CHAPTERX.THE ARABS OF THE DESERT.The Moors divide their country into four zones, running north and south. First, theZahel, or sandy, unwatered, and level ground; secondly, theTiersh, or deep black land, without trees or mountains, and composing the centre and chief portion of Morocco; thirdly, theGibellu, or cultivated portion on the side of the Atlas; fourthly, theTell[96](the earth), on the other side. Beside these, there is the subdivision intoHelotoandGaba.Mr. Parke heard the name Zahel in the interior, and thought it meant “north country.” Mr. Jackson corrects him. “Zahel,” he says, “signifies anextensive plain. Thus, the plains south of the river of Suz, and the low country on the coast near Walhadia, are called Zahel; and if an Arab were to pass over Salisbury Plain he would call it Zahel.” Mr. Jackson is as much mistaken as Mr. Parke. The word meansa thing that is easy. The wealth of the Zahel tribes consists in cattle and flocks: their sole culture is grain. They produce corn, wool, butter, hides and skins; they buy nothing except arms and fruit; they treat their money as they do their corn. This year a fine imposed in consequence of the recent troubles was paid without difficulty, though equal to several years of their customary taxes.The Zahel is one half the year exposed to scorching heat; it is destitute of trees and water, and could scarcely be cultivated by people having fixed habitations. The Arabs shifting their domicile to find pasturage for their cattle sow as they proceed, and return in like manner to reap. They sow from November to March. The harvest soon follows. The summer is, so to say, their winter, for the sun is their Boreas. The seasons are reversed. The flowers that were budding only on the plains, I found in full blossom on the hills: under the genial influence of cold, vegetation had re-commenced. Their culture consists in scraping the light soil in opposite directions with a primitive plough; a pointed piece of wood unshod with iron and a single handle, which the ploughman carries a-field upon his shoulder. They do not even clear the ground of the palm shrub, but plough round it. Sometimes, indeed, you see the land in very good order, for there are no weeds.The first idea suggested is that of depopulation. On closer inspection, one is astonished at the numbers of the people. They subsist on little. They draw comparatively a great deal from the soil, and the rudeness of their implement is not unadapted to its lightness. The tribe does not cultivate in common, but the families do: the daughters have half portions: they average a plough per tent, some having four or five, or more, others not even a pair of cattle, but managing one with another, so that each shall cultivate a plough land. Oxen are generally employed, but horses are so also: you may see pairs of horses driven by the reins. Some of their teams are grotesque enough. I have seen a camel and an ass ploughing together. Whatever animosity there may be amongst the tribes, whatever insecurity for their cattle, even in the midst of their encampment, common necessities have consecrated the standing corn, and every tribe respects its neighbour’s landmark.They have as little trace of limits, as the dogs of Constantinople, which maintain their bounds so well; or of laws, as a community of bees. I have had, however, a terminus pointed out to me between the Ziaïda and their neighbours. It was a plant of the Silla kind. They have the custom of “beating the bounds,” and understand it in a literal sense. The children are taken out and thrashed at appropriate places, that they may recollect them well. On the other hand, they run no risk of flogging for a false quantity in a dead language. Behind these zones, Zahel, Tiersh, Gibellu and Tell, lies the Zahara. Along the Medelmah the zones run east and west, following the direction of the coast; but here the first three are wanting; there is only the Tel, and behind it the Zahara. The regularity, however, of the distribution is disturbed by the great mountain block of the Cabylie, which lies in the rear of Algiers, and which is nearly insulated by the Desert.Adjoining the Moorish Tell, and deeply encroaching on the Desert, is the Beled-el-Gerid, or oasis of Tafilelt, the inner Moorish kingdom; and, so to speak, its fountain. This is the land of dates and of Morocco leather. Here is the inaccessible retreat to which in all dangers the Moorish princes retire, and from which they issue to recover their lost power. Here are deposited the treasures accumulated during seventy years by two thrifty monarchs, and which are estimated at tens of millions sterling. It is a little world within Morocco, entrenched behind the Desert and the Atlas. It takes ten days across the Desert to reach it from the nearest point of the regency of Algiers.To the south of the neck of the Atlas which runs out to the cape of St. Cruz, lies the fourth kingdom composing the empire; the parallel zones are here arrested by the Atlas. The country partakes of the nature of the Beled-el-Gerid, and is a great oasis, exceeding, indeed, all the others in richness and variety of produce.