Rabat

“ It is one of the surprises of Morocco to find the familiar African pictures bathed in this unfamiliar haze. Even the fierce midday sun does not wholly dispel it: the air remains thick, opalescent, like water slightly clouded by milk. One is tempted to say that Morocco is Tunisia seen by moonlight.
The European town of Rabat, a rapidly developing community, lies almost wholly outside the walls of the old Arab city. The latter, founded in the twelfth century by the great Almohad conqueror of Spain, Yacoub-el-Mansour, stretches its mighty walls to the river's mouth. ”

“ The sun was already beating down on the great plain thronged with horsemen and with the native population of Rabat on mule-back and foot. Within an open space in the centre of the crowd a canvas palissade dyed with a bold black pattern surrounded the Sultan's tents. The Black Guard, in scarlet tunics and white and green turbans, were drawn up on the edge of the open space, keeping the spectators at a distance ”

“ Rabat is the largest town on the coast of the empire, it is walled round; its circumference is about four miles; an aqueduct conveys abundance of water to the town from a distance of several miles. The mausoleum of the sultan Muhamed, father to the present sultan Soliman, is in the town of Rabat, it is a neat building, surrounded by a colonade; here is a lamp continually burning, and a muden 112, who is a fakeer, is continually proclaiming the omnipotence of God, and that Muhamed is the prophet. ”

“ They astonished newcomers to Rabat with their hats and their clothes, similar to those of Paris and London; they played the piano; they spoke various languages, and yet, on certain nights of sleeplessness and terror, their parents dressed them in foul tatters and disguised them, staining their faces and their hands with moist ashes and lampblack, so that they might not appear to be Jewish daughters and should rather resemble slaves. There were nights in which an uprising of the Moors was feared, an invasion of the near-by Kabyles, excited in their fanaticism by the inroads of European culture. ”

“ Warden did not find Rabat so intolerable as the captain of the Water Witch led him to believe. Its streets were more regular and cleaner, or less dirty, than those of the average Moorish town. Its people seemed to be devoted to commerce—probably because they are not pure–blooded Moors, but of Jewish descent. That, at least, is the argument advanced by a man from Fez or Tafilat when he wants a heavier dowry with a Rabati bride. ”

“ At Rabat, besides the townsfolk, [113] there were refugees from Casablanca; there were tribesmen still in arms; there were saints who had followed the Sultan from Fez; there were madmen who are sacred, and impostors who pretended to be mad; there were soldiers trained to every crime; in short, there were men from every corner of the variegated empire, any one of whom would gladly have laid down his life to slay a Christian had the Sultan so commanded. Yet months have passed and they have kept the peace, though Frenchmen still slay Moors within the sound of Rabat’s walls. ”

“ I have been also most fortunate in procuring an excellent dragoman, [134] who holds the office of interpreter to the British Consulate at Tetuan, and who has obtained three months’ leave of absence, and is now my paid servant. He has twice attended the English medical men who have been sent for to attend the Sultán, with whom he is a great favourite. To Rabat, the country presents little worthy of observation; a fine fertile plain, rich valleys, with numerous streams, and a succession of mountain ranges reaching as far as the eye will carry one. ”

“ As the wells of Rabat are brackish, I was obliged to beg water from the Moors who seldom refused me. Such was the kind of life which I led, during the whole of my residence at Rabat, while waiting for an opportunity to proceed to Tangier to the French Consul. I now and then saw Ismael, the Jew agent of the consulate, who gave me some small coins of the country, on the security of the ten shillings with which I had entrusted him. ”

“ The Moors of Rabat are mostly from Spain, expelled thence by the Spaniards. The famous Sultan, Almanzor, intended that Rabat should be his capital. His untenanted mausoleum is placed here, in a separate and sacred quarter. This prince, surnamed "the victorious," (Elmansor,) was he who expelled the Moravedi from Spain. He is the Nero of Western Africa, as Keatinge says, their "King Arthur." Tradition has it that Elmansor went in disguise to Mecca, and returned no more. Mankind love this indefinite and obscure end of their heroes. Moses went up to the mountain to die there in eternal mystery. ”

