There Is A Misunderstanding Between The Provinces Of Shed Ma And Hhaha. These Districts Adjoin Mogador, The City Belonging To Hhaha.

Shedma is mostly lowland and plains, and Hhaha highlands and mountains, which form a portion of the south-western Atlas, and strike down into the sea at Santa Cruz.

There seems to be no other reason for those frequent obstinate hostilities on both sides, except the nature of the country. It is lamentable to think, because "a narrow frith" divides two people, or because one lives in the mountains and the other in the plains, that therefore they should be enemies for ever! Strange infatuation of poor human nature.

Here the feud legend babbles of revenge, and says that, in the time of Muley Suleiman, one day when the Hhaha people were at prayers at Mogador, during broad day light, the Shedma people came down upon them and slaughtered them, and, whilst in the sacred and inviolable act of devotion, entered the mosques and pillaged their houses. This produced implacable hatred between them, which is likely to survive many generations; but the story was told me by a Hhaha man, and not improbably the people of Shedma had some plausible reason for making this barbarous attack.

Even before this piece of treachery of one Mussulman towards another at the hour of prayer, the feuds seemed to have existed. It is a remarkable circumstance in the history of Islamism, that many of the most treacherous and sanguinary actions of Mahometans have been committed within the sacred enclosures of the mosques, and at the hour of prayer. One of the caliphs having been assassinated in a mosque, seems to have been the precedent for all the murders of the kind which have followed, and indelibly disgrace the Mussulman annals.

These Hhaha and Shedma people are also borderers, and fight with the accustomed ferocity of border tribes.

Their conflicts are very desultory, being carried on by twos and threes, or sixes and sevens, and with sticks, and stones, and other weapons, if they cannot get knives, or matchlocks. Meanwhile, the Emperor folds his arms, and looks on superbly and serenely. When the two parties are exhausted, or have had enough of it for the present; his Imperial Highness then interferes, and punishes both by fine. Indeed, it pays him better to pursue this course; for, instead of spending money in the suppression of factious insurrections, he gains by mulcting both parties. The Sultan, in fact, not only aggrandizes himself by the quarrels of his own subjects, but he profits by the disputes between the foreign consuls and his governors.

The imbroglio which took place some years since, between the Governor of Mogador and the French Consul, M. Delaporte, is sufficiently characteristic. An Algerine Mussulman, who was of course a French subject, behaved himself very indecent, by setting all the usual rules of Mahometan worship at defiance. This was a great scandal to the Faithful. The Governor of Mogador, in defiance of religion, took upon himself to punish a French Mussulman.

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