At last, after nine days, my fate was decided upon. I was to return to Marakesh in the company of Kaid Maclean, and nothing could have met my wishes more completely than this did. It was by the Kaid’s own entreaties that this had been decided upon, and now that I was sufficiently recovered in health to travel, we were both anxious to start. The cold weather was setting in, and already we were experiencing sharp frosts of a night, and we dreaded that every day’s delay would increase the probability of our being snowed up in the high passes of the Atlas.
Dr Linares dined with us our last evening, and he envied much the fact that we were leaving the desert behind so shortly, with every chance of making a quick journey, while he was to remain with the Sultan and travel back by the short stages by which the mahalla proceeded.
We could no longer claim the glory of being the only three Europeans in Tafilet, for the camp had received an addition, in the persons of seven French deserters from the “Legion étrangère,” who had tramped all the way across the desert from Algeria, a march which had taken them some two months to accomplish. They arrived robbed of everything but their ragged uniforms, and half-starved, to find but poor consolation in the Sultan’s camp, although, in hopes of gaining employment, they became Moslems. Arabic names were given to each; but possessing no knowledge of the language, they could not remember them, or who was who, much to the amusement of the native soldiers, who, ill-fed though they were, spared whenever they could some trifle of food. On their arrival at Marakesh they were sent to Mogador, and handed over to the French authorities to suffer the punishment they had merited for their desertion. There was still another Frenchman in the camp, a Mons. Delbel, who to all intents and purposes was a Moslem, and was everywhere received as such. He has since published his notes upon the journey in the journal of the Geographical Society of Paris.
At length the day arrived, and long before dawn, by the light of lanterns, we struck camp, and in the bitter cold turned our horses’ heads to the north and set out for Marakesh.
CHAPTER XI.
TAFILET OR TAFILELT.
Tafilet, Tafilelt, or Tafilalet, is said to derive its name, as already mentioned, from Filàl, a district in Arabia, and to have obtained its present form by the prefix Ta, a Berber word we know better in the form Aït, corresponding to the Arabic Ulad—“sons of.” The final t is again of Berber derivation, and is also found under the form at or ta, which appears to be a feminine termination. Thus the whole name may be said to signify “The sons of the Filàl (district),” the feminine noun being used instead of the word “district” or some such term. This addition of the prefix T and the feminine termination I found to be in common use amongst the Berbers.
The fact that the root of the name owes its derivation to Arabic sources naturally tends to convince one that the oasis must previous to this time have borne some other, and Berber, title—that is to say, before the invasion of this portion of the Sahara by the Arabs in 707 A.D. In seeking for an earlier name, one is at once led to think of Sijilmassa, an undoubted Amazigh or Shelha word, and which, even after the name Tafilet came into general use, existed as the name of the capital of the district until that town was destroyed toward the end of the last century. It was this double nomenclature, no doubt, that originally gave rise to discussions on the part of geographers from the middle ages until the latter half of this century as to Sijilmassa and Tafilet; for with that haphazard way in which natives use the name of a district for a town, and vice versâ, the two became hopelessly confused, until the visit of René Caillié to these parts in 1828 set matters somewhat at rest, although over and over again since that date the discussion has been revived. There is but little need nowadays to say much on that point. Caillié’s and Rohlfs notes, scanty though they are, yet valuable as being the only records we have of the visits of Europeans to Tafilet, have satisfactorily decided the question; and it is now well known that Sijilmassa, though the name often implied the district, was in reality the capital of the oasis of Tafilet, or, as it is more properly spelt, Tafilelt. Such geographers as Marmol, who in his ‘Africa,’ published in 1575-1599, speaks of Tafilet as a great city of Numidia, must have referred to Sijilmassa. Yet the question only last year was revived in Tangier in connection with the late Sultan Mulai el Hassen’s expedition to the Sahara.
Still, except from what we gather from medieval geographers, and their evidence was mostly hearsay, there is not one atom of proof which tends to show that such a town as Tafilet ever existed, nor could I during my stay there gain any information to that effect, my informants one and all stating that Sijilmassa, or, as it is now called, Medinat el Aamra, was the sole and only large town that ever existed in Tafilet. Although many of the ksor, as the fortified villages are called, are of very considerable size, there is none to which the term town can be aptly applied.
Before offering any description of Tafilet as I saw it, a few words as to its history may not prove out of place.