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 Christopher Clark

PRISONERS OF TIME

Prussians, Germans and Other Humans

 Contents

Preface
Out of the Present into the Past

The Dream of Nebuchadnezzar: Thoughts on Political Power

The Jews and the End of Time
Why Does a Battle Matter?
Learning from Bismarck?
From Prussia with Love: Zealotry, Liberalism and the Public Sphere
in 1830s Königsberg
The Kaiser and his Biographer
The Life and Death of Colonel General Blaskowitz
Psychograms from the Third Reich
The Futures of War
High in the Joyful Air
In Memory of Christopher Bayly
Brexiteers, Revisionists and Sleepwalkers
Uncertain Times

Notes
Acknowledgements
 About the Author

Christopher Clark is the Regius Professor of History at the University

of Cambridge. He was knighted in 2015. He is the author of The
Politics of Conversion, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Iron Kingdom, The
Sleepwalkers and Time and Power and is currently writing a history
of the revolutions of 1848.
To my friend Richard Sanger,
Toronto poet and playwright
‘The Snowball’

It was the history teacher’s car

Letting off steam at the
intersection.
Walking home through the snow
With a pack of friends, the stop
sign
Still recoiling from a bull’s eye,
I reloaded quick and let go—

Oh how the whole world soared

For one brief and joyous
moment,
Soared too high for its own good
…
Then came Sarajevo, the war, the
trenches,
They told the Archduke not to go
But he, like a fool, up and went.

The car started off. We hightailed

it,
Leaving a small disturbance
Raised in his rearview mirror
And him to put the two together,
His second-hand powder keg,
My snowball loaded with the
weight of events.

Richard Sanger
 Preface
Out of the Present into the Past

In early nineteenth-century New Orleans, the months when yellow

fever was in town were known as the tiempo muerto, the dead time.
People who could afford to left the city. The dead could be seen
everywhere, in parks, on open barrows, or floating down the
Mississippi. The disease known as COVID-19 is less lethal than
yellow fever, which, in a bad year, might kill as much as a tenth of
the population. In 2020, the bodies piled up in smaller numbers and
out of sight, unless you happened to be working in a hospital,
morgue or crematorium.
But the phrase tiempo muerto does capture something of the
pandemic season of 2020. The great deceleration of all things felt
like a reversal of modernity’s inner logic. Flights, speeches,
conferences, ceremonies and meetings were cancelled. Time ceased
to rush like water in a fast river. It pooled around each task. The
future became hazy. For a seasoned professor confined to his house
it was a good time to be writing a book and compiling a volume of
essays. For young people in the academic sector, on the other hand,
there were no final exams, no conferrals of degrees and no
celebrations with friends and relatives. The thresholds they had
striven towards, rites of passage marking the transition from one
phase of life to the next, had melted away. For them, it was as if the
future had been switched off.
In order to collect my own thoughts and to signal to the wider
world that historians were still thinking, even as the world around
them was shutting down, I began a series of podcast conversations
with colleagues whose aim was to explore how reflecting on the past
can help us to reflect on our present predicaments. These
discussions, broadcast under the title The History of Now, generated
suggestive and contradictory insights.
The raw terror of earlier encounters with epidemic disease was
one interesting theme. In early modern Venice and Florence, Jane
Stevens Crawshaw and John Henderson reported, fear was seen as a
threat in its own right, because it was believed to heighten the
vulnerability to infection. The public health authorities tried to
counter it by dealing with the public in a calm and compassionate
way. But the opposite problem also presented itself. When passing
health inspectors discovered a gaggle of young Florentines blithely
partying at the height of a sixteenth-century plague epidemic, they
went to a nearby graveyard, brought back the corpse of a young
woman who had recently died and threw it into the midst of the
revellers, shouting: ‘She wants to dance too!’
It was a striking feature of the COVID-19 pandemic, Samantha
Williams, Romola Davenport and Leigh Shaw-Taylor observed, that
although our capacity to amass and communicate scientific
knowledge was incomparably greater than that of our predecessors,
our ability to actually fight and treat the disease (at least until the
emergence of a dependable vaccine) was less well developed, with
the result that we tended to fall back on techniques already
employed by medieval and early modern cities: quarantine,
lockdown, social distancing, masks and the closure of public facilities
such as shops, markets and churches. Then, as now, the political
authorities had to balance the threat to life against the threat to
incomes and economic vitality. In commercial cities such as New
Orleans, Istanbul, Bombay and Hamburg, that was an impossible
balancing act.
The measures adopted by political authority to meet the challenge
of contagious disease always go to the heart of the social contract
between the rulers and the ruled, Peter Baldwin told me. Where the
danger was evident and the policies plausible and transparent, social
conformity with counter-epidemic measures tended to be high. But
where trust in the authorities was lacking, the effort to suppress
contagion by ordinances limiting movement and economic activity
could trigger protests and riots, as in today’s United States, or, as
Shruti Kapila observed, in late-nineteenth-century plague-struck
Bombay, where measures enacted by the British triggered an
uprising that culminated in the assassination of the city’s plague
commissioner and his assistant. ‘Plague is more merciful to us,’
wrote the Indian nationalist Bal Gangadhar Tilak, ‘than its human
prototypes now reigning the city.’
The habit of assigning a moral meaning to pestilence is as old as
the written record of its effects. In the Mosaic Bible, disease is often
presented as something willed by God. ‘For now,’ says the God of
Exodus (9:15), ‘I will stretch out my hand that I may smite thee and
thy people with pestilence.’ From this it followed that epidemics must
be signs of divine disfavour requiring acts of propitiation by
humanity. The towns of medieval and early-modern Europe, Chris
Briggs told me, often flanked their public health measures with
regulations forbidding prostitution, gambling, card playing and
general frivolity, on the grounds that these would further provoke an
already vexed deity. The habit has persevered: think of the
businessman and bed accessory tycoon Mike Lindell, CEO of
MyPillow® Inc., who appeared at a White House press conference
alongside Donald Trump and presented an off-piste monologue in
which he declared that the current COVID-19 pandemic was God’s
way of punishing an America that had ‘turned its back on God’.
Americans should get back to reading ‘the book’ with their families.
There has always been an alternative view, of course. In his
account of the ancient Athenian plague epidemic, the historian
Thucydides noted archly that the pious and the impious died of the
disease in equal numbers. In the Book of Job, Jonathan Lamb
reminded me, disease is not a punishment, but the consequence of
a dark wager between God and Satan. Jealous of Job’s loyalty to
God, Satan tempts the deity to let him test this virtuous man by
visiting disease and death first on his cattle, then on his wife and
children and finally on Job himself, who passes through these
horrors in a state of the profoundest confusion, because he has no
way of understanding why he is being tormented. The need for
moral understanding remains strong. Even in the relatively
secularized environment of the present-day West, there is an urge to
mitigate the meaninglessness of suffering and death by speculating
hopefully on the notion that the pandemic will leave us more
attentive to the ecological fragility of our world and more sensitive to
the bonds of solidarity and interdependence that connect us with our
fellow citizens.
It is easy to imagine that contagious diseases fan out evenly
across human populations, like billiard balls rolling across a table.
But in fact their trajectory is highly uneven, because it is nearly
always mediated by structures of social inequality. In the towns of
early modern Europe and the Ottoman Empire, Nükhet Varlık pointed
out, the wealthy could flee from crowded cities to rural retreats
where infection was less likely. In the plague years of early modern
Cambridge, the highest mortality rates were seen in the suburban
areas between Jesus College and Barnwell, where college servants
and the labouring poor lived. Kathryn Olivarius told me that in New
Orleans, new immigrants, especially Irish and Germans, tended to
die in the greatest profusion from yellow fever, because they
occupied cheap rooms in crowded tenements, where rates of
infection were high. In colonial America, Sarah Pearsall reported,
epidemic disease killed fastest in populations that were already
immuno-suppressed by malnutrition. Eighteenth-century Native
Americans displayed heightened vulnerability to smallpox, Pearsall
observed, because forced displacement had already degraded their
nutritional standards.
Today, there are signs in the United States and many other
countries of a stark variation in mortalities that correlates with
income and levels of community health. Even in the most prosperous
parts of the world, the pandemic has intensified social awareness.
Attention focused on carers, nurses, social workers, paramedics and
delivery drivers – fellow citizens whose work is not usually
handsomely rewarded, but whose importance was now suddenly
conspicuous. People got to know their neighbours, brought food,
shopping and medications to vulnerable men and women locked
down in their homes, and lined up along their streets to applaud
health workers (at least until the government began telling them to
do so, at which point enthusiasm dwindled). Here, too, there were
parallels with the past. Even during visitations of the bubonic plague,
a pitiless and terrifying disease with a far higher lethality than
COVID-19, medieval English communities displayed high levels of
social solidarity. In Venice and Florence, the authorities rolled out
elaborate provisions – furlough payments, free food deliveries
(including a litre of wine per day), tax and rent freezes and efforts to
get people back into work once the disease had passed. The
smallpox epidemics of colonial America triggered stupendous feats of
caring, mainly by women, who often took in and raised the children
of dead neighbours, friends and relatives. Far from breaking the
bonds of social solidarity and unleashing anarchy, the encounter with
epidemic disease heightened social cohesion and reinforced ethical
norms.
During the lockdown, I happened to be reading Heinrich Heine’s
Französische Zustände, a series of articles written during his sojourn
in Paris in 1832. In the midst of a piece composed in April of that
year, I found the following parenthesis, inserted some years later:

