In Morocco

ll the heat grew less intolerable, and then ou

photograph from the Se

a

portico of the basil

er the expedition were advisable. Moulay Idriss was still said to be resentful of Chris

it, and with the piled-up terraces and towers of the Sacred City growing go

ntly at the high windows of mysterious houses veiled heads appeared and sidelong eyes cautiously inspected us. But the quarter was deserted, and we walked on without meeting any one to the Street of the Weavers, a silent narrow way between low whitewashed niches like the cubicles in a convent. In each niche sat a grav

of men's voices. I had heard such a chant before, at the other end of North Africa, in Kairouan, one of the other great Sanctuaries of Islam, where the sect of the A?ssaouas celebrate their sanguinary rites in the Zaouia[A] of their confraternity. Yet it seemed incredible that if the A?ssaouas of Moulay Idriss were performing

A: Sacre

photograph from the Se

a

ss (9,000 i

hen, suddenly, in 1916, its chiefs saw that the game was up, and surrendered without a pretense of resistance. Now the whole thing was ove

ng their ritual dance on the feast-day of their patron, the marabout Hamadch, whose tomb

All the population was in the square and on the roofs that mount above it, tier by tier, against the

ier, or cream and blue like Salé, but Tangier and Salé, for centuries continuously subject to European influences, have probably borrowed their colors from Genoa and the Italian Riviera. In the inte

late sunlight lay like gold-leaf on one side of the square, the other was in pure blue shade, and above it, the crowded r

ecial one, for these feasts of the Hamadchas occur only twice a year, in spring and autumn, and as the ritual dances take place out of doors, inste

photograph from the Se

a

iss-the ma

hole, seems so much less gay and brightly-tinted; and the women of the richer classes, mercantile or aristocratic, never leave their harems except to be married or buried. A throng of women dressed in light colors is therefore to be seen in public only when some street festival draws them to the roofs. Even then it is probable that the throng is mostly composed of slaves, household servants, and women of the lower bourgeoisie; but as they are all dressed in mauve and rose and pale g

r, to fly from the repulsive scene. The Hamadchas are much more savage than A?ssaouas, and carry much farther their display of cataleptic anaesthesia, and, knowing this, I had wondered how long I should be able to stand the sight of what was going on below our terrace. But the beauty of the setting redeemed the bestial horr

photograph taken by Ca

nch

place on the day of t

adc

he fife-players with lifted arms and inflated cheeks, the drummers pounding frantically on long earthenware drums shaped like enormous hour-glasses and painted in barbar

vulsively twitching. Around him, but a long way off, the dancers rocked and circled with long raucous cries dominated by the sobbing booming music, and in the sunl

e frenzy, or calming some devotee who had broken the ranks and lay tossing and foaming on the stones. There was something far more sinister in this passion

gested only a gaudy ritual ornament like the pattern on the drums; then one saw that the paint, or whatever it was, kept dripping down from the whirling caftans and forming fresh pools among the stones, that as one of the pools dried up another formed, redder and more glistenin

dened to let in another figure, black or dark yellow, the figure of some humble blue-shirted spectator suddenly "getting religion" and rushing forward to snatch a weapon and baptize himself with his own blood; and as ea

iss. Hamadch, it appears, had a faithful slave, who, when his master died, killed himself in despair, and the self-inflicted wounds of the brotherhood are supposed to symbo

e devotions of the free men being addressed to the saint who died in his bed, while the slaves belong to the slave, and must therefore simul

photograph taken by Ca

nch

t-place. Procession of

adc

se an invitation to take tea with the Ca?d, whose high-perched house commands the whole white amphitheatre of the town. It was disappointing to leave Moulay Idriss with the Hamadchas howling their maddest, and so much besides to see; but

tretches on which the fires of nomad camps put orange splashes in the darkness. Then the moon rose, and by its light