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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and articles have summed up some ofthe interesting investigations of the last five years. II When I was in Marrakech word was sent to Cap-tain de S., who was with me, that a Caid of theAtlas, whose prisoner he had been several yearsbefore, had himself been taken by the Pasha*stroops, and was in Marrakech. Captain de S. wasasked to identify several rifles which his old enemyhad taken from him, and on receiving them foundthat, in the interval, they had been elaboratelyornamented with the Arab niello work of whichthe tradition goes back to Damascus. This little incident is a good example of the de-gree to which the mediaeval tradition alluded to byM. Saladin has survived in Moroccan fife. No-where else in the world, except among the mori-bund fresco-painters of the Greek monasteries, hasa formula of art persisted from the seventh oreighth century to the present day; and in Moroccothe formula is not the mechanical expression of apetrified theology but the setting of the life of a ( 262 )
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Frum a phvluynij/h jrvin the .Siriiec >i,.^ Ii,,i„^-Arls an Maror Marrakecli—a street fouiilain NOTE ON MOROCCAN ARCHITECTURE people who have gone on wearing the same clothes,observing the same customs, believing in the samefetiches, and using the same saddles, ploughs,looms, and dye-stuffs as in the days when the foun-dations of the first mosque of El Kairouiyin werelaid. The origin of this tradition is confused and ob-scure. The Arabs have never been creative artists,nor are the Berbers known to have been so. Asinvestigations proceed in Syria and Mesopotamiait seems more and more probable that the sourcesof inspiration of pre-Moslem art in North Africaare to be found In Egypt, Persia, and India. Eachnew investigation pushes these sources farther backand farther east; but It is not of much use to retracethese ancient vestiges, since Moroccan art has, sofar, nothing to show of pre-Islamite art, save whatis purely Phenician or Roman. In any case, however, it is not in Morocco th

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