A visit to Wazan, the sacred city of Morocco ... With illustrations

Preface

. He who writes a book lays himself open to censure, and of mine it may be said that it unduly magnifies a short journey and a small experience ; that it condescends too much to detail ; and that it is innocent of adventure to justify such condescension. But I think that some of my professional brethren, who longto get all the fresh life they can in the brief rest from much brain-work which is allowed them by the exigencies of modern life, may be glad to know how near at hand complete change lies. I have tried to make the book such as I should have liked to consult when I first contemplated a visit to Morocco. Ex perienced travellers have their experience to Preface. VIII guide them : novices are thankful for honest assistance, though it be but feeble. I received much kindness from the Moors, and it is only fair to a people who have usually been abused by those who have travelled amongst them to show that, in their case also, there is " another side to the shield."

There is probably a considerable difference between the inhabitants of Northern and Southern Morocco. I only speak of those amongst whom I travelled. There are signs that Morocco is not long to be left undisturbed by European nations, but there are possibly reasons why Christianity as practised, and civilisation so-called, should seem dubious benefits to an intelligent Moor. The limited intercourse which has prevailed has not improved the natives who have come under its influence. They have indeed to a great extent ceased to observe the Muezzin's call to prayer, but a good Mohammedan may fail to appreciate that reform. Preface. IX I was fortunate in meeting with many o-ood and intelligent Mohammedans. I had no qualification for travel which most Englishmen do not also possess, but I carried invaluable introductions.

Next to these the most im portant requisites for successful travel in North Morocco are a willingness to be pleased, and an unwillingness to take offence. In spelling proper names and Arabic words. I have tried to represent their sound, but this is an uncertain process, for, not only do the same sounds differ to different ears, but the same words are pronounced differently by different people or in different districts. My map must be regarded simply as an index-map, although I have tried to make it as accurate as I could do from my notes and recollection. I am deeply indebted to Madame the Cherifa of Wazan for the great kindness with which she has furnished me with information upon many matters of interest connected with her distinguished husband and adopted country, Preface. X as well as for her invaluable aid in forwarding my journey to Wazan : to Mr. Horace P. White, H.B.M. Consul at Tangier, for much advice and assistance : and to Mr. W. H. Richardson, of Jarrow-on-Tyne, without the benefit of whose intimate knowledge of all that pertains to Morocco my little journey would never have been made. Bensham Grove, Gateshead-on-Tyne, July 1880. CONTENTS.

Appendix

A 315

APPENDIX.

B 3'7

APPENDIX.

C 3'9 STEAM COMMUNICATION WITH MOROCCO. There are at present two regular lines from London to Tangier and the West Coast of Africa. The boats belonging to Messrs. Forwood and Co., of 60, Gracechurch Street, London, run every two or three weeks, and those of the " London Canary Islands and Morocco Line " run at like intervals. From Marseilles the steamers of MM. Paquet et Cic., run about twice a month, but on no fixed days ; and from Oran the " Compagnie Anonyme de Navigation mixte" runs a steamer fortnightly to Nemours, Gibraltar, and Tangier. There are at present three companies at Gibraltar, each of which runs small steamers two or three times a week to Tangier, so that there is nearly daily communication, — and often three steamers a day between the two places. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE the AUTHOR IN MOORISH dress Frontispiece MAP OF NORTHERN MOROCCO TO ILLUSTRATE WATSON'S JOURNEY TO wazan To face page I VIEW OF THE SOKO OR MARKET-PLACE 32 MOORISH SWEETMEAT-SELLER, TANGIER 39 MOORISH OIL-SELLER, TANGIER 50 STONE CIRCLE AT MAZORAH.

THE TALL STONE IS EL UTED . . IOO PLAN OF EL UTED 102 WATER-CARRIER FROM THE SOUDAN 1 30 MOUNT SARSAR FROM THE VICINITY OF AL KASAR 171 MOORISH SOLDIER 1 78 DIVAN IN THE CHERIF'S GARDEN AT WAZAN 204 MOORISH WOMAN OF THE UPPER CLASS IN WALKING DRESS . . 239 MOORISH PROFESSIONAL MUSICIANS MAP OF NOKTHKUN JIAKOCCO to Illustrate WATSONS .lOriiXKY TO WAZAN. ■ Latptla LON DON, MAC Ml LLAN A ( ? J Cl« Saewir Citg of fUaroctcr.

