In the Tail of the Peacock

by Isabel Savory

Of the mosque, beside the Kutobea, nothing was to be seen except its walls, and through an open door avenues of pillars. The huge building has an Arabic name meaning "The Mosque of the Books"; for what reason—who can tell?—tradition is silent.

Marrakesh itself is supposed to have been built upon the site of an immensely old structure, the ancient Martok. As it is now, Yusuf-ibn-Tachfin founded it in 1072, a city which covers almost as much ground as Paris—a purely African city. Fez, Tetuan, Tangier, have Spanish blood in them: Marrakesh is African to the core. Arabs here are in a minority: the spare Saharowi type, the shaved lip and cheeks and pointed chin-tuft of the Berber race, men from the mysterious sandy steppes below Cape Bojador, Soudanese blacks, men from Wadnoon—one and all congregate in this city. Even the music and songs are, naturally enough, all African, with the strange interval, the rhythm which halts and races where no European music ever halted or raced; and the tom-tom, the gimbri, the ear-piercing Moorish flute, all fall upon the English ear as things intensely strange and strongly fascinating.

Marrakesh boasts no aristocracy: it is a city of the people. It has few Sharīfs: it is a land of "traders," speculating, toiling, intriguing; between its yellow adobe walls, and its whitewashed dazzling walls, amidst its dense metallic semi-tropical vegetation, up and down its sandy silent ways, they live and die. Its fountains are beautiful: Shrab-u-Schuf (Drink and admire) is inscribed on one of them. But it is not by its architecture that Marrakesh stands and falls; rather by a personality all its own—by its many ruined walls, by its deserted streets, by the hot pulse of life throbbing imperiously through its arteries crowded to suffocation with humanity, by its flaring African sunlight, by the figures which can never be other than picturesque, by a thousand impressions which can never die. And by reason of all this Marrakesh is great.

Once upon a time it was impossible for an Englishman to see the Slave Market. Owing partly to the radical hatred of Europeans, partly to the suspicious and seclusive nature of the Moor, the presence of foreigners in the sacred Slave Market was tabooed. Not that the Nazarene was "taken up" or turned back if he showed his face inside the courtyard: on the contrary, he was allowed to walk in, and apparently no eye was aware of his presence. And yet in a few moments he would find himself alone. The Slave Market had vanished, had melted away: a line of disappearing backs was all which was to be seen. Supposing a Moor had connived at this attempt on the part of a Nazarene to see slaves being sold, that Moor disappeared, by order of the Sultan, and there was a funeral later on in the day.

However, while we were in Marrakesh, less rigorous orders were in vogue. Having come prepared to see the market disguised in native dress if necessary, we found that we were able to go there without much difficulty, and only escorted by one of the missionaries and a servant. Though slaves are bought and sold through the length and breadth of Morocco, it is not possible in any other city than Marrakesh for the European to see or know much about it. In the coast towns the sales are conducted privately. In Fez it is probable that they might be attended by others than Moors; but at the time of writing I take it that no wise European, if such should be there at all in these unquiet times, would venture to put himself into a position likely to attract all the bullets and knives in Fez in his direction.

Just at sunset—6.30, I think—the Slave Market in Marrakesh opens, and we went in. To some ears it would no doubt have sounded the strangest anomaly, that prayer to the Most High God, with which the sale was prefaced; but a Mussulman hallows every action, right or wrong, with a petition; besides which slavery is lawful and good in his eyes, is approved of and permitted by Mohammed in the written book of the Korān; is, in short, a part of the scheme of Nature which it were a serious mistake not to use and enjoy. So the line of auctioneers formed up, held out their hands, prayed, invoked a blessing over the proceedings, mumbling in sonorous tones for a few moments. Then silence. It was over: the sale began. There is nothing more easy than to be theatrical and emotional in describing scenes of this sort—one has read of them scores of times: words such as "degrading" and "harrowing" rise up in the mind's eye, coupled with violent epithets and stinging clauses. And yet, finding oneself in the centre of another just such a scene, one realized how impossible the thing was, to understand, or to feel, beforehand, and how curiously it played upon the emotions. Walking into the market with a sobriety, with a cold, critical interest such as a Nero may have felt towards his victims, one divined early in the proceedings that the scene tended unduly to intensify emotion. Truly no men think alike: a vast chasm yawns between the natures of the slave-trader and the European: that chasm is a universal education. To realize all which separates a native of Africa from a Frenchman or an Englishman, and the difficulties which lie in the way of promoting an understanding between the two, visit such a place as the Slave Market in Marrakesh.

Groups of slaves, more or less gorgeously dressed, some in rags where nothing better could be afforded, were sitting far back in little covered-in recesses which lined the square. All round the square stood, or sat upon their heels, intending purchasers, for the most part middle-aged elderly men, sleek and fat, in turbans and soft linen, white beyond reproach. Each auctioneer, the prayer over, advanced to the groups of slaves, and led out one or perhaps two or three, and paraded them round and round the square under the eyes of the buyers. At last a bid was made: the auctioneer walked on, pushing the slaves in front of him, and calling out the amount of the bid. A higher bid was made: he shouted out that bid, and still walked on. Then a purchaser signed to him that he wished to look at the slaves. The auctioneer at once marshalled the women or woman slave (there were many more women than men) up to the Moor who wished to examine her. She squatted in front of him, while he looked at her teeth, felt her arms, neck, and legs, and in a low voice asked her a string of private questions. After a time the woman was allowed to get up, the auctioneer called out the latest bid for her, and walked her on. Probably some one else would examine her "points," and another and another; and her price would go up till the auctioneer should have got what he wanted, and the woman would be handed over to her new master.

Some of the slaves walked round with a profoundly indifferent air—none of them looked in wild spirits; but, on the other hand, it was "Kismet" rather than misery which was written on their faces. It is a rare thing for any slave to object violently or to make any scene: as a rule they knelt down obediently enough in front of the fat Mohammedans, who thrust their fingers into their mouths, took them by the chin, and treated them with great familiarity. But, oddly enough, on one of the nights we attended the market a scene did occur. A middle-aged woman, absolutely refused to walk round—we were told probably because she had been parted from her child, and could not bear to be sold. The poor creature wept wildly, and hid her face in the red cloth round her head. She was, however, in the end forced along like a recalcitrant mule, her cloth torn off, herself made to kneel down at the bidding of a group of traders, and undergo the usual examination. Some of the young girls looked shame-faced, shuffling along behind or in front of the auctioneers with bent heads. The sad middle-aged woman fetched in the end seven pounds ten shillings. A little child was going for three pounds ten. A girl of thirteen—that is, at her very best—was selling for fifteen pounds: she was of course unusually attractive.

The slave trade of Africa receives an apparent stamp of legality from the fact that religious warfare and the taking of prisoners in war and making them slaves are looked upon as Divine institutions. There is no obligation on the Mussulman to release slaves, and as long as wars and raids last, the mass of slaves in Mohammedan countries tends rather to increase than otherwise, their progeny ever adding to the original number. There is no restriction as to the number of slaves or concubines which a Moor may have: it entirely depends upon his purse. His women are his luxury, and an expensive one. A concubine may be sold at any moment, and the position is thus precarious and varied: it has one saving clause, which I have already explained—the woman who bears a son to her master is free, and at his death his property will be divided between the sons of concubines equally with the sons of his wife and wives. Mussulman raids still continue against the negroes of Central Africa, against tribes in Persia, in Afghanistan, and other parts of the world; indeed, as long as Mohammedanism lasts, there is very little chance of the abolition of slavery.