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In Morocco, a non-fiction book by Edith Wharton |
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CHAPTER 7. A SKETCH OF MOROCCAN HISTORY |
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_ VII A SKETCH OF MOROCCAN HISTORY [NOTE--In the chapters on Moroccan history and art I have tried to set down a slight and superficial outline of a large and confused subject. In extenuation of this summary attempt I hasten to explain that its chief merit is its lack of originality. Its facts are chiefly drawn from the books mentioned in the short bibliography at the end of the volume, in addition to which I am deeply indebted for information given on the spot to the group of remarkable specialists attached to the French administration, and to the cultivated and cordial French officials, military and civilian, who, at each stage of my rapid journey, did their best to answer my questions and open my eyes.]
I THE BERBERS In the briefest survey of the Moroccan past, account must first of all be taken of the factor which, from the beginning of recorded events, has conditioned the whole history of North Africa: the existence, from the Sahara to the Mediterranean, of a mysterious irreducible indigenous race with which every successive foreign rule, from Carthage to France, has had to reckon, and which has but imperfectly and partially assimilated the language, the religion, and the culture that successive civilizations have tried to impose upon it. This race, the race of Berbers, has never, modern explorers tell us, become really Islamite, any more than it ever really became Phenician, Roman or Vandal. It has imposed its habits while it appeared to adopt those of its invaders, and has perpetually represented, outside the Ismalitic and Hispano-Arabic circle of the Makhzen, the vast tormenting element of the dissident, the rebellious, the unsubdued tribes of the Blad-es-Siba. Who were these indigenous tribes with whom the Phenicians, when they founded their first counting-houses on the north and west coast of Africa, exchanged stuffs and pottery and arms for ivory, ostrich-feathers and slaves? Historians frankly say they do not know. All sorts of material obstacles have hitherto hampered the study of Berber origins, but it seems clear that from the earliest historic times they were a mixed race, and the ethnologist who attempts to define them is faced by the same problem as the historian of modern America who should try to find the racial definition of an "American." For centuries, for ages, North Africa has been what America now is: the clearing-house of the world. When at length it occurred to the explorer that the natives of North Africa were not all Arabs or Moors, he was bewildered by the many vistas of all they were or might be: so many and tangled were the threads leading up to them, so interwoven was their pre-Islamite culture with worn-out shreds of older and richer societies. M. Saladin, in his "Manuel d'Architecture Musulmane," after attempting to unravel the influences which went to the making of the mosque of Kairouan, the walls of Marrakech, the Medersas of Fez--influences that lead him back to Chaldaean branch-huts, to the walls of Babylon and the embroideries of Coptic Egypt--somewhat despairingly sums up the result: "The principal elements contributed to Moslem art by the styles preceding it may be thus enumerated: from India, floral ornament; from Persia, the structural principles of the Acheminedes, and the Sassanian vault. Mesopotamia contributes a system of vaulting, incised ornament, and proportion; the Copts, ornamental detail in general; Egypt, mass and unbroken wall-spaces; Spain, construction and Romano-Iberian ornament; Africa, decorative detail and Romano-Berber traditions (with Byzantine influences in Persia); Asia Minor, a mixture of Byzantine and Persian characteristics." As with the art of North Africa, so with its supposedly indigenous population. The Berber dialects extend from the Lybian desert to Senegal. Their language was probably related to Coptic, itself related to the ancient Egyptian and the non-Semitic dialects of Abyssinia and Nubia. Yet philologists have discovered what appears to be a far-off link between the Berber and Semitic languages, and the Chleuhs of the Draa and the Souss, with their tall slim Egyptian-looking bodies and hooked noses, may have a strain of Semitic blood. M. Augustin Bernard, in speaking of the natives of North Africa, ends, much on the same note as M. Saladin in speaking of Moslem art: "In their blood are the sediments of many races, Phenician, Punic, Egyptian and Arab." They were not, like the Arabs, wholly nomadic; but the tent, the flock, the tribe always entered into their conception of life. M. Augustin Bernard has pointed out that, in North Africa, the sedentary and nomadic habit do not imply a permanent difference, but rather a temporary one of situation and opportunity. The sedentary Berbers are nomadic in certain conditions, and from the earliest times the invading nomad Berbers tended to become sedentary when they reached the rich plains north of the Atlas. But when they built cities it was as their ancestors and their neighbours pitched tents; and they destroyed or abandoned them as lightly as their desert forbears packed their camel-bags and moved to new pastures. Everywhere behind the bristling walls and rock-clamped towers of old Morocco lurks the shadowy spirit of instability. Every new Sultan builds himself a new house and lets his predecessors' palaces fall into decay, and as with the Sultan so with his vassals and officials. Change is the rule in this apparently unchanged civilization, where "nought may abide but Mutability."
