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"In the name of the Most Merciful know that there was a ruler in Taza before Mulai Ismail Prince of the Faithful, he who overcame in the name of God reigned in the land. Now this ruler had a Jew for wazeer.
In the north, round Fez and Taza, there was severe fighting, spreading thence to the Riff country. Here, people did no more than curse the Pretender in public or the Sultan in private, according to the state of their personal feelings.
In the spring all the upper Mesopotamian towns are inundated by flocks of storks, but I have never seen them in greater force than in Taza. On almost every housetop were a couple, throwing their heads back and clattering their beaks in the odd way that gives them their onomatopoetic Arabic name of Lak-Lak.
After waiting a few days further, to be certain that an attack would not be unexpectedly ordered, I set out on my return trip to Baghdad. The river at Taza was still up, but I borrowed six mules from an accommodating galloping ambulance, and pulled the car across. We went by way of Kifri, a clean, stone-built town that we found all but empty.
This temporary sultanship always falls in spring, about the beginning of April. Its origin is said to have been as follows. When Mulai Rasheed II. was fighting for the throne in 1664 or 1665, a certain Jew usurped the royal authority at Taza. But the rebellion was soon suppressed through the loyalty and devotion of the students. To effect their purpose they resorted to an ingenious stratagem.
It sounded like the rattle of machine-guns; so much so that on entering the village, for the first second I thought that the Turks were opening up on us. No native will molest a stork; to do so is considered to the last degree inauspicious. There was but little water in the river running by Taza, and we managed to get the cars through under their own power.
A large field hospital had been set up close to the banks of the stream at Taza. We afterward heard that the river had risen so rapidly that many of the tents and a few ambulances were washed away. By morning it had settled down into a steady, businesslike downpour. We found that we were inextricably caught in among some low hills.
Dubdu is three days' journey southeast of Fez, and one day from Taza, in the region of the Mulweeah. Taza is the capital of the well-watered district of Haiaina, and one of the finest cities in Morocco, in a most romantic situation, placed on a rock which is shaped like an island, and in presence of the lofty mountains of Zibel Medghara, to the south-west.
They put two boxes on a mule and drove the twenty mules to the courtyard of the palace that the Jew had taken for himself. The man in charge of the mules declared he had a present for the Sultan, and the Unbeliever, whose grave was to be the meeting-place of all the dogs of Taza, gave orders that the boxes should be brought in and set before him.
When it pleased Allah to take the Sultan and set him in the pavilion of Mother of Pearl appointed for him in Paradise, in the shadow of the Tuba tree, this Jew hid his death from the people until he could seize the throne of Taza for himself and ride out under the M'dhal. So they collected forty of their bravest men and packed them in boxes one man in a box.
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