The Fire of Desert Folk/Chapter 14
OLYMPUS AND THE SONS OF THE PROPHET
THE next day at sunrise, the hour of the matinal prayer, there drew up before the door of our hotel the car that was to carry us westward to the sea through unknown scenes and country that beckoned us on with a luring hand. All the way to the first affluent of the Sbu River we ran through a well-tilled agricultural country, with the exception of a single stretch of stony desert, where we found little life save locusts and scorpions. Of these latter we identified two varieties, the first great, black fellows with yellow legs and small pincers, Androctonus bicolor, and the second, smaller, yellow-colored ones, Buthus occitanicus.
After having crossed this dreary desert, which Zofiette named "The Hopeless Plain," we began ascending again into high ranges of hills till we reached once more the fertile fields and vineyards. As we climbed, we saw to the left of the road something that resembled a group of ruined walls but that turned out to be only pinkish-gray rocks, all notched and broken. The hunter's instinct whispered subconsciously that among these heaps of stone and weather-cleft rocks jackals might be hiding—an instinct that proved itself quite correct, for, as our car honked to an Arab on a mule ahead, from behind a jagged stone the form of one of these beasts of prey flashed for a moment and made off for safety.
"Dib, dib!" shouted the Arab at the top of his voice.
After topping this particular rise and leaving Arab and jackal in possession, we saw a little farther down a group of picturesque white buildings set among the everwelcome trees. The chauffeur drew up in their shadow and turned to say:
"The ruins of Volubilis."
We bundled out with the intention of paying a visit to Monsieur L. Chatelain, who is the director of the archaeological work in the place, but found that he was away and had, therefore, to content ourselves with taking an Arab guide to show us through the ruins. Having read many books about Roman Africa and Volubilis in particular, I was most keen to see with my own eyes some of the vestiges of that exceptional civilization.
The Arabs believe these to be the remains of a city left by the Egyptians and call it "Ksar Faraun," or "the city of the Pharaohs." As a matter of fact, Volubilis was one of the most advanced western military and commercial outposts of the Romans and is mentioned by Pliny the Elder, Ptolemy, Pomponius Mela and other writers who described Mauretania Tingitana, as they called this western country. French authorities assert that the Roman legions came here to help defend the frontiers of the immense Empire. Tangier was the principal Roman military base in Morocco, and Volubilis almost the last post toward that vast, outlying south from which hordes of warlike Berbers swarmed off from time to time.
Why did the Romans come here? What did they take from this country? From Mauretania in general they exported to Rome grain, oil, some of the dearer qualities of timber, grapes, horses, donkeys and woolen yarn, from which latter were manufactured the well-known stragula maura, or Berber carpets, which were to the Roman world what Persian carpets are to that of the present. But some days later a native merchant in Meknes, who spoke fluent French, added the following interesting bit:
"The Romans found in Volubilis something much more prized than goods. Not far from the site is the mountainous range of Zerhun, whose forests, ravines, caverns and herds of mountain goats and sheep attracted innumerable ferocious beasts—lions, panthers, leopards, hyenas and jackals. Hunts were arranged, and great traps set for capturing alive these rulers of the forest, and, once they had forfeited their liberty for the narrow limits of a cage, they were sent to Rome and to other cities, whose crowds demanded the bloody shows of the arena. Echoes of this still persist in the tales of our bards."
Mauretania Tingitana thus provided the surfeited mob of decaying Rome with their "panem et circenses." And it furnished yet another cherished contribution to the life of the capital of the Caesars—black and brown slaves. Those among them who were handsome enough in appearance and build were entered in the gladiatorial schools and given a chance to fight for their lives on other sands, those of the arena, while most of the remaining ones were used in the foreign legions. They were courageous, hardy and warlike and are represented on the Column of Trajan in light tunics, with lance and shield and mounted on small, fleet horses, charging the enemy.
As our Arab guide preceded us across a small ravine and along a narrow path that led to the nearest excavations, a flock of partridges rose from the bushes at our side and a hare crossed the path. Green and pink lizards scuttled over the marble slabs that were cut and placed by slaves seventeen centuries ago. In crevices of the flagstones and in cracks of the earth spiders and scolopendras waited for booty. One of them had attacked a great beetle in a green, shining armor, resembling the sacred Egyptian scarab, had killed it with its poison and was busy dragging it off to its hole.
