Sockna is situated midway between Mourzuk and Tripoli, and is about fourteen days from the former. The inhabitants are Moors, and, besides Arabic, speak a Berber dialect. Sockna is celebrated for its fine sweet dates, called kothraee; and there is abundance of every kind of this fruit. A considerable quantity of grain is sown—wheat and barley—and the gardens abound with peaches. The town of Honn, distant about two hours from this place, is nearly as large, and also surrounded with gardens.
Wady Gharby, and Es-Shaty, have already been described. In the sands between these two places are situated the celebrated natron lakes, in which that miraculous dud ("worm") spontaneously appears at certain seasons of the year, and is eaten as people in Europe eat sardines—to sharpen the appetite. The natron is also a source of profitable exportation. Wady Sharky almost exactly resembles Wady Gharby, in population and natural features.
Sharkeeah, besides some insignificant places, includes the interesting ancient capital called Zoueelah, whence the name of Zoilah is given by the Tibboos to all Fezzan. Half the population of this place consists of Shereefs, and there are indeed great and increasing numbers of this class of persons throughout the whole country.
Ghatroun includes, with Tajerby the most southern place of Fezzan, three small towns. The inhabitants are all black, speaking the Tibbooese and Bornouese languages, and very little Arabic. The other nine districts above enumerated contain a mixed race, like the population of Mourzuk; but some of the northern towns are inhabited by people of purer blood, with comparatively fair complexions.
Mourzuk itself, the seat of the Pashalic,—distant about four hundred and twenty miles from Tripoli, in a straight line, and five hundred, counting the sinuosities of the road, viâ Benioleed, Bonjem, and Sockna,—is a rising town, becoming daily more salubrious by the improvements made since the residence of the Turks here, and the subjection of the inhabitants to a more orderly and powerful government than they had been accustomed to. The British Consul, Mr. Gagliuffi, has rendered important aid to the administration, in embellishing the appearance of Mourzuk, and giving it the air and character of a Turkish city of the coast. Our camel-drivers pretend that it is already superior to Tripoli. At the Consul's suggestion a colonnade has been built in the main street, in front of the shops, affording shelter from the fiery rays of the summer sun, as well as being an agreeable place for the natives to lounge under and make their purchases. He was also the principal promoter of the erection of new barracks for the troops, and the appropriation of a large house as a hospital for the poor. His last improvement is the plantation of a garden of the choice fruit-trees and vegetables of the coast; and his example has been imitated by the Bim Bashaw, commandant of the troops, who is now laying out a garden in a conspicuous part of the city.
Since the departure of Abd-el-Galeel with his Arab followers, the Walad Suleiman, for the neighbourhood of Bornou, the province of Fezzan has certainly enjoyed profound tranquillity. But on account of heavy taxation, high customs' dues, and other clogs to free commerce, the people are sinking deeper and deeper into poverty and wretchedness, and, except in the capital, there is a general retrograde movement. The Ottoman yoke is a peculiarly heavy one; it keeps the people in order, but it crushes them; and perhaps the Fezzanees may now regret somewhat the wholesome anarchy that distinguished the Arab chieftain's reign.
As I have said, the entire population of the ten districts of Fezzan is, according to the last Turkish census, only about twenty-six thousand souls, of whom about eleven thousand are males, including the children. The disproportion of the sexes arises in part from the number of female slaves, in part from the emigration of the men to the commercial countries of the interior, either for temporary gain, or permanently to escape from the grinding weight of taxation.
The whole amount of revenue collected by the Government is estimated at fifty thousand mahboubs per annum. Twenty-three thousand of these are raised by direct taxation, whilst the remainder is produced by customs' dues and the date-palm groves, which are the property of Government.
The military force by which the Turks hold possession of this vast but thinly-peopled territory—stretching north and south twenty-one days' journey, or about three hundred miles—is the very inconsiderable number of six hundred and thirty men. The garrison of Mourzuk itself consists of four hundred and thirty men, of whom about one-half are Fezzanees, twenty or thirty Turks, and the residue Arabs or Moors. The remaining three hundred are Arab cavaliers, living chiefly on their own means, and changed every year, who serve as a flying corps, or mounted police, for all the districts of Fezzan. The rate of pay for this latter class is one kail of wheat and half a mahboub per month for those who have no horses, and one kail of dates additional for those who are mounted. This division, however, is fastidious at present, as all those on service in Fezzan are now possessed of horses. In the whole regency of Tripoli there are but six hundred and sixty of these Arab soldiers; but in Bonjem and the Syrtis they are not cavalry, and the detachment at Ghadamez is mixed.[3] I am afraid these janissaries are obliged to commit spoliations in the towns and districts where they are stationed to avoid starvation.
I visited the barracks of Mourzuk, and found them to be commodious, and apparently salubrious. The good living of these stationary troops surprised me. They have meat and excellent soup everyday, with rice and biscuit. The Fezzanee is never so well fed and well clothed and lodged as when he is a soldier. Indeed the men seem too well off, in comparison with their former state and with the rest of the population. Nevertheless, they are glad to escape when the time of their service expires. The people all dread being made soldiers: so that Government is compelled to resort to the most paltry tricks to get recruits. Men are often unjustly charged with theft or debt, and put in prison, and then let out as a favour to be enlisted, or sometimes are clapped into the ranks at once. Youths have been seized as soldiers for kicking up the dust in front of a sentinel and dirtying his clothes. I remarked the number of soldiers that were black, and the Bim Bashaw observed that he hoped the time would come when there would not be a white private left in Mourzuk. The Turks manage to do with twenty or thirty of their own people, mostly officers, in this garrison; but, by one method or another, get as many Fezzanee recruits as they want.