The Fire of Desert Folk/Chapter 20
A FEUDAL ATLAS TRIBE
THE Commander-in-chief of the Marrakesh district proposed to me a trip into the High Atlas, which I was subsequently informed was looked upon as the pride of the French policy in the country of Mulay Yusuf. One fine morning a military car drew up before the hotel, bringing Captain Deverre of the General Staff, with whom I was to make the journey.
After skirting the walls of the town, pink with the warmth of the morning light, the road shot out across the naked, stony plain, cut in many directions by caravan routes that led away and lost themselves in notches of the most northerly ranges of the mountains. As we sped on, the car overhauled strings of loaded camels, scattered groups of mules and donkeys and frightened villagers on the way to town or nomads wandering from place to place.
From time to time I noticed the crowns of palms protruding from round holes and learned, in answer to my rather astonished inquiry, that Marrakesh would never have been the capital and the city of commerce and pleasure that it now is, had it not been for these holes. They are shafts leading down to a network of subterranean canals, which in long-forgotten times the sultans had caused to be dug to carry out the plans they had elaborated for furnishing the capital with water. The industrious and skilled natives of the Draa tribe were called upon to excavate numerous trunk-lines of these subterranean canals at a depth where the earth would carry without great wastage the water from the Atlas streams, that were being greedily absorbed by the chalky surface strata of the desert Besides the principal canals, dug by and belonging to the government, there exists also a whole network of private foggaras, which irrigate the plantations and provide some of the branch lines of the town. Somewhere around three hundred sixty of these lesser and greater branches are in use, and for their maintenance and cleaning the officials and planters still employ the Draa natives, who enter the tunnels through these round holes which I had observed. On the plain between Marrakesh and the Atlas the water of the subterranean channels in some places is carried for a short distance along the surface. Here the Moroccans have occasionally impounded the water by dams and have cleverly erected small mills.
I know similar systems of subterranean canalization in China and Persia, but in those countries I never ran across works of such grand dimensions. I have seen but one place in which this skill and spirit of enterprise in the native handling of water has reached a higher point of development, and that is in the oasis of Figig, just on the Moroccan-Algerian border, where the natives work in the earth with the skill of moles and search out the smallest water-supplies to requisition them for service in their fields and among their palms.
After we had covered about forty miles, we found ourselves winding in among the foot-hills of the first ranges. The contrast with the desert was sudden and most marked, for the earth here, saturated by the water from the snows above, allowed the vegetation to develop itself immediately above the line of the desert. Around the small villages we passed were groves of olive- and fruit-trees together with fields of sorghum and maize. In winding curves the road mounted higher and higher, joining with the others that came up out of the plain to form one of the larger feeders of the great single trunk-route that finally leads up over the Atlas to carry the stream of travel down the other side to Tarudant, Tikirt and the Sudan.
On the summit of the first range we came upon some villages hung on the slope of a ravine, at the bottom of which flowed a shallow, swift mountain stream. Judging from the configuration of the foot-hills, I inferred that it must, of course, be an affluent of the Tensift, which flows near Marrakesh; but I was informed that it disappeared entirely on the plain, seeping down and eventually contributing so much of its water has had not already evaporated to the system of subterranean canals and thus reaching the capital through these strange and unnatural channels. However, toward the end of the rainy period, when the snows and the glaciers in the mountains melt, this river carries such an augmented stream that it breasts the parching heat of the desert and strews its seasonal channel across the plain with yellow earth and stones, which remain there after the rains to mark its way, when it shall come again in its developed might.
This whole locality around the villages is called Tanaout Gray and yellow houses with open galleries and with terraces on their roofs clung to the rocky walls and overhung the ravine below like swallows' nests. Small, narrow windows, doors half sunk in the ground, dirty yards, a mosque with a spindly minaret, cattle wandering through the streets, crowds of children, chickens— all this formed a well-known picture such as I have so often seen in the aouls of the Caucasus, with their same small groups of houses, narrow streets crawling along the mountainside, dirt and crowds of lazy natives.
With a chauffeur who whirled us around dizzy curves at a sickening speed and with apparent disregard of all caution, we were soon at the summit of the first pass, from where we looked back upon the spot of the Tanaout villages, the range of green hills and, beyond them, the dead, reddish-gray plain that floored the valley across to the wall of the Jebilet range, glimmering on the horizon. Directly in front of these mountains lay the little dot which we knew to be the oasis of Marrakesh, and, straining my sight, I could just make out the minaret of the Kutubia mosque.