“ It was only at the beginning of the nineteenth century that the Morocco sultans destroyed this nest of freebooters and made a death penalty for any of their subjects to capture Christians. Later, as order under the sultans grew, the population of these towns separated into two distinct bodies, Sali remaining the seat of the former piratical families and of Berbers from everywhere, while Rabat became exclusively the home of Arabs and Andalusian Moors. ”

“ The tortuous passages of the old gates are choked for hours with swirling currents of humanity. By the time we have reached our camp by a circuitous route, Abd-el-Aziz is safely housed in the Imperial Palace of Rabat. ”

“ Our way led along the highroad from Rabat to the modern port of Kenitra, near the ruins of the Phenician colony of Mehedyia. Just north of Kenitra we struck the trail, branching off eastward to a European village on the light railway between Rabat and Fez, and beyond the railway-sheds and flat-roofed stores the wilderness began, stretching away into clear distances bounded by the hills of the Rarb, [5] above which the sun was rising. ”

“ This lovely ruin is in the safe hands of the French Fine Arts administration, and soon the wood-carvers and stucco-workers of Fez will have revived its old perfection; but it will never again be more than a show-Medersa, standing empty and unused beside the mosque behind whose guarded doors and high walls one guesses that the old religious fanaticism of Salé is dying also, as her learning and her commerce have died.
In truth the only life in her is centred in the market-place outside the walls, where big expanding Rabat goes on certain days to provision herself. ”

“ One of the guests who was at the dinner was to be Monsieur Le Glay's locum-tenens, while he was away at Rabat, and invited us to visit him in the Keshla the following morning. As we left the citadel, he gave us as guide an Arab spahi from Algeria to accompany us through the town. ”

“ I was told it was built by Muley Ishmael for the accommodation of his favourite black troops. To the south, and on the opposite side of the river Salee, is the maritime city of Rabat, commanded by a black chief, and garrisoned with black soldiers.
It is defended by a fort and strong batteries, adequate to prevent a hostile landing. It contains several ruins of importance; among the most conspicuous of which are those of a large mosque, and the famous castle built by Almansor the Invincible, together with a superb square tower ”

“ At one time the Bu Ragrag afforded a much better harbour than it does now; the road stead is quite unprotected, and there is a dangerous bar at the mouth of the river, which hampers the shipping, and makes the growth of trade slow. The depth of water over the bar varies from 7 to 12 ft. Rabat trades with Fez and the interior of Morocco, with the neighbouring coast towns and Gibraltar, and with Marseilles, Manchester and London, and is the greatest industrial centre in Morocco. ”

“ Some members of the Rahamna tribe are there also. This tribe, which belongs to the far south, near Morocco City, about eight years ago was in a state of rebellion, to quell which the Sultan sent his army with orders to eat them up. Their fat lands and fine gardens were ruined; men, women, and children killed and taken prisoners; while six hundred of them were sent to the Tetuan prison, and a great number—I do not know exactly—went to Rabat. ”

“ At seven o’clock next morning the engines were stopped, and going on deck we found ourselves lying some way off the shore, opposite the mouth of the river Oued Bouregrag, that divides Sallee from Rabat. The latter, as seen from a distance, is a place of somewhat imposing appearance. The chief mosque has a great square tower, rivalling those of Seville and Marocco; and a pile of modern masonry, on a scale unknown elsewhere in modern days in this country, marks the large barrack where the Sultan’s body-guard is lodged when he pays his annual visit to the coast. ”

“ It is most pleasantly situate upon the sea-shore, within half a mile of Rabat, both which town and the river Barugrag separateth in sunder. The buildings of this town carry a show of antiquity on them, being artificially carved and stately supported with marble pillars. Their temples are most beautiful, and their shops are built under large porches; and at the end of every row of shops is an arch, which (as they say) is to divide one occupation from another. ”