At this time I was often disturbed, most of all by the horrific

screaming of my neighbour, who died of cholera. In general, I
must point out that the conditions at that time had a
regrettable impact on the pages that follow … It is very
disturbing when the sound of death sharpening his sickle
rings all too sharply in one’s ears.

Heine had seen people dragging through the streets the mutilated
corpse of a man lynched by a crowd because he had been found to
be carrying a white powdery substance, believed to be a cholera-
spreading toxin (in fact the powder turned out to be camphor,
thought by some to protect against the disease). He had seen white
bags full of corpses piled up in the spacious hall of a public building
and watched the corpse wardens counting off the bags as they
passed them to gravediggers to be loaded onto wagons. He
remembered how two little boys with sombre faces had stood beside
him and asked him which bag their father was in. A year later, the
misery and fear were forgotten. This same hall was full of ‘cheerful
little French children jumping about, the chattering of pretty French
girls, who laughed and flirted as they went about their shopping’.
The cholera months had been ‘a time of terror’, more horrifying even
than the political Terror of 1793. Cholera was a ‘masked executioner
who made his way through Paris with an invisible mobile guillotine’.
And yet its passing seemed to leave no trace on the frivolous vitality
of the city.
I began to think about the place of epidemic catastrophes in
history. There exist many wonderful studies of the impact of
epidemic disease: Richard Evans’s classic Death in Hamburg on the
nineteenth-century cholera crises, Laura Spinney’s Pale Rider on the
Spanish flu pandemic of 1918–19, Elizabeth Fenn’s Pox Americana
and Kathryn Olivarius’s study of yellow fever in antebellum New
Orleans, to name just a few. But it was striking how little trace even
the most horrific encounters with deadly pathogens had left on
mainstream historical narratives and on public memory.
In one of our podcast conversations, Gary Gerstle remarked that
he had been thinking all his adult life about the impact of war on
American governance and yet had never written a single word about
the flu pandemic of 1918–19 that killed more Americans than the
First World War. How many Americans today remember that more
compatriots died of smallpox during the American Revolutionary
Wars than as a consequence of armed conflict?
This seemed to be a problem specific to modern history – the
Black Death, Miri Rubin reminded me, was one of the central themes
of medieval studies, and the early modernists, too, were alert to the
importance of epidemic disease. The Spanish conquest of the
Americas, Gabriela Ramos remarked, might not have happened as it
did, were it not for ‘invisible allies’ in the form of diseases endemic
to peninsular Spain, but unknown in Mexico and Andean America,
whose inhabitants, immunologically naïve to these pathogens, were
all but wiped out by them. Only in the modern era did epidemic
disease seem to have been moved to the margins of visibility. Sarah
Pearsall proposed that this had to do with gender: since the lion’s
share of caring during epidemic crises fell to women, she argued,
the topic forfeited its claim on the attention of male historians.
Commenting on the near-invisibility of the flu pandemic in many
accounts of the US contribution to the First World War, Gary Gerstle
suggested that an historiography oriented towards the struggle and
destiny of nation-states was more attuned to the kinds of suffering
and sacrifice that take place on battlefields than on those that unfold
in hospital wards when mortalities surge.
And perhaps, Laura Spinney remarked, there is something
inherent in the character of an epidemic that resists our efforts to
integrate it into grand narrative. Historians, and humans generally,
are addicted to human agency, they love stories in which people
bring about or respond to change. They think in terms of long chains
of causation. But an epidemic occurs when a non-human agent
erupts without warning into the human population. A narrative
centred on humans, Sujit Sivasundaram suggested, will never be
capable of making sense of a phenomenon like COVID-19, whose
unliving pathogen crossed the boundary between the animal and the
human worlds. What was needed was a different way of telling
history, one that made space not just for the disruptions wrought by
humans, but also for the sentient agency of pangolins and civet cats
and the non-sentient energy of atmospheric systems and the
physical environment.
For the most part, humans have preferred accounts of disease
that stress either divine agency (this is a scourge from God or the
gods) or human causation. In the fourteenth century, Jews were
suspected of poisoning wells; in sixteenth-century Milan, suspicion
focused on untori, plague ‘anointers’, strangers from other Italian
towns who were believed to be smearing church altars with a
pestilential paste; in nineteenth-century Paris, crowds sprang upon
men believed to be ‘poison-mixers’. President Donald Trump spoke of
‘the Chinese virus’ and bantered with his supporters about ‘Kung Flu’,
while theories proposing that COVID-19 was concocted in
laboratories by Chinese, American or Russian scientists were rife on
the internet. One of the most virulent conspiracy theories worldwide
claimed that the COVID-19 virus was spread by 5G phone masts. A
curious variant, widespread in Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria and
Argentina, proposed that Bill Gates had personally engineered the
current pandemic in order to implant microchips in humans along
with a vaccine, so that they could be ‘controlled’ via 5G telephone
networks.
We have learned so much and we have learned so little. Watching
President Donald Trump flounder day after day in front of the
cameras as he recommended untested therapies to the public like a
snake-oil salesman from the Old West, contradicted his own medical
experts and tried to blame the virulence of the disease on the poor
governance of Democrat governors and mayors, I found myself
thinking of Wilhelm II, Germany’s last and most incompetent Kaiser.
The two men were strikingly similar. Both exhibited a tendency to
blabber about whatever preoccupation happened to be on their
