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Chapter 10 FEZ ELBALI

Word Count: 2601    |    Released on: 30/11/2017

so narrow, and in some quarters so crowded, that a

e again, and we set out for the long tunnel-like

lack passage under a house bestriding the street, or a caravan of donkeys laden with obstr

d buttresses to prop each other's bulging sides. Windows there were none on the lower floors; only here and there an iron-barred slit stuff

photograph from the Se

a

ed-roofe

ding to the bazaars to the profound and secretive silence of a quarter of well-to-do dwelling-houses, where only a few veiled women attended by ne

in bursting out into tumultuous falls and pools shadowed with foliage. The central artery of the city is not a street but a waterfall, and tales are told of the da

ggard Blue Men of the Souss, jostle the merchants and government officials with that democratic familiarity which goes side by side with abject servility in this land of perpetual c

ned man, doctor o

desert as Mr. Tracy Tupman was unlike the Musketeers of Dumas. Ease, music, money-making, the affairs of his harem and the bringing-up of his children, are his chief interests, and

gnitaries of the Makhzen[A] are usually escorted by several mounted officers of their household, with a servant to each mule. The cry of the runners scatter

The Sultan'

ade of sardine-boxes and hares'-feet, long-lashed boys of the Chleuh in clean embroidered caftans, Jews in black robes and skull-caps, university students carrying their prayer-carpets, bangled and spangled black women, scrofulous children with gazelle

e life; but the dun-colored crowds moving through its checkered twilight, the lack of carved shop-fronts and gaily adorned coffee-houses, and the a

amels and asses. No young men stroll through the bazaar in bright caftans, with roses and jasmine behind their ears, no pedlars offer lemonade and sweetmeats and golden-fritters, no

rt. Unknown Africa seems much nearer to Morocco than to the white towns of Tunis and the smiling oas

anterns twinkle in the merchants' niches while the clear African daylight still lies on the gardens of upper Fez. This twilight adds t

cture what lay beyond. Now he knows in part; for, though the beams have not been lowered, all comers may pass under them to the lanes about the mosques, and even pause a moment in their open doorways. Farther one may not go, for the shrines

est and stateliest of Moroccan inns, with triple galleries of sculptured cedar rising above arcades of stone. A little farther on lights and incense draw one to a threshold where it is well not to linger unduly. Under a deep archway, between booths where gay votive candl

s sacred town. The mosque of Fez grew up around the tomb of his posthumous son, Moulay Idriss II, who, descending from the hil

photograph from the Se

a

edjarine

itself, and the green minaret shooting up from the very centre of old Fez, were not built until 1820. But a rich surface of age has already formed on all these disparate buildings, and

A: Moslem

reveals another secret scene. This time it is a corner of the jealously guarded court of ablutions in th

h of Fez. The great Almohad sanctuary of Tunisia is singularly free from parasitic buildings, and may be approached as easily as that of Cordova, but the approaches of El Kairouiyin are so built up that one never kn

ight-out of such glimpses one must reconstruct a vision of the long vistas of arches, the blues and golds of the mirha

he in the sanctu

B: Movab

. The number of its "countless" columns has been counted, and it is known that, to the right of the mirhab, carved cedar doors open into a mor

ty of Fez as well as its cathedral. The beautiful Medersas with which the Merinids adorned the city are simply

te of these precautions all animal life was not successfully exorcised from it. In the twelfth century, when the great gate Ech Chemmain was building, a well was discovered under its foundations. The mouth of the well was obstructed by an immense tortoise, but when the work

avily barred and ornamented with wrought iron, and one of them bears the name of the artisan, and the date 531 of the Hegira (the first half of the twelfth century). The mosque also contains the two halls of audience of the Cadi, of which one has a graceful exterior fa?ade with coupled lights under horseshoe arches; the library, whose 20,000 volumes are r

a Attarine, one of the oldest and most beautiful collegiate buildings of Fez, and through the kindness of the Director

ter spilling over from a central basin of marble with a cool sound to which lesser fountains made answer from under the pyramidal green roofs of the twin pavilions. It was near the prayer-hour, and wors

adjoining halls after having committed to memory the principles of grammar in prose and verse, the "science of the reading of the Koran," the invention, exposition and ornaments of style, law, medicine, theology, metaphysics and astronomy, as

any given course, nor is any disgrace attached to slowness in learning, it is not surprising that many students, coming as youths, linger by the fountain of Kairouiyin till their hair is gray. One well-known oulama has lately finished his studies after twenty-seven years at the University, and is ju

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