MOROCCO: THE LAND OF MULAI EL HASSAN.

Otago Witness, Issue 1989, 7 April 1892, Page 39

MOROCCO: THE LAND OF MULAI EL HASSAN.

"Within sight of an English fort and within hail of ships as they pass to our empire in the east, there is a land where the ways of life are the same as they were 1000 years ago ; a land wherein government is oppression ; where law is tyranny ; wherein justice is bought and sold ; wherein it is a terror to be rich and a danger to be poor ; wherein man may still be the slave of man, woman is no more than a creature of lust— a reproach to Europe, a disgrace to the century, an outrage on humanity, a blight on religion— that lard is Morocco." These are the words with which an eminent novelist begins a romance of Al Islam in Northern Africa; and excepting, possibly, the sweeping conclusions with 'which the indictment terminates, they are just from the European point of view, and perfectly accurate from whatever aspect they are regarded.

But the Empire of Mulai el Hassan is not that of Queen Victoria ; and Tangier, where most visitors obtain their sole glimpse of the country, is not to be criticised from the meridian of London. It is a Moorish city ; and if such a state of matters pleases its owners, we have no more right to call down fire from heaven upon them than have the Moors to inveigh against the scandalous condition of the English capital — a pious duty, seldom neglected by the few who have visited it. And whatever may be doubtful in the external economy of Morocco, it is quite certain that the inhabitants wish for no change which could in any way interfere with the peculiar institutions over which our novelist is so eloquently indignant, and for none of any description on the unbelievers' model. They may not love the Sultan when the hands of his tax-gatherers wax heavy ; and there are mountain tribes who never pay him their dues until he convinces them of their folly by the arguments of Kiupp guns and a rabble army. The government is despotism tempered with anarchy. No Emperor ever succeeda without having to engage in civil war with rivals for the throne. If the Sultan is not seen in the mosque any Thursday, the price of gunpowder immediately rises ; for then they fear be is dead, and fighting must follow. Indeed, it may be affirmed that though the Arabs have been in Morocco for more than 12 centuries, they have never yet fully conquered the country. The Berber tribes driven to the mountains by the invaders are Btill only imperfect Moslems, and only half subdued. In the Riff country they are all but independent ; and in Sus even the Arabs under a religious chief can at times _give the army of the Sultan plenty of cruel work to do. But " Seedna Al Sooltan" —

OUB LORD THE SULTAN—

is the head of the Faith. He is the first of the Shereefs, or descendants of Mohammed, who regard with contempt the claim of the Osmanli Emperor to the califate, and consider him and his loose-living subjects as little better than infidels. *; With Turkey, Morocco has no diplomatic relations. This has always been the case, and now that the Shereef of Wazan, who, as another near descendant of the Prophet, and the head of. the sect of Mulai Taib, was at one time about as powerful as the Sultan, has become a French subject (and, ie is whispered, drinks brandy and eats the accursed beast), though he and his English - wife live apart, the Emir-al-Mumenin, the Prince of True Believers — as the ruler of'" Morocco styles himself — is more absolute than ever. His people may curse his tyranny, or the tyranny of his officials, and groan under the extortions to which they are subjected. Yet, let a European army land, and they would to a man, or a woman — for the women in some of the tribes follow their husbands to battle — fight for him and for the' Faith. People who write 30 glibly of the French or of the Spaniards " seizing " on Morocco know little of what they talk. After more than 50 years' .occupation, Algeria, in spite of its costly roads and railways, and the sink it has been made for French money, is still barely subjected to Frankish rule, though, when the pirates' stronghold was captured, the country was broken up among a number of rival princes, who mutually hated each other and the Tuiks, to whom the Dey and the Algiers janissaries belonged. But there are no railways and no roads except bridle-paths in Morocco, and no such internal dissensions as in Algeria. . This the . Spaniards discovered ; for, though they easily defeated the undisciplined army of Sidi Mohammed — and since then the troops have been reorganised by English and French officers — they found it cheaper to take an indemnity than to occupy Tetuan ; and to this day, in spite of their Presidios or posts on the Morocco coast, they maintain so precarious a footing that the very sentries on the ramparts of these s,pois are liable to be popped at by the wild tribesmen's long flintlocks.