We soon came to the walls of the town and found that the only remnants of them were scattered blocks of stone and the foundations of the round watch-towers and of some of the gates that led out of this distant Roman fortress on African soil. We entered this city, whose every bit of stone, every bit of pavement, every column had seen the symbol of "eternal" Rome. Involuntarily we felt a strange respect for this dead city, where, immortalized in these stones, lived the great spirit of the powerful nation that spread to the most distant corners of the world of those days rays of the civilization of all the peoples that went to make up the Empire. Today the strong lines of the triumphal arch erected to glorify Emperor Caracalla, the columns of the forum, ruins of the basilica—all places where the public life of the city once seethed—stand somber against the background of the brilliant sky. Also motionless and indifferent to the blaze of the sun's rays lay the treads of splendid staircases, the columns and lintels of private houses, the jars for keeping oil, the stone baths, the fragments of mosaics and tablets bearing Roman inscriptions—all memorials to a life of long ago.
From certain of the inscriptions which Time and the hands of men have left unspoiled, the archaeologists have learned that Volubilus once boasted an ancient and respected family of the Caecilia gens; that once the decemvir, Marc Valerian Severus, a Carthaginian by extraction who became a high Roman dignitary, served here with glory and had a statue erected to him in the forum, in recognition of his success in obtaining from Emperor Claudius Roman privileges for the town, as well as the acknowledgment of the legality of the marriages of Roman citizens with foreigners, even though they might be barbarians. Evidently the women of these neighboring Berber tribes were far from unbeautiful, as the love affairs of the Roman warriors in Mauretania reached the ears of the divine Emperor in Rome and were one of the reasons for the ultimate downfall of the Empire.
This contact of Rome at Volubilis with the life of Africa had, in a way, some curious results, as it led to a unique admixture of the Roman religious beliefs and ceremonies with the ancient cults of Africa. The wife of Severus, Fabia Bera, came from a neighboring Berber tribe and achieved to the position of the first priestess of the town; while another priestess of note was a slave from Gallia, who had been born in Vindabone, or Vienna, and was the wife of Maternus, the chief of a regiment composed of Iberians from Galicia and Asturia. These priestesses, flaminae, were oracle-givers and at times even made decisions in the most important lawsuits.
The Arabs and Berbers had always many such prophetesses, called kahinas, who had unlimited influence upon the life of their tribes and often extended their power over several neighboring clans. When the false prophet, Mosa Ilama, appeared after the death of Mahomet, one of the most famous among these kahinas, a certain Sidjah, gathered together the Arab tribes and fought him in battle but, after some years of strife, patched up an understanding with him and signed a final truce by marrying him. Another among them, Kahina Zeineb, after previous marriages, finally became the wife of the magnificent Yusuf ibn Teshufin, the founder of the Almoravide dynasty in Morocco, and has been immortalized in legend under the title of Sahira, meaning a woman wonder-worker. Later when I was in the town of Zerhun and asked a mullah about a certain Roman priestess, he answered that she was a kahina of great power and had foretold the destruction of the Roman fortresses in Africa and the years of plague. The gods of the Roman Olympus, with Jupiter at their head, here mingled with those of the cults of Isis and Mithra and with African demonology.
The ruins of this strange town lay there before us, bathed in the ever-present and all-penetrating rays of the African sun and covered with thick vegetation. Except for the whisper of romance and story that floated in upon our minds from these long-abandoned streets and portals, silence reigned here, the silence of the grave—and really it was a cemetery of that ancient Roman culture which had assimilated the thought, the arts and the imagination of the whole known world. Bronze statues of a barking dog, of Hercules, Neptune, Mercury and Isis, together with fragments of marble statues, coins, lamps, amphorae, jewels and mosaics were excavated from this cemetery and placed in the museum; but these objects, set up in a modern European building with catalogue numbers and labels, live no more and whisper no more to the musing traveler, as do the stones, the tablets and the columns of the ancient buildings left in their original settings.
And for what do these whisperings seek a sympathetic ear? Of what would they tell us? From far back in the canyon of Time, as ever-diminishing reverberations along the walls of the centuries, come down to us the quavering notes of military trumpets, the bustle and hum of the forum to which the mixed cohorts with their scores of tongues are returning after a victory over Edemon, the Moorish chieftain who has dared to defy Imperial Rome. Like the sounds of a distant storm one hears the cries of the soldiery and the populace, hailing Septimius Severus on his arrival at Volubilis, followed by the lower and calmer tones of the well-known prefect of the respected Caecilia gens, eloquently welcoming the noted dignitary. Is it the wind murmuring through the dry grass and the shrubs or is it the thousand-throated question of the crowd to the decemvir whom they have awaited as the messenger of the divine Claudius to announce to them whether he has acceded to their petition that their olive-skinned, brown and even black belovèd ones be acknowledged as Roman citizens with all the privileges that this exalted station carried with it in those days?
