The pillars of Hercules

December 7th.

The Cazaba, the fortress with the beautiful gate, has a separate government, and is inhabited by a distinct people; a remnant of a tribe, the Oudaïah, which, on the failure of the plans of the Sultan against Clemcen, in 1832, was sacrificed to the public indignation—against himself. They furnish an instance of the tenacity with which these races, or rather families, cling to life. The shred of the broken tribe settled in these ruins has still friends, as they told me, but a long way off, in the desert beyond Timbuctoo. After the revolution of Rabat, they were seized by the like fancy, when their Caïd, apprehending mischief, took sanctuary in the tomb of a saint. The Sultan, Spartan-like, would not violate it, but converted it into a prison. Prisons, without doors or guards, were to be seen, in the time of Muley Ismael; it being customary with him to order a culprit to gaol, as with us an officer is put under arrest.

The beautiful quarter of the Cazaba had been offered to the Jews, but refused, for fear of exposure in case of war. They selected the eastern angle of the town nearest to the great tower, for the Jewry, and it is impossible to imagine any thing more filthy. The narrow passages between the houses are divided into heaps of dung, and holes of rats. The first house I visited contained no less than fifty souls. It was a hollow square with columns, and bright colours, and mosaics; with fragments of Gothic fret-work and corridors; and so small and neat, and so densely peopled with heads stuck out from every pigeon-hole above, below, and around, that it was like a toy-shop or a piece of mechanism brought on the stage, or a little gem theatre of itself. I defy the most active and pains-taking imagination to picture to itself a Moorish house; it is quite impossible to describe it, yet equally so to resist making the attempt: I will, however, await a more fit occasion, or a more congenial humour.

From the roof (for like that of Rahab at Jericho, it was built on the city wall) we had a good view of the tower. On my expressing a desire to go to it, they uttered exclamation on exclamation, and could not have been more dismayed, had I proposed to them to wade to the dreaded bar. They told me that a Jew, if he ventured into the grounds below, would be shot like a duck or a dog, and that a Christian would fare no better. There are nineteen places of, or rather rooms for, worship. They do not use the word synagogue;—they say, Beth-el-Elim, House of Knowledge. This carries these settlements to a period antecedent to the Greek rule, when the term synagogue was introduced.

They are governed by a Gistar,[213] or council of twelve elders. The sheikh collects the taxes; and for this purpose is aided by two Moorish soldiers: he sends the refractory to the public prison. In every Mussulman country which I have hitherto visited, the chiefs of tribes are themselves responsible to the goab, and are imprisoned in case of default: the people then pay to save them. Amongst the Brebers the Jews wear arms, and dress like the rest: a Jew going there will not be able to distinguish his co-religionists from the Mussulman. Each has his patron, who resents an injury done to his Jew as if done to himself. So recently as the beginning of the seventeenth century, there was a Jew prince in the mountains of Ref.[214] An old Jew gravely assured me that the river Sabation was near Tunis.

The difference of their treatment by the Moors may partly be the result of their own manners: it could not be of ancient date. The Jews invited the Moors over to Spain. On the growth of Gothic power, the Jews and Moors were treated as one people: they were persecuted and expelled together. They found refuge in Barbary, and preferred it to any other country.

The Jewish ablutions consist in washing the hands and face. The water is poured from a jug; the left hand performs the service to the right as the most honourable, then the right does the same to the left. So far it is the same as the Mussulman abdest, only it does not extend to the feet, and is performed three times a day, while the Mussulman repeats it five times. Soap is not used in the religious ablution of either; but the Mussulman washes with soap, or gayule, in the morning, and before and after each of his two meals. The Jew has to wash all his body on Fridays, but without soap: this is no offset to the weekly bath of the Mussulman, established by custom though not enjoined by law, and repeated besides upon other occasions.