[97]It is entirely inhabited by Shelluk, or southern Brebers, over whom the authority of the Sultan is held by a very precarious tenure: it was there, however, that the dominion of the shereffs was first set up, and from it they issued to conquer Morocco and Fez. Suz and Tafilelt are said to possess resources not inferior, though hardly different, to those of the other two.The population has been rated as high as sixteen millions. It is half Arab, half Breber. The climate is admirable, being tempered by the westerly breezes and the snows of Atlas. The middle region is composed of alluvial plains of inexhaustible fertility: the two capitals lie in tertiary basins resembling those of Paris and London. The fruits and produce comprise all those of the tropics and the temperate zones: harbours alone are wanting, but this deficiency is more than compensated to this people, by the security which the difficulties of the coast afford.The first thought on setting foot upon the land of Africa is, of course, the Desert. When starting on my first journey, I indulged in the fancy that I was approaching it;—what was my surprise on asking one of my companions to describe it, to be told, “Look round, this is the Desert.” Our notion of a moving sea of sand is a delusion; there is no considerable district where, as in the insulated points in the Indian and Pacific oceans, man has not found an abode. Africa is not a vacant and a useless space. Extending from the valley of the Nile to the Atlantic, and from the narrow slip along the Mediterranean down to the kingdoms of Guinea and Bourno, &c., it has its mountains and plains, its valleys and forests, and even its streams and rivers. One of the men who were with me described the road from Fez by Suz to Tafilelt, round by the south, a journey of about a thousand miles, as through a rich, well-watered—or if not well-watered, well-wooded—country, with the olive, oak, arar or date. On the road from Tafilelt towards Timbuctoo there is the great oasis of Tuat, which is distant about two weeks’ journey. There are either trees or brushwood the whole way. “The map of the Sahara,” says M. Revon, “will be one day covered with rivers, hills, and an immense number of names of wells, stations, and countries. The Desert being entirely inhabited, or traversed by nomade people, they require to designate by particular names the places that furnish subsistence for their flocks during half of the year, the countries that they are obliged to avoid and to pass round, the wells so indispensable to their existence, and the beds of the rivers, which at certain seasons of the year furnish them with water.”This unique country, taken together with that character of the people, which they must have in order to be able to inhabit it, has preserved a class of the human race in its primitive state. There are nowhere resources, so that there should be large accumulations of people to pass through the various phases which in other portions of the world humanity has presented. There is not the sea to divide or to conjoin; they cannot muster in strength (save as dependent upon the northern country) so as to be formidable abroad, and they are so movable within, that they are not liable to domestic oppression. Pasturage and rapine are the two avocations. Culture is not unassociated with the first, and rapine, as managed here, is not incompatible with traffic and good faith.[98]There are four methods of travelling; the regular trade caravans, small companies on fleet dromedaries, single messengers on foot, and the peregrinations of the tribes themselves. Of the first, or thecafileh. These are periodically fixed, and connect the three regencies in the north with the Negro countries of the south, taking in the two great bases, the Fezzan and Tuat, with Timbuctoo. Their speed is about twenty to twenty-five miles a-day, and, laden as they are, they have often to avoid the shortest roads, and to make great circuits in order to obtain supplies of water.It is quite a mistake to suppose that the traveller in the Interior is reduced to dependence upon these caravans. On the dromedary fifty miles can easily be performed. A tract of three hundred miles without water, at least where there is insecurity as to finding it, imposes on a cafileh the necessity of carrying ten days’ supply to a party which can traverse it. During four days it presents little inconvenience: being all mounted, they can easily carry water and provision for themselves for the distance which the dromedaries can travel without water.Their provisions consist in barley, roasted and bruised, and, if they are luxurious, honey and butter. The meal is mixed up with any of these, that is to say, with either honey and butter or water, the first being used as the morning meal and the latter for the evening; and this food not only enables them to do their work, but also to support thirst.The cafileh must be strong enough to fight its way. Solitary travellers, or small companies, can only pass by one of two methods, having with them a saint, or the relative of a saint, or having a friend or a hired guide,mehri, belonging to the tribes through which they have to pass. These they exchange from tribe to tribe.