Maghreb

“ Along all its hundreds of miles, the Maghreb is determined by Mount Atlas, or rather, the Maghreb is Atlas itself standing huge between the Sahara and the sea. It is a bulk of mountains so formed that one may compare it to a city wall with a broad top for fighting men to move on and a parapet along both the inner and the outer edges. The outer parapet, which is called “The 56Little Atlas,” runs along the Mediterranean shore: the inner parapet, which is called “The Great Atlas,” runs along the desert, and is usually the higher of the two chains. ”

“ Egypt may have attempted something westward: there is a legend of struggles with a fair people, and to this day in the salt marshes south of Tunis a group of date-trees, abandoned and unplucked, are called the “Dates of Pharaoh” and resemble no dates of that country, but the dates of the Nile valley. But if such expeditions were made they were fruitless. The desert was still a secure boundary for us: the first attack which Europe was to suffer came not from the sands, but from its own sea, and the first conquerors of the Maghreb were the Phœnicians. ”

“ In the opposite direction the roads bear back to the Berber villages and hitherto untouched regions the primary elements of Western civilization and Christian culture, often beginning with medical aid and the supplying of the districts with sufficient water, this magic element that brings life and strength to the dried but fertile soil of Maghreb, and ending by importing sewing-machines, ploughs and other products of Western factories, even though these may at times be only bright, naïve lithographs of Mecca or of the tomb of the Prophet. ”

“ But scarcely a century has elapsed since their union under one common Sultan, whilst the diverse population of the four States are solely kept together by the interests and feelings of a common religion.
The Maroquine Empire, with its present limits, is bounded on the north by the Mediterranean Sea and the Straits of Gibraltar, on the west by the Atlantic Ocean and the Canary and Madeira Islands, on the south by the deserts of Noun Draha and the Sahara, on the east by Algeria, the Atlas, and Tafilett, on the borders of Sahara beyond their eastern slopes. ”

“ A group of high-class Arabs sat by themselves upon the decks, waited upon by a tall tribesman faced like a camel, and with the handle of his pistol and curved dagger outlined beneath his clothes. This group was composed of sherifs [17b] from Algeria, all high-caste men, dignified, slow, and soft of speech, deliberate in movement, their clothes as white as snow, nails dyed with henna, each with a heavy rosary in his hand, their business somewhat mysterious, but bound to see the Sultan in his camp. ”

“ The greater part of the inhabitants of Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco, known collectively to Arabs as the Maghrab, and to our forefathers as Barbary,—an island girt by sea and desert,—still represents those original peoples who preceded the Phœnicians and the Romans. They have endured and survived many conquests, for the most part accommodating themselves to the conquerors’ institutions and religions. The Arabs called them Berbers,—the origin of the name is doubtful. Being to-day Arab in all but descent,—and very mixed in that,—they are described in common parlance as Arabs. ”

“ There has never been a moment that France has not dreamt of the completion of the vast colonial empire in North Africa by the inclusion of Morocco. It has been the goal for which all her military and civil administrations in Algeria and the Sahara have been working. To bring about the downfall of the Sultan's authority, not only press campaigns were undertaken, but anarchy on the Algerian frontier {76} was allowed to go on unchecked, until military measures seemed justifiable. ”

“ The French forces in Morocco represent [72] the best that the colonies of France produce in the way of fighting men. European as well as African troops are from the stations of Algeria, a colony near enough to France to partake of her civilisation yet sufficiently far away to escape conservatism and the so-called modern movements with which the home country is afflicted. ”

“ Morocco is a part of that single region of mountainous North Africa of which France already controlled the remainder, Tunis and Algeria. Peoples of the same type inhabited the whole region, but while in Tunis and Algeria they were being brought under the influence of law and order, in Morocco they remained in anarchy. Only a conventional line divided Morocco from Algeria, and the anarchy among the tribesmen on one side of the line inevitably had an unhappy effect upon the people on the other side of the line. ”