Chapter I. Introduction

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Of all countries which are within easy reach of England, Morocco is the least known. You may be in Tangier on the sixth day after leaving London, and many English people as well as representatives of other European nations visit that city every year, "but few do more than this. Some indeed get as far as Tetuan ; some visit the seaports by means of coasting steamers ; but the number who travel inland is very small indeed, and much of the interior is practically unknown. There are considerable regions which are quite unexplored, and the only B [CHAP. information about which is to be obtained from books written centuries ago. Yet Morocco is a great country, larger in fact than France ; a country of much historical interest ; of somewhat evil traditional reputation ; of unusual promise to the traveller, and of considerable performance.

It holds the descendants of those Moors who made Spain the leader of the world's civilisation ; under whose enlightened rule that land reached a point of intellectual and material prosperity which even now has not been altogether attained to by those lands which claim the lead ; whose learning, artistic skill, and heroic performance still give to the country of their adoption and rejection the greater part of the interest which leads wanderers from other nations to her shores. It holds the descendants of the men against whom nearly every great European nation has contended in vain. It is a land of slavery and oppression, but the oppressors do not add to their crimes the bitter curse of alien blood. The Barbary of our forefathers included all I.) 3 the countries adjoining the Mediterranean be tween the Atlantic and Egypt.

The Morocco of to-day combines the westernmost of these, Fez and Morocco. The French possession, Algeria, bounds it on the north-east, the frontier line having been fixed by treaty in 1845 : upon the south and south-east the Sahara is its limit, whilst the Atlantic ocean washes it on the west, and the Mediterranean sea on the north. The Atlas mountains intersect it, extending from the Mediterranean sea beyond Tetuan on the north-east to Cape Gher and Cape Nun on the south-west. They are several nearly parallel ranges of mountains rather than a single chain, and throw off many spurs. There is also a range of low-lying hills known as the Er- Riff mountains along the Mediterranean coast. Between the Atlas mountains and the sea are great cultivable plains of surpassingly rich soil, but lacking water, for the many rivers which rise amongst the mountains find their way to the sea with difficulty, and are for the most part dry during the summer's heat.

Wherever there are hills and rivers in this land you find B [CHAP. a luxuriant growth os underwood. Tall oleanders, rich in blossom, border the streams ; the gum cistus, myrtle, evergreen oak, and cork-tree clothe the sides of the hills with bright and varied greenery ; whilst now and again you chance upon noble woods of olive and carob trees attaining a glorious growth. Most of the towns are surrounded by gardens in which the orange, lemon, fig, and pomegranate-trees, flourish, and the vine wanders at her own sweet will ; whilst often, in some out-of-the-way spot, you come upon a grove of lemons or a thicket of olives or lentisks, so bright and beautiful that you are willingly compelled to dream away beneath their shade the hot and exhausting hours of the midsummer day. But the land, though rich, is not productive, the great desert plains are more strange than beautiful ; the country in summer and autumn has a dead, played-out effect ; the towns present hardly any features of architectural interest.

There is a certain suggestion of decay over the whole land ; the gilding is rubbed. The only motto truly appropriate to the Moorish crown I-] is " Laissez faire." When you reach the hills indeed you find the charm which is never quite absent from mountain lands, but the chief attrac tion of Morocco for the traveller lies in its people and its government ; a people of surpassing picturesqueness and interest — a government which possesses none of the ordinary attributes of direction, but exists for the one purpose of taxing the people. As you pass from the seaport towns to the hills, and from the hills to the cities of the interior, you soon discover that you are amongst men of different races, and that each race pre serves much of its individual character. What these races are, and how they came to be where they are, can be surely told.

