Lästext
I. My First Trip to Morocco
For years I had occupied myself with collecting from books information on the customs and religions of wild and half-civilised peoples. It began to smack of book-learning, and I yearned to see and hear for myself what I had read about, and more besides. So it came to be that one day at the beginning of March 1898 I bade farewell to London where I had spent the autumn and winter, and at Tilbury I boarded the Peninsular and Oriental Company’s steamship, Oriental. My university had awarded me the first Antell grant in three years and permitted me the right to select my field of study myself. Thus, I had time and money and freedom as my travel companions. What more could I ask for?
The Oriental was headed for India, but I remained aboard only until Gibraltar. Following a shorter excursion to the cities of Andalusia, I continued my voyage in the small steamer Gibel Tarik, which took me in around three hours across the strait to Morocco’s nearest city, Tangier.
The reader may wish to ask me why I travelled to Morocco of all places. My reply is: why should I not travel there? It was, after all, the first non-European country that lay on my journey. Although located not much more than a mile from Europe, it had remained all but untouched by its culture. The modern age had bypassed its shores without disturbing it in its medieval slumber. It was more oriental than most of the countries in the Orient, it was the final remnants of the Arabs’ old world, the only kingdom upon whose throne sat one of the Prophet’s descendants. And despite being written about extensively, it was little known. Even from the Strait of Gibraltar, I could see mountains where a Christian had yet to set foot. How could I have refrained from paying a visit to Morocco on my journey?
The steamship drops anchor in Tangier’s port. Moors with red fezzes, brown cloaks and bare legs have come to meet it and climb up its gunwale. Like a swarm of grasshoppers they alight on the deck and begin to fight over the luggage. The passengers stand helplessly and watch the suitcases being wrested to and fro by the raucous crowd. Only once the loot has been divvied up and passions have waned do they climb into the boats that take them to the new pier. If there is an eastern storm blowing, which occurs not infrequently, the boat journey is quite precarious, sometimes even dangerous, if not impossible, but now the weather was calm. Before the pier was built, passengers were carried onto land from the boats on the shoulders of the rowers.
I will never forget the trek up to the little hotel and my first ramble within Tangier’s city walls. The narrow and potholed streets that twist past the white-washed windowless houses, mosques and saints’ houses, the open shops and the small restaurants, the veiled women, men with shaved heads and the single long lock of hair hanging down from their heads, the water carriers with their bloated goat skins on their backs and a bell in their hand, the bustle of strange people and vibrantly-coloured outfits and rags that move along the main street, the shouting and clamour and stench of dirt and grease – I had read about these things in books but it still came to me as a revelation the first time it infiltrated my senses. I felt as though I was in another world and asked myself, not without some unease, how I would be able to manage there.
One of the most interesting places in Tangier is the marketplace outside the city gates, which each Sunday and Thursday is filled with an influx of people from the countryside, and on holidays functions as a gathering place for religious processions. And how delightful the surroundings are – the white sandy beach that encircles the beautifully rounded Bay of Tangier and the mountain on the other side of the city with its luscious gardens. When, a day after my arrival, I rode over the mountain on an expedition to Cape Spartel, I could not have imagined how many times during later years I would spend my summer, Christmas and Easter holidays under these acacias and eucalyptus trees with the Strait of Gibraltar at my feet and the Spanish coast, the Mediterranean’s blue waters and mountain of Andjra in the background.
But it was not my intention to linger long in Tangier. Despite the overwhelming nature of my first impression, I had come to realise that Tangier was the least authentic place in the whole of Morocco. The European legations were located there after all, and a considerable portion of the population consisted of European immigrants. Already in England I had decided, to begin with, to settle down in Tetuan where an English vice-consul was located, whom I hoped would assist me in starting my work and for whom I therefore brought a letter of recommendation.
Tétouan is located near the shore of the Mediterranean, around sixty-five kilometres east of Tangier. As the road there is very hilly and rugged, it was necessary to rise early in order to make the journey in one day. Before the sun had risen, two horses and a mule stood outside the hotel’s door, and the next thing I knew, my little caravan had set off. At the head rode the old Moorish soldier whom the Spanish consul, under current regulations, had made my protector, while the rear guard consisted of a black donkey boy who took care of my suitcases. We made our way along shadowy streets, still deep in slumber, out of the city gates and past a factory and found ourselves out in the countryside.
The landscape is inconsolably desolate. Large expanses lie uncultivated. There are no signs of habitation, as the villages are hidden behind the mountains. There are no trees. The vegetation consists for the most part of tufts of dwarf palms, which play the same role here as juniper bushes do in the Finnish landscape, and the oleanders, which fill the role of willows on the riverbanks. Here and there we spot grazing cows and sheep with their shepherds; farther on, we run into neglected wheat and barley fields and fallow fields where bare-headed farmers work with their primitive ploughs. The path we are following is miserable and, not infrequently, causes even the mule some trouble. One moment, we found ourselves at the top of a hill, the next deep in a valley, over whose shallow stream we could ride without difficulty. Hour after hour we travelled onward in this manner, while dark clouds gathered over our heads and eventually inundated us with pouring rain. We hastened the animals on as much as we could as we had to make it to Tétouan before sundown, before the city gates would be shut and the key borne up to the pasha. Meanwhile, the path is becoming steeper and more slippery. The Negro boy and his mule fall over and my suitcases drip with mud.
The only building we pass on the entire journey is a Moorish inn, a so-called fondaq, which consists of a large, rectangular, white-washed enclosure with several stalls and a couple of rooms for travellers. The rooms lack all furnishings, which is why those who spend the night here must settle for lying on straw, which is spread out on the floor. I ask for a glass of coffee or tea, but in vain. They serve neither food nor drink.
A moment later, we reach the top of the highest mountain that lies in our way and, all of a sudden, a view of astonishing vastness and beauty opens up. Below us is a narrow river valley, far away in the distance is Tétouan with its shimmering white houses and farther away still, on the horizon, is a small blue streak – the Mediterranean Sea. The nature has become progressively more idyllic. Flowering bushes add colour to the landscape. A small village or two can be seen clinging to the mountainsides. The sun, which has crept out from behind the clouds, casts life onto the magnificent tableau. And in the foreground, from the top of a hill, Tétouan shimmers unwaveringly at me, reminiscent of an apple tree in bloom. A moment before sundown I ride through a beautiful arched gate in the old city wall, which tries to impress us with a few rusty cannons in which small birds have built safe nests for themselves.