This Volubilis, where Moors, Iberians, Gauls, Germans, Franks and Britons fought for the furtherance of Rome's political aspirations, has almost completely disappeared under the wind-borne mantle of the desert, and now these same Franks, Moors, Iberians and Germans are working to excavate and reconstruct it. German warprisoners have carried through the most difficult and important part of the task, for which intelligent and conscientious work were required, under the direction of Monsieur Louis Chatelain, a French officer who had been wounded during service on the German front. Spaniards have worked here, and Berbers of the ancient Mauretania Tingitana are still excavating. Is it not a proof that Europe, rent by political strife, can find common aims and comprehensible bases for co-operation the moment it steps from the realm of politics into those of knowledge and art?
"What became of Volubilis? Why was the town destroyed?" I asked our Arab guide.
"When Meknes, Zerhun and Rabat were constructed, the Morocco sultans took from here columns, cornices and whole façades, for it was all good building material."
This was not the reply to my question, as the Arab explained only the last stage in the town s destruction. But history tells us that, after the downfall of Rome from its inability to consolidate and hold together its immense Empire, the Vandals appeared here, those archiconoclasts and despoilers. Then came Byzantium, whose interests did not reach to this frontier and who consequently left Volubilis to its fate of solitude and such further depredation as man might lay upon it. On their march of conquest toward the Atlantic the Asiatic and Arab soldiers of the Prophet came upon it and destroyed what little remained of the statues of men and animals in obedience to the prohibition of the Koran against the material representation of living forms. It was then that the Berber dynasties completed the work of ruin by taking the building materials to construct and ornament their palaces and temples.
We had no more than turned our backs upon the ruins of Volubilis before we found ourselves beneath the summit of a fairly high mountain spur, crowned by a minaret with shining, green tiles. Only two miles separate the old Roman city and this holy Moorish town of El-Zerhun, which helped to despoil the outpost of the Caesars for its own adornment. It is the first stage for the pilgrims of western Maghreb in the journey to Mecca, for a faithful hadj must visit it seven times before starting on the longer road to the sacred city on the Red Sea. It is here next to the splendid mosque that is located the tomb of the greatest saint of Morocco, Mulay Idris el-Akbar, a direct descendant of the Prophet through his daughter and the originator of the Arab dynasty of the Idrisides, whose son, Mulay Idris II, was the founder of Fez.
El-Zerhun is encircled by a powerful wall with massive gates, supplemented at a little distance with a second enclosing defensive circle of Berber figs, so rank and thick as to be practically impenetrable by man. We left our car and began scrambling up steep, broken lanes, or rather paths among the rocks, with the idea of reaching a summit that would give us a view down upon the whole town. Picking our way up over stones that had been smoothed and polished by the tread of thousands of pilgrims visiting the zaouia of Idris, we were rewarded at the top by finding the whole town at our feet, with its terraces of roofs and the minaret shining like an emerald among them.
A young native, appearing, as it were, right out of the earth itself, and saluting us politely, addressed us in excellent French. It developed that he was a son of one of the noble families of the town and that he had communicated to our chauffeur, who had made much better time to the summit, his dream that one day he might meet a writer from some foreign land who would poetically describe his native city for the outside world. In response our driver had told him that "a writer" was just then blowing and puffing his way up the steep side of the spur to see the unusually located town from this vantage-point.
I promised the young patriot to "describe poetically" his city as best my powers might permit; and now, as I reflect over the task he has set me, I have decided that I shall come closest to meeting his wishes, if I record what the young Arab himself told me and in his own style.
"Merciful Allah be praised! He, the Great and Compassionate, brought glory to this place. Twelve centuries ago on these two summits were two Berber villages, which fought each other in the saddle in merciless vendetta between the two points and looked upon each other as eternal enemies. Once an unknown wanderer came to these villages and, in response to the questions as to whence he had come, he pointed to the east and said:
"'I am come from the country where the great Prophet proclaimed the faith in One God and gathered all of the power over the Faithful into his own hands. The name of Mahomet be praised throughout the whole earth! I am the bone of his bone and my blood is the blood of his veins. Power and rule belong to me, but the false caliph, Harun al-Rashid, by deceit robbed me of them and sought to kill me. Twice already have men harvested the grain from their fields since I began my journey to your mountains.'
