgamation with the Mussulmans is the
character of Christ. In the Mussulman system Christ is the Spirit of
God, and is to be the Judge of the world: this, and the recognition of
the Gospel by the Mussulmans, is the stumbling block in their path, and
hence the common expression, “A Jew must become a Christian before he
can be a Mussulman.”
The Jew in Barbary appears to me more Jewish than elsewhere. The burden
on him is greater, and religious support less. They are Sadducees,
if I am to judge by the conversations I have had with some; and have
no idea of believing anything. In proportion to the association of a
system of religion with domestic matters is it enduring. Those of Menu
and Confucius stand, while the more theoretic one of Zoroaster has
passed away. That of Menu presents not one, but a hundred different
examples; for as many castes as there are, so many systems may there
be said to be, and these are all based on injunctions respecting food
and ceremonial. Confucius’s system is the simplest form of natural
religion, and the purest rule of morals: it has no superstition, no
priesthood, no castes, no doctrines--whence then its durability? Its
basis is the ceremonial of society. It has minutely regulated the forms
of intercourse and the mode of salutation of the nearest relatives.
Judaism in Barbary is not propped up by belief, nor is it by etiquette;
but chiefly, I should say, by _cookery_. In this respect they are under
constant restraint; ever linked to the race, and disjoined from all
others. With what pleasure must they reach a Jewish house or quarter,
after travelling for days or weeks, unable to taste almost any food
that is to be got; to solace themselves with a cup of wine, or to
partake of their own much-loved and not despicable Dafina!
Who has not heard of the olla podrida--to what corner of the earth
has its fame not reached? The honour belongs, nevertheless, to the
Jews: the Spaniard has only copied and disfigured. The original is
a remarkable specimen of human ingenuity, which has constructed
a culinary go-cart for the Hebrew conscience, and reconciled the
Israelite’s predilections with his scruples. He is forbidden to make or
touch fire on the sabbath; he desires to have a hot breakfast, dinner,
and supper on that day; and he obtains these meals without infringing
that law. He has invented a fire, which, without mending or touching,
will last over the twenty-four hours, and a pot which will furnish
out of its single belly, a whole meal, and three meals in the day
perfectly cooked in the morning, and not overdone at night. This is the
_Dafina_,[225] and the day on which all cooking was forbidden, has, _in
consequence_ of the prohibition, become the feast-day of the Jews.
In these countries, kitchen-ranges and hot tables are unknown. It
is the practice to make as many fires as there are dishes to be
simultaneously cooked. Those who have served in India understand
how soon a few holes are made in the ground, and how speedily a
multiplicity of pans are simmering over them. This tent practice is
here preserved in doors, and little earthen pots, called _nafi_,
constructed so as to allow draught, contain the charcoal, and on these
the pots are set to boil. In preparing the Dafina, the first thing is
the build of the charcoal in this small fire-pan, to make it burn slow
and last long. This is managed by four layers of charcoal in lumps, and
charcoal pounded. It is lighted on the Friday about four hours before
sunset. The ingredients are successively put in: the last just before
the Sabbath commences. The whole is first made to boil, then the fire
is reduced by the stratification I have mentioned.
_Ingredients._--Grabangos, potatoes, (English and African), eggs, beef,
rice, marrow, rasped biscuit, parsley, marjoram, nutmeg, pepper, salt,
and sometimes neat’s feet and sweetbreads.
_Produce._--First course.--_Top._ Eggs in the shell. _Bottom_, stewed
potatoes, sweet and common.
Second course.--_Top._ Rice and marrow sausages. _Middle._ Boulli.
_Bottom._ Meat sausages.
Third course.--One large dish of stewed Grabangos.
_Recipe._--The grabangos are an excellent vegetable when well cooked,
but require great care. They must be first steeped several hours with
wood ashes. They are put in the pot first, as soon as the water has
boiled; next the eggs in the shell; next the meat sausages; then the
meat; after that the rice sausages, and last of all the potatoes: water
equal to one-third of the rest.
_Meat Sausage._--Beef chopped very fine, fat (not of the entrails, but
pared from the muscle), marrow, rasped biscuit, the seasonings above
enumerated, and eggs to bind.
_Rice Sausage._--The rice is parboiled. It is then mixed with the soft
fat from the muscle, the same seasoning but not so strong, and the
binding of white of egg.
In large families the dish contains sometimes thirty or forty pounds of
beef, four dozen eggs, and eight sausages made of the largest entrails
of the bullock. Potatoes are of modern introduction, but the sweet
potato is an ancient produce of the country. The English potato is
called _Roman_, as coming from Europe.