Something of this the visitor who crosses the Strait of Gibraltar soon learns for himself. He leaves a British fortress and a British town, and in a few hours reaches one which, though for more than two centuries Portuguese, for 22 years English, and still more tinctured by European ways than any other in Morocco, is far more Moorish than Algiers, or Tunis, or Constantino. But the voyager in that brief run passes not only from one quarter of the world to another, from Europe to Airica ; be JUMPS AT A BOUND INTO THE* MIDDLE AGES, - into a state of society which he must, in any other part of the world so near the centres of ciyiliaation, merely imagine. He could not see it. For before him lies a walled town, with houses like huge cubes of chalk tumbled down on the slope, crowned by a few green-blinded villas, the homes of " those who fear not Allah."" This is Tangier "the city preserved of the Lord." The shadow of Europe, it is true, has fallen upon it. Beside the square-towered mosques with the little flags which indicate the hour of prayer, there rise hotels for the accommodation of the infidel ; and outside the walls there has been erected of late years a little Bnglish church in corrugated zinc — that transition stage of architecture, which all the world over marks a purse above wood, but unequal to stone. The Nazarene— the Bumi, or Romans, as the natives, with a persistenfc memory of their old conquerors, still

call them — are here in abundance, though for the most part Spaniards, either born in the place or from Gibraltar, where they are known by the lordly Britons as " rock scorpions." And here the foreign representatives reside, though the nearest of the three capitals is seven days' ride in the interior. But the Moor is master. In his narrow lane-like street he hears himself like one, and is inclined to yield not one footbreadth of the road to any wandering uubeliever. On each side of the squalid way are shops like packing-boxes, on the floor of which sits the owner, within easy reach of his wares ; while the customer stands on the street bargaining after the .weary fashion of the East, the merchant asking twice what he intends to take, the buyer offering half what he intends to give. Horses and donkeys straggle with the pedestrian for a footing. " Arra I Arra 1 " is heard on every side ; " Balak 1 " — by your leave — is about the first word of Arabic which the new arrival bears, until he passes through the landward gate, or is in the " Sok " amid a wild concourse of men and beasts. For it is

MARKET DAY,

and a more picturesque scene it is hard to conceive. We have reached a land in which there are no wheeled carriages, yet the babel of voices furnishes din enough. Amid the dense mass of buyers and sellers, among oxen and sheep, donkeys and camels and horses, we thread our way, stopping ever and anon to watch the unwonted eights around us. Here are two Arabs, all tnrbaned and "jellab"-ed and yellow slippered, shrieking and clutching their turbans and invoking their beards and the beard of the prophet. Another moment, and it seems certain that the curved daggers hanging at their belts will be out. But no; they are only disputing in a friendly way over a coin of which it takes 50 to make 4d ; and the difference settled, the bullion under discussion is transferred to the leather pouch which is invariably slung over the shoulder of every labouring Moor. It is at once bis pocket, his purse, and his haversack. A troop of weary camels have arrived it may be from Fez, or from Tafilet, on the other side of the Atlas, laden with merchandise from the far-way Soudan, and from their appearance seem to have had a hard journey, long delayed by the swollen rivers which had to be crossed, and the flooded country over which they had to pass. The tents of some Bedouins are pitched near at hand, their owners, long flintlock on shoulders, glaring defiantly at the Nazarenes, while the Riffian pirates — and they are Btill at times addicted to the old traits— curse loudly the Christian consul whose cavass orders thjem to 'give way. In a corner an eager crowd is listening to a glib story-teller, wand in hand, who prattles of Sal-a-din and Al-Man-zur, and many a tale which m familiar enough to the reader of the Arabian Nights, with some which the folklorist 'might', do well to garner, while in and around arid over all is that peculiar odour •of argan oil and charcoal fire which is characteristic of a Moorish market place. Beggars abound. Some are holy men, with axe and cup and the green turban which proclaim them Shereefs or descendants of Mohammed ; and villainous scoundrels most of .them are. Others are simply mendicants, who find a profit out of the all- abounding charity of the Moslem, even though, like the gigantic negro, with a voice that responds over the market as he calls for alms in the name of " God the great," they may have , been robbers deprived of their eyes asa punishment, for offences many and manifold. Snake-charmers from Sus are here also. Minstrels abound ; and it may be' one of the wild fanatical sects of the south, such as the " Eisouias," scatter the crowd on either side. A Jewish wedding; an Arab, bride carried home in the curious box fastened on a horse's back ; or the procession which accompanies the boy who has read the Koran, or completed the ceremony which stamps him ior ever as a son of Islam, lend a gayer aspect to the scene. And whatever may be the morals of the people, it is certain that externally at least Morocco is ' '■ THE MOST RELIGIOUS COUNTRY ON THE

EARTH.

