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He was a builder as well as a fighter, and the noblest period of Arab art in Morocco and Spain coincides with his reign. After his death, the Almohad empire followed the downward curve to which all Oriental rule seems destined. The Beni-Merins or Merinids were nomads who ranged the desert between Biskra and the Tafilelt. It was not a religious upheaval that drove them to the conquest of Morocco.
Their exquisite tombs at Marrakech commemorate in courtly language the superhuman virtues of a series of rulers whose debaucheries and vices were usually cut short by assassination. Finally another austere and fanatical mountain tribe surged down on them, wiped them out, and ruled in their stead. The new rulers came from the Tafilelt, which has always been a troublesome corner of Morocco.
The Arabs, however, of the eastern side of Mount Atlas, at Tafilelt, and Draa, pronounce their Moggrebyn tongue with much less harshness than their western neighbours. But I must acknowledge, that of all Arabic dialects, none appeared to me so disagreeable and so adulterated as that of the young Christian fops of Cairo and Aleppo.
Particularly I may mention the horde of brigands of Wady-es-Sour, which infest the routes between Touat and Tafilelt. But this horde is more placable, and mostly, after levying black-mail, will allow a caravan to pass uninterruptedly on its way.
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