The Arab historians, and our own old geo graphers who follow them, explain how Barbary was first peopled by Phut, the third son of Cham, driven out of Canaan by the conquering Israelites, but the narration of these remote facts, even by Peter Heylyn, is naturally a little hazy. When that part of the written history of this corner of the world which we are used to [CHAP. consider authentic begins, it is named Mauritania Tingitana, and has been taken by the Romans from a people undoubtedly of Phœnician origin, and called Mauri by their conquerors. The Romans kept possession of this land, and used it (with their other African territories) as a valuable granary, for nearly five centuries. During this period the seat of Empire was changed from Rome to Byzantium, and the Roman Empire had become Christian in name, and was fast drawing to its close.

The great movements of the Teutonic and Eastern peoples had begun, and the Vandals had swept over part of France, and had ravaged Spain for twenty years. Under their great leader Genseric in 429 they crossed the straits of Gibraltar, and Mauritania speedily became theirs. The religious persecution which fol lowed, and which one so-called Christian people practised upon another, should make us a little chary of the way in which we con demn the followers of Mohammed for the cruelties which they practised upon men of another faith. The Sacred City of Morocco. I] 7 The Vandals held Mauritania until the year 533, when they were defeated by the troops of the Emperor Justinian under the famous Belisarius, and the Mauri once more became subject to the power of the Roman Empire. But they were not destined to remain much longer under the sway of Byzantine than they had under that of Vandal rulers.

The great prophet Mohammed had not been dead fifty years when his all-conquering followers entered Mauritania. They took Tingis (Tan gier) in the year 68 1, and from that time they have, with little intermission, been the pos sessors of the country. The Christian religion vanished before them, and Morocco is the solitary instance of a land wherein it had been for centuries established, from which it altogether died out. Neither the Romans nor the Greeks pro duced much real effect upon Mauritania, the lasting evidences of their long rule are not greater than those of the much shorter Roman rule in our own Britain. Their remains are indeed still to be found here and there, and [CHAP. it is possible that, in the interior of the country (into which they penetrated) there may yet be discovered many interesting relics of their dominion, but upon the land itself, its people and their language, they have left scarcely any mark.

The A.rab historians, who describe the wars which followed the invasion of Morocco by the followers of Mohammed between them and the degenerate Romans or more formidable Mauri, call the latter Briber, from whence comes our term Berber, applied at the present time to the mountain tribes of Northern Morocco. It is not a term which the people themselves use or understand, but it is evident that the Mauri of the Romans and the Berbers of to-day are identically the same people. Barbarian was the name by which both Greeks and Romans called all peoples who were not Greek or Roman ; barbarian and foreigner were synonyms with them. The name is said to take its rise from the attempts of a stammerer to speak, — the speech of all persons whom they were unable to understand sounding like The Sacred City of Morocco.

I.] 9 stammering efforts to the warriors of Greece and Rome. " Thou shalt not see a fierce people ; a people of deeper speech than thou canst perceive, of a stammering tongue which thou canst not understand." From Mauritania, in the beginning of the eighth century, the Arabs passed into Spain, and the inhabitants of that land called them Mauri ; although they had nothing in common with the true Mauri, the conquered Berbers of Africa, and although they drew (at first at all events) but a small part of their forces from the genuine Moors. Thus at this period of Arab rule in Spain, we have in Morocco the conquering Arabs and the vanquished Moors or Berbers, and in the Peninsula the conquering Arabs, nick-named Moors by the vanquished inhabitants of Spain. When the tables were turned and the Arabs (mis called Moors) were at length expelled from Spain, and took refuge in Morocco, neither the Berbers (the true Moors) nor the Arabs, who had been settled for many centuries in that land, were willing to receive them.