“ And still others grow up in a stifling Mellah, trip unveiled on its blue terraces overlooking the gardens of the great, and, seen one day at sunset by a fat vizier or his pale young master, are acquired for a handsome sum and transferred to the painted sepulchre of the harem.
Worst of all must be the fate of those who go from tents and cedar forests, or from some sea-blown garden above Rabat, into one of the houses of Old Fez. They are well-nigh impenetrable, these palaces of Elbali; the Fazi dignitaries do not welcome the visits of strange women. ”

“ W.S.W. of Fez, on the road to Rabat, in 33° 56′ N., 5° 50′ W. The town wall with its four-cornered towers is pierced by nine gates, one, the Báb Bardain, with fine tile-work. A lower wall of wider circuit protects the luxuriant gardens in the outskirts. Mequinez at a distance appears a city of palaces, but it possesses few buildings of any note except the palace and the mosque of Mulai Ismail, which serves as the royal burying-place. ”

“ They are the so-called "Masters of the Mountains," or the great caids, with whom even the sultans do not like to meddle but ever strive to maintain the best relations. The rulers of Rabat and Fez had always to remember that, at the first sign from these Masters of the Mountains, the mountaineers from the shores of the Atlantic to the easternmost branches of the Atlas would rise—the Haha, Sous, Draa and Shlu tribes—and with them the peoples camping behind the Anti Atlas, those mixed Arabs and Berbers who also carry strains of the peoples from the Sahara. ”

“ Below us lies the country of the famous Beni-Hasan tribe. The "Sons of Hasan" are famous as horsemen, warriors, and pirates of the plain. Our route lies westward across their territory to the seaport city called Rabat, where we hope to embark in due time on one of the infrequent coasting-steamers that ply up and down the western coast of Africa.
A SOKO IN THE WILDERNESS
As we descend the steep trail winding down from the hill region, we look in vain for any sign of town or village. ”

“ Then they came in troops to cheapen it, and haggle with the Jews who were instructed to maintain the two blanquillos. The Sultan marched against the city, but the people withdrew into the Alcazaba, and presented so imposing a front that he was content with an accommodation.
Civilized and philosophical Germany can riddle the body of a minister; but let us not compare such an act with the shambles of Rabat. The one is the frenzy of a people which cannot help itself ”

“ In almost every case the deserters are Germans, and the Moors permit them to pass, for they understand that German Nasrani and French Nasrani hate each other as cordially as do Arab Moslems and Berber Moslems. Nevertheless, even though the deserters are Germans, it is asking too much of the Moor to spare them their packs as well as their [78] lives. I have seen one man come into Rabat dressed only in a shirt, another, followed by many Arab boys, wearing a loin-cloth and a helmet. ”

“ When Fabir, who, tradition says, built it for the Sultan El Mansur, and it stood glorious, adorned with tiles like those which still remain, the gilding fresh upon the great brass balls, even the mosque at Cordoba itself could not have been more glorious, and El Mansur could not have easily foreseen that on his lonely tomb under the palm trees, beside the river at Rabat, goats would browse and shepherds play their pipes. Allah, Jehovah, all the Gods are alike unmindful of their worshippers, who made and gave them fame ”

“ They furnish an instance of the tenacity with which these races, or rather families, cling to life. The shred of the broken tribe settled in these ruins has still friends, as they told me, but a long way off, in the desert beyond Timbuctoo. After the revolution of Rabat, they were seized by the like fancy, when their Caïd, apprehending mischief, took sanctuary in the tomb of a saint. The Sultan, Spartan-like, would not violate it, but converted it into a prison. Prisons, without doors or guards, were to be seen, in the time of Muley Ismael ”

“ Then the Sultan's government privately informed the Resident General that an unsuspected treasure of Moroccan art was falling into ruin, and after some hesitation it was agreed that General Lyautey and the Director of Fine Arts should be admitted to the mosque containing the tombs, on the express condition that the French Government undertook to repair them. While we were at Rabat General Lyautey had described his visit to us, and it was at his request that the Sultan authorized us to see the mosque, to which no travellers had as yet been admitted. ”