They have to take off their shoes in passing a mosque, which is not without its influence on their apartments. No traveller in the East can have failed to remark the establishments attached to the mosque for purification, &c., or the cleanliness and peculiarities of the corresponding parts of private houses. In washing, the Mussulmans use only the left hand, and reserve the right pure for eating. The Spaniard, Ali Bey, lost his life by breaking this rule: master as he was of the language and the religious ceremonies, his corns led to suspicion of his origin. He was watched, and, being observed to use his right hand in washing, when a Mussulman would not have used it, he was at once proved to be an impostor feigning Islamism, and shot. I was informed that the Jews are not more particular, and for the portions of the house where water is constantly splashing about, they do not use wooden pattens.[215] The relative position of two races living intermixed, cannot fail to be influenced by their relative cleanliness; and the contempt in which the Jews are held in the towns must, in part at least, be owing to this cause.

The Jews of Barbary look down upon the Jews of Christendom,[216] whom they call Ers Edom. A rabbi, referring to the conversion of the rich, said, “We have only to undergo the temptations of poverty and danger—they have to endure those of ease and wealth.”

They tax themselves for the Holy Land to the amount of one half their tax to the Moorish Government. I saw one of the collectors from Jerusalem, who told me that their people in Morocco amounted to one million.[217]

The Jews are the only portion of the people not, therefore, subject to the haratch, or poll-tax: they do not pay it. This fact entirely confirms what I have said respecting the original conquest. The tax now paid by the Jews is of modern introduction;[218] formerly, they presented to the Sovereign a golden hen with twelve chickens in enamelled work, and this was their quit-rent. At Tunis and Tripoli they do so still. The vexations to which they are subject are of this nature:—A son of the Sultan being resident here, and for a time really the governor, sent to them a young lion to keep, directing that a certain quantity of meat should be given him daily, and fixing four hundred dollars as his weir geldt in case of death. The Jews supplied him so plentifully, that he died of indigestion. The Prince then sent a hyena, fixing six pounds of beef, “besides the bones,” as his daily allowance, and settling his head-money at one thousand dollars: the Jews began again by giving him ten pounds “besides the bones.” The Prince was, however, soon after disgraced and imprisoned, and the Jews since then have led a quiet life.

They are subject to blows from any one and every one, and the occasion is afforded by every holy place, where the shoes have to be taken off. Still, I have not remarked that they suffer much. Up to the present time, I have not seen a Jew beaten or insulted, and I have witnessed on several occasions their reception by Moors of the first rank, in which it would have been impossible, but for the dress, to have known the difference. Besides, the Moors are not proficients in the art of “self-defence,” and could not plant a blow if they set about it.

At a Jewish marriage I was standing beside the bridegroom when the bride entered: as she crossed the threshold, he stooped down and slipped off his shoe, and struck her with the heel on the nape of the neck. I at once saw the interpretation of the passage in Scripture, respecting the transfer of the shoe to another, in case the brother-in-law did not exercise his privilege.

The slipper in the East being taken off in-doors, or if not, left outside the apartment, is placed at the edge of the small carpets upon which you sit, and is at hand to administer correction, and is here used in sign of the obedience of the wife, and of the supremacy of the husband. The Highland custom is to strike, for “good luck,” as they say, the bride with an old slipper. Little do they suspect the meaning implied. The regalia of Morocco is enriched with a pair of embroidered slippers, which are, or used to be, carried before the Sultan, as amongst us the sceptre or sword of state.

This superstition of the old slipper reminds me of another. In the Highlands the great festivity is the ushering in of the new year. The moment is watched for with the utmost anxiety; every one then rushes into the streets, with posset in hand, embracing whoever he meets, and shouting “Huy meneh!” This word has puzzled the traveller and antiquary; it was the very word which the Greeks repeated, no more knowing its meaning than the Highlander: Hymenea or Hymeneu! and out of which come, Hymen, Hymn, &c. Meneh was Jesboal among the Sabeans, from minah or minik, fortifications, the procession going round the walls. Men is habitation in Egyptian and Coptic—minith contracted to met, is the name for a village in Egypt; it is preserved in the Highlands in midden. From this word come many names of places in Spain, Italy, Africa, Greece, and Asia Minor. It gives the names to founders, as Menes, Minos, Maon, &c.; thence are derived a multiplicity of the terms in common use,—manes, ammunition, mansion; manitoni, month, maniac, &c., and of course the words in Greek and Latin, through which they have reached us. Minoïa Gaza meant the Walled Gaza.