"'Whom are you seeking here?' asked one of the villagers.
"'I had a vision in Hejaz that in the place where an old city and two villages form a triangle and where these latter are at war with each other I should find a man, called Aouraba, who would help me and, through this, would himself become great and famous.'
"'No such man exists here,' answered the Berbers. 'That is the name of a tribe of traitorous dogs, of cowardly and vicious jackals!'
"'Each tribe has a head and a heart, and these are its chief,' rejoined the traveler.
"'The chief of these criminals is one called Gamderoui,' said the villagers.
"'Thank you; may Allah be merciful to you and increase the crop of your vineyards.'
"The courageous and really good Gamderoui was just in the act of putting his foot in the stirrup to start on a hunt when this unknown wanderer, coming from these warring villages of Kliber and Tasga, approached him and announced:
"'I am he whom you saw yesterday, as you stopped at the well. My name is Mulay Idris Abd Allah ben el-Hassan ben Ali, and the blood of the Prophet flows in my veins. I have come to seek you, Gamderoui, and you are to act as the Lord shall order you.'
"Bowing to the will of Allah, Gamderoui and the Aouraba tribe received the banished caliph, who at once began to teach the Koran to pagans, Christians and Jews. Then he reconciled the fighting tribes, united them and formed the Maghreb Empire, ascending the throne as its first great emir. The thankful sultan married a Berber woman, who gave to him a son, the great and holy Idris who built Fez el-Bali. Here in Ulili, the ancient Volubilis, the hand of the revengeful Harun al-Rashid reached the sultan and had him poisoned by a sorcerer.
"Oh, foreigners! Look down upon this city, where the people entombed the ashes of the master. Here the unbeliever cannot remain longer than from sunrise to sunset. The Idrises were wise masters, who taught the faith in One God, the Creator of everything and of all the other gods and spirits. They have all remained here—the ancient gods, the saints of the neighboring tribes and the djinns—and find place enough within the walls of El-Zerhun. At the hours of prayer to Allah they hide in their several abodes and only come out of them when the last words of the Imams and the muezzins have died away. The most celebrated magi, sorcerers, fortunetellers, and clairvoyants have visited our town and have found strength here. Here they have put together the most efficacious talismans, just as they have also uttered the most reliable prophecies. Old men among our people have received and guarded the most proven magic recipes to cure the sick, and here poets come to write their tomes of verse."
For a long time the young Berber held our attention with innumerable stories of the place, as he guided us about through the town, where we noticed a Koran school with some of the Roman columns from Volubilis incorporated in its walls, were shown a fountain with miraculous healing powers and were led through the market and through dark, mysterious passageways under the houses.
At last we yielded to the insistent honkings from our chauffeur, who was signaling us from below that we must be away, if we would reach Meknes that evening. Consequently we scrambled down to the road and were soon again on our westward way. Before the jutting shoulders of the range moved out to cut off our view, we took one last look at this strange town perched upon this mountain ridge with its white walls standing out clear above the gray-green of the slope and jealously guarding its disorderly grouped buildings and minaret, which looked like a great spear thrust upward into the warm blue of the sky. El-Zerhun disappeared just as Ksar Faraun, or the Roman Volubilis, had previously melted away. The voices of Jupiter and of the descendant of Mahomet were hushed. One heard no longer the whisperings of the forum and of the unknown pagan gods, even the names of whom had long been forgotten through the disappearance of the tribes that worshipped them. However, they have in spirit persisted and maintained their influence and importance through the devotion and help of their sorceresses, these kahinas whose sisters of long ago were beloved by the Roman dignitaries.
All this disappeared behind the mountains, yet the vivid impression remained and gave birth to fecund thoughts. The story of the young Arab had laid bare for me some of the workings of the native mind in its attitude toward the primitive gods and spirits that still retained their dominion over the minds of peasant and sage alike. If the soul of the people is so guided, how dangerous would be the liberty that men seek to bring to them! What would these tribes do except indulge in a whirlpool of civil strife? When years of bad harvest, of cattle epidemics or of disease come upon them, would their sorcerers and clairvoyants help them, would their quacks and magi heal them?
I am firmly convinced that the liberty and freedom for these tribes ought to be of another character from that about which agitators are preaching; otherwise to the ruins of Volubilis, Blida and Timgad we may soon be obliged to add El-Zerhun, Fez, Rabat, Biskra and hundreds of other towns and villages that would be engulfed by the storm, carried away by the natural desire for an independence for which they are not prepared and for which, as their history points out, they are not temperamentally fitted.