Mauretania

“ All I need tell you is that, in fifteen months, Arsène Lupin conquered a kingdom twice the size of France. From the Berbers of Morocco, from the indomitable Tuaregs, from the Arabs of the extreme south of Algeria, from the negroes who overrun Senegal, from the Moors along the Atlantic coast, under the blazing sun, in the flames of hell, he conquered half the Sahara and what we may call ancient Mauretania. ”

“ The Mauretania stalked like a skyscraper through the harbor shipping. A rift of sunlight sharpened the shadow under the broad bridge, along the white stripes of upper decks, glinted in the rows of portholes. The smokestacks stood apart, the hull lengthened. The black relentless hull of the Mauretania pushing puffing tugs ahead of it cut like a long knife into the North River.
A ferry was leaving the immigrant station, a murmur rustled through the crowd that packed the edges of the wharf. "Deportees. . . . It's the communists the Department of Justice is having deported . . . deportees . ”

“ These people, they say, are distant thirty days’ journey from Lynx.
4. Writers in general are agreed that Mauretania is a fertile country, except a small part which is desert, and is supplied with water by rivers and lakes. It has forests of trees of vast size, and the soil produces everything. It is this country which furnishes the Romans with tables, formed of one piece of wood, of the largest dimensions, and most beautifully variegated. The rivers are said to contain crocodiles and other kinds of animals similar to those in the Nile. ”

“ It was not till the Jugurthine War brought the Romans into contact with the people W. of the Molochath, that any exact knowledge could be obtained of the mountains of Mauretania; but from that time to the end of the Civil Wars the means of such knowledge were rapidly increased. ”

“ It retained its independence till the time of Augustus, who in 25 B.C. bestowed the sovereignty of the previously existing kingdom upon Juba II., king of Numidia, at the same time uniting it with the western portion of Numidia, from the Mulucha to the Ampsaga, which received the name of Mauretania Caesariensis, while the province that had previously constituted the kingdom, or Mauretania proper, came to be known as Mauretania Tingitana (see Mauretania) . ”

“ In Africa, Suetonius Paulinus and Geta subdued the Moors, whose country formed two provinces—the Mauretania Cæsariensis and Mauretania Tingitana.
[171]
The emperor now lacked neither military nor political glory. Mauretania and the half of Britain were conquered; the Germans coerced, the Bosporus reduced to obedience; Thrace, Lycia, and Judea made provinces, and the Parthian troubles long since smoothed over. Within the empire there was growing prosperity; the army was well disciplined and its activity was directed to the public welfare under the direction of generals grown old in command. ”

“ Bocchus, king of Mauretania, formed an alliance with his son-in-law, Jugurtha, and was induced by him to march against Cirta, which was in the possession of the Romans. About the same time Metellus heard that Marius was coming to supersede him. The proud man shed tears of rage, and would not move further for fear of hazarding his own reputation, or lessening the difficulties of his successor. ”

“ ASAMA (Άσάμα) , a river of Mauretania Tingitana, falling into the Atlantic, in 32° N. lat. (Ptol. iv. 1. § 3) , 30' S. of Port Rhusibis, and 20' N. of the river Diour. All along this coast, the positions may be safely determined by Ptolemy's latitudes (his longitudes are greatly out) ; consequently Asama is Wadi-Tensift, the river which, in its upper course, flows past Marocco: Portus Rhusibis is Saffee, and the river Diour is Wad-al-Gored, which falls into the ocean by Mogador. ”

“ No colonies are assigned to Sardinia, the three Gauls and two Germanies, Raetia, Noricum, Bithynia, Pontus, Galatia, Galatian Pontus, Paphlagonia, part of Phrygia, Lycaonia, Isauria, Cilicia, Cyprus, Crete, Egypt, Cyrenaica. As for parts of the empire under subject kings, such as Thrace, Cappadocia, Mauretania, no account is taken of them, though there were certainly colonies in Mauretania, at Cartenna and Tupusuctu. Cf. Pliny, Hist. Nat., V, 2, 20; C. I. L., VIII, 8857.
134 Cf. an article by Mommsen, Hermes, XVIII, 161 ff. on the “Colonies of Italy from Sulla to Vespasian.” ”

