The Emperor's favourite diversions, while here, are shooting and hunting, in both of which I am told he excels. He keeps a large pack of greyhounds, as fine as any I have seen in England. His pleasure-grounds, and park, in the vicinity of this town, abound in all kinds of game, hares, rabbits, and deer, and in wild boars and foxes.
LETTER XVI.
Courtship—Marriage—Funerals—Sabbath.
Mequinez.
I shall now give you an account of the manner in which the marriages are invariably negotiated and conducted in this country. A female, the confidential friend of the suitor, is dispatched to observe and report the beauty and accomplishments of the young lady; and when those are found to be perfectly adapted to the gentleman's taste, she is further delegated to sound his eulogium, and by every means, such as presenting her with valuable jewels, &c. to ingratiate him in the good opinion of the fair one. When this curious courtship ends, by terms being agreed upon, the destined bridegroom pays down a sum of money to the bride, a license is taken out from the Cadi, and the parties are married. I send you a description of a marriage-ceremony, at which I was present the other day.
The bridegroom (who is one of the officers of the household) came out of his house, attended by a vast number of his friends, and mounted one of the best horses belonging to the Emperor, most curiously and richly caparisoned. He carried his sword unsheathed, and was preceded by a splendid standard, and a band of music; he was followed by a kind of palanquin, supported on the shoulders of four stout black slaves, a detachment of cavalry firing off their pieces every minute, and a procession of relatives and friends, the whole moving with great mirth and jollity,
Before they reached the house of the bride, the cavalcade halted, and the bridegroom dismounted, assisted by his negro slaves, and knocked loudly at the door three times. The lady was brought out in a covered chair, attended by four women, completely muffled up. The whole party of the bridegroom turned their backs, and she was smuggled into the palanquin: they then returned in the same style to the house of her lord, where, before she was allowed to enter, he placed himself at the entrance, and extending his right arm across the door-way, she passed under, as an indication of her voluntary and unconditional submission to his will and pleasure.
After this ceremony, the bridegroom was obliged to retire to the house of his nearest relation, where he continued three days and nights, feasting, and receiving presents from all his male friends, while the bride was paid the same compliments by her female acquaintance. At the expiration of the appointed time, the gentleman returned to his own house.
The Moors are not allowed by their law more than four wives, but they may have as many concubines as they can maintain; accordingly, the wealthy Moors, besides their wives, keep a kind of seraglio of women of all colours.
From their marriages, I am insensibly led to the subject of the burial of their dead. Not that any idea strikes me of an analogy between the situations of a married person, and one consigned to the "narrow house," as Ossian poetically styles the grave; but from a certain succession of thought, for which one is at a loss to account. In the burial of their dead, they are decent and pious, without pomp or show. The corpse is attended by the relations and friends, chanting passages from the Koran, to the mosque, where it is washed, and it is afterwards interred in a place at some distance from the town, the Iman, or priest, pronouncing an oration, containing the eulogy of the deceased. The male relations express their regard by alms and prayers, the women by ornamenting the tomb with flowers and green leaves. Their term of mourning is the same as ours, twelve months, during which period the widows divest themselves of every ornament, and appear habited in the coarsest attire. Their burial-grounds are inclosed by cypress and other dark lofty trees, the lower parts of which are interwoven with odoriferous shrubs and creeping plants, forming an almost impenetrable hedge. Some of their tombs are very curious, though they exhibit specimens of the rudest architecture. There are also several saints' houses in their burying-places, which render them doubly sacred; and no Christian or Jew is suffered to enter, on pain of death.