by Jane Johnson
Meknes has been called a second Versailles. Moulay Ismail and Louis XIV shared a fervour for building as well as for power, and both were passionately involved in the construction of their respective palaces. Versailles may not have been built with slave-labour, but Louis was heedless of the lives and safety of his workmen. In the bitter winter of 1685 there were almost forty thousand men working on the site, despite the terrible cold and the ravages of disease, and many of them died. Of course, the fate of the thousands of slaves at Meknes was even more terrible. But where Versailles was symmetrical, ordered, elegant, the palace complex at Meknes, with its fifty connected palaces, mosques, courtyards, barracks and parks, was vast and rambling in its ever-shifting design, as walls and pavilions were constructed, then demolished, at the arbitrary whim of its creator.
His successors continued with his building programme, but in 1755 the shocks of the huge Lisbon earthquake, which is believed to have reached a magnitude of 9.0 on the Richter scale, severely damaged the site, reducing to rubble in minutes what had taken many decades and thousands of lives to create. Of Ismail’s madly ambitious project, only his extraordinary mausoleum, parts of the Dar Kbira, the vast granary, some of the outer walls and the city gates remain. Despite this, the ruins are well worth visiting to gain a sense of the sheer scale of the sultan’s megalomania.
Charles II had no legitimate children. But records show he engendered somewhere between a dozen and fourteen illegitimate offspring, and very likely there were others who did not survive or who were not recognized. Wherever he was billeted during the long years of his exile before the Restoration in 1660, he sowed his seed: from Jersey in 1646, to The Hague in 1649, from Paris in 1650 to Bruges in 1656. Alys Swann is a fictional character; but Moulay Ismail is reputed to have had at least one and maybe two English wives with whom he was much enamoured, one of whom died (or disappeared) and another, later than my Alys, who gave birth to a son who was designated an accredited heir, also by the name of Mohammed (although it must be said that Mohammed is the preferred name of first sons in Morocco).
The Moroccan embassy of 1682 arrived in London in January under the command of Mohammed ben Hadou Ottur, sometimes known as ‘the Tinker’. The almost-seven-month visit is well documented in the records of the day, and is particularly colourfully described in the diary of John Evelyn, who writes that ben Hadou was ‘the fashion of the season’. The ambassador had his portrait painted twice, both by anonymous artists. One of these handsome portraits can be found in the archives of the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Nus-Nus – or Akuji, to give him his true name – is my own creation.
Glossary
abid slave
afrit devil
alhemdullillah thanks be to God
bab gate
babouches leather slippers
baksheesh literally ‘charity’, though usually cynically used to mean ‘bribe’
baraka good luck
bukhari the Black Guard
burnous cloak
charaf honour; also a term of affection
chicha hookah pipe
Dar Kbira Great Palace
djellaba hooded robe
djinn spirit of smokeless fire
Eid feast
Fassi from Fez
fkih sir
funduq guest house
hajib vizier
hammam steam bath
haram forbidden
harem women’s private quarters
hijab Islamic headscarf
insh’allah if God wills it
kaid senior civil servant, administrator
kasbah fortress
khanjar ceremonial dagger
kif marijuana
koubba domed, four-sided building, often a shrine
lalla madam, honorative
ma’alema teacher
marabout holy man
matamore slave pit
marhaban welcome
mechoui spit-roasted lamb
medina old, walled part of city
Meknassi from Meknes
mellah ‘place of salt’, Jewish quarter
mezian good
nus-nus half-and-half
oud Arabic lute
qadi judge
qamis loose leggings
qibla direction of Mecca
rabab Moroccan instrument
raïs captain
ras al hanout mixture of spices
Ribati from Rabat
salaam aleikum peace be upon you
shahada profession of Islamic faith
Shaitan Satan
sherif descendant of the Prophet
sidi sir, lord: honorative
smen preserved butter
souq market
sura chapter of the Qur’an
tadelakt specialist plaster
Tafraouti from Tafraout
tajine earthenware cooking vessel, and the casserole made in it
taleb scholar
tarboush a ‘fez’: hard red hat
zellij mosaic tile-work
zelliji master tiler
zumeta rich paste of nuts and seeds
Acknowledgements
With thanks to my wonderful agents, Danny and Heather Baror, for all that they do; to Emma and Philippa for feedback and support; to Venetia and Will at Viking Penguin for their passion and care; to Donna for her exacting standards. And to Eugène Delacroix, whose ‘Portrait of a Turk in a Turban’, glimpsed across a Moroccan restaurant, started a lively discussion and inspired the character of Nus-Nus.
Bibliography
Aouchar, Amina, Jean-Michel Ruiz and Cécile Tréal, Fès, Meknès (Paris, Flammarion, 2005)
Bejjit, Karim, Encountering the Infidels: Restoration Images of the Moors (essay, University Hassan II, Casablanca)
Blunt, Wilfrid, Black Sunrise (London, Methuen, 1951)
de Beer, E. S. (ed.), Diary of John Evelyn (London, Everyman’s Library, 2006)
Daileader, Celia, Racism, Mysogny and the Othello Myth (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005)
Doutté, Edmond, Magie et religion dans l’Afrique du Nord (Algiers, Société Musulmane du Maghrib, 1909)
Forneron, Henri, The Court of King Charles II (London, Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1892)
Frasier, Antonia, King Charles II (London, Weidenfeld, 1979)
Harris, Tim, Restoration (London, Allen Lane, 2005)
Lithgow, William, The Totall Discourse, of the Rare Adventures, and Painefull Peregrinations … to the Most Famous Kingdomes in Europe, Asia, and Africa … (London, N. Okes, 1632)
Mafi, Maryam and Kolin, Azima Melita, Rumi: Hidden Music (London, Thorsons, 2001)
Matar, Nabil, Islam in Britain (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998)
Mernissi, Fatema, Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood (New York, Perseus, 1995)
Milton, Giles, White Gold (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 2004)
Ogg, David, Europe in the Seventeenth Century (London, A&C Black, 1943)
Pearson, Hesketh, Charles II (London, Heinemann, 1960)
Picard, Liza, Restoration London (London, Weidenfeld, 1997)
Tames, Richard, City of London Past (London, Historical Publications, 1995)
Vitkus, Daniel J. (ed.), Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption (New York, Columbia University Press, 2001)
Pierre Mignard’s portrait of Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth (painted in 1682 during the Moroccan embassy visit), is held at the National Portrait Gallery, as are the two anonymous, but very handsome, portraits of Mohammed ben Hadou. The latter two are not on general view, but arrangements can be made with the curators to see them.
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