In the Land of Mosques & Minarets
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Title: In the Land of Mosques & Minarets
Author: M. F. Mansfield
Illustrator: Blanche McManus
Release date: August 27, 2014 [eBook #46705]
Most recently updated: November 28, 2024
Language: English
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In the Land of Mosques
and Minarets
_WORKS OF_ _FRANCIS MILTOUN_
[Illustration]
_Rambles on the Riviera_ $2.50
_Rambles in Normandy_ 2.50
_Rambles in Brittany_ 2.50
_The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine_ 2.50
_The Cathedrals of Northern France_ 2.50
_The Cathedrals of Southern France_ 2.50
_In the Land of Mosques and Minarets_ 3.00
_Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine and
the Loire Country_ 3.00
_Castles and Chateaux of Old Navarre and
the Basque Provinces_ 3.00
_Castles and Palaces of Italy_ 3.00
_The Automobilist Abroad_ _net_ 3.00
_Postage Extra_
[Illustration]
_L. C. PAGE & COMPANY_
_New England Building_, _Boston, Mass._
[Illustration:
The Caïd
of the
Msaaba
Blanche McManus
1907]
In the Land of
Mosques & Minarets
BY FRANCIS MILTOUN
_Officier du Nicham Iftikhar_
Author of "Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine," "Rambles in
Normandy," "Rambles in Brittany," "Rambles on the
Riviera," "Castles and Chateaux of Old Navarre
and the Basque Provinces," etc.
_With Illustrations
from drawings and paintings done_
BY BLANCHE MCMANUS
[Illustration: colophon]
BOSTON
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
1908
_Copyright, 1908_
BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
_All rights reserved_
First Impression, April, 1908
_COLONIAL PRESS_
_Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co._
_Boston, U. S. A._
CHAPTER PAGE
I. GOING AND COMING 1
II. THE REAL NORTH AFRICA 16
III. ALGERIA OF TO-DAY 42
IV. THE RÉGENCE OF TUNISIA AND THE TUNISIANS 57
V. THE RELIGION OF THE MUSSULMAN 74
VI. ARCHITECTURE OF THE MOSQUES 97
VII. POETRY, MUSIC, AND DANCING 113
VIII. ARABS, TURKS, AND JEWS 129
IX. SOME THINGS THAT MATTER--TO THE ARAB 146
X. "THE ARAB SHOD WITH FIRE" 169
XI. THE SHIP OF THE DESERT AND HIS OCEAN OF SAND 178
XII. SOLDIERS SAVAGE AND CIVILIZED--LÉGIONNAIRES AND SPAHIS 197
XIII. FROM ORAN TO THE MOROCCO FRONTIER 209
XIV. THE MITIDJA AND THE SAHEL 227
XV. THE GREAT WHITE CITY--ALGIERS 245
XVI. ALGIERS AND BEYOND 259
XVII. KABYLIE AND THE KABYLES 273
XVIII. CONSTANTINE AND THE GORGE DU RUMMEL 291
XIX. BETWEEN THE DESERT AND THE SOWN 309
XX. BISKRA AND THE DESERT BEYOND 320
XXI. IN THE WAKE OF THE ROMAN 336
XXII. TUNIS AND THE SOUKS 356
XXIII. IN SHADOW OF THE MOSQUE 371
XXIV. THE GLORY THAT ONCE WAS CARTHAGE 389
XXV. THE BARBARY COAST 402
XXVI. THE OASIS OF TOZEUR 414
INDEX 431
List of Illustrations
PAGE
THE CAÏD OF THE MSAÂBA _Frontispiece_
THE APPROACH BY SEA (Map) 8
THE EDGE OF THE DESERT _facing_ 12
"CIREUR" 27
THE FLIGHT OF THE MOORS (Map) 29
ALGERIA AND ITS PROVINCES (Map) _facing_ 42
TOUGGOURT _facing_ 44
FARMING, OLD STYLE 50
BATNA _facing_ 52
TUNISIA (Map) _facing_ 56
AN OLD SEAL OF THE BEY OF TUNIS 58
THE OLIVES WE EAT 68
THE WORLD OF ISLAM _facing_ 74
THE EIGHT POSITIONS OF THE PRAYING MUSSULMAN 81
THE MUEZZIN'S CALL TO PRAYER _facing_ 84
A MARABOUT _facing_ 90
IN AN ARAB CEMETERY _facing_ 96
GROUND PLAN OF A MOSQUE 100
A WINDOW IN AN ARAB HOUSE 105
KOUBA OF SIDI-BRAHIM _facing_ 106
AN ARABIAN MUSICIAN _facing_ 120
A FLUTE SELLER _facing_ 122
"SOUVENIR D'ALGÉRIE" (Music) 123
TYPES OF ARABS 131
JEWISH WOMEN OF TUNIS _facing_ 142
A DAUGHTER OF THE "GREAT TENTS" _facing_ 152
THE LIFE OF THE "GREAT TENTS" _facing_ 156
AN ARAB AND HIS HORSE IN GALA ATTIRE _facing_ 172
THE _MEHARI_ OF THE DESERT _facing_ 180
A DESERT CARAVAN _facing_ 186
THE ILLIMITABLE DESERT 191
THE SAND DUNES OF THE DESERT _facing_ 192
A CAPTAIN OF SPAHIS _facing_ 202
SOME NATIVE SOLDIERY 204
A GOUM _facing_ 206
ARAB MOSQUE AT BENI-OUNIF _facing_ 220
A _KIF_ SHOP _facing_ 222
LAGHOUAT _facing_ 224
HOTEL AT FIGUIG 225
MARKET, BOUFARIK 228
TOMB OF SIDI-YACOUB _facing_ 232
A MAURESQUE OF BLIDA _facing_ 234
FRIEZE AT THE RUISSEAU DES SINGES 243
ALGIERS AND ITS ENVIRONS (Map) _facing_ 244
A CEMETERY GATE _facing_ 256
A BOU-SAADA TYPE _facing_ 268
THINGS SEEN IN KABYLIE 285
A MINARET AT CONSTANTINE 294
A CONSTANTINE MOSQUE _facing_ 294
THE GORGE DU RUMMEL _facing_ 298
A MUSSULMAN FUNERAL 302
THE VILLAGE AND THE GORGE OF EL KANTARA _facing_ 316
BISKRA AND ITS ARAB VILLAGES (Map) 321
THE COURTYARD OF THE HÔTEL DES ZIBAN, BISKRA _facing_ 322
SIDI-OKBA _facing_ 330
THE _KASBA_, BONA _facing_ 338
SO-CALLED TOMB OF CONSTANTINE (Diagram) 342
TOMB OF MÉDRACEN 343
LAMBESSA AND ITS RUINS _facing_ 346
LAMBESSA (Map) 347
TIMGAD (Map) 349
TEBESSA (Diagram) 353
MORSOTT (Diagram) 355
IN THE BAZAARS, TUNIS _facing_ 360
A STREET OF MOSQUES, TUNIS _facing_ 366
DANCING GIRLS OF TUNIS 369
HABIB'S VISITING CARD 380
THE PORTS OF CARTHAGE _facing_ 390
CARTHAGE (Map) 395
ANCIENT UTICA (Diagram) 398
THE _SUD-TUNISIEN_ (Map) 404
IN A KAIROUAN MOSQUE _facing_ 410
AMPHITHEATRE AT EL DJEM 413
EL OUED _facing_ 416
A STREET IN TOZEUR _facing_ 420
In the Land of Mosques and Minarets
CHAPTER I
GOING AND COMING
"Say, dear friend, wouldst thou go to the land where pass the
caravans beneath the shadow of the palm trees of the Oasis; where
even in mid-winter all is in flower as in spring-time
elsewhere."--VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM.
The taste for travel is an acquired accomplishment. Not every one likes
to rough it. Some demand home comforts; others luxurious appointments;
but you don't get either of these in North Africa, save in the palace
hotels of Algiers, Biskra and Tunis, and even there these things are
less complete than many would wish.
We knew all this when we started out. We had become habituated as it
were, for we had been there before. The railways of North Africa are
poor, uncomfortable things, and excruciatingly slow; the steamships
between Marseilles or Genoa and the African littoral are either
uncomfortably crowded, or wobbly, slow-going tubs; and there are many
discomforts of travel--not forgetting fleas--which considerably mitigate
the joys of the conventional traveller who affects floating hotels and
Pullman car luxuries.
The wonderful African-Mediterranean setting is a patent attraction and
is very lovely. Every one thinks that; but it is best always to take
ways and means into consideration when journeying, and if the game is
not worth the candle, let it alone.
This book is not written in commendation only of the good things of life
which one meets with in North Africa, but is a personal record of things
seen and heard by the artist and the author. As such it may be accepted
as a faithful transcript of sights and scenes--and many correlative
things that matter--which will prove to be the portion of others who
follow after. These things have been seen by many who have gone before
who, however, have not had the courage to paint or describe them as they
found them.
Victor Hugo discovered the Rhine, Théophile Gautier Italy, De Nerval the
Orient, and Merimée Spain; but they did not blush over the dark side
and include only the more charming. For this reason the French
descriptive writer has often given a more faithful picture of strange
lands than that limned by Anglo-Saxon writers who have mostly praised
them in an ignorant, sentimental fashion, or reviled them because they
had left their own damp sheets and stogy food behind, and really did not
enjoy travel--or even life--without them. There is a happy mean for the
travellers' mood which must be cultivated, if one is not born with it,
else all hope of pleasurable travel is lost for ever.
The comparison holds good with regard to North Africa and its Arab
population. Sir Richard Burton certainly wrote a masterful work in his
"Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina," and set forth the Arab character as no
one else has done; but he said some things, and did some things, too,
that his fellow countrymen did not like, and so they were loth to accept
his great work at its face value.
The African Mediterranean littoral, the mountains and the desert beyond,
and all that lies between, have found their only true exponents in Mme.
Myriam Harry, MM. Louis Bertrand, Arnaud and Maryval, André Gide and
Isabelle Eberhardt, and Victor Barrucaud. These and some others
mentioned further on are the latter-day authorities on the Arab life of
Africa, though the makers of English books on Algeria and Tunisia seem
never to have heard of them, much less profited by their
next-to-the-soil knowledge. Instead they have preferred to weave their
romances and novels on "home-country" lines, using a Mediterranean or
Saharan setting for characters which are not of Africa and which have no
place therein.
This book is a record of various journeyings in that domain of North
Africa where French influence is paramount; and is confidently offered
as the result of much absorption of first-hand experiences and
observations, coupled with authenticated facts of history and romance.
All the elements have been found _sur place_ and have been woven into
the pages which follow in order that nothing desirable of local colour
should be lost by allowing too great an expanse of sea and land to
intervene.
The story of Algeria and Tunisia has so often been told by the French,
and its moods have so often been painted by _les "gens d'esprit et de
talent,"_ that a foreigner has a considerable task laid out for him in
his effort to do the subject justice. Think of trying to catch the fire
and spirit of Fromentin, of Loti, of the Maupassants or Masqueray, or
the local colour of the canvases of Dinet, Armand Point, Potter,
Besnard, Constant, Cabannes, Guillaumet, or Ziem! Then go and try to
paint the picture as it looks to you. Yet why not? We live to learn;
and, as all the phases of this subtropical land have not been exploited,
why should we--the author and artist--not have a hand in it?
So we started out. The mistral had begun to blow at Martigues (la Venise
Provençal known by artist folk of all nationalities, but unknown--as
yet--to the world of tourists), where we had made our Mediterranean
headquarters for some years, but the sirocco was still blowing
contrariwise from the south on the African coast, and it was for that
reason that the author, the artist and another--the agreeable travelling
companion, a rara avis by the way--made a hurried start.
We were tired of the grime and grind of cities of convention; and were
minded, after another round of travel, to repose a bit in some
half-dormant, half-progressive little town of the Barbary coast, or some
desert oasis where one might, if he would, still dream the dreams of the
Arabian nights and days, regardless of a certain reflected glamour of
vulgar modernity which filters through to the utmost Saharan outposts
from the great ports of the coast.
By a fortunate chance weather and circumstances favoured this last
journey, and thus the making of this book became a most enjoyable
labour.
We left Marseilles for the land of the sun at six of an early autumn
evening, the "_heure verte_" of the Marseillais, when the whole
Cannebière smells of absinthe, alcohol, and anise, and all the world is
at ease after a bustling, rustling day of busy affairs. These men of the
Midi, though they seemingly take things easy are a very industrious
race. There is no such virile movement in Paris, even on the boulevards,
as one may witness on Marseilles' famous Cannebière at the seducing hour
of the Frenchman's _apéritif_. Marseilles is a ceaseless turmoil of busy
workaday affairs as well. From the ever-present gaiety of the Cannebière
cafés it is but a step to the great _quais_ and their creaking capstans
and shouting longshoremen.
From the _quais_ of La Joliette all the world and his wife come and go
in an interminable and constant tide of travel, to Africa, to Corsica
and Sardinia; to Jaffa and Constantinople; to Port Said and the East,
India, Australia, China and Japan; and westward, through Gibraltar's
Strait to the Mexican Gulf and the Argentine. The like of Marseilles
exists nowhere on earth; it is the most brilliant and lively of all the
ports of the world. It is the principal seaport of the Mediterranean and
the third city of France.
Our small, tubby steamer slipped slowly and silently out between the
Joliette _quais_ and past the towering Notre Dame de la Garde and the
great Byzantine Cathedral of Sainte Marie Majeur, leaving the twinkling
lights of the Vieux Port and the Pharo soon far behind. Past Château
d'If, the Point des Catalans, Ratonneau and Pomègue we steamed, all
reminiscent of Dumas and that masterpiece of his gallant portrait
gallery,--"The Count of Monte Cristo."
The great Planier light flashed its rays in our way for thirty odd miles
seaward, keeping us company long after we had eaten a good dinner, a
very good dinner indeed, with _café-cognac_--or _chartreuse_, real
_chartreuse_, not the base imitation, mark you, _tout compris_, to top
off with. The boat was a poor, wallowing thing of eight hundred tons or
so, but the dinner was much better than many an Atlantic liner gives. It
had character, and was served
[Illustration: _The_ APPROACH _By_ SEA]
in a tiny saloon on deck, with doors and ports all open, and a gentle,
sighing Mediterranean _brise_ wafting about our heads.
We were six passengers all told, and we were very, very comfortably
installed on the _Isly_ of the Compagnie Touache, in spite of the fact
that the craft owned to twenty-seven years and made only ten knots. The
Compagnie Générale Transatlantique has boats of the comparatively
youthful age of twelve and seventeen, but they are so crowded that one
is infinitely less comfortable, though they make the voyage at a gait of
fifteen or sixteen knots. Then again the food is by no means so good or
well served as that we had on the _Isly_. We have tried them both, and,
as we asked no favours of price or accommodation in either case, the
opinion may be set down as frank, truthful and personal. What others may
think all depends on themselves and circumstance.
In Algeria, at any rate, one doesn't find trippers, and there are
surprisingly few of what the French call "_Anglaises sans-gêne_" and
"_Allemands grotesques_."
The traveller in Algeria should by all means eliminate his countrymen
and study the native races and the French _colons_, if he wishes to know
something of the country. Otherwise he will know nothing, and might as
well have gone to a magic-lantern show at home.
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. That idea was exploded when
Stanley uttered his famous words: "Doctor Livingstone, I presume." And
since that day the late Cecil Rhodes launched his Cape to Cairo scheme,
and Africa has been given over to diamond-mine exploiters, rubber
collectors and semi-invalids, who, hearing wonderful tales of the
climatic conditions of Assouan and Biskra, have foregathered in these
places, to the joy of the native and the profit of the hotel
director--usually a Swiss.
Occasionally one has heard of an adventurous tourist who has hunted the
wild gazelle in the Atlas or the mountains of Kabylie, the gentlest
man-fearing creature God ever made, or who has "camped-out" in a tent
furnished by Cook, and has come home and told of his exploits which in
truth were more Tartarinesque than daring.
The trail of the traveller is over all to-day; but he follows as a rule
only the well-worn _pistes_. In addition to those strangers who live in
Algiers or Tunis and have made of those cities weak imitations of
European capitals and their suburbs as characterless as those of Paris,
London or Chicago, they have also imported such conventions as "bars"
and "tea-rooms" to Biskra and Hammam-R'hira.
Tlemcen and its mosques, however; Figuig and its fortress-looking Grand
Hôtel du Sahara at Beni-Ounif; Touggourt and its market and its military
posts; and Bou-Saada and Tozeur with their oases are as yet
comparatively unknown ground to all except artists who have the passion
of going everywhere and anywhere in search of the unspoiled.
When it comes to Oued-Souf with its one "_Maison française_," which, by
the way, is inhabited by the Frenchified Sheik of the Msaâba to whom a
chapter is devoted in this book later on; or Ghardaïa, the Holy City of
the Sud-Constantinois, the case were still more different. This is
still virgin ground for the stranger, and can only be reached by
diligence or caravan.
The railway with a fairly good equipment runs all the length of Algeria
and Tunisia, from the Moroccan frontier at Tlemcen to Gabès and beyond,
almost to the boundary of Tripoli in Barbary. An automobile would be
much quicker, and in some parts even a donkey, but the railway serves as
well as it ever does in a new-old country where it has recently been
installed.
If one enters by Algiers or Oran and leaves by Tunis or even Sfax or
Gabès he has done the round; but if opportunity offers, he should go
south from Tlemcen into the real desert at Figuig; from Biskra to
Touggourt; or from Gabès to Tozeur. Otherwise he will have so kept "in
touch" with things that he can, for the asking, have oatmeal for
breakfast and marmalade for tea, which is not what one comes, or should
come, to Africa for. One takes his departure from French Mediterranean
Africa from Tunis or Bizerte.
Leaving Tunis and its domes and minarets behind, his ship makes its way
gingerly out through the straight-cut canal, a matter of six
[Illustration: _The Edge of the Desert_]
or eight miles to La Goulette, a veritable Italian fishing village in
Africa which the Italian population themselves call La Goletta. Here the
pilot is sent ashore,--he was a useless personage anyway, but he touches
a hundred and fifty francs for standing on the bridge and doing
nothing,--the ship turns a sharp right angle and sets its course
northward for Marseilles, leaving Korbus and the great double-horned
mountain far in the distance to starboard.
Carthage and its cathedral, and Sidi-bou-Saïd and its minarets are to
port, the red soil forming a rich frame for the scintillating white
walls scattered here and there over the landscape. La Marsa and the
Bey's summer palace loom next in view, Cap Carthage and Cap Bon, and
then the open sea.
Midway between Tunis and Marseilles, one sees the red porphyry rocks of
Sardinia. Offshore are the little isles which terminate the greater
island, the "Taureau," the "Vache" and the "Veau." They are only
interesting as landmarks, and look like the outcroppings of other
Mediterranean islands. In bad weather the mariners give them a wide
berth.
The sight of Sardinia makes no impression on the French passengers. They
stare at it, and remark it not. The profound contempt of the Frenchman
of the Midi for all things Italian is to be remarked. Corsica is left to
starboard, still farther away, in fact not visible, but the Frenchman
apparently does not regret this either, even though it has become a
French Département. "_Peuh: la Corse_," he says, "_un vilain pays_,"
where men pass their existence killing each other off. Such is the
outcome of traditional, racial rancour, and yet the most patriotic
Frenchman the writer has ever known was a Corsican.
"_Voilà! le Cap Sicié!_" said the commandant the second morning at ten
o'clock, as he stood on the bridge straining his eyes for a sight of
land. We didn't see it, but we took his word for it. A quarter of an
hour later it came into view, the great landmark promontory, which juts
out into the Mediterranean just west of Toulon.
Just then with a swish and a swirl, and with as icy a breath as ever
blew south from the snow-clad Alps, down came the mistral upon us, and
we all went below and passed the most uncomfortable five hours
imaginable, anchored off the Estaque, in full view of Marseilles, and
yet not able to enter harbour. The Gulf of Lyons and the mistral form
an irresistible combination of forces once they get together.
At last in port; the _douanier_ keeps a sharp lookout for cigars and
cigarettes (which in Algeria and Tunisia sell for about a quarter of
what they do in France), and in a quarter of an hour we are installed in
that remarkably equipped "Touring Hotel" of Marseilles' Cours Belzunce.
_Art nouveau_ furniture, no heavy rugs or draperies, metallic bedsteads,
and hot and cold running water in every room. This is a good deal to
find on this side of the Atlantic. The house should be made note of by
all coming this way. Not in the palace hotels of Algiers, Biskra or
Tunis can you find such a combination.