Tétouan is, just like Tangier, an ancient city that existed already in Roman times. It was rebuilt by the Andalusian Moors who, after the conquest of Granada by the Spanish in 1492, took refuge there. It is told that many of the migrants took with them the keys to their houses in the hopes that Allah would once again allow Granada to fall into the hands of the faithful. But this was not to be. Close to four hundred years later, the Spanish came to Tétouan and occupied it for more than two years – between 1860 and 1862. After their evacuation, the Moors attempted to obliterate every sign of the Spanish occupation. Almost all that remains to remind us of it are the piles of rubble left behind by the Spanish conquerors who demolished two of the city’s quarters in order to obtain fuel when the natives systematically refused to sell them coal.
The city’s centre consists of a large open square full of hustle and bustle on market days. White-skinned, neatly dressed city dwellers, sunburnt Berbers, hunchbacked Jews, moving white bundles from which peer out pairs of women’s eyes, but also unveiled women from the countryside take care of commerce. In the middle of the marketplace, surrounded by a captive crowd, sits a fortune-teller, who tells an interested customer his fate, having first drawn some mystical lines on a wooden tablet that he holds in his lap. And not far from there, a butcher has carried out his work: in a pool of blood a dying goat writhes with its throat cut, to the clear amusement of some boys who curiously watch the convulsive spasms of the body.
The streets are cramped, winding and full of dirt and debris, which is thrown out of the houses. The unaccustomed must walk carefully so as not to fall into a hole or sink into a puddle or slip on a rotting cadaver. The finest streets are lined with open shops that are also used as workshops, where a master and his apprentices produce woodwork, straw mats, sandals, guns or other objects that are typical of Tétouanese crafts. Here and there one may be able to steal a forbidden glance into a mosque – into which you must, however, never set foot under any circumstances – or into a school in which the children, seated on the floor, sway their torsos in a regular motion, studying the Koran. They intone the words loudly and all at the same time, so that it sounds like buzzing from a beehive, while the schoolmaster sits a short distance from them with a long rod in his hands, ready to hit negligent pupils on their bare feet. The exteriors of the dwelling houses are blank and make it impossible for passers-by to imagine what may be hidden behind the closed doors. If one enters a rich Tétouanese gentleman’s home from the grimy alleyway, one is surprised by the splendour found therein. In the middle is an open courtyard surrounded by arcades, with a marble fountain or at the very least a small pond with running water, whose purling always caresses a Moroccan’s ear like the sweetest of music. Alongside is a garden with orange, lemon and other fruit trees, some walled and white-washed or colourfully tiled paths and, on both sides and above them, lattices with grapevines and other climbing plants. On the house’s floors, pillars, stairs and walls are mosaic inlays in geometrical patterns, and the ceilings are engraved and painted with patterns familiar from the Alhambra. All of this is a remnant of the same ancient culture that still reveals itself in the Moroccan gentleman’s well-bred manner and adorns his speech with so many polite phrases.
In one corner of the marketplace is a gate that leads to the overpopulated Jewish quarter mellaḥ, with its straight streets. In Tétouan, as in most other Moroccan cities, the native Jews play an extremely important role as craftsmen, merchants and bankers, which becomes most strikingly obvious on Saturdays, when the Jews have their Sabbath and business in the city dies down as a result. The Jews living in the coastal cities are probably mostly descendants of those who in the fifteenth century were cast out by the Spanish and migrated to Morocco in the hopes that they would find there an equally tolerable existence as under the Moors in Spain. They were moderately free of any real persecution, and Morocco’s history also reveals that there have been more than a few Jews who, in the role of the Sultan’s advisor or financier, have held influence over the court or have been sent as ambassadors to foreign courts. But it is still not exactly possible to say that the lot of the Moroccan Jew is enviable. From cradle to grave he is despised and taunted – a ”dog”, a ”donkey”, a ”swine”. In civilised company, one must not speak of a Jew without apologising for having to do so. Curses, jostling and blows are his daily bread, but woe the Jew who assaults a Moor! A Jew must remove his slippers when walking past a mosque and, in some cities, he must walk barefoot if he wishes to move around outside his mellaḥ during the day. Not long ago, he was forbidden from riding within the city gates and from riding a horse, even when he was out on a journey. His robe, slippers and calotte had to be black, a colour loathed by the Moors. He was forced to take on work that no Muslim was willing to engage in: cleaning the sewers, dragging away the corpses of horses and donkeys that had died on the streets or in the marketplace, and salting the severed heads of defeated rebels before they were nailed up above the city gates to serve as a warning to others. And add to this the fact that he is a skilled craftsman, a well-stocked merchant, an enterprising importer of foreign goods and a rewarding object for taxation and extortion, it is no wonder that he is looked upon as a useful pet that it is good to own. In the good old days, Jews were therefore subject to export tariffs – four dollars for men and a hundred for women.
What I said about the treatment of Jews naturally does not apply to those under European protection. They are protected by their respective consuls, dress as they please, are exempt from virtually all taxation and are at liberty to do so much that the others could never even dream of. Several of them have obtained significant wealth, send their children to European schools and are becoming modernised almost beyond recognition. They have thus become Morocco’s most educated natives, but at the same time the least interesting. In Tangier and the cities on the west coast, there are many Jews of this kind, but in Tétouan their numbers are not large.
Speaking of Tétouan’s population, I must mention the Europeans. At the time of my visit, they made up an insignificant handful. The majority were poor Spaniards and there were not even a dozen educated Europeans; all I can remember are a Spanish consul, two vice-consuls, some missionaries as well as an Englishman and a Frenchman who had converted to Islam. The missionaries consisted of a few Franciscan monks, an old Scottish gentleman and a couple of English ladies. Neither here nor elsewhere in Morocco had the natives shown the slightest interest in allowing themselves to be converted, which is why the missionaries largely spent their time offering medical care. They were treated very decently by the authorities and residents – much more decently, I believe, than Moslem missionaries would have been received in England. And just as little as the Muslim will allow himself to be converted to Christianity does he care about trying to convert Christians to Islam. If the English or French nation as a whole were to convert to Islam, he would praise and thank Allah, the merciful and compassionate, but if one or two Englishmen or Frenchmen do so, it is entirely irrelevant to him –— in fact it raises his suspicions. It was also entirely on their own initiative that the gentlemen in question renounced their old religion and adopted the Prophet’s. The Englishman told me that it was only with the greatest difficulty that he was able to convince a Moorish barber in Tétouan to perform on him the conversion operation – the same one that at the Lord’s command would be performed on each boy child in Israel when he was eight days of age. Among Muslims, this takes place at a somewhat older age, when the boy is between two and five years old, and is then considered to be entirely safe. But to perform it on a forty-year-old gentleman appeared to be relatively questionable, and it was not until the barber had been released from all responsibility with a witnessed written document did he take on the task. During the operation a boy held an onion under the convert’s nose – this was in place of chloroform. But the Englishman told me that if he had known how painful the conversion would be, he would never have abandoned the faith of his fathers.
