The nine tales which follow have a history which is itself not without
interest. The materials have been accumulated during a residence of
many years at Tetuan, Morocco, varied by excursions to places in the
interior where semi-barbarous life may be seen in its pristine
crudeness. In Tetuan I had somewhat exceptional opportunities of
getting into the heart of native life and thought, and I am under
obligations also for contributions received from a venerable
story-teller at Tangier, who had been assistant librarian at the
_Kairouin_ of Fez, the only university of the Moorish Empire. The
tales themselves have been for centuries floating through the
legendary lore which plays so large a part in the intellectual
cloudland of the gorgeous East; my part has been to put them into
English dress, with scrupulous adherence to their substance and, as
far as may be, to their native costume.
Tetuan is a typical Oriental town, beautiful from a distance,
disappointing at a closer inspection, but not devoid of that classic
atmosphere which invests ancient cities in the East with a spiritual
something unfelt in modern centres of culture. Situated at the foot of
the Beni Hosmar, a bold peak of the northern branch of the Atlas
range, it has a population of about twenty thousand souls, is enclosed
by a dilapidated wall, boasts of some fine homes built by wealthy
Tetuani, has a separate _mellah_ for its unfavored Jews, some European
dwellings and cultivated gardens for foreign consuls, a large unclean
square as a market-place, chronically infested by packs of mongrel
dogs fed by Moslem women, and something of an official residence
within the moss-capped walls of a stronghold spoken of as the
_Casbah_. The rest is covered by the Moorish quarter, a bewildering
labyrinth of unpaved, unswept alleys, crooked lanes, the white,
flat-roofed, unwindowed houses often meeting each other overhead, thus
creating dingy tunnels which are utilized as bazaars, with wretched
holes to right and left reserved for sundry wares and offices--the
usual conditions of Moslem towns.
Unattractive as such a conglomeration of semi-barbarous retreats must
appear, neither Pegasus nor the muses would pass them with
indifference. As the descendants of the Moors expelled from Hispania
by their Catholic Majesties, the Tetuani show a degree of refinement
unknown elsewhere in Barbary, and with it survives a taste for higher
things of which poetry is not the least. Tetuan's intellectual
atmosphere is so generally recognized that the present Emir-al-Mumemin
(sole ruler of the true faithful) sent his heir apparent, Hassan, to
be educated at the _Casbah_ by a _taleb_ chosen from the local
aristocracy, in preference to the unfathomed wisdom stored in the wise
heads of the _Kairouin_ at Fez. The minstrel, the fluent story-teller,
the poetic historian, and the fine performer on the double-stringed
_gimreh_, are not unfamiliar figures in Tetuan, provided one knows how
to approach them, which is not so hard as it is to overcome their
reluctance to unbosom themselves before the infidel. Great as is the
Moor's cupidity, it pales before his abhorrence of the foreign
intruder who presumes to pry into his jealously guarded sanctuaries.
Touch him on a point concerning his nebulous legends and traditions
and, like the turtle, he draws in his head, and that is the last you
will see of him, unless you strike the sensitive chord of national
pride by speaking grandiloquently of non-Mussulman heroes and literary
triumphs. Even then Moslem passiveness proves often an immovable
inertia. It has been found possible to provoke the garrulity of the
_taleb_, _adool_ and _fukie_, respectively representing our lawyer,
notary, and man of letters; but there are two characters in Morocco
whom no whirlwind will move to dispute the infidel's claim to a
superior culture, and they are the all-knowing _kadi_ and the _emin_,
the judge and the priest, both deriving their unquestioned authority
from al Koran, and thus cherishing a supreme contempt for the wisdom
of the faithless inspired by the cunning devil. The idea is as old as
Islam that what the Koran reveals not, Allah alone knows.