CHAPTER II
THE REAL NORTH AFRICA
"_Africque apporte tousjours quelque chose de nouveau._"
--RABELAIS
Algeria and Tunisia are already the vogue, and Biskra, Hammam-R'hira and
Mustapha are already names as familiar as Cairo, Amalfi or Teneriffe,
even though the throng of "_colis vivants expédiés par Cook_," as the
French call them, have not as yet overrun the land. For the most part
the travellers in these delightful lands, be they Americans, English or
Germans (and the Germans are almost as numerous as the others), are
strictly unlabelled, and each goes about his own affairs, one to Tlemcen
to paint the Moorish architecture of its mosques, another to Biskra for
his health, and another to Tunis merely to while away his time amid
exotic surroundings.
This describes well enough the majority of travellers here, but the
other categories are increasing every day, and occasionally a
"tourist-steamship" drops down three or four hundred at one fell swoop
on the _quais_ of Algiers or Tunis, and then those cities become as the
Place de l'Opéra, or Piccadilly Circus. These tourists only skirt the
fringe of this interesting land, and after thirty-six hours or so go
their ways.
One does not become acquainted with the real North Africa in any such
fashion.
The picturesque is everywhere in Algeria and Tunisia, and the incoming
manners and customs of _outre-mer_ only make the contrast more
remarkable. It is not the extraordinary thing that astonishes us to-day,
for there is no more virgin land to exploit as a touring-ground. It is
the rubbing of shoulders with the dwellers in foreign lands who, after
all, are human, and have relatively the same desires as ourselves, which
they often satisfy in a different manner, that makes travel enjoyable.
What Nubian and Arab Africa will become later, when European races have
still further blended the centuries-old tropical and subtropical blood
in a gentle assimilated adaptation of men and things, no one can
predict. The Arab has become a very good engineer, the Berber can be
trained to become a respectable herder of cattle, as the Egyptian
_fellah_ has been made into a good farmer, or a motorman on the
electric railway from Cairo to the Pyramids.
What the French call the "Empire Européen" is bound to envelop Africa
some day, and France will be in for the chief part in the division
without question. The French seem to understand the situation
thoroughly; and, with the storehouse of food products (Algeria and
Tunisia, and perhaps by the time these lines are printed, Morocco) at
her very door, she is more than fortunately placed with regard to the
development of this part of Africa. The individual German may come and
do a little trading on his own account, but it is France as a nation
that is going to prosper out of Africa. This is the one paramount aspect
of the real North Africa of to-day as it has been for some generations
past, a fact which the Foreign Offices of many powers have overlooked.
It is a pity that the whole gamut of the current affairs of North Africa
is summed up in many minds by the memory of the palpably false sentiment
of the school of fictionists which began with Ouida. Let us hope it has
ended, for the picturing of the local colour of Mediterranean and
Saharan Africa is really beyond the romancer who writes love-stories for
the young ladies of the boarding-schools, and the new women of the _art
nouveau_ boudoirs. The lithe, dreamy young Arab of fiction, who falls in
love with lonesome young women _en voyage_ alone to some tourist centre,
is purely a myth. There is not a real thing about him, not even his
clothes, much less his sentiments; and he and his picturesque natural
surroundings jar horribly against each other at best.
The Cigarette of "Under Two Flags" was not even a classically
conventional figure, but simply a passionate, tumultuous creature,
lovable only for her inconsistencies, which in reality were nothing
African in act or sentiment, though that was her environment.
The English lord who became a "Chasseur d'Afrique" was even more
unreal--he wasn't a "Chasseur d'Afrique," anyway, he was simply a member
of the "Légion Étrangère;" but doubtless Ouida cared less for minutely
precise detail than she did to exploit her unconventional convictions.
The best novels of to-day are something our parents never dreamed of!
Exclamations and exhortations of the characters of "Under Two Flags,"
"Mon Amour," "Ma Patrie," "Les Enfants," are not African. They belong to
the parasite faubourgs of Paris' fortifications. Let no one make the
mistake, then, of taking this crop of North African novels for their
guide and mentor. Much better go with Cook and be done with it, if one
lacks the initiative to launch out for himself, and make the itinerary
by railway, _diligence_ and caravan. If he will, one can travel by
_diligence_ all over Mediterranean Africa, and by such a means of
locomotion he will best see and know the country.
The _diligence_ of the plain and mountain roads of Algeria and Tunisia
is as remarkable a structure as still rolls on wheels. Its counterpart
does not exist to-day in France, Switzerland or Italy. It is generally
driven by a portly Arab, with three wheelers and four leaders, seven
horses in all. It is made up of many compartments and stories. There is
a _rez-de-chaussée_, a _mezzanine_ floor and a roof garden, with prices
varying accordingly as comfort increases or decreases. A fifty or a
hundred kilometre journey therein, or thereon, is an experience one does
not readily forget. To begin with, one usually starts at an hour varying
from four to seven in the morning, an hour which, even in Algeria, in
winter, is dark and chill.
The stage-driver of the "Far West" is a fearsome, capable individual,
but the Arab conductor of a "_voiture publique_," with a rope-wound
turban on his head, a flowing, entangling burnous, and a five-yard whip,
can take more chances in getting around corners or down a sharp incline
than any other coach-driver that ever handled the ribbons. Sometimes he
has an assistant who handles a shorter whip, and belabours it over the
backs of the wheelers, when additional risks accrue. Sometimes, even,
this is not enough and the man-at-the-wheel jumps down and runs
alongside, slashing viciously at the flying heels of the seven horse
power, after which he crawls up aloft and dozes awhile.
Under the hood of the _impériale_ is stowed away as miscellaneous a lot
of baggage as one can imagine, including perhaps a dozen fowls, a sheep
or two, or even a calf. Amidst all this, three or four cross-legged
natives wobble and lurch as the equipage makes its perilsome way.
Down below everything is full, too; so that, with its human freight of
fifteen or sixteen persons, and the unweighed kilos of merchandise on
the roof, the journey may well be described as being fraught with
possibilities of disaster. There is treasure aboard, too,--a strong-box
bolted to the floor beneath the drivers' feet; and at the rear a
weather-proof cast-iron letter-box, padlocked tight and only opened at
wayside post-offices. The sequestered colonist, living far from the rail
or post, has his only communication with the outside world through the
medium of this mobile _bureau de poste_.
The roads of Algeria and Tunisia are marvellously good--where they
exist. The Arab roads and routes of old were simple trails, trod down in
the herb-grown, sandy soil by the bare feet of men, or camels, or the
hoofs of horses and mules. So narrow were these trails that two caravans
could not pass each other, so there were two trails, like the steamship
"lanes" of the Atlantic.
Tradition still prompts the Kabyles to march in single file on the
sixteen meter wide high-roads, which now cross and recross their
country, the results of a beneficent French administration. Morocco some
day will come in line.
In Tunisia, the roads are as good as they are in Algeria, and they are
many and being added to yearly.
There are still to be seen, in the interior, little pyramids of stones,
perhaps made up of tens of thousands, or a hundred thousand even, of
desert pebbles, each unit placed by some devoted traveller who has
recalled that on that spot occurred the death, or perhaps murder, of
some pioneer. The Arabs call these monuments Nza, and would not think
for a moment of passing one by without making their offering. It is a
delicate, natural expression of sentiment, and one that might well be
imitated.
There is no more danger to the tourist travelling through Algeria and
Tunisia by road than there would be in France or Italy--and considerably
less than might be met with in Spain. There are some brigands and
robbers left hiding in the mountains, perhaps, but their raids are on
flocks and herds, and not for the mere dross of the gold of tourists, or
the gasolene of automobilists. The desert lion is a myth of
Tartarinesque poets and artists, and one is not likely to meet anything
more savage than a rabbit or a hedgehog all the fifteen hundred or two
thousand kilometres from Tlemcen to Gabès.
The African lion is a dweller only in the forest-grown mountains; and
the popular belief that it can track for weeks across the desert,
drinking only air, and eating only sand, is pure folly of the romantic
brand perpetuated by the painter Gérome.
During the last ten years, in all Algeria there were killed only:--
Lions and lionesses and cubs 181
Panthers 988
Hyenas 1,485
Jackals 22,619
It may be taken for granted, then, that there are no great dangers to be
experienced on the well-worn roads and _pistes_ of Tunisia and Algeria.
The hyenas and lions are hidden away in the great mountain fastnesses,
and the jackals themselves are harmless enough so far as human beings
are concerned. The _sanglier_, or wild boar, is savage enough if
attacked when met with, otherwise it is he who flees, whilst the
jack-rabbits and the gazelles make up the majority of the "savage life"
seen contiguous to the main travelled roads away from the railways.
Scorpions and horned vipers are everywhere--if one looks for them,
otherwise one scarcely ever sees one or the other. The greatest enemy of
mankind hereabouts is the flea; and, as the remedy is an obvious and
personal one, no more need be said. Another plague is the cricket,
grasshopper or _sauterelle_. The _sauterelle_, says the Arab, is the
wonder among nature's living things. It has the face of a horse, the
eyes of an elephant, the neck of a bull, the horns of a deer, the breast
of a lion, the stomach of a scorpion, the legs of an ostrich, the tail
of a snake, and is more to be feared than any of the before enumerated
menagerie. It all but devastated the chief wheat-growing lands of the
plateaux of the provinces of Alger and Constantine a generation or more
ago, and brought great misery in its wake.
The scorpion and the gazelle are the two chief novelties among living
things (after the camel) with which the stranger makes acquaintance
here. The former is unlovely but not dangerous. "_Il pique, mais ne mord
pas_," say the French; but no one likes to find them in his shoes in the
morning all the same. The gazelle is more likable, a gentle, endearing
creature, with great liquid eyes, such as poets attribute to their most
lovely feminine creations.
The gazelle is an attribute of all fountain courtyards. It lives and
thrives in captivity, can be tamed to follow you like a dog, and is as
affectionate as a caressing kitten. It will eat condensed milk, dates,
cabbage and cigarettes; but it balks at Pear's soap.
In the open country the nomad Arab or even the house-dweller that one
meets by the roadside is an agreeable, willing person, and when he
understands French (as he frequently does), he is quite as "useful" as
would be his European prototype under similar conditions. The country
Arab is courteous, for courtesy's sake, moreover, and not for profit.
This is not apt to be the case in the cities and towns.
The Arab speech of the ports and railway cities and towns is of the
solicitous kind. One can't learn anything here of phraseology that will
be useful to him in the least and it's bad French. "_Sidi mousi! Moi
porter! Moi forsa besef!_" is nothing at all, though it is eloquent, and
probably means that the gamin, old or young, wants to carry your baggage
or call a cab. And for this you pay in Algiers and Tunis as you pay in
London or Paris, but you are not blackmailed as you are in Alexandria or
Cairo.
One may not rest two minutes on the terrace of any café in a large
Algerian town without having an Arab, a Kabyle, or a Jewish ragamuffin
come up and bawl at one incessantly, "_Ciri, ciri, ciri!_" If you have
just left your hotel, your boots brilliant as jet from the best Algerian
substitute for "Day & Martin's Best," it doesn't matter in the least;
they still cry, "_Ciri, ciri, ciri, m'siou!_" Sometimes it is, "_Ciri
bien, m'siou!_" and sometimes "_Ciri, kif, kif la glace de Paris!_" But
the object of their plaint is always the same. Finally, if you won't let
them dull the polish of your _shine_, they will cire their faces and
demand "_quat' sous_" from you because you witnessed the operation. Very
businesslike are the shoeblacks of Algiers; they don't mind what they
_cire_ as long as they _cire_ something.
[Illustration: "Cireur"]
The Café d'Apollon in Algiers is the rendezvous of the "high-life Arab."
Here Sheiks from the deserts' great tents, Caïds from the settlements,
and others of the vast army of great and small Arab officialdom assemble
to take an afternoon _bock_ or _apéritif_; for in spite of his religion
the Mussulman will sometimes drink beer and white wine. Some, too, are
"decorated," and some wear even the _ruban_ or _bouton_ of the Legion of
Honour on their chests where that otherwise useless buttonhole of the
coat of civilization would be. Grim, taciturn figures are these, whose
only exclamation is a mechanical clacking of the lips or a cynical,
gurgling chuckle coming from deep down, expressive of much or little,
according as much or little is meant.
The foreign population in Algeria and Tunisia is very mixed; and though
all nationalities mingle in trade the foreigners will not become
naturalized to any great extent. Out of forty-one naturalized foreigners
in Tunis in 1891, 27 were Italians, 2 Alsatians, 2 Luxembourgeois, 2
Maltese, 1 German, 1 Belgian, 1 Moroccan, and 5 individuals of
undetermined nationality.
Civilization and progress has marked North Africa for exploitation, but
it will never overturn Mohammedanism. The trail of Islam is a long one
and plainly marked. From the Moghreb to the Levant and beyond extends
the
[Illustration: THE FLIGHT _of the_ MOORS]
memory and tradition of Moorish civilization of days long gone by. The
field is unlimited, and ranges from the Giralda of Andalusia to the
Ottoman mosques of the Dardanelles, though we may regret, with all the
Arab poets and historians, the decadence of Granada more than all else.
The Arab-Moorish overrunning of North Africa defined an epoch full of
the incident of romance, whatever may have been the cruelties of the
barbarians. This period endured until finally the sombre cities of the
corsairs became the commercial capitals of to-day, just as glorious
Carthage became a residential suburb of Tunis. The hand of time has left
its mark plainly imprinted on all Mediterranean Africa, and not even the
desire for up-to-dateness on the part of its exploiters will ever efface
these memories, nor further desecrate the monuments which still remain.
The French African possessions include more than a third of the
continent, an area considerably more extensive than the United States,
Alaska, Porto Rico, and the Philippines combined. One hears a lot about
the development of the British sphere of influence in Africa; but not
much concerning that of the French which, since the unhappy affair of
Fashoda, has been more active than ever. The French are not the
garrulous nation one sometimes thinks them. They have a way of doing
things, and saying nothing, which is often fraught with surprises for
the outside world. Perhaps Morocco and Tripoli de Barbarie may come into
the fold some day; and, then, with the French holding the railways of
Egypt and the Suez Canal, as at present, they will certainly be the
dominant Mediterranean and African power, if they may not be reckoned so
already.
The Saharan desert is French down to its last grain of sand and the last
oasis palm-tree, and it alone has an area half the size of the United
States.
Of Mediterranean French Africa, Tunisia is a protectorate, but almost as
absolutely governed by the French as if it were a part of the Ile de
France. Algérie is a part of France, a Department across the seas like
Corse. It holds its own elections and has three senators and six
deputies at Paris. Its governor-general is a Frenchman (usually promoted
from the Préfecture of some mainland Département) and most of the
officialdom and bureaucracy are French.
Trade between Algeria and France, mostly in wines and food stuffs on one
side, and manufactured products on the other, approximates three hundred
millions of francs in each direction. Algeria, "la belle Algérie" as the
French fondly call it, is not a mere strip of mountain land and desert.
It is one of the richest agricultural lands on earth, running eastward
from the Moroccan frontier well over into Tunisia; and, for ages, it has
been known as the granary of Europe. The Carthaginians and the
Phoenicians built colonies and empires here, and Rome was nourished
from its wheat-fields and olive-groves.
The wheat of Africa was revered by the Romans of the capital above all
others. One of the pro-consuls sent Augustus a little packet of four
hundred grains, all grown from one sole seed, whereupon great national
granaries were built and the commerce in the wheat of Africa took on
forthwith almost the complexion of a monopoly. The sowing and the
harvest were most primitive. "I have seen," wrote Pliny (H. N. XVIII,
21), "the sowing and the reaping accomplished here by the aid of a
primitive plough, an old woman and a tiny donkey." The visitor may see
the same to-day!
At the moment of the first autumn rains the Arab or Berber cultivator
works over his soil, or sets his wives on the job, and sows his winter
wheat. The planting finished, the small Arab farmer seeks the sunny side
of a wall and basks there, watching things grow, smoking much tobacco
and drinking much coffee, each of these narcotics very black and strong.
Four months later his ample, or meagre, crop comes by chance. Then he
flays it, not by means of a flail swung by hand, but by borrowing a
little donkey from some neighbour,--if he hasn't one of his own,--and
letting the donkey's hoofs trample it out. Now he takes it--or most
likely sends it--to market, and his year's work is done. He rolls over
to the shady side of his _gourbi_ (the sunny side is getting too warm)
and loafs along until another autumn. He might grow maize in the
interval, but he doesn't.
The Barbary fig, or prickly-pear cactus, is everywhere in Algeria and
Tunisia. It grows wild by the roadside, in great fields, and as a
barrier transplanted to the top of the universal mud walls. Frost is its
only enemy. Everything and everybody else flees before it except the
native who eats its spiny, juicy bulbs and finds them good. The rest of
us only find the spines, and throw the fruit away in disgust when we
attempt to taste it. The Barbary fig is the Arab's sole food supply when
crops fail, the only thing which stands between him and
starvation--unless he steals dates or figs from some richer man's
plantation. The Arab's wants are not great, and with fifty francs and
some ingenuity he can live a year.
The palm-trees of Africa number scores of varieties, but those of the
Mediterranean states and provinces, the date-bearing palm, come within
three well-defined classes: the _Phoenix-dactylifera_, the
_chamaerops-humilis_ and the _cucifera-thebaica_.
Even the smallest Arab proprietor of land or sheep or goats pays taxes.
The French leave its collection to the local Caïds or Sheiks, but it
gets into the official coffers ultimately,--or most of it does.
In Algeria there are four principal taxes, or _impôts_:
The _Achour_ on cereals; the _Zekai_, on sheep and cattle to-day, but
originally a tax collected for the general good, as prescribed by the
Koran; the _Hokar_ (in Constantine), a tax on land; the _Lezma_, the
generic term for various contributions, such as the right to carry
firearms (the only tax levied in Kabylie), and the tax on date-palms in
the Sud-Algérie and Sud-Oranais. The Arab carries a gun only after he
gets a permit, which he must show every time he buys powder or shot.
In Tunisia the taxes are much the same; but there is a specific tax on
olive-trees as well as date-palms, and on the markets and the products
sold there.
The wines of Algeria and Tunisia are the product of foreign vines whose
roots were transplanted here but little more than half a century ago.
These vines came from all parts, from France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy,
Malta and America; and now the "_vin d'Algérie_" goes out to the ends of
the earth,--usually under the name of a _cru_ more famous. It is very
good wine nevertheless, this rich, hybrid juice of the grape; and,
though the Provençal of Chateauneuf, the sons of the Aude, the Garde and
the Hérault, or the men of Roussillon do not recognize Algerian wine as
a worthy competitor of their own vintages, it is such all the same. And
the Peroximen, supposed to be a product only of Andalusia, and the
Muscatel of Alexandria, are very nearly as good grown on Algerian soil
as when gathered in the place of their birth.
The "_vin rosé_" of Kolea, the really superb wines of Médea, and the
"_vin blanc de Carthage_," should carry the fame of these North African
vintages to all who are, or think they are, judges of good wine.
With such a rich larder at their very doors, the mediæval Mediterranean
nations were in a constant quarrel over its possession. Vandals and
Greeks fought for the right to populate it after the Romans, but the
Moorish wave was too strong; the Arab crowded the Berber to the wall and
made him a Mussulman instead of a Christian, a religious faith which
the French have held inviolate so far as proselytizing goes. It is this
one fundamental principle which has done much to make the French rule in
Algeria the success that it is. Britain should leave religion out of her
colonizing schemes if she would avoid the unrest which is continually
cropping up in various parts of the empire; and the United States should
leave the friars of the Philippines alone, and let them grow fat if they
will, and develop the country on business lines. We are apt to think
that the French are slow in business matters, but they get results
sometimes in an astonishingly successful manner, and by methods which
they copy from no one.
The ports of Algeria and Tunisia are of great antiquity. The Romans, not
content with the natural advantages offered as harbours, frequently cut
them out of the soft rock itself, or built out jetties or _quais_, as
have all dock engineers since when occasion demanded. There are vestiges
of these old Roman _quais_ at Bougie, at Collo, at Cherchell, at Stora
and at Bona. These Roman works, destroyed or abandoned at the Vandal
invasion, were never rebuilt; and the great oversea traders of the
Italian Republics, of France and of Spain, merely hung around offshore
and transacted their business, as do the tourist steamers at Jaffa
to-day, while their personally conducted hordes descend upon Jerusalem
and the Jordan.
The Barbary pirates had little inlets and outlets which they alone knew,
and flitted in and out of on their nefarious projects; but only at
Algiers, until in comparatively recent times, were there any ports or
harbours, legitimately so called, in either Algeria or Tunisia, though
the Spaniards, when in occupation of Oran in the eighteenth century,
made some inefficient attempts towards waterside improvements of a
permanent character.
In thinking of North Africa it is well to recall that it is not a
tropical belt, nor even a subtropical one. It is very like the climate
of the latitude of Washington, though perhaps with less rain in winter.
It is not for a moment to be compared with California or Bermuda.