I settled myself in a small Spanish inn, and the vice-consul to whom I had brought a letter of recommendation immediately presented to me as a teacher an older Tétouanese man who spoke fluent English, and so began my work. I also learned quite a lot by wandering around the streets and marketplaces. But usually, I would take myself out through the city gates to look at the springtime. And what a springtime it was! South of Tétouan, there spreads out a broad and incredibly fertile river valley where, after the abundant rains, the creative power of the earth had bloomed in an unparalleled display of colours. The orchards are strewn full of fiery red poppies among the succulent crops. The meadows’ carpet of flowers shimmers in all the colours of the rainbow. The sheer greenery of the fig trees’ large and plump leaves breaks against the grey branches and stems. The pomegranate trees’ branches and shoots are resplendent in scarlet. The pear trees are white with flowers. The orange trees sag with the burden of their flame-coloured fruit. And over all of this extends a cloud-free sky, which changes colour as the sun rises in the early morning hours or sinks below the horizon in the evening. Spring in Morocco with its colours and scents, its air and sun, its teeming life, its singing nightingales, is one of life’s high points that fills one’s soul with bliss. And what a view from the hills that make up Tétouan’s natural wall to the north – the snow-white city under one’s feet, the fields and gardens with the wealthy Moors’ country houses sprinkled like cubes of sugar among the greenery, in the background the violet contours and slopes of the Atlas Mountains’ outermost reaches, and to the east, the broad estuary and the Mediterranean Sea’s emerald belt between earth and sky.
Tétouan became dear to me, and I experienced a vague feeling that I would return there one day. This feeling came true much faster than I could have anticipated. I spent the following winter in Tétouan, from November to March, and ten years later, I visited it for the third time. But now, on my first trip, I stayed there for just over three weeks. I longed to see the interior of the country and above all the premier city and the heart of Moorish culture – Fez. With a muleteer and his two animals, I returned to Tangier to meet with the necessary authorities for the planned trip.
First and foremost, I had to find myself an interpreter. The only one that could be recommended for the task was a Syrian named Rashid, who had moved to Morocco several years ago. However, I discovered that he had been previously engaged by a young Englishman who had been sent to Morocco by his doctor to cure his nerves through strenuous travel. The Englishman also intended to travel to Fez, and when the English legation heard that I was entertaining similar plans, it was decided that we would undertake the journey together. The legation had prior to this attained detailed accounts of my person, as this protégé was the son of a lord and had come to Tangier with a letter of recommendation from the Prince of Wales. I took up this proposal; due to the interpreter I really had no other option. And after a few days’ preparations we were ready, on 22 April, to set off.
We had with us the Syrian interpreter, a Moroccan soldier, four Moroccan servants, the Englishman’s valet, three horses, seven mules and a donkey, and in addition four tents with furnishings and provisions for a couple of weeks. The journey began with some small adventures. When crossing a stream, one of the mules sank into the mud and was rescued only after serious efforts. Another one took a tumble in the grass with its whole pack. A third one, in an unattended moment, turned around and trotted back towards Tangier. One of the stallions escaped during the lunch break, but was captured with a lasso. And furthermore, the soldier lost his snuffbox. Our men began to grumble: why did we have to start off on a Friday, things could not possibly go well.
In the evening, we pitched our tents in a smaller village that consisted of a round open area surrounded by an embankment of brush and huts made of stones and clay with roofs of straw. The huts lacked both windows and chimneys, and in order to enter through the doorway, one had to bend over almost at a right angle. The women handed us jugs of goat milk and nobly refused the payment we offered them. A large camel caravan arrived and settled down in the vicinity of our tents; and fires were lit about us, around which the camel drivers, wrapped up in their cloaks, rested after the day’s labour.
The next evening we chose as our resting place the village of Ulad Mûsa where apparently there were ”a hundred and sixty houses, twenty-five riders and three hundred other men”; women and children were not counted. We visited the sheikh, an old man with a distinguished look who lived in one of the ordinary huts, guarded by half a dozen angry dogs. He gave us milk and eggs and invited us to spend the night under his roof, which we nevertheless declined. In return, we gave him a box of matches and a bar of soap for his wife and daughter. Later in the evening, when he returned our visit, he was lavished with a pen knife, a pencil and a string of gilded glass beads for his daughter. We also offered him a small compass, but he wanted nothing to do with it and was afraid to even touch it. In his hut we also had the pleasure of seeing some unveiled young ladies with tattooed chins and decidedly attractive eyes. They were busy grinding grain, but when we entered, they interrupted their work and burst out in roars of laughter. When I wondered about the reason for their loud mirth, one of the men said that they had never before seen any Christians. And in addition, he added that our trousers were also a relatively absurd item of clothing.
We stayed put there for one day due to torrential rain. In the afternoon, when the skies cleared up, the village’s men and youth were invited to compete in riding and running in the field outside of our tents, and small prizes were handed out. The first winner was in fact one of ours, Sīdī ̔Abdsslam, who, as a matter of fact, was thrown from his unsaddled horse headfirst, but then with the agility of a cat, leaped up again to continue his ride. As night drew in, the sheikh sent six men to guard our camp. Around midnight I was awakened by yelling and the barking of dogs. They claimed that they had seen thieves stealing up on our horses. But it appeared to be much more likely that it was the guards who were quarrelling amongst themselves.
The major event of the following day was the crossing of the Mkhazen (Wādī al-Makhāzin] river. We had earlier crossed several rivers that had not caused us much trouble, or had at least not been nearly as irksome as many of the smaller streams with their deep mud. But now, the Mkhazen’s waters were so high due to the rains that they came up to the neck of a fully grown man, and the current was strong. We first thought about obtaining some timber from the nearest village to build us a raft, but gave up on the idea entirely when we saw a camel caravan approaching. Once we had hired a suitable number of camels, we transferred all of our luggage onto them and sat ourselves uppermost, one on each animal. Throughout northern Morocco, the camel is used exclusively as a pack animal, and it is no wonder, as it is unpleasant to ride on. The critical moment is getting up, specifically when the camel does so, as it is kind enough to lie down while it is loaded with supplies. When it stands up, it does so in two movements: first the rider falls on his face, then he is thrown backwards, and finally he is flung up into the air – significantly higher than he really wished to be. But the worst was ahead of us, namely the crossing of the torrential and muddy river. The camel is not exactly an aquatic animal; it easily slips on wet ground and if its leg then bends outward, which is often the case, it cannot get up again, at least if it is carrying a load, and it must then be slaughtered. But everything went well, although valuable time was lost and we had to find our way to Alcazar [Westermarck used the Spanish name Alcazarquivir, in Arabic it is al-Qaṣr al-Kabīr] in the pitch black, whereby one of the mules toppled into a river with its entire pack. The reader can see in the photograph on page 26 how calm and tranquil a crossing of the Mkhazen can be under normal conditions.
