CHAPTER XII.
Once through the olive groves of Tamasluoght, the city of Yusuf-ibn-Tachfin [263] lay glistening on the plain, almost hull down on the horizon. Above the forests of tall date palms which fringe the town, the tall mosque towers rose, the Kutubieh and the minaret of Sidi Bel Abbas high above the rest. From the green gardens of the Aguedal the enormous stone-built pile of the Sultan’s palace, all ornamented with fine marbles brought from Italy and Spain, towered like a desert-built Gibraltar over the level plain. Across the sea-like surface of the steppe long trains of camels, mules, and men on foot crawled, looking like streams of ants converging on a giant ant-hill, whilst in the distance the huge wall-like Atlas towering up, walled the flat country in, as the volcanoes seem to cut off Mexico from the world outside. The situation of Morocco city much resembles that of Mexico, which has a pseudo-Oriental look, the flat-roofed houses and the palm trees completing the effect.
A hot three hours, kicking our tired beasts along, brought us outside the city walls, and passing underneath the gate, which zig-zags like an old Scottish bridge, we emerged into the sandy lanes running between orange gardens, which form a kind of suburb of the town, and where the Soudanese, the men from Draa and the Wad Nun, do mostly congregate. No one would ever think, from the aspect of the lanes, unpaved and broken into holes by winter rains, that he was actually inside a city which is supposed to cover almost as much ground as Paris. It took us almost three-quarters of an hour to ride from the outside walls to the centre of the town. We passed through narrow lanes where camels jammed us almost to the wall; along the foot-paths beggars sat and showed their sores; dogs, yellow, ulcerous and wild as jackals, skulked between our horses’ legs. At last we came out on an open space under the tower of the Kutubieh, in which square a sort of market was in progress, and a ring of interested spectators sat, crouched, and stood, intent upon a story-teller’s tale. I sat a moment listening on my horse, and heard enough to learn the story was after the style of the Arabian Nights, but quite unbowdlerised and suitable for Oriental taste.
A certain prince admired a beauteous dame, but an old Sultan (always the wicked baronet of Eastern tales) desired her for his harem, and engaged a certain witch, of whom there were great store throughout his territory, to cast a spell upon the prince, so that the lady should fall into a dislike of him. He, on his part, resorted to a wizard who stirred the ladies of the Sultan’s harem up to play strange pranks and turn the palace upside down, let young men in o’nights, stay out themselves too late, and generally comport themselves in a discreditable way. A faithful slave at last made all things right, and after a most realistic love scene the prince and princess were married and lived happy ever after; or, as the story-teller, a sad moralising wag, remarked, until the prince should take another wife. Humanity, when crushed together in the heat, either in London ball-rooms or in waste places in Morocco city, sends up a perfume which makes one regret that the cynical contriver of the world endowed us with a nose. Therefore I waited but a little and rode on, turning occasionally to take a look at the great mosque and the tall dusty tower. The outside of the mosque, the name of which in Arabic means Mosque of the Books, from the word Kitab, a book, is not imposing. What it is inside I believe no Christian knows. Had I that moment, dressed as I was, sunburned and dirty, got off and entered it, I might have seen, but the thought did not cross my mind, and afterwards, when known for a European, it might have cost my life. The tower springs straight from the sandy square as the Giralda rises from the level of the street in Seville. One man built both, so runs tradition, and certainly the Kutubieh tower to-day reminds one greatly of the description of the Giralda when San Fernando drove out the Moorish king of Seville, and planted the banner with the Castles of Castille above the town. The same gilt globes, of which the Spanish speak, are on the Moorish tower, and the same little cupola which the Christians took away in Seville, replacing it by a renaissance “fleche,” upon which stands the towering figure cast by Bartolomé Morel. The tower, almost three hundred feet in height, is built of dark-red stone, with the alternating raised and sunk patterns (called in Spanish Ajaracas) cut deeply or standing boldly out from the solid masonry. At one time tile work filled most of the patterns, or was embroidered round the edges of the windows, but neglect and time have made most of it drop away. Still, just below the parapet runs a broad band, which from the square appears to be full four feet broad, of the most wonderful black and green hidescent tiles I ever saw. When Fabir, who, tradition says, built it for the Sultan El Mansur, and it stood glorious, adorned with tiles like those which still remain, the gilding fresh upon the great brass balls, even the mosque at Cordoba itself could not have been more glorious, and El Mansur could not have easily foreseen that on his lonely tomb under the palm trees, beside the river at Rabat, goats would browse and shepherds play their pipes. Allah, Jehovah, all the Gods are alike unmindful of their worshippers, who made and gave them fame; what more may the contrivers of the Crystal Palace and the gasometers at Battersea expect, when they have had their day? Medina, Mellah, Kaiserieh, Sidi Bel Abbas, the tomb of Mulai Abdul Azis, all have been described so many times and by such serious and painstaking writers, who have apparently measured, re-measured, and calculated the cubic capacity of every building in Morocco city, that it would have been a work of supererogation on my part to have laid a measuring tape once more on any of them.
Morocco city struck me, and has always done so, for I have been there twice, as the best example of a purely African city I have seen. Fez has the mixture of Spanish blood in its inhabitants which the expulsed from Malaga, Granada, and from all the Andalos, brought and disseminated. In the high houses, which make the streets like sewers to walk in, you hear men play the lute, and women sing the Malagueña, Caña and the Rondeña as in mountain towns in Spain. Quite half the population have fair hair, some pale blue eyes, and their fanaticism is born of ancient persecution by the fanatic Christians of Spain. In every house, in every mosque, in almost every saint’s tomb is fine tile work, stone and wood carving, the eaves especially being often as richly decorated as they had been Venetian and not African. The streets are thronged, men move quickly through them and the whole place is redolent of aristocracy, of a great religious class, in fact has all the air of what in Europe we call a capital.