“ I have been endeavouring to calculate our present position, and I believe that we are not more than four hundred miles south of the borders of Morocco or Algiers. Should we reach Morocco, we might not be much better off in some respects than we are at present, as the Moors are even more fanatical than these wandering Arabs; but we might find the means of communicating with one of the English consuls on the coast, and probably obtain our release: whereas, if we could get into the neighbourhood of the frontier of Algiers, we might, on escaping, place ourselves under the protection of the French. ”

“ Unlike India and Tripolitania and Rhodesia and the Sudan, Morocco is a country which is admirably adapted for European colonisation, being blessed with every natural advantage that creation has to offer. Its only objectionable feature is its people. Lying at the western gateway of the Mediterranean, where the narrowed sea has so often proved a temptation to invasion, its Atlantic ports within striking distance of the great lanes of commerce between Europe and South America and South Africa, Morocco occupies a position of enormous strategic, political, and commercial importance. ”

“ Hemmed in between the Atlas Mountains and the Great Sahara, it forms the real Algerian hinterland, a region vastly different in people, manners, and customs from either the desert or the littoral. Here, in this fertile borderland, where the red tarbooshes and baggy trousers of the French outposts are the sole signs of civilisation, is the home of the Ouled-Naïls, that curious race, neither Arab, Berber, nor Moor, the beauty of whose dusky, daring daughters is a staple topic of conversation in every harem and native coffee-house between the Pyramids and the Pillars of Hercules. ”

“ This is our last impression of Morocco, this overwhelming "fantasia" of the billows. And as we look back through clouds of flying spray at the grim Kasbah of Rabat, at the white city, and the smiling hillsides roundabout, we say with Pierre Loti, "Farewell, dark Moghreb, Empire of the Moors, mayst thou remain, many years yet, immured, impenetrable to the things that are new! Turn thy back upon Europe! Let thy sleep be the sleep of centuries, and so continue thine ancient dream. ”

“ The well-to-do ride by in white, and the rest of the population goes mournfully in earth-color.
But gradually one falls under the spell of another influence—the influence of the Atlas and the desert. Unknown Africa seems much nearer to Morocco than to the white towns of Tunis and the smiling oases of South Algeria. One feels the nearness of Marrakech at Fez, and at Marrakech that of Timbuctoo. ”

“ Below Wad Nun the Arab tribes live practically as they lived in Arabia before Mohammed. Morocco is too far away to be much feared, the negro tribes to the south and east not strong enough to fight, the Touaregs not disposed to attack men like the Arabs who can only give hard knocks; whilst in the Senegal the French, in spite of that consuming hunger for sand, as witness Southern Algeria, Tunis, and the desire they are said to have to make a sandy empire from Tripoli to Senegal, are not so foolish as to adventure, merely for glory, to attack the desert tribes. ”

“ Every detail of our trip from Tangier to Rabat had been carefully planned to keep us in unbroken contact with civilization. We were to "tub" in one European hotel, and to dine in another, with just enough picnicking between to give a touch of local colour. But let one little cog slip and the whole plan falls to bits, and we are alone in the old untamed Moghreb, as remote from Europe as any mediaeval adventurer. If one lose one's way in Morocco, civilization vanishes as though it were a magic carpet rolled up by a Djinn. ”

“ A taleb [A] of Marrakech having shown the Sultan a register containing the names of the negroes who had formed part of the army of El-Mansour, Moulay-Ismaël ordered his agents to collect all that remained of these negroes and their children.... He also sent to the tribes of the Beni-Hasen, and into the mountains, to purchase all the negroes to be found there. Thus all that were in the whole of Moghreb were assembled, from the cities and the countryside, till not one was left, slave or free.
[Footnote A: Learned man.] ”

“ Ostentatious funerals and processions of all sorts, public demonstrations over trifles, the worship of gilt and glitter, and the emotional spirit called loyalty, of the present day, do not exist in El Moghreb. There is a spirit of simplicity about its shows; they do not breathe of money: old as their customs are, there is vigour in them and a certain amount of use, for the people have not outgrown them, do not make of them so many lay figures on which to display signs of their own great wealth.
The Day of the Great Feast up at Court with the Sultan, that is the pageant in all Morocco. ”