The temperature on the Algerian coast is normally as follows:--
Winter, 11°-12° centigrade Summer, 25° centigrade
Spring, 15°-16° centigrade Autumn, 19°-20° centigrade
Average yearly, 17°-18° centigrade
As compared with the temperature of the French Riviera, taking Nice as
an example, the balance swings in favour of Algeria in winter, and a
trifle against it for summer, as the following figures show:--
Winter, 9° centigrade Summer, 23° centigrade
Spring, 17° centigrade Autumn, 18° centigrade
Yearly average, 16° centigrade
One pertinent observation on North Africa is that regarding the influx
of outside civilizing influences. The American invasion of manufactured
products is here something considerable; but as yet it has achieved
nothing like its possibilities, save perhaps in electrical tramway
installation, sewing machines and five-gallon tins of kerosene. The
French have _got_ North Africa, mostly; the Germans the trade in
cutlery; the English (or the Scotch) that in whiskey and marmalade; but
the American shipments of "Singers" and "Standards" must in total
figures swamp any of the other single "foreign imports" in value. One
does not speak of course of imports from France. As the argument of the
dealers, who push the sewing-machine into the desert _gourbis_ of the
nomads and the mountain dwellings of the Kabyles, has it, the civilizing
influences of Algeria have been railways, public schools and "Singers."
What progressive Arab could be expected to resist such an argument for
progress, with easy-payment terms of a franc a week as the chief
inducement? The only objection seems to be that his delicately
fashioned, creamy, woollen burnous of old is fast becoming a ready-made
"lock-stitch" affair, which lacks the loving marks of the real hand-made
article. Other things from America are agricultural machinery, ice-cream
freezers, oil-stoves, corn meal, corned beef, salmon from Seattle, and
pickles from Bunker Hill. As yet the trade in these "staples" is
infinitesimal when compared with what it might be if "pushed," which it
is not because all these things come mostly through London warehouse
men, who "push" something else when they can.
A few things America will not be able to sell in North Africa are boots
and shoes, the Arab wears his neatly folded down at the heel, and ours
are not that kind; nor socks, nor stockings, the Arab buys a gaudy
"near-silk," made in the Vosges, when he buys any, and the women don't
wear them; nor hats, though a Stetson, No. 7, would please them
mightily, all but the price. There is no demand for folding-beds or
elastic bookcases. The Arab sleeps on the floor, and the only book he
possesses, if he can read, is a copy of the Koran, which he tucks away
inside his burnous and carries about with him everywhere. Chairs he has
no need for; when the Arab doesn't lie or huddle on the ground, he sits
dangle-legged or cross-legged on a bench, which is a home-made affair.
The women mostly squat on their heels, which looks uncomfortable, but
which they seem to enjoy.
Besides the American invasion, there is the German occupation to reckon
with--in a trade sense.
"Those terrible Germans," is a newspaper phrase of recent coinage which
is applicable to almost any reference to the German trade invasion of
every country under the sun, save perhaps the United States and Canada.
In South America, in Russia, and in the African Mediterranean States and
Provinces, the Teuton has pushed his trading instincts to the utmost. He
may be no sort of a colonizer himself, but he knows how to sell goods.
In North Africa, in the coast towns, over a thousand German firms have
established themselves within the last ten years, all the way from
Tangier to Port Saïd. This may mean little or nothing to the offhand
thinker; but when one recalls that the blackamoor and the Arab have
learned to use matches and folding pocket-knives, and have even been
known to invest in talking machines, it is also well to recall that the
German can produce these things, "machine-made," and market them cheaper
than any other nation. For this reason he floods the market, where the
taste is not too critical, and the cry is here for cheapness above all
things. This is the Arab's point of view, hence the increasing hordes of
German traders.
To show the German is indefatigable, and that he knows North Africa to
its depths, the case of the late German consul at Cairo, Paul Gerhard,
who wrote a monumental work on the butterflies of North Africa, is worth
recalling.
CHAPTER III
ALGERIA OF TO-DAY
"Le coq Gaulois est le coq de la gloire.
Il chante bien fort quand il gagne une victoire
Et encore plus fort quand il est battu."
Algeria is by no means savage Africa, even though its population is
mostly _indigène_. It forms a "_circonscription académique_" of France.
It has a national observatory, a branch of that at Paris, founded in
1858; a school of medicine and pharmacy; a school of law; a faculty of
letters and sciences, and three endowed chairs of Arabic, at Algiers
(founded in 1836); Oran (1850) and Constantine (1858).
Algeria has a great future in store, although it has cost France
8,593,000,000 francs since its occupation seventy years ago, and has
only produced a revenue of 2,330,000,000 francs, which represents the
loss of a sum greater than the war indemnity of 1870. The Algerian
budget balanced for the first time in 1901 without subsidies from home.
The entire population of Algeria is 4,124,732, of which 3,524,000 are
Arabs, Kabyles or
[Illustration: Algeria and its Provinces]
[Illustration: Algeria and its Provinces]
Berbers, and the subdivided races hereafter mentioned, leaving in the
neighbourhood of 600,000 Europeans, whose numbers are largely increasing
each year.
The rate of increase of the European population, from 1836, when the
French first occupied the country, has been notable. In 1836 there were
14,561 Europeans in the colony; in 1881, 423,881, of which 233,937 were
French, 112,047 Spanish, and 31,865 Italians, and to-day the figure is
over 600,000.
The Arab and Berber population, too, are notably increasing; they are
not disappearing like the red man. From 2,320,000, in 1851, they have
increased, in 1891, to 3,524,000.
In addition to the Arab and Berber population of Algeria, and the
"foreigners" and Europeans, there are the following:
Moors--(90,500), the mixed issue of the Berbers and all the races
inhabiting Algeria.
Koulouglis--(20,000), born of Turks and Moorish women.
Jews--(47,667), who by the decree of 1870 were made French. (This does
not include unnaturalized Jews.)
Negroes--(5,000), the former slaves who were freed in 1848.
The French colonist in Algeria, the man on the spot, understands the
Arab question better than the minister and officials of the Colonial
Office of the Pavilion Sully, though the French have succeeded in making
of Algeria what they have never accomplished with their other
colonies--a paying proposition at last. Still France governs Algeria
under a sort of "up-the-state," "Raines-law" rule, and treats the
_indigène_ of Laghouat or Touggourt as they would a boatman of Pontoise
or a farm labourer of Étampes. The French colonial howls against all the
mistakes and indiscretions of a "Boulevard Government" for the Sahara,
and even revile the Governor General, whom he calls a civilian dressed
up in military garb and no governor at all. _Que diable!_ This savours
of partisanship and politics, but it is an echo of what one hears as
"café talk" any time he opens his ears in Algiers.
All is peace and concord within, however, in spite of the small talk of
the cafés; and the Arab and European live side by side, each enjoying
practically the same rights and protection that they would if they lived
in suburban Paris.
The Caïd or Sheik or head man of a tribe is the go-between in all that
concerns the affairs of the native with the French government.
[Illustration: _Touggourt_]
The name Caïd was formerly given to the governors of the provinces of
the Barbary States, but to-day that individual has absolutely
disappeared, though he still remains as an administrator of French law,
under the surveillance of the military government. In reality the Caïd
still remains the official head of his tribe, and in this position is
sustained by the French authorities.
The Arab has adopted the new order of things very graciously, but he
can't get over his ancient desire to hoard gold; and, for that reason,
no Algerian gold coin exists, and there is no gold in circulation to
speak of. The Arab, when he gets it, buries it, forgets where, or dies
and forgets to tell any one where, which is the same thing, and thus a
certain very considerable amount is lost to circulation.
Paper money, in values of twenty and fifty francs, takes the place of
gold; the Arab thinks that it is something that is perishable, and
accordingly spends it and keeps the country prosperous. The French
understand the Arab and his foibles; there is no doubt about that. They
solved the question of a circulating currency in Algeria. New York and
Washington representatives of _haute finance_ might take a few lessons
here.
With regard to the money question, the stranger in Algeria must beware
of false and non-current coin. Anything that's a coin looks good to an
Arab, and for that reason a large amount of spurious stuff is in
circulation. It was originally made by counterfeiters to gull the
native, but to-day the stranger gets his share, or more than his share.
To replace the gold "_louis_" of France, the Banque d'Algérie issues
"shin-plasters" of twenty francs. They are convenient, but one must get
rid of them before leaving the country or else sell them to a money
changer at a discount. These Algerian bank-notes now pass current in
Tunisia, a branch of the parent bank having recently been opened there.
The commercial possibilities of Algeria have hardly, as yet, begun to be
exploited, though the wine and wheat-growing lands are highly developed;
and, since their opening, have suffered no lack of prosperity, save for
a plague of _phylloxera_ which set back the vines on one occasion, and a
plague of locusts which one day devastated almost the entire region of
the wheat-growing plateaux. It was then the Arabs became locust-eaters,
though indeed they are not become a cult as in Japan. With the Arab it
was a case of eating locusts or nothing, for there was no grain.
This plague of locusts fell upon the province of Constantine in 1885,
and from Laghouat to Bou-Saada, and from Kenchela to Aumale they were
brought in myriads by the sirocco of the desert from no one knows where.
For two years these great cereal-growing areas were cleared of their
crops as though a wild-fire had passed over them, until finally the
government by strenuous efforts, and the employment of many thousands of
labourers, was able to control and arrest the march of the plague.
During this period many of the new colonists saw their utmost resources
disappear; but gallantly they took up their task anew, and for the past
dozen years only occasional slight recurrences of the pest have been
noted, and they, fortunately, have been suppressed as they appeared.
Besides wheat and wine, tobacco is an almost equal source of profit to
Algeria. In France no one may grow a tobacco plant, even as an
embellishment to his garden-plot, without first informing the excise
authorities, who, afterwards, will come around periodically and count
the leaves. In Africa the tobacco crop is something that brings peace
and plenty to any who will cultivate it judiciously, for the consumption
of the weed is great.
Manufactured tobacco is cheap in Algeria. Neither cigars, cigarettes nor
pipe mixtures, nor snuff either, pay any excise duties; and even foreign
tobaccos, which mostly come from Hungary and the Turkish provinces, pay
very little.
Two-thirds of the Algerian manufactured product is made from home-grown
tobacco, and a very large quantity of the same is sent to France to be
sold as "Maryland;" though, indeed, if the original plants ever came
from the other side of the water, it was by a very roundabout route.
Certainly the broom-corn tobacco of France does not resemble that of
Maryland in the least. The hope of France and her colonies is to grow
all the tobacco consumed within her frontiers, whether it is labelled
"Maryland," "Turkish" or "Scaferlati." The French government puts out
some awful stuff it calls tobacco and sells under fancy names.
The tobacco tax in Algeria is _nil_, and that on wine is nearly so. Four
sous a _hectolitre_ (100 _litres_) is not a heavy tax to pay, though
when it was first applied (in 1907) it was the excuse for the retail
wine dealer (who in Algeria is but human, when he seeks to make what
profit he can) to add two sous to the price of his wine _per litre_.
There is a law in France against unfair trading, and the same applies to
Algeria. It has been a dead law in many places for many years, but when
a tax of four sous a _hectolitre_, originally paid to the state, by the
dealer, finally came out of the consumer's pocket as ten francs, an
increase of 5,000 per cent., popular clamour and threats of the law
caused the dealer to drop back to his original price. This is the way
Algeria protects its growing wine industry. Publicists and economists
elsewhere should study the system.
The African landscape is very simple and very expressive, severe but not
sad, lively but not gay. The great level horizon bars the way south
towards the wastes of the Sahara, and the mountains of the Atlas are
ever present nearer at hand. The desert of romance, _le vrai désert_, is
still a long way off; and, though there is now a macadamized road to
Bou-Saada and Biskra, and a railway to Figuig and beyond, civilization
is still only at the vestibule of the Sahara. The real development and
exploitation of North Africa and its peoples and riches is yet to come.
[Illustration: FARMING _OLD STYLE_]
As for the climate, that of California is undoubtedly superior to that
of Algeria, but the topographical and agricultural characteristics are
much the same. The greatest difference which will be remarked by an
American crossing Algeria from Oran to Souk-Ahras will be the distinct
"foreign note" of the installation of its farming communities. Haystacks
are plastered over with mud; carts are drawn by mules or horses hitched
tandemwise, three, four or five on end, and the carts are mostly
two-wheeled at that. There are no fences and no great barns for stocking
fodder or sheltering cattle; the farmhouses are all of stone, bare or
stucco-covered, and range in colour from sky-blue to pale pink and vivid
yellow. There is some American farming machinery in use, but the Arab
son of the soil still largely works with the implements of Biblical
times.
The winter of Algeria is the winter of Syria, of Japan, and reminiscent
to some extent of California; perhaps not so mild on the whole, but
still something of an approach thereto. Another contrast favourable to
California is that in Algeria there is a lack of certain refinements of
modern travel which are to be had in the "land of sunshine." Winter,
properly speaking, does not come to Algeria except on the high plateaux
of the provinces of Oran, Alger and Constantine, and on the mountain
peaks of the Atlas, and in Kabylie.
South of Algiers stretches the great plain of the Mitidja, which is like
no other part of the earth's surface so much as it is like Normandy with
respect to its prairies, "la Beauce" for its wheat-fields and its
grazing-grounds, and the Bordelais for its vineyards.
At the western extremity of the Mitidja commence the orange-groves of
Blida, the forests of olive-trees, and the eucalyptus of La Trappe. The
scene is immensely varied and suggestive of untold wealth and prosperity
at every kilometre.
Suburban Algiers is thickly built with villas, more or less after the
Moorish style, but owned by Europeans. Recently the wealthy Arab has
taken to building his "country house" on similar gracious lines; and,
when he does, he keeps pretty near to accepted Moorish elements and
details, whereas the European, the _colon_, or the _commerçant_ grown
rich, carries out his idea on the Meudon or St. Cloud plan. The Moorish
part is all there, but the thing often doesn't hang together.
To the eastward back of the mountains of Kabylie lies the great plateau
region of the Tell.
The Tell is a region vastly different in manners and customs from either
the desert or the Algerian littoral. The manners of the nomad of the
Sahara here blend into those of the farming peasant; but, by the time
Batna is reached, they become tainted with the commercialism of the
outside world. At Constantine there is much European influence at work,
and at the seacoast towns of Bona or Philippeville the Oriental perfume
of the date-palm is lost in that of the smells and cosmopolitanism
usually
[Illustration]
associated with great seaports. These four distinct characteristics mark
four distinct regions of the Numidia of the ancients, to-day the
wheat-growing region of the Tell.
The principal mountain peaks in Algeria rise to no great heights.
Touabet, near Tlemcen, is 1,620 metres in height; the highest peak of
the Grand Kabylie Range, in the province of Alger, is 2,308 metres; and
Chelia, in Constantine, 2,328 metres. They are not bold, rugged
mountains, but rolling, rounded crests, often destitute of verdure to
the point of desolation.
The development of the regions forming the _hinterland_--practically one
may so call the Sahara--is of constant and assiduous care to the
authorities. They have done much and are doing much more as statistics
indicate.
In the valley of the Oued-Righ and the Ziban, one of the most favoured
of these borderlands, the government statistics of springs and oases are
as follows (1880-90):--
Oases, 38
Springs, 434
Palms, 518,000
Other fruit-trees, 90,000
Value of crops, 5,500,500 fcs.
Inhabitants, 12,827
And as the population increases and fruit-growing areas are further
developed, the military engineers come along and dig more wells.
The following average temperatures and rainfall show the contrast
between various regions:--
January August Rainfall
(Centigrade) (Centigrade) (Millimetres)
{Tlemcen 9.2 26 524
Mountains {Fort Nationale 10.1 27 982
{Constantine 8.5 26 408
{Géryville 7.2 25.3 126
Plateaux {Djeefa 7.2 27.6 176
{Tebessa 8.1 27.7 251
It will be noted that, normally, there is very little difference in
temperature, and a very considerable difference in rainfall.
The extreme recorded winter temperatures are as follows:--
1906 Aumale 8° centigrade
Laghouat 45° "
1905 Laghouat 7° "
Biskra 47° "
1904 Aumale 3° "
Tunis 14° "
Algeria has something like 3,100 kilometres of standard gauge railway,
and various light railways, or narrow gauge roads, of from ten to fifty
kilometres in length, aggregating perhaps five hundred kilometres more.
Railway building and development is going on constantly, but they don't
yet know what an express train is, and the sleeping and dining car
services are almost as bad as they are in England. The real up-to-date
sleeping-car has electric lights and hot and cold water as well as steam
heat. They have dreamed of none of these things yet in England or
Africa.
The railway is the chief civilizing developer of a country. The railway
receipts in Algeria in 1870 were 2,500,000 francs. In 1900 they were
26,000,000 francs. That's an increase of a thousand per cent., and it
all came out of the country.
The "Routes Nationales" of Algeria (not counting by-roads, etc.), the
real arteries of the life-blood of the country, at the same periods
numbered almost an equal extent, and they are still being built. Give a
new country good roads and good railways and it is bound to prosper.
Four millions of the total population of Algeria (including something
over two hundred thousand Europeans) are dependent upon agriculture for
their livelihood. Wheat, wine and tobacco rank in importance in the
order named.
The growth of the wine industry has been most remarkable.
In 1872 4,994,000 gallons were produced
" 1880 9,504,000 " " "
" 1888 60,742,000 " " "
" 1898 100,194,600 " " "
None of it is sold as Bordeaux or Burgundy, at least not by the Algerian
grower or dealer. It is quite good enough to sell on its own merits. Let
Australia, then, fabricate so-called "Burgundy" and Germany
"Champagne"--Algeria has no need for any of these wiles.
Grapes, figs and plums are seemingly better in Algeria than elsewhere.
Not better, perhaps, but they are so abundant that one eats only of the
best. The rest are exported to England and Germany. The little
_mandarin_ oranges from Blida and about there, are one of the stand-bys
of Algerian trade. So are olives and dates.
[Illustration: _Tunisia_]
CHAPTER IV
THE RÉGENCE OF TUNISIA AND THE TUNISIANS
For twenty years France has been putting forth her best efforts and
energies into the development of Tunisia, to make it a worthy and
helpful sister to Algeria. From a French population of seven hundred at
the time of the occupation in 1882, the number has risen to fifty
thousand.
Tunisia of to-day was the Lybia of the ancients; but whether it was
peopled originally from Spain, from Egypt or from peoples from the
south, history is silent, or at least is not convincingly loud-voiced.
Lybian, Punic, Roman, Vandal and Byzantine, the country became in turn,
then Mussulman; for the native Tunisian has not yet become French. The
Bey still reigns, though with a shorn fragment of his former powers. The
Bey is still the titular head of his Régence, but the French Résident
Général is really the _premier fonctionnaire_, as also he is the Bey's
Ministère des Affaires Étrangères.
The ancient governmental organization of the Bey has been retained with
respect to interior affairs. The Caïds are the local governors or
administrators of the territorial divisions and are appointed by the Bey
himself. They are charged with the policing of their districts, the
collecting of taxes, and are vested with a certain military authority
with which to impress their tribes. Associated with the Caïds, as
seconds in command, are a class called Khalifas, and as tax collectors,
mere civil authorities, there are finally the Sheiks.
[Illustration: _An Old Seal of the Bey of Tunis_]
It was a bitter pill for Italy when France took the ascendancy in Tunis.
The population of the city of Tunis to-day still figures 30,000 Italians
and Maltese as against 10,000 French,--and ever have the French
anti-expansionists called it a "_chinoiserie_." Call it what you will,
Tunis, in spite of its preponderant Italian influence, is fast becoming
French. It is also becoming prosperous, which is the chief end of man's
existence. This proves France's intervention to have been a good thing,
in spite of the fact that it accounts for seventy-five per cent. of the
Italian's animosity towards his Gallic sister.
The death of S. A. Saddok-Bey in 1882, by which the Tunisian sovereign
became subservient to the French Resident, was an event which caused
some apprehension in France.
The new ruler, Si-Ali-Bey, embraced gladly the French suzerainty in his
land that his sons might see the institutions of the Régence prosper
under the benign guidance of a world power. Ali-Bey resisted nothing
French,--even as a Prince,--and when he came to the Beylicale throne in
1882 he gave no thought whatever to the ultimate political independence
of his country. He was ever, until his death, the faithful, liberal
coöperator with the succession of Résidents Généreaux who superseded him
in the control of the real destinies of Tunisia.
As a sovereign he formerly stood as the absolute ruler of a million
souls, not only their political ruler, but their religious head as well.
The latter title still belongs to the Bey. (The present ruler,
Mohammed-en-Nacer-Bey, came into power upon the death of his
predecessor, Mohammed-el-Hadi-Bey in 1906.)
