Part 13

In the midst of this plantation lies Múrzuk. It is situated so as not to face the cardinal points, but with a deviation from them of thirty degrees, the north side running N. 30° E., S. 30° W., and so on: it is less than two miles in circumference. The walls, built of clay, with round and pointed bastions, but partly in bad repair, have two gates, the largest on the east, and the other on the west side. There is only a very small gate on the north side, and there is none towards the south. This quarter of the town has been greatly contracted by ʿAbd el Jelíl, as the remains of the old wall of the time of Mukni clearly show; but the town is still much too large for its scanty population, which is said now to amount to 2800, and the greatest part of it, especially in the quarters most distant from the bazar, is thinly inhabited and half in ruins. The characteristic feature of the town, which shows that it has more points of relation with Negroland than with the lands of the Arabs, is the spacious road or “dendal” stretching out from the eastern gate as far as the castle, and making the principal part of the town more airy, but also infinitely more exposed to the heat.

The bazar, of course, is the most frequented part of the town. It lies nearly half-way between the east and west gates, but a little nearer to the former, and affords, with its halls of palm-stems, a very comfortable place for the sellers and buyers. The watch-house at the east end of the bazar, and almost opposite Mr. Gagliuffi’s house (from the terrace of which the accompanying view was taken), is ornamented with a portico of six columns, which adds to the neat appearance of this quarter of the town. The kásbah is the same as in Captain Lyon’s time, with its immense walls and small apartments; but the outer court has been much improved by the building of a barrack or kishlah, which now forms its northern portion. It is a large quadrangular building, with a spacious esplanade in the interior, around which are arranged the principal apartments. The building is said to be capable of containing 2000 men, though at present there are but 400 in the garrison, who are well lodged and fed.

[Illustration: Drawn by J. M. Bernatz, from a Sketch by Dr. Barth.

M. & N. Hanhart, lith. et impt.

MÚRZUK.

May 1850.]

The accompanying sketch of a ground-plan will give a tolerably exact idea of the whole character of the town.

[Illustration:

1. Custom-house.

2. Guard-house.

3. Watch-house.

4. Mr. Gagliuffi’s house.

5. Garden.

6. House of the agent of Bórnu.

7. Mosque.

8. First courtyard of kásbah.

9. Kishla.

10. Staircase leading to the upper apartments.]

With regard to commerce, the condition of Múrzuk is very different from that of Ghadámes. The latter is the residence of wealthy merchants, who embark all their capital in commercial enterprises, and bring home their own merchandise. But Múrzuk is rather the thoroughfare than the seat of a considerable commerce, the whole annual value of imports and exports amounting, in a round sum, to 100,000 Spanish dollars; and the place, therefore, is usually in great want of money, the foreign merchants, when they have sold their merchandise, carrying away its price in specie,—the Mejábera to Jálo, the Tébu to Bílma and Bórnu, the people of Tawát and Ghadámes to their respective homes. Few of the principal merchants of Múrzuk are natives of the place. The western or Sudán route is more favourable to commerce than the route to Bórnu. On the latter the Tawárek are always ready to furnish any number of camels to carry merchandise, and to guarantee their safety, while the road to Bórnu, which is the nearest for Múrzuk, is in such a precarious state, that the merchant who selects it must convey his merchandise on his own camels and at his own risk. As for the routes through Fezzán, the Hotmán, the Zwáya, and the Megésha are the general carriers of the merchandise; while, on the route to Sudán, the conveyance at present is wholly in the hands of the Tinýlkum.

As soon as Gagliuffi learned distinctly the plan of our expedition, he made an agreement with these people to take our things as far as Selúfiet; and they were anxious to be off. After much procrastination, they fixed upon the 6th of June for taking away the merchandise with which we had been provided here. We were to follow on the 12th; but the luggage not being ready at an early hour, our final departure was fixed for the 13th.

[Footnote 56: I will here only remark, that the degree of heat observed here by Captain Lyon, which has astonished and perplexed all scientific men, is not the real state of the atmosphere, but evidently depended upon the peculiar character of the locality where that enterprising and meritorious traveller had placed his thermometer.]

[Illustration: DR. BARTH’S TRAVELS IN NORTH AND CENTRAL AFRICA Sheet No. 4.

MAP OF THE ROUTE FROM MÚRZUK TO WÁDÍ FALÉSSELEZ 13. June to 5. August 1850.

Constructed and drawn by A. Petermann.

Engraved by E. Weller, _Duke Strt. Bloomsbury._

_London, Longman & Co._]

CHAP. VIII.

THE DESERT. — TASÁWA. — EXACTIONS OF THE ESCORT. — DELAY AT ELÁWEN.

[Sidenote: Thursday, June 13th.]