Alcazar is an ugly old city with foul-smelling streets, dirty-coloured buildings, a few mosques and shrines and a stork on every rooftop. It is located on a plain and the only attractive features of the surroundings are a meandering river and some orchards. The city’s prison was pointed out to us as its premier attraction. Supplied with about one hundred bread rolls and a couple of hundred cigarettes, we crept through a small hole that acted as the door to the prison, and found ourselves immediately surrounded by a large crowd of men who looked at us with curious and hopeful eyes. The prisoners all live together in a single large room, which was cleaner than I expected, and the air in the room could almost be called tolerable thanks to the large opening in the ceiling. They moved around entirely freely and appeared not to be too low in spirits, at least as long as they had something to eat. The prison does not supply food, instead each prisoner must provide for his own upkeep, in other words, his relatives provide him with food and if he does not have any relatives nearby, he must rely on the generosity of the other prisoners. That is at least what it was like at that time; during recent years, conditions have improved significantly. I have read many unpleasant accounts of Moroccan prisons, originating with philanthropic Europeans, who immediately upon arriving in Tangier or Mogador, or some other coastal city have headed straight for its prison, without at all knowing that Moroccans are used to dirt and stink, and without thinking how much more humane it is to let a prisoner be together with his peers than to confine him to a cell. It is another matter again that so many innocent people are thrown into prison simply due to the governor’s greed, while, on the other hand, many criminals can buy themselves free. Corporal punishment is common, but it is extremely rare for anyone other than rebels to be punished with death. Murderers often atone for their crime with one year of prison, as long as their victim was not a Christian or a local who is under the protection of a Christian power, as in that case a much heavier punishment is required. Among the prisoners in Alcazar, in particular two older men stood out whose appearance and dress brought to mind the upper class. They politely offered us their hands and expressed their delight at making our acquaintance. When I asked what had brought them to this miserable abode, they responded that they had been charged a year ago with the attempted murder of the British consular agent in Alcazar.
Approximately halfway between Tangier and Fez we came to the Sebû [Sebū] river valley – an immense, fertile plain that first appeared as boundless as the ocean. On the horizon to the south the contours of a mountain could be glimpsed here and there, like a distant island, but to the west, one cannot see even the smallest elevation to break the even line between heaven and earth, and in the evening, the sun hides itself like a corn crake in a field of grain. It took us two days to ride across this valley, and it was here that we had for the first and last time on our journey the pleasure of encountering a ferry. Otherwise we would not have been able to get across the wide and deep river. But they have also limited themselves to the bare necessities. It has naturally not occurred to anyone to construct a land bridge that would connect the ferry to the high and clayey shore. The animals must be freed from their packs. They are then driven with whips and blows to jump from the clay bottom over the side of the boat and we ourselves are carried onboard by the ferrymen.
Eventually we arrived at a mountain range where the diverse nature felt invigorating after the uniformity of the previous days. Until now, people everywhere had been friendly towards us. Even when we rode through a village without stopping, an elderly man came out and handed us a bowl of milk. However, on the evening of the eleventh day we experienced something different. We were in the process of pitching our tents near an old governor’s castle when its owner, the son of a recently deceased provincial governor, came with a troop of servants to stop us in our lawful undertaking. The scene played out not far from my tent. I heard our old soldier raising a terrible commotion and saw him gesticulate violently; it was, after all, his way and could just as easily mean something good as something bad. But in the blink of an eye, sticks were waving in the air, the soldier rushed out of the howling mob and mounted his horse. He had been close to coming to harm. They had managed to grab his head and were just about to cut off his bushy beard – the worst insult that could be inflicted on a Muslim – when at a critical moment one of ours managed to slap the knife out of the perpetrator’s hand. The soldier now rode at full gallop to the provincial governor living nearby, while the twenty-man strong enemy attempted to conceal its fear under loud, scornful laughter.
A moment later, an older man approaches my tent, accompanied by two servants. It is the uncle of the young castle owner coming to deplore what has happened and ask for forgiveness. He brings with him some eggs, a pail of milk, a piece of meat and a sugarloaf. The presents are accepted – happily, for our sugar had just run out – but justice must take its course. The governor sends one of his soldiers to detain the guilty parties. A man and a boy are led forward as scapegoats. They throw themselves down at our feet and shower our soldier with kisses – until his heart melts and he confers upon them his forgiveness.
Safety seemed to diminish the closer we got to Fez. In the village where we spent the last night, both the inhabitants and soldier urged us to pitch our tents within the village walls, and when we refused to do so because of the dirt and vermin, they surrounded the camp with half a dozen armed watchmen. We now had as our neighbours the feared Berbers, who obeyed the sultan’s rule only in name. And besides, even the different villages of the same tribe quarrel among themselves and are happy to play unpleasant pranks on one another if the opportunity arises. And just such an opportunity presents itself when the village has overnight guests travelling under the state’s protection, as the village is then responsible for their safety.
From a hill on the road, there suddenly materialised the next morning the contours of a city, which from a distance resembled a large European city with numerous factory smokestacks rising from its centre. But no smoke swirled up from their mouths – some of them turned out to be sky-high black poplars, and some minarets, consecrated to a god other than the modern Mammon. We felt as though we had new blood in our veins. The animals picked up their pace without being told. And a moment later, we rode in through a magnificent city gate, worthy of Alhambra. We found ourselves in the ”new town” which largely consists of the Jewish quarter, crossed a small river, rode up a steep incline and close to an hour later came to the ”old town”, Fez proper, Morocco’s pride and joy.
