Part 3

The amateur will look in vain in Algiers for fine examples of Arab art, such as he may study at Cairo, at Granada, or at Tlemçen, in the province of Oran. The ravages of war, the stress of successive bombardments, amply account for this. The old minarets are gone; such work of the best period as may have existed has long disappeared; what the French have spared is chiefly of the Turkish domination.

But, in truth, during the great days of Mohammedan art Algiers was not of much importance. Its site had been previously occupied by the Roman Icosium, a town of little place in history, but the seat of one of the numerous North African bishoprics of the fifth century. The Arab town was founded in the tenth century, at which time numerous monuments of the Roman period are said to have been still standing. About the year 1500, when the Moors were expelled from Spain, many settled here, and adopted the profession of pirates. It is at this time that the importance of Algiers in the history of Europe commences.

[Illustration: ALGIERS: DOORWAY IN THE RUE BEN-ALI]

The Penon, the islet which, being connected with the shore by a mole, forms the present inner harbour of Algiers, the old harbour of the corsair fleet, is intimately connected with this period. Some good Arab work is to be seen, notably a magnificent doorway in the Bureau de la Marine, carved in white marble, or ornamented with inscriptions and with tigers,—an infringement of the Moorish law which perhaps indicates its Persian origin.[1] A small and very charming Arab house with good carving and many tiles is used as the residence of the Admiral. As I gazed deferentially at the exterior an obliging sailor invited me to enter. “This,” he said, “is the _grand salon_ of the Admiral; and this,” laying his hand on the handle of a door, “the Admiral’s _bureau_.” I recalled the Oxford undergraduate who showed “his people” over his college: “That,” he said, “is the Master’s Lodge, and that,” hurling a stone at a window, “is the Master.” Perhaps my face showed some apprehension of the possible apparition of a fierce French admiral with bristling moustache hastening to repel the foreign invader, for my conductor reassured me. “M. l’Amiral est absent,” he said. From a pleasant flagged terrace, with a summer-house at the further end, the Admiral may look down on the inner harbour, packed now with the French torpedo-boats which have replaced the lateen-rigged vessels of its former owners.

Footnote 1:

See Chapter IV.

The island and its mole have a strange history,—not the least astonishing episode in the annals of this astonishing city. The depredations of the Moorish pirates soon became extremely harassing to Spain; not only did they seriously interfere with Spanish commerce, but they made frequent raids on the Spanish coast, pillaging towns and carrying away their inhabitants to slavery. The evil became so pressing that at length a determined effort was made to put a stop to it. In 1509 a Spanish expedition, under Cardinal Ximenes, captured Oran and Bougie, and as a check to the pirates of Algiers occupied the island facing the town. Here they built a fort, which still exists in part, and forms the base of the lighthouse. This expedition, for which the Cardinal supplied the funds, was known as the “Crusade of Ximenes de Cisteros,” and was regarded as a holy war, bestowing certain indulgences on those who took part in it.

For nearly twenty years the Spaniards held the island, commanding the roadstead and controlling the maritime proceedings of the Algerines. These found the position so irksome that their Emir, to his own undoing, called in the services of the celebrated pirate, Baba Aroudj, known to Christendom as Barbarossa,

“A corsair’s name, linked with a thousand crimes.”

The romantic story of this king of robbers supplies a curious picture of the times. At the beginning of the sixteenth century Lesbos, in Mytilene, was the head-quarters of Turkish piracy in the Eastern Mediterranean. A simple potter, or fisherman, as some say, of the island had four sons, of whom two, Baba Aroudj and Kheir-ed-Din, rose to fame. Aroudj was in particular of a soaring spirit. Marking the avenues to fortune which the staple industry of the island presented, he became “apprenticed to a pirate.” An early disaster seemed like to blast his promising career; he was captured by a vessel of the Knights of Rhodes and condemned to the galleys. But such checks are to the really great only stepping-stones to higher things. Having, as was inevitable, effected his escape, he betook himself to Tunis, determined in the freer air of a new country to wipe out the memory of his early failure, and to find a fresh theatre for his energies. His professional knowledge stood him in good stead. He proposed to the Sultan of Tunis that they should enter into a partnership, in accordance with which he should conduct the active part of the business, and the Sultan receive half the profits, in consideration of his countenance and support. The Sultan, with that discernment that has so often characterized sovereigns, saw that he had to deal with a man of mark, and jumped at the proposal. A pirate station on the most approved lines was established at Djerba, where Aroudj was shortly joined by his brother, Kheir-ed-Din. The enterprise met with more than the success it deserved. Besides the ordinary dividends of the business, the brothers were able to make many very handsome presents to their partner and patron. On one occasion, it is recorded, they offered to him fifty Spanish youths holding in leash hounds and hawks of the rarest breeds, and four young ladies of noble birth, attired in splendid garments and mounted on magnificent horses. Mulai Mohammed, the Sultan, however keen a hand in purely business matters, was not the man to turn a deaf ear to the appeal of a brother in distress. The plight of his fellow-monarch, the Emir of Algiers, moved him deeply. With a quite distinguished disinterestedness he proposed to his associates that they should abandon for a time the ordinary course of their duties and proceed to Algiers to turn the obnoxious Spaniards out of their eyrie on the island. Baba Aroudj arrived at Algiers with 5000 men, and was hailed as a deliverer. But the instincts of his trade were too strong for him. Instead of attacking the Spaniards on the Penon, he put the Emir to death, proclaimed himself King, and gave the town to pillage. Master of Algiers, with his vessels dominant at sea, he set himself to win an empire. He occupied Medea and Tlemçen, and menaced the Spanish position at Oran. This was too much, and Charles V sent thither a powerful force to check him. He retired on Tlemçen, and fell in an obscure fight at Oudjda, on the frontier of Morocco, a town of some significance in recent history, and now in the occupation of the French.

