THE COMMERCE OF TRIPOLI.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 59, 24 October 1911, Page 7

THE COMMERCE OF TRIPOLI.

The vilayet of Tripoli is purely agricultural, but production is restricted almost entirely to a narrow strip of territory lying between the hills and the sea. This soil is very fertile, however, and yields a plentiful harvest after rain. irrigation, manifestly, would work wonders in this district. Out beyond the town, past the oasis of date palms, begins the desert, the great highway of the caravan traffic to the Soudan. Just without the walls of Tripoli it has been, the'.custom to hold the Suk-cl-Thalat (the Tuesday market) ;' the scene of the . Friday market is further out in the oasis. Mr C. W. Furlong (says the Sydney “Telegraph”) thus describes what he saw on a visit at dawn to the Tuesday market: “I climbed to the top of the high wall of a square enclosure. In tiie early light the grey and white baracans of the people merged into the tone of the sand, and I could sense the great noiseless mass of humanity moving below mo only by the dark spots of faces, arms, and legs. Then the sunlight flooded a scene as truly barbaric and pastoral as any in the days of Abraham. A palette of living, moving colour, this red-fezzfed, baracaned humanity wormed its way between piles of multi-coloured products of the oases—scintillating brass, copper, and silver utensils ; ornaments, brilliant cloths, and leather trappings from the antipodes of Tripoli trade— Kano and Manchester.

“The wall upon which I had been seated enclosed a rectangular yard of several acres, in which bulky loads of the wild esparto grass, or halfa, as the Arabs call it, were being removed frouj the camels, eventually to be shipped to England for the manufacture of paper. Patches of blood stained the sand outside some neighbouring shacks. They are but the sign of the barbar, who, in addition to his tonsorial accomplishments, like the barbars of old, perform simple surgical operations. Our striped barbar-pole is but an ancient symbol, representing a twisted bandage. “Passing through the produce quarter, 1 picked my way through heaps of grain, piles of ; melons, tomatoes, and other stuffs, which made gorgeous spottings- of colour as they lay in the brilliant sunshine or under the violent shadows of the shacks, which,, were shifted from‘time to time as the sun wore round. Under a tattered piece of old burlap two Soudanese roasted fodder corn; men passed noiselessly by, over the hot sand, pausing to ask, ‘Gedash?’ (‘How much?’) Often they squatted down In front of the goods and spent an hour or more in bargaining. I came soon to the Arab butcher shops. Suspended , from heavy poles the meat nung dressed and ready for sale, and one cannot help being impressed with die very evident fact that practically no portion of the animal is considered unsaleable. The nature of the Ori- / ental climate has rendered certain kinds of fond detrimental to health, arid this, with the Arab as with the Jews, has led to a division of animals into clean and unclean. Those for the diet of tiio faithful must he killed in the prescribed way. According to the Turkish law of the country, it must be killed in the early morning, and by reason of the extreme heat must lie sold by the night of the same day.” .