After a journey of nearly two weeks through treeless and mostly desolate parts, it felt refreshing to arrive in this delightful clime with its lush vegetation. Fez is located in a hollow between moderately high mountains with bare peaks but with olive trees covering their slopes. In the distance a rock face can be seen, white with snow. There live Berber tribes that no European can reach – free people who almost right outside the gates to the sultan’s foremost seat of power accede to his sovereignty only in name. But what particularly draws one’s attention when one arrives in Fez is the extraordinary abundance of water. A river flows through it, which already as it first enters the city divides into a myriad of rivulets, which power mills, run through gardens, mosques and dwelling houses, cross streets, shoot out of mosaic-covered fountains and rinse the dirt from the sewers. Wherever one wanders, one can hear the sound of running water and the eye is delighted by the greenery sprouting out of the wet soil. Native writers never tire of singing the praises of Fez and its water which is said to cure illnesses, to soften the skin and clean clothing without adding soap, to bestow a fragrance upon anything it comes into contact with and taste like honey. A Fez resident takes his drinking water from the river, not from any of the springs that are plentiful in the city; and it does not trouble him in the slightest that the neighbour above has perhaps rinsed his laundry in the same water with which he quenches his thirst.
We headed straight to a wealthy Muslim’s house, the top floor of which had been put in order for us; the British Ambassador in Tangier, Sir Arthur Nicholson, had in fact announced our arrival ahead of time. In this metropolis, where the number of residents probably comes to a hundred thousand, there was not even the most humble of boarding houses to be found, and the same was still true nine years ago when I last visited Fez. At that time, around twenty Europeans, children and servants included, lived in the city, and when the sultan resided in another area, their number fell to half a dozen. I wonder if there existed a more authentic capital city in the entire world.
A house in a Moorish city does not offer the types of comforts we are used to in Europe. The rooms have neither chairs nor tables and are equipped only with mattresses spread out on the floor. The windows are mostly without glass, but can be closed by means of wooden shutters. The stairwells are dark and cramped and the steps are of unequal height, but all of them a touch too high. The rooms are large and airy and the perpetual splashing of water, running through the house and the garden, feels cool in the summer’s heat. My host spends the majority of his day on the ground floor, stretched out on his mattress. In the evenings, he likes to arrange small tea parties; and when the atmosphere becomes cheerful, he pulls out his accordion and happily sings the strains of an old hymn: ”There is only one God and Muḥammad is his prophet, there is only one God and Muḥammad is his prophet”, and so on to infinity.
The streets of Fez make up a labyrinth, where I never learned to find my way around on my own even during my later, six-month-long stay in the place; Toledo in this regard is nothing compared with Fez. The reason for this is that in the centre of this large city with its crooked streets, there are no open areas whatsoever. Besides, the streets, if one excludes the large thoroughfares, are extraordinarily narrow. On many of them it is impossible for two riders to pass one another, which is why one of them must turn around to allow the other to proceed; and it has happened to me that my mules’ packs have become wedged between the walls of the houses in such a way that they have not been able to move before the loads have been rearranged. The streets are lined with tall houses. In some places they have sheer roofs of grapevines through whose foliage the sun’s rays filter through, in others they resemble tunnels, blasted through the overhanging houses, and there the rider must lean forward over the neck of the animal in time to avoid a blow to the forehead or being thrown out of the saddle. In the middle of the street is a deep, approximately half-metre deep groove created by the animals’ hooves, which often turns into a flowing stream in rainy weather. As the edges or shores are usually so narrow that two people cannot pass one another on the same side, a walk through the city turns into incessant hopping or climbing up and down. However, many of these streets are teeming with life, as Fez is a bustling city and a large commercial centre. The more important wares have their own special streets where they are sold; and as everything in Morocco smells, the different streets consequently have their special odours – linen or leather, rancid butter or roses. At sunset the city is enveloped in a mysterious dusk, in which white figures drift about like ghostly spectres. In the evening life dies down: only a wanderer here and there, groping his way forward in the dark, or a lonesome rider with a flickering lantern in his hand. But one must ride forward carefully as along the streets’ edges the poor have laid themselves down to sleep, not allowing themselves to be disturbed by the horses’ hooves or the barking of the half-wild dogs. One must also be careful about staying out too long, as later in the evening the countless gates separating one district of the city from another are closed in order to prevent any miscreants from saving themselves by way of escape.
Sandwiched between other buildings lie also the two foremost shrines in Fez: Mûläi Idrīs’ sepulchral chapel and the associated mosque, as well as Qarwîin. Mûläi Idrīs the younger, son of Morocco’s first sultan, founded Fez at the start of the 800s and is revered as one of its greatest saints. Later in the same century, Qarwîin was built, and was later expanded so that it became Morocco’s largest mosque. Moreover, there are a couple of hundred mosques and a large number of saints’ houses here. But several of the foremost shrines lie outside of the city walls, some surrounded by the graves of ordinary mortals. Neither in Fez nor elsewhere in Morocco are infidels allowed to set foot in the mosques and saints’ houses, which is why we must settle for viewing them from the outside, provided we do not wish to risk life and limb. Speaking of attractions outside of Fez, I wish to also mention the bridge over Sebû a short distance from there, which is looked upon by the people as one of the wonders of the world. It took me three minutes to wander across it.
But time is slipping away, and I wish to see a thing or two in Morocco before I turn my back on it. After a three-week stay in Fez I decide to continue my journey. My English travel companion feels too tired to join me and will remain put with our Syrian interpreter, while I take with me one of our other men, Sīdī ̔Abdsslam, who speaks passable English. This time I decide to dispense with the military escort. It admittedly conflicts with international law as the sultan has come to an understanding with the European powers that if any of their subjects finds it absolutely necessary to travel in his country (which Heaven forbid!), he must have a military escort. The accompanying soldier is a type of life insurance policy for which a fixed fee is paid, of which the majority ends up in the pockets of the city governor. But in Morocco, one can do just about anything one pleases, and why should I burden myself with such a hanger-on, as the only hostility I had so far witnessed on the part of the natives specifically involved the soldier that we had with us from Tangier. My departure from Fez was very unassuming: it involved two mules and two servants. Later, I additionally hired a horse and engaged a third servant, and the journey transpired without incident.
My closest destination was Mequinez, close to sixty kilometres west of Fez, now a decaying city with thirty or forty thousand residents, but renowned for its glorious city gates, its immense palace and other monuments from the days of Mûläi Ismaʿil. The sultan, who ruled here for more than half a century in the late 1600s and early 1700s, was depicted by European ambassadors who visited his court, and by Christian prisoners who served under his persecution, as a wild animal in human form. Over the first twenty years of his reign he is purported to have killed twenty thousand of his subjects with his own hands. To test the blade of a new sword, he might chop off the head of the nearest man, and when a French ambassador visited him, he amused himself by stabbing some slaves in his presence. Moreover, he had an executioner by his side at all times, ready to dispatch the person he was looking at a moment’s notice by beheading them if he gave the signal with his chin, and by strangulation if he twisted his wrist. Pellow, a Christian slave who won his trust, says that he had three hundred wives at one time, who conferred upon him nine hundred sons and two hundred daughters, but others claim that he had over a thousand women in his harem. In Morocco, he is largely remembered as a mighty and pious ruler whose holiness was so immense that whosoever was lucky enough to fall by his hand thereby gained entry to paradise.