II PHENICIANS, ROMANS AND VANDALS Far to the south of the Anti-Atlas, in the yellow deserts that lead to Timbuctoo, live the wild Touaregs, the Veiled Men of the south, who ride to war with their faces covered by linen masks. These Veiled Men are Berbers, but their alphabet is composed of Lybian characters, and these are closely related to the signs engraved on certain vases of the Nile valley that are probably six thousand years old. Moreover, among the rock-cut images of the African desert is the likeness of Theban Ammon crowned with the solar disk between serpents, and the old Berber religion, with its sun and animal worship, has many points of resemblance with Egyptian beliefs. All this implies trade contacts far below the horizon of history, and obscure comings and goings of restless throngs across incredible distances long before the Phenicians planted their first trading posts on the north African coast about 1200 B.C. Five hundred years before Christ, Carthage sent one of her admirals on a voyage of colonization beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Hannon set out with sixty fifty-oared galleys carrying thirty thousand people. Some of them settled at Mehedyia, at the mouth of the Sebou, where Phenician remains have been found, and apparently the exploration was pushed as far south as the coast of Guinea, for the inscription recording it relates that Hannon beheld elephants, hairy men and "savages called gorillas." At any rate, Carthage founded stable colonies at Melilla, Larache, Sale and Casablanca. Then came the Romans, who carried on the business, set up one of their easy tolerant protectorates over "Tingitanian Mauretania,"[A] and built one important military outpost, Volubilis in the Zerhoun, which a series of minor defenses probably connected with Sale on the west coast, thus guarding the Roman province against the unconquered Berbers to the south. [Footnote A: East of the Moulouya, the African protectorate (now west Algeria and the Sud Oranais) was called the Mauretania of Caesar.] Tingitanian Mauretania was one of the numerous African granaries of Rome. She also supplied the Imperial armies with their famous African cavalry, and among minor articles of exportation were guinea-hens, snails, honey, euphorbia, wild beasts, horses and pearls. The Roman dominion ceased at the line drawn between Volubilis and Sale. There was no interest in pushing farther south, since the ivory and slave trade with the Soudan was carried on by way of Tripoli. But the spirit of enterprise never slept in the race, and Pliny records the journey of a Roman general--Suetonius Paulinus--who appears to have crossed the Atlas, probably by the pass of Tizi-n-Telremt, which is even now so beset with difficulties that access by land to the Souss will remain an arduous undertaking until the way by Imintanout is safe for European travel. The Vandals swept away the Romans in the fifth century. The Lower Empire restored a brief period of civilization; but its authority finally dwindled to the half-legendary rule of Count Julian, shut up within his walls of Ceuta. Then Europe vanished from the shores of Africa, and though Christianity lingered here and there in vague Donatist colonies, and in the names of Roman bishoprics, its last faint hold went down in the eighth century before the irresistible cry: "There is no God but Allah!"
III THE ARAB CONQUEST The first Arab invasion of Morocco is said to have reached the Atlantic coast, but it left no lasting traces, and the real Islamisation of Barbary did not happen till near the end of the eighth century, when a descendant of Ali, driven from Mesopotamia by the Caliphate, reached the mountains above Volubilis and there founded an empire. The Berbers, though indifferent in religious matters, had always, from a spirit of independence, tended to heresy and schism. Under the rule of Christian Rome they had been Donatists, as M. Bernard puts it, "out of opposition to the Empire"; and so, out of opposition to the Caliphate, they took up the cause of one Moslem schismatic after another. Their great popular movements have always had a religious basis, or perhaps it would be truer to say, a religious pretext, for they have been in reality the partly moral, partly envious revolt of hungry and ascetic warrior tribes against the fatness and corruption of the "cities of the plain." Idriss I became the first national saint and ruler of Morocco. His rule extended throughout northern Morocco, and his son, Idriss II, attacking a Berber tribe on the banks of the Oued Fez, routed them, took possession of their oasis and founded the city of Fez. Thither came schismatic refugees from Kairouan and Moors from Andalusia. The Islamite Empire of Morocco was founded, and Idriss II has become the legendary ancestor of all its subsequent rulers. The Idrissite rule is a welter of obscure struggles between rapidly melting groups of adherents. Its chief features are: the founding of Moulay Idriss and Fez, and the building of the mosques of El Andalous and Kairouiyin at Fez for the two groups of refugees from Tunisia and Spain. Meanwhile the Caliphate of Cordova had reached the height of its power, while that of the Fatimites extended from the Nile to western Morocco, and the little Idrissite empire, pulverized under the weight of these expanding powers, became once more a dust of disintegrated tribes. It was only in the eleventh century that the dust again conglomerated. Two Arab tribes from the desert of the Hedjaz, suddenly driven westward by the Fatimites, entered Morocco, not with a small military expedition, as the Arabs had hitherto done, but with a horde of emigrants reckoned as high as 200,000 families; and this first colonizing expedition was doubtless succeeded by others. To strengthen their hold in Morocco the Arab colonists embraced the dynastic feuds of the Berbers. They inaugurated a period of general havoc which destroyed what little prosperity had survived the break-up of the Idrissite rule, and many Berber tribes took refuge in the mountains; but others remained and were merged with the invaders, reforming into new tribes of mixed Berber and Arab blood. This invasion was almost purely destructive, it marks one of the most desolate periods in the progress of the "wasteful Empire" of Moghreb.