“He left a name at which the world grew pale, To point a moral and adorn a tale.”

His brother, Kheir-ed-Din, assumed the reins of power at Algiers. Lacking the vaulting ambition of the terrible Barbarossa, he seems to have possessed a sounder business head. His first care was to assure his position; and with this object he offered his African dominions to Selim I, Sultan of Turkey. The Turk accepted the offer, and named Kheir-ed-Din his “Captain-pasha.” So arose the Turkish domination of Algeria, which lasted for three centuries, and inflicted on Europe unnumbered woes. If Europe had only known it, now was the time to cut off the serpent’s head; but Europe, as usual, was busy with its own quarrels. Charles V did indeed conduct an expedition in person in 1535, but it was half-hearted and proved abortive. No native prince arose to repel the Turkish pretensions, which were consolidated by the capture of Tunis and the occupation of Kairouan, the holy city.

Kheir-ed-Din next turned his attention to the Spanish garrison on the Penon. Having procured heavy guns, he bombarded the position for fifteen days with an incessant fire. The garrison of 150 men made a heroic resistance, but when all save twenty-five were killed, the island was captured and the survivors put to death.

The brave commander, Martin Vargas, was offered the alternative of embracing Mohammedanism and a Mohammedan wife or execution. He chose the latter, and was beaten to death with sticks, his body was dragged through the streets, cut into pieces, and thrown into the sea. So did the corsair treat a gallant foe.

It was then that Kheir-ed-Din conceived the project of uniting the island and the city, with the double object of preventing any repetition of the Spanish occupation and of providing a harbour for his fleet. Thirty thousand Christian slaves supplied him with labour, and materials lay near to hand. The ruins of the old Roman city of Rusgania strewed the shore at Cape Matifou; and countless blocks of Roman hewn stone and marble lie buried beneath the floor of the mole. The work, a very big work for the period, was finished in three years, and henceforth for nearly three centuries the corsair fleets lay within, safe from the storms of the Mediterranean and the attacks of their enemies. Kheir-ed-Din’s son mounted batteries on the Penon, and built the lighthouse tower in 1544. It is of octagonal shape, nearly 120 feet high, and visible for a distance of fifteen miles. A band of gleaming tiles below the summit happily relieves the monotony of its elevation.

The present great harbour, covering 222 acres, was commenced by the French in 1836. It was formed by continuing the line of Kheir-ed-Din’s mole to the south-east, and building another of irregular form from a point to the south of the city. In these works blocks of concrete were used for the first time in such operations,—an experiment which has had important results. In the making of this great harbour, as in so many other constructive matters, the French have risen to the level of their opportunities. Their genius in such large matters is unquestioned; and if anyone doubts their pre-eminence in minor arts, let him compare their coinage and their postage stamps with those of any other nation.

The French have done many great things; one thing they have omitted,—to provide an adequate service of passenger steamers between France and North Africa. They have generally fallen behind in the race of maritime improvement in recent years; but the insufficiency of this particular service may be due to the fact that trade between Marseilles and Algeria is held to be French coasting trade, and therefore reserved to vessels sailing under the French flag. The stimulus of foreign competition is absent. But nothing can prevent the indirect competition of the superior steamers of the North German Lloyd to Genoa, which are securing much of the tourist traffic. This company is gradually establishing a network of steamer lines in the Mediterranean. And a service of fast steamers covering the voyage between Barcelona and Algiers in twelve hours is now mooted. This may prove a further nail in the coffin of the Marseilles route. But the French have it in their hands to retain the trade by running adequate steamers properly equipped.