They [CHAP. had to take up their abode chiefly upon the sea-coast, and they founded or occupied the many sea-port towns which we still find along the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. It is the inhabitants of these towns to whom the term Moor is now most properly applied. It would be, generally speaking, correct to say that, at the present day, the Berbers are the dwellers in the hill country in North Morocco ; the Arabs the inhabitants of the towns in the interior ; and the Moors those of the sea-coast towns. In the four centuries which have elapsed since the events of which I have spoken there has been some commingling of these elements ; they have all received a considerable admixture of Ethiopian blood from constant intermarriage with the slaves, who are annually imported in large numbers from the Soudan ; but there is even to-day a sufficiently marked distinction between the three peoples, — the Berbers, whom we may call the native possessors of the land ; the Arabs who conquered and settled in it ; and the Arabs, so-called Moors, who escaped to it I.] from Spain in the fifteenth century.

I was not sufficiently long in Morocco to recognise accurately the typical differences, but I found the Berbers and the Arabs of the interior pleasanter people to deal with than those of the sea-coast. The Berber language is an un written tongue, and philologers differ even as to the great family it belongs to. The history of Morocco during the period of Arab dominion in Spain is one of frequent revolution and constant war. At times it was divided into four kingdoms, Tafilet, Sus, Morocco, and Fez, each under a different monarch, but each monarch anxious to add the domains of the others to his own. Upon these the changes were rung in every con ceivable way. From time to time, under a more powerful ruler than usual, all the four kingdoms would be for a time united, and some of the kings of Morocco held high sway even in Spain.

The communication being constant, Africa could not fail to benefit from intercourse with that land which, under its Arab rulers, not only was at the head of [CHAP European civilisation, but was centuries in advance of the European peoples in sweet ness and in light, in scientific knowledge admirably applied to every-day life, in all branches of intellectual attainment, and to which all European peoples should look back with the deepest gratitude, because of the great number of practical benefits which it conferred upon them, and the ease, comfort, and brightness which it added to life. Many of the brilliant features of the Arab rule in Spain were reproduced in Morocco. The cities of Fez and Morocco had important universities and libraries ; and, amongst many men of eminence whose names are no longer familiar to us, we find that the illustrious Jew, Maimonides, who was born at Cordova in 1135, lived and taught for many years at Fez ; and that the great Averrhoes, also born at Cordova, took up his abode in the city of Morocco, where he died towards the end of the twelfth cen tury.

But the lamp of learning burned too fiercely to last, and its feverish brilliancy was succeeded by enduring intellectual darkness. I-l For many centuries no land of so much quasi-civilisation has been so absolutely un-intellectual as Morocco. It would take up too much time and be to little profit to trace the rise and fall of Arab dynasties ; how the Almoravides succeeded the Idrisides; the Almohades the Almoravides; and the Merinides the Almohades ; how the Cherifs Filleli followed the Cherifs Hassani ; to speak of the civil . wars and revolutions which kept the land in perpetual unsettlement, and the invasions of foreign nations which frequently threatened the very existence of the Arab rule, but which invariably ended in disaster and disgrace. Although there is still con stantly a rebellion in one part of the country or another, Morocco has for all practical purposes been a united kingdom since the days of Mulai Ismael, who reigned from 1692 to 1727.

I must, however, say a few words about the history of what may fairly be spoken of as the leading family in Morocco, a family the head of which (a lineal descendant of Mulai [CHAP. Dris, the first Emperor of Morocco, and thus of Ali the Prophet's nephew and his daughter Fatmeh) enjoys an influence in many parts of the country scarcely second to that of the Emperor himself, and whose fame extends into far distant lands. I allude to the family of the Cherifs of Wazan. Their influence is not, properly speaking, political, it is essentially a religious influence. Let me explain how it arises, and what it is. There have always been certain great and contending sects in the Mohammedan faith. It would scarcely be too much to say that they existed even in the Prophet's life-time, and they showed themselves violently immediately after his death.

The four orthodox sects are known in the aggregate as Sonnites, because they acknow ledge the authority of the Sonna, which is to the Koran what the Mishnah is to the Mosaic Law, a kind of supplement interpreting or amplifying the original. Of these sects that of the Malekites has obtained authority in Barbary. Its founder was Mulai Ebn Ans, " the holy interpreter of I.I 15 the Koran," who was born about the ninetieth year of the Hegira. I have already pointed out that when the Arabs first reached Morocco it was what is called a Christian country, but the Christianity it professed was base and degenerate formalism, far inferior in all of true worth to the living faith which was to supplant it. No doubt that faith was propagated by the sword, but religious wars waged under the banner of the Prince of Peace have been as cruel and bloody, and more relentless, than those waged by the fol lowers of him who professed to be the prophet of the God of battles.

