A body of secretaries come after the ministers, who write and dispatch the Sultan's decrees to distant cities, where their letters are read aloud in the mosques to the people by the governors. A special body of messengers is employed under the secretaries.
Each district and city has its kaid or basha (its governor), whose duty is to read the Sultan's letter aloud and carry out his instructions, who oversees the city market, prices food, detects false weight, deals with robbers and murderers, and sees that the peace is kept.
As well as basha every city has its kadi, or judge of civil law, who settles all questions of land, of grants, divorces, etc.
We visited the Court of Civil Justice at Tetuan, a tiny room, carpeted with yellow matting, where the white-haired kadi, attired in white, sat like a magnificent white rabbit on a large red cushion on the floor, beside him a table six inches high, with learned-looking books, ink, parchment, and thin slips of wood for pens.
Below the basha or kaid come sheikhs (village elders), who may be called gentlemen farmers. They collect the taxes directly from the country people. A province is taxed according to what it produces: no one pays the sum demanded of him, nor at the time it is demanded, but eventually every householder in the district is judiciously squeezed to the uttermost farthing, and half of what he pays goes into the sheikh's pocket.
Morocco conceals its wealth in times of visitations such as these: money and corn alike are buried in the ground. Some of the people are imprisoned, some tortured, and eventually all disgorge, and are left with barely enough for their every-day wants.
It is a system typical of the East and its slipshod, rough-and-ready dealings: its great element of simplicity harks back to a life in tents, where red tape was unknown.
The highest officials are in the habit of transacting business at their street doors or in their stables: the basha invariably sits in some gateway near his house, hearing and judging matters which two or three gesticulating claimants explain to him. Private matters are public property: the man in the street chats with the Minister of Finance—for are not all men equal? The minister may have sold groceries at one time, before he was called upon to fill a position at Court. Who can tell what a day may not bring forth?
The Sultan—who is known as "The Lofty Portal, the Exalted of God, the Noble Presence"—has a body of servants and retainers round him: first of all "The Learned Ones," men who advise him, but make a point of ascertaining his wishes before they give an opinion, and are of no use at all except in conducting negotiations; next the officer who carries the great pearl-and-gold-embroidered parasol over his head; next an officer who flicks away flies; then a master of ceremonies, a headsman, a flogger, a shooter, a water-bearer, a tent-layer, a tea-maker, a standard-bearer, and a "taster" to see that no poison is given.
More closely connected than any of these with the Sultan is of course his harem, of both black and white women, who have been honoured by admission into the much-sought-after precincts. Some of them are Circassians, supplied by Constantinople: all are the best which money can buy, or ease and position tempt. When their numbers have been greatly swelled, certain of them are drafted on as presents to kaids and bashas.