In spite of the heavy hand of the destroyer a few fine houses of the Turkish domination survive, and some are put to public uses and are accessible to the stranger. They exhibit a usual characteristic of the Eastern house; they are insignificant, sometimes even squalid without, but like the princess they are all glorious within. Christendom builds its houses for the public eye. This is not entirely altruistic; not wholly due to a desire to please the neighbours; a man’s credit and importance (even, it is said, the amount of his doctor’s bill) bear some relation in the opinion of his world to the outward appearance of the house in which he lives. And in the northern view, at any rate, a man’s house is a consideration prior to his equipage, his retinue, and his personal adornment. And some value attaches to what is called “a good address.” Wherefore our note-paper headings often contain a _suggestio falsi_; and Glenalmond Villa or The Elms strive to conceal the banality of a mere terrace.

All this is unmeaning to the Mussulman. He fulfils Bacon’s dictum that “houses are built to live in, not to look upon, wherefore let use be preferred before uniformity.” A bare wall with narrow and barred windows facing a mean alley;—such is his house’s exterior. It seems rather to desire to escape than to court observation. It has more the air of a fortress than of a dwelling. The doorways are an exception to the prevailing plainness. They exhibit a great variety of detail, but mainly follow a Roman or Byzantine scheme, of a round arch supported on columns, the whole copiously decorated. The doors themselves are generally of simple woodwork, often heavily studded with iron, and sometimes retaining their fine old handles and knockers. To the wanderer in the Arab town they offer a never-failing source of interest and study. The elaboration of the doorway when all else that is external is plain would seem to be thoroughly congruous with Oriental taste and tradition. The door of the house and the gate of the city stand for much in private and public life, for the line that divides the intimate and the stranger, the friend and the foe. Our fathers had some sense of the dignity of the door, a sense which in our careless acceptance of decadent conventions we have almost lost. We may strive to recover it in contemplating these Arab portals. The charming drawings of Mr. Thoroton, here reproduced, accurately represent their general scheme and the variety of their ornament. A common decorative feature appears to be based on the artichoke; the precision of its symmetry doubtless appeals strongly to Mohammedan prejudices.

When you have passed the portal the very contrast of the squalor without heightens the effect of the splendour and refinement within. The usual type of house is one which the Arabs owe to the Romans, or both to an earlier source. The doorway opens on to a long vestibule, with a row of marble seats on either side, divided at regular intervals by columns, often twisted and generally suggesting the Ionic order. From this you pass into the main dwelling, a square marble court open, or partially open, to the sky, round which are grouped the chief rooms. Marble columns support the gallery of the first floor, the walls are a blaze of tiles, a fine dark balustrade of open woodwork surrounds the gallery; and in the centre of the court-yard perhaps the pleasant plash of a fountain emphasises the pervading peace. It is all very splendid, and yet most dignified. Such a beautiful house is used as the Bibliothèque Municipale, a library with 35,000 volumes, many Arabian and Persian MSS., and an up-to-date card catalogue. Another is the residence of the Archbishop. This is said to be a fragment of the ancient palace of the Deys. It is a pleasant touch of humour which lodges the Archbishop in the last remnant of the harem. To these may be added the Governor’s Winter Palace, with a modern front and rich interior decorations; and a few other houses occupied by officials, and not open to inspection without an introduction.

A mere civilian must bow before the requirements of the military authorities, but he may be permitted to regret that they should have seen fit to turn the Kasbeh, the ancient fortress of the Deys, into a barrack. As may naturally be expected, the decorations and many of the original features have disappeared; marble columns have been replaced by wooden posts, tiles have been picked off,—and the Dey’s pavilion has been repainted! Worse than all, a public road has been driven right through the centre of the old compact mass of buildings surrounded by their embattled wall. The visitor will turn away with disgust from this reckless spoliation, which will some day no doubt be bitterly regretted.

Of the mosques of Algiers, that of Sidi Abd er Rahman, adjoining the tomb of the saint, is the most picturesque. The great mosque of Djama el Kebir has a very handsome exterior, notably a magnificent colonnade fronting the Rue de la Marine. The entrance is pleasing, but the interior rather bare. The mosque in the Place du Gouvernement, known as the New Mosque, was built in 1660 to the designs of a Christian slave, and is in the form of a Greek cross. The Catholic Cathedral was formerly a mosque, and is now an eclectic monstrosity.