Every act, almost every expression used, is tinctured with illusions to the 'Faith. "In'sballah" and " Bismallah "— " If the Lord wills," and " In the name of the Lord " — are every minute in the mouth' of the rudest peasant. Indeed the readier he is to cheat you, the more volubly does he invoke the name of the Most High, so that one can well believe the tale -of the Gibraltar Jew whose price .was 25c higher when his Moorish customers promised to pay "three months hence— lnshallah ; " for "If the Lord wills " means too frequently, "If I cannot avoid payment altogether." The very costermonger recommends his ware 3by pledging the credit of a saint — "In the name of .Mulai Idrissl Boast chestnuts 1' "In the name of our Lord Mohammed Al Hadj ! Popcorn 1 Popcorn 1 " "In the name of Sidna Ali-bu-Bhaleb 1 Melons 1 Nice sweet melons 1 " " God is gracious ! Beaus I Fried beans ! " "There is no might nor majesty save in Allah 1 Water ! Cool water 1 " These and the like are beard at every turn. Even the auctioneer who is filing out the price of a slave-girl, or the bids for a Rabat carpet, is careful to interlard his professional talk freely with illusions to his Maker and the plethoric roll of Moorish saints. An hour later we are Bitting at dinner. Through the open window come the distant hum of the market— the shouts of the donkey-drivers returning home, the groans of the overladen camels, the reports of muskets — of men trying new ones, or o£ marksmen firing, Tell-like, at oranges held in a friend's band — the shrill reed-pipes of the wandering musicians, or, it may be, the fusillade of a troop of white-robed cavalry engaged in the favourite Moorish game of "powder play." The major who had run across from "Gib." to have a day with the snipe is inveighing on the wrorig3 of Irish landlords and the mischiefs of the shortservice system, when suddenly there is a silence, and then from every mosque tower comes the long-drawn cry of the muezzin calliDg to prayer. For a few minutes the din is hushed, and anon the noise and shonts and musket-fire begin afresh. Then darkness falls and the gates are shut'; the packing-box-like bazaars are closed with rude padlocks, and everyone goes home for the night. The narrow streets are left in

daikness, and deserted save for a fewcuirish dogs, and the frowsy multitudes which not long ago were crowding the " Sok " are now miles away in reed-thatched villages, the cactus hedges around which are gay with blossoms in summer and laden with pricklypear in autumn. This is Tangier, THE MOST EUROPEANISED OF ALL THE

towns of morocco; and the coast-lying places all resemble it more or less. None of them of any consequence, except perhaps Sallee and Azimur, are altogether without Europeans, though in irost of them the number is limited to a few families. But though they all bear the impress either of later European influence, or of the time when they were, for the most part, occupied by the Portuguese and Spaniards, the native squalor is out of all proportion to the foreign civilisation. All are crumbling, and all of them dreadfully dirty, Sanitation, except when the European -residents undertake to dig the accumulated filth of ages out of the narrow lanes, is unknown. Everything is primitive in the extreme, from the barges into which the cargo is discharged out of the ships lying in the open bays, to the captain of the port, who intermits his professional occupation of cursing the turbaned bargees to pray on the beach when the mosque flag flies. So with the Customhouse officer sitting cross-legged in the shed hard by and the Bashaw of trie city, who administers a kind of corrupt justice according to the Koran under a whitewashed archway ai the corner.

But it is only when the traveller penetrates the interior that he finds how very stationary is the land of which he has hitherto only seen the outside. He must ride at a walking pace with at least two soldiers, as representing the authority of the Sultan, or take the consequences of the country folk mistaking his intentions. And he must take with him tents and baggage animals and riding beasts, a cook and the wherewit hal for him to cook For we are entering a land in which no man's roof will shelter the infidel ; in which there are no Europeans ; where nothing save eergs and fowls can be relied upon as food supplies ; where there are no hotels save the caravanserais ; where the cattle and their owner are accommodated in the same enclcsure; and, above all, where the only roads are in the shape of bridle paths worn by the trampling of yellow-slippered feet, and endless droves of horses and donkeys, aud mules and camels, and goats and sheep and cattle, throughout unnumbered ages. It is rare to find a bridge, and the chances are that the ferry must be crossed on a raft of reeds, while the animals are swung and reloaded en the other side. Possibly if there is a sudden fall of rain the traveller may have to wait between two rivers days before the water falls 4 \ow enough for him to ford. If the period chosen for the journey is autumn the country is bare and burnt up. It is " Brown Barbary" indeed. All the landscape is of a tawny hue, and wells and streams alike are cf scanty dimensions. But in the spring the land is blight with verdure and gay with flowers. Every valley is waving with crops of wheat and maize and barley ; or the owner is cutting his corn with his dagger, his firelock within easy reach; and the flocks of the 'roaming tribesmen are pasturing for, miles around their acacia hedged camel-hair tents. Little in the scene suggests Africa. There is no desert ; but plenty of oranges and lemons, and grapes and pomegranates, and, except in the south, palms of any sort are rare.

