Benabu was the best Governor I have known during the forty years I was at Tangier. Under his iron but just rule, murder, robbery, and even theft became unknown after the first year of his government. He made terrible examples of all criminals.
Cattle-lifting was, and still is, a common practice throughout Morocco. On his first appointment as Basha he sent the public crier, on a market-day when the mountaineers and peasantry flock in to make their purchases, to proclaim that the severest punishment would be inflicted on robbers or other criminals.
He kept his word, for the next market-day two cattle-lifters, caught red-handed, were brought before him. After hearing the evidence, they were severely bastinadoed. Benabu had caused an iron brand to be prepared with the letter س (‘sin’), the first of the word ‘sarak’ meaning robber. On the forehead, just above and between the eyebrows, these robbers were marked with the hot brand.
Their property was seized and confiscated, and after issuing a fresh proclamation that any criminal who had been branded, would, on a second conviction of crime, have his hand or foot or both amputated, according to circumstances, Benabu liberated the robbers, and reported his proceedings to the Sultan, making known to H.S.M. that he had found on his appointment murders, robberies, and crime of all kinds prevailed, and that there was no security for life or property outside the walls of Tangier, and he requested the Sultan’s authority to cut off the hand or foot of any person branded with the ‘Sin,’ who was again convicted of a murder or robbery with violence.
The Sultan approved of his conduct, and complied with the request.
Six months after the branding of the two robbers, one of them was caught, having robbed some cattle and wounded the herd in charge.
The delinquent, stripped to the waist, was mounted on the back of a donkey. The animal was led through the principal streets and market-place; two soldiers followed with the bastinado, which is a rope of twisted leather about four feet long. The lash was applied every twenty paces to the back of the prisoner, who was compelled to proclaim his crimes in a loud voice. He was then taken off the donkey in the middle of the market-place, where a fire was lit, and on it an earthen pot stood filled with boiling pitch.
A butcher, the first the soldiers could lay hands on, was seized, and ordered to sever a right hand and left foot.
The unfortunate butcher remonstrated in vain. The condemned man was laid on the ground, his hands were untied; the right hand was taken off at the joint, and the stump plunged into the pot of pitch to stop hemorrhage and prevent gangrene.
The left foot was amputated in the same manner. Charitable bystanders carried off the victim to a small house in the town called ‘Morstan[36],’ where paupers seek shelter at night. There he was provided with food and water for some months. He recovered, and could be seen crawling about the streets or sitting at the gate of the town, begging[37].