Here and there you find a Tangerine with a cigar in his mouth; but then you may be sure he is a worthless fellow and has learnt the vice from the ‘Nazarenes.’ Tobacco is much used in the form of snuff, and the snuff of the town of Tetuan is deservedly famed for its pungent flavour.
‘Ahel tanbakko lil Jinnats yasbakko’ is a Moorish doggerel couplet meaning, ‘Snuff-takers enter heaven first.’ This may be said to reconcile many a snuff-taker to his box of vice, whereas those who do not so indulge take the proverb in another sense as inferring that the snuff-takers have a short life.
The Moor takes his snuff as we Highlanders do; not in a pinch, but by laying it along the hollow of the back of his thumb. Very small cocoa-nut shells, having a narrow ivory mouth-piece, form the usual style of box, to which is attached by a small chain an ivory pin to stir up the snuff, which is jerked through the orifice. But I am growing tiresome, and though snuff may keep the attention awake, it will not do so, I fear, when taken in this manner and in so plentiful a dose.
You ask about the Jews in this country; much may be said, and I will endeavour in subsequent letters to tell you all I know. They are a sadly degraded race, full of bigotry and superstition, but retaining their activity, cunning, and love for each other, together with an extraordinary firmness in their belief—for which, indeed, these persecuted people have been always famed in every clime.
The Jew of Morocco, next to the Negro in the West Indies and America, is the most persecuted and degraded of God’s creatures. In Tangier and the seaport towns, through the Christian Representatives, the Jews have ever received a certain indirect countenance and support, but in the interior their fate is a very hard one.
The subject of the Jews in Morocco was one that greatly interested Mr. Hay. In subsequent notes and letters, as the following extracts show, he redeemed his promise to Mr. Gordon. Thus he writes:—
With respect to the Jews, I have knowledge of there being a population of about four or five thousand in the Atlas mountains beyond the city of Marákesh, and they are said to have lived there ever since the time of Solomon.
These Jews are armed, but are not independent; each Jewish family having its Moorish master, or protector. In the feuds of the Moors in the mountainous regions they take part and, by their active and warlike life, acquire a far more independent spirit than their brethren of the seaport towns and of the capitals. There is some tradition about their Rabbis possessing a document containing the signet of Joab, who was sent to collect tribute from them in the time of the son of David.
In 1844 there still existed an ancient inscription in Hebrew graven on a stone in the Dra country, which was said to be as follows: עד כאן הגיץ יואב בן צרויה לקבל המס which is interpreted thus, ‘So far as this place came Joab Ben (son of) Serruia to receive the tribute.’
Joab, chief of the army of King David, is called in the recognised translation of the Bible ‘the son of Zeruiah.’