The Sabbath commences on Friday evening, when the shadow ceases, or when three stars can be seen, and lasts to the same period of Saturday. During these hours the Jew cannot spread an umbrella; it would be pitching a tent:—he cannot mount on horseback; it would be going a journey:—he cannot smoke; it would be lighting a fire:—he cannot put one out, even if it caught the house:—he cannot buy or bring any thing, nor speak of any worldly concern, nor break the seal of a letter.

The most remarkable practices are the Phylacteries and the mystical garments. As to the first, I had hoped here to find some traces of an earlier origin than that which is assigned to it—the Babylonian Captivity; but was disappointed. The Phylacteries are not as our Guercinos and Rembrandts make them,—a scroll of parchment habitually paraded on the forehead. They are small boxes covered with leather, containing passages from Exodus and Deuteronomy,[219] bound by long narrow straps, one upon the forehead, and another upon the left arm, at the time of prayer. The box is placed on the forehead as the seat of the senses, and upon the arm nearest the heart, as the seat of life. The strap is twisted seven times round the arm, three times round the hand, and three times round the second finger. Two peculiar knots are used for tying them, one to represent Dalif, and the other Ud. The Mazonza (Mystery of the Covenant) is a small roll of parchment with the same passages put in a piece of cane and nailed to the door-post, on the right side as you go out.

The Phylactery, and the Mazonza are to the Jews what amulets are to the Moors; with, however, this difference, that they protect against sin as well as against evil. One of the Talmudists writes:—“Whoever has Phylacteries on his head, Mazonza on his door, and fringes on his garment, is assured that he will not sin; for it is written, ‘And the threefold cord is not easily rent.’”[220]

The mystical vestments have a very different interest, and are so connected with the costume of this country that I shall reserve this subject till I come to the Moorish haïk. The following passage from the Baal Haturim, expresses the preservative influence of these usages upon the Jewish people:—

“Israel is son of the Holy King, for they are all marked by Him, in their bodies, with the sacred mark (circumcision); in their garments by robes of merit (Taleth and fringes); on their heads, by the Phylactery boxes with the name of the Lord; in their hands by the sacred straps; in their houses by the Mazonza. They are marked in every thing that they are the sons of the most High Being.”

The indifference of the Jews to apostacy may seem incompatible with the instance I have quoted in a former chapter: age makes the difference. The Moors are not doctrinal: they possess blandishments. The Jews do not fear them as contending with age, but as seducing youth; and their instinct appears, alike in yielding in the one case, and resisting in the other. They are gainers in both, for in the one they would lose by apostacy, in the other by martyrdom.

I have several times visited the wife of the renegade, and the mother of the Jewish boy. Speaking the Spanish of the sixteenth century as the Jews of Barbary do, she recalled the condition of the Jews in Spain, as the fate of her husband and child did something of the cause of their expulsion. The peninsula, which did not share in the frenzy of the Crusaders, remained a stranger to the religious fanaticism which resulted from them. At the time when the Jews were proscribed throughout the rest of Europe, they were, in Spain, the favourites of monarchs, princes, and rulers—they were possessors of land—they had most of the wealth and commerce of the different kingdoms in their hands, and appear to have been twice as numerous as their forefathers when they entered the Holy Land.[221] Then did the persecutions here assume a savage character unknown elsewhere.

