THE STUDENT OF TIMBUCTU.
AT the close of the year 1578 the slave-markets of Mauritania were glutted to their uttermost, and for once the price of a male slave was less than that of a donkey. This overstock of human ware was due to the thousands of prisoners who had survived the fateful battle fought in the neighborhood of Al-Kesar Kebir, on the banks of the Elmahassen, between the invading army of Dom Sebastian, the youthful, overbearing monarch of Lusitania, and the host of Muley Abd-al-Melek, the formidable Emir-al-Mumemin, the Commander of the true believers, the Seedna or lord of the Moorish Empire.[10]
[10] This battle and the fate of Dom Sebastian as narrated in this tradition agrees with historical fact. [Back]
The Moslem’s cruelty to his Christian slaves rose in proportion to the latter’s decline as marketable articles, and fanaticism revelled in the daily spectacle of crusaders doomed to immurement, because of their refusing to embrace Islam by uttering the Fatha. The irony of the historic whirligig showed itself in the fact that the Catholic Auto-da-fè had its counterpart in the frightful doom of a king and an army led by the flower of his nobility, who, barely a hundred miles from the coast of their kingdom, had to choose between apostasy or being immured alive for the edification of the vengeful Moor. The wretches were compelled to prepare their own graves, usually cells in the city’s wall, one Christian bricking up his fellow only to be in turn entombed alive himself.
A melancholy distinction was reserved for the royal zealot, Dom Sebastian, who had encountered crushing defeat and humiliation. With less than half of his smitten chivalry and valiant soldiers he saw himself in the power of an inexorable foe, himself wounded and in chains pining in the vile dungeon of Mequinez, one of the Sultan’s capitals, the others being Fez and Morocco. After the obsequies of the unmourned Seedna, who had died on the field of battle, his son and successor, having been proclaimed Sultan, and crowned in the holy shrine of Mulai Edris at Fez, proposed to celebrate his coronation by the entombment alive of the Christian king who had invaded his father’s empire, notwithstanding the warning of the late Shereef that the unjust inroad would surely land the aggressors in ruin. His Majesty furthermore remembered the treacherous proceeding of Sebastian, who, at the end of the decisive battle, had caused a white flag to be displayed, but had broken the truce by throwing himself with fifty of his knights into the thick of the Moorish ranks, causing slaughter and consternation, and resulting in the death of the late Sultan.
But the strongest motive of the young Shereef’s dire vengeance was the unaccountable loss of his sire’s priceless crown, which Muley Abd-al-Melek was in the habit of carrying with him whithersoever he went, wearing it on solemn occasions. Muley had worn the crown upon his head while the great battle was being fought, after which that invaluable symbol of imperial grandeur was not to be found. The crown was an heirloom traced back to the great Caliphat of Omar, whose victorious general Saad had acquired it with the enormous treasures of the Chosroes. It was worn by Chosroes Nushirvan in the throne-hall of his grand palace in Madayn, the capital of ancient Persia, and its incalculable value had been further enhanced by a rare jewel which the Emperor Heraclius had sent Omar as a present.
Such were the cumulative incentives to one of the most cruel executions devised by human atrocity. And the tortures also inflicted by order of the new Seedna on his most loyal attendants, such as the Mul-el-Ma, who satisfies His Majesty’s thirst when in camp from a gazelle-skin; the Mul Attai, who prepares the royal tea and serves it; and the most important Mul M’dul, the keeper and holder of the Shereef’s red umbrella, left the mystery unsolved.
The inhabitants of Mequinez, who since times immemorial furnished the bulk of the Emperor’s most devoted servitors, tingled with excitement, and the entire population turned out to witness the burial of a live Christian monarch. From the portal of the imperial mosque issued a train of chosen notables, long-bearded Kadis robed in white flowing raiments, wearing white turbans, red sandals, the delill or prayer book suspended from the belt by a cord of silk; talebs, the doctors of law; emins, the ministers of the mosque; adools, the public notaries; and a train of fukies, the all-moving luminaries at whose feet the rising generation of the faithful drink in truth and wisdom. They were joined at the city’s gate by another cortege, grotesque and dismal enough to match the gruesome processions of the Inquisition. This was made up of happy juveniles, who struck tom-toms, rent the air with the blare of infernal horns, and accompanied the music with ludicrous grimaces and comical dances, to the great delight of a sympathetic crowd, who swelled the chorus to the pitch of mad vociferation. A hideous negro, broad-shouldered, tall and massive, his frame clothed tightly in black, his eyes blinking dismally from circles of red, with a pointed hat to add several feet to his unusual height, impersonated Azrael the angel of death. Behind this caricature came a donkey whereon was seated the woeful representative of outraged Christian royalty, bare-headed, dressed in a black jellab, holding in his right hand a human skull,—a picture of terror and anguish. This was Dom Sebastian, riding to his sepulchre, on his right Monkir, to his left Nakir,—the demons of livid hue, who wake the dead to question him about his faith, and beat him with clubs if unable to stand the examination. The rear of this group was occupied by Eblis, grotesquely attired in red and armed with the implements of hellish torture. A throng of naked, filthy saints ran along howling and spitting at the whilom majesty of Portugal, relegating his soul to the deepest pit, and praying Allah to show no mercy to the Christian dog. Having passed out of the city’s gate, the procession advanced along a tortuous road, winding among well-fostered gardens, protected by an outer and much lower wall, toward the spot where a cell about six feet high, but barely wide enough to enclose a human body, stood open in the main wall for the death by suffocation and for the dreamless rest of the fallen king. Too weak to dismount unassisted, Sebastian was rudely handled by Monkir and Nakir, who raised him from his seat, lifted him to the level of the cell, and pushed him inside, turning him with a twist so that the fanatic spectators had a full view of his face. Three wooden bars held the victim against the dead wall.
All eyes were now turned in the direction of the mosque, whence the signal for the closing up of the king’s grave was to be given by the firing of a gun and the hoisting of a flag. The ghastly ceremony was so timed that the bricking up of the living tomb coincided with the hour of prayer, so that the boom of cannon and the appearance of the flag streaming to the breeze, was answered by a score of muezzins from the tops of their minarets, who called; “Allah akbar, Allah akbar,—God is great, and Mohammed is his Prophet!” The multitude fell prostrate in the dust, sending the fatha eastward to Mecca: “Praise be to God, the Lord of all creatures, the most merciful, the King of the Day of Judgment! Thee do we worship, and of Thee do we beg assistance. Direct us in the right way, in the way of those to whom Thou hast been gracious, not of those against whom thou art incensed, nor of those who go astray.”