the works of the Idrisides, Almohades and Merinides.
Our visits to these places consecrated to science and to the Faith gave us the opportunity of making the acquaintance of some tholba, comrades of our Hafid, with whom we rambled about the town, listening to their chatter that continuously disclosed to us new and interesting recesses in the great, conglomerate life of Fez. The great majority of these students live in the medersas, where they have ever before them what still persists of the treasures of the art of their country, while the remaining small minority have lodgings about the town. One can meet among these tholba dreamers, poets, practical men preparing for professions, especially the law, and ascetics, who spend their days in prayer, in exercises in concentration and in study. From these are drawn the future ulema, Imams and, sometimes, even Marabouts. It is not unusual for a student, on leaving the university, to purchase the key of his cell against the time when he may wish to return to his Alma Mater and retire for a time within its sanctuary to rest from the noise and difficulties of life, to meditate and thus to restore order to his harassed thoughts and feelings.
Being like their brothers the world over, the Fez students occasionally create disturbances, take part in revolutionary movements and protests and, besides breaking the far-from-luxurious course of their ordinary lives with occasional feasts, have their own societies, usually formed on the affiliating lines of the tribal extraction of the individuals or because of membership in, or leanings towards, some religious confraternity. Only the ascetics
