We used to divide our days between the Arab village of Sidi Bou Medin and the mines of Mansooua.
The way to Sidi Bou Medin lies amid one vast cemetery called the Mokbara, where the Tclemcenites have been buried for hundreds of years. A French guide-book has this remark upon the horrible condition of this cemetery,—“Ici s’amoncellent depuis des siècles les tombes des Tclemcéniens; le temps les a peu respectés:” but is it time alone that has so mishandled the dead?
There was hardly a spot where time (or the road-maker?) had not laid bare some skeleton, and in some places the bones lay in heaps. Some pretty little Marabouts lie scattered about these acres of grave-yard, and near one we saw a ragged Bedouin at afternoon prayer. The kneeling man, the white temple peeping amid olive-trees, the long lines of the cemetery, the yellow evening light bathing all, made a touching picture. The dry bones preached to us. We thought of the Moors driven thither from Spain, and of the sad hearts they brought into exile.
The village of Sidi Bou Medin covers a hill terrace-wise, and is overtopped by a graceful minaret. It has a gracious and sunny aspect, with its hanging gardens of myrtle, and orange, and pomegranate, its running streams, its vineyards and olive-groves, its shining white domes and minarets. Not a French element has entered the place; and when we had climbed the precipitous shady path and entered the court of the great Mosque, we felt as far from France as if Abd-el-Kader’s dream of a new Mahomedan dynasty at Tclemcen were realised, and the Nureddin was summoning, not Bedouins and beggars only, but turbaned princes and rulers to prayer.
Sidi Bou Medin, from whom the village is called, was a great saint, and his tomb (koubba) is considered the sight to see, it being very richly decorated with draperies of cloth and gold, ostrich’s eggs set in silver, chains and amulets of gold and beads, arabesques, mirrors in mother-of-pearl frames, lustres and lamps. To enter this koubba, you first descend into a little court, around which runs a graceful arcade supported on pillars of onyx; the panels are decorated with inscriptions, and hung with cages of singing birds, and the whole place is wonderfully rich and fantastic.
The Arabs heap up wealth on the shrines of their favourites with a zeal unequalled by Romanists, however fervent, and Bou Medin is the favourite saint here. There are many strange, touching, and also—for even saints have humour—comic stories about him. He was born in Spain, and was brought up, first to arms, then to the profession of science; but, after many wanderings to Cordova, to Bagdad, to Mecca, to Constantine, came to Tclemcen, finding it, as he said, “a place in which the eternal sleep must be sweet,” where he died with these noble words on his lips,—“God alone is the Eternal Truth.”
His life, as are all the lives of Mahomedan saints, was meditative and active, miraculous and ordinary, and abounds in legends. He could read the most secret thoughts of men, in testimony of which the Arabs tell this story:—“A certain Sheikh was angry with his wife, and wishing to be separated from her, without feeling quite sure that he had reasonable grounds for doing so, went one day without saying a word to anybody to consult Sidi Bou Medin. Hardly, however, had he entered the room when the Marabout looking at him, called out sharply,—
“‘Fear God, and don’t put away your wife!’
“Of course the Sheikh was at a loss to understand how the saint came to quote the Koran so à propos, to which Sidi Bou Medin replied,—
“‘When you came in, I saw, as it were, the words of the Koran written on your person, and I guessed at once what was in your mind.’”