IV ALMORAVIDS AND ALMOHADS While the Hilalian Arabs were conquering and destroying northern Morocco another but more fruitful invasion was upon her from the south. The Almoravids, one of the tribes of Veiled Men of the south, driven by the usual mixture of religious zeal and lust of booty, set out to invade the rich black kingdoms north of the Sahara. Thence they crossed the Atlas under their great chief, Youssef-ben-Tachfin, and founded the city of Marrakech in 1062. From Marrakech they advanced on Idrissite Fez and the valley of the Moulouya. Fez rose against her conquerors, and Youssef put all the male inhabitants to death. By 1084 he was master of Tangier and the Rif, and his rule stretched as far west as Tlemcen, Oran and finally Algiers. His ambition drove him across the straits to Spain, where he conquered one Moslem prince after another and wiped out the luxurious civilization of Moorish Andalusia. In 1086, at Zallarca, Youssef gave battle to Alphonso VI of Castile and Leon. The Almoravid army was a strange rabble of Arabs, Berbers, blacks, wild tribes of the Sahara and Christian mercenaries. They conquered the Spanish forces, and Youssef left to his successors an empire extending from the Ebro to Senegal and from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the borders of Tunisia. But the empire fell to pieces of its own weight, leaving little record of its brief and stormy existence. While Youssef was routing the forces of Christianity at Zallarca in Spain, another schismatic tribe of his own people was detaching Marrakech and the south from his rule. The leader of the new invasion was a Mahdi, one of the numerous Saviours of the World who have carried death and destruction throughout Islam. His name was Ibn-Toumert, and he had travelled in Egypt, Syria and Spain, and made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Preaching the doctrine of a purified monotheism, he called his followers the Almohads or Unitarians, to distinguish them from the polytheistic Almoravids, whose heresies he denounced. He fortified the city of Tinmel in the Souss, and built there a mosque of which the ruins still exist. When he died, in 1128, he designated as his successor Abd-el-Moumen, the son of a potter, who had been his disciple. Abd-el-Moumen carried on the campaign against the Almoravids. He fought them not only in Morocco but in Spain, taking Cadiz, Cordova, Granada as well as Tlemcen and Fez. In 1152 his African dominion reached from Tripoli to the Souss, and he had formed a disciplined army in which Christian mercenaries from France and Spain fought side by side with Berbers and Soudanese. This great captain was also a great administrator, and under his rule Africa was surveyed from the Souss to Barka, the country was policed, agriculture was protected, and the caravans journeyed safely over the trade-routes. Abd-el-Moumen died in 1163 and was followed by his son, who, though he suffered reverses in Spain, was also a great ruler. He died in 1184, and his son, Yacoub-el-Mansour, avenged his father's ill-success in Spain by the great victory of Alarcos and the conquest of Madrid. Yacoub-el-Mansour was the greatest of Moroccan Sultans. So far did his fame extend that the illustrious Saladin sent him presents and asked the help of his fleet. He was a builder as well as a fighter, and the noblest period of Arab art in Morocco and Spain coincides with his reign. After his death, the Almohad empire followed the downward curve to which all Oriental rule seems destined. In Spain, the Berber forces were beaten in the great Christian victory of Las-Navas-de Tolosa, and in Morocco itself the first stirrings of the Beni-Merins (a new tribe from the Sahara) were preparing the way for a new dynasty.
