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The greater part of the royal family reside at Tafilett, the ancient country of the Sherfah, or Shereefs, and is still especially appropriated for their residence.

Sous is the richest of these provinces, and equal to any other of the northern districts. Its trade in dates, ostrich feathers, wax, wool, and hides, particularly in gums, almonds, and slaves, is very great. All the Saharan caravans must pass through this country, except those proceeding viâ Tafilett to Fez. Teroudant, its capital, is a very ancient city, and was built by the ancient Berbers.

They are divided into two branches, the Sherfah Hoseinee, so named from the founder of the dynasty, who began to reign at Taroudant and Morocco in 1524, and over all the empire in 1550, and the Sherfah El Fileli, or Tafilett, whose ancestor was Muley Shereef Ben Ali-el-Hoseinee, and assumed sovereign power at Tafilett in 1648, from which country he extended his authority over all the provinces of that empire.

The principal and most flourishing place was a long time called Tafilett, but is now according to Callie, Ghourlan, and the residence of the Governor of the province of Ressant, a town distinguished by a magnificent gateway surrounded with various coloured Dutch tiles, symmetrically arranged in a diamond pattern. This traveller calls the district of Tafilett, Afile or Afilel.

Aghmat, formerly a great and flourishing city and capital of the province of Rhamna, built by the Berbers, and well fortified is now fallen into decay, and consists only of a miserable village inhabited by some sixty families, among which are a few Jews Aghmat lies at the foot of Mount Atlas, on the road which conducts to Tafilett, near a river of the same name, and in the midst of a fine country abounding in orchards and vine-yards; Aghmat was the first capital of the Marabout dynasty.

The Sultan's authority is now indeed purely nominal, and the French look forward to the time when these fine and centrally placed oases will form "une dependance de l'Algérie." The only countries in the South which now pay a regular impost to the Emperor, are Tafilett, limited to the valley of Fez, Wad-Draha as far as the lake Ed-Debaia, and Sous.