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.
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