To the south quite another landscape—a narrow valley, widening as it dropped, led down to the plain between the two high ranges of the mountain, which there overtowered the narrow silvery trail of a river. Small houses were scattered about the upper valley, carrying with them their checker-boards of fields, across which men could be seen drawing the slow and patient lines of the plough. Farther on flocks of sheep were browsing, and over against the mountainside a big village with a mossque, a minaret and a green-roofed kubba nestled in distant tranquillity.
"That is the town of Mulay Brahim to which crowds of the pious make pilgrimages every year to visit the kubba of this wali," explained Captain Deverre. "It is the most frequented place for the tribes of all the Atlas, so much so that a hadj from anywhere in these regions is supposed to visit this shrine several times before starting on the road to Mecca."
As we pointed downward and twisted like an eel in among the mountain rocks and along the breakneck road that at times overhung sheer drops of hundreds of feet we met or passed many of these pilgrims of the Faith coming from or going toward the sacred town. At times they would break their Indian file and stop near some tree to offer sacrifice to the spirit inhabiting it. Rags, bits of yarn or gaudy-colored strips of cloth were the offerings which again carried me back to the open country in Asia, where I had myself placed such tribute on hundreds of trees—shreds from the lining of my jacket or hair from the mane of my Bielak, the faithful companion who carried me from Amyl to Narabanchi Kuré. I used to make such offerings, not because I believed in the demons of the holy trees but in order to avoid stirring up the devil that was more certainly resident in the heart of my Mongol guide.
When we had dropped down to the bottom of the narrow valley and were running between olive-groves, green fields and pasturing herds, we came suddenly upon some workings in reddish earth with rectangular basins, or reservoirs, full of water. It was a saltern, in which natives were carrying water in buckets made of goatskin and emptying it in the uppermost basin. There, we found, they left it until evaporation began, when they drew it off into a lower reservoir, allowed it to remain in this for a time and thus carried it down through several levels, until they brought the very heavy solution to the lowest tank, where they left it to form the salt crystals. From this last they shoveled it out to dry in piles.
On our way up the ascent of the second range we passed two kasbas that were real fortresses with thick walls, watch-towers, narrow slits of windows, loopholes and powerful gates. They were perched on the summits of solitary hills, where they were difficult to attack and offered the defenders every advantage in repulsing an enemy. The population of each of these kasbas forms a commune, which is governed by an elected caid or, quite as often, by a Marabout.
This locality we were passing is known as Asni, is very rich but has not been thoroughly explored. The kasbas were surrounded by groves of olives, almonds and fruittrees, while everywhere about the country I saw cultivated fields, vineyards, excellent pastures and an abundance of water in the streams flowing from the mountains. Further up, the slopes were covered with oaks and sandaracs and above the timber-line were faced with bare, gleaming rocks, reaching up under the snows that capped their summits.
Here in this region I saw immense varan, or lizards, of the largest size found in these latitudes. Herodotus called this species "earth crocodiles." Those that I ran across were over three feet in length, with long necks and with the strong legs and feet that give to this type a speed of locomotion above the average in the species. Scared by the roar of the car, they made off very quickly, slashing about with their strong tails, which they use in attack or defense with the power and precision of a whip.
About six miles beyond Asni we met a group of mountaineers trekking toward Marrakesh with panniers of charcoal laden on donkeys.
"Do you realize," said the Captain, "that these men will receive about five francs apiece for their charcoal? And they trudge for five or six days to make the journey of a hundred miles there and back, just for five francs. It is evidently the hereditary nomad blood, calling for a change of scene, that makes the native so fond of such trips."
In the bed of a river we were crossing I found some bits of rock-crystal that made me curious and sent me prospecting up the stream, which had its source above among the broken and jagged rocks that were picturesquely colored in yellows and reds. As I searched, I found in the stream-bed a large number of beautiful pieces of onyx, agate, quartz and bits of green copper ore. If a Siberian or Canadian gold prospector found himself in this region, he would certainly investigate carefully the bed of this stream, into which ran numerous little affluents that carried down broken bits of quartz from the colored rocks, which, as far as I could judge from the few samples I found, were conglomerates. While I was looking about I flushed a flock of partridges and scared up something else in the brush lhat made off with so much noise that I inferred it must have been a boar.
A little farther on we stopped for a few moments to feast our eyes on a beautiful panorama which lay spread before us. The mountains parted here, forming a great valley down which the road wound to Tagadirt el-Bour, that lay hidden from us by an intervening forest of sandaracs. The mountain tops were bathed with light-suffused fog and lighter sunny mists. Above us stretched skyward the highest summits of the Atlas with snow in the crevices and on their northern slopes. In the great, sweeping circle formed by these rugged crags I was told that one might readily come upon a panther hunting mountain-sheep.