“ If Rome conquered Numidia, she might become his neighbour. What in that case would be the position of Mauretania, connected as it would be by no previous ties of friendship or alliance with the conquering state? If Bacchus joined Jugurtha, he would immediately become a power with whom Rome would be forced to deal. An ally detached from her enemies had often become her most trusted friend; it was thus that the power of Masinissa had been secured and his kingdom had been increased. If Jugurtha were victorious, the Romans would be kept at bay ”

“ Having been obliged to withdraw to Africa in consequence of the advance of the forces of Sulla over the Pyrenees, he carried on a campaign in Mauretania, in which he defeated one of Sulla's generals and captured Tingis (Tangier) . ”

“ His eyes were now turned to the west; the men of the desert, the King of the Moors, would be infallible means of prolonging the war with Rome, if their help could be secured. No Roman army had yet dared to penetrate even into Western Numidia, and such a venture would be more hopeless than ever, if the nomad tribes of the desert frontier and Bocchus of Mauretania enclosed that district with myriads of mounted men that might sweep it at any time from point to point, and destroy in a moment the laborious efforts at occupation that might be made by Rome. ”

“ There was great wrath at Rome and throughout Italy; and the senate, a majority of which still clung to Jugurtha, were persuaded in the same year (111) to declare war. An army was despatched to Africa under the consul L. Calpurnius Bestia, several of the Numidian towns voluntarily surrendered, and Bocchus, the king of Mauretania, and Jugurtha’s father-in-law, offered the Romans his alliance. Jugurtha was alarmed, but having at his command the accumulated treasures of Massinissa, he was successful in arranging with the Roman general a peace which left him in possession of the whole of Numidia. ”

“ According to Stuhlmann [1107] it had its origin in South Arabia, if not further east, and entered Africa in the region of Erythrea. He regards the Red Sea as offering no obstacle to migrations, but suggests a possible land connection between the opposite shores.
Foreign Elements in Mauretania.
Nothing is more astonishing than the strange persistence not merely of the Berber type, but of the Berber temperament and nationality since the Stone Ages, despite the successive invasions of foreign peoples during the historic period. ”

“ He has been identified by some with the military commander of the same name, mentioned in a Latin inscription of A.D. 260 (C. I. L. viii. 9047) as having lost his life in the colony of Auzia (Aumale) in Mauretania Caesariensis. Considerable fragments of his work (probably called De hortis) , which treated of the cultivation of trees and vegetables, and also of their medicinal properties, have survived, chiefly in the body of and as an appendix to the Medicina Plinii (an anonymous 4th century handbook of medical recipes based upon Pliny, Nat. Hist. xx.–xxxii.) . ”

“ On his arrival in Africa, Don Luis Perenna, Sultan of Mauretania, found his old associates and accredited Mazeroux to them and to his grand dignitaries. He organized the government to follow on his abdication and precede the annexation of the new empire by France, and he had several secret interviews on the Moorish border with General Léauty, commanding the French troops, interviews in the course of which they thought out all the measures to be executed in succession so as to lend to the conquest of Morocco an appearance of facility which would otherwise be difficult to explain. ”

“ The country on the side of Mauretania produced a greater revenue and was more powerful, whilst that near Carthage and of the Masylies was more flourishing and better furnished with buildings, although it suffered first in the Carthaginian wars, and subsequently during the war with Jugurtha, who successfully besieged Adarbal in Ityca (Utica) ,962 and put him to death as a friend of the Romans, and thus involved the whole country in war. Other wars succeeded one another, of which the last was that between divus Cæsar and Scipio, in which Juba lost his life. ”

“ The other regions, as far as Mauretania, the Numidians occupy; the Moors are nearest to Spain. To the south of Numidia, [87] as we are informed, are the Getulians, of whom some live in huts, and others lead a vagrant and less civilized life; beyond these are the Ethiopians; and further on, regions parched by the heat of the sun.
At the time of the Jugurthine war, most of the Punic towns, and the territories which Carthage had lately possessed, [88] were under the government of Roman praetors; a great part of the Getulians, and Numidia as far as the river Mulucha, were subject to Jugurtha ”