minds at any given moment. A short attention span, extreme
irritability, a tendency to drift into incoherence under pressure,
anger-management issues, a hectoring, bullying demeanour,
coldness and lack of empathy, egregious boastfulness, crackpot
plans, sarcastic asides and off-colour jokes were common to both. It
was Wilhelm II who said to a group of advisers: ‘All of you know
nothing. I alone know something,’ but no one would be surprised to
hear these words on the lips of Donald Trump. Both men denounced
domestic protesters as anarchists and troublemakers and both
insisted on tough repressive measures against them. Both were
preoccupied by zero-sum scenarios of conflict in which one country’s
victory must be another’s defeat. Like Trump, the Kaiser was
completely incapable of learning from his own mistakes.
We all saw the strained expressions on the faces of the experts
and staffers standing around the president as he veered off the text
prepared for him into narcissistic speculations that appeared
completely decoupled from reality. In 1907, exactly the same
phenomenon was captured in a famous caricature by Rudolf Wilke
published in the satirical journal Simplicissimus under the title
‘During a speech by the Kaiser’. A group of generals listen to a
speech unfold in three phases. During the first, ‘The Fine Opening’,
the gentlemen look on, calm and attentive. Then comes ‘The
Awkward Bit’ – the Kaiser is off-message, the generals stroke their
Other documents randomly have
different content
 Thirty-five miles south of Mazagan, is the town of El Waladia,
situated in an extensive plain. Here is a very spacious harbour
sufficiently extensive to contain 500 sail of the line: but the entrance
is obstructed by a rock or two, which, it is said, might be blown up; if
this could be effected, it would be one of the finest harbours for
shipping in the world. The coast of El Waladia is lined with rocks, at
the bottom of which, and between them and the ocean, is a table
land, almost even with the surface of the water, abounding with
springs, where every necessary and luxury of life grows in
abundance. The view of this land from the plains above the rocks, is
extremely beautiful and picturesque.
The town of El Waladia is small, and encompassed by a square
wall: it contains but few inhabitants. It may have been built towards
the middle of the 17th century by Muley El Waled, as the name
seems to indicate.
To the south of this, at the extremity of Cape Cantin, are the ruins
of an ancient town, called by the Africans Cantin, probably the Conte
of Leo Africanus.
Twenty-five miles south of El Waladia, we discover the ancient
town of Saffy, situated between two hills, which render it intolerably
hot, and in winter very disagreeable, as the waters from the
neighbouring mountains, occasioned by the rains, discharge
themselves through the main-street into the ocean, deluging the
lower apartments of the houses; and this happens sometimes so
suddenly and unexpectedly, that the inhabitants have not time to
remove their property from the stores.
The walls of Saffy are extremely thick and high; it was probably
built by the Carthaginians; but in the beginning of the 16th century it
was taken by the Portuguese, who voluntarily quitted it in 1641, after
having resisted every effort of the Mooselmin princes, who
endeavoured to take it. The road is safe in summer; but in winter,
when the winds blow from the south or south-west, vessels are
obliged to run to sea, which I have known some do several times in
the course of a month whilst taking in their cargoes.
 There are many sanctuaries in the environs of Saffy, on which
account the Jews are obliged to enter the town barefooted, taking off
their sandals, when they approach these consecrated places; and if
riding, they must descend from their mule, and enter the town on
foot. The people of Saffy, although it has been a place of
considerable trade, particularly in corn, are inimical to Europeans,
fanatical, and bigotted, insomuch that till lately, Christians found it an
unpleasant residence. The surrounding country abounds in corn, and
two falls of rain a year are sufficient to bring the crops to maturity.
South of Saffy, we come to a defile close to the road, where only
one person can pass, called (Jerf el Eudee) the Jew’s Cliff, so
named, (as it is reported,) from a Jew, who, in passing, slipped, and
fell down the cavity, which is some hundred feet deep.
Sixteen miles south of Saffy, we reach the river Tensift, which
discharges itself into the ocean, near the ruins of an ancient town,
probably the Asama of Ptolomy. Travellers pass the Tensift on
horseback in summer, but on rafts in the rainy season, which, in
passing, drift down to a square fort surrounded by trees, on the
opposite side of the river, built by Muley Ismael for the
accommodation of travellers.
Proceeding through the plains of Akkeermute, we discover the
ruins of a large town near the foot of Jibbel el Heddid,[47]
depopulated by the plague about 50 years since; and after a journey
of 48 miles from the river, we reach Mogodor, built by the Emperor
Seedy Mohammed ben Abdallah ben Ismael, in 1760, and so named
from a sanctuary in the adjacent sands, called Seedi Mogodol; but
the proper name is Saweera,[48] a name given by the Emperor in
allusion to its beauty, it being the only town altogether of geometrical
construction in the empire.
Mogodor is built on a sandy beach forming a peninsula, the
foundation of which is rocky adjoining to a chain of lofty hills, of
moveable sand impelled by the wind into waves continually changing
their position, resembling the billows of the ocean, and hence aptly
denominated a sea of sand, which sandy sea separates it from the
cultivated country. The town is defended from the encroachment of
the sea by rocks, which extend from the northern to the southern
gate, though at spring tides it is almost surrounded. There are two
towns, or rather a citadel and an outer town; the citadel (Luksebba)
contains the custom-house, treasury, the residence of the Alkaid,
and the houses of the foreign merchants, together with those of
some of the civil officers, &c. The Jews who are not foreign
merchants are obliged to reside in the outer town, which is walled in,
and protected by batteries and cannon, as well as the citadel.
 Plate 9.