Mohammedanism is after all but a high development of Judaism, and the wars it waged were in the highest and truest sense religious wars ; for every warrior really believed in the faith for which he fought. He was animated by the same spirit as that which led the Israelites to the conquest of the promised land, or the Christians of middle-age Europe to the Crusades, and it would be difficult to show that the benefits which the more tolerant Mohammedan faith conferred upon the countries [CHAP. it brought beneath its sway were not at least as great as those of which either Judaism or Christianity can boast. The Christianity of the Berbers was but religious whitewash, and did not long survive the forcible persuasions of their Arab con querors. They accepted by degrees the new faith, and, when that faith was driven out of Western Europe, and found an abiding home in the land of its adoption, that land was cut off from all intercourse with other countries by the constant attacks which the Christian peoples of Europe made upon it.

To a people thus forced back upon itself intellectual progress was impossible. There was no longer room for that tolerance which constant communication with peoples of alien beliefs begets. The whole mind of the nation was concentrated upon religion, and, whenever that is the case, religion is certain to degenerate into formalism. We can have no stronger instance of this than that of the Jews in the time of Christ. Their learned men wearied out their lives in the discussion of miserable problems which were all IJ dependent upon " the letter which killeth." And thus in Morocco to-day we find the learned men are learned in religious detail, and in the law founded upon that alone, and their Moham medanism is more narrow, exclusive, and in tolerant, than that which obtains in any other part of the world.

But there are many bright exceptions to this general rule, exceptions which show that it is not of the essence of this faith that it should so close the door to intercourse with men of another, and yet not all alien, belief. In the struggles for supremacy of the sects into which, as I have mentioned, Mohammedanism was from the first divided, at times one of the parties was itself divided, and thus when the Abassides (the descendants of Abbas, the uncle of Mohammed) had about the year 750 over thrown the Omeiades (the descendants of Omeia, the uncle of Abbas and of Mohammed's father), they fell out amongst themselves, and Idris, the son of Abd-Allah, and one of the vanquished party, fled to Morocco. He was in the immediate line of descent from the Prophet's favourite c [CHAP. nephew, the noble Ali and his beloved daughter Fatmeh.

Mohammed said of Ali that he bore the same relation to him as Aaron did to Moses. Idris, his descendant, was willingly made their chief by the Arabs and by the Berbers who accepted the Arab faith, and he may be fairly called the first Emperor of Morocco. Ali Bey, writing at the beginning of this century, says " his descendants are still considered as the most illustrious family of this country. The veneration of the inhabitants for Muley Edris is so great, that in all the situations of life, and in all their spontaneous motions, they invoke Muley Edris instead of the Almighty." His posthumous son Idris II. succeeded him after a short period of dispute, and at the beginning of the ninth cen tury founded the famous city of Fez. He was followed by his son Mohammed, who divided the government of his possessions between seven of his brothers and one of his uncles, and, although he was succeeded on the throne by his son Ali, the power of the Idriside family declined from Mohammed's reign, and, early in the tenth century the empire passed from them.

I.] 19 I give in the Appendix (A) a complete genea logical table from the present Cherif of Wazan back to Ali and Fatmeh, but I have learned little of the subsequent history of the family from the time of Ali-ebn-Mohammed-ebn-Idris to that of the founder of the house of Wazan, Mulai Abdullah esh Cherif, who died at Wazan about i675- Before his time Wazan was but a collection of mud huts. He it was who first made it a sacred city. He seems to have established that reputation for sanctity which has continued in the Wazan family since, and which has caused their place of dwelling to become a place of pilgrimage from remote parts of the earth. His son, Mulai Mohammed, had two sons, the elder of whom, Mulai Tayib, attained so great a power, that he has given his name to the entire religious denomination of which the Cherifs of Wazan are the head.