“ There is never mention of any formal extension or taking back of the frontier in Africa. ... The former territory of Carthage and the larger part of the earlier kingdom of Numidia, united with it by the dictator Cæsar, or, as they also called it, the old and new Africa, formed until the end of the reign of Tiberius the province of that name [Africa] , which extended from the boundary of Cyrene to the river Ampsaga, embracing the modern state of Tripoli, as well as Tunis and the French province of Constantine. ... Mauretania was not a heritage like Africa and Numidia. ”

“ Metagonium is nearly opposite to New Carthage.946 Timosthenes is mistaken in saying that it is opposite to Massalia.947 The passage across from New Carthage to Metagonium is 3000 stadia, but the voyage along the coast to Massalia is above 6000 stadia.
7. Although the Mauretanians inhabit a country, the greatest part of which is very fertile, yet the people in general continue even to this time to live like nomades. They bestow care to improve their looks by plaiting their hair, trimming their beards, by wearing golden ornaments, cleaning their teeth, and paring their nails ”

“ In 668, only thirty-six years after the death of the Prophet, they were at the gates of Constantinople, making the first of their many attempts to gain possession of the New Rome. In 698 they had taken Carthage, had occupied all North Africa to the Atlantic coast, had converted the Mauretanians, or Moors, and absorbed them into their body politic as well as into their communion. In 711 the commingled Arabs and Moors crossed the Straits and entered Spain, and the overthrow of the Christian kingdom of the Visigoths was practically accomplished in a single battle that same year. ”

“ Nature, too, was here more favourable for husbandry than in the western part of North Africa; the middle depression between the northern and the southern range is indeed here not quite absent, but the salt lakes and the steppe proper are less extensive than in the two Mauretanias. The military arrangements were chiefly designed to plant the troops in front of the mighty Aurasian mountain-block, the Saint Gotthard of the southern frontier-range, and to check the irruption of the non-subject tribes from the latter into the pacified territory of Africa and Numidia. ”

“ They call themselves in the Riff near Tangier Amâzigh, in the Sahara Imôshagh, and the same name meets us, referred to particular tribes, on several occasions among the Greeks and Romans, thus as Maxyes at the founding of Carthage (ii. 8) ii. 7., as Mazices in the Roman period at different places of the Mauretanian north coast; the similar designation that has remained with the scattered remnants proves that this great people has once had a consciousness, and has permanently retained the impression, of the relationship of its members. ”

“ MAURITANIA, a large region of Africa, extending from east to west along the Mediterranean, divided by the emperor Claudius into Cæsariensis, the eastern part, and Tingitana, the western. It had Numidia to the east, and Getulia to the south; and was also bounded by the Atlantic ocean, the straits of Gibraltar, and the Mediterranean to the north. The natives were called Mauri, and thence the name of Mauritania; now Barbary.
MEDIA, a country of the Farther Asia, bounded on the west by Armenia, on the east by Parthia, on the north by the Caspian Sea, on the south by Persia. ”

“ The parts of Mauritania which border on the Great Desert and the Atlantic Ocean, were filled with a fierce and untractable race of men, whose savage temper had been exasperated, rather than reclaimed, by their dread of the Roman arms. The wandering Moors, as they gradually ventured to approach the seashore, and the camp of the Vandals, must have viewed with terror and astonishment the dress, the armor, the martial pride and discipline of the unknown strangers who had landed on their coast ”

“ When the Arabs came into the land some of them took to the plains inland, and continued their wild wandering idle style of life—half predatory, half pastoral; others took up their abode on the coast, became more mingled with the people of other sea-faring tribes, built towns, and came at last to be known as Mauri or Moors, from which the part of the land they dwelt in was known of old by the name of Mauritania. ”

“ The genuine Mauritania, or country of the Moors, which, from the ancient city of Tingi, or Tangier, was distinguished by the appellation of Tingitana, is represented by the modern kingdom of Fez. Salle, on the Ocean, so infamous at present for its piratical depredations, was noticed by the Romans, as the extreme object of their power, and almost of their geography. A city of their foundation may still be discovered near Mequinez, the residence of the barbarian whom we condescend to style the Emperor of Morocco ”