[99]Messengers and couriers on foot carry with them their skin of meal, and, when requisite, their skin of water; and with a similar protection, will traverse these vast regions at the rate of forty miles a-day.Lastly, comes the most interesting of all these movements—a tribe in march, which is then callednafla. Some of these, on the northern side within the regency of Algiers, where more is known of their movements, yearly perform a journey of six hundred miles backwards and forwards, from the date-growing region to the Tell, carrying down dates, and bringing back grain, and pasturing their flocks as they come and go. The season so corresponding, they have to come down to the lowlands for their pasturage at the time of the harvest of grain, and to return to the south at the time of the harvest of dates. Nothing can exceed the interest of these ambulatory cities, which carry everything with them; where are commingled signs of domesticity[100]and circumstance of war. They are merchants and soldiers, shepherds and manufacturers, cultivators and wanderers; they carry with them their children and their law—their judge in peace, their chief in war; they may be called at any moment to traffic or to fight; they are on the alert for a verdant plain, sending forth scouts to discover a fountain or a hostile camp. If suspicious signs appear, then every man falls into rank, knows his place, and it is a regiment that advances or encamps. There is the council of the elders, to determine whether it is war or peace; and a treaty may be signed or a battle engaged. By these necessities certain proportions are given to these bodies. They must never be too weak to defend themselves, nor too strong, to devour the pasturage, or drink up the water.We know only the discipline of men, but the discipline of the Zahara extends to the family. The utensils, the home itself, everything is compact, and all as ready as the people are alert. Our armies are liable to lose themselves at once, either with the people they subdue or with the people through whose territories they pass. An invading Arab carries with him, and plants his home, as we do a standard; and where it comes it is not a victor’s banner that is reared, but a hostile roof that is upset. The idea of resisting the shock of such a horde, could it be let loose on a European community, is not so much as to be entertained. But M. Thiers thinks the Arabs very bad soldiers.[101]Thus is the surface of Africa converted into a plain, covered with lines along which move, and circles round which revolve, these planetary bodies. Man lives where it appeared a wilderness, and order rules where it seemed a chaos. There is no land that is not owned; there is no pasturage that is not assigned. The fields may appear deserted, and the space vacant; but, with the times and seasons, they return, traversing the same vales, drinking at the same fountains, cultivating the same valleys, and as indestructible in their race as they are regular in their motions. Like the ocean which guards them, they will fill, as they have filled, their space; and, like the seasons they resemble, they undergo the changes of the year; and summer and autumn will find them again and again at their appointed task and place.With the beauty of order is associated the drama of life, as if the planets were moved in their sphere with love or hatred, and propelled and attracted, or connected with each other. The chords of sympathy are so stretched, that the dissensions of the most insignificant members of this vast community in the centre of the Desert may be felt and responded to on the borders of the Mediterranean or Atlantic.[102]The people of the town are a distinct nation. On the face of the land alone is to be seen the stretched canvas of the fleeting sons of the Desert. From the tent reared and displaced in an hour, what an age is passed, as you cross the city gateway![103]In the Arab dwelling there is no sense of age; there is no mark of newness, nor sign of mouldering decay.The soil on which they tread, and from which they feed:—carved by no fosse, confined by no bound, and bearing no load, is a nature—subdued indeed, but untravestied—and presents the wildness of the Desert without penury, its freedom without solitude: the gifts it gives are favours rather of Providence, than fruits of toil.Pass the yawning barbican and ruined walls—enter the city, the work of Cyclops or Titan—of Philistine, Hebrew, Lybian, Roman, Goth, Vandal, Saracen, Portuguese, or Spaniard—and there is man! nothing but man! It is not, as in other cities, the men and things of to-day, but of old times and ages. Thinly scattered, these are each a nook in the stream of time, when the wrecks of successive storms are cast up—a Bantry Bay in the Atlantic of eternity.Zahara means resplendent. Zeara, in Hebrew, is round. The first was an ancient epithet of Venus; the second, a name for the moon.