FOOTNOTES:
[213] At Tangier the body of elders is called Mahamad; the members
composing it, Yehedeems,
President, Parnaas,
Reader, Haezan,
Treasurer, Gisbar,
Sacristan, Saamus,
Deean (Judge).
[214] “Muley Arshid proceeded to a district called ‘The Mountain of
the Jew,’ because a Jew governed there, and because the Brebers, whom
he subjected to the law, respected him as their sovereign. After
spreading terror through the country, he massacred the Jew as unworthy
of commanding Mahometans, seized on his wealth, and rewarded his
troops.”--CHENIER, vol. ii p. 122.
[215] In the towns of Morocco a primitive mode of _trapping_ is in use,
to prevent the entrance of the effluvia from drains and cess-pools.
The orifice is small, and a stone is fitted to it, and slipped off
and on. It is the closest application in a city of the injunction of
Deuteronomy xxiii. 12, 13, which the Moors rigidly follow, when they
are in the country.
[216] Country of the _Erse_, that is, the Celts. _Erse_, however,
like _Scot_, is peculiar to the clans. I shall revert to this term in
tracing their wanderings.
[217] Rating by the taxes they pay, the town population is only 74,000.
DUCATS.
Rabat, population 4000 1000
Salee 500
Tangier 1000
Tetuan 3000
Fez 5000
Mequinez 3000
Mogadore 3000
Morocco 500
Arzila 500
Larache 1000
------
18,500
======
Numerous agricultural tribes of them are settled in the Atlas.
[218] It amounts to about half a dollar. At Tangier they were formerly
assessed 2000 ducats; the half was remitted when the dragomans of the
different consuls, who were the wealthiest men of the tribe, were
exempted from taxation.
[219] The passages are, Exodus xiii. 1, 10, 11, 16; Deut. vi. 4-9; and
Deut. xi. 13-21.
[220] Eccles. iv. 17.
[221] See calculation in Lindo’s “Jews of the Peninsula.”
[222] An Englishman at Gibraltar has recently become a Jew, and they
seem to have invented some strange process of admission, and subjected
him to a total abstinence from food during seven days. He gave up a
petty office he held in the police, which required him to work on
Saturday.
[223] The Mussulman is indeed enjoined by the Koran to eat without
asking questions whatever is offered to him by _a Christian_, as well
as a Jew, but this they do not always practise.
[224] “In Terjgient there is a people called the Medjehrahs, of Jewish
extraction, who, to escape death (?) embraced Islamism. They have the
peculiar Jewish features, and the Arabs say, their houses have the
Jewish smell. They live in quarters set apart for themselves, but they
do not intermarry: they are scribes and merchants, but are never raised
to the office of Caïd or Imaum. They do not observe Friday as the
Sabbath.”--DAVIDSON’S _Journal_.
[225] Whence the Greek Δεἴπνον.
CHAPTER IV.
THE BAÏRAM.
December 10th.
This morning Mustafa Ducaly sent me, by his man Selam, a “Dollond,”
and a ladder, telling me to run to Hassan to see the Baïram, which was
to be held on the downs to the south of the city, without the Caïd’s
permission, and a guard was enjoined not to cross the threshold.
Authorities and soldiers had all deserted the city. Selam sallied out
in search of some one who should pass for a guard, and found a soldier
belonging to Tangier who was familiar with Europeans. After passing
the gate, I found myself for the first time at liberty to roam, and
could not resist the temptation; so, instead of turning to the left
towards the tower, we turned through the gardens to the right, hoping
to get through the second wall, or to see the Baïram from it. We made
for a huge gate, but on reaching it found it barred. The wall was
about forty feet high, and in good repair: there were no staircases.
All chance of getting a glimpse of the ceremony was now lost, and we
rambled along through the gardens; but the ignorance of our elected
guards, strangers, like ourselves, as to what was or was not _taboo_,
was worse than the severity of our regular keepers. They were at
every turn, doubting, fearing, warning, objecting. Our course was like
that of a vessel feeling her way over sand-banks: one moment it was
“starboard,” the next “hard-a-port.” “There it is bad,” would our pilot
exclaim, and ever and anon we were laid all aback, with the “breakers
ahead” of “Saint’s Tomb.” We worked on till we came to a gate in the
wall facing the east, and issuing forth, beheld another city. This
could be no other than the Shallah, of which we had heard so often,
and from which spring-water was daily brought. Neither Christian nor
Jew is allowed so much as to approach it. Profiting by the occasion,
I hastened on before my companions’ fears could rally, or their
remonstrances be urged.
