Identifier: inmorocco00wharuoft (find matches)
Title: In Morocco
Year: 1920 (1920s)
Authors: Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937
Subjects: Morocco -- Description and travel
Publisher: New York Scribner
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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watch-towers. The Giralda watchedover civilized enemies in a land of ancient Romanculture; the Koutoubya stood at the edge of theworld, facing the hordes of the desert. The Almoravid princes who founded INlarrakechcame from the black desert of Senegal; themselveswere leaders of wild hordes. In the history ofNorth Africa the same cycle has perpetually re-peated itself. Generation after generation of chiefshave flowed in from the desert or the mountains,overthrown their predecessors, massacred, plun-dered, grown rich, built sudden palaces, encouragedtheir great servants to do the same; then fallen onthem, and taken their wealth and their palaces.Usually some religious fury, some ascetic wrathagainst the self-indulgence of the cities, has beenthe motive of these attacks; but invariably thesame results followed, as thev followed when theGermanic barbarians descended on Italv. The con-querors, infected with luxury and mad with power,built vaster palaces, planned grander cities; but ( 128 )
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From a plmtugrapit from the Service ties Deaux-.irls an Maroc Marrakech—The Little flarden (willi jjaiiited doors) in l)ackgrouncl, Palace (if the Baliia MARRAKECH Sultans and Viziers camped in tlieir golden housesas if on the march, and the mud huts of the tribes-men within their walls were but one degree removedfrom the mud-walled tents of the hied. This was more especially the case with Marra-kech, a city of Berbers and blacks, and the lastoutpost against the fierce black world beyond theAtlas from which its founders came. SMien onelooks at its site, and considers its hLstorj-, one canonly mar^-el at the height of civilization it attained. The Bahia itself, now the palace of the ResidentGeneral, though built less than a hundred yearsago, is t\-pical of the architectural megalomania ofthe great southern chiefs. It was built by Ba-Akmed. the all-powerful black Vizier of the SultanMoulav-el-Hassan.* Ba-Ahmed was e^ndentlv anartist and an archaeologist. His ambition was tore-create a

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