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The truth is, respectable Moorish females detest this system of domestic slavery, and wish to see it abolished, notwithstanding that they are bred in it, and are themselves little better than slaves.
We embarked once more on board the little Leon Belge for Gibraltar, well pleased with our brief visit to the curious Moorish capital. The Sultan of Morocco is supreme, and holds the lives and fortunes of his subjects at his will. He is judge and executor of laws which emanate solely from himself. Taxation is so heavy as to amount to prohibition in many departments of enterprise.
Now and then the monotony was broken by an arabesque window, but, as a rule, there were none opening outward; like all Moorish houses, they had a small inner court upon which doors and windows opened, thus avoiding being overlooked, and promoting the seclusion of the harem, which seems to be the first and foremost idea of the Eastern people.
The crew were casting loose the boats at the quarter davits. If there was an English engineer on board of her, he had clothed himself in Moorish costume, for no one in a European dress could be seen. "She is settling in the water," said Louis, as he observed the condition of the disabled vessel. "In a word, Louis, she is going to the bottom!" exclaimed Captain Scott.
It is well known, that the vernacular histories, both traditionary and written, of the wars of the Moorish empire, agree in stating, that from the middle of the seventeenth century, Timbuctoo was occupied by the troops of the emperors of Morocco, in whose name a considerable annual tribute was levied upon the inhabitants; but that the negroes, in the early part of the last century, taking advantage of one of those periods of civil dissension bloodshed, which generally follow the demise of any of the rulers of Barbary, did at length shake off the yoke of their northern masters, to which the latter were never afterwards able again to reduce them.
And there came with him thirty and six kings, and one Moorish queen, who was a negress, and she brought with her two hundred horsewomen, all negresses like herself, all having their hair shorn save a tuft on the top, and this was in token that they came as if upon a pilgrimage, and to obtain the remission of their sins; and they were all armed in coats of mail and with Turkish bows.
The two Moorish chiefs were taken prisoners and thirteen hundred of their men were killed in the battle. The Cid then became a vassal of the Moorish king of Saragossa. After a while Alfonzo recalled the Cid from banishment and gave him seven castles and the lands adjoining them. He needed the Cid's help in the greatest of all his plans against the Moors. He was determined to capture Toledo.
Suddenly two figures appeared beneath the doorway; one was that of a bare-headed and bare-legged Moorish boy of about ten years of age, dressed in a gelaba; he guided by the hand an old man, whom I at once recognised as one of the Algerines, the good Moslems of whom the old Mahasni had spoken in terms of praise in the morning whilst we ascended the street of the Siarrin.
But the chief charm of that exquisite countenance was in an expression of softness and purity, and intellectual sentiment, that seldom accompanies that cast of loveliness, and was wholly foreign to the voluptuous and dreamy languor of Moorish maidens; Leila had been educated, and the statue had received a soul.
The Moorish sultans entertained their guests and held big parties in courtyards like this one. But they lived with their families and servants in another part of the Alhambra, with gardens and a sparkling pool where the royal ladies bathed. Looking out through certain of the arching, carved windows, the sultans could see the snow-covered Sierra Nevada Mountains.
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