[1]Abd el Saddock was the father of Hadj Hamara, the Kaïd of Mogador, by whom we were hospitably entertained soon after our arrival. The father appears to have cumulated important offices to an extent now rare, if not unknown, in Marocco. As the Sultan’s hold over the province of Sous is very feeble, and limited to the occasional receipt of tribute, there is no resident Kaïd, but the title is given to any official sent, pro hâc vice, to represent the Sultan. But the provinces of Duquallah and Abda, like the rest of the settled country, are ordinarily administered by resident governors.
[2]The same of whom the first story is related above.
APPENDIX K.
On the Shelluh Language.
By John Ball.
Jackson in his ‘Account of Marocco’ refers to the opinion of Marmol, that the Shelluhs of Marocco and the Berebers (Kabyles) of Algeria speak the same language, as altogether incorrect, and positively affirms, on the contrary, that these languages are quite distinct. In proof of this assertion, he gives a short list of Shelluh words or short phrases, with the Bereber equivalents of most of them, and concludes, from the differences between these, that the languages are profoundly, if not radically, different. A comparison of this kind is so notoriously misleading that no importance would have been attached to the conclusion derived from it, were it not for the fact that Jackson was well acquainted with the Shelluh language, probably better than any other European has since been; and that although not versed in comparative philology, a science not yet come into existence in his time, he was a man of good general intelligence who seems to have had frequent occasion to compare the two languages.
The first person who was able to speak on the subject with any authority was Venture de Paradis, a man of remarkable linguistic attainments, who died prematurely while accompanying the French Syrian Expedition in 1799. His grammar and vocabulary of the Bereber language were not published until 1844, and his conclusions were not until then made known to the world. It appears that in the year 1788 two Shelluhs, one a native of Haha, the other from Sous, went to Paris. Notwithstanding the difficulty of communicating with men who possessed no written language, Venture de Paradis contrived to obtain from them a list of Shelluh words and short phrases. He was very soon after attached to a mission sent to Algiers, where he was detained for more than a year. He made acquaintance with two Kabyles, theological students, at Algiers, and, finding that his list of Shelluh words corresponded very nearly with the Kabyle equivalents, he devoted himself to the study of the Kabyle dialect of the Bereber tongue, and prepared the grammar and dictionary which remained for more than half a century unpublished. It might be sufficient to refer the reader to the judgment of so competent an authority; but a slight examination of the subject has afforded such confirmation to the conclusions of Venture de Paradis as seems to place them beyond the reach of controversy.
It must be remarked in the first place that, from the want of sacred books or other written records among the races of the Bereber stock, there is no one of the many dialects spoken by them that can be taken as the classical standard to which others may be compared. French writers in treating of what they style ‘la langue Berbère’ usually mean the Kabyle, spoken by most of the mountain tribes of Algeria. The same language, with dialectic differences, is used by many tribes of the Sahara; but throughout the larger part of the vast region lying between the southern borders of Algeria and Marocco and the Soudan, the prevailing tongue, though unquestionably belonging to the Bereber family, deserves to rank as a distinct language from the Kabyle. A slight examination of the latter shows that it has been largely adulterated by contact with the Arab population, who from an early period have ruled the open country and carried on all commercial intercourse; while the characteristic grammatical features have been in many respects obscured or effaced. On the other hand, it appears from a recent publication by General Faidherbe[1] that the dialect spoken at the south-western limit of the Bereber races, adjoining the river Senegal, while preserving the chief Bereber grammatical characteristics, has undergone much etymological alteration, whether from contact with the Negro tribes, or from inherent causes. As far as the available materials enable us to form a judgment, it seems clear that the best living representative of the Bereber language is that spoken by the Touarecks of the Great Desert, and especially by the great tribes, the Azguer and Ahaggar, who occupy between them a territory measuring at least half a million of square miles. Of this, which is properly called Tamashek’, a grammar was published by General Hanoteau in 1860, and another by Mr. Stanhope Freeman in 1862. The Tamashek’ is distinguished from the other languages of the same family by the greater regularity and completeness of its grammatical system, by the comparative absence of Arab words, of which the Kabyle shows a large infusion; but especially by the possession of a system of writing, rude, indeed, and imperfect, but not known to any other branch of the Bereber stock. This privilege has not led to the growth of a national literature; the written characters are used only for rock inscriptions, for mottoes on shields, and occasionally for verses on festive occasions; but their use is widely spread among men of the higher class, and still more among the women, and, however restricted, has doubtless tended to give comparative fixity to the language.
Of the Shelluh tongue the materials available are, indeed, very scanty. The most considerable document is contained in the ninth volume of the ‘Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society,’ where Mr. Francis Newman has given a literal Latin version of a story written in Arabic characters by a native of South Marocco. It would require far more knowledge of the Shelluh language and familiarity with Arabic writing than I possess to enter on any examination of that document; and there is the further difficulty that the natives who learn to write their own language in Arabic characters are usually those who also acquire the Arabic language, and in so doing learn to adopt Arabic phrases and forms of speech. In the following table I have introduced all the Shelluh words given by Jackson and Washington, of which I have been able to find equivalents in Kabyle or Tamashek’, and have endeavoured to adopt a uniform mode of orthography. The vowels are intended to have the sounds to which they correspond in most European languages, and not those peculiar to England. Th and sh have nearly the same sounds as in English; gh before e or i has the hard sound; and r’ indicates the peculiar sound intermediate between the guttural and the ordinary r, which European travellers indicate sometimes by r, and sometimes by gh. In several instances synonyms are given in brackets.