V THE MERINIDS The Beni-Merins or Merinids were nomads who ranged the desert between Biskra and the Tafilelt. It was not a religious upheaval that drove them to the conquest of Morocco. The demoralized Almohads called them in as mercenaries to defend their crumbling empire; and the Merinids came, drove out the Almohads, and replaced them. They took Fez, Meknez, Sale, Rabat and Sidjilmassa in the Tafilelt; and their second Sultan, Abou-Youssef, built New Fez (Eldjid) on the height above the old Idrissite city. The Merinids renewed the struggle with the Sultan of Tlemcen, and carried the Holy War once more into Spain. The conflict with Tlemcen was long and unsuccessful, and one of the Merinid Sultans died assassinated under its walls. In the fourteenth century the Sultan Abou Hassan tried to piece together the scattered bits of the Almohad empire. Tlemcen was finally taken, and the whole of Algeria annexed. But in the plain of Kairouan, in Tunisia, Abou Hassan was defeated by the Arabs. Meanwhile one of his brothers had headed a revolt in Morocco, and the princes of Tlemcen won back their ancient kingdom. Constantine and Bougie rebelled in turn, and the kingdom of Abou Hassan vanished like a mirage. His successors struggled vainly to control their vassals in Morocco, and to keep their possessions beyond its borders. Before the end of the fourteenth century Morocco from end to end was a chaos of antagonistic tribes, owning no allegiance, abiding by no laws. The last of the Merinids, divided, diminished, bound by humiliating treaties with Christian Spain, kept up a semblance of sovereignty at Fez and Marrakech, at war with one another and with their neighbours, and Spain and Portugal seized this moment of internal dissolution to drive them from Spain, and carry the war into Morocco itself. The short and stormy passage of the Beni-Merins seems hardly to leave room for the development of the humaner qualities; yet the flowering of Moroccan art and culture coincided with those tumultuous years, and it was under the Merinid Sultans that Fez became the centre of Moroccan learning and industry, a kind of Oxford with Birmingham annexed.
VI THE SAADIANS Meanwhile, behind all the Berber turmoil a secret work of religious propaganda was going on. The Arab element had been crushed but not extirpated. The crude idolatrous wealth-loving Berbers apparently dominated, but whenever there was a new uprising or a new invasion it was based on the religious discontent perpetually stirred up by Mahometan agents. The longing for a Mahdi, a Saviour, the craving for purification combined with an opportunity to murder and rob, always gave the Moslem apostle a ready opening; and the downfall of the Merinids was the result of a long series of religious movements to which the European invasion gave an object and a war-cry. The Saadians were Cherifian Arabs, newcomers from Arabia, to whom the lax Berber paganism was abhorrent. They preached a return to the creed of Mahomet, and proclaimed the Holy War against the hated Portuguese, who had set up fortified posts all along the west coast of Morocco. It is a mistake to suppose that hatred of the Christian has always existed among the North African Moslems. The earlier dynasties, and especially the great Almohad Sultans, were on friendly terms with the Catholic powers of Europe, and in the thirteenth century a treaty assured to Christians in Africa full religious liberty, excepting only the right to preach their doctrine in public places. There was a Catholic diocese at Fez, and afterward at Marrakech under Gregory IX, and there is a letter of the Pope thanking the "Miromilan" (the Emir El Moumenin) for his kindness to the Bishop and the friars living in his dominions. Another Bishop was recommended by Innocent IV to the Sultan of Morocco; the Pope even asked that certain strongholds should be assigned to the Christians in Morocco as places of refuge in times of disturbance. But the best proof of the friendly relations between Christians and infidels is the fact that the Christian armies which helped the Sultans of Morocco to defeat Spain and subjugate Algeria and Tunisia were not composed of "renegadoes" or captives, as is generally supposed, but of Christian mercenaries, French and English, led by knights and nobles, and fighting for the Sultan of Morocco exactly as they would have fought for the Duke of Burgundy, the Count of Flanders, or any other Prince who offered high pay and held out the hope of rich spoils. Any one who has read Villehardouin and Joinville will own that there is not much to choose between the motives animating these noble freebooters and those which caused the Crusaders to loot Constantinople "on the way" to the Holy Sepulchre. War in those days was regarded as a lucrative and legitimate form of business, exactly as it was when the earlier heroes started out to take the rich robber-town of Troy. The Berbers have never been religious fanatics, and the Vicomte de Foucauld, when he made his great journey of exploration in the Atlas in 1883, remarked that antagonism to the foreigner was always due to the fear of military espionage and never to religious motives. This equally applies to the Berbers of the sixteenth century, when the