Around the time of my visit, there were a few American missionaries in Mequinez as the sole representatives of Christianity; before their arrival three years prior, not a single Christian had lived there. And that does not surprise me. It would be dishonest to say that the population acted graciously towards me. When I wandered the streets I heard mouths hissing behind me, and when I stopped outside a small coffee-house for a moment, the manager became so furious that I had to immediately move on. Mequinez has a reputation for depravity exceeding even that of Sodom and Gomorra.
My journey then led north-west through a mountain range peopled by both Berbers and so-called ”Arabs”. One must not believe that the section of the peasant population who are in Morocco called l-ʿarab are of purely Arabic origin; it is likely that in their veins runs more Berber than Arab blood, although they speak Arabic exclusively. The so-called Berbers, who speak Berber, are, on the contrary, certainly more or less pure descendants of the people who lived in Morocco before the arrival of the Arabs. They presumably belong to a race that at some time inhabited both the northern and southern coasts of the Mediterranean, the Mediterranean race, but their language, which belongs to the so-called Hamitic language group, has to a large extent been mixed with Arabic loan words. In the parts that I was now travelling in, the Berbers and ”Arabs” hardly differ from one another in appearance and both live in tent villages. But the relationship between them is anything but good. Often, they are openly feuding with one another and even in times of peace, the Arabs are afraid of their Berber neighbours. In the small Arab village where I arrived on the evening of the same day I left Mequinez, they had terrible tales to tell of the Berbers’ rampages and asked me to proceed to the next village, but Sīdī ̔Abdsslam put everything right. The leaders invited us, as is the custom, to sit around the steaming teapot while a score of women and children gathered outside the tent, looked me over from head to toe and laughed so hard that tears ran from their eyes.
The next day I found myself in the Sebû river valley. The courtyard in which I pitched my tent in the evening made a mixed impression on me of both prosperity and dilapidation. The houses were new but partly destroyed and they stood unoccupied. The villagers explained that the place had belonged to a regional governor who had only recently been thrown into prison along with both his sons. His crime had been that a man from another village had coveted the post of governor and had offered the sultan a generous sum of money for it. The governor was dealt with summarily. In Morocco, an official who has been dismissed is not awarded a life-long pension; instead he often receives a life-long prison sentence.
After having left the Sebû valley behind me, I took the road to the small town of Laraiche situated on the shore of the Atlantic, which here drops steeply into the ocean. In its vicinity, for the first time during my journey, I came upon an actual forest, consisting of cork oaks. Below the town, the mouth of the Lekkūs river widens out. I crossed it in a ferry and then followed the sandy coast – a delightful day with a cooling sea breeze and a swim in the Atlantic. But it began to feel slightly eerie when night fell and there were no signs of human habitation. When travelling in Morocco, one should always try to reach a village or town before dark to avoid encountering a robber loitering in the bushes or lying in ambush in some hiding place. But sometimes one is not able to do so, and that is what happened to us. The only thing we could find was a whitewashed shrine next to a spring on the beach, and there we stopped in the hopes that robbers might have even a morsel of respect for his holiness SīdīʿBumghait. My servant ʿAbdulla, who was posted as the night watchman told us the following morning that he had noticed a man sneaking around the tent. But he had previously seen so many trolls and spirits that none of us believed that what he had seen this time was a human.
The next day we arrived in Azila, the ancient Romans’ Zilia, now just a small, sleepy coastal town, where no foreign ships may dock and not one Christian soul has their dwelling. And after a further one and a half days of travel, we were back in Tangier. It was not altogether unpleasant after twelve days of the tent life to have a solid roof over one’s head. A journey to Morocco is not without its tribulations. The incessant riding, sometimes ten or twelve hours a day, the scorching sun, the slim fare and the dirty drinking water place certain demands on a traveller’s physique. The countless small creatures that fly, crawl and jump to infest his tent, seriously test his night’s sleep. Even the Moorish servants sometimes give him moments of anxiety, despite how friendly and obliging they usually are. Drinking coffee from the spout of my coffee pot, cutting the candles with my table knife just as I am about to begin my meal, drying my plate with the first dirty handkerchief they can get hold of – these things do not bother them one bit. And then, perhaps, a hospitable villager arrives in the evening with a steaming plate of kūskus or sěksu, the Moroccan national dish, which consists of a type of steamed semolina or pearl barley mixed with butter, with added meat and vegetables; the butter is usually old and at least part of it is, in fact, supposed to be rancid. Then one must stick one’s right hand in the greasy dish, roll up a small ball for oneself and carefully throw it into one’s mouth. It is extremely tricky to do so without getting oneself dirty, as the ball will often fall apart before one has had time to deposit it in one’s mouth. When mealtime is over, the fingers are licked in a specific order, beginning with the little finger, the middle finger and thumb, and one calls on God to bless the noble giver while the rancid butter burns one’s throat. It is par for the course that one’s hands are washed before and after a meal, but in general people are not so fastidious and dry their fingers on their clothes.
And of course, in the end, what do these small inconveniences mean in the face of the indescribable charm that envelops a trip to Morocco with its wonderful Medieval atmosphere. Many times I imagined myself a wayfarer in Europe during a time when there were neither roads nor bridges, and the traveller had to manage on his own as best he could. Even the people who sat themselves around my tent each evening and remained perched there engaged in small talk and almost completely still hour after hour were just as remote from the modern world’s pursuits and ideas as our own distant forefathers. The comparison appears perhaps curious when we are speaking of a Muslim country such as Morocco. But what is Islam among the peasant population but a shell which hides behind it the same belief in magical forces and supernatural beings that can still be glimpsed in the often ambiguous features of the European farmers’ everyday customs? Here, it lives on as strong as ever, populating every ravine in the mountains, every river and every spring with spirits and trolls, which at nightfall climb out from their hiding places and fill the minds of human children with anxiety and dread.
We now found ourselves at the beginning of June. I cast a somewhat melancholic glance towards the north where nature had just awakened, while the sundown here had already burned the vegetation and coloured the landscape yellow as in autumn. But my path led me southward for the second time. Together with Sīdī ̔Abdsslam, I boarded a steamboat that in the space of a day took us to Mazagan [today's al-Jadīda] on the Atlantic coast. Here, I hired three mules, engaged two servants and then set off in a south-westerly direction with the city of Marrakesh as my first destination. I wished to see something of southern Morocco, its capital city and the Great Atlas Mountains.
