Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/214

 174 NORTH-WEST AFRICA. No doubt, of the five hundred schools in the regency one hundred and thirteen are ♦• Koranic," and the large schools or mcdrcss^ attached to the mosques are always frequented by students from far and near, who recite the Koran, learn the " sciences of traditions," and, like the students of the University of Cairo, repeat grammatical rules, medical formulas, astrological spells, and magical incantations. The Jem^a Zituna, or " Mosque of Olives," the finest religious edifice in Tunis, is frequented by six hundred students, Tunisians and foreigners. Those who come from the interior of the regency nearly all become students so as to evade military service and escape the poll-tax. The Tunisian scholars study more especially law and grammar, so as to obtain a diploma which will enable them to become either pro- fessors or notaries. The mosque possesses two libraries of ancient Arabic com- mentaries, much venerated works, which can only be borrowed by those authorised by the Sheikh-el-Islam, the head of the University. But the movement that is to give renewed life to science must come from abroad, and this extraneous influence is, fortunately, not wanting. Besides the primary Italian and French schools and establishments founded with religious motives, such as the Jewish schools and the Catholic College of Saint Charles, there are also institutions where the Mussulmans can study the French language and the rudiments of science. The Sadiki College, founded in the reign of Sadok, has a hundred and fifty pupils, many of whom have already been sufiiciently advanced to enter the ^lawi College, a normal school of recent foundation, where the pupils are trained as masters for the future schools of the regency, and where the young Mussulmans and Europeans are seated on the same forms. In 188-j the number of Mussulman children who were receiving a French education was calculated at six hundred ; while the Franco- Jewish schools, founded by the Israelitish Alliance, were instructing over twelve hundred children in the same language. But, although possessing valuable private collections of books, Tunis has as yet no public library or museum, and the works which have been presented or left to the town still (1885) repose in the packing-cases. The historian Ibn- Khaldun was a native of Tunis. Outside the fortifications there are no straggling suburbs, and the desert begins at the very city gates ; the bluffs of the chain separating the Bahira from Lake Seljum alone bear a few dilapidated forts and two Mussulman convents. The palace of the Bardo, which stands in the plain, north of the Seljum depression, is not an isolated structure, but quite a separate quarter, with ramparts and towers, set apart not only for the prince but also for the whole court, garrison troops, and a large population of provision-dealers and artisans. The royal apartments, covered with ornaments, hangings, embroideries, painted flowers, alabasters, marbles, offend the eye with their tasteless mixture of forms and colours, and all this sham luxury appears all the more repulsive in association with the torn tapestries, the crumbling walls, warped timber and furniture, revealing the poverty of the place. Some country houses, which stand farther west in the Manuba olive groves, or else north of Tunis in the Ariana and Belvedere districts, and on the sea-shore in the Marsa valley, without being so showy as the Bardo are in reality much finer