Drawn by J. G. Jackson. Engraved J. C. Stadler.

West View of (Jibbel Heddeed) the Iron Mountains

from the plains of Akkurmute
in the Province of Shedma.
1 3 Circular encampment of Arabs at a
Circular encampment of Arabs.
distance.
2 Ruined town of Akkermute destroyed by 4 Palm of Date Trees.
the plague. 5 Sanctuary at the top of the Iron
Mountains.

London Published June 4. 1811. by W. G. Nicholl Pall Mall.

 Plate 10.

Drawn by J. G. Jackson. Engraved J. C. Stadler.

A South East View of Mogodor.

1. Part of the Island of Mogodor.
2. A Ship entering the Port.
3. A Battery at the entrance of the Port.
4. Do. Do.
5. A Battery at the Landing Place.
6. Building over the Emperor’s Scale.
7. Emperor’s Coffee Alcove.
8. British Vice Consuls tower.
9. Mosque of the Citadel.
10. French Vice Consuls tower.
11. Spanish Vice Do.
12. Batavian Vice Do.
13. Entrance Port to the outer town.
14. Grand Mosque of Seedy Usif.
15. 16. & 17. Mosques.
18. Duquella Battery.
19. Duquella Gate.
20. Gate near the Sea.
21. Sandy Beach with loaded Camels approaching the town with the (Stata) or Convoy on
horseback.
22. Boat entering the passage.
23. Landing Place.
 London Published June 4. 1811. by G. & W. Nicholl Pall Mall.

The wind being high all the summer, with little intermission,
nothing will grow here in sufficient quantity to supply the inhabitants,
all kinds of fruits and vegetables are therefore brought from gardens
from four to twelve miles distant; and the cattle and poultry are also
brought from the other side of the sandy hills, where the country,
although interspersed with (Harushe) stony spots, is yet capable of
producing every necessary of life. The insulated situation of
Mogodor, and the want of fresh water, which is brought from the river
a mile and a half distant, deprive the inhabitants of all resource,
except that of commerce, so that every individual is supported
directly or indirectly by it: in this respect it differs from every other
port on the coast. The island which lies southward of the town is
about two miles in circumference, between which and the main-land
is a passage of water, where the ships anchor; but as there is but ten
or twelve feet at ebb tide, ships of war, or those of great burden, do
not enter the port, but lie at anchor about a mile and a half west of
the (Skalla) Long Battery, which extends along the west side of the
town towards the sea. This battery was constructed by a Genoese,
and is perhaps more remarkable for beauty than strength, and better
calculated for offensive than defensive operations. Proceeding
southward, towards the entrance of the road, we come to a circular
battery, on which are cannon and some mortars, besides a curious
brass gun taken by General Lord Heathfield, during the siege of
Gibraltar: the carriage, which is also of brass, is in the form of a lion,
opens in the middle, and contains the gun within it.[49] Underneath
this Battery is an extensive and copious mitfere, or cistern, into
which the rain falls from the flat roofs or terraces during the wet
season, and is sufficient to supply the garrison a twelvemonth.
Within the harbour, at the landing-place, are two long batteries
mounted with very handsome brass eighteen pounders, which were
presented to the Emperor Seedy Mohammed, by the Dutch
government. The town is defended on the landside by a battery of
considerable force to the eastward, and is fully adequate to keep the
Shelluhs and Arabs at a distance.
 Plate 11.

