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Updated: May 17, 2025
So far the Sultan knows only two or three places in his whole kingdom, and has practically spent his life at one Morocco City, or Marrakesh, as the Moors call it. Nor would his journeys be reckoned blessings by the unfortunate country through which he passed.
Even the music and songs are, naturally enough, all African, with the strange interval, the rhythm which halts and races where no European music ever halted or raced; and the tom-tom, the gimbri, the ear-piercing Moorish flute, all fall upon the English ear as things intensely strange and strongly fascinating. Marrakesh boasts no aristocracy: it is a city of the people.
Orihuela, on the road from Carthagena to Alicante, still looks oriental with its palm-trees, square towers and domes, and Elche is just another such, with flat roofs and the orthodox kasbah, now a prison. The enormous number of palms which surround the town recall Marrákesh, but they are sadly neglected.
His province, at any rate, rose against him to a man at the late Sultan's death, and wrecked his castle, the Government disposing of him after he had escaped to Marrakesh. The orchards of almond-trees, with thriving beans planted underneath them, and the fat fields of barley, spoke volumes for the prosperity of his days.
From end to end of its plains the powder "spoke," and the burning douars lighted the roads that their owners had plundered so often. Neither old nor young were spared, and great basketsful of human heads were sent to Red Marrakesh, to be spiked upon the wall by the J'maa Effina.
And here one pays tribute also to great Mulai Abd el Kader Ijjilalli, yet another saint whose name is very piously invoked among the poor. The mosque by the Dukala gate is worthy of note, and earns the salutation of all who come by way of R'hamna to Marrakesh.
It was a transformation scene; it was a weird dream weird to the point of seeming unreal, unlike men and the haunts of men, though all the time rampant with humans. When the Sultan went to Fez, a party of soldiers and goldsmiths and craftsmen of all sorts went with him from the city of Marrakesh, in number over forty thousand souls. But the exodus made no appreciable difference in the soks.
In southern Morocco, with its capital at Aghmát, on the Atlas slopes, was formed what later grew to be the kingdom of Marrákesh, the city of that name being founded in the middle of the eleventh century. Towards the close of the thirteenth, the kingdoms of Fez and Marrákesh became united under one ruler, whose successor, after numerous dynastic changes, is the Sultan of Morocco now.
One afternoon we went over the garden belonging to the late basha of Marrakesh Ben Dowd almost the only garden I have ever seen in Morocco which had in it flowers; and these were roses from Spain, valuable and beautiful, the pride of the basha. There was a charming summer-house half built, and a conservatory nearly finished, in different parts of the garden.
"As for Europeans, they have been rambling all over the country with their wonted freedom from interference. A Frenchman, travelling almost alone, has just returned from Imintanoot. Another has twice crossed the Atlas. Needless to say the route to Marrákesh is almost as devoid of other than pleasurable novelty as a stroll on the Embankment or down the shady side of Pall Mall.
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