[Illustration: ALGIERS: ENTRANCE-DOOR OF THE MOSQUE, RUE DE LA MARINE]

The interest which Algiers has for the traveller is closely bound up with the hideous story of the Christian captives. Our literature, especially of the seventeenth century, is full of allusion to their miserable condition. Their numbers were prodigious. In 1646 it was reckoned that there were not less than 20,000 such slaves. During our Civil War the Channel was full of Algerine pirates, and their operations extended to the North Sea. The Long Parliament passed an Act “whereby they did manifest unto the world their resolution of undertaking that Christian work of the Redemption of the Captives from the cruel thraldom that they lay under,” and established a tax on merchants’ goods, called “Algier duty,” to provide funds for the purpose. Many distinguished men were at one time or another slaves in Barbary. Cervantes was in captivity for five years, and has related some of his miseries in the story of “The Captive” in “Don Quixote.” He who went to sea in those days had to face the chance of “being taken by the insolent foe and sold to slavery.” It will be recalled that before he set forth on his immortal voyage Robinson Crusoe was captured by a Sallee-rover, and worked as a slave. Samuel Pepys records (February 8th, 1660-1) a conversation on the subject: “At noon to the Exchange to meet Mr. Warren the timber merchant, but could not meet with him. Here I met with many sea commanders, and among others Captain Cuttle, and Curtis and Mootham, and I went to the Fleece Tavern to drink; and there we spent till four o’clock, telling stories of Algiers, and the manner of the life of slaves there. And truly Captain Mootham and Mr. Dawes (who have been both slaves there) did make me fully acquainted with their condition there: as, how they eat nothing but bread and water. At their redemption they pay so much for the water they drink at the public fountaynes, during their being slaves. How they are beat upon the soles of their feet and bellies at the liberty of their padron. How they are all, at night, called into their master’s Bagnard [prison]; and there they lie. How the poorest men do use their slaves best. How some rogues do live well, if they do invent to bring their masters in so much a week by their industry or theft.” Other accounts give far more harrowing details of the sufferings of the slaves and of the tortures they endured.

When a prize was brought in, the crew and the passengers were forced by torture, generally the bastinado, to declare their quality and condition. The Dey selected one in eight for himself, generally preferring skilled workmen. The remainder were sold by auction for the benefit of the owners and crews of the pirate vessels. The European Powers maintained consuls at Algiers, and through them, and other agencies, those of the captives whose friends could find the ransom demanded, were, after much delay, redeemed.

That such an iniquity was more or less tolerated for centuries is one of the curiosities of history. It can only be explained by the fact that European nations found it a convenient scourge for their enemies. France and England especially were continually intriguing to make infamous treaties with the Dey to the benefit of each against the other. All nations, including the United States of America, after they obtained their independence in 1783, paid tribute to the Dey in one form or another to secure the exemption of their vessels from capture; but the Algerines never respected any treaty when they could violate it with advantage or probable impunity.

The close of the Napoleonic wars gave England not only undisputed command of the sea, but leisure to deal with the open sore of Algerian piracy. She was not slow to use it. At the beginning of 1816 Lord Exmouth was ordered to visit the Barbary States and obtain the release of such slaves as were British subjects—chiefly Ionians—or subjects of Great Britain’s allies. At Algiers the Dey readily released the Ionians, and also the Neapolitans and Sardinians, on payment of a ransom. Lord Exmouth proceeded to Tunis and Tripoli, and concluded treaties with the Beys, who agreed to abolish the institution of Christian slavery altogether. He then returned to Algiers and endeavoured to get the Dey to make a similar treaty. The Dey declined to accede, but finally consented to treat at London and Constantinople. Lord Exmouth took a high hand; he told the Dey that he evidently had little idea of the power of a British man-of-war, and that he would engage, if hostilities became necessary, to blow the place to pieces with five line-of-battle ships. Shortly after he had sailed for England matters were brought to a climax by an attack by Turks and Arabs on a large number of coral-fishermen, sailing under French and English colours, who had landed at Bona on Ascension Day. About two hundred were massacred in a church and hundreds more wounded. The British consul was killed, the houses of Christians pillaged, and the British flag trampled under foot. The British Government considered that the cup was now full, and that strong measures must be taken against these barbarians. On Lord Exmouth’s arrival a fresh fleet was fitted out. He was offered any force he required, but he determined to rely on the five battleships he had mentioned to the Dey. To these were added five frigates and some smaller vessels. At Gibraltar he found a Dutch squadron of five frigates and a corvette under Admiral van Capellan, who asked and obtained leave to co-operate.

After some vexatious delays Exmouth arrived off Algiers on August 26th, 1816. His despatch, dated August 28th, is very interesting reading. He had previously sent on the _Prometheus_, to endeavour to bring away the British consul, Captain Dashwood. A landing party brought off his wife and daughter, disguised in midshipmen’s uniforms. The surgeon was following with the consul’s infant child concealed in a basket. As he was entering a boat the child, unfortunately, cried, with the result that the surgeon, three midshipmen, and others, in all eighteen persons, were seized and confined as slaves in the usual dungeons. “The child was sent off next morning by the Dey, and as a solitary instance of his humanity it ought to be recorded by me,” says his lordship. Captain Dashwood was closely confined in irons.