Through Spain to the Sahara

by Matilda Betham-Edwards

From the court you enter the koubba itself. The cenotaph, which is of richly sculptured wood, lies under a dusky dome, only lighted by small panes of coloured glass. A blessed disciple and friend of the saint lies by his side.

But it is the beauty of the mosque that those who are not devotees at Sidi Bou Medin’s shrine, care most to look at. Here you see azulejos and artesonados as original in design and as perfect in finish as any in Grenada, and probably of the same period. The tiles of the three primary colours, red, yellow, and blue, within, the sculptured red tiles without, the sculptured porticoes and walls, are quite of the same style, and in no degree unequal to the finest Moorish work we had seen in Spain. There are intact some of those gorgeous inscriptions, historical and religious, such as crowd the seat of the Caliph in the mosque of Cordova, and I do not remember to have seen any defacement or dilapidation anywhere. The building is a perfect specimen of Moorish art, which is always simple where simplicity has its use, and always profuse of ornament, where ornament is in place. Take, for instance, the outer court where the Arabs perform their ablutions before prayer; there you have a marble basin, a floor of faïence in bright colours, all shut in by an airy arcade and overhead a bright blue sky. What could you add that would not spoil the purpose of the place?—a purifying place that ought to be unadorned. But within, where the devout man has the right to worship, having purified himself, flesh and spirit by the outward and visible sign as well as the inward and spiritual grace, the Mahomedan makes his temple magnificent for the one God and His Prophet. Neither wealth nor workmanship is spared, and the result is what we see, walls covered with ornamentation, most delicate both as to colour and design, pillars of jasper and onyx, arcades of lovely fret-work, the priestly seat or pulpit of cedar-wood richly sculptured—lavishness of labour and perfection of form and colour everywhere.

The ruins of Mansourah, once the rival of Tclemcen, lie about two miles off the town. It is now six centuries since this city was one vast congeries of palaces, public buildings, gardens, baths, hospitals, and mosques. Nothing remains now but ruined walls and the minaret, though these alone are quite sufficient to show what Mansourah once was.

Photographs might help you a little to imagine the place, but, having looked at them, you must shut your eyes and colour the minaret and the walls with richest, reddest ochre, you must clothe the hills in living green, fill the space between hill and sky with soft warm skies of southern blue, and then set the whole picture floating and palpitating in golden mist.

This minaret is unlike anything else in the whole world. It is like a gigantic monolith of solid Indian gold, and is as wonderful as the Pyramids. When you come closer you see what a ruin it is now, and what a splendour it once was; it has been cleft in two like a pomegranate. The construction is of a rich reddish-coloured tile, and these tiles are arranged in panels sculptured and coloured. Some of the colour remains wonderfully bright still, but the whole building would hardly stand the shock of an earthquake, I think. Looking at the inner side, you see the traces of inclined stairs by which mounted horsemen could ride to the top, and by dint of a little patience, you are able to master the original ground-plan of the place. The exquisite columns of jasper and marble have been removed to the museums of Tclemcen, Algiers, and Paris, where are also to be seen many beautiful mosaics, enamelled tiles, shafts, and pedestals.

Whilst sitting at the foot of this minaret and looking from one scene of ruin to another, we found some fragments of coloured glass, blue, green, amber and red, which alone sufficed to show how splendid the mosque must have been. We looked at these bits of broken glass which were brilliant as jewels, and from them to the half-buried portico and the shattered minaret; and gradually the past became vivid as a dream, the dry bones were covered with flesh, the flesh palpitated with happy life, and the city of Mansourah was young and fair and gay again!

But we did not live wholly in the Tclemcen of yesterday. There is quite a little Protestant colony here, and we found ourselves taking up threads of interests long laid aside, and here, in a remote corner of Africa, discussing all those questions dear to the well-wisher of the English Church. We talked naturally a good deal of the Arabs and discovered that we were in a nucleus of what French writers on Algerian affairs call Philo-Arabes. One gentleman, a German, I think, but of whatever nation a most intelligent person, worked himself into quite a passion of indignant eloquence.

“I assure you, Madame,” he said, “that much as I love Tclemcen, and well as my affairs are thriving here, I do not know how to stay. The treatment of the Arabs enrages me—who am a peaceable man—fifty times a-day. You will hear wherever you go that the Arab is a sensual, unprincipled wretch, given to slaying, stealing, and all kinds of vice. You must not believe half what you hear, Madame; I have lived long enough among the Arabs to know what they are, and this is what they are,—harmless, generous, patient, hospitable, religious; they are all this and often much more. If I go from Tclemcen to Oran, do you think I want a pistol? Madame, I need never bear the expense of going to an hotel; every Arab tent or house is open to me; at any man’s table I am welcome to a meal; his children will play with me; his own sons will tend or saddle my horse; at parting he will wring my hands and bid me come again.”

“We don’t hear such things from everyone,” we said.

“Ay, because you have doubtless had more talk with the soldier rather than the civilian, the ruler of the Arab than his fellow-man. But when a Colonel, or a Major, or a Chef du Bureau Arabe, tells you how wicked the Arabs are, and how necessary it is to beat them (leur donner coups de bâton), he does not tell you all the story, Madame. He does not tell you how there are some who make their fortune by bleeding the poor Arabs, and then go back to Paris to live grandly. He does not tell you how he administers justice, and that is worth your while to hear. I am a Chef du Bureau Arabe, so we will suppose, and I want something, no matter what,—a few jackal-skins for my wife’s drawing-room, a little money, sheep, horses, anything. What do I do? The Arabs have all these things, skins, money, cattle, so I call my Sheikhs together, and tell them what I want, and they get it: what do I care how? and then people wonder that the Arabs rob in their turn! I tell you, Madame, that the Arab is unfairly treated in every way, and that those who treat him so will suffer for it hereafter. He would assimilate with us if we would only let him. To-day, for instance, I met a friend of mine, an Arab who lives in Tclemcen, and I told him that I would bring some English travellers to see his pretty Moorish house. He was as delighted as if he had been a countryman of yours. ‘I will prepare a diffa (feast),’ he said; ‘there shall be a good cous-cous-son to regale your friends,’ and if you go, you will find him, in every sense, a gentleman—polished, kindly, and intelligent. Our boys play together. Do you suppose those young Bedouins will not be influenced by the companionship? If I were to leave Tclemcen to-morrow, there are some Arabs I should part from as from my brothers.”