Accompanied by Mr. Gagliuffi, the Greek doctor, and the Bin-básha, we left Múrzuk by the western gate. My parting from Mr. Gagliuffi was cordial. He had received us and treated us hospitably, and had shown an earnest desire to further our proceedings, and to secure if possible the success of our expedition; and, if in his commercial transactions with the mission he did not neglect his own advantage, we could not complain, though it would have been infinitely better for us if we had been provided with a more useful sort of merchandise.

In leaving the town we kept, in general, along the same path by which we had first entered it, and encamped during the hot hours of the day in the scanty shade afforded by the trees of Zerghán, the well close by affording us delicious draughts of cool water, not at all of that brackish insipid taste which is common to the water of Fezzán. We had started in the belief that we should find our luggage in Óm el hammám; but in this place we learned from the poor ragged people who come occasionally hither to take care of the trees, that it was gone on to Tigger-urtín. Not knowing, however, the road to the latter place, we took the path to Óm el hammám, and encamped about seven o’clock in the afternoon a little north of it.

Óm el hammám is a half-decayed and deserted village, built of clay, which is strongly incrusted with salt, the inhabitants at present living entirely in huts made of palm-branches. The plantation being intermixed with a large number of ethel-trees (_Tamarix orientalis_), and interspersed with gardens, exhibited a more varied aspect than is generally the case with these groves; and having pitched our tent near a large ethel-bush, we felt very comfortable, especially as we had the good luck to obtain a few eggs, which, fried with plenty of onions, made a very palatable supper.

Next morning we directed our course to Tigger-urtín, making almost a right angle towards the north, and crossing a desolate plain incrusted with salt, after we had left the fine plantation of Óm el hammám. Having reached the village of our camel-drivers, which consists entirely of huts of palm-branches, we looked long in vain for a tolerable camping- ground, as the strong wind filled the whole air with sand. At length we pitched our tents a few paces south from the well. It was an extremely sultry and oppressive day, and the wind anything but refreshing.

In the afternoon we went to pay our compliments to Mohammed Bóro, who had left Múrzuk several days before us. He informed us that he had consumed all his provisions, and that he would have left to-day for Tasáwa, in order to replenish his stores, if he had not seen us coming. We consoled him with the intimation that we hoped our whole party would be soon ready for starting, and sent him a quantity of dates and corn.

The next day I went roving through the valley, which a little further to the N.W. was much prettier, and had several fine clusters of palm-trees; but the most picturesque object was the old village, built of clay, now entirely in decay, but surrounded by a dense group of fine date-trees. Subjoined is a sketch of it.

[Illustration]

At the south-west end of the grove also is a little village, likewise deserted. Here I met a Felláta or Pullo slave, a full-grown man, who, when a young lad, had been carried away from his native home, somewhere about Kazaure, and since then had been moiling and toiling here in this half-deserted valley, which had become his second home. He told me that fever had driven away the old inhabitants of the village long ago, after which the Tinýlkum seem to have taken entire possession of it, though it is remarkable that its name seems rather to belong to the Berber language, its original form being Tigger-odén (ŏdē means the valley), which has been changed into the more general form Tigger-urtín. The whole valley, which makes a turn towards the south-west, is full of ethel-bush, and affords shelter to a number of doves. Groups of palm- trees are scattered about.

[Sidenote: June 16th.]

In the morning I took a walk round the village of the Tinýlkum, which exhibited some lively and interesting scenes. All the men were saying their prayers together upon a sand-hill on the north side of the principal cluster of cottages, while the women were busy in getting ready the provisions for the long journey about to be undertaken by their husbands, and the children were playing among them. About fifty or sixty huts were lying hereabouts, most of them formed into groups; others more detached. Some of them had pointed roofs, while others were flat-roofed; but all of them had a neat and orderly appearance. Besides camels, which constitute their principal wealth, as by means of them they are enabled to undertake those long annual journeys to Sudán, they possess a good many sheep. Two of our camel-drivers, Ibrahím and Slimán, whom I shall have occasion to mention repeatedly, together with their mother and sister, were in possession of a flock of about 200 head, which they were sending to the fine pasture-grounds of Terhén in Wadi Berjúsh. Besides the latter valley, the Tinýlkum also use the valley Táderart as their chief pasture-grounds.

