In Morocco

Chapter 4 CHELLA AND THE GREAT MOSQUE

Word Count: 1084 | Released on: 30/11/2017

ep an eye on the pirates of Salé. But Chella has fallen like a Babylonian city triumphed over by the prophets; while

nclosing them faces the city wall of Rabat, looking at it across one of those great red powdery wastes which

amels, and by the busy motors of the French administration; yet there emanates from it an impression of solitude and decay which

nds the thin veil of the European Illusion, and confronts one with the old grey Moslem reality. Passing under the gate of Chel

w where a little blue-green minaret gleams through fig-trees, and f

ing in the dust. Close by women and children splash and chatter about the spring, and the dome of a saint's tomb shines through lustreless leaves. The black man, the donkeys, the women and children,

at would even their beauty be without the leafy setting of the place? The "unimaginable touch of Time" gives Chella its peculiar charm: the aged fig-tree clamped in uptorn tiles and thrusting gouty arms between the arches; the garlanding o

enery and coolness in the hollow of a fierce red hill make Chella seem, to the traveller new to Africa, the very type and embo

d-el-Moumen, had been occupied with conquest and civic administration. It was said of his rule that "he seized northern Africa to make order prevail there"; and in fact, out of a welter of wild tribes confusedly fighting and robb

photograph from the Se

ruins o

he north of Spain, dreamed a great dream of art. His ambition was to bestow on his three capitals, Seville, Rabat and Marrakech, the three most beautiful towers the wo

its height, it stands on the edge of the cliff, a far-off beacon to travellers by land and sea. It is one of the world's great monuments, so sufficient in strength and majesty that until one has se

he sky. This mosque, before it was destroyed, must have been one of the finest monuments of Almohad architecture in Morocco: now,

nd complete as that of some mediaeval Tuscan city. All they need to make the comparison exact is that they should have been compactly m

larcos, "The Camp of Victory" (Ribat-el-Path), and the monuments he bestowed on it justifi

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In Morocco

Edith Wharton Literature

“Having begun my book with the statement that Morocco still lacks a guide-book, I should have wished to take a first step toward remedying that deficiency. But the conditions in which I travelled, though full of unexpected and picturesque opportunities, were not suited to leisurely study of the places visited. The time was limited by the approach of the rainy season, which puts an end to motoring over the treacherous trails of the Spanish zone. In 1918, owing to the watchfulness of German submarines in the Straits and along the northwest coast of Africa, the trip by sea from Marseilles to Casablanca, ordinarily so easy, was not to be made without much discomfort and loss of time. Once on board the steamer, passengers were often kept in port (without leave to land) for six or eight days; therefore for any one bound by a time-limit, as most war-workers were, it was necessary to travel[Pg viii] across country, and to be back at Tangier before the November rains. This left me only one month in which to visit Morocco from the Mediterranean to the High Atlas, and from the Atlantic to Fez, and even had there been a Djinn's carpet to carry me, the multiplicity of impressions received would have made precise observation difficult.The next best thing to a Djinn's carpet, a military motor, was at my disposal every morning; but war conditions imposed restrictions, and the wish to use the minimum of petrol often stood in the way of the second visit which alone makes it possible to carry away a definite and detailed impression...”