II
AÏD-EL-KEBIR
In the verandah of the Residence of Rabat I stood looking out between
posts festooned with gentian-blue ipomeas at the first shimmer of light
on black cypresses and white tobacco-flowers, on the scattered roofs of
the new town, and the plain stretching away to the Sultan's palace above
the sea.
We had been told, late the night before, that the Sultan would allow
Madame Lyautey, with the three ladies of her party, to be present at
the great religious rite of the Aïd-el-Kebir (the Sacrifice of the
Sheep). The honour was an unprecedented one, a favour probably conceded
only at the last moment: for as a rule no women are admitted to these
ceremonies. It was an opportunity not to be missed, and all through the
short stifling night I had lain awake wondering if I should be ready
early enough. Presently the motors assembled, and we set out with the
French officers in attendance on the Governor's wife.
The Sultan's palace, a large modern building on the familiar Arab lines,
lies in a treeless and gardenless waste enclosed by high walls and close
above the blue Atlantic. We motored past the gates, where the Sultan's
Black Guard was drawn up, and out to the _msalla_,[A] a sort of common
adjacent to all the Sultan's residences where public ceremonies are
usually performed. The sun was already beating down on the great plain
thronged with horsemen and with the native population of Rabat on
mule-back and foot. Within an open space in the centre of the crowd a
canvas palissade dyed with a bold black pattern surrounded the Sultan's
tents. The Black Guard, in scarlet tunics and white and green turbans,
were drawn up on the edge of the open space, keeping the spectators at a
distance; but under the guidance of our companions we penetrated to the
edge of the crowd.
[Footnote A: The _msalla_ is used for the performance of religious
ceremonies when the crowd is too great to be contained in the court of
the mosque.]
The palissade was open on one side, and within it we could see moving
about among the snowy-robed officials a group of men in straight narrow
gowns of almond-green, peach-blossom, lilac and pink; they were the
Sultan's musicians, whose coloured dresses always flower out
conspicuously among the white draperies of all the other court
attendants.
In the tent nearest the opening, against a background of embroidered
hangings, a circle of majestic turbaned old men squatted placidly on
Rabat rugs. Presently the circle broke up, there was an agitated coming
and going, and some one said: "The Sultan has gone to the tent at the
back of the enclosure to kill the sheep."
A sense of the impending solemnity ran through the crowd. The mysterious
rumour which is the Voice of the Bazaar rose about us like the wind in
a palm-oasis; the Black Guard fired a salute from an adjoining hillock;
the clouds of red dust flung up by wheeling horsemen thickened and then
parted, and a white-robed rider sprang out from the tent of the
Sacrifice with something red and dripping across his saddle-bow, and
galloped away toward Rabat through the shouting. A little shiver ran
over the group of occidental spectators, who knew that the dripping red
thing was a sheep with its throat so skilfully slit that, if the omen
were favourable, it would live on through the long race to Rabat and
gasp out its agonized life on the tiles of the Mosque.
The Sacrifice of the Sheep, one of the four great Moslem rites, is
simply the annual propitiatory offering made by every Mahometan head of
a family, and by the Sultan as such. It is based not on a Koranic
injunction, but on the "Souna" or record of the Prophet's "custom" or
usages, which forms an authoritative precedent in Moslem ritual. So far
goes the Moslem exegesis. In reality, of course, the Moslem
blood-sacrifice comes, by way of the Semitic ritual, from far beyond and
behind it, and the belief that the Sultan's prosperity for the coming
year depends on the animal's protracted agony seems to relate the
ceremony to the dark magic so deeply rooted in the mysterious tribes
peopling North Africa long ages before the first Phoenician prows had
rounded its coast.
Between the Black Guard and the tents, five or six horses were being led
up and down by muscular grooms in snowy tunics. They were handsome
animals, as Moroccan horses go, and each of a different colour, and on
the bay horse was a red saddle embroidered in gold, on the piebald a
saddle of peach-colour and silver, on the chestnut, grass-green
encrusted with seed-pearls, on the white mare purple housings, and
orange velvet on the grey. The Sultan's band had struck up a shrill
hammering and twanging, the salute of the Black Guard continued at
intervals, and the caparisoned steeds began to rear and snort and drag
back from the cruel Arab bits with their exquisite _niello_
incrustations. Some one whispered that these were His Majesty's
horses--and that it was never known till he appeared which one he would
mount.
Presently the crowd about the tents thickened, and when it divided
again there emerged from it a grey horse bearing a motionless figure
swathed in blinding white. Marching at the horse's bridle, lean brown
grooms in white tunics rhythmically waved long strips of white linen to
keep off the flies from the Imperial Presence, and beside the motionless
rider, in a line with his horse's flank, rode the Imperial
Parasol-bearer, who held above the sovereign's head a great sunshade of
bright green velvet. Slowly the grey horse advanced a few yards before
the tent; behind rode the court dignitaries, followed by the musicians,
who looked, in their bright scant caftans, like the slender music-making
angels of a Florentine fresco.
The Sultan, pausing beneath his velvet dome, waited to receive the
homage of the assembled tribes. An official, riding forward, drew bridle
and called out a name. Instantly there came storming across the plain a
wild cavalcade of tribesmen, with rifles slung across their shoulders,
pistols and cutlasses in their belts, and twists of camel's-hair bound
about their turbans. Within a few feet of the Sultan they drew in, their
leader uttered a cry and sprang forward, bending to the saddle-bow,
and with a great shout the tribe galloped by, each man bowed over his
horse's neck as he flew past the hieratic figure on the grey horse.
[Illustration: _From a photograph from "France-Maroc"_
The Sultan of Morocco under the green umbrella (at Meknez, 1916)]
Again and again this ceremony was repeated, the Sultan advancing a few
feet as each new group thundered toward him. There were more than ten
thousand horsemen and chieftains from the Atlas and the wilderness, and
as the ceremony continued the dust-clouds grew denser and more
fiery-golden, till at last the forward-surging lines showed through them
like blurred images in a tarnished mirror.
As the Sultan advanced we followed, abreast of him and facing the
oncoming squadrons. The contrast between his motionless figure and the
wild waves of cavalry beating against it typified the strange soul of
Islam, with its impetuosity forever culminating in impassiveness. The
sun hung high, a brazen ball in a white sky, darting down metallic
shafts on the dust-enveloped plain and the serene white figure under its
umbrella. The fat man with a soft round beard-fringed face, wrapped in
spirals of pure white, one plump hand on his embroidered bridle, his
yellow-slippered feet thrust heel-down in big velvet-lined stirrups,
became, through sheer immobility, a symbol, a mystery, a God. The human
flux beat against him, dissolved, ebbed away, another spear-crested wave
swept up behind it and dissolved in turn; and he sat on, hour after
hour, under the white-hot sky, unconscious of the heat, the dust, the
tumult, embodying to the wild factious precipitate hordes a long
tradition of serene aloofness.