After many rueful failures to get at the sources of Barbary's
folklore, the author of this book conceived the idea, which happily
met with some success, of creating a social focus sufficiently
attractive to ensnare unwary stragglers of infallible Islamism, such
as itinerant students, beggars, story-tellers and pilgrims, who, being
strangers in the place, might be induced by liberal treatment and a
little policy to impart some glimpses of the precious lore so dear to
one who had set his heart on the acquisition of so promising a
treasure. Did the _Arabian Nights_ and the other works we know exhaust
the vast resources of the Orient's mysteries? Without betraying his
ultimate purpose, the author called a meeting of the foreign
residents, all good friends or acquaintances, and submitted the scheme
of opening a Casino for mutual sociability and the reception of worthy
strangers, sometimes of high rank, who not infrequently cross the
Strait of Gibraltar to see life as it must have been in the
patriarchal age. The suggestion was received with acclamation; the
meeting, nineteen souls in all, organized itself into a body of
subscribing members; officers were elected, rules formulated, and a
liberal subscription list enabled the chairman to proceed at once to
carry out the project, everyone wondering why the thing had never been
thought of before. It took some weeks to perfect matters, when the
pleasure-house was opened with proper ceremony. The windows of the
commodious building looked on the market-place, the Casino being about
a hundred paces from the gate of the _Casbah_, and the institution
soon became an object of talk and wonder, it being the first of its
kind in the tedious annals of Tetuan.
Only a few days after the opening the members experienced the
undelightful surprise of finding one of their distinguished friends,
the Spanish Vice-consul, a stately hidalgo of high lineage, afflicted
by the thirst of Tantalus, with a hydrophobic aversion to water as the
proper means of appeasing it. The cavalier could neither be asked to
resign nor could he be expelled, without creating an unpleasant
sensation, but his drunkenness threatened the very life of the resort.
What was to be done? A secret meeting called for the purpose of
dealing with the problem ended in a unanimous sigh of despondency. But
help was near at hand. Diepo, the caterer, who realized that his
prospects were on the brink of ruin, devised a way out of the dilemma.
Under the pretext that the annoying pest of insects, flying and
creeping, required some remedy, the shrewd caterer prepared a
substance that stuck to one like the Evil One, spread it freely on
large sheets of brown paper, and distributed them judiciously where
they would best serve his purpose. Once in his hazy condition, the
chivalrous Vice-consul was quick in satisfying Diepo's most sanguine
anticipations, picking up by a variety of zigzag evolutions almost
every sticker, and covering himself with the viscous stuff from head
to foot, until the stifled giggle of those present gave way to roars
of laughter. A coarse _jellab_ had to be thrown around the frame of
the inebriate, to take him home without exposure to the ridicule of
outsiders. If the incident did not cure the disgraced representative
of Spanish chivalry of his thirst, it at least rendered it impossible
for him to return to the circle he had scandalized; and as to Diepo's
stratagem, it was commended as a measure devised for self-preservation.
An unexpected triumph for the Casino was the application of three
prominent Moslems for membership, each one, in days bygone, having
been attached to some embassy the Caliph of the Lord now and then
sends to one or another of the European courts. To the manifold
diversions afforded by the institution belonged a sagacious parrot who
astonished the noble Moors by receiving them with the _Muezzin's_ cry:
"_La illaha, il Allah, Mohammed Ressul Allah!_" This confession of
Islam, that there is no God but God, and that Mohammed is His Prophet,
would have edified the Mussulmans, had not the frivolous bird
accompanied his exclamation with screams of profane laughter. At first
puzzled by the unaccountable frivolity of the bird, the most
ingenuous of the Moslems finally solved the riddle by recognizing
therein an expression of felicity the creature derived from uttering
the sacred formula.
Gratuitous music was furnished by an Italian who blew the trombone; by
a French teacher who played the violin; by a Hebrew who gave wind to a
pipe of reeds; and by a Spaniard who harped on the strings of a
colossal bass-viol. In course of a few months the members of the
Casino entertained visitors not alone from Europe and many quarters of
Barbary, but from the more distant Orient, the most of them coming by
the way of Tangier, sometimes called the "white city of the dark
continent." But nothing advertised and dignified that institution more
than the standing offer of twenty-five pesetas to him who should, upon
a fixed evening, regale its members with the most interesting tale,
subject to the critical verdict of three judges, the decision to be
sustained or rejected by a majority of votes. The tale was not to be
wholly fictitious, but should either turn around some historic event,
or be based on some popular tradition or legend current in the lands
of the rising sun. In a country where, thanks to nature's bounty, a
peseta is sufficient to supply a numerous family with food for days,
the prize held out as an inducement proved an object of keen
competition. Once a month the competitors were given the opportunity
of displaying their story-telling talents, and on one occasion a
_fukie_ of Fez, a Jew of Yemen, another one of Jerusalem, and a Parsee
of Bombay, claimed the attention of the interested auditors, in their
endeavors to secure the coveted prize.