Drawn by J. G. Jackson. Engraved J. C. Stadler.

North View of the Port of Mogodor taken on the

Terras of a House.
1. Vessel entering the Road.
2. Battery on the Island.
3. The Island.
4. Battery on the Island.
5. A Mosque on Do.
6. A Battery on Do.
7. A Bastion where the powder is deposited.
8. A long Battery mounted with brass Cannon.
9. Custom House Entrance.
10. Emperor’s Scale.
11. Warehouses.
12. Sandy Hills and Desert Country.
13. Battery near the River.
14. The Emperor’s Palace.
15. Village of Diabet.
16. Dwaria or Summer house, attached to the Emperor’s Palace.
17. Wall to prevent the encroachment of the Sea.
18. Battery on a Rocky ground, forming the North entrance to the port.
19. Cape Tegriwelt or Ossim.
20. Road for Shipping.
21. Battery where the State Prisoners are confined, previous to their transportation to the
Island.
 22. Sandy Beach.
London Published June 4. 1811. by W. & G. Nicholl Pall Mall.

Various opinions have been given of the strength of Mogodor by

the different naval officers who have visited it, and with whom I have
gone round the fortifications by permission of the Governor of the
citadel; I think the best one is, that if the works were all completely
mounted, and well manned, it would require six or seven large
frigates to capture, or rather destroy the place;[50] for if it were
entered by storm, a dreadful slaughter would be made among the
assailants by the inhabitants from the tops of the houses, every
house being a battery from whence the most destructive fire might
be kept up with small arms. This was the case when the Arabs of
Shedma, headed by their Sheiks, entered the town one Friday
afternoon after prayers.[51] The cause was this: some persons in the
town being dissatisfied with the Governor, who was a Bukarie black,
or slave, and not a (horreh) freeman, engaged the Bashaw of
Shedma[52] to enter the town with the chiefs of his province, assuring
him, the people were well disposed towards him, and would, in the
event of his forcing an entrance, give up the government to him,
thereby securing to the town the necessary supplies of provisions,
with which it had of late been but ill supplied, owing to the enmity
between the Alkaid of the town, and the Bashaw of the neighbouring
province. Things being mature for execution, the army of Arabs
secreted themselves behind the sand hills in the hollows, about a
mile from the town, whilst the Bashaw and chiefs rode in, and
reached the entrance gate, just as it was opened after prayers, and
secured the gate-keepers until about 17 or 18 of the chief Arabs of
the province had passed into the town: by this time the inhabitants
made a desperate push, and got the gate closed again; and the
chiefs running about the streets, were fired upon by the armed
populace from the tops of the houses, until the whole were killed.
The Bashaw took refuge in an old house near the Haha gate, and
offered a large sum of money if they would spare his life, but to no
purpose; he was shot by the rabble. In the mean time the scouts
from the army secreted in the bottoms seeing no signal from the
town for their approach, were dismayed, and too soon found it
necessary to return to their homes, with the loss of the flower of the
province, the most undaunted warriors, who had so often signalized
themselves against their neighbours, the Abda and Haha clans. The
Arabs entered the town one by one, with fixed bayonets, a very
unusual thing in that country, and the whole was conducted in so
private a manner, that whilst I was walking round the town with Mr.
C. Layton, we met the Bashaw, who saluted us (for he was attached
to the English) and said we had nothing to fear, that all would
terminate to our satisfaction before the morning. As the balls were
flying in all directions, we went to the battery at the landing-place,
and there remained till the tumult was over; and when we returned
again into the town, were received by the Governor with
compliments of congratulation on our escape.
The houses at Mogodor are built as in other towns of the empire;
but those of the foreign merchants are more spacious, having from
eight to twelve rooms on a floor, which are square or long, and open
into a gallery which surrounds a court or garden in the interior of the
house, which, if occupied by merchants, is appropriated to the
packing and stowing of goods. The roofs are flat and beat down with
terrace, a composition of lime and small stones, and when this is
properly done, it will remain several years without admitting the rain,
provided it be washed over once every autumn with lime white-wash:
these terraces serve to walk on to take the air, and are preferable to
the walks out of the town, where there is nothing but barren sands
drifting with the wind. When, however, the trade-wind does not blow
strong, which is but seldom the case, during the summer months,
one may walk without being annoyed by the sand.
Mogodor has a very beautiful appearance at a distance, and
particularly from the sea, the houses being all of stone, and white:
but on entering the streets, which cross each other at right angles,
we are greatly disappointed, for they are narrow, and the houses
having few windows towards the street, they have a sombre
appearance.
In case of an attack, Mogodor would find some difficulty in
procuring water, which is brought from the river, about a mile and
half to the south, in jars and casks, by mules and asses.
 The Emperor Seedy Mohammed, to impress on the minds of his
subjects, his desire to make Mogodor the principal commercial port
on the ocean, ordered the Bashaw Ben Amaran, and others of the
great officers about his person, to bring him mortar and stones,
whilst he with his own hands began to build a wall, which is still to be
seen on the rocks west of the town; and, in order to encourage the
merchants to erect substantial houses, he gave them ground to build
on, and allowed them to ship produce, free of duty, by way of
remuneration for their expenses. This is the only port which
maintains a regular and uninterrupted commercial intercourse with
Europe.
A winter seldom passes but some ships are driven ashore here by
the south-west winds, and this happens generally between the 12th
of December, and the 22d of January, the season called Liali by the
Arabs, and the only period dangerous to shipping in the bay.
Proceeding to the south along the coast, the next port we reach is
Agadeer, or Santa Cruz, called, in the time of Leo Africanus,
Guertguessem; it is the last port in the Emperor’s dominions, on the
shores of the Atlantic. The town, which stands on the summit of the
Atlas, is strong by nature, and almost impregnable; its walls are also
defended by batteries; but the principal battery is at a short distance
from the town, half way down the west declivity of the mountain, and
was originally intended to protect a fine spring of fresh water, close
to the sea; this battery also commands the approach to the town,
both from the north and south, and the shipping in the bay. The town
called by the Portuguese Fonté, and by the Shelluhs Agurem, is still
standing at the foot of the mountain towards the sea, and the arms of
that nation are yet to be seen in a building erected over the spring.
This town was appropriated to warehouses for the merchants of
Santa Cruz to deposit their effects during its establishment.
Santa Cruz was walled round and strengthened by batteries in
1503, by Emanuel, king of Portugal, but it was taken from the