The gate, or rather barbican (for the Moorish word is required to
convey the Moorish thing), is peculiarly constructed and ornamented.
The arch is the horse-shoe, pointed like the Gothic. The vivid colours
and stuccos which elsewhere adorn the interiors here, as of Babylon and
Ecbatana, are displayed outside;--the style is quaint and rich.
This city was in ruins before those buildings arose, which are
considered the models of that style: the date of its fall is that of
the erection of Westminster Hall,--itself the work of a pupil of the
Saracens. The walls of the present city of Rabat, which signifies camp,
stand on the lines of the camp of Jacob when he was besieging it.
Whilst I was making a sketch of the gate, the Moors came up beseeching
me on their account not to enter; they proposed to go in and report:
they soon came out, exclaiming, “Holy Place;” “Saints’ Tombs.” I cut
the matter short by passing the portal and ascending a stair that led
to the top of the gate. The prospect thence was enchanting: the ground
broke away immediately in front as we looked eastward, the masses
of red ruin cresting the heights on both sides, and running down to
the river. Beyond spread the plain of emerald green, with the river
meandering through it, and the landscape closed with long waves of
sandhills of olive green on their summits and red and yellow on their
broken faces. I saw not a soul, and was making myself merry with the
fears of our conductors, when the alarm was sounded by the dogs, and
presently two old men rushed at us, frantic with rage;--fortunately
they had no arms.
Of our Moors, one only retained the faculty of speech. He endeavoured
to explain that I had the Sultan’s permission, on which one of the old
men (the other had gone to raise the hue and cry) became wilder than
before. He would shoot the Sultan; the Sultan dared not give an order
there, nor enter the place except with bare feet. The soldier threw
his cap on the ground, knelt down, and jumped up; tried to kiss his
head, his hands, his feet, his clothes. I left them so engaged, quietly
returning towards Rabat. At the gate Selam overtook me, calling out,
“Run, run! wild man gone for gun.” We had a fair start, but I could
not condescend to hurry beyond a steady pace: Selam relieved himself
by mumbling dismal sounds close to my ear, in his broken English: “You
bring me and other Moors into trouble; I do your bidding instead of
master’s and Sultan’s, and be at Baïram in my new clothes. I be shot
outside like a dog, or flogged inside like a Jew.” At every moment we
expected to meet a crowd returning, for the old fanatic, on reaching
the town, could raise the people upon us in an instant. However, the
distance was soon traversed, and before he hove in sight we had reached
the gate. It was locked! We then hastened along the wall to the right,
expecting to get in by the next gate--there was none! We came to the
steep edge of the river, and there we were completely hemmed in. At
that moment, our pursuers, now consisting of several armed men, came in
sight; when a boat with soldiers and horses shoved up close in shore,
to drop down the current to Salee.
Our Moors hailed them; they pushed in; we scrambled down, and leaping
on board, shoved off, and were out of hail--or at least speaking
distance--before our pursuers reached the bank. They durst not
fire, and there being no other boat, they ran back to get in by the
Baïram-gate, so as to intercept us before we could be re-shipped
back from Salee. In the meantime, we espied a boat belonging to a
Portuguese schooner: we hailed it, got on board of it, and were
speedily landed and housed at the consulate. The soldier made off to
Salee, vowing never to set eyes on Rabat again, and Selam, enjoining
profound secrecy, hastened to his master, whom he found with the Caïd.
Scarcely had he told his story when the people from Shallah appeared.
Fortunately, everybody was busy with his own affairs, and the Caïd
succeeded in appeasing all; but this evening there has been great
excitement in the city, and I am told that I shall have to be conveyed
privately out of Rabat. However, like the Russian expedition of 1833 to
the Bosphorus, to the satisfaction of having got into, I have to add
that of having got out of, Shallah.
What an extraordinary thing to see a people thus ignorant, and yet
thus devoted to the vestiges of their antiquity: sanctifying spots
untenanted for scores of generations--taking the shoes from off their
feet when they press them, and ready to sacrifice to the manes of the
departed the stranger who disturbs their long repose!