[104]Thus, the region of death and terror, of the Zamiel and the locust, appears to them a place of light and splendour. It has the charm of battle for the brave—of ocean for the rover—of rocks for the mountaineer. But what need comparison? it is the Desert to the Arab.It is not the ambition of visiting the mud huts of Timbuctoo which has led so many European adventurers to peril their lives, and to lose them in that vain attempt; but it is the indescribable charm of the Desert life of which they have felt the influence, or caught the contagion. Without the protection of constituted governments, despite all obstructions, danger, distance, thirst and hunger, commerce is carried on nowhere in the world with more regularity, integrity, and security. There are no internal fluctuations, no international barriers;exchange presents no difficulty, although they have a standard of value. This is an ideal money, or a coin of account. In the south it is the “bar,” in the north it is “Pezetta;” in other districts, “Naia,” &c. A piece of iron, a Spanish coin, a measure of dates—any other object would serve equally well to constitute this unit, which represents value with absolute perfection, precisely because it is a measure—as an inch or a pound.They do not say a bar is so many pounds, so many ounces, and so many grains; and this quantity of metal shall be the standard of value; that is, the value of all things shall be changed to meet the accidental fluctuations in this quantity of metal; for, according to their barbarous notions, that would be not an ingenious device to facilitate business, but a piece of knavery too barefaced to be dangerous. If iron becomes cheap, two bars of iron go to “thebar;” if it becomes dear, half a bar of iron goes to “the bar.” The ideal standard is preserved because it is ideal. Yet, here are barbarians! This subject is at once the most practical and scientific,—money, arithmetic, commerce, property! Well may Solomon exclaim, “God made man, but he has found out many inventions.”Ebn Khaldoun has a passage which seems at once to throw light on the origin of the term and the antiquity of the practice. “In the times of ignorance the Arabs counted by various dirhems; thetaboriwas the weightiest, thebaglithe lightest.” The Mussulmans fixed a middle term, and adjusted to it fines, &c. A discussion then arose on the ancient value of these coins, and as to whether they were, or were not, known in the time of Mahomet. Ebn Khaldoun decides as follows: “The valuation of the dirhem was known, but there was no corresponding coin; nevertheless, judgments were regulated according to the valuation of that money.”If any one is curious to know the meaning of the words “currency law,” he will find it all in this sentence of the late Lord Ashburton: it is a process by which, “in the event of a deficient harvest (or any other internal disturbance),a few shrewd capitalists can so control the supply of gold as to enrich themselves and ruin the nation.” This is all that it requires to know on this subject, to be perfectly happy and content; for, as to doing anything, that is out of the question. The “press,” and “public opinion” may upset ministers, and substitute theory for theory; but, against any deep purpose or design, they can avail nothing, even supposing that they were not the blind instruments of the designing, and stormed and ranted against them from Land’s End to John o’ Groat’s. A pasquinade, stuck at night to a pedestal under the papal government of Rome, had more effect on the affairs of that government than all the free press of England thundering together could have on its government—at least, when the really important points are concerned, viz. the profits of the capitalists or the service of the Czar.[96]This word I at first thought to be a trace of the Romans, but the word is spread over Asia and Africa, far out of Roman reach. “Telis generally used forvillagein the Delta;kom, in Upper Egypt.”—Wilkinson’sThebes,vol. ii. p.76.[97]“The country is completely cultivated: it is backed by four regular rows of limestone hills, which serve as a kind of embankment against the Desert. They are now cutting the corn, which produces more than one hundred fold, most of the seeds throwing out four stems, and some five.”—Davidson’sJournal,p.83.[98]“Mirum dictû ex innumeris populis pars æqua in commerciis aut in latrociniis degit.”—Plin.Hist. Nat.vi.32.The Arab enjoys the benefits of society, without forfeiting the prerogative of nature.[99]“Up to the time that you have reached the point determined upon, themehriis responsible for his companion. Before whom? Before God, without doubt, who reads the hearts of men. The faithfulness of a guide is a virtue innate amongst the Arabs.”—Carette.[100]“If any people can be justly called happy, the Arabs on the borders of the Sahara are so. Confident in the power of their religion to gain them paradise, creating for themselves no artificial wants, and perfectly satisfied with what nature provides for them, they calmly resign themselves to the will of Providence, and are strangers to all cares. They are more wild in their appearance, but far more cultivated than the Arabs of Asia: nearly all of them can read, and a great many write.”—Davidson’sJournal.[101]“Vous dites qu’il faut que tout le monde soit soldat à son tour. Savez-vous quelles sont les sociétés où tout le monde est soldat? ce sont les sociétés barbares. Chez les Arabes, tout le monde est soldat, et mauvais soldat. (Interruption.) Oui, dans les sociétés où tout le monde est soldat, on n’a que de mauvais soldats.”—Speech, October 21st, 1848.[102]“Often a quarrel in the streets of Algiers is the echo of one between two tribes in the sand, three hundred leagues distant, and when the quarrel becomes animated between the mother tribes, the distant colonies can no longer inhabit the same district.”—Carette,p. xlvii.Introduction.[103]“Divina natura dedit agros, ars humana ædificavit urbes.”—Varrode Re Rustica,lib. iii.50.[104]Deuteronomyiv.19.