French political administration has robbed the power of the Bey of many
of its picturesque and romantic accessories; but the usages of Islam are
tolerated not only in the entourage of the Bey, but in all his subjects
as well. This toleration even grants them the sanctity of their mosques,
and does not allow the hordes of Christian tourists, who now make a
playground of Mediterranean Africa from Cairo to Fez, to desecrate them
by writing their names in Mohammedan sacred places. In other words,
Europeans are forbidden to enter any of the Tunisian mosques save those
at Kairouan.
It was Ali-Bey who achieved the task of making the masses understand
that their duty was to obey the new régime; that it was a law common to
them all that would assure the prosperity of the nation; and that it was
he, the Bey, who was still the titular head of their religion, which,
after all, is the Mussulman's chief concern in life.
Might makes right, often enough in a maladroit fashion, but sometimes it
comes as a real blessing. This was the case with the coming of the
French to Tunisia. A highly organized army was a necessity for Tunisia,
and within the last quarter of a century she has got it. The French were
far-seeing enough to anticipate the probable eventuality which might
grow out of England's side-long glances towards Bizerte, and the Italian
sphere of influence in Tripoli. Now those fears, not by any means
imaginary ones at the time, are dead. England must be content with
Gibraltar, and Italy with Sardinia. There are no more Mediterranean
worlds to conquer, or there will not be after France absorbs Tripoli in
Barbary, and Morocco, and the mortgages are maturing fast.
To-day the Tunisians are taxed less than they ever were before, and are
better policed, protected and cared for in every way. Their millennium
seems to have arrived. France, with the coöperation of the Bey,
dispenses the law and the prophets after the patriarchal manner which
Saint Louis inaugurated at Carthage in the thirteenth century.
The justice of Ali-Bey and Mohammed-el-Hadi-Bey was an improvement over
that of their predecessors, which was tyrannical to an extreme. The
Spartan or Druidical under-the-oak justice, and worse, gave way to a
formal recognized code of laws which the French authorities evolved from
the heritage of the Koran, and very well indeed it has worked.
The Bey had become a veritable father of his people, and was accessible
to all who had business with him, meriting and receiving the true
veneration of all the Tunisian population of Turks, Jews and Arabs. He
interpreted the laws of Mahomet with liberality to all, and from his
palace of La Marsa dispensed an incalculable charity.
The present Bey is not an old and tried law-maker or soldier like his
predecessors, and beyond a few simple phrases is not even conversant
with the French language. He is a Mussulman _in toto_, but his régime
seems to run smoothly, and day by day the country of his forefathers
prospers and its people grow fat. Some day an even greater prosperity is
due to come to Tunisia, and then the Beylicale incumbent will be covered
with further glories, if not further powers. This will come when the
great trade-route from the Mediterranean to the heart of Africa, to Lake
Tchad, is opened through the Sud-Tunisien and Tripoli, which will be
long before the African interior railway dreamed of by the late Cecil
Rhodes comes into being.
French influence in Africa will then receive a commercial expansion that
is its due, and another Islamic land will come unconsciously under the
sway of Christian civilization.
The obsequies of the late Bey of Tunis were an impressive and unusual
ceremony. The eve before, the prince who was to reign henceforth
received the proclamation of his powers at the Bardo, when he was
invested with the Beylicale honours by the authorities of France and
Tunisia.
The funeral of the dead Bey was more pompous than any other of his
predecessors. He died at his palace at La Marsa and lay in state for a
time in his own particular "Holy City," Kassar-Saïd, on the route to
Bizerte, where were present all his immediate family. Prince
Mohammed-en-Nacer, the Bey to be, was so overcome with a crisis of
nerves that he fell swooning at the ceremony, with difficulty pulling
himself together sufficiently to proceed.
The progress of the cortége towards Tunis, the capital, was through the
lined-up ranks of fifty thousand Mussulmans lying prostrate on the
ground. Entrance to the city was by the Sidi-Abdallah Gate, and thence
to the Kasba. The Mussulman population crowded the roof-tops and towers
of the entire city. The military guard of the Zouaves, the Chasseurs
d'Afrique, and the Beylicale cavalry formed a contrasting lively note to
the solemnity of the religious proceedings, though nothing could drown
the fervent wails and shouts of "_La illah allah, Mohammed Rassone
Allah! Sidi Ali-Bey!_" the Arabic substitute for "The King is dead! Long
live the King!"
Before the Grande Mosquée the Unans-Muftis and the Bach-Muftis recited
their special prayers, and all the dignitaries of the new court came to
kiss the hand of the reigning prince, who, at the Gate of Dar-el-Bey,
was saluted by the Résident Général of France.
The Tomb of the Beys, the Tourbet et Bey, is the sepulchre of all the
princes of the house, each being buried in a separate marble
sarcophagus, but practically in a common grave.
A fanatical expression which was not countenanced, but which frequently
came to pass nevertheless, was the crawling beneath the litter on which
reposed the remains of the defunct Bey by numerous Mussulman devotees.
The necromancy of it all is to the effect that he who should pass
beneath the body of a dead Mussulman ruler would attain pardon for any
faults ever afterwards committed. Seemingly it occurred to the
authorities that it was putting a premium on crime, and so it was
suppressed, and rightly enough.
The political status of the native of Tunisia to-day is similar to that
of his brother of Algeria. It is incontestable that the Tunisian's
status under Beylicale rule was not wholly comfortable, for the
_indigènes_ were ruled in a manner little short of tyrannical; but the
Arab lived always in expectation of bettering his position, in spite of
being either a serf or a ground-down menial. To-day he has only the
state of the ordinary French citizen to look forward to, and has no hope
of becoming a tyrant himself. This is his chief grievance as seen by an
outsider, though indeed when you discuss the matter with him he has a
long line of complaints to enumerate.
Things have greatly improved in Tunisia since the French came into
control. Formerly the native, or the outlander, had no appeal from the
Beylicale rule short of being hanged if he didn't like his original
sentence. To-day, with a mixed tribunal of Tunisian and French
officials, he has a far easier time of it even though he be a
delinquent. He gets his deserts, but no vituperative punishments.
One thing the Tunisian Arab may not do under French rule. He may not
leave the Régence, even though he objects to living there. The French
forbid this. They keep the _indigènes_ at home for their country's good,
instead of sending them away. It keeps a good balance of things anyway,
and the law of the Koran as interpreted by the powers of Tunis is as
good for the control of a subject people as that of the Code Napoleon.
The Tunisians, the common people of Tunis, are protégés of France, and
France is doing her best to protect them and lead them to prosperity,
assisted of course by the good-will and influence of the ruling Bey,
whom she keeps in luxury and quasi-power.
Formerly when the native ruler did not care to be bothered with any
particular class of subjects, whether they were Turks or Jews, he
banished them, but the French officials consider this a superfluous
prodigality, and keep all ranks at home and as contented as possible in
their work of developing their country.
The one thing that the French will not have is a wholesale immigration
of the Arab population of either Algeria or Tunisia. To benefit by a
change of air, the _indigène_ of whatever rank must have a special
permission from the government before he will be allowed to embark on
board ship, or he will have to become a stowaway. Very many get this
special permission, for one reason or another, but to many it is
refused, and for good and sufficient reasons. To the merchant who would
develop a commerce in the wheat of the plateau-lands, the barley of the
Sahel, or the dates of the oasis, permission is granted readily enough;
and to the young student who would study law or medicine at Aix,
Montpellier or Paris; but not to the able-bodied cultivator of the
fields. He is wanted at home to grow up with the country.
Tunis _la ville_ and Tunisia _le pays_ are more mediæval and more
Oriental than Algiers or Algeria. In Tunis, as in every Arab town, as in
Constantinople or Cairo, you may yet walk the streets feeling all the
oppression of that silence which "follows you still," and of a patient,
lack-lustre stare, still regarding you as "an unaccountable,
uncomfortable work of God, that may have been sent for some good
purpose--to be revealed hereafter."
The morality and the methods of the traders of the bazars and _souks_
remain as Kinglake and Burton described them in their day, something not
yet understood by the ordinary Occidental.
This sort of thing is at its best at Tunis. Wine, olives, dates and
phosphates are each contributing to the prosperity of Tunis to a
remarkable degree, and the development of each industry is increasing as
nowhere else, not even in Algeria. In 1900 the vineyards of Tunisia
increased over two thousand hectares, and in all numbered nearly twelve
thousand hectares, of which one-quarter at least were native owned.
[Illustration: THE OLIVES WE EAT
OLIVE de LUCQUES
OLIVE PECHELINE
OLIVE VERDALE
OLIVE ROUGET
OLIVE OLIVER
]
The wine crop in 1900 was 225,000 hectolitres, an increase of nearly
thirty per cent, over the season before, and it is still increasing. The
olive brings an enormous profit to its exploiters, and the Tunisian
olive and Tunisian olive oil rank high in the markets of the world.
Originally ancient Lybia was one of the first countries known to produce
olive oil on a commercial scale. All varieties of olive are grown on
Tunisian soil. The illustration herewith marks the species.
The art of making olive oil goes back to the god Mercury. In the time of
Moses and of Job the culture of the olive was greatly in repute. The
exotics of the East and of Greece took the olive-leaf for a symbol, but
the fighting, quarrelsome Romans would have none of it; the bay leaf
and the palm of victory were all-sufficient for them.
They soon came to know its value, however, when they overran North
Africa, and they exploited the olive-groves as they did the plateau
wheat belt. Cæsar even nourished his armies on such other local products
as figs and dates and found them strength-giving and sinew-making. North
Africa has ever been a _garde-manger_ of nations.
What Tunisia needs is capital, and everybody knows it. The date-palm and
the olive give the greatest return of all the agricultural exploitations
of the country, and after them the vine, and finally the orange-tree,
the lemon-tree, the fig and the almond. Each and every one of these
fruits requires a different condition of soil and climate. Fortunately
all are here, and that is why Tunisia is going some day to be a gold
mine for all who invest their capital in the exploitation of its soil.
The date requires a warmth and dryness of atmosphere which is found
nowhere so suitable as in the Djerid and the Nefzaoua in the south. Here
the soil is of just the right sandy composition, and rain is
comparatively unknown. For this reason the date here flourishes better
than the olive, which accommodates itself readily to the Sahel and the
mountains of the north. Of the vast production of dates in this region,
by far the greater part is consumed at home, the exportation of a
million francs' worth per annum being but a small proportion of the
whole.
Almost every newly exploited tourist ground has an individual brand of
pottery which collectors rave over, though it may be the ordinary
variety of cooking utensils which are common to the region. This is true
of Tunis and the potteries of Nabeul.
Besides mere utilitarian articles for domestic use, the shapes and forms
which these Arab pottery-workers give to their vases and jugs make them
really characteristic and beautiful _objets d'art_; and they are not
expensive. The loving marks of the potter's thumb are over all, and his
crude ideas of form and colour are something which more highly trained
craftsmen often miss when they come to manufacturing "art-pottery," as
the name is known to collectors.
A _cruchon_ decorated with a band of angular camels and queer zigzag
rows of green or red has more of that quality called "character" than
the finest _lustre_ of the Golfe de Jouan or the faïence of Rouen. For
five francs one may buy three very imposing examples of jugs, vases or
water-bottles, and make his friends at home as happy as if he brought
them a string of coral (made of celluloid, which is mostly what one gets
in Italy to-day), or a carved ivory elephant of the Indies (made in
Belgium of zylonite). The real art sense often expresses itself in the
common, ordinary products of a country, though not every tourist seems
to know this. Let the collector who wants a new fad collect "peasant
pottery," and never pay over half a dollar for any one piece.
Closely allied with the pottery of Nabeul is a more commercially grand
enterprise which has recently been undertaken in the Sahel south of
Tunis. Not all the wealth of the vastly productive though undeveloped
countryside lies in cereals, phosphates or olive-trees. There is a
species of clay which is suitable, apparently, to all forms of ceramic
fabrication.
In one of the most picturesque corners of the littoral, just south of
Monastir, is a factory which turns out the most beautiful glazed brick
and tiles that one ever cast his eye upon. The red-tiled roof of
convention may now be expected to give way to one of iridescent,
dazzling green, if the industry goes on prospering; and no more will the
brick-yards of Marseilles sell their dull, conventional product
throughout Tunisia; and no more will the steamship companies grow
wealthy off this dead-weight freight. The Italian or Maltese
_balancelle_ will deliver these magnificent coloured bricks and tiles of
Monastir all over the Mediterranean shores; and a variety of colour will
come into the landscape of the fishermen's huts and the farmhouses which
the artists of a former generation knew not of.
Tunis is undergoing a great commercial development, and if the gold of
Ophir is not some day found beneath its soil, many who have predicted
its undeveloped riches will be surprised and disappointed.
The railways of Tunisia are not at all adequate to the needs of the
country, but they are growing rapidly. When the line is finally built
linking Sousse and Sfax (the service is now performed by automobile by
travellers, or on camel-back; or by Italian or Arab _barques_ by water,
for merchandise), there will be approximately 1,700 kilometres of
single-track road. Algeria with an area four times as great has but
3,100 kilometres of railway.
The railway exploitation of Tunisia has not as yet brought any great
profit to its founders. The net profit after the cost of exploitation,
in 1904, was but half a million francs; but it has a bright future.
Great efforts are being made by the government authorities, and the
railway officials as well, towards colonizing the Régence with _French
citizens_. A million and a half of francs have already been spent by the
government, in addition to free grants of land, towards this
colonization, and in 1904 alone land to the value of a million and a
half was sold to _French_ immigrants.
If one wants to travel into the interior of Tunisia, off the beaten
track, say to Médenine, beyond Gabès; or to Tozeur, he should find some
way of fitting himself out with an authorization and recommendation from
the French "civil control." This recommendation will be written in
Arabic, and one will not be able to read it, nor will half the officials
to whom it is shown _en route_; but one and all will be impressed by the
official seal, the parchment, the heading "Praise to Allah the only
God," and the date at the bottom,--which will read something as follows:
22 Djoumada 2d, 1307,--this being the date of the Hegira. Any document
as mysterious and formal as this will accomplish much anywhere, so far
as its powers as an open sesame are concerned.
CHAPTER V
THE RELIGION OF THE MUSSULMAN
No one unless he be a Mohammedan can hope to experience the sentiments
and emotions born of the Mussulman religion, or explain the fundamental
principles of the Koran. It is a thing apart from all other religions,
and though we may recognize many of its principles as being good and
worthy, only one of the faithful can really absorb them as a part of his
daily life.
The one underlying tenet which we all recognize as being something
understood of all people, be they fanatics or not, is that of the
purification by water. No Mussulman commences his devotions without
first washing himself; he may take a conventional bath; he may wash his
feet, face and hands; or he may go through a mere perfunctory
sprinkling; but the form or ceremony has been complied with, and then,
and then only, may he invoke Allah and his Prophet.
From the Atlantic to the Malay seas, from Turkestan to the Congo, more
than two
[Illustration: The World of Islam]
hundred millions of men proclaim that there is no God but Allah and that
Mohammed is his Prophet. Besides these well-defined geographical limits,
the Mohammedans are everywhere. You find them in China, in Japan, in
India, in the Philippines, and scattered throughout Continental Europe.
The strength of Islam is everywhere in evidence. And whether it is mere
tribal warfare that brings it to our notice, or a "Holy War" against the
infidels of Christians, as is really the case in Morocco at the present
time, it is to be reckoned with as a power, as much so as the "yellow
plague" of the Chinese and Japanese.
In all Islamic lands religion stands first. The Sultans--those of
Constantinople and Fez--are religious heads even before they are
accounted as chiefs of the state. And through its sub-heads and
brotherhoods and secret societies, Islamism is spreading with a rapidity
which most of the supposedly worldly-wise have hitherto ignored
entirely.
In the African possessions of France alone there are in the
neighbourhood of a hundred head-centres of Islamism which, until a very
recent time, preached obstruction to the foreigner--and perhaps still
does so in secret. France came to know and realize this very soon, and
when she took over the civil and military charge of Algeria and Tunisia,
she recognized the only successful policy as being one of coöperation
and not of coercion. Three hundred organizations, then,--more religious
sects or communities than political divisions of a people--were kept
intact in most instances, and the Sheiks who formerly got obedience from
their people as the sub-religious heads of this vast organization became
practically mayors, councillors and justices of the peace. It was the
only thing to do, and how well it has worked is best shown by the fact
that Algeria has become the most flourishing and loyal of all French
colonies.
These Sheiks of Algeria and Tunisia, to whom France has granted so much
complimentary power, contributed in cash, in 1890, the sum of sixteen
millions of francs which they had collected of their fellow Mussulmans.
A gigantic sum when it is realized that it may originally have been paid
to the Sheik in kind, a quintal of wheat, a half dozen sheep, or a few
hundred kilos of dates. The Sheik doubtless makes something for himself
as all this commodity passes through his hands, but what would you,
official sinning is not confined to Mohammedans.
In return for his services the Arab Sheik, the emissary of the French
civil control, gets a more modest salary than would his Gallic
substitute, and he does his work more efficiently. His powers, with the
backing of France, have been largely increased, even with his own
people, and he is a part of a great political machine. He may even be a
very learned person, an expert linguist in French, and the bearer of
many decorations, even the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour. Is it
any wonder that his country is peaceful and everybody satisfied! He
breaks out once and again with some childish, petulant protest and
compromises the whole thing; but then some French official at
headquarters makes him a present of a gross of wax candles, a bird-cage
or a phonograph, and again everything runs smoothly for a space.
Before the time of Mohammed the Arabs professed diverse religions; some
were Christians; some were Jews; some were fire-worshippers; and some
mere idol-worshippers. Among this latter were a sect who made great
idols of dough which in time became baked or very nearly petrified, and
thus served the tribe of the Beni Hafa as food in time of famine. A very
practical religion this!
[Illustration: [Arabic]
"There is no God but Allah
And Mohammed is his prophet."
]
The faith of Islam is an obscure thing. It is supposedly a compound of
the Christian and Hebrew religions--with variations. The sects of Islam
are many, the two chief being the Shiites and the Sunnites. The former
recognized Ali, the cousin of Mohammed, as the true successor of the
Prophet, and collectively they form the major part of the Mussulman
faith of India and Persia.
The orthodox followers of the Prophet, the faithful of Turkey, Arabia,
Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, have added to the precepts of the
Koran the books of traditional sayings and maxims of the Prophet (a sort
of Apocrypha, it would seem), and recognize as his successors the first
four Kalifs--those of Bagdad, Cairo, Constantinople and Fez--as the
legitimate successors of Mohammed.
This chief orthodox sect is further subdivided into Hanefites,
Malikites, Shafiites and Hanabites,--foundations of various relations of
the Prophet. They vary somewhat in their interpretations of the Koran
and certain conclusions with regard to the "law" of the Prophet, but
they are as one with regard to the precepts of purification, prayer,
fasting, pilgrimage and charity towards their fellow men, and against
the outside world of infidels.
The Arabs and _Berbères Arabisés_ of North Africa are mostly Hanefites
and Malikites.
Five times a day the Mussulman prays: (i) at _fedjeur_ (daybreak--before
sunrise); (ii) at _eulam_ (after meridian); (iii) at _dohar_ (midway
between noon and nightfall); (iv) at _aseur_ (just after sunset, when
his day of labour is finished); and (v) at _mogreb_ (when night actually
falls). There is sometimes a sixth prayer at _eucha_ (supper-time).
Not all professing Mussulmans pray five times a day. There are
backsliders in the Mussulman religion as in other religions; but both in
the cities and the countryside the truly devout, singly, or even in
groups of a score or a hundred at a time, make their "sunset devotions"
with regularity and impressiveness. The devout Arab will dismount from
his horse, mule or camel, will come out of his tent or house, and will
even alight from a railway train or diligence if opportunity offers,
and say his sunset prayer in the open air. The Mussulman does not
invariably need the stimulus of a temple to express himself towards his
God. In that respect he is certainly far ahead of some of the other
sects found throughout the world.
The spectacle of the Mussulman's sunset prayer in the desert--standing
barefooted on his little rug or carpet and facing the east and Mecca--is
impressive beyond words; and not even the most skeptical would deny to
the simple faith of Islam the virtues granted to many religions more
ceremoniously complicated. The ceremonies in the mosques are less
impressive than those in the open air.
The following résumé of the symbolism of the eight positions of the
Mussulmans' prayer explains the attitudes and postures that one remarks
everywhere in the world of Islam.
I. Standing. "I offer my God, with sincere heart and with my face
towards Mecca, two _rakôh_ (prayers).
II. Still standing, but with open palms raised to each side of the face,
the thumbs touching the ears--"God is Great!"
III. Still standing; with the right hand crossing the left over the
chest, he repeats, "Holiness to Thee, oh, God! Praise be to
[Illustration: _The Eight Positions of the Praying Mussulman_]
Thee! Great is Thy name!"--and other prayers from the Koran.
IV. Still standing; the body inclined forward and the hands, with
fingers separated, placed upon the knees. "I extol the Sanctity of the
Great God!"
