In Barbary

From the Porte de France, where Europe comes to an abrupt end and the Orient dramatically begins, the walls and roofs of Old Tunis rise like terraces, one above the other, to the Kasbah, which, as in the case of all Oriental citadels, occupies the highest point, so that in the event of a revolt its guns may sweep the city. In the days when Tunis was a corsair stronghold, its swift-sailing galleys the terror of the Mediterranean, the Kasbah was the seat of power, its massive ramparts inclosing the palaces of the beys, the barracks of the Janizaries, and the bagnios in which were confined the Christian slaves. To-day, however, there is little about the Kasbah to suggest its one-time importance, for only the exterior wall remains, and the old buildings have disappeared to make room for the casernes in which are housed the troops of the French garrison.

Yet few areas of like size in the world have witnessed so much bloodshed, cruelty, and suffering. At the height of the pirate power the Christian captives in Tunis alone numbered upward of ten thousand; they were treated like wild beasts; worked like draft-animals, and sold like cattle to the highest bidder. But they had their revenge, for when, in July, 1535, the Spaniards under Charles V besieged Tunis, the Christian slaves confined in the citadel suddenly rose in revolt, massacred their guards, and helped to secure the victory of the emperor.

This reverse was very far from crushing the power of the corsair chiefs, however, and a few years later found them again ravaging the seaboards of Italy, France, and Spain, exacting tribute from every seafaring nation. Even the European coastwise traffic was not immune. In the closing years of the sixteenth century a young Frenchman of a religious turn of mind, while voyaging from Marseilles to Narbonne, was captured by the corsairs, taken to Tunis, and sold at public auction. His heart stirred with pity by the sufferings which he witnessed during his two years of captivity in the city, he dedicated the remainder of his life to ameliorating the wretched lot of Christian captives and galley-slaves. In recognition of the great services which he rendered to suffering humanity, he was canonized by the Church of Rome, being known to history as St. Vincent de Paul.

Though vanished are its glories, the Kasbah is well worth visiting if for no other purpose than to view the superb panorama commanded by its ramparts. Seen under the morning sun, the Tunisian capital is a pearl-white city, though its whiteness is relieved from monotony and glare by numerous patches of green—the palms and orange-trees in the gardens of the Dar-el-Bey, the shade-trees along the Avenue Jules Ferry, the Avenue de France, and other thoroughfares, and the blue-green tiles used so effectively in the decoration of the mosques, particularly on their domes and pointed minarets.

The view from the Kasbah, especially in the late afternoon, when the shadows begin to lengthen and the fort-crowned hills which encircle the city are tinged with coral, is one never to be forgotten. To the southward, an opal imbedded in green velvet, lies the salt lake, Sebkhet-es-Sedjoumi. Two or three miles to the west the white palace of the Bardo rises from a sea of verdure. To the northward, beyond the Park of the Belvedere, with its sweeping drives and charming Moorish pavilions, the fir-clad peaks of Djebel Merkez and Djebel Ahmar rear themselves against the African sky. Eastward, across the turquoise-colored, flamingo-haunted lagoon of El Bahira, bask in the sunshine the ivory buildings of La Goulette; while somewhat more to the north, beyond the rose-brown arches of the Roman aqueduct, are the slopes on which Carthage once stood so proudly, the whole dominated by the twin peaks of Bou-Kornein.

Descending from the heights of the Kasbah, a few hundred paces bring us to the town palace of the rulers of Tunisia, the Dar-el-Bey, now seldom used as a royal residence save during the month of Ramadan, for during the rest of the year the bey dwells at his suburban palace of La Marsa, on the sea-shore beyond Cape Carthage. The interior of the Dar-el-Bey is an unhappy combination of Oriental taste and European tawdriness. Though some of the reception-rooms and the private apartments of the bey are as fine as anything in the Alcázar or the Alhambra, their walls done in tiles of exquisite design and color, their ceilings decorated with the delicately chiseled, lace-like plaster-work called nuksh hadida, the state apartments present a painful contrast, having been perpetrated in the early years of the Victorian epoch, when Turkey-red carpets, crimson brocade hangings, ornate crystal chandeliers, and an excessive use of gilt were considered the acme of richness and good taste.