The Moors divide their country into four zones, running north and south. First, theZahel, or sandy, unwatered, and level ground; secondly, theTiersh, or deep black land, without trees or mountains, and composing the centre and chief portion of Morocco; thirdly, theGibellu, or cultivated portion on the side of the Atlas; fourthly, theTell[96](the earth), on the other side. Beside these, there is the subdivision intoHelotoandGaba.
Mr. Parke heard the name Zahel in the interior, and thought it meant “north country.” Mr. Jackson corrects him. “Zahel,” he says, “signifies anextensive plain. Thus, the plains south of the river of Suz, and the low country on the coast near Walhadia, are called Zahel; and if an Arab were to pass over Salisbury Plain he would call it Zahel.” Mr. Jackson is as much mistaken as Mr. Parke. The word meansa thing that is easy. The wealth of the Zahel tribes consists in cattle and flocks: their sole culture is grain. They produce corn, wool, butter, hides and skins; they buy nothing except arms and fruit; they treat their money as they do their corn. This year a fine imposed in consequence of the recent troubles was paid without difficulty, though equal to several years of their customary taxes.
The Zahel is one half the year exposed to scorching heat; it is destitute of trees and water, and could scarcely be cultivated by people having fixed habitations. The Arabs shifting their domicile to find pasturage for their cattle sow as they proceed, and return in like manner to reap. They sow from November to March. The harvest soon follows. The summer is, so to say, their winter, for the sun is their Boreas. The seasons are reversed. The flowers that were budding only on the plains, I found in full blossom on the hills: under the genial influence of cold, vegetation had re-commenced. Their culture consists in scraping the light soil in opposite directions with a primitive plough; a pointed piece of wood unshod with iron and a single handle, which the ploughman carries a-field upon his shoulder. They do not even clear the ground of the palm shrub, but plough round it. Sometimes, indeed, you see the land in very good order, for there are no weeds.
The first idea suggested is that of depopulation. On closer inspection, one is astonished at the numbers of the people. They subsist on little. They draw comparatively a great deal from the soil, and the rudeness of their implement is not unadapted to its lightness. The tribe does not cultivate in common, but the families do: the daughters have half portions: they average a plough per tent, some having four or five, or more, others not even a pair of cattle, but managing one with another, so that each shall cultivate a plough land. Oxen are generally employed, but horses are so also: you may see pairs of horses driven by the reins. Some of their teams are grotesque enough. I have seen a camel and an ass ploughing together. Whatever animosity there may be amongst the tribes, whatever insecurity for their cattle, even in the midst of their encampment, common necessities have consecrated the standing corn, and every tribe respects its neighbour’s landmark.
They have as little trace of limits, as the dogs of Constantinople, which maintain their bounds so well; or of laws, as a community of bees. I have had, however, a terminus pointed out to me between the Ziaïda and their neighbours. It was a plant of the Silla kind. They have the custom of “beating the bounds,” and understand it in a literal sense. The children are taken out and thrashed at appropriate places, that they may recollect them well. On the other hand, they run no risk of flogging for a false quantity in a dead language. Behind these zones, Zahel, Tiersh, Gibellu and Tell, lies the Zahara. Along the Medelmah the zones run east and west, following the direction of the coast; but here the first three are wanting; there is only the Tel, and behind it the Zahara. The regularity, however, of the distribution is disturbed by the great mountain block of the Cabylie, which lies in the rear of Algiers, and which is nearly insulated by the Desert.
Adjoining the Moorish Tell, and deeply encroaching on the Desert, is the Beled-el-Gerid, or oasis of Tafilelt, the inner Moorish kingdom; and, so to speak, its fountain. This is the land of dates and of Morocco leather. Here is the inaccessible retreat to which in all dangers the Moorish princes retire, and from which they issue to recover their lost power. Here are deposited the treasures accumulated during seventy years by two thrifty monarchs, and which are estimated at tens of millions sterling. It is a little world within Morocco, entrenched behind the Desert and the Atlas. It takes ten days across the Desert to reach it from the nearest point of the regency of Algiers.
To the south of the neck of the Atlas which runs out to the cape of St. Cruz, lies the fourth kingdom composing the empire; the parallel zones are here arrested by the Atlas. The country partakes of the nature of the Beled-el-Gerid, and is a great oasis, exceeding, indeed, all the others in richness and variety of produce.[97]It is entirely inhabited by Shelluk, or southern Brebers, over whom the authority of the Sultan is held by a very precarious tenure: it was there, however, that the dominion of the shereffs was first set up, and from it they issued to conquer Morocco and Fez. Suz and Tafilelt are said to possess resources not inferior, though hardly different, to those of the other two.