The Baïram has passed off most happily: the day was splendid; the
gathering and the presents satisfactory to the Emperor. He condescended
to tell the people of Rabat that they were wholly forgiven; that the
choice they had made, proved them to be wise and just in all their
ways; that he had not ratified their choice because they had made it,
but because it was the best that could be made; and that, though young
in years, their Caïd was old in wisdom. The Sultan has also released
a former governor of Salee, and sent a pardon to a son of the late
Sultan, his uncle, who has been four years in irons at Mequinez. The
disgrace yesterday of Hamuda has proved a golden opportunity for him.
The firing of his regiment with two pieces, was quicker than that of
the other with their ten. The Sultan went up to him and complimented
him, saying, “God prosper you;” upon which all the grandees did the
same. Mustafa has also come in for his share of good things. Eight
field-pieces which he had offered as a present, were refused as such,
in these words; “I want you to become fat and not lean, because you
are my friend, and now I make you the head and master of the merchants
of Morocco.” The ladies of the harem have not, however, been equally
scrupulous, and have made no difficulty in receiving the keepsakes
he has brought them from Europe, consisting, among other things, of
dresses of brocade at twenty guineas a yard.
The afternoon was spent in receiving visitors, among whom was the
admiral of Salee in a gorgeous Algerine costume. He is also captain
of the port and pilot, and the representative of the first family of
the empire, Muley Idris, its first founder, who is also one of the
chief _living saints_. Four of this family are bound to compliment the
Emperor on the Baïram; they had come for that purpose, carrying with
them the offerings of the capital. Two of these accompanied the saint,
and presented the strongest contrast that could be imagined with the
fanatics from whose balls and daggers we had just before escaped. They
were affable, curious, facile, and lively: they had never seen the
sea before, and admired it like children. They explained their visit
by saying they wanted to know what a Christian was like, never having
seen one. When I told them about Leo Africanus and El Edressi, the
geographers who on the fall of the dynasty had taken refuge in Sicily,
where his history was written, they were exceedingly delighted. They
invited me to Fez; and when I spoke of the difficulties of a Christian
going there, they declared they would answer for me with their heads.
They spend to-morrow in attendance on the Sultan; the day following
they are to repeat their visit here.
I must not omit another important personage, no less than the Sultan’s
buffoon: this, indeed, is the third visit I have received from him, and
each time he has carried away two or three bottles under his girdle,
besides one in his sack. He has a good voice, and a wonderful stock
of strange songs, and is an admirable mimic. I have heard him mingle
together the muezzin chant, from the minaret, with the cries of a
European vessel getting under weigh. He is a compound of the zany,
mimic, minion, bard, and bacchanal.
The strangeness of this people, instead of wearing off, increases with
acquaintance--so much ease and facility at one moment, is followed
by unexpected and unaccountable difficulties. The dramatic, not the
speculative, man is strong in them. What can be more surprising, at
this moment, than their total forgetfulness of the existence of France:
how would it shock the pride of the victor to find that the defeated
have already forgotten Isly and Mogadore! When I saw to-day the dense
mass of the tens of thousands tranquilly performing their Baïram, I
thought of the Greeks celebrating their Olympic games with the Persians
at Thermopylæ.
However primitive Morocco may be in its customs, it has to be borne
in mind that the convulsions which accompanied the rise, and more
particularly the fall, of the Beni Marinc dynasty, and the almost total
subjugation of the country by Portugal, and then the civil war (and
that ensued before the establishment of a Sheriffean dynasty), reduced
this region, in a period of two generations, to an almost chaotic
state. What shipwreck must there have been of old usages! A few traces
appear in the three or four meagre works written on Africa in the
sixteenth century.
The town of Salee, as described by Leo Africanus, would scarcely be
recognised in the city which lay before me, of which I could measure
the dimensions and observe the contents, though I could not pass the
gates.
“It is most pleasantly situate upon the sea-shore, within half a mile
of Rabat, both which town and the river Barugrag separateth in sunder.
The buildings of this town carry a show of antiquity on them, being
artificially carved and stately supported with marble pillars. Their
temples are most beautiful, and their shops are built under large
porches; and at the end of every row of shops is an arch, which (as
they say) is to divide one occupation from another. And to say all
in a word, here is nothing wanting which may be required, either in
a most honourable city, or in a flourishing commonwealth. Moreover,
here resort all kinds of merchants, Christians, and others. Here
the Genoese, Venetians, English, and Low Dutch used to traffic. The
inhabitants do weave most excellent cotton. Here, likewise, are made
very fine combs, which are sold in all the kingdom of Fez; for the
region thereabout yieldeth great plenty of box and of other wood fit
for the same purpose. Their Government is very orderly and discreet,
even until this day; for they have most learned judges, umpires, and
deciders of doubtful cases in law.