No cause has been assigned for the sudden and bitter spirit of persecution which, at so late a period, arose against them. It may have taken its rise in their being the fiscal agents for king, bishop, monastery, and proprietor. First assailed from social animosities, their manner of screening themselves (which was afforded in no other country) aroused the inextinguishable hatred of the Christians. That part of their history, suggested by circumstances before me, is their facility in receiving baptism, then, of course, relapsing; and there can be no doubt that many of these nominally conforming Christians, and their children and descendants, filled every grade of the priesthood, and occupied the episcopal thrones of Spain. Out of this again grew the Inquisition, the most artful instrument of despotic power, and which, in Europe, has been mistaken for a religious institution. Finding that conversions were worthless, the proof of apostacy was sought in the traces of blood. The processes of the Inquisition were afterwards imitated by Parliament in England, when, fabricating a church by-law, it framed articles to catch consciences, as it now does resolutions to catch votes. The two great events are the emancipation from bondage, and the conquest of a territory. Promises, rights, obligations, and commandments, are all understood with reference to these. The stranger within their gates was to obey the commandments. He partook of necessity in certain ceremonies: he might at his option be admitted to all, unless excepted, like the Philistines, Amalekites, &c., because of historical events. Hence the difference with Mussulmans and Christians, whose bond is wholly religious, and who aim at extinguishing all distinctions derived from birth and race. The Jews having no idea of converting others, estimate differently from us an apparent conformity with the creeds of the people among whom they sojourn.[222]

The Jews have in common with the Mussulmans everything like doctrine—the unity of the Godhead—the attributes of God—the inspiration of the Sacred Books, the Creation, the scheme of Providence, the prophets on earth, the chosen people, the law of Sinai and of Horeb, the ceremony—the abhorrence of idolatry. There is nothing the Jew believes that the Mussulman does not believe; there is no ceremony the Jew performs that the Mussulman does not respect, or meat that he prepares, which the Mussulman cannot eat.[223] The passage, therefore, from Judaism to Islamism appears easy. It was amongst the Jews that Islamism first and most rapidly spread: fifty thousand were converted in one day, yet in its subsequent stages it has been by them most uncompromisingly resisted. Millions of Christians have become Mussulmans; of the Jews, no influx has taken place. I know but of two cases of apparent conformity: the one is a tribe at Thessalonica, who are called the Changed (Dunmeh). The other a tribe in Suz, also known by the name of the Changed.[224] In both cases they live as a distinct race; do not intermarry with the Mussulmans; and, though enjoying the privileges of Islamism, are not looked upon by the Jews as renegades.

The father of the boy whose story I have told, professed Islamism to escape popular vengeance, aroused by the extortions of a governor at Dar el Baida, whose agent he was. He nevertheless continued to live in the Jews’ quarter with his wife and child: instead of bringing up the child in his new faith, he sedulously inculcated on him the observance of the law. The Jews seem to have looked upon him as one who had incurred a misfortune. His Islamism was rather a disease, for which he had to be pitied, than an apostacy for which he was to be abhorred; and as the Jews took no offence at his religious profession, so the Moors took none at his domestic habits.

The Mussulmans accept the practices of the Jews, but not so the latter. Both cut the throats of animals, and allow “the blood to run like water on the earth;” but the Mussulman does not inspect the bowels of the ox or the sheep to determine whether it be kaser (imperfect) or tarefa (forbidden); he does not, before and after the operation, observe whether there be a flaw or jag in the knife. He does not examine whether the windpipe of the animal be completely severed—he does not abstain from “seething the kid in its mother’s milk;” that is, from mixing meat, or the juice of meat, in the same dish with butter, or from eating the internal fat. The food, therefore, of the Mussulman, is rejected by the Jews, even to the dishes from which they have eaten. The great obstacle to their amalgamation with the Mussulmans is the character of Christ. In the Mussulman system Christ is the Spirit of God, and is to be the Judge of the world: this, and the recognition of the Gospel by the Mussulmans, is the stumbling block in their path, and hence the common expression, “A Jew must become a Christian before he can be a Mussulman.”