Portuguese by the Moors in 1536.
This place would make an excellent depot for the produce of
South America; the natural strength of the place, situated on the
summit of Atlas, would secure it from the attacks of the Shelluhs and
Arabs, who would soon become hospitable and friendly: they are
addicted to traffic. Plantations of olives, vines, dates, and oranges
abound in the adjacent country; it produces also gum, almonds,
copper, lead, salt-petre, and sulphur. Gold dust is brought here from
Soudan, silver from the adjacent mountains, and ambergris from the
coast to the southward.
The bay of Agadeer is probably the best road for vessels in the
empire, being large, deep, and well defended on every side from all
winds: a proof of this is, that during my three years residence there,
there was not a ship lost or injured. It abounds in exquisite fish,
immense quantities of which are caught by the inhabitants of the
town, and prepared in ovens, for transportation to the interior.[53]
In the reign of Muley Ismael, Agadeer was the centre of a very
extensive commerce, whither the Arabs of the Desert, and the
people of Soudan, resorted to purchase various kinds of
merchandize for the markets of the interior of Africa; and caravans
were constantly passing to and from Timbuctoo. The natural strength
of the place, however, its imposing situation, and capability of
resisting any force, excited the jealousy of the Emperors, which was
confirmed in 1773 by the inhabitants becoming refractory, and Talb
Solh, the governor, refusing to deliver it up. On learning this, the
Emperor Seedy Mohammed immediately levied an army, and
marched from Marocco against it; the place did not make a long
resistance, for the rebellious governor, finding it impossible to
withstand the imperial army, yielded to the persuasions of the chiefs
to accept an invitation the Emperor had sent him to come and
declare his allegiance, as on doing that he should receive his
pardon; he accordingly repaired to Tamaract,[54] but found, too late,
that this was only a stratagem to seize his person, as he was
immediately imprisoned; but procuring, by the assistance of a friend,
a penknife, which was sent to him, baked in a loaf of bread, he with
this terminated his existence, and the town soon after surrendered.
The merchants were allowed but a short time to collect together their
effects, when they were ordered to proceed to Mogodor, where the
Emperor, as before mentioned, encouraged them to build houses.
 Beyond Santa Cruz there is no port frequented by shipping: there
is a tract of coast, however, which holds out great encouragement to
commercial enterprize, and secure establishments might be affected
upon it, which would amply remunerate the enterprizing speculator;
the people of Suse are also well disposed towards Europeans,
particularly the English; and the communication, and short distance,
between this place and the provinces, or districts, where most of the
valuable products of Barbary are raised, render it peculiarly adapted
to trade.
When curiosity induced me to visit this coast, I was invited by the
Amarani Arabs to establish a factory at a certain eligible place; the
Sheik offered to get a house built for me, free of expense, and
declared that all exports and imports should be regulated by a duty
of only two per cent. on the value; as he was, however, liable to be
shot, being a celebrated warrior, and as I was not sufficiently known
in England to procure the credit necessary to carry on
advantageously such an establishment, I thought it prudent at that
time to decline the overture. If, however, I had been able to procure
the same support from Europe that I should have had from the
natives and their Sheik, an eligible opportunity would have presented
itself to open an extensive and lucrative trade with the interior, which
in a short time would have supplied the whole of the inland countries
of North Africa with European manufactures and produce.
From Santa Cruz southward the sovereignty of the Emperor
slackens, so that at Wedinoon it is scarcely acknowledged, and the
difficulty of passing an army over that branch of the Atlas which
separates Suse from Haha, secures to the Wedinoonees their
arrogated independence. There are but two roads yet discovered fit
for shipping between Santa Cruz and Cape Bojador, an extent of
coast, for the most part desert, of seventy leagues, the whole of
which is inhabited by various tribes of Arabs, who have emigrated at
different periods from the interior of Sahara, and pitched their tents
wherever they could find a spot capable of affording pasture to their
flocks. All along this dangerous and deceitful coast, there are rocks
even with, or very near, the surface of the water, over which the
waves break violently; and the rapidity of the currents, which
invariably set in towards the land, too often drive vessels ashore
here.[55]
In these southern climates the people are more superstitious than
in the northern provinces; the heat inflaming the imagination,
multiplies the number of fanatics, who under the name of Fakeers, or
saints, impose on the credulity of the people: they have but few
mosques, and therefore pray in the open air, or in their tents. Here
we see horses, camels, and other beasts, living together with men,
women, and children indiscriminately. When they are in want of
water for their religious ablutions, they substitute the use of sand.
These restless people are continually at war with their neighbours,
which originates in family quarrels; plunder keeps them incessantly
in motion, and they traverse the Desert to Soudan, Timbuctoo, and
Wangara, with as little preparation as we should make to go from
London to Hampstead.
Wedinoon is a kind of intermediate depot for merchandize on its
way to Soudan, and for the produce of Soudan going to Mogodor.
Gums and wax are produced here in abundance; and the people
living in independance, indulge in the luxuries of dress, and use
many European commodities. A great quantity of gold dust is bought
and sold at Wedinoon. They trade sometimes to Mogodor, but prefer
selling their merchandize on the spot, not wishing to trust their
persons and property within the territory of the Emperor of Marocco.
With Timbuctoo, however, they carry on a constant and
advantageous trade, and many of the Arabs are immensely rich;
they also supply the Moors of Marocco with (Statas) convoys
through the Desert, in their travels to Timbuctoo.
Some of the more enlightened merchants of Mogodor, towards
the close of the last century, had a great opinion of an establishment
somewhere on this coast, between the latitude of 27° and 30° north;
but a famine, and afterwards a most destructive plague, added to
various other incidents, conspired to prevent the execution of the
plan. It is certain that a very profitable commerce might be carried on
with these people; and most probably Bonaparte, if he succeed in
the final conquest of Spain, will turn his mind decidedly to an
extensive factory somewhere here, which (besides many
advantages, which existing circumstances prevent me explaining
here) would effectually open a direct communication with Timbuctoo,
and Soudan, and supply that immense territory with European
manufactures at the second hand, which they now receive at the fifth
and sixth.
Having said thus much about the coast, we will proceed to
describe the principal inland towns, viz. Marocco, Mequinas, Fas,
and Terodant.
 Plate 12.