V. Falling upon the knees--"God is Great!"
VI. Still on the knees he makes a bow (three times repeated), the
forehead and nose touching the ground, "I extol the Sanctity of my God,
the Most High!"
This practically finishes one _rakôh_, but there are usually added
certain recitations from the first chapter of the Koran, with perhaps a
repetition of the postures.
VII. Before finally leaving the place of prayer the act of witness,
_Tashabhud_, is given. He raises the forefinger of his right hand and
repeats: "I affirm that there is no God but God and that Mohammed is the
Apostle of God."
VIII. The last position is the _Munjat_, or supplication, when are
repeated certain suitable verses of the Koran.
Christ enters into the Mussulman religion as one of the Prophets of God.
They believe that Christ was, before the coming of Mohammed, the
greatest of all Prophets.
All good Mussulmans recite the prayers of their beads, just as all good
Catholics say their chaplets. The Mussulman has a string of ninety-nine
beads, each standing for one of the ninety-nine perfections of Allah.
This rosary is often elaborate and costly, interspersed here and there
with jewels; but more often than not, even with wealthy Mussulmans, it
is a string of crude wooden beads. The faith of Islam is a simple one,
not a showy one.
The Friday prayer at the mosques is one of the events to see in a
Mussulman country. Public prayer is a social event with Mohammedans, as
it is with many Christians. Soon after the sun has marked high noon, and
while the siesta is still the chief blessing with many, the throng
follows the first _zoual_ or call of the _muezzin_.
Everything is burning and brilliant under an ardent southern sun, and a
scintillating, dazzling reflection comes from each whitewashed wall
until one is almost blinded. After this the cool shadows of the mosque
are most refreshing. Barefooted the Mussulman throng threads its way
among the myriad pillars of the court and enters the sanctuary where
daylight filters dimly through a sieve of iron-latticed windows.
Praying men are everywhere,--men of the town, and nomad Arabs from the
desert whose business has brought them thither. The women are all at the
cemetery talking scandal, for except on special occasions, the Mussulman
women are not admitted to the Holy Day (Friday) prayers in the mosques.
This is in accordance to the law of the Prophet. Under a great dome a
ruddier, more brilliant light showers down on the students and
professors who psalm the verses of the Koran in a monotonous wail; while
still farther to the rear is the infants' school, whose pupils repeat
their lessons in crackling singsong voices all day long to a pair of
bearded, turbaned elders. Here and there, backed up against a pillar, a
_taleb_ recites his litany to the Prophet. All these voices blend in a
murmur undistinguishable from any other conglomerate sound, except that
it is manifestly human.
Suddenly, from high above, on the gallery of the minaret, rings out the
_muezzin's_ second call to prayer, and like the reverberant light, it
seems to filter down from the unknown.
With face towards Mecca the _imam_ reads
[Illustration: _The Muezzin's Call to Prayer_]
the Khotba, a long, dreary prayer of exhortation, but no more monotonous
than the cut and dried sermon which one mostly gets in Christian
churches. The _imam_ is not a priest as is known of Christendom; the
religion of Islam has no regular clergy; he is simply the wisest elder
among the personnel of the mosque.
All through the service, as indeed at all times, a great calm reigns
throughout every Mohammedan mosque. At the end of the last exhorting
couplet issuing from between the lips of the _imam_ a naïve joy, as of a
relief from a great oppression, spreads over the assembled faithful and
all rush for the open, as do congregations of other faiths. One religion
is not so very different from another after all. It is only a matter of
belief, not of the mode of expressing one's adherence to that belief.
"_May peace be thine, O Mohammed, Prophet of God. Ruler of Mecca and
Medina and Lord of all Mussulmans now and always._"
This finishes the service of the mosque.
From the opaque obscurity of the maze of the mosque's interior one comes
suddenly again into the light of day. To a burning African landscape
from the humidity of a cloister.
Woman's position in Islam is peculiar. It is not according to our
notions of what is right and proper, and there is no looked-for or
hoped-for emancipation to be thought of. The question is both a social
and a religious one. Those few Europeans who have really studied the
harem as an institution have found, however, that its establishment and
continuance is a plan that works well, and that the majority of these
supposedly unhappy wives really love their husbands, and their destiny.
If this is so, what business is it of ours to criticize the conduct of
the _ménage_ of the Arab or the Turk. The Prophet himself said that
woman was the jewel and the perfume of this world.
Theoretically the Mussulman idea is that man is the superior creature
physically, and that it is his business alone to mingle and rub
shoulders with the world, leaving his wives, members of the fragile sex,
to raise his family, embellish his life and console him in time of
grief. All other things apart, surely these are good enough principles
for anybody to found domestic bliss upon. And these are the principal
tenets of the domestic creed of the Moslem. He is often not the villain
he is painted. To continue the words of the Prophet--Mohammed said one
day to his companions: "Would you know the most valuable possession of
man? It is, then, an honest woman. She charms the eye, and is obedient,
and guards his reputation intact during his absence from home." Really
the Islamic faith goes a bit farther, for it counsels man to "cloister
his wife as a prevention of jealousy and doubt, the mortal poisons, the
terrible unpitying destroyers of conjugal quietude." This, too, seems
good advice, like many other of the precepts of the Koran.
Many of these Arab women were born within the harem's walls, and know
not any other modes of life as preferable to their own. They regard the
daily round of liberty of the European woman as an unreal, undesirable
state. The harem has been the theatre of their joys since infancy, and
they have become so habituated to it that their life of seclusion
becomes a second nature. They would not flee the sill of the great
doorway into the outer world if they could, and their only change of
_locale_ is to pass from the harem of the husband of their mother to
that of their spouse. In the harem the Arab woman is cared for with an
unthought-of luxury. All the goods and chattels that their husband
values most go to enrich the harem walls and floors. The harem is a
sumptuous, glorious apartment compared to the simplicity with which the
master of the house surrounds himself in his own quarters.
It is the opinion of that indefatigable traveller and student of exotic
things, Edmond de Amicis, that the Arab concedes nothing to the European
in his chivalrous treatment of woman. "No Arab dares lift an offending
hand against a woman in public." "No Arab soldier, even in the tumult of
attack, would think of maltreating even the most insolent of womenkind."
And yet Europeans of most nationalities have been known to do both these
things.
In her cloister, or to be more exact, in her boudoir, the Arab woman,
and particularly the mother, receives the most respectful homage and
solicitude from all the household. According to the Koran the children
are admonished to respect the persons of those who bore them, and a
verbal declaration of the Prophet is set down as: "A child may gain
Paradise only by following in the footsteps of its mother."
The educated and advanced Arabs of the towns have done much to disabuse
the public of any false preconceived ideas concerning Arab womenfolk.
Contrary to common belief the Arab woman is often the intellectual and
social equal of her spouse. It was only the absurd jealousy of the
old-school Mussulmans that annihilated for ever the faculties of their
wives.
The portrait gallery of celebrated Mussulman women is not large, but one
does not forget Zobeïdah, who inspired and aided the illustrious
Haroun-Al-Rachid. Islam is not in its decadence, but its sponsors are
awakening to the fact that they must keep abreast of the times.
The Friday promenade of the Mussulman woman of the towns to the cemetery
is her only outing, the only day off allowed her. She makes as much of
it as possible, but it is a sad proceeding at best.
The Arab tomb is, generally speaking, a thing of simplicity, a simple
slab bearing the Arab words for the sentiment "_Hic jacet_." The
exception is in the _marabout_ tombs or _koubas_, which are often
monumental, though of comparatively small dimensions, well built,
symmetrical, and surmounted by a dome or cupola.
The word _marabout_ signifies first of all a holy man of the Mohammedan
sect, a _réligieux_ in fact, one whose vows, life and service is devoted
to his God. Furthermore the same word is applied to the tiny
mosque-like tombs distributed throughout the Arab peopled lands, which
are served by a _marabout_. The two entities have become somehow
indistinguishable as to name.
The _mosque-marabout_ is practically a tiny house of worship, its four
box-like walls surmounted by one great dome or others smaller, with
never, never a minaret, the invariable adjunct of a full-grown mosque.
The quaint, kindly welcome of the marabout of Algeria and Tunisia will
long remain in the memory of those who have come under its influence, as
did the author in the course of some months' sojourn in a little desert
oasis, peopled only by _indigènes_ and the small garrison of a French
military post. An excursion to visit the marabout in his humble
dwelling, some kilometres away under another little clump of palm-trees,
was an almost weekly occurrence. Conversation was difficult, but we all
sat and looked at each other and made signs, and nodded, and clasped
hands, and again nodded a farewell, the white-clad marabout's kindly,
bearded face lighting up meanwhile as if in appreciation of the glimmer
of light from the outside world which had filtered through to his
tranquil abode. Nothing ever more belied the words
[Illustration: _A Marabout_]
of a proverb than a marabout. The French have a remark in which he is
made out an ugly, uncouth man: "_Affreux comme un marabout_." The
illustration herewith belies these words.
If you are a clergyman of the Christian church, and there are many
"conducted tourists" of that order in Algeria to-day, you need have no
hesitancy in making your profession of faith known to the marabout. Say
simply that you are a "_marabout d'Aïssa_." He will recognize and
respect your religion, which is more than the Confucian or Buddhist
will, who simply rolls his tongue in his cheek and smiles blandly. The
Mohammedan's religion is a very plausible and a very well-working one.
He has no false gods or idols. That's a good thing of itself. And
superstition plays a very small part therein. That's another good thing.
The marabout is not a Mussulman priest, but a member, merely, of a
religious order,--a monk virtually, and, as there are communities of
monkish orders elsewhere, there are also whole tribes in Africa composed
entirely of marabouts. They are looked up to by the Mussulman faithful
as shepherds of the flock in the absence of a specially credentialled
priest or father.
The marabouts are most numerous in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, though
their vocation properly belongs to the entire Mussulman religion.
A whole tribe of the sect of marabouts, under the pretext of wishing to
be free to practise their rites away from worldly contaminating
influences, voluntarily exiled themselves centuries ago in the Atlas
range bordering the northern limits of the Sahara. This was in 1050.
From this procedure these religionists grew to such power and influence
that they became virtually political rulers as well. They conquered the
kingdoms of Fez and Morocco, and even sought to conquer Spain,
emigrating to the southern peninsula in vast numbers, only to be chased
from there to seek a refuge in Majorca, which they were able to do
because of the bounty of the Mussulman King of Cordova, to whom the
suzerainty belonged. Here they were known under the name of
_Almoravides_, and to them was due the invention of the Spanish money
known as _maravédis_.
The marabout is caricatured a little, too, in the name given to a
fat-bellied copper coffee-pot frequently met with in the Mediterranean
countries. Balzac describes the _batterie de cuisine_ of one of his
characters as consisting of _un chaudron, un gril, une casserole et
trois marabouts_.
One of the greatest Mussulman saints, and the one who is the most
frequently invoked, was Sidi-el-Hadji-Abd-el-Kader-el-Djilali. His tomb
is at Bagdad, but all Algeria is strewn with _koubas_ in his honour. He
is particularly the patron saint of the blind, but the lame and the halt
invoke his aid as well, for he has the reputation of being the most
potent and efficacious of all Mussulman saints. A marabout is generally
in charge of these _koubas_, as he is with the proper tombs of other
holy men. The marabout tombs, the _koubas_ and the mosques are all
Mussulman shrines of the same rank so far as their being holy,
sanctified places is concerned.
The pilgrimage to Mecca from all Mohammedan lands is the event of their
lives for the faithful who participate therein. The pilgrims going from
Algeria and Tunisia are yearly becoming greater in numbers. It is as
queer a composite caravan as one has ever seen which lines up at the
wharves of Bona or Sfax, there to take ship for the East. By this time
it has ceased to be a caravan, and has become a personally conducted
excursion. The return is quite as impressive as the departure. It is
then that a sort of cantata is sung or chanted, running something like
the following:--
First the waiting folk on shore shout out,--
"O pilgrims from the house of God
Hast thou seen the Prophet of God."
Then the pilgrims reply:--
"We have seen! We have seen!
And we have left him in the House of God:
There he makes his devotions,
There he reads his holy books."
The marabouts then endorse it all,--
"Our Seigneur Abraham is the beloved of God,
Our Seigneur Moses is the mouthpiece of God,
Our Seigneur Aïssa[1] is the spirit of God,
But our Seigneur Mohammed is the Prophet of God."
[1] The name the Arabs give Jesus Christ.
The memory of a Mussulman who has departed this life is not put lightly
aside with the rising of the next day's sun, but a real devotion, if a
silent one, goes out towards the departed for many months, and perhaps
years, after his corpse is first laid out on its mat of straw in the
courtyard of his domicile or before his tent.
At this moment the vague, rigid form compels the devotion of all who
were near and dear to him in life. In soft cadence they bewail his
death, and prayers of the utmost fervour are sent upward on his behalf.
All is calm, solemn, and well-ordered, there is no hysterical
excitement, no wailing clamour, and no jealous quarrellings among the
heirs.
Above all others one voice cries out a sad voluminous chant. It is the
"_Borda_," the funeral elegy of a departed soul.
An Arab funeral is a solemn affair, though not necessarily imposing. A
little group of indeterminate numbers lead off, then four others
carrying a litter, covered with a flowing white cloth, on their
shoulders. All this is usually in the first hour after sunrise. On a
little plateau of desert sand, just above the deep-dug grave, the corpse
is finally placed, the company ranged about in a semicircle for one
last, long, lingering prayer. The face of the corpse is turned always
towards the holy city, Mecca, and when the body has been lowered into
its eternal sandy cradle, and covered with a layer of sun-baked clay,
and then more sand, three tiny palms are planted above. They soon wither
and die, or they live, accordingly as chance favours or not, but the
thing is that they be planted.
This is the end; nothing remains but for the women to come along after a
decent interval and weep, never by any chance missing a Friday.
[Illustration: _In an Arab Cemetery_]
CHAPTER VI
ARCHITECTURE OF THE MOSQUES
Gothic architecture is expressive of much that a mixed or transitory
style lacks, but again the Roman, or Lombard, or the later architecture
of the Renaissance, have their own particular cachet quite as
recognizable and quite as well defined.
Mohammedan architecture, so different in motif and treatment, is quite
as expressive and, in many ways, quite as civilized as the architectural
forms of Europe, and possesses in addition a certain feeling which baked
clay and plaster suggests better than all other materials. A feeling
which is often entirely wanting in cut stone when used to reproduce
animal and plant forms.
Saracenic, Assyrian, Persian and Byzantine architectural details are all
of them beautiful, if bizarre, but the Mohammedan architecture of the
Moors outranks them all for sheer appeal, fantastic and less consistent
though it be. Fantastic it is, but often in a simple, suggestive way,
depending upon design and proportion rather than profuse decoration.
This is why the mosques of Kairouan in Tunisia, or those of Tlemcen in
Algeria are even more interesting than the great Mosque of Saint Sophia,
or the palace corridors of the Alhambra itself, which are, in fact, but
a mixture of several styles. Terra-cotta and baked clay are all right in
their way, but their way is the Mohammedan builders' way, not that of
the modern school architects who simulate cut stone in the same plastic
products, and build up Turkish baths in palatial twenty-story Broadway
hotels with the pagan decorations of ancient Rome, when what they had in
mind all the time was the fountained courtyard of a Mohammedan
mosque--not by any means a symbolism of paganism. Our new-school
architects of the Western world sadly muddle things at times. Moorish
arabesques do not mingle well with the palmer's shells of the Italian
Renaissance and the English fan-lights of the brothers Adam.
The word mosque comes properly from the word _mesgid_, signifying place
of adoration. The Italians make of the word, _moscheta_; the Spaniards,
_meschita_; and the French, _mosquée_. All these variations are met with
in North Africa. It is well to recognize them, for both Algeria and
Tunisia are more "mixed" in their language and institutions than any
other lands yet become affected of twentieth-century tourists. The
mixture is perhaps the more likable because of its catholicity. It is
certainly more interesting; but school-board and self-taught linguists
will need all their wits about them to make the most of the soft, sweet
tongue of a desert Arab who lisps first in French, then in Spanish and
then in Italian, with perhaps an "_Oh, yes!_" or an "_All right!_" here
and there. He modestly reserves his own Arabic for an exclusive harangue
among his intimates.
The conventional type of mosque is undoubtedly reminiscent of the Greek
basilica, but in every way more amply disposed. The plan herewith is the
accepted conventional type of great mosque before it got crowded up in
the cities. To-day in most large towns and cities the mosque has been
shorn of many of its attributes, leaving only the inner sanctuaries
remaining.
The plainness of the exterior of the mosques of North Africa is no
indication of the gorgeousness of their interiors. An imposing sobriety
of exterior, of all the mosques of Islam
[Illustration: _Ground Plan of a Mosque_
A Outer Court. B Inner Court or Sahn. C Pulpits on which the Koran is
placed. D Fountain. E Tribune from which the Muezzin calls to prayer. F
Three praying-niches. G Horses and camels. H Strangers. I Bath. J
Drinking-fountain. K Well.]
in the Moghreb, from Tlemcen to Kairouan, invariably clothes dentelled
sculpture and mouldings, fine rugs and hangings, and a labyrinth of
architectural fantasies possessed by no other class of civil or
religious edifices extant.
The architecture of the mosques of Algeria and Tunisia, as of those of
Constantinople and Cairo, is the apotheosis of a mysterious symbolism,
at which the infidel can but wonder and speculate. He will never
understand it, at least he will never feel it as does the Mussulman
himself. It is unfortunate that we outsiders are thought of as
unbelievers, but so it is. One does not forget that even
twentieth-century Arab gamins at Suez and Port Saïd revile the Christian
with their guttural:
"_Ya Nasrani
Kalb awani!_"
This venerable abuse means nothing more or less than:
"O Nazarene
O dog obscene!"
This comes down from tradition, for the same thing is recounted in
Percy's "Reliques." There, in a certain anecdote, a knight calls his
Mussulman opponent "_unchristian hound_," to which the retort courteous
was given as, "christen dogge."
Of all the dainty features of a Moorish mosque none appeals to the
artist as does the minaret. Minaret is the Arab name for a chandelier,
lantern, signal fire, and finally the slim, graceful tower of purely
Arab origin. Properly speaking it is in the application to the Mussulman
place of worship, the mosque, that we know the minaret in its most
poetic form. In its architectural sense, however, it is that slim,
graceful, arrow-like tower which is so frequently a component part of a
Moorish or Byzantine structure.
The Hebrews had a similar word for a tower which performed similar
functions--_menorah_; and the Chaldeans the word _menora_; while,
finally, the Syrians adopted _menortho_. Of the exotic origin of the
word there is no doubt, but a minaret is first of all something more
than a mere tower. It must be of special proportions, and it must be an
adjunct to a more pretentious structure. Never is a minaret a thing
apart.
For a comparison between the Byzantine minaret and that born of the
ingenuity of the Moorish builder, the words of Théophile Gautier must be
accepted as final: "The minarets of Saint Sophia (Constantinople) have
not the elegance nor _sveltesse_ of those of the Moor."
The minaret of the mosque of the Sultan Kalaûn at Cairo is perhaps the
most splendid of all contemporary works. Its height approximates two
hundred feet, and though the mosque itself is ruined, its firm, square
minaret, brilliant with all the fantasy of the best of Mussulman art, is
to-day quite the most splendid example of its class above ground.
The minaret of El Bardenei, also at Cairo, runs the former a close
second.
The square, dazzling white and more severe, though none less beautiful,
minarets of Tunis and Algiers seem almost as if they were another
species from the Cairene type. In reality they are not. They are one and
the same thing, differing in no essential constructive element, but only
in detail of decoration.
The Arabs, seemingly, have a horror of symmetry. No two structures in
one street are on the same building line or at the same angle, and the
sky-lines of even the Frenchified cities of Algiers and Tunis are as
bizarre as that of lower New York, though not as elevated.
The Arab's idea of a street building line is most rudimentary, but
French engineers are helping him out, and boulevards, avenues and
streets are being laid out, and roads and alleys straightened as
opportunity offers. The Arab looks on stolidly and doesn't in the least
seem to object, though it answered him well enough previously that the
doorway of his favourite mosque should be half-hidden and almost
obstructed by the jutting veranda of a Moorish café, a sheep butcher's,
a silversmith's, or a red and yellow awninged bath-house, and these, be
it noted, were all set at varying angles and inclinations.
A _moucharabia_ is a component of every Arab, Moorish or Turkish
structure of any pretence. Its name sounds as though it might have some
relation to a fly-screen, and in a certain sense it is that, though not
an impenetrable one. It is more like the choir-screen of a Renaissance
church.
In reality the _moucharabia_ is a lattice or _grille_ of wood or even
iron, sometimes ornate and finely carved, and sometimes merely a barred
gate or door.