Such were the beginnings of this work; it contains in substance all
the tales for which prizes were awarded, but it is only fair to state
that the Parsee was the one to whom the author is mostly indebted for
the mass of his material. Yakoub Malek was a very original eccentric,
of a nature deep, generous, ardent and visionary. A Parsee by birth,
Malek exchanged his Zoroastrian creed for Buddha's ideals, only to
show a later preference for Islam. Driven by a restless temperament,
he traversed Asia throughout its length and breadth, and crossed the
whole north of Africa for the avowed purpose of seeking an audience
with the Pope in Rome, his object being to be initiated into the
mystery of the Catholic Church. Like Marco Polo, Malek was the most
observing of travellers, and his adventures embraced encounters with
monstrous brutes, communion with spirits in the desert of Gobi,
hairbreadth escapes from cyclonic storms, shipwrecks, venomous
reptiles, cannibals and banditti. In the Western hemisphere Malek
would pass for a transcendental spiritualist, claiming, as he did, to
hold intercourse with the spirits of his parents, especially with that
of his father. One dark evening he startled his auditors by producing
a human finger, all dried and shrivelled. He had taken it off
stealthily from the right hand of his father's dead body, after the
vultures had denuded it of flesh, it being the religious custom of the
Parsees to expose their dead to the voracity of that carrion bird, for
which purpose, as is well known, their "towers of silence" are
constructed. That singular rite has its origin in the Zoroastrian idea
that earth is holy and must not be polluted by the decay of human
flesh.--"As often as I long to see my father, I hold this bone closed
in my right hand and shut my eyes, when lo! I see him rise from the
realms of the invisible, ready to commune with me in whispers audible
to my soul," asserted the Oriental with a mystic glow in his eye.
His æsthetic quality betrayed itself in his glowing descriptions of
Balbec and Tadmor, of the prodigious monuments of Egypt, and the
temples and palaces of India. Of his vivid power to portray what his
memory retained, or his imagination conceived, the subjoined rhapsody,
taken as he gave it, may convey an idea. "I see him there, Shah Jahán,
in Jáhnáhád, the Delhi of his fiat, exalted on his throne of thrones,
a blaze of jewelled splendors, set in mockery of the peacock's
feathers, but fairer than that fairest bird, the Moghul's emblem of
star-dotted majesty. Great Akbar's Empire is his, and India's
wealth.--Poor Moghul! From Agra's lovelier court, thy favored home,
the courier speeds to drown thy happiness in gloom. She is no more who
owned thy heart. Thy sweetest Empress, Mumtaza Mahal, the Orient's
loveliness and grace, succumbed to throes which mothers know. The babe
survived her. Delhi mourns. Shah Jahán hurries to his seat of woe. How
dismal looks the city of imperial gardens! How sepulchral its palace
of grandeurs nowhere seen, never heard of, vast and noble, too grand
for man, not unfit for gods!--Death darkens the world, darkens Shah
Jahán's glorious throne-hall. Here his incomparable mate lies cold in
death, crowned and sceptred, as though called to rule in the nether
world, a queen among the dead. All mourn and weep, but the true sorrow
is thine, poor Jahán, with melancholy as thy only friend, thy hope the
grave. That wondrous sepulchre of thine, reared to crown thy love;
there it stands, thy resting-place and hers, the _Taj_, the monumental
blossom of the world, beyond expression beautiful."
Yakoub Malek was a mystic adventurer, and his narrative mystified his
audience. But for that delightful dreamer this book would never have
seen light. His passing out of sight, with an echo that rings in the
ear forever, charmed by a voice that enchanted the soul, suggests the
career of those prophetic wizards who, having stirred the world with
the fire of their breath, departed this life, leaving song and
prophecy to vibrate in the air to the end of time. Should that
picturesque wanderer ever come across these pages, he will have to
forgive the liberties the author has taken with his rhapsodic style
not less than with the version in certain parts of his narrative. Not
everything the dreamy Orient is ready to accept will meet with equal
credence, or even with tolerance, in the sobered Occident. Yet enough
has been retained in these tales to draw the reader from his realistic
surroundings into those weird realms where, unrestrained by the laws
of sublunar existence and the limitations of mortality, the spirit is
allowed to roam in the vast, unencumbered by matter, unhindered by
time and space.
Henry Iliowizi.
Philadelphia, April, 1900.