"Every sheep hangs by her own legs."

Moorish Proverb.

When, after an absence of twenty months, I found myself in Tripoli, although far enough from Morocco, I was still amid familiar sights and sounds which made it hard to realize that I was not in some hitherto unvisited town of that Empire. The petty differences sank to naught amid the wonderful resemblances. It was the Turkish element alone which was novel, and that seemed altogether out of place, foreign as it is to Africa. There was something quite incongruous in the sight of those ungainly figures in their badly fitting, quasi-European black coats and breeches, crowned with tall and still more ungainly red caps. The Turks are such an inferior race to the Berbers and Arabs that it is no wonder that they are despised by the natives. They appear much more out of place than do the Europeans, who remain, as in Morocco, a class by themselves. To see a Turk side by side with a white-robed native at prayer in a mosque is too ridiculous, and to see him eating like a wild man of the woods! Even the governor, a benign old gentleman, looked very undignified in his shabby European surroundings, after the important[page327] appearance of the Moorish functionaries in their flowing robes. The sentinels at the door seemed to have been taught to imitate the wooden salute of the Germans, which removes any particle of grace which might have remained in spite of their clumsy dress. It is a strange sight to see them selling their rations of uninviting bread in the market to buy something more stimulating. They squat behind a sack on the ground as the old women do in Tangier. These are the little things reminding one that Tripoli is but a Turkish dependency.

We may complain of the Moorish customs arrangements, but from my own experience, and from what others tell me, I should say that here is worse still. Not only were our things carefully overhauled, but the books had to be examined, as a result of which process Arabic works are often confiscated, either going in or out. The confusing lack of a monetary system equals anything even in southern Morocco, between which and this place the poor despised "gursh" turns up as a familiar link, not to be met with between Casablanca and Tripoli.

Perhaps the best idea of the town for those readers acquainted with Morocco will be to call it a large edition of Casablanca. The country round is flat, the streets are on the whole fairly regular, and wider than the average in this part of the world. Indeed, carriages are possible, though not throughout the town. A great many more flying arches are thrown across the streets than we are accustomed to further west, but upper storeys are rare. The paving is of the orthodox Barbary style.

The Tripolitan mosques are of a very different[page328] style from those of Morocco, the people belonging to a different sect—the HÁnafis—Moors, Algerines and Tunisians being of the more rigorous MÁlikis. Instead of the open courtyard surrounded by a colonnade, here they have a perfectly closed interior roofed with little domes, and lighted by barred windows. The walls are adorned with inferior tiles, mostly European, and the floors are carpeted. Round the walls hang cheap glazed texts from the KorÁn, and there is a general appearance of tawdry display which is disappointing after the chaste adornment of the finer Moorish mosques, or even the rude simplicity of the poorer ones. Orders may be obtained to view these buildings, of which it is hardly necessary to say I availed myself, in one case ascending also the minaret. These minarets are much less substantial than those of Morocco, being octangular, with protruding stone balconies in something of the Florentine style, reached by winding stairs. The exteriors are whitewashed, the balconies being tiled, and the cupolas painted green. Lamps are hung out at certain feasts. As for the voice of the muÉdhdhin, it must be fairly faint, since during the week I was there I never heard it. In Morocco this would have been an impossibility.

The language, though differing in many minor details from that employed in Morocco, presents no difficulty to conversation, but it was sometimes necessary to try a second word to explain myself. The differences are chiefly in the names of common things in daily use, and in common adjectives. The music was identical with what we know in the "Far West." Religious strictness is much less than in[page329] Morocco, the use of intoxicants being fairly general in the town, the hours of prayer less strictly kept, and the objection to portraits having vanished. There seemed fewer women in the streets than in Morocco, but those who did appear were for the most part less covered up; there was nothing new in the way the native women were veiled, only one eye being shown—I do not now take the foreign Turks into account.

In the streets the absence of the better-class natives is most noticeable; one sees at once that Tripoli is not an aristocratic town like Fez, Tetuan, or Rabat. The differences which exist between the costumes observed and those of Morocco are almost entirely confined to the upper classes. The poor and the country people would be undistinguishable in a Moorish crowd. Among the townsfolk stockings and European shoes are common, but there are no native slippers to equal those of Morocco, and yellow ones are rare. I saw no natives riding in the town; though in the country it must be more common. The scarcity of four-footed beasts of burden is noticeable after the crowded Moorish thoroughfares.

On the whole there is a great lack of the picturesque in the Tripoli streets, and also of noise. The street cries are poor, being chiefly those of vegetable hawkers, and one misses the striking figure of the water-seller, with his tinkling bell and his cry.

The houses and shops are much like those of Morocco, so far as exteriors go, and so are the interiors of houses occupied by Europeans. The only native house to which I was able to gain access was furnished in the worst possible mixture[page330] of European and native styles to be found in many Jewish houses in Morocco, but from what I gleaned from others this was no exception to the rule.

Unfortunately the number of grog-shops is unduly large, with all their attendant evils. The wheeled vehicles being foreign, claim no description, though the quaintness of the public ones is great. Palmetto being unknown, the all-pervading halfah fibre takes its place for baskets, ropes, etc. The public ovens are very numerous, and do not differ greatly from the Moorish, except in being more open to the street. The bread is much less tempting; baked in small round cakes, varnished, made yellow with saffron, and sprinkled with gingelly seed. Most of the beef going alive to Malta, mutton is the staple animal food; vegetables are much the same as in Morocco.

The great drawback to Tripoli is its proximity to the desert, which, after walking through a belt of palms on the land side of the town—itself built on a peninsula—one may see rolling away to the horizon. The gardens and palm groves are watered by a peculiar system, the precious liquid being drawn up from the wells by ropes over pulleys, in huge leather funnels of which the lower orifice is slung on a level with the upper, thus forming a bag. The discharge is ingeniously accomplished automatically by a second rope over a lower pulley, the two being pulled by a bullock walking down an incline. The lower lip being drawn over the lower pulley, releases the water when the funnel reaches the top.

The weekly market, SÔk et-ThlÁthah, held on the sands, is much as it would be in the Gharb el[page331] JawÁni, as Morocco is called in Tripoli. The greater number of Blacks is only natural, especially when it is noted that hard by they have a large settlement.

OUTSIDE TRIPOLI.
Photograph by G. Michell, Esq.
OUTSIDE TRIPOLI.

It would, of course, be possible to enter into a much more minute comparison, but sufficient has been said to give a general idea of Tripoli to those who know something of Morocco, without having entered upon a general description of the place. From what I saw of the country people, I have no doubt that further afield the similarity between them and the people of central and southern Morocco, to whom they are most akin, would even be increased.

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