There is but little known of him, but it is still told that he could miraculously cure the sick and even raise the dead. He was succeeded in turn by his son Mulai Hamed, and his grandson Mulai Ali, c [CHAP, of whom we hear from Ali Bey that he and one other saint, "decide almost on the fate of the whole empire, as it is supposed that they attract the blessings of Heaven on the country. The departments which they inhabit have no Pasha, no Kaid or Governor of the Sultan ; the inhabitants of these pay no kind of tribute, and are ruled by these two saints under a kind of theocracy. The veneration which they enjoy is so great that upon occasions when they visit the provinces, the Governors take their orders and advice. They preach submission to the Sultan, domestic peace, and the practice of virtue."

Mulai Ali was followed by his son Mulai el Erbi, the father of the present Cherif of Wazan, Mulai Sid Hadj'-ebd-es-Salam. Mulai el Erbi is also said to have possessed miraculous powers which have descended to his son. His touch would make the lame walk, the deaf hear, the blind see, and would remove the barrenness of women. So much for the pedigree of the Cherifs of Wazan. Their actual position is a peculiar one. The Emperor of Morocco is the head of the Church in that land, but upon coming to the throne, he seeks the ratification and the blessing of the great Cherif. There is thus a spiritual power co-existent with the Emperor's own, which is, in many respects, as great as his in his own land, but which is also acknowledged throughout Mohammedan Africa, and is known and looked up to by Mohammedans in most parts of the world where they are found.

The name Cherif is properly applied to all the descendants of the Prophet. The dignity, it will have been observed, is an hereditary one ; each son of a Cherif is a Cherif; but the acting head of the house of Wazan is not always the eldest son of the great Cherif. At the present time the great Cherif resides for the most part at Tangier, and his second son fills his place at Wazan. No duties, either political or re ligious, are involved in the dignity ; it does not carry with it any distinguishing name or title ; and it does not immediately confer any authority. But the power which the great Cherif wields is substantial enough ; the Emperor receives him, [CHAP. alone amongst men, as his equal, and appeals to him for assistance in times of difficulty ; in cases of serious rebellion he has accomplished what an army of soldiers could not, the mere fact of his presence sufficing to put the insurgents to rout ; and upon more than one occasion he has undertaken long and difficult journeys even to the Sahara itself to obtain the submission of some border chieftain who has been occasioning trouble to the reigning house.

He is the object of pilgrimage from all parts of Northern Africa ; Mo hammedans have even travelled from India to obtain his blessing ; and when the present bearer of the name made the journey to Mecca he was even there the object of marked respect and veneration, the worshippers actually leaving the Kaabah to prostrate themselves before him. But that which makes the great Cherif of Wazan of peculiar interest to Englishmen is that the present bearer of the name has married an English lady. He met her when she was visiting Morocco, and they were united according to the rites of the Church of England by Sir John Drummond Hay at the British Legation I] at Tangier on the 17th March, 1873. Thus then we are brought into immediate alliance with one of the leaders of Mohammedanism in that land where it has been most exclusive ; and I have strong hope that the alliance will, through the gentle but powerful influence of our fair country woman who has had the courage to take so bold and novel a step, prove of much benefit to the country of her birth as well as to that of her adoption.

Chapter II. Tangier

It is perhaps necessary that I should begin with an apology for writing about Morocco at all. I was but a short time in the country. I had no special qualification to make a visit to it profitable from a scientific, geographical or archæological point of view. My object was simply that of obtaining the rest which lies in a change of life. I knew but little of the history of the country, and scarcely anything of what had been written about it by previous travellers. Of the very existence of the sacred city of Wazan, in which I was to pass bright and happy days, I was ignorant until a few weeks before leaving England ; and the title of Cherif was a new one to me. But even this complete ignorance may make my experi ences of the more value to those who may chap, ii j The Sacred City of Morocco. 25 possibly think of seeing for themselves some thing of the actual life in a land which is practically less known and travelled than any part of the globe which is so readily accessible.