The population has been rated as high as sixteen millions. It is half Arab, half Breber. The climate is admirable, being tempered by the westerly breezes and the snows of Atlas. The middle region is composed of alluvial plains of inexhaustible fertility: the two capitals lie in tertiary basins resembling those of Paris and London. The fruits and produce comprise all those of the tropics and the temperate zones: harbours alone are wanting, but this deficiency is more than compensated to this people, by the security which the difficulties of the coast afford.
The first thought on setting foot upon the land of Africa is, of course, the Desert. When starting on my first journey, I indulged in the fancy that I was approaching it;—what was my surprise on asking one of my companions to describe it, to be told, “Look round, this is the Desert.” Our notion of a moving sea of sand is a delusion; there is no considerable district where, as in the insulated points in the Indian and Pacific oceans, man has not found an abode. Africa is not a vacant and a useless space. Extending from the valley of the Nile to the Atlantic, and from the narrow slip along the Mediterranean down to the kingdoms of Guinea and Bourno, &c., it has its mountains and plains, its valleys and forests, and even its streams and rivers. One of the men who were with me described the road from Fez by Suz to Tafilelt, round by the south, a journey of about a thousand miles, as through a rich, well-watered—or if not well-watered, well-wooded—country, with the olive, oak, arar or date. On the road from Tafilelt towards Timbuctoo there is the great oasis of Tuat, which is distant about two weeks’ journey. There are either trees or brushwood the whole way. “The map of the Sahara,” says M. Revon, “will be one day covered with rivers, hills, and an immense number of names of wells, stations, and countries. The Desert being entirely inhabited, or traversed by nomade people, they require to designate by particular names the places that furnish subsistence for their flocks during half of the year, the countries that they are obliged to avoid and to pass round, the wells so indispensable to their existence, and the beds of the rivers, which at certain seasons of the year furnish them with water.”
This unique country, taken together with that character of the people, which they must have in order to be able to inhabit it, has preserved a class of the human race in its primitive state. There are nowhere resources, so that there should be large accumulations of people to pass through the various phases which in other portions of the world humanity has presented. There is not the sea to divide or to conjoin; they cannot muster in strength (save as dependent upon the northern country) so as to be formidable abroad, and they are so movable within, that they are not liable to domestic oppression. Pasturage and rapine are the two avocations. Culture is not unassociated with the first, and rapine, as managed here, is not incompatible with traffic and good faith.[98]
There are four methods of travelling; the regular trade caravans, small companies on fleet dromedaries, single messengers on foot, and the peregrinations of the tribes themselves. Of the first, or thecafileh. These are periodically fixed, and connect the three regencies in the north with the Negro countries of the south, taking in the two great bases, the Fezzan and Tuat, with Timbuctoo. Their speed is about twenty to twenty-five miles a-day, and, laden as they are, they have often to avoid the shortest roads, and to make great circuits in order to obtain supplies of water.
It is quite a mistake to suppose that the traveller in the Interior is reduced to dependence upon these caravans. On the dromedary fifty miles can easily be performed. A tract of three hundred miles without water, at least where there is insecurity as to finding it, imposes on a cafileh the necessity of carrying ten days’ supply to a party which can traverse it. During four days it presents little inconvenience: being all mounted, they can easily carry water and provision for themselves for the distance which the dromedaries can travel without water.
Their provisions consist in barley, roasted and bruised, and, if they are luxurious, honey and butter. The meal is mixed up with any of these, that is to say, with either honey and butter or water, the first being used as the morning meal and the latter for the evening; and this food not only enables them to do their work, but also to support thirst.
The cafileh must be strong enough to fight its way. Solitary travellers, or small companies, can only pass by one of two methods, having with them a saint, or the relative of a saint, or having a friend or a hired guide,mehri, belonging to the tribes through which they have to pass. These they exchange from tribe to tribe.[99]
Messengers and couriers on foot carry with them their skin of meal, and, when requisite, their skin of water; and with a similar protection, will traverse these vast regions at the rate of forty miles a-day.
