although he attempts to strengthen his assertion by adding
that they were planted with cypresses of which only
the tops were to be seen; but then all cypresses are
not twenty yards high One of these gardens was
spanned by a bridge, five yards wide. They were shaded
by vines trained over trellises, and carpeted with clover.
A different taste this from that of a better known tyrant,
who indulged in “ hanging gardens 1” This wretch was
wont to take the air, not as Cowper describes the London
citizens of his day, “ close packed and smiling in a chaise
and pair," but alone in a peculiar vehicle on springs,
drawn by his women and eunuchs, whom alone he suffered
to approach him.1
The palace contains many buildings, called kubbahs
: T«of which our word “ alcove” is a corruption through
the Spanish. These are more or less square,
^f°Palace with a large doorway bn one side, and pyramidal
roofs ornamented outside with green
glazed tiles, and inside with richly carved and painted
wood-work in Mauresque style. The walls are tiled to
a height of four or five feet in the geometrical mosaics
of cut glazed tiles for which Fez is famous: above this
height they are finished in plaster, plainly white-washed
or carved into exquisite filigree work. Tiles are frequently
employed throughout all the apartments, walks, stores,
passages and arches being thus adorned. One of the
passages is described as thirty feet wide and a quarter
of a mile lon g : this served as a portion of Mulai Isma'il’s
armoury, for it was bordered from end to end by three
rows of rails with saddles, and above were cases of arms.2
Many pillars of marble and other stones, with finelyworked
plaster arches are to be seen, but now all are
more or less coated and disfigured with white-
Marble Pillars. , - . , c t . 1 wash, often over an eighth of an inch thick,
even on the beautiful tile-work. Some of the pillars
were brought from Salli, others are Italian, forty having
been brought from Genoa at one time, early in the
eighteenth century, by the renegade Pillet, for $16,000,
chiefly paid in Christian slaves.1 T h e gates of Laraiche,
taken from the Spaniards, also figured here, much of
the iron-work and many of the swords being of similar
origin. The amount of manual labour expended in the
completion of this palace was, of course, enormous. It
has been, computed that no fewer than thirty thousand
men, including a large number of Christian slaves, and
ten thousand animals, were employed upon it at one time.
In the park which surrounds the palace— called Agudal,
like that in Marrakesh— wild beasts were formerly kept,
and more recently ostriches.2
Until Isma‘i'1 had them destroyed in 1693, and replaced
them by some of its numerous buildings, immense underground
dwellings in the old Tannery Quarter | L
were allotted to the Christian captives. This Slaves.
great “ bagnio” is stated to have been 155
varas long by 7 or 8 wide, having twenty-four arches,
and a bridge across, with water running down the middle
and across an open court. In it there was a church, and
when the palace was destroyed the friars bought the
ruins and built a hospital with eighty beds upon the site.*
This was destroyed in 1790,* but portions of the subterranean
dungeons continue to exist beside their builder’s
tomb, and are occasionally used for “ barracks. 4 The
remains of the kasbahs of Dar Dabibah, near Fez, and
Bu Fakran, near Mequinez, are monuments of the piracy
* The friars also treated the natives medically, until they found their
prescriptions abused, and had recourse to a decoction of herbs and honey
which was given to all applicants as “ dua-shareef” or “ noble physic.
1 D e l a M e r c y , p. 275. * E r c k m a n n , p. 29.
3 See The Moorish Empire, p. 201. . 1
» H a r r i s , Land, p. 8 1 . . For illustration, see M o n t b a r t . J a c k s o n , p. 121. .