Drawn by J. G. Jackson. Engraved J. C. Stadler.

West View of the City of Marocco with the Mountains

of Atlas.
1 Circular encampment of Arabs Tents. 3 Grove of Palm of Date Trees.
2 Strait encampment of Arabs Tents. 4 Do. Do.
5 Atlas Mountains.

London Published June 4. 1811. by W. & G. Nicholl Pall Mall.

MAROCCO.

The city of Marocco is situated in a fruitful plain, abounding in

grain, and all the other necessaries of life, and depastured by sheep
and cattle, and horses of a superior breed, called (Sift Ain Toga) the
breed of Ain Toga. At a distance, the city has a beautiful and
romantic appearance, the adjacent country being interspersed with
groves of the lofty palm, and the towering snow-topped mountains of
Atlas, in the back-ground, seem to cool the parched and weary
traveller reposing in the plains; for although none
 “Can hold a fire in his hand,
“By thinking on the frosty Caucasus;”
Shakspeare.

yet, in the sultry season, the traveller, by viewing these mountains,

experiences an agreeable sensation, difficult to be described. The
lily of the valley, the fleur-de-lis, lupins, roses, jonquils, mignonet,
jasmines, violets, the orange and citron flowers, and many others,
grow here spontaneously; and in the months of March and April, the
air in the morning, is strongly perfumed with their grateful and
delicious odours. The fruits are, oranges of the finest flavour, figs of
various kinds, water and musk melons, apricots, peaches, and
various kinds of grapes, pears, dates, plums, and pomgranates.
The city of Marocco was founded in the 424th year of the
Hejira[56] (1052) by Jusuf Teshfin, of the family of Luntuna, a tribe of
Arabs inhabiting the plains east of Atlas, on the way to Tafilelt; and in
the time of his grandson, Aly ben Yusif, it is said to have contained a
million of inhabitants; latterly, however, it has been much
depopulated, and owing to the devastations of succeeding
conquerors, retains little of its ancient magnificence; the
accumulated ruins of houses and gardens within the town, which
were once the sites of habitations, indicate its decay. It is surrounded
by extremely thick walls, formed of a cement of lime and sandy
earth,[57] put in cases, and beaten together with square rammers.
These walls were in many places broken and decayed, so that
horses might pass through them; but the breaches were repaired
previous to the siege and capture of the city by Muley Yezzid, in
February, 1792. Some of the houses are built with much elegance
and taste, but being all behind high walls, they are not visible from
the street; and these outer walls are of the rudest construction, for
every individual here is anxious to conceal his wealth, and to
impress the public and the State with an idea that he is poor and
distressed!
The imperial palace of Marocco, which faces Mount Atlas, is built
of hewn stone, ornamented with marble. It is not so magnificent a
building as that of Mequinas; the architecture of the principal gates is
Gothic, embellished with various ornaments in the Arabesque taste;
the walls of some of the rooms are of filligree-work, and others of
(ezzulia, or) glazed tiles, similar to the Chinese tiles, which are fixed
in the walls with much art, and have a cool effect. Three gardens are
attached to the palace, the first and largest is called Jinen el Erdoua,
the second Jinen el Afia, and the third, which is the smallest, and
situated at a private door, Jinen Nile, or the Garden of the Nile, so
named from its containing the fruits and plants of the Nile,
Timbuctoo, and Soudan, with many others, the produce of Barbary.
In the two former of these gardens, the Emperor allows the foreign
merchants to pitch their tents whenever they visit him, which is
generally every time he goes to Marocco, and in the Jinen Nile they
have their audience of business, that is, the second audience, the
first being an interview of ceremony, and the third, an audience of
leave to depart. The two first gardens abound with olives, oranges,
grapes of various kinds, apricots, peaches, pomgranates, water-
melons, citrons, limes, &c.; these, however, are surpassed in
richness by the Jinen Nile, the orange trees of which are small, but
very fruitful, and the flowers extremely odoriferous; the roses, in
particular, are unequalled, and matrasses are made of their leaves
for the men of rank to recline upon. In these gardens are (Kobba)
pavilions about forty feet square, with pyramidal roofs covered with
glazed tiles of various colours, and lighted from four lofty and
spacious doors, which are opened according to the position of the
sun; they are painted and gilt in the Arabesque style, and
ornamented with square compartments containing passages from
the Koran, in a sort of hieroglyphic character, or Arabic shorthand,
understood only by the first scholars. As the luxury and convenience
of tables, chairs, and curtains are unknown in this country, the
furniture of these apartments is very simple, consisting of a couple of
sofas or couches, some china, and tea equipage, a clock, a few
arms hung round the walls, a water-pot, and carpets to kneel upon in
prayers. Here the Emperor takes coffee or tea, and transacts
business with his courtiers.
The grand pavilion in the middle of the enclosure is appropriated
to the women; it is a very spacious building, and fitted up in the same
style of neatness and simplicity as the others.[58]
Near to the palace is (the M’shoar, or) Place of Audience, an
extensive quadrangle, walled in, but open to the sky, in which the
Emperor gives audience to his subjects, hears their complaints, and
administers justice.
In Marocco are many temples, sanctuaries, and mosques; of
these, the most curious is one in the middle of the city, called Jamâa
Sidi Yusif, built by a prince named Muley el Mumen, on the site of
one erected by Sidi Yusif, which the former destroyed with a view to
obliterate the latter prince’s name; in this, however, he was
disappointed, for though he expended great sums in the erection of