When these fine latticed _grilles_ are taken away by the housebreaker,
and offered the dealer in curios, they take on an exalted value that
the original owners never knew. It is difficult to buy old-time woodwork
anywhere, whether one is searching out Chippendale chairs in Yorkshire,
_panétiers_ in Provence, or _moucharabias_ in the Mitidja; but the Arab
curio dealer can give the Christian or Hebrew antique dealer of other
lands a good fair start and then beat him as to the profits he can draw
from the inexperienced tourist collector. One thing you may be sure of,
Arab or Moorish antiques are seldom imitations, and though the "asking
price" of a _moucharabia_ may (at first) be excessive, and the "talking
points" of dubious value, the article in question is probably authentic,
and actually could not be duplicated by the workmen of to-day for a
similar price.
[Illustration]
The native dealer of Tunis or Algiers will ask two or three hundred
francs for a fine example of a _moucharabia_, all green and red and
gold, but he will probably take seventy-five if you will spend the day
with him arguing it out.
The little temples or shrines called _koubas_ scattered all over Algeria
are not unlike the pagan temples of the Greeks in their general
proportions. Literally the word in Arabic means a square house, though
indeed it was the patriarch Abraham who supposedly set the conventional
design upon which all others have since been built. Two workmen, one a
Greek and another a Copt, built the first _kouba_ at Mecca, and it was
out of this that the typical Arab mosque grew, as distinct from the
frequently more splendid mosques of the Byzants.
The Arabs had no religious art previous to their adoption of the faith
of Mahomet. The true Mussulman thinks that the form and style of the
mosque and all its dependencies was preconceived in the heavens, before
even the creation of man, and that that poor mortal was only formed in
the image of God when everything was ready and in place. With what
success man has made use of his opportunities each must judge for
himself.
The _mosque-marabout_ is often a monument which marks a holy place, the
tomb, for instance, of a celebrated marabout or holy man. That erected
at Algiers, above the remains of the Marabout Sidi-Brahim, famous
because of
[Illustration]
his defence of a French captain and his soldiers in the Algerian warfare
of 1845, is as admirable and worthy a sepulchral monument as one will
find in any land.
The religious architecture of Islam, as far as its symbolism is
concerned, is a thing that will never be understood by the Christian. A
mosque to most people is simply a public monument, a thing of domes and
minarets and many columns. The winter bird of passage at Cairo thinks it
a great inconvenience that he should be made to put on a pair of
_babouches_ over his shoes in order to enter, forgetting that it is a
Holy Place and that one of the tenets of the Mussulman religion forbids
walking rough-shod over the rugs and carpets of a place of worship. In
Algeria the practice is similar, except that the "infidel" simply
removes his shoes and enters stocking-footed. In Tunisia, with the
exception of the mosques at Kairouan, none but the Mussulman may pass
their thresholds.
The fine Moorish architecture which radiated from Granada in the golden
days of its best epoch has in our day sadly degenerated. The primitive
Arab of Africa intermingled with the Moors and absorbed to a certain
degree the pure fundamental principles of Moorish architecture. The
town-dwelling Arab built his mosques and his houses, during the last two
centuries, less luxuriously perhaps than his predecessors (and often
with the aid of Italian workmen), but he did not debase the Moorish
formulæ. What he kept of constructive elements was pure, the debasement
has only come in later years with the additions and reconstructions
incident to keeping pace with the times. This is where the Arab
architect beats the European at the same game.
The religious edifices of Islam, whether the simple _kouba_ of a saint,
or the elaborate mosque of the city, possess always a certain infallible
form. The fundamental principles are the same, whether one takes an
example from the Holy Land, or from one within sight of Gibraltar.
In Arabia, in Syria, Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria this Arab expression of
the architecture of the Moors predominates, but in Persia, Turkestan and
in the Ottoman Empire there is a certain specious Byzantine cachet,
which, if not actually a debasement, is a qualifying note which
differentiates the two varieties. The Arab variety has always been,
however, the pattern-mould from which has sprung forth the Islamic
religious architecture of to-day.
Before the birth of Islamism, Arabia, properly called, had no great
artistic monuments. The first mosque of magnificent proportions was
erected in the year 20 of the Hegira (642 A.D.) under the Khalifat of
Omar--this was the mosque of Hmrou at Cairo.
On this model many others were afterwards constructed, with variations
of little importance. These comprise for the most part the mosques of
the Arabian peninsula, of Egypt, of Africa, and of Andalusia. The most
famous of this class are those at Mecca and Medina; that of Iba Touloum
at Cairo; that of Djama Ez-Zitouna at Tunis; those at Mahdia and Gafsa;
of Okba Ibm Maffî at Kairouan; and El Mansourah at Tlemcen. Besides
these most of the mosques of Morocco are in the same style, as is also
the grand mosque of Cordova in Spain.
Omar's great mosque at Jerusalem was built at the inspiration of that
Kalif. He said to the Patriarch of Jerusalem after one of the periodical
religious quarrels of the time: "Show me a place, then, where I may
build a mosque, where Mussulmans may henceforth assemble for their
prayers without coming into contact with those of the Christian cult."
Then finally grew up the mosque of Omar, the Khalif himself working
with the common labourers. Thus came into being the mosque commonly
reputed to be the most beautiful in existence to-day.
We know that the minarets of the mosques were primarily instituted that
the _muezzins_ might make their call to prayer in full view and hearing
of the faithful. It is to the honour of the Khalif el-Walid that the
first of these svelt, sky-piercing towers was raised, and its name
derived from the Arab _menora_.
The minaret plays a preponderant role in all Arab art, and is the
distinguishing characteristic between Arab and Moorish architecture. In
the Moghreb (that is the Barbary States and Spain, bordering on the
western Mediterranean) the form of the minaret is nearly always
quadrangular, and the tiny terrace or platform high above supports,
invariably, a smaller pavilion whose roof is usually composed of four
sloping sides which, in turn, is surmounted by the conventional three
balls and crescent of copper, silver or even gold. The four sides
forming the base of this square tower are sometimes of carved stone, or
faïence, or of rough-hewn stone covered with plaster, which is
afterwards carved or gilded.
Amongst the most beautiful of these minarets of the Moghreb there is an
exquisite delicacy of design, a remarkable warmth of colour and an
elegant, piquant suggestion of daintiness as they rise up into the
unalterable azure of the African skies. Of this class are those of
Ez-Zitouna and the Kasba at Tunis; of Sidi-bou-Medine and Mansourah at
Tlemcen; those at Tangier and Fez; and of course that of the Giralda at
Seville. The Giralda is assuredly one of the most beautiful types of
Arabic-Andalusian architecture, and was built in the twelfth century
during the reign of the Sultan Yacoub-el-Nansourd.
In Egypt, quaint and mysterious as the roof-tops and minarets are to the
untrained eye, they possess no systematic regularity of form or feature.
They are of all dimensions and proportions. The gamut runs from the
square to the hexagon, to the octagon, and to the circle even, with
always numerous openings too small to be called windows, and above all a
plethora of finely chiselled stone.
This résumé outlines the brilliant art of the builder of the Arab
mosque, beginning with the twelfth century in Spain, the thirteenth in
the Moghreb, and finally the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth in
Egypt and Syria.
Beyond the pale of these perfect types are the Perso-Byzantine varieties
of the Ottoman Empire; and still farther east, types which are quite
beyond the scope of these pages.
CHAPTER VII
POETRY, MUSIC, AND DANCING
The Arab is not wholly a silent, morose individual. He has his joys and
sorrows, and his own proper means of expressing them like the rest of
us. Here in Mediterranean Africa he has kept his traditions alight, and
the darkness of the historic past is only relative, even though the Arab
does belong to the unprogressive school.
The Arab countries, as the French, the only real masters the Arab has
ever had, know them, are a broad belt bordering upon the eastern and
southern shores of the Mediterranean, from the Dardanelles to the
Straits of Gibraltar; and comprise Arabia proper, the Holy Land, Egypt,
Tripoli, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. Throughout this region the
influence is wholly French, whatever may be the destinies of the various
political divisions. Turkey holds the custom-house arrangements, but the
language spoken with the outsider is French. Egypt is garrisoned by the
English, and its prosperity of to-day was, it is true, born of Lord
Cromer's English administration, but for all that the whole complexion
is French, the great Suez Canal, the railways and the hotels. 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. The Arabs'
popular literature, their tales, their legends, their proverbs and their
songs, are known to be many and great by all who have studied the
folk-lore of the ancients. Furthermore they occupy a field which has
been but slightly explored save in the "Thousand and One Nights" and
certain other works more speculative than popular.
It was Solomon who said that speech was a passing wind, and that to
harness it one must know how to write. The Arab writes from right to
left, and uses no capitals nor punctuation. The Arab knows two forms of
writing: _neskhi_, that belonging to the common people; and the
_diouani_, of officialdom. The Arabs and Moors of Spain of other days
wrote with a beauty and elegance which to-day has sadly degenerated
among all the tribes.
A good handwriting is greatly in honour among the Arabs. "Fine writing
augments one's reputation for truth," says Qalqachandi. The Arab writes
with a sort of bamboo or rose-tree switch, which he cuts into a point,
and he has never yet heard of a steel or gold pen, nor suspected that a
goose-quill would answer. For ink he burns sheep's wool, adds gum-water
to the cinders, and makes a concoction which, for his purpose, answers
well enough. We who are rather particular about such things will not
care for its colour or quality.
The Arab, as a matter of fact, writes but little, and composes his
letters after traditional types and forms. Formalities have a prominent
place. He "begs to intimate" and "has the honour to be" all through the
list, until one doubts if he ever can get the kernel out of the nut, and
the subject-matter is treated in cyclopædic form.
If the Arab who writes is "classy," and if he occupies a sufficiently
high social position, he seals his letter with a cachet, as did
our own forefathers, and he also imprints a mark or cipher for a
signature; otherwise he signs himself "Ali-Ben something or other,
the poor-devil-of-a-sheep-herder-in-the-mountains-of-the
far-away-never-never-land." According to the briefness of the signature
you are thus enabled to judge of the importance of a letter without
reading it through.
This doesn't matter to the Arab, for he has a very poor idea of the
value of time or even of the passing of time. His notions with regard to
many things may only be described as vague. If he is ill, he goes to a
doctor, perhaps even a French one, if he lives near the towns, but
immediately the practitioner begins interrogating him he asks: "Why is
it, you, who are a savant, do not know what is the matter with me
without asking all these questions?" Many of us have thought the same
about our own doctors!
The Arabs have a sort of "Jo Miller Joke Book," or "Old Farmer's
Almanac," containing many antiquated sayings. Here is an example:
A man asked confidingly of another, "Will you lend me fifty piastres?"
"But I don't know you," was the reply.
"It is for that reason that I ask," said the seeker after unearned
wealth.
Pretty bad, even in the translation; but our own comic almanacs and
Sunday supplements do considerably worse sometimes.
The Arab's proverbs, or sayings, have become classic, and he has
perverted or perhaps simplified many of the sayings of other tongues:
"All is not water that flows down-hill."
"Not every roof is a heaven."
"Not every house is a House of God."
The sentiments expressed by the above are not possible of being
misunderstood, and our own similar sayings are not improvements. Chief
among Arab tales and proverbs are those concerning horses and mules.
"The fortresses of the Arabs are their horses and guns."
The folk-lore and tales, current mostly by word of mouth, of the Arab of
the Sahara is apparently very abundant. Each tribe, nay, each
encampment, one meets on the march has its Tusitala or teller of tales,
as do the South Sea Island communities. Tales, legends, traditions,
fables and even accounts of travel make up the repertory of the Arab
story-teller; besides which there are songs and chants, religious and
profane, many of them perhaps dating back before the days of Mohammed.
The mule has ever been the butt of Arab proverb and legend. There is a
story of a wood-cutter of the forests of Kabylie who, having left his
mule tied to a tree in a half-hidden spot, found it gone when he went to
look for it after finishing his day's work. Two robbers--just plain
horse-thieves--had come up previously, and one had made away with the
mule, leaving its bridle and saddle harnessed on the other fellow who
remained behind.
"Who are you?" asked the wood-chopper, "and where is my mule?" as he
came up.
"I was your mule, good master; years ago I insulted my parents and God
turned me into a mule."
The wood-chopper, astonished, knew not what to say or do.
"But I will stay with you always," said the thieving rascal, merely to
gain time.
"Well, I don't want you; you are free," the woodman replied generously.
Three days later, in the public market-place, he saw and recognized his
mule in the hands of a trader. He did not dare claim him, or rather he
could not make his claim good, so he tweaked the mule's ears and shouted
at him: "So you've been insulting your parents again, have you? Well, to
serve you right, may you find a harsher master than I."
Another favourite subject of Arab story and proverb makers is that of
the farmer and his crops. The following is a fair sample:--
Satan appeared one day before an Arab sowing his fields, introduced
himself and said that half the world belonged to him, and that he
claimed half the coming crop.
"Very well," said the labourer, "which half? That which is above ground
or that which is below?"
The Devil was no agriculturist, he could not tell pumpkin seeds from
turnip seeds, so he said simply that he wouldn't be put off with the
roots. That what he wanted was that which grew above ground. On the day
of the harvest the Devil came around for his share--and got it, turnip
tops, good for greens, if boiled, but otherwise food for cattle.
The next sowing time he came again. This time he claimed that which was
below ground--and got it. The Arab had sown buckwheat, of which all
Arabs are very fond.
Furious and speechless with anger, the Devil took flight and vowed he
would have no more to do with the race. This tale bears some resemblance
to the European legend of St. Crepin and the Devil, which the peasant of
Mid-France tells regularly to his family twice each year, once at the
sowing and once at the reaping. It is a classic. Query: Did the Arab
steal his tale from the Auvergnat, or did the latter appropriate it from
the former?
The native music of all African tribes is of slight importance. It never
reaches a great height. It is simply a piercing, dismal wail, and since
it is invariably produced by instruments which look as if they could
produce nothing else, this is not to be wondered at.
There is method in the native musician's effort, however, whether he
hails from Kabylie, the Soudan or the Congo.
Chiefly their instruments are of the appearance and value of penny
whistles, toy drums and home-made fiddles.
It may be true that the soul of a people manifests itself in musical
expression, but if so the African's soul is a very minor thing in his
make-up.
The vibrating chant of the Bedouin Arab, accompanied by the music of his
crude
[Illustration: _An Arabian Musician_]
instruments, reminds one of Théophile Gautier's phrase: "The making of
music was a troublesome, noisy amusement." Coming out from beneath one
of the "Great Tents" of an encampment, or from behind a sand-dune of the
desert, it is suggestive of an exotic mystery. But when one comes
actually to face "La musique Arabe," one calls it simply idiotic, and
nothing else. This even though the stolid Berber affirms that it _is_ an
expression of his very soul. Musical intuition is one thing and musical
education quite another.
The real king of an Arab orchestra is the _bendir_ player. His is the
most violent exercises of all the players. The _bendir_ is a drum, a
sort of a cross between a tambourine and a flour-sieve. There may be a
whole battery of accompanying musical instruments, or there may be only
a supporting pipe or flute. The pipe may be played alone, but the
_bendir_ never. These two instruments are the invariable accompaniment
of the serpent charmer and the man who eats scorpions for the
delectation of tourists, at a franc a time. He doesn't really eat
them--but that is another story.
Seriously, those who have delved into the subject pretend to have
discovered method in the music of the Arab; but the "Hymne Khédivial,"
which charms Mediterranean tourists on the terrace of Shepheard's Hotel
at Cairo is nothing Arab at all. On the other hand, the "Marche
Hamidiè," which one hears at Tangier, is banal enough to be pure Arab,
and "La Musique Beylicale" at Tunis sounds more like the blows of a
pick-axe on a water-pipe than anything else.
When it comes to the street music of the big towns, that of the dancers,
and of the followers of marriage and funeral processions, there is a
repetition of the same dreary wail; a mild imitation of the Scotch
pibroch or the _binou_ one hears in Brittany.
Arab music possesses, however, we learn, a certain formal notation which
is seemingly too complicated to admit of setting forth here.
The composition of an Arab orchestra is not always the same; there are
divers combinations. There is always a _bendir_, and there are
_tabellas_ and _chekacheks_ or pipes; and again more pipes or flutes,
smaller in size; and a _gambri_ and perhaps a _mejoued_, the latter
practically imitations of European mandolines and violas. With these
crazily mixed elements are given the concerts that one hears so often in
the open air or in the Moorish cafés. The music, if music it is, rises
and falls in erratic
[Illustration: _A Flute Seller_]
[Illustration: SOUVENIR D'ALGÉRIE]
cadences, sometimes brutal and sometimes soft; but never melodious and
always shrill and brassy.
Whether or no Arab music is great music is no part of the writer of this
book to attempt to explain. The following anecdote of the late Bey of
Tunis, who died in 1906, has some bearing on the question of native
taste in that line.
About fifty years ago, before the legions of France invaded the country,
the Mussulman sovereigns of the period regularly bought European slaves,
brought to them by pirate ships cruising in the Mediterranean. One of
these unfortunate captives, brought before the Bey of Tunis and
questioned as to his capabilities, admitted in a rash moment that he was
the leader of an orchestra.
"Just what I want," said the Bey. "I always wished to have a band."
The prisoner began to feel uncomfortable. He saw the grave danger which
menaced him. There were no instruments, and to his Majesty he explained
that he must have a big drum, several little ones, large and small
flutes, violins and violoncellos, trombones and cymbals.
"I have more than enough to pay for all you want," was the answer of
the Bey. And he gave an order to buy the instruments.
"But the musicians?" queried the prisoner in alarm.
"Musicians! I will give you fifty negroes."
"But," asked the orchestra leader, in despair, "do the negroes know
music?"
"That," answered the Bey, "is your affair, and if in a month they cannot
play an air before me, you will be impaled, that's all."
The captive turned away, feeling that he had only one more month to
live. But he thought he would see what the negroes could do. So he began
to teach them, and for fourteen hours a day he made them practise on
their instruments, giving them--as he was a Frenchman--a simple air,
"_Maman, les p'tits bateaux--qui vont sur l'eau--ont-ils des jambes?_"
But his efforts only plunged him in a deeper despair. One of the
flute-players managed to repeat more or less accurately four or five
measures, but the violinists could never get more than one note from
their instruments. The trombones produced a series of most melancholy
sounds. Only the big drum rose to the height of the occasion. When the
fatal date arrived, the Bey summoned the leader of the orchestra before
him.
"Are you ready?" he asked.
"Your Majesty--" began the trembling musician.
"Then play!" was the imperative command.
The fifty negroes commenced to tune up their instruments. But no two of
them ever got the same key, and the discord they made was indescribable.
However, when they seemed to have reached some semblance of unison, the
leader gave the signal to commence, and the dusky orchestra attacked
"_Les p'tits bateaux_." The result was heartrending, and as the
ear-splitting torture proceeded the leader said to himself: "In another
ten minutes I shall be impaled."
The concert finally came to an end unexpectedly with a solo on the big
drum. The Bey kept silence for a minute, while the leader's knees quaked
against each other.
"It is not bad," said his Majesty, slowly, "but I liked the first air
best."
The first air was the discordant attempt made by the negroes to tune
their instruments. The leader of the orchestra began to breathe again.
And from that time he gave concerts every day, and grew old and wealthy
in the service of the court of the Bey of Tunis.
If one had only ears with which to hear, and no eyes with which to see,
this music could readily be likened to that which accompanied the
dancers of the King of Cambodia. This, at any rate, is the impression
given the writer; he has heard both kinds, and there is no choice
between them.
Dancing among the Arabs is a profession abandoned to the lower classes
of women, and to slaves. There are two schools, as one might say: those
who go around to the houses of the rich and dance for the edification of
their employers and their guests, like the entertainers, the
"lady-whistlers" and unsuccessful opera stars of other lands; and a less
recherché class who are to all intents and purposes mere street dancers
of a morality several shades removed from Esmeralda.
These latter, the "_anâlem publiques_," as they are designated in the
Frenchified towns of the littoral, are known otherwise as _ghaouâzy_,
and by supposedly blasé travellers as _almas_, which indeed they are
not, any more than are they houris. A musician of questionable talent
usually accompanies these street dancers, and picks out a monotonous
minor twang to which the "dancers" jerk and twist and shrug, and then
come around for a collection if they don't "dance" themselves into a
state of coma--in which case they take up the collection first.
The _danseuses_ of Biskra, Tunis and Constantine are daring, dusky
beauties whose lives at any rate are more wholesome than those lived by
the same class in the dance halls of Europe. There is a savagery about
them and their dress that makes for a suggestion of another world; and
if they are immoral it is because the strangers who have come among them
have made them so. "It wasn't so before the white man came," is the
plaint of many an exotic race. The Gringo complains of the American and
his innovations, the Hindu wails loudly against the Englishman, and the
Arab protests against the Latin and the Turk.