“This town is frequented by many rich merchants of Genoa, whom the king
hath always had in great regard, because he gaineth much yearly by
their traffic. The said merchants have their abode and diet partly here
at Salla, and partly at Fez, from both which towns they mutually help
the traffic, one of another.”
The change in the disposition of the people is not less marked than
that in the character of the city. Little would one suspect to-day,
that two centuries ago, Christians were thus hospitably received and
kindly treated in Salee. He continues:--“In the year of the Hegira,
670, it was surprised by a Castilian captain, the inhabitants being put
to flight, and the Christians enjoying the city. * * * And albeit this
town was in so few days recovered from the enemy, yet a world it was
to see what a wonderful alteration both of the houses and of the state
of government happened. Many houses of this town are left desolate,
especially near the town walls; which, albeit, they are most stately
and curiously built, yet no man there is that will inhabit them.”
Dec. 11th.
I have seen several of the renegades. The French are the only ones
who have any knowledge by which they may be useful. One came to talk
about a project of a wire suspension bridge over the Seboo. He remained
nearly the whole day, and detailed his life and adventures during the
dozen years he has been in this country. Several of them have been with
Abd-el Kadir. They spoke in high terms of the presumed succession of
the Sultan, and of some other leading men. With these few exceptions,
their discourse was most unfavourable to the Moors, whom they called
cowards and braggarts. In their battles the loss never exceeded twenty
men; and a single French regiment might march to Morocco. The Arabs,
they said, were divided amongst themselves; but the Brebers were still
more so; and the art of Government here consisted in setting one tribe
against another, and one chief against another. Their remedy was
disciplined troops. If the Emperor, said one of them, had had five
thousand disciplined men, he never would have received M. Roche.
I said, that if the Emperor had known how to transact a matter of
business, he never would have been insulted by the presence of that
person, and that one hundred thousand men would not give him that
knowledge. I instanced Spain and Algiers as evidence of the power of
resistance of a country destitute, not of regular troops only, but of
a Government. I added, that a regular army facilitated invasion, but
not defence, and generally proved the means of rendering a people an
easy prey. Certainly, to put an army at the disposal of the Emperor of
Morocco would be the means of doing so.
Abd-el-Kadir was rated very low, and spoken of very little. The
Europeans admired him for his valour, enterprise, generosity, and
humanity; but did not respect his military judgment. They said that he
uselessly exposed men and tribes, threw away great opportunities, and
afforded to the French the means of extending their authority.
If Abd-el-Kadir had not been playing a game, at all events a game was
played in his person. He was necessary to the French military system of
Algiers. He is known to have been three times in their hands, and to
have been suffered to escape.
From one who had been for seven years the companion of Abd-el-Kadir,
I give the following incidents. After the destruction of the Turkish
Government, the most powerful chief was Mahmud Ben Ismael, the
descendant of the man who had first entered Oran on its evacuation
by the Spaniards. Abd-el-Kadir came next by his family and religious
character: differences arising between them, the latter had to fly, and
took refuge in Oran, asking the assistance of the French. They did not
neglect the opportunity to sow divisions between the tribes, and gave
him arms, ammunition, and twenty thousand dollars. With these means he
defeated his rival, who, in like manner, came to the French, and said,
“You have strengthened my rival against me; deal fairly now by me.”
They required that he should acknowledge himself the vassal of France;
but this proposal he rejected. Abd-el-Kadir from that time continued
at war with the French, till the treaty of the Tafna, by which the
French appeared to gain some show of title, but in reality invested
Abd-el-Kadir with a _quasi_ sovereign character.
The rupture of this treaty was occasioned by the violation of the
Emir’s territory by the Duke d’Aumale, when returning from Constantine.
He led the troops through passes which exposed them to be cut off, had
not treachery been at work. A French renegade had insinuated himself
into the confidence and affections of Abd-el-Kadir. This man stole the
seal of the Emir, and wrote letters to the Chiefs, requiring them to
allow the French to pass. A Jew, who in the pillage of the treasury of
Algiers had secured a quantity of jewels, and had, therefore, to fly,
and was in the deira, discovered the fraud. High words ensued in the
tent of the renegade: the conversation was carried on in French, and M.
Lascases, a French advocate, who, compromised in the affairs of July,
had taken refuge with Abd-el-Kadir, entered the tent to implore them
not to speak so loud. He thus became acquainted with the transaction.