Save, as I have already remarked, during the fasting month of Ramadan, when he finds his city palace more convenient for participating in the numerous religious ceremonies, the present ruler visits the Dar-el-Bey only once or twice a week for the transaction of official business and to sit in judgment on criminals. For, though the regency is French in pretty much everything but name, it has been deemed wise to maintain the fiction of Tunisian independence by permitting the bey a good deal of latitude so far as the punishment of his own subjects is concerned; his ideas of justice (la justice du bey it is called, in contradistinction to la justice française) usually working out in a fashion truly Oriental.

In Tunisia all death sentences must be confirmed by the bey in person, the condemned man being brought before him as he sits on his great gilt and velvet throne in the Hall of Judgment. Until quite recent years the condemned were put to death in the grounds of the Bardo, a hanging being one of the sights offered to European visitors, but of late this barbarous custom has fallen into desuetude, executions usually being carried out in the barrack-yard of the Beylical Guard at La Marsa.

In the days of the present ruler’s father the murderer was suddenly brought face to face with the members of his victim’s family in the presence of the bey, for such things are always done dramatically in the East. The bey then inquired of the family if they insisted on the murderer paying the death penalty, or if they were willing to accept blood-money, a sum equivalent to one hundred and forty dollars, which in theory was paid by the murderer to the relatives of the deceased as a sort of indemnity if he was permitted to escape with his life. If, however, he did not possess so large a sum, as was frequently the case, the bey made it up out of his private purse. Nine times out of ten, if the victim was a woman, the blood-money was promptly accepted—and praise be to Allah for getting it!—for in Africa women are plentiful but gold is scarce. In case the blood-money was accepted the murderer’s sentence was commuted to imprisonment for twelve months and twenty-seven days (which is a considerably severer punishment than murderers usually receive in certain American cities; say, Chicago), though I have never been able to ascertain the reason for adding the odd twenty-seven days.

But it may have been that the victim was an only son, or the father of a large family, or a person of political importance, in which case the relatives invariably demanded the extreme penalty of the law.

“Do you insist on his blood?” inquired the bey, a portly, easy-going Oriental who was known to have a marked aversion to taking human life, even in the case of murderers.

“We do, your Highness,” the spokesman of the family would reply, salaaming until his chéchia tassel swept the ground.

“Be it so,” said the bey, shrugging his shoulders. “I call upon you to bear witness that I am innocent of his death. May Allah the Compassionate have mercy upon him! Turn him toward the gate of the Bardo,” which last is the local euphemism for, “Take him out and hang him.”

The Palace of the Bardo, a short distance to the north of the city, is the Tunisian Windsor, though nowadays it is seldom if ever occupied. Formerly the winter residence of the sovereign, it is the center of a congeries of villas, kiosks, pavilions, offices, barracks, and stables, which are grouped helter-skelter in the inconsequential Oriental fashion, without the slightest regard to harmony, order, or convenience. Though the French destroyed the fortifications which originally surrounded it, there is much that is majestic and beautiful about the place, its white walls, marble terraces, and fluted columns rising from well-kept lawns and hedged gardens ablaze with flowers.

The Bardo is divided into three parts: the private apartments of the bey, which, though almost never used, are as rigidly closed to the public as the dwelling of any other Moslem gentleman; the state apartments, which he occasionally uses instead of those in the town palace, the Dar-el-Bey, for holding courts of justice, official audiences, and receptions; and the Alaoui Museum.

Access to the Bardo is gained by the Staircase of the Lions, which is flanked on either side by numerous undersized and not at all imposing marble images of the Felis leo, couchant, rampant, and in attitudes suggestive of a well-trained poodle asking for a biscuit. Yet the general effect is pleasing, for the slender columns with their carved capitals are beautifully proportioned, and the Moorish ceilings, strongly reminiscent of those in the Alhambra at Granada, are superb.