Morocco city is purely African, negroes abound; the streets are never full, even in the kaiserieh [267] you can make your way about. With the exception of the Kutubieh Tower, and some fine fountains, notably that with the inscription “Drink and admire” (Shrab-u-Schuf) inscribed upon it, and the fine gate of the Kasbah of the best period of Moorish work, there is no architecture. Sand, sand, and more sand in almost every street, in the vast open spaces, in the long winding narrow lanes, outside the walls up to the city gates; sand in your hair, your clothes, the coats of animals. Streets, streets, and still more streets of houses in decay. Yellow adobe walls, dazzling white roofs and dense metallic semi-tropical vegetation shrouding the heaps of yellowish decaying masonry. No noise, the footfalls of the mules and camels falling into the sand as rain falls into the sea, with a soft swishing sound.
The people all are African, men from the Draa, the Sus, the Sahara, Wad Nun and the mysterious sandy steppes below Cape Bojador. Arabs are quite in the minority, and the fine types and full grey beards of aged Sheikhs one sees so frequently in Fez exchanged for the spare Saharowi type, or the shaved lip and cheeks and pointed chin tufts of the Berber race. Tom-tom and gimbry are their chief instruments, together with the Moorish flute, ear-piercing and encouraging to horses, who when they hear its shriek, step proudly, arching their necks and moving sideways down the streets as if they liked the sound. Their songs are African, the interval so strange, and the rhythm so unlike that of all European music, as at first hearing to be almost unintelligible; but which at last grow on one until one likes them and endeavours to repeat their tunes. Hardly an aristocratic family lives in the place, and few Sherifs, the richer of the population being traders with the Sahara.
A city of vast distances, immense perspectives, great desolate squares, of gardens miles in length, a place in which you want a mule to ride about, for to attempt to labour through the sand on foot would be a purgatory. And yet a place which grows upon you, the sound of water ever in your ears, the narrow streets arched over all with grape vines; mouth of the Sahara, city of Yusuf-ibn-Tachfin, town circled in with mountains, plain girt, sun beaten, wind swept, ruinous, wearisome, and mournful in the sad sunlight which enshrouds its mouldering walls.
Fez and Rabat, Sefrou, Salee and Mogador with Tetuan, Larache, Dar-el-Baida and the rest may have more trade, more art, more beauty, population, importance, industry, rank, faith, architecture, or what you will; but none of them enter into your soul as does this heap of ruins, this sandheap, desert town, metropolis of the fantastic world which stretches from its walls across the mountains through the oases of the Sahara; and which for aught I know may some day have its railway station, public houses, Salvation Army barracks, and its people have their eyes opened, as were those of Adam and of Eve, and veil their nakedness in mackintoshes. Through streets and open spaces, past mosque doors, with glimpses of the worshippers at prayers seated upon the floor, or lounging in the inner courts, through streets arched in with vines, the trellis work so low that upon horseback one had to bend one’s head in passing, and at the side door of the missionary’s house (Dar-Ebikouros) I got off, and, sending up a boy, was met by Mr. Nairn, who for a moment did not recognise me dressed in the Moorish clothes. There, as upon my first visit to Morocco city, I received a hospitable and courteous welcome. Long we sat talking of our captivity. I learned about the hurried visit of the Oudad with letters, his departure without a word, and found that no one had expected us so soon. Mr. Nairn, who spoke both Arabic and Shillah well, had passed on one occasion close to Kintafi; but, not having been near the castle, was not recognised, but like myself had been unable to push on to Tarudant. This in a measure consoled me for my failure, as Mr. Nairn had lived long in the country, spoke the language well, and with his dark complexion and black hair, dressed in the Moorish clothes, must have looked exactly like a Berber mountaineer. After a welcome and most necessary bath I left his hospitable house and rode to Sid Abu Beckr’s, almost the only man in Morocco city from whom it is possible for a European to get a house. And, as I rode, I mused upon the mystery of faith, and marvelled to see the honest single-hearted missionary still with the cross upon his shoulders, ploughing the stony vineyard of the Moorish heart, quite as contentedly and just as hopefully as he had done four years ago. Yet, not a ray of hope, without a convert or a chance of making one, and still contented, hoping for the time when he should see the fruit of his hard work. Crowds thronged his courtyard in the morning to get medicines, and I fancy as he dispensed his drugs, in the goodness of his heart he tried to do all that was in his power to lead his patients to what he thought the truth. Women in numbers came, not for the medicines, so much as for the bottles, which they valued highly to keep oil for cooking in, throwing the medicine carefully away; but cherishing the flask and bearing it about them always, slung in a little case. Bottles may yet save souls when preaching fails, for women who receive them may so work upon their husbands’ hearts, that by degrees, from the errors of Mohammed and the mere two ounce phial, they rise to the imperial pint and Christianity; and so societies at home should send more bottles out, artfully coloured and with the necks fashioned to hold a string, so that if bibles prove of no effect, bottles may yet prevail.
Not that I mean to undervalue missionaries, they have their uses, but in a different way from that in which perchance they think themselves. What they can do is to set forth, in countries like Morocco, that they are not mere merchants trying to deceive all those with whom they deal. So in Morocco city Mr. Nairn and his wife, and the young men and women of his household, have the respect of all the Moors for the pureness of their life, and their untiring kindness to the poor. The educated Moors see that they are like their own religious sects—that is, their minds are fixed, not upon gain, but prayer, and in the East madness and holiness are held akin, and both, as being sent from heaven, are respected.