(He afterwards came to Morocco.) The Jew was quieted, and induced
to remain and sup with the renegade. Next morning the renegade had
left, and in the tent the Jew was found dead. At Mascara the renegade
took one of Abd-el-Kadir’s people to accompany him, as if proceeding
somewhere by his orders. On arriving at the French posts, he clapped a
pistol to his companion’s ear and blew out his brains. He rejoined his
countrymen, and was immediately appointed to an important post in the
army of Africa.
The renegade whose opinions I have been reporting, saw the absurdity of
the attempt to change the national costume. The haïk and other clothing
of the horsemen might appear an embarrassment, though, in fact, it
was not so to them; but the sulam or bornoos of the foot soldiers was
a costume rather to be adopted by other nations than changed by the
Moors. The most interesting part of the conversation was the anxious
inquiries they made respecting the successes of the Circassians, of
which vague rumours had reached them through Egypt. One of these men
had been with the Aï Fatu, one of the most powerful tribes, numbering
thirty thousand horse. The Sultan has built several fortresses round
them, but the most of these they have taken and destroyed.
Their mode of attack is this. They allot certain portions of the wall
to the different tribes or families; they then advance simultaneously
on all sides, with bags and hurdles to fill up the ditch, and make
a bridge to the rampart. Many fall, but those who follow march on.
If any hang back, their wives are taken from them, and they are not
allowed afterwards to marry. Here is the Roman testudo, or perhaps the
origin of it. Their cry is, “Shields to the wall.” They shave their
beards.
Speaking of the difference between the Arabs and the Turks, this
story was told by one of the former. When Mahomet left this world, he
delivered to the Turks a standard, and to the Arabs a standard, telling
them that he should return in forty years to require it of them. Then
the Arabs took their standard and cut it into many pieces, and each
man put his piece by in his breast; but the Turks took care of the
standard, and, making a chest of cypress-wood, they put upon it forty
locks, and they laid in it the standard, and gave a key to each of the
elders of the forty tribes. At the end of the years Mahomet came to the
Arabs, and said: “Where is your flag?” and they all called out, “Here
it is--here it is!” and each man put his hand into his breast, but the
pieces could not fit; so Mahomet said to them, “Unworthy servants, the
empire is departed from you.” And then he went to the Turks, and said
to them, “Where is your flag?” They answered, “We have laid it by;”
and he said, “Bring it forth.” So they called the elders together,
but one was wanting. So he said to them, “This is a pretence, for you
have lost the flag;” and they said, “The elder is gone to look after
his flocks--an elder of the people cannot be wanting. Come again
to-morrow.” So Mahomet came the next day, and there were the forty
elders with the forty keys; so they opened the chest and brought forth
the flag; and Mahomet said, “Good and faithful servants, the empire is
taken from the Arabs and given unto you!”
CHAPTER V.
THE SULTAN: HIS COMMERCIAL SYSTEM.
Rabat, Dec. 12th.
I find it was not the Sultan who went to the mosque last Friday, but
his son. To-day I saw the real potentate overshadowed by the Sheriffean
umbrella. He wore a green sulam, with a white sash or turban bound
over it, which had a most singular effect. The umbrella was carried
by a horseman on his left. The umbrella is of the ordinary size, but
the spokes are straight. It is covered with crimson velvet, and has
a depending fringe or border. Two men carried before him long lances
upright, to spear on the spot, as I was told, whomever he might point
out for that purpose. I could distinguish through my glass his broad
Mulatto features, as he inclined right and left to the saluting crowd.
As for two Fridays he has not been to mosque, his appearance to-day,
and his look of health, have occasioned great rejoicings. Selam said
to me, “Moors not like English--look much to king.--English king die;
no troubles Gibraltar, Malta--Moorish king die; all cut one another’s
throats.”
Muley Abderachman has reigned twenty-three years. He had been employed
both as governor and minister, and was assiduous and incorruptible.
He was originally a merchant of Larache, where the loss of a cargo
first made him known to the late Sultan, his uncle, and he gave him,
in consequence, the government of Mogadore. His conduct in that post
induced the Sultan to appoint him his successor, as being worthier to
reign than any of his own sons. He was not, however, seated on the
throne without bloodshed, and the commencement of his reign was marked
with severity. His authority once established, his previous mildness
reappeared. He is fond of money, and no one ever knew better how to
gratify that taste; but his word is inviolable, and he is no less
orderly than upright in his commercial dealings, which extend to every
portion of his kingdom. Wise in small matters, he is foolish in great
ones; and his merits render tolerable, or his astuteness sustains, the
false and ruinous commercial system he has introduced.