A few new things caught my attention immediately. In many places I ran into enormous swarms of grasshoppers, which entirely devastated fields and gardens where they had settled. They eat everything green that they come across and are also troublesome for riders who must shield their eyes from their wings. Where they appear in the greatest numbers and stay at the appropriate height, they are reminiscent of a heavy blizzard and nearly darken the air. The only consolation that can be offered to the poor farmer in return for his destroyed crops is the meal that he prepares from the egg-bearing females by boiling them with salt or frying them with pepper; they then look like shrimp and are considered a great delicacy. Hardly fewer in number are the snails, which colour all of the bushes and grasses white with their dried shells. On the ground crawl scorpions, and here and there in the green grass we find chameleons. For the most part, the population lives in round, beehive-shaped straw huts, a type of building that I had not come across in the areas in which I had previously travelled.
We crossed the enormous Dukkâla plain and came on the third day to Jbel l-Khdar, ”the green mountain” that constitutes its south-eastern border. The mountain, which hardly lives up to its name, consists of a number of caves that are inhabited by hermits or have been taken possession of by people who come here to celebrate l-ʾӑîd l-kbīr, the Moroccans’ largest religious holiday. It is a holy mountain that received its baraka, or holiness, in the following manner. Once when Adam was ploughing in ʿAbda – southwest of Dukkâla – his wife Hawwa (Eve) went to the eastern land to fetch him some food. On the way back, she met in Dukkâla a huge snake, which did not let her pass. Adam called out to all the mountains that the first of them to come and trample the snake would become as holy as the mountain ʿArafāt near Mecca, and Jbel l-Khdar heeded the call.
After passing Jbel l-Khdar, we found ourselves in Rahámna. Here, a valley opened up before our eyes that was the most bewildering imitation of the sea that one could imagine. From the level surface, which for the present lacks any trace of water, a low rock face rises up in the south-east, reminiscent of a sea stack, sending out individual outcroppings of rock towards the plain to the west, between which the horizon can be glimpsed free and unbroken. The ground is covered in dark green bushes, interspersed with pale yellow spots, and looks from the distance like a stormy sea. This view was so illusory that I for a moment believed that my companions had led me astray and had to shift my gaze to the giant compass, the sun, to convince myself that what I saw was not the sea, but land.
On the fourth day, we came to a narrow and rugged mountain pass in the so-called Jbîlet Jbilet, ”small mountains”, where the mules kept stumbling on the crevices. But then came the reward for our hardships – a view that is surely one of the most beautiful in the world. Below us was the broad Tensift valley that holds Marrakesh in its embrace. On both sides of the river is an enormous palm forest with fig gardens and olive groves scattered between the date palms. But high above their crowns rises the Kutubîya mosque’s narrow tower like a beacon that shows travellers the way to the south Moroccan capital. And in the background to the south-east extends the gigantic chain of the Great Atlas Mountains with its snow-capped peaks reaching to a height of 4000 metres.
My way through the palm forest and gardens was lit by the rays of the evening sun which nowhere else had appeared as colourful to me as in this delightful place. I rode over the long bridge that connects the shores of the Tensift, now a nearly dried up riverbed, and arrived shortly after at Marrakesh’s city walls, more than a mile in circumference, twenty or thirty feet high, equipped with numerous square towers and pierced by seven archways. They are reddish in colour due to the building material and the same applies to the houses within. Marrakesh is also called l-ḥamra, ”the red”.
Marrakesh differs from Fez because of its broad streets, its low houses and many open squares where acrobats perform their feats, storytellers gather listening crowds around them, jugglers, snake charmers, fortune-tellers and quacksalvers practice their more or less lucrative professions. In the foremost commercial quarter, [Qaisarîyah], the short, straight and parallel running streets are covered with a canopy of bamboo and vines, and closed off from the surrounding area with crossbars or chains to keep riders and pack animals away. Negro blood is clearly visible in the population: while the residents of Fez are usually pale, the inhabitants of Marrekesh are dark in colour. In Marrakesh one feels more like one is in Africa rather than in the land of the Moors. Although, there is at least one large memorial to the Moors’ heyday, namely the approximately eighty-metre-high tower of the Kutubîya mosque, a sister to the Giralda in Seville. The city itself was founded in the eleventh century by Yûsef ben Táshfīn, the first ruler of the Almoravid dynasty. Local authors claim that it once had 700,000 residents, but this report is probably much exaggerated. At present, the number of residents is perhaps as many as sixty thousand, although it has also been estimated at over one hundred thousand. At the time of my first and also my second and third visit to Marrakesh, the city was livelier than usual: the sultan was there with his army. But at the same time, the angel of death was busy decimating the population through a murderous typhus epidemic, which was said to have spared not a single family.
I brought a letter of recommendation from Sir Arthur Nicholson to the notorious Kaid Maclean who could at the time be found in Marrakesh together with the court. Twenty years earlier, he had come to Morocco from Gibraltar where he was an officer, in order to become an instructor for the army of the then sultan Mûläi l-Ḥasan. Under his successor, Mûläi ʿAbdlʿazîz, he rose up in the ranks and became the young sultan’s friend, confidant and court jester, and additionally, the Moorish administration’s political, financial and commercial agent. He was looked upon more as a Moroccan than a Christian and went around just as any other qaid, dressed in a turban, kaftan, burnous and white breeches tucked into yellow riding boots. When I first visited Marrakesh, he had not yet reached the pinnacle of his career, as Mûläi ʿAbdlʿazîz was still very young and the grand vizier, commonly called Baḥmed, was still alive and was a strong ruler.
It was to this man that I first made my way upon arriving in Marrakesh. He welcomed me in the warmest manner, informed the grand vizier of my presence and requested on my behalf that a house be appointed for me to live in. An answer followed: he shall have a house tomorrow, but tonight he must lie in his tent. I was then taken to a spot on a large marketplace near Kutubîya mosque and there I set up my camp to await the next day. But the house did not materialise, neither that day nor the next. I repeated my request, but the answer was always the same: ”tomorrow”. They did not want strangers to come to Marrakesh, and if one arrived, notwithstanding, they made it as unpleasant for him as possible. As far as I know, there were no other Europeans in Marrakesh other than Kaid Maclean and his family, a young doctor whom he had recently summoned from England, and a couple of missionary families, whose numbers had been reduced by typhus. It was beginning to be a little tiresome. A hot wind drove sand and dust into my tent so that I could barely keep my eyes open. The heat in the tent was intolerable and besides it attracted thousands of flies which did not grant me a moment’s peace while it was light. On the floor crawled spiders and beetles, and one evening a large scorpion was found to have smuggled itself into my tent bed. – And then the major catastrophe occurred.
