THE AGDAL
One of the Almohad Sultans who, during their hundred
years of empire, scattered such great monuments from
Seville to the Atlas, felt the need of coolness about
his southern capital, and laid out the olive-yards
of the Agdal.
To the south of Marrakech the Agdal extends for many
acres between the outer walls of the city and the
edge of the palm-oasis—a continuous belt
of silver foliage traversed by deep red lanes, and
enclosing a wide-spreading summer palace and two immense
reservoirs walled with masonry, and the vision of
these serene sheets of water, in which the olives
and palms are motionlessly reflected, is one of the
most poetic impressions in that city of inveterate
poetry.
On the edge of one of the reservoirs a sentimental
Sultan built in the last century a little pleasure-house
called the Menara. It is composed of a few rooms
with a two-storied loggia looking across the water
to the palm-groves, and surrounded by a garden of
cypresses and orange-trees. The Menara, long
since abandoned, is usually uninhabited, but on the
day when we drove through the Agdal we noticed, at
the gate, a group of well-dressed servants holding
mules with embroidered saddle-clothes.
The French officer who was with us asked the porter
what was going on, and he replied that the Chief of
the Guild of Wool-Merchants had hired the pavilion
for a week and invited a few friends to visit him.
They were now, the porter added, taking tea in the
loggia above the lake, and the host, being informed
of our presence, begged that we should do him and
his friends the honour of visiting the pavilion.
In reply to this amiable invitation we crossed an
empty saloon surrounded with divans and passed out
onto the loggia where the wool-merchant and his guests
were seated. They were evidently persons of consequence:
large bulky men wrapped in fresh muslins and reclining
side by side on muslin-covered divans and cushions.
Black slaves had placed before them brass trays with
pots of mint-tea, glasses in filigree stands, and
dishes of gazelles’ horns and sugar-plums, and
they sat serenely absorbing these refreshments and
gazing with large calm eyes upon the motionless water
and the reflected trees.
So, we were told, they would probably spend the greater
part of their holiday. The merchant’s cooks
had taken possession of the kitchens, and toward sunset
a sumptuous repast of many courses would be carried
into the saloon on covered trays, and the guests would
squat about it on rugs of Rabat, tearing with their
fingers the tender chicken wings and small artichokes
cooked in oil, plunging their fat white hands to the
wrist into huge mounds of saffron and rice, and washing
off the traces of each course in the brass basin of
perfumed water carried about by a young black slave-girl
with hoop-earrings and a green-and-gold scarf about
her hips.