THE COUNTRY IN NORTH MOROCCO

is for the most part rolling hills, capped with a patch of trees around some saint's whitewashed tomb, or covered with thickets of palmetto, out of which coveys of red-legged partridges flutter or wild boars rush snorting. The plains along the river brink are often far-stretching and as fertile as the American prairies. But cultivation is small, out of all proportion to the population, and the population is so scanty that even in the course of a day's journey only a few people will be met. These are mostly country folk, laden with provisions for the market or driving camels and donkeys before them, or soldiers on the Sultan's business, or it may be travellers like ourselves on their way to the coast or to some other town. The city ladies are all veiled. But the country women take no such precaution except when in towns. Nobody, it must be admitted, is over-genial, though open incivility ia rare. Possibly a waspish old woman will turn to the wall as we pass through a town, or a young one — if the men folks are about — will speak disrespectfully of our burnt father, who, like ourselves, " will never Eec Paradise " ; or a laughing-faced country lass trudging to the fair with her red shawl round her neck may, as a saucy repartee to the badinage of our soldiers, inform them that the fire is lit for them and their Nazarene train. At worst, they sulk past, muttering unpleasantnesses, or return bur " Salaam Alikum " (Peace be with you) with the saving clause, " to those whom God bath given peace" — that is to say, to the " True Believer " only. Every night we must encamp in some village, the sheik of which is made responsible for our safety, though after we have left the good old man will a<» likely as not burn green boughs on the spot where our tents were pitched, in order to purify the sacred soil of Islam from the taint left by such infidels.

A village may now and then be seen — though to avoid the extortion of the imperial officials the villages are usually off the routes of travel — or a half -ruined town encountered. If we desire to halt in one of these, say in Fez or in Marrakescb, we must produce a letter from our consul in Tangier or in Mogador, for there are no consuls or ministers off the coa3t ; and after the governor has granted permission, a place to stay in will be allotted us, the conveniences and the locality of which being carefully apportioned to the supposed rank our letter may indicate. Yet at best we are early made aware that our absence will be excellent company, though every morning, if our credentials merit their attention, a "mouna" of provisions will be sent us in the Bashaw's, or even in the Sultan's name.

The latter, however, is mosb likely marching about the country collecting the taxes of refractory tribes; and even if not, unless when he goes to the mosque, it is difficult for any cne not an envoy to have an audience of

MULAI EL HASSAN,

He speaks no language except Arabic, and his ministers, mere creatures of the hour, are equally ignorant. They want no change, and they know well that any change must sweep

away them aud their system of tyranny and extortion. No man is paid more than a nominal salary. He buys his office ; and in the course of a few years* if peradventure he is not squeezed dry by the Sultan before he has time to grow rich, recoups himself by all manner of speculation and plunder. The prisons are full of their victims ; and no man desires to appeal wealthy lest he should tempt these official horse-leeches to bleed him. A few cattle are permitted to be exported to Gibraltar under a special treaty ; and wheat has within the last few months been allowed to be sent out of the country, though under conditions which render the concession almost valueless. But no fourfooted beast can be exported without the Sultan's permit. Hence, a land which might support 50 millions of people in comfort does not contain a tenth of the number.

THE MINERAL DEPOSITS — silver, iron, antimony, manganese, gold — are rich, but undeveloped, and every effort to induce the Sultan to open them has been refused, for this would give the Europeans a foothold, and increase tbe number of those " protected subjects " which have ever been a source of just irritation to him.

For Morocco there is, we fear, no future under the present regime, and those who know the country best leave it convinced that without a European war — which all Africa is not worth — there can be no improvement from without. Lord Salisbury has hinted mere plainly than at any former date that, as far as Mulai el Hassan is concerned, the sands have nearly run out. But what does this mean ? Nothing, except that the Premier's words have by this time been translated into Arabic, and sent to the Sultan as a proof that if Codlin's not tbe friend, neither is Short. And the Sultan will continue to wag his beard in the gardens of Fez or Mequiut z or Marrakesch — fair within, squalid without — well aware that tbe mutual jealousies of the " Christians " are the best protection of the land which the Arabs describe as Moghreb-al-Aksa — the Farthest West — and other people as

THE CHINA OF AFRICA.

For Tangier is the Pumpernickel of modern diplomacy. What one envoy proposes, another opposes. Meantime Morocco, is " l'Empire gui croule," But the crumbling has taken a long time. Twelve ceuturies have left it not much worse than it began — something feebler, not so rich, but assuredly no liker Europe than of old. — Dr Robert Brown, in Chambers' Journal.