"We are now well up in the real High Atlas," Captain Deverre observed.
As he spoke, I recalled and discussed with him some of the facts communicated to me by Monsieur Orthlieb, the French political administrator for this district. From time immemorial this expanse of mountains has been divided between three powerful, feudal princely families, the Glawi, Gundafi and Mtugi, which have often fought with the sultans and which were related to both the Almoravide and Saadite dynasties. They are the so-called "Masters of the Mountains," or the great caids, with whom even the sultans do not like to meddle but ever strive to maintain the best relations. The rulers of Rabat and Fez had always to remember that, at the first sign from these Masters of the Mountains, the mountaineers from the shores of the Atlantic to the easternmost branches of the Atlas would rise—the Haha, Sous, Draa and Shlu tribes—and with them the peoples camping behind the Anti Atlas, those mixed Arabs and Berbers who also carry strains of the peoples from the Sahara.
When the French came into Morocco they met at first hostility and constant intrigue on the part of the great caids but finally arrived at an understanding with them, leaving undisturbed their feudal organization, dating from as far back as the thirteenth century, their laws and their established traditions. It is, in fact, a state within the state of the sultan, or, more correctly, three states within the Moroccan territory; but, instead of indulging in civil strife, this political combination has become a guarantor of peace in southwestern Morocco. The French, on the one hand, vouched for the sultan's recognition of the feudal laws and relationships and, on the other, assisted the ruler in coming to an arrangement with the mountain tribes for the payment of tribute and the furnishing of warriors. But the great caids know, however, that the first instance of disobedience or revolt would be sufficient for the sultan to declare them enemies and to bring French armies from Marrakesh and the Atlantic ports, which would ultimately drive them from their strongholds and deprive them of their special laws and their governing authority. Consequently the caids vie with one another in their administrative control of their warlike mountaineers as well as in the application of certain features of European science to their civic problems. In no part of French Morocco is it so safe as in the High Atlas, where no French military outposts exist and where a woman or a child can travel without fear of molestation. The Masters of the Mountains, through their severe tribunals, see to it that the peace and security of the countryside is not violated. Once during an observation on the apparent abnormality of this condition in the Atlas, one of the French made the remark:
"If the great caids had not been there we should have had to invent them."
The Sous mountaineers, with their capital at Tarudant, are the most numerous and the most warlike of the mountain tribes. They do not belong to any one of the three principal branches of the Berber race, Mesmudas, Zenatas nor Senhadjas; they speak a Shlu jargon, have a light, olive complexion with little hair on their faces and usually possess agile, flexible bodies. Past-masters that they are in fighting with knives, their curved kumia becomes a terrible arm in their hands. Before the Almoravides and during the period of the civil wars the men of this tribe were robbers and picked their prey along the caravan routes leading from Central Africa into Morocco.
In their legends they preserve memories of the time when their ancestors held the whole country up to the very shores of the Mediterranean, until, repulsed by invaders, who were probably Vandals or Normans, they were forced to retreat southward. Their legends also affirm that on their retreat they could not carry all their treasure with them and consequently hid it in various places between the Mediterranean and the river Regreg, especially in the forest of Mamora. It is even claimed that certain of their Marabouts still guard ancient pieces of leather and copper tablets which carry the plans of the places where the hidden treasures lie. The reputation of the Sous as the most skilled among treasurehunters may have something to do with the fact that they lost their own wealth and have long continued the search for it. An old Spanish merchant told me that at certain times almost all of the able-bodied men of the tribe trekked north to hunt for these caches which their ancestors made. In any case it is a fact that many ancient objects have been found by these Sous in the ruins of the old Roman towns.
When the great caids with fire and sword established their authority throughout the Atlas, the golden days of freebooting for the Sous came to an end. They could no longer attack with impunity the caravans of the merchants transporting goods and running slaves from the Sudan and Senegal to Fez, Tangier and Meknes. The caids protected these merchants, requiring from them and even from the sultan, in the manner of the old Baltic barons, a heavy fee and saw to it that any robbing of them that was to be permitted should be legalized and for their benefit alone.
Through this change the Sous, after being accustomed to the free and open life of highway brigands and of wandering far in search of finer booty, were compelled to settle down and become agriculturalists. But this was not in their blood, and it was real tragedy that fell upon the tribe, when misery and hunger stalked the villages. They had but little land and no liking for clearing the forests to make more. This struggle with nature on the mountain slopes was no life for a freebooter.