CHAPTER VIII
ARABS, TURKS, AND JEWS
Throughout North Africa, from Oran to Tunis, one encounters everywhere,
in the town as in the country, the distinct traits which mark the seven
races which make up the native population: the Moors, the Berbers, the
Arabs, the Negroes, the Jews, the Turks and the Koulouglis. One may see
all these types, living their own distinct and characteristic lives, all
within a radius of a half a dozen leagues of Algiers' port and _quais_.
The Moors and the Berbers are the oldest inhabitants of the region,
descended, Sallust says, "from a mingling of the soldiers of the army of
Hercules, campaigning in Spain and Africa, with the Lybians and Gétules
of the region."
The _indigène_ Mussulman population of Algeria and Tunisia is divided
into many groups, the chief of which are the following:--
Moors, called by the Arabs the Hadars; not a race apart, but the result
of a crossing to infinity of all the diverse races of North Africa.
Koulouglis, descendants of Turks and Arab women.
Kabyles, the pure Berber race, speaking still their primitive language
uncorrupted.
Arabs, descendants of the pure Arab of east of the Red Sea, but in
reality "Berber-Arabs," as the French know them, who still preserve in
all its purity the Arab tongue, manners, and retain its ancient dress.
The Moors and the Koulouglis tend more and more to lose their
individuality; the Kabyle is practically stationary; whilst the
Berber-Arab is increasing in numbers at his traditional rate,--and here
and there becoming so highly civilized that he wears store clothes and
carries a revolver instead of a gun. He has also learned to drink
absinthe and beer, in the towns, at least those of him who have become
less orthodox.
There are two distinct classes of Arabs, those of the cities and those
of the "Great Tents." The former, by rubbing up with civilization, have
become contaminated, whilst the real nomads of the interior still retain
all their pristine force of character. The Arab hides with jealousy all
particulars of his domestic life, and is a very taciturn individual, as
taciturn almost as that classic type that one meets in south-eastern
railway trains in England, fortified behind a copy of "The Thunderer."
[Illustration: ARAB _of the_ TELL ARAB _of_ ORAN BERBER-ARAB]
The docile, contemplative nature of the Arab permits him to pass long
hours in a state of mental abstraction that would drive a man of affairs
of the western world crazy. The Arab, however, is not hostile to
activity, or even amusement, and will gamble for hours at some silly
little game.
The Arab of the town apparently spends a good part of his time in a
café. He drinks the subtle infusion, grounds and all, in innumerable
potions, and plays at chess, cards or checkers.
For further amusement the Arab is quite content to gaze drowsily at the
singing and dancing girls, the _er rnaïa_ and _ech chtahat_, who make
music, of a kind, and gyrate with considerably more fervour than grace.
All the time his ear is soothed by as howling a discord as one will hear
out of the practice hall of a village band in America or of "La Musique
des Sapeurs-Pompiers" of the small town in France. Two guitars of sorts,
and of most bizarre shape, a two-stringed fiddle (called a _rbab_) and a
half a dozen Arab flutes (_jouaks_), each being played independently,
cannot be expected to make harmony.
The Arab has his story-teller, too, a species of ballad singer or
reciter who, for a price, tells stories, fables, and legends.
Among this class of professional story-tellers are the _gouals_, the
improvisers, and the _médahs_, who are more like revivalists than
mountebanks, and about as fanatical as the shrieking sisters of a
"down-south" camp-meeting.
The Arab himself regards all stolidly, smokes and drink away, and
doesn't leave the café sometimes for days. It's an orgie, if you like,
but less reprehensible than the bridge-playing, drinking bouts of
civilization, which last too often from Saturday until Monday morning.
The Arab of the desert, or the Bedouin, shows to advantage when compared
with the town-dwelling Arab of the coast settlements, and whether he be
Sheik of a tribe or Cadi of a community, is a hospitable, kindly person
with even--at times--a sense of humour, and a guile which is rare in
these days of artfulness. The town Arab, the "dweller within the walls,"
is not primarily wicked or unreliable, but he has mixed with the sordid
ways of commercialism, and his favours--extended always with a
smile--are apt to bear a distinct relation to what he hopes to get out
of you. If he is simply an ordinary individual, or a gamin who points
out your road, his _quid pro quo_ is not likely to be more than a
cigarette, but the merchant of a bazaar who offers you coffee--and makes
you take it, too--charges for it in the bill, if even your purchase of a
"_fatmah_" charm, or a pair of "_babouches_" amounts to no more than two
francs in value,--bargained down, of course, from his original demand of
a hundred sous.
Like the Chinaman, the Arab can smile blandly when he wants to put you
off the track. A smile that begins at the corners of the mouth and
extends so that it makes a wrinkle at the nape of the neck is
disconcerting to all but the smiler. That's the Arab kind of a smile.
With all his faults and virtues the Arab of to-day is not a great
offender; he is only an obstructionist. Indolent, insouciant and
apathetic, the Arab lives to-day as in the past, indifferent to all
progress. If you show him your typewriter, your fountain-pen or your
kodak, he shrugs his shoulders and says simply, "_Maboule! Maboule! You
are fools! You are fools! Why try to kill time!_"
At Msaken, a frontier post in Tunisia, which was established only
fifteen or a score of years ago, and has already attained a population
of ten thousand souls, a protest was actually presented to the
government by the Arab population, asking that the great trading-route
into the desert be not laid down through their city, but that they, the
_indigènes_, be left to peace and tranquillity.
To sum the Arab up in a few words is difficult. He is a frequenter of
that path which lies between the straight way of virtue and the quagmire
of deceit. He is not alone in his profession, but it is well to define
his position exactly. Like the Indian and the Chinaman, the Arab is
deceitful, but scrupulously honest as far as appropriating anything that
may rightly belong to you is concerned, when it comes to actual business
transactions. A bargain once made with an Arab is inviolate. "_Ils ne
sont pas mauvais ces gens, mais ils sont voleurs quand même_," says
every Frenchman of the Arab, unjustly in many cases, no doubt, but true
enough in the general run. You must make your bargain first.
The real Arab--meaning literally a tent-dweller, for, in a certain
sense, the town-dweller is no Arab--loves first and above all his horse.
Next he loves his firearm, which poetically ought to be a six-foot,
gold-inlaid, muzzle-loading matchlock, which would kick any man but an
Arab flat on his back at every shot; actually in Algeria or Tunis the
Arab is the possessor of a modern breech-loader. Next to his gun he
loves his eldest son. Last comes his wife--or wives. Daughters don't
even count; he doesn't even know how many he has. Until some neighbour
comes along and proposes to marry one of them, a daughter is only a
chattel, a soulless thing, though often a pretty, amiable, helpful
being. The Arab of the settlements may be a lover of horse-flesh, too,
but he only professes it; any old hack is good enough for him to ride.
He will descant to you all the livelong day on the beauties and
qualities of some rare specimen of the equine race which he has at the
home of his father, back in the "Great Tents;" but meanwhile he drives,
or rides, a sorry spavined nag fit only for the bone-yard.
North Africa is not only the Land of Sunshine; it is also the land of
the burnous. This soft, floating drapery which clothes the Arab so
majestically, whatever may be his social rank,--miserable _meskine_ or
opulent Caïd,--is a thing fearfully and wonderfully made.
There are burnouses and burnouses, as there are cheeses and cheeses.
This ideal garment of the Mussulman Arab differs at times in form and
colour and quality, but it is always a simple burnous. The Sheik of a
tribe or the Caïd of a village wraps himself in a rich red robe, and the
poor vagabond Arab of the hills and desert makes the best showing he can
with his sordid pieced-up rag of a mantle.
The classic burnous is woven of a creamy white lamb's wool, or that of a
baby camel, though often its immaculateness is of but a brief duration.
The Caïd and the Sheik rise above this, and the nomad often descends to
a gunny-sack, from which exhales an odour _sui generis_; but one and
all carry it off with grace and éclat, as does the Arlésienne the fichu,
and the Madrillienne the mantilla. It is the garment that is worn by the
Arab of the towns, by the lone sheep-herder of the plains, and by the
nomad of the desert.
An Arab shepherd is a happy mortal if he can gain twenty francs a month,
a little _pap_ for breakfast, a dish of couscous for dinner, and a new
burnous once a year. He will spend all his income (for he, apparently,
as all his tribe, has acquired a taste for strong drink, though even he
will not partake of it when it is red) on absinthe, of a kind, and
tobacco, of a considerably better kind, every time he comes to town. How
he clothes himself had best not be inquired into too closely, for
excepting the burnous, he is mostly clothed in rags. The burnous is as
effectual a covering as charity.
The Arab officials, the Sheik of a tribe, the Caïd, and the Cadi even,
are all "decorated" as a sort of supernumerary reward for their services
on behalf of the established government.
One day _en voyage_--in a _compartiment_ of that slow-going express
train which runs daily from Algiers to El Guerrah, and takes fourteen
hours to do what it ought to, and will accomplish, in six, when they
get some American locomotives to take the place of the old crocks now in
service,--we met a young Caïd of a tribe of the Tell who had been
summoned to Algiers to get the collaret of the Legion bestowed upon his
manly breast. He was decorated already, for he was the son of the "Great
Tents" and a powerful man in his community, but he was ready enough to
make a place for another _étoile_. He said in his queer jargon French:
"_Li gouvernement y vian di me donni l'Itoile di Ligien. Ji suis content
d'avoir._" We sympathized with him, were glad for him, and we parted,
each on our respective ways, and by this time he is home waiting and
hoping for the next. What won't a man do for a _bout de ruban_ or a
silver star?
The Arab's French is much like our own--queer at times, but it is
expressive. The following beauties of judicial eloquence, from the bench
of an Arab justice of the peace will explain the situation better than
any further comment. With the Arab the Irish "_bull_" becomes a French
"_goat_."
"_On peut entrer dans un cabaret sans être l'amant de quelqu'n._"
This is good enough French, though the sentiment is of doubtful
morality.
"_Le plaignant a lancé, alors, un coup de sifflet de désespoir._"
A "_sifflet de désespoir_" is presumably something akin to a wail.
"_Le plaignant s'est adressé à la police parce qu'il désirait rentrer
dans ses bouteilles._"
"_Dans ses bouteilles_," may be Arab-French for "in his cups"--or it may
not.
"_Il portera de deuil aussi longtemps que sa femme sera morte._"
She will be dead a long time, no doubt, once having taken the fatal
step.
"_Je dirai encore deux mots, mais je serai très brief._"
Two words! That is very brief.
"_Il n'a laissé que des descendants en ligne collatérale._"
What is a collateral descendant?
The Arabs' struggles with French should give the rest of the world, who
are not French, courage. They seem to care little for tenses or numbers,
but they make their way nevertheless. A Zou Zou, in calling your
attention to something, says simply, "_Regarde_," but you understand,
and so does he when you say "_Regardez_," so what matter!
The Arab nourishes himself well, as well as circumstances will allow,
though it must be remembered that the tenets of his religion call for
abstemiousness. He differs from the Greek of old in that he believes in
a good dinner and a light supper. "_Eh bien!_" said the traveller
Montmaur, "_I will dine with the Arab and sup with the Greeks_."
The Arab is a connoisseur in tea and coffee, and an adept at cigarette
smoking.
Couscous is the _plat du jour_ with the Arab. It is his national dish.
Mutton or lamb (_kebeh_ or _kherouf_) is almost the only meat, and most
frequently the Arab roasts the carcass whole, spitted on a branch. He
roasts it before, or over, an open fire, and accordingly it is all the
better for that. In America we bake our meats, which is barbaric; and in
England they boil them, which is worse. The Arab knows better.
The Arab eats his meat _à la main,_ gnaws it with his teeth, and pulls
it apart with his fingers; the delicate morsel, the titbit, is the
kidney, and he is a lucky Arab who grabs it first, though if you are a
guest in his tent he reserves it for you. Beef is seldom, if ever,
eaten, but camel is in high esteem, the hump (_hadba_) being the best
"_cut_." Pork (_el hallouf_) is abhorred by the true Mussulman. He has
reason! Dried meat or smoked meat, like the jerked beef of the Far
West, is often carried on long desert journeys, when fresh meat is as
scarce a commodity as it was on an Indiaman a hundred days out from
Bombay a century ago.
The Arab eats soup, when he takes the trouble to make it, and he knows
well its concocting. For pastry, too, the Arab has a sweet tooth, and it
also frequently comes into the menu, with honey and dates predominating
in its make-up.
The Arab smokes _kif_ also, a concoction whose iniquitous effects are
only equalled by those of the state-protected opium of Bengal.
These voluptuous epicurean Arabs smoke _kif,_ not surreptitiously, but
guiltily. Carefully they wipe their pipes and cook the little ball of
drug, and offer it to you first with all the grace and seductiveness of
a houri. You don't accept, and they smoke it themselves, and in a short
space drop off into a semi-intoxicated condition, forgetful of the world
in the stupefying smoke which haloes about their heads. Like opium with
the Chinaman, _kif_ is the curse of the Arab.
After the Arabs and the Berbers, the Jews are the most striking race one
meets on the African coast, or even in the interior, where they herd to
themselves in some dingy quarter of an Arab village and ply their
trades of jewellers, leather workers, embroiderers and, of course, as
money changers. They talk Hebrew among themselves and Arabic with
natives, and they are as clannish as Scotchmen.
The Berber and the Jew and the Arab are necessary to each other, whether
they are town dwellers, village inhabitants or nomads. They make
business, each of them, and they don't live by taking in each other's
washing--as does the indigenous population of the Scilly Islands, or by
exploiting tourists--as do the Swiss. Altogether the social system as
worked out by the mixed races of North Africa seems to be a success.
One curses the Jews in Algeria and Tunisia, but then one curses them
everywhere for the same attributes. The Hebrew of Algeria is in no way
different from those of his brethren in other Mediterranean countries,
and here he has a craftsman's mission to fill and he fills it very well.
Catch a Jew and make him into a tailor, a jeweller or a banker, and he
is more adept at these professions than men of any other race on earth.
Are the Jews and Mussulmans men like other sons of Adam? This is a
question which has been asked and reasked since the earliest times
[Illustration: _Jewish Women of Tunis_]
of history, and no one yet seems to have decided the question. When the
Papal See was transferred to Avignon in the Comtat Venaissin (it was for
seventy years rooted in France), the position of the Jews seems to have
been defined, and they were put on a par with orthodox religionists. But
before and since, their status has been less readily defined. Froissart
put it in non-contradictory words when he said that except in the lands
of the church (in the Comtat), these aliens were everywhere chased and
persecuted.
This reference to the church and the Jews recalls the fact that many
Arab slaves of Barbary were owned by the Papal powers in the days when
the traffic was a profitable one for Turkish _pachas_.
The slaves of Barbary were known all through the Mediterranean. Civita
Vecchia in the eighteenth century, directly under Papal patronage, held
a number of them of which the following is a description from an old
record:--
Arab Names Names in the Galleys Nationality Age Health
Papass Papass Tunis 45 Good
Acmet Buffalotto Tripoli 40 "
Mamchet Marzocco Alger 45 "
Mesaud Piantaceci " 35 "
Machmet Mezza Luna " 30 "
Aamor Bella Camiscia Alger 30 Good
Machmet Il Gabbiano " 30 "
Ali Nettuno Tunis 40 Mediocre
Aamor Carbone Tripoli 30 Good
These men in fact were for service in the Pontifical galley.
They were a fine race of servants, evidently!
The Jews are much less numerous in Algeria than in Morocco and Tunisia,
but they take on a very considerable commercial importance in the
picturesque conglomerate ensemble of peoples in the cities like Algiers,
Oran or Tunis; they gather the small savings of the nomad races in a way
that is the marvel of all who know their trade. Furthermore, as French
citizens, they play no small part in political affairs. What they lack
in numbers they make up in power, and the money-lending trade, while
seemingly in disrepute, is quite a necessary one in commercial
communities.
The Jews lend money to Christians the world over, men and nations alike,
and in Africa they do the same to the improvident Arab. Clearly the Jew
has a mission in life; he has found it out, and he sticks to it, and has
ever since that historic hour in the Temple.
Of all the mixed races with which one rubs shoulders in Northern Africa,
it is the Arab who interests us most. It is his country that we are in.
It is the Arab who must be our guide, philosopher and friend. "Ask an
Arab anything you like," say the French, "but ask nothing of a Maltese
or an Italian." Why, they do not tell you, but simply shrug their
shoulders in the expressive Frenchman's way.
CHAPTER IX
SOME THINGS THAT MATTER--TO THE ARAB
There are three kinds of _noblesse_ among the Arabs: there is the
aristocrat class, the _noblesse de race_, descended, so they think, from
Fatma, the daughter of the Prophet; the _noblesse militaire_,
descendants of the Arab conquerors, of which Mohammed and his family are
also descended; and finally the _noblesse réligieuse_, a hereditary
_noblesse_ like the preceding, but a distinction that can only be
acquired by meritorious performance of a religious duty.
The tribes each have a head known as a _Caïd_, and each tribe is divided
into smaller tribes and factions who obey implicitly the sub-head or
_Cheikh_ (sheik). The head of a _douar_,--a group of tents,--if the
collection is not great enough to have a presiding Sheik, is a sort of
committee, like the bodies of selectmen of a New England village.
Over and above all _indigène_ control, the French administration is the
real head of the Arabs in Algeria, and the Tunisian French
_fonctionnaires_ hold the same powers in Tunisia.
The Arab or Kabyle chiefs in Algeria are merely the agents for the
execution of the government's laws, civil or military, and in Tunisia
the laws for each province (_outhan_) are made known to the _Caïd_ by
the authorities, and it is he who is held responsible for their
observance. As for punishment for a crime committed,--for they are not
all plaster saints,--the Arabs would much prefer the old Turkish
_bastinado_ to a sentence behind prison walls or a fine in money, sheep
or goats. Does civilization civilize?
The Arabs are full of wise saws mostly adopted from the Koran, or from
the Apocryphal books of the Prophet. They have a saying which might well
be put into a motto suitable for the creed of any man:--
"_El-Khams_, _El-Miter_, _El-Ansab_ and _El-Aglane_ are the inventions
of the devil."
_El-Khams_ is worry; _El-Miter_ is gambling; _El-Ansab_ are the stones
or thorns in one's road; and _El-Aglane_ is the argument by sword
instead of by reason. The following might well be printed in Gothic
script and hung in our own "dens" and boudoirs along with Stevenson's
"Prayer."
"_When a woman says to her husband, I have never received a single
benefit from you, all the good acts she may have done lose their
value._"
"_God detests those who show pride before their companions._"
"_Go a mile to visit a sick man, two miles to reconcile a pair of
quarrellers and three miles to see a holy man._"
"_When you think of the faults of your neighbours, think also of your
own._"
"_He who salutes thee first is free from pride._"
"_God hates dirtiness and disorder._"
With respect to this last, the Arab performs his ablutions with great
regularity and devotion, but by contrast, curiously enough, enshrouds
himself frequently in dirty, verminous rags.
The most detested sequence of events that can happen to an Arab are
ranked as follows:--
I. The drunkenness which makes a fool of a man.
II. The sleep which dissipates the drunkenness.
III. And the chagrin which destroys the sleep.
The emotion has been felt by others, who cannot slip on and off the
_peau de chagrin_ as did Balzac's hero.
The Arabs explain their abstention from wine by an act of the Prophet
forbidding its use.
One day the Prophet saw, in passing, a group of young men who were
making free and drinking of wine. He blessed them, saying, "Drink at
your ease, you have the benediction of God." At the end of a brief
interval the Prophet, passing that way again, saw them disputing among
themselves, and learned that one had been killed. Thereupon he vowed
upon their heads that "wine was a curse upon them, and that not one who
was given to it should hope to enter Heaven."
Among the Arab _indigènes_ to-day, one remarks an almost total
abstention from the "wine when it is red." Contrariwise they may
frequently be seen drinking white wine, and indeed they have a great
fondness for champagne,--but they are not particular about the brand,
the label on the bottle means nothing to them, so long as it is a gaudy
one, and so, like many Americans, they drink something which they think
is champagne, and is just as "heady."
Arab hospitality is famous, their very manner of life, even to-day, as
in olden times, makes it a sort of compulsory tenet of their creed.
"Ida andek ktir, ati men mulek.
Ida andek glil, ati men galbeck."
"If you have much, give of your best.
`If you have little, give from the heart."
Never ask an Arab his age; you will be disappointed if you do. The Arabs
have no civil register and generally ignore their exact age, frequently
reckoning only by some great event which may have happened within their
memories, like the "Uncle Toms" and "Old Mammies" of "way down Souf."
With such a rule-of-thumb reckoning, you are likely to remain as much in
the dark as before.
It is a belief among the Arabs that they can carry on a conversation
with animals. Not all amongst them are thus accomplished, but the speech
of animals, they say, can be learned, and many of their head men know
it. They share this belief with other Orientals; but there is no proof
that they have learned their lessons as well as did Garner in his
attempts to acquire "monkey talk." The Arabs, too, are superstitious.
