The Passing of Morocco

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

We discussed with him the great moral vice of Mohammedan countries, and he admitted that it was prevalent in Morocco no less than, as we told him, it prevailed farther east, and that it affected all classes. He told me that it was the custom of the wealthy father of the better class of Moors, in order to protect his sons, to make them each a present of a slave girl as they attain the age of fifteen or sixteen. Of course, from the Mohammedan point of view, there is nothing immoral in this; indeed the mothers of sons often advocate it.

It was the fasting month of Ramadan at the time of our sojourn at Rabat, and no one could eat except at night. Every evening at six o’clock a white-cloaked gunner came out of the Kasbah walls and rammed into his antique cannon a load of powder sufficient, it would seem, to raise the dead of the cemetery in which it was discharged. For two reasons—that it was the cemetery and that the Ramadan gun was here—this was the gathering-place of all Moslems. Often we, too, went up to see the crowd and to watch with the gunner and the other Moors for the signal. All eyes were turned, not towards the Atlantic to see old Sol set, but inland, towards the town, where towered above the low houses a great white minaret, whence the Muezzin watched the sun and signalled with a banner of white. At the blast of the cannon a great shout went up from the hundred small boys gathered about; and, with the slope of the hill to lend them speed, everybody went hurrying into the town, the skirts of those who ran fluttering a yard behind them. In a minute came the boom from the gun of the m’halla, the city of tents, on the hills visible beyond the town walls. When we passed down the streets to our supper five minutes later, everybody was swallowing great gulps of hererah, Ramadan soup, breaking the long day’s fast. The little cafés, dingy and deserted during the day, were now brilliant and crowded, the keeper himself eating with one hand while he served with the other; and the roadway was studded with little groups of men who had squatted where they stood half-an-hour before the setting of the sun, and, spoon in hand, waited for the gun to boom.

Christians and Mohammedans treat their religions with a curious difference: where the one is generally ashamed of reverence and never flaunts his faith, the other is afraid not to make a considerable show of his. Not a Moor would dare to eat or even touch a drop of water in the sight of another during Ramadan; though under our window overlooking the river it was the custom of an old beggar to come daily at noon, to roll himself into a ball on the ground as if sleeping, and under the cover of his ragged jeleba make his lunch. Had he been caught at this he would probably have been stoned out of town.

One day during Ramadan we were taken by a Jewish merchant, a British subject, to the house of a wealthy Moor with whom he traded in goods from Manchester. The house was down a turning off the street of arches, and the turning came to an end at the Moor’s door, a massive oaken door with the heads of huge rivets showing every six or seven inches. It was the width of the narrow street, about six feet, and the height of one’s shoulder. We approached quietly and knocked lightly, for our friend told us that the Moor did not care for his neighbours to see us entering his house. The entrance, which was at one corner of the square house, led into the courtyard, of which the ornate walls were spotlessly white-washed, the floor was of green tiles, and the roof, as is usual, of glass. The reception room, the length of one side of the house, though but twelve feet wide, had low divans all round the walls, leaving but a long, narrow aisle the length of the room, to the right and to the left of the arched entrance. Rising in tiers at each end were broader divans, to appear as beds one beyond another, though their luxurious and expensive upholstering, covered with the richest of native silks, were evidently never displaced by use. About the room, in cases above the divans, were many little ornaments, noticeably tall silver sprinklers filled with rose-water and other perfumes; but most curious to us were the innumerable clocks, most of them cheap things, all set at different hours in order that their bells should not drown each other’s melodious clangs.

Two little slave girls, who giggled at us all the while, brought in a samovar much after the Russian pattern, and silver boxes of broken cone sugar and of European biscuits. Our host made tea in the native fashion, brewed with quantities of sugar and flavoured heavily with mint; green tea, of course. He filled our cups again and again, though he would take nothing, till we too wished we respected Ramadan, for we were told by our Jewish friend that it would be impolite to drink less than five or six cups. Along with this refreshment the silver sprinklers were passed us by the giggling little blacks, that we might sprinkle our clothes, and no doubt they thought we needed perfuming, though they did not hold their noses, as other Europeans have told me they often do when close to Nazarenes. Perhaps their master had instructed them in good behaviour, for he was indeed a gentleman, and he had travelled on one occasion to London and to Paris. It was at this point, when the Moor, with immaculate fingers, sprinkled his own long white robes, that one could appreciate their feeling that we are filthy people. We wear the same outer garments for months, and they are never washed; indeed, we wear dark colours that the dirt may not show; here we had entered upon this gentleman’s precious carpets with our muddy boots, where a sockless Moor would shift his slippers. And they have habits too which make for bodily cleanliness, habits which they know we have not, as, for instance, that of shaving the hair from every part of the body but the face. Our conversation was chiefly on comparisons of customs, our host noticing that we shaved our faces, the Moors their heads, and we remarking—for he was too polite—that we kept on our shoes when we entered a house, whereas the Moors wore their fezzes or their turbans. He said that he had beheld in London the extraordinary sight of a pair of ordinary Moorish slippers set upon a table as an ornament; and he had seen also the woman sultan, Queen Victoria.

At Ramadan there are generally continual street festivities during the eating hours of the night; but the gloom cast over the country by the presence of the French kept these now to a minimum. There was not even, in spite of the Sultan’s presence any powder play, a thing which I was particularly anxious to witness, to learn for myself to what degree the Moors are hard upon their animals. I know that Moslems are seldom deliberately cruel; but I know, too, that the vanity of the Moor makes him ride with a cruel bit and a pointed spur that could reach the vitals of a horse, and both of these, I have heard, they employ in a vicious manner in their famous, dashing powder play. But most of their cruelty is only from neglect, laziness, and ignorance. Camels wear their shoulders and their necks through to the bone—the sight is a common one—because their masters do not trouble to pad their packs properly; two men will ride an undersized donkey already overloaded with a pack; and, as is the way among all Moslems, an animal when it comes to die may suffer for weeks or months, yet will not be killed because ‘Allah gave life, and Allah alone may take it away.’ Still there is the Moorish sect of Aisawa, that in a mad stampede tears a sheep to pieces in the streets and eats it still palpitating.

A CAMP OUTSIDE THE WALLS OF RABAT.

There were some interesting Englishmen at Rabat, notably the Times correspondent, W. B. Harris, who has travelled with several Sultans of Morocco, and lived some time as a Moor in order that he might learn their ways and penetrate to the farthest reaches of the country forbidden to the Christian. There was also Mr. Allan Maclean, likewise an authority on Morocco, now busy with the Maghzen to arrange for the release of certain prisoners, which Raisuli exacted as one of the stipulations of Kaid Maclean’s release. There was then the British Consul, George Neroutsos, an old friend of the Sultan and a man whom he often consults on matters of European policy.

With some of the Englishmen we took long rides around the town, passing several times through the m’halla, where we were never welcome; the camp of Abdul Aziz was in sympathy with Mulai Hafid. We saw the soldiers who were sent to fight Hafid and joined his ranks with all their arms. Gradually we saw the army dwindle away until there could have been no more than four thousand men between the discredited Sultan and his hostile brother, whose following of tribesmen was reported to number variously from twenty to sixty thousand men. Had the army of the French not stood between them and fought the Hafid m’hallas, Rabat would surely have fallen and Abdul Aziz would now be a royal prisoner safe in the keeping of his brother. For want of money to pay the troops Abdul Aziz was forced to pawn his jewels; and at last, by a royal decree, he made good ‘a hundred sacks’ of silver coins that had been confiscated as counterfeit. It was because of a threatened revolt of the troops for want of pay that the Spaniards in February occupied the port of Mar Chica.