So far as regards the manners, ideas, habits, and mode of living of the inhabitants, the changes are quite insignificant, save in so far as these are affected by a general decline in material prosperity. The central authority was at that period much weaker, and the separate tribes led a more independent existence. Amongst the Bereber people of the mountains, and even in many of the larger towns, such government as existed was ordinarily of the democratic type. Thus we read that in Tarudant four chiefs were elected to manage the affairs of the city, holding office for only six months at a time.
If it were possible to doubt the results of the establishment of a system of grinding despotism, administered by officials who enjoy practical impunity so long as they satisfy the pecuniary demands of their master, the pages of Leo Africanus bring ample evidence. It is, indeed, true that a slight improvement has ensued as regards internal tranquillity. There is now rather less of habitual turbulence; the mutual encounters between neighbouring tribes may be somewhat less frequent; and brigandage, which appears to have been not uncommon in the open country, is now comparatively rare. It may be doubted whether this advantage, such as it is, is not as much due to diminished population as to the successful administration of the Moorish Sultans.
On the other hand, there is overwhelming evidence of a general and progressive decline in prosperity. Throughout the southern provinces, and especially in Haha and Sous, Leo Africanus found numerous flourishing towns, most of them visited and described by him. In each one of these he found people living in comparative ease, inhabiting good houses with gardens, and possessing, according to the standard of the age, some literary education. From the towns, and even from the inner valleys of the Atlas, students flocked to Fez, then the head-quarters of Arabic knowledge and civilisation. All the principal places were then local centres of production, the artificers being principally Jews.
It is notable that excepting the city of Marocco, then full of a numerous and active population, none of the towns mentioned owed their foundation to the conquering race. Leo, not likely to detract from the achievements of his own people, expressly attributes the origin of most of them to the ‘antichi Africani,’ by which designation he commonly speaks of the primitive Bereber stock; and, as regards the smaller towns lying in the low country north of the Atlas, he frequently speaks of the population being harassed by the Arabs, then, as at this day, leading a semi-nomad existence in the plains.
If we confront his description with the present state of the country we find comparative ruin and desolation. In all the southern provinces we now find but two inland cities of any importance, Marocco and Tarudant, and these dwindled to a mere tithe of their ancient wealth and population. Where the traveller in the sixteenth century found thriving towns at intervals of ten or twelve miles, there are now miserable villages whose wretched inhabitants maintain a bare existence, and are often unable to pay the imposts which leave no surplus behind. It does not appear that in the great province of Haha there is now a single place that can be called a town except the ruined seaport of Agadir, destined by nature to be the chief port of South Marocco, but closed to trade by the caprice of a Sultan. Throughout the interior we saw or heard of but two places that could by courtesy be called towns, Amsmiz and Moulai Ibrahim. Although no statistics are available, it seems a moderate estimate if we reckon that the present population of South Marocco cannot exceed one-third of what it was when Leo wrote.
Along with the decay of wealth and population, we naturally find that of everything that could raise the people in the scale of existence. In Leo’s day iron and copper mines were worked in many places in the Atlas, and various handicrafts exercised, of which there is now no trace. Education, such as it was, was widely spread; and in some parts of the Atlas where it was absent, the traveller noted the fact as a proof of the low condition of the population. He notes as a curious incident that when he visited the mountain district of Semele, where the people were ignorant of reading and writing, they forced him to remain nine days, hearing and deciding all pending cases of litigation; in doing which, as he records, he had to act both as judge and notary, there being no one competent to write down the decisions of the court.
Several incidental statements in the work of Leo Africanus suggest an inquiry of considerable interest. There is nothing in the published annals of the Portuguese wars with the Moors to suggest a belief that the former at any time established their authority in the interior of South Marocco, or even undertook any inland expeditions. From Leo’s narrative it appears, however, that, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, they had, at least occasionally, penetrated much farther into the interior than has commonly been supposed, and that the authority of the Portuguese king was in some places paramount. At Tumeglast, a place in the plain of Marocco, probably not far from the present village of Frouga, Leo lodged in the house with a Moor, named Sidi Yehie, who had come in the name of the king of Portugal to levy tribute, the same Moor having been made by the king chief (capitano) of the district of Azasi. Elsewhere he relates that the king of Marocco sent an expeditionary force against an independent chief in the district of Hanimmei, forty miles east of the city of Marocco (apparently in the present province of Demnet), and which force was accompanied by 300 Portuguese cavalry. The expedition was unsuccessful, the Sultan’s troops were defeated, and, according to the narrative, not one of the Christian horsemen returned from the disaster. It seems highly improbable that the Portuguese should have taken part in such an affair if their troops had not at the time been stationed somewhere in the interior.
After Leo Africanus but little of a definite kind is to be learned from subsequent writers as to the geography of South Marocco. In 1791 the reigning Sultan applied to General O’Hara, then Governor of Gibraltar, for the assistance of an English physician to treat his favourite son, Mouley Absalom, who was at the time governing the province of Sous. Mr. Lempriere, an army-surgeon, undertook the office, and travelled by the west coast to Agadir, and thence to Tarudant. After successfully treating his patient, he was partly induced, and partly forced, to travel to the city of Marocco, whence, after considerable delay and difficulty, he succeeded in returning to Gibraltar. Mr. Lempriere probably travelled across the Atlas by the road from Tarudant to Imintanout, but his narrative supplies little information to the geographer. He speaks of the distance from Tarudant to the northern foot of the Atlas as an easy journey of three days, and describes the track as leading beneath and along tremendous precipices.
Frequent reference is made in the text to Jackson’s ‘Account of the Empire of Marocco,’ of which the first edition appeared in 1809, and the third in 1814. This is undoubtedly the fullest and most correct modern work on Southern Marocco. Jackson spent sixteen years in the country, chiefly at Mogador and Agadir; he acquired the familiar use of the Moorish Arabic, and seems to have obtained merited influence among the natives. Either because he had but little taste for exploration, or because he found the difficulties too serious, Jackson has added little to our knowledge of the geography of the country. His map, though it contains some corrections, is on the whole inferior to that of Chénier, published a century earlier.
A definite contribution to the slight existing amount of positive knowledge was made by the late Admiral Washington, then a lieutenant in the navy, who accompanied the late Sir J. Drummond Hay on his mission to the city of Marocco in the winter of 1829-1830. His paper, published in the first volume of the ‘Journal of the Royal Geographical Society,’ is frequently referred to in our text; and in the accompanying map the positions of several points in the interior of the country were accurately laid down from astronomical observation.