The pillars of Hercules

by David Urquhart

The following on the same subject is from the ponderous records of the Franciscan Friars:—

“It is customary for all the chief priests and doctors of law to assemble with the other great people of the town, and for the Mufti or Cadi to read aloud to the Emperor a short recapitulation of some of the laws of the Koran, which direct that he shall preserve the empire, administer speedy justice, protect the innocent, destroy the wicked; and so far from countenancing and keeping near his sacred person any adulterer, that he shall punish adultery, prevent the exportation of corn and provisions to the prejudice of the people, tax provisions according to their plenty or scarcity, and forbid usury to be exercised towards the poor, which is an abomination before God. He is told that if he breaks these articles, he shall be punished as he ought to punish others.”

These extracts will show that Morocco is not now without some rule for the present, and some respectable vestiges of the past. There are other functionaries of the city, whose origin ascends to an earlier period than the Mussulman times. They are public notaries, called Edules; no doubt the Roman edile. Before them sales are effected, and deeds executed.

The present practice I shall give as I have been able to collect it. The initiatory steps are by documents drawn up by Edules—these have the conjoint characters of petition, affidavit, and verdict (in the old sense). The Plaintiff’s case is stated—he signs it. His witnesses then sign, if they agree with his statement of facts, or state in what they differ. Then follow signatures as vouching for the Plaintiff or Defendant, as the case may be, the witnesses, or the other signees. This act is then verified by the Edules, as to the genuineness of the signatures. Furnished with this document, the petitioner proceeds to the judge, the governor, or the Sultan. He is met by a counter document. The Judge, after perusing these, proceeds to try the case by oral testimony, and without intervention of legal practitioners. The document is called El Bra, which is very near, Brief.[230] This is evidently the origin of the Spanish mode of procedure by Escribanos. Among the Spaniards the oral proceedings are suppressed, and those which are the preliminary steps only in the Moorish courts, constitute the whole proceeding. The Edules have become agents to the parties, as well as public notaries; so that the case of each party is placed in the hands of the agents of the other. Thus, notwithstanding excellent laws, the Spanish Courts have been converted into labyrinths of intrigue. The Moorish system, which exhibits the origin of the Spanish aberrations, still retains the celerity of oral proceedings, with the advantage of record, and combines the responsibility of a Judge with the uses of a Jury. In fact, it differs little from the ancient institution of the Jury in Britain, which gave their verdict on the common repute of the parties, and not on the facts of the case; though it does not leave to them the faculty either of condemnation or expurgation. I look, of course, to the system, as what it would be if duly executed; and it was, no doubt, the foundation of that prompt justice which characterised the Mussulman government in Spain, and made Algiers a model for quick, gratuitous, and impartial adjudication, until its capture by the French.

When any one is assaulted or insulted in the streets, or in any way injured in public, and he appeals to the Caïd: his appeal is rejected unless he brings as witnesses those who were present; but he has the power of compelling their presence—he has but to cry out, “I seek justice,” and every one within hearing must quit whatever occupation they are engaged in, and secure the offender. If they refuse or neglect, they become immediately principals, and the injured person has his remedy against each and all.

It is to this rule—an extended “view of frank pledge,”[231]—that the tranquillity and security of the towns amongst so turbulent a population is to be attributed; and whatever partiality there may be in governors, there is no apprehension of false testimony among the people.

The office of king, in Morocco, is specially that of Grand Justiciary. The king himself is the fountain of justice. There is the utmost freedom of appeal to him from or against the Caïd;—he will stop in the streets, and administer summary justice while sitting on horseback; and when any supplicant appears at his gate, however humble, of whatever race or faith, and pronounces the words, “The God of Justice,” he is admitted to his presence; the order is given for the council to be filled; the secretaries appear in their places, and the petitioner states his or her case, and justice is immediately done. While he has been here, two hours have been daily consecrated to this duty; and this I imagine to be the secret of those constant peregrinations of the Emperor of Morocco, and their extraordinary effect in quelling insurrections and quieting the country; whilst, by the heavy exactions with which they are accompanied, they might appear calculated to produce the very contrary effect. A “progress of the king,” is the constant specific in Morocco for disturbance—there is always disturbance where he has not for a long time appeared; and he always manages to subdue it.

The designation of the court of Morocco is El Haznee, or the treasury. The title of the Minister of Finance in Spain to day is Haciendu. Haznee is treasury or possessions—the two terms are synonymous, and one is derived from the other: the one briefly explains in Morocco the purposes of government, and in Spain its necessities. Our word magazine comes from Mal Haznee, or treasury of wealth. How surprised the legitimate owners of the terms would be, if they knew the contents of the periodicals to which we apply it.

It is impossible to conclude this subject of government without mention of the saints. What constitutes a saint no one can tell: they are of both sexes and all ages, of every class and rank, from the madman to the philosopher, from the fanatic to the infidel, and from the mischievous and wicked to the humane and benevolent. I met a man with wool on his head, and a long stave in his hand, chanting forth a ditty at the top of his strained voice. This was a saint, and the soldiers made me move aside, for fear he should make a rush at me. They took the man for a madman; he was none. There was some time ago at Tangier, a female saint, who went about entirely naked: every morning she took from the market-people wood, and laying it in a circle made a fire and seated herself in the middle. There are respectable families where saintship is hereditary: these bury the saints when they die, in their own houses. In these saints are to be found traces at once of the asceticism of early Christianity, which had its birth in Africa, and of those practices which, in the still earlier times of Polytheism, rendered Africa a scandal and wonder to the rest of the world.[232]

Since the introduction of Islamism, the superstitions of a country, in early times the most fertile in monsters and chimeras, have been associated with that faith, and have produced that strange veneration of dead saints and sanctification of living fools, which is without parallel elsewhere; and weaving themselves into the religious forms of a people whose civil government is derived from its sacred writings, the distinction between the doctrines of the one, and revolutions of the other is effaced, and thus do we find the names of dynasties derived from the denomination of sects.