The pillars of Hercules

by David Urquhart

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.