“ The Arabs have their original stock in Sahara, from whence they emigrate to the plains of Marocco, whenever the plague, famine, or any other calamity depopulates the country so as to admit of a new colony, without injuring the territory of the former inhabitants. These Arabs live in tents, inhabiting the fertile and extensive plains, and indeed the whole territory west of Atlas, and as far south as Mogodor, or the confines of the Arab province of Shedma. ”

“ But there is reason for the French, indeed necessity for them, to control Morocco. Europe is too near Morocco for the country to be left to anarchy and ignorance and their consequences. Some European Power or Powers must represent Europe there, while the establishment of one other than France would be a constant menace to Algeria and would throw upon France the obligation of devoting to the expense of her colony a greater outlay than it would cost to conquer the Moorish Empire. ”

“ MOROCCO (El Maghrib el Aksa, “The Farthest West,” i.e. of the Mahommedan world) , an independent state of North Africa, bounded on the N. by the Mediterranean, on the E. by Algeria, on the S. (indefinitely) by the Sahara, and on the W. by the Atlantic as far south as Wad Dra’a. Its landward limits can only be vaguely defined. The eastern frontier towards Algeria, determined by the treaty of 1844, is a purely conventional line starting from the mouth of a small stream called the Skis and running across country in a general S.S.E. direction. ”

“ So to this New Jerusalem, after a five days’ voyage, the Rabat arrived, and anchored inside the island where the Sultan has a great open prison; there his rebels are confined, and daily die, both those who live and those whom death releases. An iron steamboat, much like a tramp, in shape, but armed with four small guns, and commanded by a German officer, displays the red flag of Morocco, identical in colour with the well-known flag which in Hyde Park has braved a thousand meetings, and around which the “comrades” flock to listen when Quelch holds forth on social wrongs, or Mr. ”

“ Tripoli in Barbary is Turkish, but the trading steamships, the hotels and most of the merchants, are French. Tunisia and Algeria are French through and through, and Morocco may yet become French.
All these Arab lands are peopled with natives of the same tongue, speech and sentiments, though they belong to widely differing tribes.
First of all, be it understood that the Arab of North Africa is no wild, savage, untamed manner of man, but virtually a highly civilized one, so far as tradition goes, whether he be Berber, Kabyle or Nomad. ”

“ Morocco, virtually consisting of the chain of Atlas and the coasts depending on it, may be most conveniently thought of as including the modern Morocco and Algeria, with the Canaries as a dependent group of islands.
Libya, in like manner, will include the modern Tunis and Tripoli: it will begin on the west with St. Augustine's town of Hippo; and its coast is colonized from Tyre and Greece, dividing it into the two districts of Carthage and Cyrene. Egypt, the country of the River, and Arabia, the country of no River, are to be thought of as the two great southern powers of separate Religion. ”

“ One seems to be not in Africa itself, but in the Africa that northern crusaders may have dreamed of in snow-bound castles by colder shores of the same ocean. This is what Moghreb must have looked like to the confused imagination of the Middle Ages, to Norman knights burning to ransom the Holy Places, or Hansa merchants devising, in steep-roofed towns, of Barbary and the long caravans bringing apes and gold-powder from the south.
Inside the gate of the Kasbah one comes on more waste land and on other walls—for all Moroccan towns are enclosed in circuit within circuit of battlemented masonry. ”

“ It is a delightfully soft, exotic land which the geographers know as Mediterranean Africa, and which is fast becoming known to the world of modern travellers as the newest winter playground. The tide of pleasure-seeking travel has turned towards Algeria and Tunisia, but the plea is herein made to those who follow after for the better knowing of the places off the beaten track, Bou-Saada, Kairouan, the Oasis of Gabès, Oued-Souf or Tlemcen, for instance, something besides Mustapha, Biskra and Tunis.
Darkest Africa is no more darkest Africa. ”