Holy War against Catholic Spain and Portugal was preached. The real cause of the sudden deadly hatred of the foreigner was twofold. The Spaniards were detested because of the ferocious cruelty with which they had driven the Moors from Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella, and the Portuguese because of the arrogance and brutality of their military colonists in the fortified trading stations of the west coast. And both were feared as possible conquerors and overlords. There was a third incentive also: the Moroccans, dealing in black slaves for the European market, had discovered the value of white slaves in Moslem markets. The Sultan had his fleet, and each coast-town its powerful pirate vessels, and from pirate-nests like Sale and Tangier the raiders continued, till well on into the first half of the nineteenth century, to seize European ships and carry their passengers to the slave-markets of Fez and Marrakech.[A] The miseries endured by these captives, and so poignantly described in John Windus's travels, and in the "Naufrage du Brick Sophie" by Charles Cochelet,[B] show how savage the feeling against the foreigner had become. [Footnote A: The Moroccans being very poor seamen, these corsair-vessels were usually commanded and manned by Christian renegadoes and Turks.] [Footnote B: Cochelet was wrecked on the coast near Agadir early in the nineteenth century and was taken with his fellow-travellers overland to El-Ksar and Tangier, enduring terrible hardships by the way.] With the advent of the Cherifian dynasties, which coincided with this religious reform, and was in fact brought about by it, Morocco became a closed country, as fiercely guarded as Japan against European penetration. Cut off from civilizing influences, the Moslems isolated themselves in a lonely fanaticism, far more racial than religious, and the history of the country from the fall of the Merinids till the French annexation is mainly a dull tale of tribal warfare. The religious movement of the sixteenth century was led and fed by zealots from the Sahara. One of them took possession of Rabat and Azemmour, and preached the Holy War; other "feudal fiefs" (as M. Augustin Bernard has well called them) were founded at Tameslout, Ilegh, Tamgrout: the tombs of the _marabouts_ who led these revolts are scattered all along the west coast, and are still objects of popular veneration. The unorthodox saint worship which marks Moroccan Moslemism, and is commemorated by the countless white _koubbas_ throughout the country, grew up chiefly at the time of the religious revival under the Saadian dynasty, and almost all the "Moulays" and "Sidis" venerated between Tangier and the Atlas were warrior monks who issued forth from their fortified _Zaouias_ to drive the Christians out of Africa. The Saadians were probably rather embarrassed by these fanatics, whom they found useful to oppose to the Merinids, but troublesome where their own plans were concerned. They were ambitious and luxury-loving princes, who invaded the wealthy kingdom of the Soudan, conquered the Sultan of Timbuctoo, and came back laden with slaves and gold to embellish Marrakech and spend their treasure in the usual demoralizing orgies. Their exquisite tombs at Marrakech commemorate in courtly language the superhuman virtues of a series of rulers whose debaucheries and vices were usually cut short by assassination. Finally another austere and fanatical mountain tribe surged down on them, wiped them out, and ruled in their stead.
VII THE HASSANIANS The new rulers came from the Tafilelt, which has always been a troublesome corner of Morocco. The first two Hassanian Sultans were the usual tribal chiefs bent on taking advantage of Saadian misrule to loot and conquer. But the third was the great Moulay-Ismael, the tale of whose long and triumphant rule (1672 to 1727) has already been told in the chapter on Meknez. This savage and enlightened old man once more drew order out of anarchy, and left, when he died, an organized and administered empire, as well as a progeny of seven hundred sons and unnumbered daughters.[A] [Footnote A: Moulay-Ismael was a learned theologian and often held religious discussions with the Fathers of the Order of Mercy and the Trinitarians. He was scrupulously orthodox in his religious observances, and wrote a treatise in defense of his faith which he sent to James II of England, urging him to become a Mahometan. He invented most of the most exquisite forms of torture which subsequent Sultans have applied to their victims (see Loti, _Au Maroc_), and was fond of flowers, and extremely simple and frugal in his personal habits.] The empire fell apart as usual, and no less quickly than usual, under his successors; and from his death until the strong hand of General Lyautey took over the direction of affairs the Hassanian rule in Morocco was little more than a tumult of incoherent ambitions. The successors of Moulay-Ismael inherited his blood-lust and his passion for dominion without his capacity to govern. In 1757 Sidi-Mohammed, one of his sons, tried to put order into his kingdom, and drove the last Portuguese out of Morocco; but under his successors the country remained isolated and stagnant, making spasmodic efforts to