The Mosques Are Numerous And Rich, The Principal Of Which Are
El-Kirtubeeah, Of Elegant Architecture With An Extremely Lofty Minaret;
El-Maazin, Which Is Three Hundred Years Old, And A Magnificent Building;
And Benious, Built Nearly Seven Hundred Years Ago Of Singular
Construction, Uniting Modern And Ancient Architecture.
The mosque of the
patron saint is Sidi Belabbess.
Nine gates open in the city-walls; these
are strong and high, and flanked with towers, except on the south east
where the Sultan's palace stands. The streets are crooked, of uneven
width, unpaved, and dirty in winter, and full of dust in summer.
There are several public squares and marketplaces. The Kaessaria, or
commercial quarter, is extensive, exhibiting every species of
manufacture and natural product.
The manufactures of this, as of other large places, are principally,
silks, embroidery, and leather. The merchants of Mogador have magazines
here; this capital has also its caravans, which trade to the interior,
passing through Wadnoun to the south.
The Imperial palace is without the city and fortified with strong walls.
There are large gardens attached, in one of which the Emperor receives
his merchants and the diplomatic agents. The air of the country, at the
foot of the Atlas, is pure and salubrious. The city is well supplied
with water from an aqueduct, connecting it with the river Tensift, which
flows from the gorges of the Atlas. But the inhabitants, although they
enjoy this inestimable blessing in an African climate, are not famous
for their cleanliness; Morocco, if possessing any particular character,
still must be considered as a commercial city, for its learning is at a
very low ebb. Its interior wears a deeply dejected, nay a profoundly
gloomy aspect.
"Horrendum incultumque specus."
and the European merchants, when they come up here are glad to get away
as soon as possible.
Outside the city, there is a suburb appropriated to lepers, a
Lazar-house of leprosy, which afflicting and loathsome disease descends
from father to son through unbroken generations; the afflicted cannot
enter the city, and no one dare approach their habitations. The Emperor
usually resides for a third portion of his time at Morocco the rest at
Fez and Mequinez. Whenever his Imperial Highness has anything
disagreeable with foreign European powers, he comes down from Fez to
Morocco, to get out of the way. Occasionally, he travels from town to
town of the interior, to awe by his presence the ever restless
disaflfection of the tribes, or excite their loyalty for the Shereefian
throne.
Morocco is placed in Lat. 31 deg. 37" 31' N. and Long. 7 deg. 35" 30', W.
Tafilett consists of a group of towns or villages, situate on the
south-eastern side of the Atlas, which may he added to the royal cities,
being inhabited in part by the Imperial family, and is the birth-place
of their sovereign power - emphatically called Beladesh-Sherfa, "country
of the Shereefs." The country was anciently called Sedjelmasa, and
retained this name up to 1530 A.D., when the principal city acquired the
apellation of Tafilett, said to be derived from an Arab immigrant,
called Filal, who improved the culture of dates, and whose name on this
account, under the Berber form of Tafilett, was given to a plantation of
dates cultivated by him, and then passed to the surrounding districts.
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