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Updated: June 15, 2025
Even then it is probable that the throng is mostly composed of slaves, household servants, and women of the lower bourgeoisie; but as they are all dressed in mauve and rose and pale green, with long earrings and jewelled head-bands flashing through their parted veils, the illusion, from a little distance, is as complete as though they were the ladies in waiting of the Queen of Sheba; and that radiant afternoon at Moulay Idriss, above the vine-garlanded square, and against the background of piled-up terraces, their vivid groups were in such contrast to the usual gray assemblages of the East that the scene seemed like a setting for some extravagantly staged ballet.
Fugitives from Spain came to the new city when Moulay Idriss founded it. One part of the town was given to them, and the river divided the Elbali of the Almohads into the two quarters of Kairouiyin and Andalous, which still retain their old names. But the full intellectual and artistic flowering of Fez was delayed till the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
A fine French road runs from Moulay Idriss to Meknez, and we flew on through the dusk between wooded hills and open stretches on which the fires of nomad camps put orange splashes in the darkness. Then the moon rose, and by its light we saw a widening valley, and gardens and orchards that stretched up to a great walled city outlined against the stars.
For centuries Moulay Idriss had held out fanatically on its holy steep; then, suddenly, in 1916, its chiefs saw that the game was up, and surrendered without a pretense of resistance. Now the whole thing was over, the new conditions were accepted, and the chief of police assured us that with the French uniform at our side we should be safe anywhere. "The Aïssaouas?" he explained.
No wonder the students of Kairouiyin say with the tortoise, "Burn me rather than take me away." Outside the sacred precincts of Moulay Idriss and Kairouiyin, on the other side of the Oued Fez, lies El Andalous, the mosque which the Andalusian Moors built when they settled in Fez in the ninth century.
There at his left was the smoky shelf of blind Moulay's café black-faced, white-eyed old Moulay. Moulay was dead now many years, but the men still sat in the same attitudes, holding the same cups, smoking the same chibouk with the same gulping of bubbles as in the happy days.
We lingered under the pergolas of Volubilis till the heat grew less intolerable, and then our companions suggested a visit to Moulay Idriss. Such a possibility had not occurred to us, and even Captain de M. seemed to doubt whether the expedition were advisable.
This twilight adds to the mystery of the souks, making them, in spite of profane noise and crowding and filth, an impressive approach to the sacred places. Until a year or two ago, the precincts around Moulay Idriss and El Kairouiyin were horm, that is, cut off from the unbeliever.
All the population was in the square and on the roofs that mount above it, tier by tier, against the wooded hillside: Moulay Idriss had better to do that day than to gape at a few tourists in dust-coats. Short of Sfax, and the other coast cities of eastern Tunisia, there is surely not another town in North Africa as white as Moulay Idriss.
The favourites fluttered about him, respectful but by no means awestruck, and the youngest began to play with the little Prince. We could well believe the report that his was the happiest harem in Morocco, as well as the only one into which a breath of the outer world ever came. Moulay Youssef greeted Mme.
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