The Jew in Barbary appears to me more Jewish than elsewhere. The burden on him is greater, and religious support less. They are Sadducees, if I am to judge by the conversations I have had with some; and have no idea of believing anything. In proportion to the association of a system of religion with domestic matters is it enduring. Those of Menu and Confucius stand, while the more theoretic one of Zoroaster has passed away. That of Menu presents not one, but a hundred different examples; for as many castes as there are, so many systems may there be said to be, and these are all based on injunctions respecting food and ceremonial. Confucius’s system is the simplest form of natural religion, and the purest rule of morals: it has no superstition, no priesthood, no castes, no doctrines—whence then its durability? Its basis is the ceremonial of society. It has minutely regulated the forms of intercourse and the mode of salutation of the nearest relatives.

Judaism in Barbary is not propped up by belief, nor is it by etiquette; but chiefly, I should say, by cookery. In this respect they are under constant restraint; ever linked to the race, and disjoined from all others. With what pleasure must they reach a Jewish house or quarter, after travelling for days or weeks, unable to taste almost any food that is to be got; to solace themselves with a cup of wine, or to partake of their own much-loved and not despicable Dafina!

Who has not heard of the olla podrida—to what corner of the earth has its fame not reached? The honour belongs, nevertheless, to the Jews: the Spaniard has only copied and disfigured. The original is a remarkable specimen of human ingenuity, which has constructed a culinary go-cart for the Hebrew conscience, and reconciled the Israelite’s predilections with his scruples. He is forbidden to make or touch fire on the sabbath; he desires to have a hot breakfast, dinner, and supper on that day; and he obtains these meals without infringing that law. He has invented a fire, which, without mending or touching, will last over the twenty-four hours, and a pot which will furnish out of its single belly, a whole meal, and three meals in the day perfectly cooked in the morning, and not overdone at night. This is the Dafina,[225] and the day on which all cooking was forbidden, has, in consequence of the prohibition, become the feast-day of the Jews.

In these countries, kitchen-ranges and hot tables are unknown. It is the practice to make as many fires as there are dishes to be simultaneously cooked. Those who have served in India understand how soon a few holes are made in the ground, and how speedily a multiplicity of pans are simmering over them. This tent practice is here preserved in doors, and little earthen pots, called nafi, constructed so as to allow draught, contain the charcoal, and on these the pots are set to boil. In preparing the Dafina, the first thing is the build of the charcoal in this small fire-pan, to make it burn slow and last long. This is managed by four layers of charcoal in lumps, and charcoal pounded. It is lighted on the Friday about four hours before sunset. The ingredients are successively put in: the last just before the Sabbath commences. The whole is first made to boil, then the fire is reduced by the stratification I have mentioned.

Ingredients.—Grabangos, potatoes, (English and African), eggs, beef, rice, marrow, rasped biscuit, parsley, marjoram, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and sometimes neat’s feet and sweetbreads.

Produce.—First course.—Top. Eggs in the shell. Bottom, stewed potatoes, sweet and common.

Second course.—Top. Rice and marrow sausages. Middle. Boulli. Bottom. Meat sausages.

Third course.—One large dish of stewed Grabangos.

Recipe.—The grabangos are an excellent vegetable when well cooked, but require great care. They must be first steeped several hours with wood ashes. They are put in the pot first, as soon as the water has boiled; next the eggs in the shell; next the meat sausages; then the meat; after that the rice sausages, and last of all the potatoes: water equal to one-third of the rest.

Meat Sausage.—Beef chopped very fine, fat (not of the entrails, but pared from the muscle), marrow, rasped biscuit, the seasonings above enumerated, and eggs to bind.

Rice Sausage.—The rice is parboiled. It is then mixed with the soft fat from the muscle, the same seasoning but not so strong, and the binding of white of egg.

In large families the dish contains sometimes thirty or forty pounds of beef, four dozen eggs, and eight sausages made of the largest entrails of the bullock. Potatoes are of modern introduction, but the sweet potato is an ancient produce of the country. The English potato is called Roman, as coming from Europe.