One morning, I found to my horror that my suitcase had disappeared and all of my clothes besides, save for the only piece of clothing I wore while I slept. Moreover, the suitcase contained all of my travel funds and all of my notes. During the night, one or more bandits had cut one of the tent ropes and snuck in, without myself or any of my servants being wakened. My negligent revolver still lay at the head of my bed, which, as a last resort, was intended to protect me and my possessions, but everything else was gone. I could not get up as, even in Morocco, a fully grown man cannot go about in just his shirt. I asked the cook to give me my breakfast – but where to get the money to buy it? I informed Kaid Maclean of what had happened, and he reported the matter to the grand vizier. I claimed compensation, as I had been robbed precisely in the place that the authorities had assigned to me. The grand vizier made excuses and indicated that I should be pleased that nothing worse had happened to me. ”If a person forces their way into our house or tent while we sleep and takes our possessions but spares our life,” he said, ”we should feel thankful and praise God. And what is more, the foreign gentleman did not have a soldier with him.” The matter was a little absurd: according to the insurance regulations, I should have let a soldier accompany me from Mazagan. But on the other hand, I carried with me a letter of recommendation from the British ambassador, the grand vizier had promised me a house but had not fulfilled the promise, and the city officials had neglected to post a night watchman, although I was in a manner of speaking their guest. I could therefore entertain high hopes.
The next night, my camp was surrounded by a dozen guards and the next day I was allowed to move into a small house that was vacated on my behalf. My new quarters with their three rectangular side rooms and a small garden in the middle became for me a veritable Tusculum. Sīdī ̔Abdsslam ensured that I was always surrounded by natives from both Marrkesh and other parts of Morocco, who around steaming glasses of tea had interesting things to relate about spirits, saints and ordinary mortals. Among my new acquaintances I must mention especially a magician from Sūs [Sūs], south of the Great Atlas Mountains, who gave me lessons in magic, as well as a couple of Gnáwa, black Sudanese, whose specialty is the expelling of disease spirits. Sīdī ̔Abdsslam pretended to be ill, lay down full-length on the floor and took on a pitiful expression, whereby the summoned Gnáwa, through dancing, screaming, massaging and grimacing attempted to entice the evil spirit out of his body. In my new house I did not even need to be afraid of scorpions as by the entrance to my room it stood written: ”Muhammed greeted Noah and all of the people and said that God commanded them to beware of venom.” The owner of the house assured me that these words would protect me against venomous insects while I slept. Regardless, it was not advised to sleep too soundly. One night, an attempted break-in occurred. But I was wakened by a sound at the door and the intruders were scared away.
One of Marrakesh’s sights is (or more accurately was) the slave market. Shortly before sundown each Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, slaves were sold at auction on Ṣōq l-Ghazel, a rectangular open area surrounded by a wall with small loges for the customers. One by one the slaves were led around by the auctioneers who loudly called out each bid that was made. In the loge to my right sat two wealthy citizens who were interested in a slave girl, around eighteen years of age. They called her to them, felt her body, checked her teeth and whispered something in her ear. Neither she nor any of the other slaves seemed distressed; quite the opposite, some of the children seemed entirely cheerful. In Morocco, slavery is considered entirely natural, as though it is part of the world order decreed by God; and to be a slave is not shameful, at most a misfortune, if even that. The master can of course do what he wishes with his slave, but it is in his own interest to ensure that the slave receives what he needs; and besides a closeness often forms between them, which makes slavery in Morocco something entirely different than it was in America’s slave states and the European colonies. In Morocco, the slave is in daily contact with his master, works in his household, carries out his orders and is considered almost a lesser member of his family. Sometimes he is also allowed to work on his own behalf in order to buy his freedom and often he is freed at his master’s death in accordance with his last wishes. The freed slave can ascend to the very top in the ranks of society; his black colour is not a hindrance as Moroccans do not have any objection to Negro blood. Numerous slaves are imported as children from Sudan and are then sold in Sūs – south of the Great Atlas Mountains – or in Marrakesh. Prices vary immensely, depending on supply and demand as well as the slave’s age, sex and appearance. It is possible for a mother with a couple of children to be sold for less than a hundred marks, while there are examples where the price for a pretty girl has been as high as four thousand. To dispel every possible suspicion, I wish to add that my intention was not to act as a buyer when I sat myself down in one of the loges at Ṣōq l-Ghazel. A Christian is not allowed to buy a slave, not even to free him. —
After a wait of nearly two weeks, I received from the grand vizier two bags of silver coins worth 2800 pesetas. It was quite generous and it had been relatively quick. Kaid Maclean, whom I primarily had to thank for the happy outcome, had himself not yet received compensation for a similar robbery that he had experienced a few months prior. But I had to forget about my planned journey to the Great Atlas Mountains; the Moorish government had not given its consent for it. For this reason, I set off westward, following the Atlas range at a distance and arrived after a four and a half days’ ride at the coastal town of Mogador. From there, I took a steamboat back to Tangier to then continue the journey back to Europe.
It was with decidedly mixed feelings that I ended my first journey to Morocco. I had seen and learned a lot of new things, but the foremost fruits of the three-month endeavour were lost. And I had furthermore realised that an ethnological research trip is a serious undertaking that requires time and patience. A botanist, zoologist and geologist could bring home fairly significant findings from a trip of just a few months, but it is different for him that has made it his mission to study a foreign people. He must first and foremost learn their language. Not even the most excellent translator can make up for what is lost to the researcher if he is unable to directly communicate with the natives and understand what they say. It is now clear to me as a self-evident truth. But that I did not immediately understand this does not surprise me as much when I think about how even today the capable ethnologists at Cambridge believe that one can, without a true knowledge of the natives’ language and in a relatively short time, reach one’s goal, if only one uses the correct research method. I had originally thought of Morocco as merely a way station along my journey; it was then my intention to head towards Ceylon and the Southsea Islands and God knows where else. But that journey was never to be. I would come back to Morocco, learn its language and make myself as familiar as I could with its people. This task was enough for me; better to have a lot of a little than a little of a lot. Morocco was after all so close to Europe that I could easily and often return there. And there I could continue to work on my book on the origin and development of morals, which I had long occupied myself with. Now I had to return to Europe, but I would not stay away long. Au revoir.