In the Tail of the Peacock

by Isabel Savory

No doubt the original motive of fasting and abstinence in the Old Testament was the promotion of sanitary conditions. It is not good to eat pig in hot countries: thus pork was "unclean," and is to-day in Morocco. Nor is the consumption of much spirituous liquor wise when the thermometer marks a hundred and one: hence the Korān forbids the use of strong drinks. The same motive underlies the fast, which rests and relieves systems over-fattened and little exercised. But the "all or nothing" theory which governs the uneducated and knows no moderation runs a benefit into an abuse. Rámadhan had its disadvantages. Tetuan was revelling at night and in a sodden sleep through the day; work was slipshod and at sixes and sevens; men were irritable and quarrelsome; every one looked indisposed; and the excuse for it all was always Rámadhan. Worst of all, the countrywomen still tramped four and five hours into market with loads, and children a month old, only half nourished at the time of the fast.

But Rámadhan came to an end at last: Morocco breathed again. The day before the fast was over everybody was smiling, and Tetuan had but one hope, that the new moon would be seen that night, and thus the month of penance come to an end. After the letter from Tangier had been received next morning, which said that the new moon had been seen there, the gun from the fort thundered, the basha went in gorgeous state to the Jama-el-Kebeer (Big Mosque) on a white mule, all caparisoned in blue, and read aloud the letter, the city was uproarious, and the mountains echoed again, for soldiers were sent post-haste up the valleys, and fired all day at intervals to notify to the fathermost villages that Rámadhan was over.

And the next day! The first day of the Aid-el-Sereer (Little Feast)! Everybody was in shining white, if not new, apparel, and all Tetuan was abroad. That among a people clad so largely in white and in gorgeous colours means a great deal, and the streets of Tetuan might have competed with the Park on the Sunday before Ascot. The Moorish crowd was almost entirely a male one, dressed like peacocks: satins embroidered with gold and silver prevailed.

And if the snowy haiks and turbans and the resplendent shades of the kaftans were the first point about the feast, the sweetmeat stalls were the second. A Moor is a born sweet-tooth, and at every corner of the streets a board was stacked with creamy mixtures in which walnuts were embedded, with generously browned toffee full of almonds, with carmine-coloured sticks, with magenta squares of sweet peppermint, with blocks of nougat inches thick. And the joys of the feast seemed amply to compensate for the fast.

Mohammed ordained many minor feasts and fasts. Rámadhan stands out chief of the one: Aid-el-Kebeer (Great Feast), falling two months and six days afterwards, is chief of the other.

The three reforms which Mohammed instituted were temperance, cleanliness, and monotheism, at a time when reform was badly needed. He was born in Mecca five hundred and seventy years after Christ, an Arab of the tribe of Beni Has`sim. Christianity was not unknown around him in his day.

Always somewhat of a visionary and introspective turn of mind, when he was about forty years old he became deeply interested in the subject of religion. Living in the imaginative East, in a hotbed of mysticism and superstition, it was easy for him to conceive himself a chosen vessel of the Almighty, and to assume by degrees the rôle of prophet, in the honest belief that the words he uttered came direct from that God whose mouthpiece he conceived himself to be. A small band of followers by degrees collected round him, and in the ordinary course of events his end would have been that of a saint with a tombstone white; but, added to the saint's fanaticisms, Mohammed possessed the talents of a leader, and the ambition which accompanies those talents.

Men and more men were attracted to him; he instituted among them a ceremonial of prayer, feasts, and fasts, and built a mosque at Medina, in which they worshipped. Persecution from their fellow-countrymen followed as a matter of course, and Mohammed's disciples, who began to call themselves Mohammedans, turned to him as their chief. The one "able man," he naturally assumed the position of a theocratic ruler, and led them against their enemies; while the words he spoke were committed to memory, constituting later on the Korān.

As a general Mohammed was successful: battle after battle was fought and won, reverses were amply compensated for, and men flocked to his standard, while deputations from surrounding tribes poured in upon him, acknowledging his supremacy, and asking for instruction in his creed.

That creed was admirably adapted to suit the manners, opinions, and vices of the East: it was extraordinarily simple, it proposed but few truths in which belief was necessary, and it laid no severe restraints upon the natural desires of men; above all, its warlike tendencies captivated the men of its day, and war, which at first had been necessary in self-defence, was still carried on, and gradually came to be looked upon by Mohammed and his followers as a lawful means towards spreading their religion. In the name of a Holy War the conquerors offered their defeated enemies the option of death or embracing the new religion, while the women and children taken in battle were sold as slaves, after the manner of the time.