They believe in the evil eye, and they object most decidedly and
vociferously if you point your finger at them; also, they wear charms
and amulets against disease and disaster.
They used to object to the camera man and the artist, but to-day, since
they have come to learn that you carry away with you no actual part of
themselves, only an impression, their attitude has changed.
The Arab warrior must have ten qualities, or he is _déclassé_ in the
favour of all other Arabs.
I. The courage of a cock.
II. The painstaking of a chicken.
III. The heart of a lion.
IV. The brusqueness of a wild boar.
V. The tricks of a fox.
VI. The prudence of a hedgehog.
VII. The swiftness of a wolf.
VIII. The resignation of a dog.
IX. The hand always open.
X. The sword always drawn, and one sole speech for friend or foe.
The Arab warrior, save as he now serves France, has disappeared, but his
precepts were good ones for a soldier.
The Arabs' regard for womankind has often been misunderstood and
misstated. Not all Mussulmans have the same noble regard for womankind.
The Turk and the Persian is notably a tyrant in his home; and, among the
Arabs, the Bedouin is frequently a brute towards his wives and
daughters; but the conventional _Arab-Berberisé_ is quite compassionate
and liberal in his views and treatment of the female members of his
family.
"_Auprès de Dieu, le maître du monde, une fille vaut un garçon._"
Thus say the Arabs, but in practice it's all the other way. The boy
stays with the family and adds his strength and talents to his father's
tribe; but the daughter, arriving at the marrying age, which comes early
with the Arabs, leaves not only her family, but the ancestral _douar_ or
community, perhaps even the tribe, and goes where her new master
pleases.
In a word, the boy is another sword or brain for his family's interests,
whilst the daughter goes to augment those who may, perhaps, at some
future time, be enemies of her parents.
From this one judges that with the Arabs, as with many other exotic
nations, the birth of a son brings real joy to the parental roof-tree;
but that of a girl merely a lukewarm expression of gratification, or
perhaps nothing
[Illustration]
more than a disappointed resignation. If it is a boy that is new-born,
the parents are congratulated with: "God has made you a good gift!" If
it is a girl: "May you be as happy as possible!" is considered as all
that is needful, a sort of commiserating congratulation this, and the
father perforce responds ordinarily: "_Zaddat di nââla!_" ("It is my
sorrow.")
Once the child is born, the sex determined, the "rejoicings," properly
called, do not differ in one case from the other, for the Arab believes
profoundly in Mohammed's diction--"These are the innocents and the _Fête
des Anges_ must be the same in each case."
Seven days after the birth, the baby daughter's _Fête de Naîssance_
takes place in presence of the Caïd, the marabout, parents and friends.
The women cry and sob joyfully, and dance with the abandon of a dervish,
and the screech and roll of the _guellal_ and the flute make things
hideous for one who has no special responsibility bound up in the event.
The men, too, give themselves over to the dance quite as vigorously and
quite as gracefully as do the women, and a feast--all birth and wedding
celebrations end with a feast--terminates the great event so far as a
general participation goes. The eternal _couscous_ is the _pièce de
résistance_, with dates, raisins, figs, honey, butter and milk in
addition.
For a choice of names for their little daughter, the Arab parents,
almost without exception, choose one of the following:--
Aicha (the life)
Aatika
Badia
Djohar (the pearl)
Fathma
Fatima (diminutive)
Halima (the gentle)
Kheddouma
Khedidja
Kreira (the best)
Kheroufa
Kadra (the blossom)
Kneltoum
Meryem (Marie)
Nedjma (the star)
Sofia (the pure)
Yamina (the prosperous)
Yetan
Zina (the belle)
Zinent
Zohra (the flower)
Sometimes the child is given the name of some female friend of the
family, who agrees to act as godmother through the early years of its
life, and is obliged to spend a relatively large sum of money in
supplying a baptismal present, as do godmothers the world over. The boy
under the same circumstances would probably have been named Mohammed or
Achmed and have done with it.
After the actual naming ceremony the great bracelet talismans are put on
the girl-child's arms, and a little later a similar decoration will be
given her for her neck. If the parents are rich their children are often
rudely sent away to be nourished and given strength beneath the shade of
some Saharan oasis, not too far away but that they can be visited once a
year. The nurse who guards the children in their desert home is called
the second mother, but she is a nurse pure and simple and bears no
relation to the godmother.
The child is carried pick-a-back by day, by one or another of its
mothers, clumsily swathed in a none too clean-looking woollen cloth
during the first few months, and at night is securely stowed away in a
fig-leaf basket which is hung from the tent poles, a cradle which is
soft, flexible and cheap.
In time light foods, such as the milk of goats, cows, or camels is given
the child, and as early as possible it is told or shown how to take a
bath--and made to take it whenever the idea enters the parents' heads.
For dress, the girl is clothed as becomes the station and wealth of her
parents; her ears are pierced in two or three places, but as no jewelry
is worn by infants the holes are kept open by silk cords.
The home life of these early years is very much _en famille_ among the
Arabs of the countryside, with horses, oxen, and cows as dwellers under
the same roof.
As soon as possible the child is taught to pray according to the
religion of its parents. Each prayer is preceded by an ablution. Truly
the Mohammedan religion is a cleanly and purifying one!
The practical education of an Arab girl commences when she is shown how
to cut and fit a burnous (nothing of the tailor-made or Paris mode about
this to make it difficult; any one who can handle a pair of scissors can
do the thing), to sew a tent-covering together, and the thousand and one
domestic accomplishments of women everywhere, not forgetting spinning
and weaving.
In the poorer families, those who live in mean, ragged tents, not the
"Great Tents," the child is most likely first set to doing the cooking.
At the age of fourteen or fifteen, she begins to "take notice" of the
youth of the other sex, meanwhile partaking of the fare of the family
board only when there are no strangers present. During visits to friends
and neighbours, or to the marabouts, or at fêtes given in her honour,
the young Arab girl of whatever social rank is closely chaperoned,
always accompanied by her mother. The
[Illustration: _The Life of the "Great Tents"_]
daughters of the "Great Tents" are veiled from their tenth year onwards,
only the poor remain with their visage uncovered. Music is a part of the
early education of the Arab girl. She learns to dance, _yatagan_ in
hand; and to play the _bendir_, a sort of Spanish _tambourin_, and the
_touiba_, a similar instrument, somewhat smaller and less sonorous.
At an early age, too, she learns the rudiments of the arts of coquetry.
She puts rouge (_zerkoun_) on her face, and blacks her eyelids with
_koheul_; and, finally, colours the tips of her toes and fingers a
coppery red with henna. She has her wrists and ankles tattooed in bands
or bracelets; and paints beauty spots, a star or a crude imitation of a
fly, on her cheeks or forehead. By this time she is thought to be a
ravishing beauty.
Even the poorest of Arab families guard their daughter's honour with the
greatest circumspection, never a doubtful word or phrase is uttered in
her presence. She is brought up in the greatest purity of atmosphere.
Should there be any doubts as to this, her spouse, even on the marriage
day, will send her back to her parents dressed in a white burnous--with
no thanks. Dishonour can be punished by death. The Cadi is the referee
in all matters of dispute or doubt of this nature, and his word is
final.
Among the wealthiest tribes the daughters are often promised in marriage
at the age of four or five, and frequently they marry between ten and
fifteen. Indeed they must marry at an early age or people say unkind
things about them. In the Sahara the rich marry three or four wives, the
poor one, rarely two. One may not marry but one wife in any one year.
The Arab proverbs concerning women are many and mostly complimentary.
"_The quarrelsome wife is for her spouse a heavy burden, but a happy
wife is as a crown of gold._"
The Arab poet says of his chosen type of female beauty:--
_Hair black as the feathers of the ostrich._
_Forehead wide and eyebrows thick and arched._
_Eyes black like a gazelle's._
_Nose straight and finely modelled._
_Cheeks like bouquets of roses._
_Mouth small and round._
_Teeth like pearls set in coral._
_Lips small and coloured like vermilion._
_Neck white and long._
_Shoulders broad._
_Hands and feet small._
_Manners agreeable._
_Laughter delicate._
"She must laugh soberly, must not gad about nor dispute with her husband
or neighbours, have a well-governed tongue, may rouge slightly, guard
well the house, and ever give good counsel."
The formula might well be any man's ideal; though the Arabs say when you
meet this paragon of a woman, you become crazy, and if she leaves you,
you will die. All of which may be true also! The ideal is one made up of
an appalling array of virtues.
An Arab tale tells of a warrior horseman, El Faad-ben-Mohammed, rich in
this world's goods and lands, who met a certain Oumya-bent-Abdallah, and
would marry her, so beautiful was she. He sent his emissary to her to
plead his cause, for he was timid in love, if brave in war.
The young girl asked what might be her wooer's position in life,
whereupon his friend replied: "He is a warrior; when the fight is at its
thickest, it is he who cleaves a passage through the ranks of the foe.
He is taciturn and sober and knows well how to take adversity." This
seems a good enough send-off for a proxy to give, but the maid would
have none of it. She said simply: "Go back to your friend. It is a lion
that you tell me of. He wants a lioness, not a woman. I would not suit."
The suitor for a young girl's hand among the Arabs often does make his
demand of her parents by proxy; and much bargaining and giving and
taking of concessions goes on, all without embarrassment to the swain.
It's not a bad plan! A contract follows, and finally legal sanction.
Every Mussulman marriage must have the consideration of the _dot_ as a
part of the legal agreement. The _dot_ may vary with the fortunes of the
girl's family, or with the condition of the suitor; and, in case of
divorce, this _dot_ must be returned to the unfortunate lady's parents,
not to her, whatever may be the cause.
The wedding trousseau of the young wife, that which she brings in the
way of clothes and jewelry, must comport with her former station in
life; but her _dot_, which may be in kind, not necessarily in money, may
be as great as the prospective husband can worm out of the girl's
parents. A rich Arab of the "Great Tents" whom we heard of at Jouggourt
gave up the following: Three camels, fifty sheep, eighteen skins, three
bolts of cotton cloth (made in Manchester--the "Manchester goods" of
commerce as it is known in the near and far East); a gun (a Remington
so-called, most likely made in Belgium), with brass and silver inlaid in
the stock; two pairs of silver rings for ankles and wrists; two buckles
for the _haïk_, a silken burnous, a silk sash, a string of coral beads
(made of celluloid at Birmingham), earrings, a mirror (of course) and a
red _haïk_, and a _melhafa_ or _haïk_ of cotton.
Among the desert tribes the women of all classes of society frequently
have their faces unveiled; but, as they approach the great trade-routes
and the cities, they closely enwrap the face so that only a pair of
glittering black eyes peep out. Without regard to class distinctions or
age all Arab women are passionately fond of jewelry of all kinds,
finger-rings, anklets, bracelets, chains, and brooches.
Repudiation, or divorce, is legal among the Arabs if accomplished in a
legal way, and is simply and expeditiously brought about. The following
is an account reported recently in an Algerian journal:--
El Batah had presented himself before the Cadi for the purpose of
"repudiating" his wife, "_une femme grande et forte, d'une éclatante
beauté_." "Well, what is it?" said the Cadi, scenting in the affair a
big fee, at least big for him. The Cadi was very much smitten by the
lady, it appears, though he did not know it, or at any rate admit it, at
the time.
"I come to complain of my wife, who has beaten me and nearly broken in
my head," said the poor man.
"It is true," echoed the woman, "but I did not mean to do it, I am
sorry; I ought not to be punished." (This doesn't seem logical, does
it?)
"Well, I shall '_repudiate_' her" said the man; "I will have none of
her."
"Return her _dot_, then, to her family," said the Cadi.
"Great Allah! It is impossible, it is four thousand _dirhems_, how can I
pay it?"
By this time the Cadi saw his fat fee vanishing, and his ardour for the
lady of the _striking_ beauty rising. He had just lost his fourth wife,
the Cadi, and there was a place in the ranks for another.
"If I will give you the sum," said he, "will you '_repudiate_' this
woman?"
"Yes, willingly," said the fellow.
"Well, here's your money," said the accommodating official.
No consideration of the women of North Africa ought to terminate without
a reference to the Mauresque, that gracious type found all through
Northwestern Africa, a product of the mixture of the races, an outcome
of civilization and the growth of the great cities of the seaboard. They
are usually named Fathma, Zohra, Aicha, Houria, Mami, Mimi, Roza,
Ourida, Kheira, etc.; and they leave the bed and board of their parents
usually between the ages of twelve and fourteen to be married, or for
other reasons. Practically all the world looks upon the Mauresques as
social outcasts. The class had become so numerous about the middle of
the nineteenth century that the hand of philanthropy was held out to
them to enable them to better their condition in life. They were given a
rudimentary book education, and were taught the art of Oriental
embroidery with all its extravagance of capricious arabesques and
threads of gold.
As for the other class of Mauresques, the _rikats_, those who have
become contaminated,--for not all are saved, nor ever will be,--one
recognizes them plainly as of the world worldly whenever they take their
walks abroad. The sad amusement of visiting mosques and cemeteries is
not _their_ sole pleasure, as it is that of the legitimate Arab wife, or
Mauresque, even though her spouse be wealthy.
The Mauresque _partner de convenance_ of a wealthy _indigène_ or
European may have her own horses and carriages, perhaps by this time
even her own automobile; and rolls off the kilometres in her daily
promenades on the fine suburban roads of Algiers, in company with the
_haute société_ of the city, and the thronging American, English and
German tourists from Mustapha. She even dines at the _cabarets_ of Saint
Eugène, Pointe Pescade or the Jardin d'Essai, and no one does more than
look askance at her. Algiers is very _mondaine_, and its morals as
varied as its population.
Even though the _rikat_ dresses after the European mode, there is no
mistaking her origin. Her great, snappy black eyes, livened and set off
by dashes of _koheul_, are fine to look upon; and her figure, as she
sits in her cabriolet or opera-box, is so well hidden that one does not
realize its cumbersomeness. At home she wears the seraglio "pantalon" of
the Arabian Nights, ankles bare and feet stuffed into _babouches_--which
an Indian or a plainsman would call moccasins. Over all is the _r'lila_,
a sort of cloak of gold-embroidered, silken stuff, very light and wavy.
It's not so graceful as the _kimona_ of the Japanese, but it's far more
picturesque and useful than the most ravishing tea-gown ever donned in
Fifth Avenue or Mayfair.
The Mussulman calendar is simple, and, except in the nomenclature of its
divisions, is not greatly different from our own. The Arab year has
twelve lunar months, making in all three hundred and fifty-four or three
hundred and fifty-five days.
Moharem 30 days
Safer 29 "
Rbia el ouel 30 "
Rbia el tani 29 "
Djoumad el ouela 30 "
Djoumad et tania 29 "
Rdjab 30 "
Châban 29 "
Ramdan 30 "
Choual 29 "
Dzou el Kada 30 "
Dzou el Hadja 29 or 30
----------
354 or 355
Seasons
Spring El rbia
Summer Es Saïf
Autumn El Kherif
Winter Ech Chta
The principal fêtes of the Arab are those of the Mussulman religion, the
same one observes in Bombay, Constantinople and Cairo.
Ras el âm 1 Moharem (first day of year)
El âchoura 10 Moharem (anniversary of the death of the
son of Sidi Ali bou Thâleb)
El Mouloud 12 Rbia el ouel (anniversary of the
birth of the Prophet)
Çiam 1 Ramdan
Aïd es srir
(or little Beïram) 1 Choual
Aïd el kbir
(or great Beïram) 10 Dzou el haja (in commemoration
of sacrifice of Abraham)
The following glossary of commonly met with Arab words is curious and
useful:--
Allah Dieu--God
Bab Porte or passage, gateway (as Bab Souika at Tunis)
Burnous A woollen cloak
Cadi A judge or notary
Caïd Sheik, chief
Calif or Khalif Chief, commander
Cheikh (Sheik) Chief of a community or douar
Coran (Koran) The Book of Islam
Couscous or Couscoussu (Kouskouss)
Derviche (Dervish) A member of a certain
sect of religious dancers
Divan The council-chamber of a Sultan or Bey
Djebel Mountain
Djinn Evil spirits, demon
Dof A square drum
Douar Group of tents, a community
Effendi Title of quality
Fakir A mendicant monk
Fellah Egyptian peasant
Ganoun (or Kanoun) Harp of 75 strings (seen at Alexandria and Tunis)
Goule Vampire
Goum Native soldiery from the South
Gourbi Hut or cabin
Hadji Pilgrim who has been to Mecca
Hammam Moorish or Turkish baths
Harem The place reserved for Mussulman women
Henne Henna for staining hair or body
Houri Celestial Virgin of Paradise
Imam The prayer leader
Islam The religion of the Prophet
Kabyles Berber mountaineers between Algiers and Tunis
Khalifa Chief of a religious community
Kheloua Cave, grotto
Kouba Chapel above the tomb of a saint
Lella Madame
Marabout A holy person or his tomb (mark the distinction;
one word for two entities)
Mehari A "high speed" dromedary
Moghreb Occident
Moghrabin Man of the Occident
Mosque Mussulman place of worship (in French Mosquée)
Narghileh Arab or Turkish pipe
Ouali Marabout
Oukil Guardian
Raïa Flag
Raïs Captain
Roumi Christians
Scheriff (or Cheriff) Descendants of the Prophet
Sidi Monsieur, sir
Simoun (Sirocco) The South wind of the Sahara
Spahi Native warrior horseman
Sultan Virtually King or Emperor
Sultani Gold money
Tarr or Tar Tabor drum
Teboul Tambourine
Zaouia Hermitage, chapel, school
Zerma Clarionet
CHAPTER X
"THE ARAB SHOD WITH FIRE"
(_Horses, Donkeys, and Mules_)
As a Kentucky colonel once said, the pure-bred Arabian horse is a fine
thing in his native land; but there is more good horse-flesh, per head
of population, in the United States than the first home of the ancestor
of the blooded horse ever possessed. Everything points to the fact that
the gentleman knew what he was talking about, as fine specimens of
Arabian horse-flesh are rare to-day, even in Arabia and North Africa.
They exist, of course, but the majority of horses one sees in Algeria
and Tunisia are sorry-looking hacks.
In the desert the case is somewhat different. There the beautiful
Arabian horses of which romance and history tell are more numerous than
the diminutive bronchos of the coast plains and mountains. The
descendants of the Anazeh mares, the parent branch of royal Arabian
blood, are not many; but an Arab of good lineage may still be had by one
who knows how to pick him out, or gets some friendly Sheik to give him
his.
No one seems to know where the original Arabian horse was bred, though
it was known in the Mauritania of the Romans, in the environs of
Carthage, long before that little affair of Romulus and Remus startled
an astonished world. In all probability he was a descendant of the same
horses which made up the Numidian cavalry which overran Rome during the
Punic wars, and that's a pretty ancient pedigree.
To-day all through North Africa, in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Tripoli,
Egypt, and in Arabia across the Red Sea, the type is recognizable in all
variations of purity and debasement.
The "Arab shod with fire" of the Bedouin love-song may not be all that
sentiment has pictured, but he is an exceedingly high-bred animal
nevertheless.
Here are his fine points:--
Four { The forehead
"Wide" { The portrail (chest)
Points { Loins
{ Membres (shoulders)
Four { Encolure (neck)
"Long" { Rayons supérieurs (upper fore and hind leg)
Points { Body
{ Hind quarter
Four "Short" Points {Reins (flank)
{Paturons (pasterns)
{Ears
{Tail
Coat brilliant and dark coloured
This is the formulæ upon which the French remount officers choose their
Arabian horses, and for hard work they take always a "_traineur avec sa
queue_," a horse of seven years or more.
Each chief of an Arab family possesses one or more of the blooded
Arabians of classic renown. It is his friend in joy and sorrow, and his
constant companion when he is away from his family. If the Arab chief
has many horses he always keeps one, the favourite, as a war-charger. If
there are no wars or rumours of war in sight, he only rides this
favourite on gala or parade occasions; but at all times he gives it more
care and attention than many heads of families, in more conventionally
civilized lands, give their wives. The Arab knows the ancestors of his
horse as well as he knows his own; and he has its pedigree writ on
parchment, which is more trouble than he has taken to perpetuate the
memory of his own remote parents. The Algerian Arab horse has been
called a "mixed-_pur sang_," whatever that may mean, but certainly it
will take somebody more expert than a mere "horsey" person (the kind
that go around talking about their "mounts" and how "fit and saucy" was
the one they rode that morning) to mark the distinction between the best
of the Algerian variety and those of Egypt, Syria or Arabia.
The Arab trains his horses for his own personal use, to pace, canter, or
gallop, never to trot, a gait which is only fit for the European who is
afraid to sit on, or behind, a horse with a quick-moving pace. This is
the Arab version of it, and an Arab horse owner will hobble his beast
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