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IN MOROCCO
small native infi rmaries to the important hospitals of Rabat,
Fez, Meknez, Marrakech, and Casablanca.
Mobile sanitary formations supplied with light motor
ambulances travel about the country, vaccinating, making
tours of sanitary inspection, investigating infected areas, and
giving general hygienic education throughout the remoter
regions.
Native patients treated in 1916 over 900,000
“ “ “ 1917 “ 1,220,800
Night-shelters in towns. Every town is provided with
a shelter for the indigent wayfarers so numerous in Morocco.
These shelters are used as disinfection centres, from which
suspicious cases are sent to quarantine camp at the gates of
the towns.
Central Laboratory at Rabat. This is a kind of Pasteur Institute. In 1917, 210,000 persons were vaccinated throughout the country and 356 patients treated at the Laboratory
for rabies.
Clinics for venereal diseases have been established at Casablanca, Fez, Rabat, and Marrakech.
More than 15, 000 cases were treated in 1917.
Ophthalmic clinics in the same cities gave in 1917, 44,600
consultations.
Radiotherapy. Clinics have been opened at Fez and Rabat for the treatment of skin diseases of the head, from which
the native children habitually suffer.
181
EDITH WHARTON
The French Department of Health distributes annually
immense quantities of quinine in the malarial districts.
Madame Lyautey’s private charities comprise admirably
administered child-welfare centres in the principal cities, with
dispensaries for the native mothers and children.
VII
A SKETCH OF
MOROCCAN HISTORY
Note. – In the chapters on Moroccan history and art I have
tried to set down a slight and superfi cial outline of a large and
confused subject. In extenuation of this summary attempt I hasten to explain that its chief merit is its lack of originality.
Its facts are chiefl y drawn from the books mentioned in
the short bibliography at the end of the volume; in addition to
which I am deeply indebted for information given on the spot to
the group of remarkable specialists attached to the French administration, and to the cultivated and cordial French offi cials,
military and civilian, who, at each stage of my rapid journey, did
their best to answer my questions and open my eyes.
I
THE BERBERS
In the briefest survey of the Moroccan past account must
fi rst of all be taken of the factor which, from the beginning of
recorded events, has conditioned the whole history of North
Africa: the existence, from the Sahara to the Mediterranean, of
a mysterious irreducible indigenous race with which every
successive foreign rule, from Carthage to France, has had to
reckon, and which has but imperfectly and partially assimilated the language, the religion, and the culture that successive
civilizations have tried to impose upon it.
This race, the race of Berbers, has never, modern explorers tell us, become really Islamite, any more than it ever really became Phenician, Roman or Vandal. It has imposed its
habits while it appeared to adopt those of its invaders, and
has perpetually represented, outside the Ismalitic and Hispano-Arabic circle of the Makhzen, the vast tormenting element of the dissident, the rebellious, the unsubdued tribes of
the Blad-es-Siba.
Who were these indigenous tribes with whom the Phenicians, when they founded their fi rst counting-houses on
the north and west coast of Africa, exchanged stuffs and pottery and arms for ivory, ostrich-feathers and slaves?
187
EDITH WHARTON
Historians frankly say they do not know. All sorts of material obstacles have hitherto hampered the study of Berber
origins; but it seems clear that from the earliest historic times
they were a mixed race, and the ethnologist who attempts to
defi ne them is faced by the same problem as the historian of
modern America who should try to fi nd the racial defi nition of an “American.” For centuries, for ages, North Africa has
been what America now is: the clearing-house of the world.
When at length it occurred to the explorer that the natives of
North Africa were not all Arabs or Moors, he was bewildered by the many vistas of all they were or might be: so many
and tangled were the threads leading up to them, so interwoven was their pre-Islamite culture with worn-out shreds of
older and richer societies.
M. Saladin, in his “Manuel d’Architecture Musulmane,”
after attempting to unravel the infl uences which went to
the making of the mosque of Kairouan, the walls of Marrakech, the Medersas of Fez – infl uences that lead him back to
Chaldæan branch-huts, to the walls of Babylon and the embroideries of Coptic Egypt – somewhat despairingly sums up
the result: “The principal elements contributed to Moslem
art by the styles preceding it may be thus enumerated: from
India, fl oral ornament; from Persia, the structural principles of
the Acheminedes, and the Sassanian vault. Mesopotamia contributes a system of vaulting, incised ornament, and proportion; the Copts, ornamental detail in general; Egypt, mass and
unbroken wall-spaces; Spain, construction and Romano-Ibe-
188
IN MOROCCO
rian ornament; Africa, decorative detail and Romano-Berber
traditions (with Byzantine infl uences in Persia); Asia Minor,
a mixture of Byzantine and Persian characteristics.”
As with the art of North Africa, so with its supposedly indigenous population. The Berber dialects extend from the Lybian desert to Senegal. Their language was probably related to
Coptic, itself related to the ancient Egyptian and the non-Semitic dialects of Abyssinia and Nubia. Yet philologists have
discovered what appears to be a far-off link between the Berber and Semitic languages, and the Chleuhs of the Draa and
the Souss, with their tall slim Egyptian-looking bodies and
hooked noses, may have a strain of Semitic blood. M. Augustin Bernard, in speaking of the natives of North Africa, ends,
much on the same note as M. Saladin in speaking of Moslem
art: “In their blood are the sediments of many races, Phenician,
Punic, Egyptian and Arab.”
They were not, like the Arabs, wholly nomadic; but the tent,
the fl ock, the tribe always entered into their conception of life.
M. Augustin Bernard has pointed out that, in North Africa,
the sedentary and nomadic habit do not imply a permanent
difference, but rather a temporary one of situation and opportunity. The sedentary Berbers are nomadic in certain conditions; and from the earliest times the invading nomad Berbers
tended to become sedentary when they reached the rich plains
north of the Atlas. But when they built cities it was as their ancestors and their neighbours pitched tents; and they destroyed
or abandoned them as lightly as their desert forbears packed
their camel-bags and moved to new pastures. Everywhere be-
189
EDITH WHARTON
hind the bristling walls and rock-clamped towers of old Morocco lurks the shadowy spirit of instability. Every new Sultan
builds himself a new house and lets his predecessors’ palaces
fall into decay; and as with the Sultan so with his vassals and
offi cials. Change is the rule in this apparently unchanged civilization, where “nought may abide but Mutability.”
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