the present building, and called it after himself, for the purpose of
transmitting his own name to posterity, yet the people continued to
call it by the old name, which it retains to the present time.
There is another mosque, said to have been built by Muley el
Monsore;[59] the body of it is supported by many pillars of marble,
and under it is a (mitfere) cistern, which holds a large quantity of
water, collected in the rainy season, and used by the Mohammedans
for their ablutions. The tower is square, and built like that of Seville in
Spain, and the one near Rabat already described;[60] the walls are
four feet thick, and it has seven stories, in each of which are
windows, narrow on the outside, but wide within, which renders the
interior light and airy: the ascent is not by stairs, but by a gradually
winding terrace composed of lime and small stones, so firmly
cemented together as to be nearly as hard as iron. On the summit of
the tower is a turret in the form of a square lantern, hence called
(Smâa el Fannarh) the Lantern Tower, which commands a most
extensive prospect, and from whence Cape Cantin, distant about
120 miles, is distinctly visible. The roofs of the different chambers in
this building, which are all quadrangular, are very ingeniously
vaulted: and indeed the whole workmanship is of the most excellent
kind. Prayers are performed here every Friday in presence of the
Emperor. That part of the city adjoining this edifice is quite a heap of
ruins.
 There is another tower in the city, which may be mentioned, from
the circumstance of its having three golden balls on its top, weighing
together, it is said, 10 quintals, equal to 1205 lbs. avoirdupois.
Several kings, when in want of money, have, it is said, attempted to
take them down, but without success, as they are very firmly and
artfully fixed; the superstitious people say they are fixed by magic,
that (jin) a spirit guards them from all injury, and that all those who
have attempted their removal, were soon after killed.[61] There is a
tradition, that the wife of Muley el Mumen, desirous of ornamenting
the temple built by her husband, caused these globes to be made of
the gold melted down from the jewels which the king gave her.
At the extremity of the city, towards the Atlas, and near the
imperial palace, is the department for the Jews, called El Millah, the
gates of which are shut at night: these people have an Alkaid
appointed over them, to whom they apply for protection against
insult: they pay a certain tribute or poll-tax, (called Elgazia), to the
Alkaid; they are for the most part rich; but from motives of policy,
under this despotic government, they endeavour to appear poor,
miserable, and dirty. Not more than two thousand Jewish families
now reside here, great numbers having been induced, from various
causes, to emigrate to the adjacent mountains, where they are free
from taxation.
In this quarter stands the Spanish convent, which, till lately, was
inhabited by two or three friars; but it is now deserted.
The Kasseria, or department for trade, is an oblong building,
surrounded with shops of a small size, filled with silks, cloths, linens,
and other valuable articles for sale. Here the people resort to
transact business, hear the news, &c. much in the same manner as
is done on the exchanges of European towns; and independent
gentlemen, who have no occupation at court, often hire one of these
shops, merely for the purpose of passing the morning here in
conversation on politics, and other subjects.
The principal gates of Marocco are the Beb El Khumise and Beb
Duquella; the former takes its name from a market called Soke El
Khumise, or the fifth day’s market, or Thursday’s market, where
horses, cattle, and all kinds of merchandize are bought and sold; the
latter, or Duquella Gate, takes its name from the province of that
name. Besides these, there is the Gate of the Millah, the Gate of the
Luksebba, or palace, and two or three other gates.
The city of Marocco is supplied with water from numerous wells
and springs amongst the different olive plantations, and the rich
procure it from the river Tensift, which flows at a short distance from
the city: this water is very salubrious, and anti-bilious, and is drank in
cases of indigestion. There is also a subterraneous aqueduct built of
brick, which surrounds the town, twenty feet below the surface, and
from which, at about every hundred yards, pipes of brick-work
branch off, and convey the water into the different houses; over each
of these branches are excavations from the surface, through which
persons descend to repair any injuries below; but this aqueduct is
now much neglected, and out of repair.
This city being now on the decline, little can be said of its
cleanliness; the streets are mostly filled with ruins of houses which
have gone to decay; and in the Millah, or Jews’ quarter, heaps of
dung and other filth are seen, as high as the houses. The Moors,
however, from a natural desire of cleanliness, in which the Jews are
scandalously deficient, pay more attention to the streets in which
they reside. The houses of the Alkaids, Shereefs, or nobles, and
other military officers, are lofty, spacious, and strongly built, with a
turret in the middle, or on one side, where the women take the air,
and pass the evening in fresco. The rest of the houses being almost
all old, they swarm with vermin, particularly bugs, which, in the
summer season, are literally a plague, the walls being covered with
them; at this period also, the inhabitants are much annoyed with
scorpions, which are frequently found in the beds, and other places;
[62] to these may be added the domestic serpent, but this is rather

considered as an object of veneration, than a nuisance.[63]

The air about Marocco is generally calm; the neighbouring
mountains of Atlas defend the plain in which it stands from the
scorching Shume, or hot wind (which blows from Tafilelt and
Sahara), by arresting its progress, and the snow with which they are