Through porch and patio floored and colonnaded with white marble and paneled with glorious old tiles arabesqued in soft yellow, peacock green, and Persian blue, we enter a typical Oriental palace, with guards in tawdry uniforms dozing in the corners and with the atmosphere of a somewhat garish stage-setting. A purely Oriental interior is nearly always pleasing, for your Arab’s sense of the beautiful is generally well developed. But once Europe is permitted to intrude, everything is spoiled, for the Oriental’s taste in regard to things European is quite untutored and garish. Cut-glass chandeliers, gilt clocks, oil paintings, and Louis Seize furniture are as absurd and out of the picture when introduced into a room with marble floors, tiled walls, and exquisitely fretted Moorish ceilings as were the horrible “Turkish corners” found in nearly every American home a generation ago.

The principal state apartments of the Bardo are the Throne Room, the Hall of Justice, and the Salle des Glaces, so named, I suppose, from its mammoth crystal chandeliers. The last named is just such a room as may be found in almost any European palace, the walls lined with life-size paintings of Louis Philippe, Napoleon III, Victor Emmanuel of Italy—the first of the name, I mean—an incredibly ugly man with a pug-nose and enormous mustachios, Francis Joseph as a youth in a white uniform so tight at the waist as to suggest the use of corsets, and, of course, a whole portrait-gallery of the beys who have reigned in Tunisia ever since the Cretan adventurer, Hussein ben Ali, made himself master of the country at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The pictures of the present bey, Sidi Mohamed el Habib, and of his immediate predecessor on the throne, Sidi Mohamed En Naceur Bacha, show dignified, intelligent, amiable looking men; but the earlier rulers, with their fierce, dark faces, glowering from beneath enormous turbans, suggest the pirates that they were.

Adjoining the state apartments, in the rooms formerly occupied by the women of the royal harem, has been gathered a remarkable collection of antiquities and of Moorish and Arabic work under the name of the Musée Alaoui. As this is not intended to be a guide-book to Tunis, I have no intention of trespassing on the field of Herr Baedeker and Messrs. Thomas Cook & Son by enumerating the many beautiful and interesting objects—sculptures, faiences, arms, glassware, terra-cotta—which the museum contains, though passing mention should be made of its collection of ancient mosaics, which is one of the finest in existence. Occupying nearly half of the floor of the great hall, an apartment sixty feet in length, is an enormous mosaic in almost perfect preservation, “The Triumph of Neptune,” found at Sousse; while set in the walls are mosaics brought from various other parts of the regency—pagan mosaics from Zaghouan; representations of a circus from Gafsa; a mosaic unearthed at Tabarca depicting a Roman farm; and numerous other scenes. From these the visitor possessed of a little imagination can obtain a very graphic conception of the domestic life, recreations, and religious observances of North Africa under the Romans. What a pity, I thought, that these mosaics cannot be seen by the youth who is struggling with high school and college Latin! Then he would realize that the ancients were not the unreal, stilted figures portrayed in our dry-as-dust text-books, but that they lived and loved and fought and played games and went to circuses very much as we do, the chief difference being that they wore togas instead of trousers and shouted, “To the lions with the Christians!” instead of, “Kill the umpire!” But one of these days, perhaps, we shall teach Latin more intelligently.

When the French occupied Tunisia they announced that they would respect the religious prejudices of the Moslems in those cities whose inhabitants offered no resistance. Kairouan, the holy city of Africa, in sanctity inferior only to Mecca itself, disregarded this ultimatum, which explains why unbelievers have the privilege of entering its mosques and other sacred buildings. But the people of Tunis did not actively oppose the occupation and consequently its mosques and marabouts’ tombs, its Moslem schools and cemeteries, may not be polluted by infidel feet. In thus excluding from their places of worship the adherents of other faiths, the Moslems have the coöperation of the French authorities, the doors of the mosques bearing a warning printed in four languages: “Reservé au culte mussulman. Entrée interdite.”