So the men began to emigrate. Who does not know the "bakjal Sousi" of the Moroccan, towns, sellers of dried fruits and aromatic herbs? Others, especially those belonging to the religious sect of the great Marabout, Musa es-Semlali, wander throughout all Morocco and Algeria as acrobats and jugglers. They likewise band themselves together and go much farther afield, as laborers to Europe and even to America, where they readily take on the external features of the different culture but never abandon their Islamic faith and save penny after penny to bring them back to the mountains of their warlike ancestors, where the mysterious tablets with the plans of buried treasure are preserved, together with the greatest treasure of all, the most beautiful women in Morocco. I have seen them, lithe, proud and bold. With their attractive mouths and arresting eyes they reminded me of the mountain women in the Caucasus, those fiery sheeagles of Imeritia and Georgia. It is consequently not strange that it should be the dream of rich men of Fez and Marrakesh to possess such women nor that these girls of the Sous, either captured or bought, often reach high honors in the harems of the Masters of the Mountains, of the pashas or even of the sultans.
I remember having seen once an epitomized presentation of a drama of the Sous mountains. It was in one of the small oases grouped around picturesque Biskra. I was there on Monday, the market day, when the natives came in from the neighboring villages and camps to sell sheep and wool and to purchase in return cloth, tea and sugar. Groups of them with their donkeys had gathered in the small kisaria, where everything was in a flux of movement, as the merchants inspected sheep and bags of wool. Suddenly a commotion started and a crowd began collecting about an open space, in the center of which a man with a fair, olive complexion stood out conspicuously among the darker, almost black nomads from the desert.
"It is the Sous, Abd er-Rbi'a," was heard passed on from mouth to mouth. The man was fixing some short staves in the ground, seven of them in all. Then he made a formal harangue and, throwing aside his dark-blue boumous, drew from his belt seven kumias, as curved as sickles. With great skill he threw them at the boards with such force that the blades sank into the wood or split the staves and fell to the ground. As the circle pressed forward to toss their coins into his basket, Er-Rbi'a went up close to one woman after another in his audience, looked searchingly into her eyes and asked in a whisper:
"Are you Aksa? … Are you from the land of the Sous and were you the wife of Abd er-Rbi'a? …"
The women only laughed, the crowd laughed, and the mad mountaineer pressed his head between his thin hands and cried in despair:
"Again I have not found her. Where are you, delight of my eyes? Where are you, Aksa, the pride of unhappy Er-Rbi'a?"
The crowd only laughed the louder, and one of the onlookers, a stout Arab merchant, pulled at the bournous of the mountaineer and asked him whom he was seeking.
"My wife, the beautiful Aksa, whom they took from me ten years ago when I went to search for treasure in Mamora."
"So long ago?" laughed the merchant. "Aksa has had time to grow old. Better look for a young girl here among our women."
Once more the crowd shouted with laughter and bantered him with jokes and gibes. Er-Rbi'a stood silent in their midst, waited for calm to return and then answered in serious tones:
"I don't want your women. They are slaves, timid, cringing and thoughtless. They fade like flowers in the sun."
"And yours from the mountains, are they better?"
"The women of the Sous are the daughters of kings. When they grace one with their regard, happiness sings in the heart; when they love a man, to him is given the paradise of Allah on earth."
Er-Rbi'a spoke his last words sadly and, looking off into the distance where the contours of low-lying mountains, the last outposts of the Atlas, showed above the hazy dust-clouds of the desert, wrapped himself in his bournous and went away to dream and continue his search.
Such is the Sous land and such is the fate of their beautiful women and of their men who follow their old instinct for roaming the earth. It would seem that some ancient, never-ending tragedy has its stage in these mountains.
Once the sultans located sugar plantations in these uplands and forced the Sous to cultivate the soil and harvest the crop. Story has it that the mountaineers often asked for Christian slaves as a reward for their work. Perhaps it was they who brought the lighter element into the complexion of these people and infused into the women of the tribe pride and the queenly gift of love with the desire for equality. Who shall ever search out the true thread of the drama? At least, so much one can gather from the old books—that, when the Saadite sultans erected in Marrakesh the pantheon for their dead, they paid for the marble from Carrara with sugar and with the Italian and Spanish slaves who had been dragging out lives of bondage in the mountains of the Atlas. Some echoes come down out of the past from these words of the old chroniclers, waking conjecture and suggesting epics, tragic and unspoken.
Filled with these thoughts and impressions I came back to Marrakesh from the excursion into these mountains where the great caids govern, as feudal masters, the tragic Sous, the despised Draa and the oldest Berber tribes, which have given warlike and splendid monarchs to the whole of Maghreb.