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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em of Islam is essentially and funda-mentally theological. Of old secular buildings,palaces or private houses, virtually none are knownto exist; but their plan and decorations may easilybe reconstituted from the early chronicles, and alsofrom the surviving palaces built in the eighteenthand nineteenth centuries, and even those whichthe wealthy nobles of modern Morocco are buildingto this day. The whole of civilian Moslem architecture fromPersia to Morocco is based on four unchanging con-ditions: a hot cHmate, slavery, polygamy and thesegregation of women. The private house in Ma-hometan countries is in fact a fortress, a conventand a temple: a temple of which the god (as in allancient religions) frequently descends to visit hiscloistered votaresses. For where slavery and polyg-amy exist every house-master is necessarily a god,and the house he inhabits a shrine built about hisdivinity. The first thought of the Moroccan chieftain wasalways defensive. As soon as he pitched a camp ( 266 )
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From a photograph from the Serrice dcs Beaux-Arts an Maroc Rabat—gate of the Kasbali of tlu- Oudavas NOTE ON MOROCCAN ARCHITECTURE or founded a city it had to be guarded against thehungry hordes who encompassed him on every side.Each Httle centre of culture and luxury in Moghrebwas an islet in a sea of perpetual storms. Thewonder is that, thus incessantly threatened fromwithout and conspired against from within—withthe desert at their doors, and their slaves on thethreshold—these violent men managed to createabout them an atmosphere of luxury and stabilitythat astonished not only the obsequious native chron-icler but travellers and captives from western Europe.The truth is, as has been often pointed out, that,even until the end of the seventeenth century, therefinements of civilization were in many respectsno greater in France and England than in NorthAfrica. North Africa had long been in more directcommunication with the old Empires of immemorialluxury, and was therefore farthe

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