Such is the twentieth-century curriculum of the University
of Fez. Repetition is the rule of Arab education
as it is of Arab ornament. The teaching of the
University is based entirely on the mediaeval principle
of mnemonics, and as there are no examinations, no
degrees, no limits to the duration of any given course,
nor is any disgrace attached to slowness in learning,
it is not surprising that many students, coming as
youths, linger by the fountain of Kairouiyin till their
hair is gray. One well-known oulama has
lately finished his studies after twenty-seven years
at the University, and is justly proud of the length
of his stay. The life of the scholar is easy,
the way of knowledge is long, the contrast exquisite
between the foul lanes and noisy bazaars outside and
this cool heaven of learning. No wonder the students
of Kairouiyin say with the tortoise, “Burn me
rather than take me away.”
EL ANDALOUS AND THE POTTERS’ FIELD
Outside the sacred precincts of Moulay Idriss and
Kairouiyin, on the other side of the Oued Fez, lies
El Andalous, the mosque which the Andalusian Moors
built when they settled in Fez in the ninth century.
It stands apart from the bazaars, on higher ground,
and though it is not horm we found it less
easy to see than the more famous mosques, since the
Christian loiterer in its doorways is more quickly
noticed. The Fazi are not yet used to seeing
unbelievers near their sacred places. It is only
in the tumult and confusion of the souks that
one can linger on the edge of the inner mysteries
without becoming aware of attracting sullen looks,
and my only impression of El Andalous is of a magnificent
Almohad door and the rich blur of an interior in which
there was no time to single out the details.
Turning from its forbidden and forbidding threshold
we rode on through a poor quarter which leads to the
great gate of Bab F’touh. Beyond the gate
rises a dusty rocky slope extending to the outer walls—one
of those grim intramural deserts that girdle Fez with
desolation. This one is strewn with gravestones,
not enclosed, but, as in most Moroccan cemeteries,
simply cropping up like nettles between the rocks and
out of the flaming dust. Here and there among
the slabs rises a well-curb or a crumbling koubba.
A solitary palm shoots up beside one of the shrines.
And between the crowded graves the caravan trail crosses
from the outer to the inner gate, and perpetual lines
of camels and donkeys trample the dead a little deeper
into the dusty earth.
This Bab F’touh cemetery is also a kind of fondak.
Poor caravans camp there under the walls in a mire
of offal and chicken-feathers and stripped date-branches
prowled through by wolfish dogs and buzzed over by
fat blue flies. Camel-drivers squat beside iron
kettles over heaps of embers, sorcerers from the Sahara
offer their amulets to negro women, peddlers with
portable wooden booths sell greasy cakes that look
as if they had been made out of the garbage of the
caravans, and in and out among the unknown dead and
sleeping saints circulates the squalid indifferent
life of the living poor.