To disregard this injunction, either by attempting to enter a mosque or to gain a surreptitious glimpse of its interior from without, is to invite serious trouble. Religious fanaticism runs high in Tunisia, and, even if the intruder escaped serious injury at the hands of infuriated natives, he would almost certainly feel the heavy hand of the French law; for the French have spared no effort to gain the friendship and confidence of the native population, and they have no intention of permitting the amicable relations which exist between the races to be endangered by the inquisitiveness of some irresponsible European.

Yet there are certain high points in the city accessible to Christians, from which, by not making themselves conspicuous, they can look down unmolested upon some of the mosques, catching distant glimpses of their marble-paved courts and richly tiled cloisters. There are one or two such spots in the Souk-des-Attarins, for example, from which can be seen the central court of the Djamaa-es-Zeitouna, or Mosque of the Olive Tree, the largest sanctuary in the city. From the lofty minaret of this venerable edifice close on thirteen centuries look down upon you, for it dates from the end of the seventh century, though its marble columns, spoils from Carthage, are at least a thousand years older. Like most of the great mosques of Islam, it is also a college, where several hundred Moslem youths receive instruction in literature, philosophy, mathematics, history, and religion.

On the birthday of the Prophet—June 7, according to the Roman calendar—the bey goes in state to the Great Mosque. On this occasion the souks unbar their gates at night and are ablaze with lights from end to end, and the effect is magical. By day the souks of Tunis are only narrow passages with holes in their vaulted roofs, through which the sun pours down on the flagged, uneven pavement. But on the Night of the Prophet they are turned into fairy-land, for hanging from the roofs are cut-glass chandeliers aflame with candles, supplemented by thousands and thousands of diminutive oil-lamps with glass shades of every hue, while the fronts of the shops are concealed beneath priceless silken carpets and wonderful old brocades and embroideries, so that the narrow, tunnel-like lanes are aglow with light and color. The painters have been busy too, the vaultings, pillars, and carven capitals being vivified by the lavish application of vermilion and emerald green; and set before the stalls on either side are rows of richly upholstered divans and benches, piled high with silken pillows, for the use of the merchants and their friends and the musicians whom they have hired. The covered ways resound to the throbbing of string and reed instruments, the chanting of priests, the shrill appeals of holy men and mendicants, and the deep, low hum of countless voices. The approach of the bey is heralded by a fanfare of trumpets and the wild, barbaric strains of a native military band, and, as he passes along the street, guarded by twin files of the Garde Beylicale in their picturesque uniform and followed by a throng of staff-officers, religious dignitaries, and officials, the spectators salaam to the ground, costly rugs are thrown down for him to walk upon, and the flowers which the natives wear behind their ears are cast beneath the feet of this portly, gray-bearded, benevolent-looking old gentleman, his blue uniform glittering with stars and crosses, who is venerated by his subjects as the descendant of the Prophet, the Shadow of God on Earth.

On the northern fringe of the bazaars, hard by the Bab Souika, rises the Djamaa Sidi Mahrez, a renowned saint of the fifth century of the Mohammedan calendar, whose tomb makes it a sanctuary for debtors. The mosque, which is the largest in the city, was built in the seventeenth century, having been designed by a French architect taken prisoner by the corsairs. This explains, no doubt, why it is so radically different in plan and general design from the other mosques of Tunis, the great central dome, surrounded by several smaller cupolas, suggesting, if not actually resembling, Santa Sophia in Constantinople. At twilight, when its domes, their outlines softened by an amethyst and violet sky, are transformed by the westering sun into great globes of rosy coral, the beauty of effect is positively startling. There are certain scenes—the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, the Taj Mahal by moonlight, sunset on the Upper Congo—which, by reason of their surpassing loveliness, are indelibly engraved upon the tablets of my memory, and the Mosque of Sidi Mahrez at nightfall is one of them.

