[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.