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But in other parts of Barbary, I have found, on the contrary, an opinion very prevalent, that the religion of the English is very much like the religion of the Moors, arising, I have no doubt, from the absence of images and pictures in Protestant churches. This evening, when visiting the Ben Weleed, conversation turned upon the Bas-Relief.
On my observing that the slab belonged to a date prior to the Christians, they were astonished, and asked, "Who were before the Christians?" They have no idea of people before the Christians. The conversation was suddenly stopped by the appearance of a remarkable personage, the quasi-Sultan of the Ben Weleed. This was the famous rich and powerful Haj Ben Mousa Ettanee.
After breakfast visited the quarter of Ben Weleed. Saw the giant Touarick stretching his unwieldy length upon a stone-bench.
The Algerine dervish is playing off some fine tricks. This afternoon he got together a dozen low fellows of the Ben Weleed, and went to say the fatah before the Governor.
Picked some up and could hardly believe but what they were burnt bricks. The Ben Weleed, who accompanied Essnousee, instead of the short and direct road through the streets of the Ben Wezeet, took a circuitous route round the inner walls of the city to arrive at the gate of departure, showing me how great was still the force of these factions.
My taleb only wrote the following when I asked him to give some historical information respecting these factions: "The Ben Weleed and the Ben Wezeet are people of Ghadames, who have quarrelled from time immemorial: it was the will of God they should be divided, and who shall resist his will? Yâkob, be content to know this!"
There is a singularity about the language of Ghadames: it has differences as spoken by the two factions of the Weleed and the Wezeet, the provincialisms of the country. It is highly probable that the various Berber dialects are the fragments of the language of those formidable, but doubtful, auxiliaries, which so often balanced and changed the fortune of Roman and Carthaginian arms.
I saw Sheikh Makouran and Mohammed Ben Mousa Ettanee, the two principal merchants representing the factions of Weleed and Wezeet, very busy in conversation upon the neutral ground of the market-place, talking over their mutual losses. Both have lost property to a great amount by this Shânbah irruption. 21st. The departure of the ghafalah is deferred to the 24th.
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