by Jane Johnson
After Ismail’s death in 1727 there was an almighty succession battle amongst his surviving sons, and in a very short time the unified kingdom of Morocco fell apart in a stew of civil war and moral dissipation.
*
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
mecboui
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
sberif
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, Rutni: 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.
About the Author
JANE JOHNSON is a British novelist and publisher. She is the UK editor for George R.R. Martin, Robin Hobb and Dean Koontz and was for many years publisher of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Married to a Berber chef she met while researching The Tenth Gift, she lives in Cornwall and Morocco.
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