North Africa and the desert

by George Edward Woodberry

V

The British consul, who had also shown me attention, arranged for me to visit the Turkish school of arts and crafts. Hassan Bey, who seemed to be an aid of the Vali, waited on us one morning at the Consulate, and we set out to walk to the school. Hassan Bey was an exile from Daghestan, of a fine military figure, middle-aged, thick-set, with a pleasant countenance; his gray whiskers became his energetic face; he had a look of power and the grave authority of character. He wore a sword; his sleeves and gold braid gave distinction to his person; and he carried lightly, like a cane, the short, twisted whip of stiff bull’s hide that one occasionally sees on these coasts. I have seldom seen so manly a figure, rugged and strong, and stamped by nature for rule; and his politeness was complete and charming, with an accent of strength and breeding that put it out of the category of mere grace of manners. He interested me profoundly by his personality, an entirely new type in my experience, and as the walk was somewhat long I had an opportunity to observe him.

The director of the school received us cordially, gave us coffee and cigarettes, and showed us through the buildings which were rather extensive. The school is endowed with some lands, and its income is supplemented by voluntary funds and a subsidy from the government. It receives upward of one hundred and fifty pupils, from the age of twelve years, and completely supports them during the course, which is seven years in length. Some literary instruction is given, such as geography and secondary branches; but the main end of the school is technical training in the arts and crafts. There was a carpet and silk-weaving department, a tailor-shop, a shoe-shop, carpentry, a foundry and blacksmithing, a refectory and store-rooms. The shops were rather empty, and the students whom I saw were few and of all ages; the rest may have been at their books. The foundry and the carpenter-shop were the busiest and most occupied; there were many heavy pieces of machinery of modern make, and the department seemed properly provided for and in competent management; work was going on in both these rooms, which I watched with great interest. I was told that the furniture of the Ottoman Bank was made here, and apparently orders of various kinds, as, for example, for wheels, were regularly received.

The foundation clearly enough was only a beginning, and the provision inadequate to the scale; but it was a serious and admirable attempt to plant the mechanical arts in the country in their modern form and development, and to foster industry in the simple crafts. The idea was there and in operation, however the means to realize it might seem small in my American eyes, used to great industrial riches in such things; and I was much impressed, not only by the facts but by the spirit of the thing and those who had it in charge. The products seemed excellent, so far as I could judge of the various things shown me. I followed the example of the consul in buying a small bolt of strong silk in a beautiful design of brilliant-colored stripes, and I should have been glad to have taken more in other varieties. I was rather surprised when at the end Hassan Bey suggested my going into the girls’ carpet school. We entered, paused a moment at the school-room door that some notice might be given, and on going into the room I saw that all the girls, who were young, were standing with their faces turned to the wall. We remained only long enough to see the nature of the work and its arrangement, and for a word with the teacher; but the scene, with the young girlish profiles along the sides, was picturesque. There is one other carpet school for girls in another city. We spent perhaps two hours in this inspection and walked leisurely back to town, where I parted with Hassan Bey with sincere admiration.

In the afternoon I went with Absalom to visit a school I had heard of in the Jewish quarter, a pious foundation, the bequest of a wealthy Jew, for the education of poor boys. There were about five hundred of them there, bright-eyed, intelligent, intent, as Jewish boys in their condition usually are. The buildings were excellent, properly furnished, with the substantial and prosperous look of a well-administered educational enterprise. I visited several rooms, saw the boys at their desks and classes, heard some exercises, and talked with the professor in charge. I noticed a tennis-court on the ground. Altogether, I was more than favorably impressed by what I saw, and the mere presence here of a well-organized charity school on such a scale was an encouraging sign. It was surprising to me to find this establishment and the technical school at Tripoli, where I had certainly not anticipated seeing anything of the sort, nor was this my only surprise. I had thought of Tripoli as a semi-barbarous country almost detached from civilization, a focus for Moslem fanaticism, a place for Turkish exiles, a last foothold of the slave-trader, and such it truly was; but it did not present the aspect of neglect and decay that I had imagined as concomitant with this. The old gates of the city had recently been removed; outside the walls there was a good deal of new building going on, which was a sign of safer and more settled life as well as of a kind of prosperity; the roads were excellent, and in a Turkish dependency that is noticeable; in some places new pavements had been laid. In other words, there was evidence of enterprise and public works, of modern life and vitality; and this impression was much strengthened by my experience of the two schools. It is true that I never lost the sense of that strangely conglomerate crowd that passed through the streets, that mixed and fanatic people. I indulged no illusions with respect to the populace en masse. The state of things, however, seemed to me by no means so bad, with these stirrings of civilization, of betterment, of a modern spirit in the city, and I was frankly surprised by it.

My surprise melted away some months later when, on opening my morning paper in America to read of the Turkish revolution, I saw that the Vali of Tripoli was among the first of the exiles to sail for Constantinople; and I observed that, later, he had an active part in the government of the Young Turks. He and Hassan Bey had been doing in Tripoli what they had been exiled for wishing to do on the Bosphorus. Then I understood.