Lastly, comes the most interesting of all these movements—a tribe in march, which is then callednafla. Some of these, on the northern side within the regency of Algiers, where more is known of their movements, yearly perform a journey of six hundred miles backwards and forwards, from the date-growing region to the Tell, carrying down dates, and bringing back grain, and pasturing their flocks as they come and go. The season so corresponding, they have to come down to the lowlands for their pasturage at the time of the harvest of grain, and to return to the south at the time of the harvest of dates. Nothing can exceed the interest of these ambulatory cities, which carry everything with them; where are commingled signs of domesticity[100]and circumstance of war. They are merchants and soldiers, shepherds and manufacturers, cultivators and wanderers; they carry with them their children and their law—their judge in peace, their chief in war; they may be called at any moment to traffic or to fight; they are on the alert for a verdant plain, sending forth scouts to discover a fountain or a hostile camp. If suspicious signs appear, then every man falls into rank, knows his place, and it is a regiment that advances or encamps. There is the council of the elders, to determine whether it is war or peace; and a treaty may be signed or a battle engaged. By these necessities certain proportions are given to these bodies. They must never be too weak to defend themselves, nor too strong, to devour the pasturage, or drink up the water.
We know only the discipline of men, but the discipline of the Zahara extends to the family. The utensils, the home itself, everything is compact, and all as ready as the people are alert. Our armies are liable to lose themselves at once, either with the people they subdue or with the people through whose territories they pass. An invading Arab carries with him, and plants his home, as we do a standard; and where it comes it is not a victor’s banner that is reared, but a hostile roof that is upset. The idea of resisting the shock of such a horde, could it be let loose on a European community, is not so much as to be entertained. But M. Thiers thinks the Arabs very bad soldiers.[101]
Thus is the surface of Africa converted into a plain, covered with lines along which move, and circles round which revolve, these planetary bodies. Man lives where it appeared a wilderness, and order rules where it seemed a chaos. There is no land that is not owned; there is no pasturage that is not assigned. The fields may appear deserted, and the space vacant; but, with the times and seasons, they return, traversing the same vales, drinking at the same fountains, cultivating the same valleys, and as indestructible in their race as they are regular in their motions. Like the ocean which guards them, they will fill, as they have filled, their space; and, like the seasons they resemble, they undergo the changes of the year; and summer and autumn will find them again and again at their appointed task and place.
With the beauty of order is associated the drama of life, as if the planets were moved in their sphere with love or hatred, and propelled and attracted, or connected with each other. The chords of sympathy are so stretched, that the dissensions of the most insignificant members of this vast community in the centre of the Desert may be felt and responded to on the borders of the Mediterranean or Atlantic.[102]
The people of the town are a distinct nation. On the face of the land alone is to be seen the stretched canvas of the fleeting sons of the Desert. From the tent reared and displaced in an hour, what an age is passed, as you cross the city gateway![103]In the Arab dwelling there is no sense of age; there is no mark of newness, nor sign of mouldering decay.
The soil on which they tread, and from which they feed:—carved by no fosse, confined by no bound, and bearing no load, is a nature—subdued indeed, but untravestied—and presents the wildness of the Desert without penury, its freedom without solitude: the gifts it gives are favours rather of Providence, than fruits of toil.
Pass the yawning barbican and ruined walls—enter the city, the work of Cyclops or Titan—of Philistine, Hebrew, Lybian, Roman, Goth, Vandal, Saracen, Portuguese, or Spaniard—and there is man! nothing but man! It is not, as in other cities, the men and things of to-day, but of old times and ages. Thinly scattered, these are each a nook in the stream of time, when the wrecks of successive storms are cast up—a Bantry Bay in the Atlantic of eternity.
Zahara means resplendent. Zeara, in Hebrew, is round. The first was an ancient epithet of Venus; the second, a name for the moon.[104]Thus, the region of death and terror, of the Zamiel and the locust, appears to them a place of light and splendour. It has the charm of battle for the brave—of ocean for the rover—of rocks for the mountaineer. But what need comparison? it is the Desert to the Arab.
It is not the ambition of visiting the mud huts of Timbuctoo which has led so many European adventurers to peril their lives, and to lose them in that vain attempt; but it is the indescribable charm of the Desert life of which they have felt the influence, or caught the contagion. Without the protection of constituted governments, despite all obstructions, danger, distance, thirst and hunger, commerce is carried on nowhere in the world with more regularity, integrity, and security. There are no internal fluctuations, no international barriers;exchange presents no difficulty, although they have a standard of value. This is an ideal money, or a coin of account. In the south it is the “bar,” in the north it is “Pezetta;” in other districts, “Naia,” &c. A piece of iron, a Spanish coin, a measure of dates—any other object would serve equally well to constitute this unit, which represents value with absolute perfection, precisely because it is a measure—as an inch or a pound.