On the E.N.E. side of the village rose a hill about 100 feet high, and affording a fine view over the valley-plain. From its highest summit, where a niche for prayers has been laid out with stones on the ground, it stretches from east to west, and forms a kind of separation in the flat valley, limiting the ethel-tree to its western part, all the sand- hills in the eastern prolongation being covered with palm-bushes, which, from a distance, have the appearance of a thick grove. Descending from this hill northwards, I came to the handsomely-decorated sepulchre of Háj Sálemi, the brother of the sheikh, who resides in Múrzuk, and further on met a party of Tinýlkum _en route_ for the wadi, where numbers of them are residing. Another division dwells about Sebhha; but the whole body of the tribe comprises from 350 to 400 families, which are united by the closest bonds, and act as one body—“like meal” (to use their own expression) “falling through the numerous holes of a sieve into one pot.” About noon arrived the pilgrim-caravan of the Tawáti, which had been long encamped near Múrzuk, on their way home; it had been this year only 114 persons strong, with 70 muskets, while sometimes it musters as many as 500 persons. Their chief, or sheikh el rákeb, was an intelligent person of the name of ʿAbd el Káder, a native of Timímun, who had been leader of the caravan several times. They encamped at no great distance from us on the open ground.

Being obliged to buy another camel for myself (in order to be able to mount our servant Mohammed el Túnsi on a camel of our own, the Tinýlkum being very particular about their beasts, and not liking to see a man often mounting them), I bought, in the afternoon, a fine tall méheri from Háj Mohammed, for 69 Fezzán riyals or 55 Spanish dollars.

[Sidenote: June 17th.]

I made a longer excursion along the eastern part of the wadi, which here, where it is lower and collects more humidity, is adorned with some beautiful wild groups of palm-trees left quite to themselves; the valley extends towards Wadi Ghodwa, which it joins. Keeping on in that direction, I came to a poor hamlet called Márhhaba inhabited by a few families, who bitterly complained of their poverty. Here was formerly a village built of clay, and a large spacious castle about sixty-five paces square. All is now deserted; and only a small part of the available ground is under culture, forming about six or seven small fields. The same picture is met with all over Fezzán, where the only places exhibiting to the eye some degree of life and prosperity are Sokna and Murzuk. The population of this wide expanse of country falls short of even sixty thousand souls.

The heat of the day had already set in, when I returned to the tents, where I was extremely rejoiced to see the different members of our caravan collecting at last, so as to afford a fair prospect of our soon setting out for unknown and more interesting regions. There had arrived Mohammed el Sfaksi, a man with whom Mr. Gagliuffi had entered into a sort of partnership for a commercial journey to Negroland, and whom he had supplied with a tolerable amount of merchandise; and in the afternoon came the boat. The following day Yusuf Mukni, Mr. Richardson’s interpreter, came with the rest of the luggage, so that gradually everything fell into its right place, and nothing was now wanting but the Tawárek chiefs to set our whole body in regular motion. We therefore procured a load of dates from Aghár, and, getting everything ready, roused our spirits for the contemplation of novelties and the encountering of difficulties; for the latter could certainly not be wanting where the former were at hand.

[Sidenote: Wednesday, June 19th.]

While the greater part of the caravan took the direct road to the well Sháraba, Mr. Overweg and I, with the remainder, chose the road to Tessáwa, or, rather more accurately, Tasáwa; but though our party formed but a small body of people, yet it presented a very animated spectacle. The lazy Arab mode of letting the camels go singly, as they like, straggling about right and left, strains and fatigues the traveller’s attention; but his mind is stimulated and nerved to the contemplation of great distances to be traversed when he sees a long line of camels attached one to the other, and led by a man at a steady pace without any halt or interruption. As for myself, riding my own méheri, I was quite at liberty to go before or fall behind, just as the circumstances of the road called for observation, or presented something worthy of attention.

Having passed some tolerably-deep sand-hills accumulated in the wadi, we obtained a sight of an advanced spur of the plantation of Aghár to our left, when the ground became firm, and the country more open. Then, keeping along the southern border of the principal plantation, we passed the village and our former camping-ground, and having left further on some deserted villages and a few scattered huts of palm-leaves, still inhabited, a little on one side, about noon we again entered a sandy region with a few detached palm-groups. Here I observed a specimen of a very rare sort of bifurcated or divided palm-tree (not the dúm, which is generally so) with two distinct tufts hanging down on the opposite sides: this is the only specimen I ever saw. We then passed the village of Tasáwa[57], which, with its clay walls and towers, looks much more considerable from afar than it appears when viewed from among the deserted houses within it; still it is one of the more wealthy and important places of the country. A little beyond it we encamped on the open sandy ground, when, as our small tent had by mistake gone on in advance, and our large tent was too bulky to be pitched for one night’s rest, we contrived a very tolerable airy shade with our carpets.

We had scarcely made ourselves comfortable, when we received the joyful news that Hatíta, with two sons of Sháfo, had just arrived from Ghát, and were about to call on us. Their arrival of course had now become a matter of the utmost importance, as Mr. Richardson had made his mind up not to start without them, though it might have been clear, to every one well acquainted with the state of things in the interior, that their protection could not be the least guarantee for our favourable reception and success in the country of Aïr or Asben, inhabited and governed by an entirely distinct tribe. And, on the other hand, the arrival of these chiefs made our relation to Mohammed Bóro extremely disagreeable, for, after waiting so long for us, he now clearly saw that Mr. Gagliuffi, in declaring that we relied entirely on him for our success, while we were in fact placing ourselves wholly at the disposal of the chiefs of Ghát, was only trifling with him. He therefore flew into a violent passion, threatening openly before the people that he would take care that we should be attacked on the road by his countrymen; and these were not empty threats.

