where the sultan rests when he is on his way from Rabat to Marrakesh to receive the tribute and homage of the Atlas tribes, we approached the old town, to which the long shadows of the night were already laying siege from the east and above which the citadel, with its menacing walls, crenelated towers and strongly fortified gates that bear Portuguese coats of arms and mottoes of the sixteenth century, loomed like a monstrous eagle's nest on some rocky crag. From two powerful forts, Skutia on the north and Dar el-Behar on the south, old Spanish and Dutch cannon still protruded their threatening black muzzles toward the sea.
"They will show you Keshla and Dar el-Behar tomorrow," said Monsieur Le Glay; "now I want to give you a rapid glimpse of the whole town—my own little Safi, where, in the early decades of the sixteenth century, the enmity reigning between the various Berber families and tribes allowed Don Manuel, the King of Portugal, to take the town without any great difficulty. Then in 1541, after a struggle of thirty years, the sultans drove the Portuguese out. Just now we are passing through the Rbat quarter, which was the home of the most fervid and energetic defenders of Islam."
It was here in this quarter of Rbat that the story of the Portuguese colonization was written in bloody letters. When the invaders took Safi, most of the old Berber families fled from the Medina, but Rbat remained intact. Among its citizens, and especially among the members of the several strong religious fraternities that gathered round the mosque and zaouias of the quarter, the sultans, who for a long time fought the invaders, finally worked