They do not say a bar is so many pounds, so many ounces, and so many grains; and this quantity of metal shall be the standard of value; that is, the value of all things shall be changed to meet the accidental fluctuations in this quantity of metal; for, according to their barbarous notions, that would be not an ingenious device to facilitate business, but a piece of knavery too barefaced to be dangerous. If iron becomes cheap, two bars of iron go to “thebar;” if it becomes dear, half a bar of iron goes to “the bar.” The ideal standard is preserved because it is ideal. Yet, here are barbarians! This subject is at once the most practical and scientific,—money, arithmetic, commerce, property! Well may Solomon exclaim, “God made man, but he has found out many inventions.”
Ebn Khaldoun has a passage which seems at once to throw light on the origin of the term and the antiquity of the practice. “In the times of ignorance the Arabs counted by various dirhems; thetaboriwas the weightiest, thebaglithe lightest.” The Mussulmans fixed a middle term, and adjusted to it fines, &c. A discussion then arose on the ancient value of these coins, and as to whether they were, or were not, known in the time of Mahomet. Ebn Khaldoun decides as follows: “The valuation of the dirhem was known, but there was no corresponding coin; nevertheless, judgments were regulated according to the valuation of that money.”
If any one is curious to know the meaning of the words “currency law,” he will find it all in this sentence of the late Lord Ashburton: it is a process by which, “in the event of a deficient harvest (or any other internal disturbance),a few shrewd capitalists can so control the supply of gold as to enrich themselves and ruin the nation.” This is all that it requires to know on this subject, to be perfectly happy and content; for, as to doing anything, that is out of the question. The “press,” and “public opinion” may upset ministers, and substitute theory for theory; but, against any deep purpose or design, they can avail nothing, even supposing that they were not the blind instruments of the designing, and stormed and ranted against them from Land’s End to John o’ Groat’s. A pasquinade, stuck at night to a pedestal under the papal government of Rome, had more effect on the affairs of that government than all the free press of England thundering together could have on its government—at least, when the really important points are concerned, viz. the profits of the capitalists or the service of the Czar.
[96]This word I at first thought to be a trace of the Romans, but the word is spread over Asia and Africa, far out of Roman reach. “Telis generally used forvillagein the Delta;kom, in Upper Egypt.”—Wilkinson’sThebes,vol. ii. p.76.
[97]“The country is completely cultivated: it is backed by four regular rows of limestone hills, which serve as a kind of embankment against the Desert. They are now cutting the corn, which produces more than one hundred fold, most of the seeds throwing out four stems, and some five.”—Davidson’sJournal,p.83.
[98]“Mirum dictû ex innumeris populis pars æqua in commerciis aut in latrociniis degit.”—Plin.Hist. Nat.vi.32.
The Arab enjoys the benefits of society, without forfeiting the prerogative of nature.
[99]“Up to the time that you have reached the point determined upon, themehriis responsible for his companion. Before whom? Before God, without doubt, who reads the hearts of men. The faithfulness of a guide is a virtue innate amongst the Arabs.”—Carette.
[100]“If any people can be justly called happy, the Arabs on the borders of the Sahara are so. Confident in the power of their religion to gain them paradise, creating for themselves no artificial wants, and perfectly satisfied with what nature provides for them, they calmly resign themselves to the will of Providence, and are strangers to all cares. They are more wild in their appearance, but far more cultivated than the Arabs of Asia: nearly all of them can read, and a great many write.”—Davidson’sJournal.
[101]“Vous dites qu’il faut que tout le monde soit soldat à son tour. Savez-vous quelles sont les sociétés où tout le monde est soldat? ce sont les sociétés barbares. Chez les Arabes, tout le monde est soldat, et mauvais soldat. (Interruption.) Oui, dans les sociétés où tout le monde est soldat, on n’a que de mauvais soldats.”—Speech, October 21st, 1848.
[102]“Often a quarrel in the streets of Algiers is the echo of one between two tribes in the sand, three hundred leagues distant, and when the quarrel becomes animated between the mother tribes, the distant colonies can no longer inhabit the same district.”—Carette,p. xlvii.Introduction.
[103]“Divina natura dedit agros, ars humana ædificavit urbes.”—Varrode Re Rustica,lib. iii.50.
[104]Deuteronomyiv.19.