After a hot day followed a very fine evening, with a beautifully-clear moonlight; and cherishing the fervent hope that, with the assistance of the Almighty, I should succeed in my dangerous undertaking, I lay down in the open encampment, and listened with hearty sympathy to the fervent prayers of the Tinýlkum, which in melodious cadence, and accompanied with the sound há, há, sometimes in a voice of thunder, at others in a melancholy unearthly plaint, were well adapted to make a deep impression upon the mind, the tall palm-trees forming majestic groups, and giving a fanciful character to the landscape in the calm moonlight.

It is a remarkable fact that, while the Mohammedan religion in general is manifestly sinking to corruption along the coast, there are ascetic sects rising up in the interior which unite its last zealous followers by a religious band. The particular sect to which belong the Tinýlkum, who in general are Máleki, has been founded by Mohammed el Médani, who established a sort of convent or oratory (zawíya) near Masráta, and endowed it with a certain extent of landed property, from the produce of which he fed many pilgrims. The best feature of this creed is the abolition of the veneration of dead saints, which has sullied in so high a degree the purity of Islám. Mohammed el Médani is said to have died a short time ago; but his son continues the pious establishment.[58] It is a sort of freemasonry, and promises to make a great many proselytes. I am not one of those who think it a sign of progress when Mohammedans become indifferent to the precepts of their religion, and learn to indulge in drinking and such things; for I have not given up my belief that there is a vital principle in Islám, which has only to be brought out by a reformer, in order to accomplish great things.

In Tasáwa also reside a few Tinýlkum, who, however, have been intimately intermixed with the Arabs, while the others in general keep their blood pure, and do not intermarry with the people of Fezzán.

Having assured ourselves that, owing to the arrival of the Tawárek chiefs, we should have to make some stay here, we determined to pitch our large tent early the next morning, while the chiefs had a long dispute with Mohammed e’ Sfaksi, the subject of which I must relate, as it throws some light on the history and the present state of this country. The northern Tawárek, when they occupied the country round Ghát, established a sort of tribute, or gheráma, to be paid by merchants passing through their territory, and on payment of which the trader should be no further molested, but enjoy full protection. At that time the Masráta—a section of a very powerful Berber tribe—had made, as we shall see, a colonial settlement in Ágades, and, owing to their great power, commercial activity, and near connection with the Tawárek, were considered wholly exempt from any tribute, while the inhabitants of Tunis, who seem to have excited the jealousy or hostility of the great lords of the desert, were subjected to the highest personal exaction, viz. ten dollars a head. Now Gagliuffi’s partner was a native of Sfákes; but having long resided in Masráta, he insisted upon being free from tribute, like the inhabitants of the latter place: but our friends were not to be cheated out of their right, and made him pay as a Tunisian.

Having settled this little business, they came to us. There were Hatíta Inek (the son of) Khóden of the Manghásatangh, Utaeti (the eldest son of Sháfo), a younger son of the latter, and several more. The first, who had enjoyed the friendship of Captain Lyon, behaved throughout like a man well acquainted with Europeans; but Utaeti conducted himself like a strict Tarki, neither showing his face, nor speaking a single word. Hatíta expressed the wish that we should not proceed until he returned from Murzuk, where he assured us he would remain but a very short time; and we engaged to do our best to keep back the camel-drivers, who were but little inclined to stay here long.

In consequence of this state of things, I determined to return to the town, in order to ascertain the terms entered into between the parties; and accordingly, starting at five in the evening, and resting a few hours after midnight in Zerghán, I reached Murzuk on Friday morning at seven o’clock. I found that Mr. Gagliuffi had been very ill during the hot weather of the last few days; but to-day he was fortunately a little better.

Having waited in vain for the chiefs the whole of Saturday, we received a visit from them on Sunday, when they appeared in the finery with which they had been dressed by Mustapha Bey, but would not come to any terms; and it was not till Monday, when they took up their residence in the house belonging formerly to Mukni, but now to the Wakíl of Borno, that they concluded an arrangement. The sum which they then received would have been moderate, had they undertaken to see us safe under the protection of Annur, the Chief of the Kél-owí. I urged, with Mr. Gagliuffi, the necessity of having a written copy of the agreement; but to this the chief would not listen, and thus confessed that there was really no distinct contract, as we had been given to understand, to the effect that Utaeti should not leave us till he had committed us to the care of the chief Annur.