Among the innumerable types forming the river of humanity which flows continually through the streets of Tunis, the women, whether Moslem or Jewish, are among the strangest and certainly are the most curiosity-provoking. Unlike the custom prevailing in other Islamic lands, where the women are usually veiled only to the eyes, the faces of the Moslem women of Tunisia are entirely covered with tightly drawn veils, usually black, but quite frequently blue, bright pink, or saffron yellow, so that they appear to be wearing the cheap cotton masks with which their sisters across the Mediterranean conceal their faces during the gaieties of carnival-time. They flit like apparitions between the high, blind walls or peer down from the latticed windows of the harems in which they are immured, as much prisoners as the Man in the Iron Mask. One wonders how much longer the women of North Africa will endure this intolerable tyranny; how many years must pass before, following the example of their Turkish sisters, they will refuse any longer to hide their pretty faces, to stay within their prisons, on days when the sun is shining and the sky is blue.

Even more fantastic of costume are the Jewish women, of whom one sees great numbers, for nearly one third of the city’s population is of the Hebrew faith. Though some of the young Jewish girls are quite slim and very pretty, with satiny skins, carmine lips, and lustrous, heavily-fringed eyes, most of the older women are of an enormous stoutness, their excess avoirdupois accentuated rather than camouflaged by their voluminous mantles and baggy pantaloons. Veritable mountains of flesh, they go waddling along on absurdly small and high-heeled slippers, only half as long as their feet, which go flap-flap-flap upon the pavement as they roll by like full-rigged sailing-ships wallowing in a heavy sea.

Many of the Jewish women still wear, set well at the back of the head, the old-fashioned pointed head-dress, shaped somewhat like a dunce’s cap, which bears a close resemblance to the “steeple-horn” hats worn by European women of rank in the Middle Ages. From the point of this depends a white silk haik which envelops the whole figure, a form of head-gear still further reminiscent of that worn by the great ladies of medieval Europe. Less frequently one sees the tight-fitting trousers or drawers, which have now been quite generally discarded in favor of the more comfortable if less picturesque pantaloons worn by Moslem women. These nether garments are cut somewhat like riding-breeches save that they fit more tightly to the leg, which is invariably a fat one, so that the effect is comic rather than alluring, particularly as the costume is usually completed by a short, loose, elaborately embroidered garment such as women wear when combing their hair. When arrayed in this costume a Jewish woman looks for all the world as though she had rushed from her boudoir at an alarm of fire without pausing to put on her skirt or take off her dressing-jacket.

On Fridays, and on the last day of the month, the Jews of Tunis make an excursion to the Jewish cemetery, which is about a mile and a half outside the town, to visit the graves of their relatives and to lament over the dear departed. For they believe that on those days the spirits of the dead revisit the earth, and hence their weekly visit to the cemetery to keep them company. On either side of the dusty, unshaded avenue which bisects the cemetery are acres of white marble slabs, raised a foot or so above the ground. They are all of the same shape and size, and all on the same level, so that they form what amounts to a vast marble pavement, which beneath the sun becomes as hot as the top of a stove. Seated cross-legged on this terrace are groups of portly Jewesses, their white haiks, supported by their pointed bonnets, giving them the appearance of so many cone-shaped tents. And when they rock themselves back and forth, prostrating their corpulent figures in what would appear to be an utter abandonment to anguish, they look like a whole encampment swaying in a heavy wind. It does not take the visitor long to realize, however, that these ostentatious genuflections and lamentations are largely a shibboleth, a simulation of sorrow, being no more indicative of real grief than the behavior of the mourners at the Wailing Place in Jerusalem.

Speaking of cemeteries reminds me that no American should leave Tunis without paying a visit to the little Protestant cemetery of St. George, now disused, which lies just within the inner city walls, here demolished, not far from the Bab Cartagena. It is a spot which holds poignant memories for every man and woman who speaks the English tongue, for here was buried John Howard Payne, author of “Home, Sweet Home,” who died at Tunis in 1852 while serving as American consul. Thirty years later the body was disinterred and removed to America, but the spot is marked by a cenotaph similar to that erected over the poet’s present burial place in Washington. As you stand there in the tranquillity of that forgotten back-water, with the teeming Eastern city flowing all around, it is not difficult to picture the longing for a cleaner, greener land of the lonely man who so truly voiced the thoughts of other homesick exiles when he wrote those immortal lines: