Part 16 (2/2)

The Arab chroniclers paint pictures of Merinid palaces, such as the House of the Favourite at Cordova, which the soberer modern imagination refused to accept until the medersas of Fez were revealed, and the old decorative tradition was shown in the eighteenth century Moroccan palaces. The descriptions given of the palaces of Fez and of Marrakech in the preceding articles, which make it unnecessary, in so slight a note as this, to go again into the detail of their planning and decoration, will serve to show how gracefully the art of the mosque and the medersa was lightened and domesticated to suit these cool chambers and flower-filled courts.

With regard to the immense fortifications that are the most picturesque and noticeable architectural features of Morocco, the first thing to strike the traveller is the difficulty of discerning any difference in the probable date of their construction until certain structural peculiarities are examined, or the ornamental details of the great gateways are noted. Thus the Almohad portions of the walls of Fez and Rabat are built of stone, while later parts are of rubble; and the touch of European influence in certain gateways of Meknez and Fez at once situate them in the seventeenth century. But the mediaeval outline of these great piles of masonry, and certain technicalities in their plan, such as the disposition of the towers, alternating in the inner and outer walls, continued unchanged throughout the different dynasties; and this immutability of the Moroccan military architecture enables the imagination to picture, not only what was the aspect of the fortified cities which the Greeks built in Palestine and Syria, and the Crusaders brought back to Europe, but even that of the far-off a.s.syrio-Chaldaean strongholds to which the whole fortified architecture of the Middle Ages in Europe seems to lead back.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au Maroc_

Marrakech--the gate of the Portuguese]

FOOTNOTES:

[27] The ”deacon” or elder of the Moslem religion, which has no order of priests.

[28] These Moroccan mosaics are called _zellijes_.

IX

BOOKS CONSULTED

Afrique Francaise (L'), Bulletin Mensuel du Comite de l'Afrique Francaise. Paris, 21, rue Ca.s.sette.

Bernard, Augustin. Le Maroc. Paris, F. Alcan, 1916.

Budgett-Meakin. The Land of the Moors. London, 1902.

Chatelain, L. Recherches archeologiques au Maroc. Volubilis.

(Published by the Military Command in Morocco.)

Les Fouilles de Volubilis. (Extrait du Bulletin Archeologique, 1916.)

Chevrillon, A. Crepuscule d'Islam.

Cochelet, Charles. Le Naufrage du Brick Sophie.

Conferences Marocaines. Paris, Plon-Nourrit.

Doutte, E. En Tribu. Paris, 1914.

Foucauld, Vicomte de. La Reconnaissance au Maroc. Paris, 1888.

France-Maroc. Revue Mensuelle, Paris, 4, rue Chauveau-Lagarde.

Gaillard. Une Ville d'Islam, Fez. Paris, 1909.

Gayet, Al. L'Art Arabe. Paris, 1906.

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