defend itself against the encroachments of European influence, while its rulers wasted their energy in a policy of double-dealing and dissimulation. Early in the nineteenth century the government was compelled by the European powers to suppress piracy and the trade in Christian slaves; and in 1830 the French conquest of Algeria broke down the wall of isolation behind which the country was mouldering away by placing a European power on one of its frontiers. At first the conquest of Algeria tended to create a link between France and Morocco. The Dey of Algiers was a Turk, and, therefore, an hereditary enemy; and Morocco was disposed to favour the power which had broken Turkish rule in a neighbouring country. But the Sultan could not help trying to profit by the general disturbance to seize Tlemcen and raise insurrections in western Algeria; and presently Morocco was engaged in a Holy War against France. Abd-el-Kader, the Sultan of Algeria, had taken refuge in Morocco, and the Sultan of Morocco having furnished him with supplies and munitions, France sent an official remonstrance. At the same time Marshal Bugeaud landed at Mers-el-Kebir, and invited the Makhzen to discuss the situation. The offer was accepted and General Bedeau and the Caid El Guennaoui met in an open place. Behind them their respective troops were drawn up, and almost as soon as the first salutes were exchanged the Caid declared the negotiations broken off. The French troops accordingly withdrew to the coast, but during their retreat they were attacked by the Moroccans. This put an end to peaceful negotiations, and Tangier was besieged and taken. The following August Bugeaud brought his troops up from Oudjda, through the defile that leads from West Algeria, and routed the Moroccans. He wished to advance on Fez, but international politics interfered, and he was not allowed to carry out his plans. England looked unfavourably on the French penetration of Morocco, and it became necessary to conclude peace at once to prove that France had no territorial ambitions west of Oudjda. Meanwhile a great Sultan was once more to appear in the land. Moulay-el-Hassan, who ruled from 1873 to 1894, was an able and energetic administrator. He pieced together his broken empire, asserted his authority in Fez and Marrakech, and fought the rebellious tribes of the west. In 1877 he asked the French government to send him a permanent military mission to assist in organizing his army. He planned an expedition to the Souss, but the want of food and water in the wilderness traversed by the army caused the most cruel sufferings. Moulay-el-Hassan had provisions sent by sea, but the weather was too stormy to allow of a landing on the exposed Atlantic coast, and the Sultan, who had never seen the sea, was as surprised and indignant as Canute to find that the waves would not obey him. His son Abd-el-Aziz was only thirteen years old when he succeeded to the throne. For six years he remained under the guardianship of Ba-Ahmed, the black Vizier of Moulay-el-Hassan, who built the fairy palace of the Bahia at Marrakech, with its mysterious pale green padlocked door leading down to the secret vaults where his treasure was hidden. When the all-powerful Ba-Ahmed died the young Sultan was nineteen. He was intelligent, charming, and fond of the society of Europeans; but he was indifferent to religious questions and still more to military affairs, and thus doubly at the mercy of native mistrust and European intrigue. Some clumsy attempts at fiscal reform, and a too great leaning toward European habits and associates, roused the animosity of the people, and of the conservative party in the upper class. The Sultan's eldest brother, who had been set aside in his favour, was intriguing against him; the usual Cherifian Pretender was stirring up the factious tribes in the mountains; and the European powers were attempting, in the confusion of an ungoverned country, to assert their respective ascendencies. The demoralized condition of the country justified these attempts, and made European interference inevitable. But the powers were jealously watching each other, and Germany, already coveting the certain agricultural resources and the conjectured mineral wealth of Morocco, was above all determined that a French protectorate should not be set up. In 1908 another son of Moulay-Hassan, Abd-el-Hafid, was proclaimed Sultan by the reactionary Islamite faction, who accused Abd-el-Aziz of having sold his country to the Christians. Abd-el-Aziz was defeated in a battle near Marrakech, and retired to Tangier, where he still lives in futile state. Abd-el-Hafid, proclaimed Sultan at Fez, was recognized by the whole country, but he found himself unable to cope with the factious tribes (those outside the Blad-el-Makhzen, or _governed country_). These rebel tribes besieged Fez, and the Sultan had to ask France for aid. France sent troops to his relief, but as soon as the dissidents were routed, and he himself was safe, Abd-el-Hafid refused to give the French army his support, and in 1912, after the horrible massacres of Fez, he abdicated in favour of another brother, Moulay Youssef, the actual ruler of Morocco. _ |
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