Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/73

 TOPOGRATUY. 55 native Moorish girls, whoso reputation is also so bad that an alliance with one of this class is looked upon almost as a disgrace. But however respected the wives of the Turkish officials, their sons are seldom destined to hold high positions in the administration. After serving in the gendarmerie or some other corps, most of these Kuluglis withdraw to the rural districts surrounding the capital, where they gradually merge in the rest of the population. The Jews, Maltese, and Europeans of Tripolitana. In Tripolitana, as in the other Barbary states, the Jews are essentially the despised race. Yet they are amongst the oldest inhabitants of the country, having settled here under the Ptolemies. During the early years of the Roman administration they had secured the special protection of the Emperor Augustus. An encampment west of Mukhlar, on the coast of the Great Syrtis, still bears the name of Yehudia, or " Jewry," in memory of the Isi'aelites who peopled the country before the arrival of the Arabs. In the Jebel Ghurian the Jews occupy, like the Berbers, certain underground villages, in which, according to Lyon, their dwellings would appear to be cleaner and better excavated than those of their neighbours. These troglo<lyte Jews, the only artisans in the country, are exempt from the abuse and bad treatment to which their co-religionists are elsewhere subjected in Tripolitana. In the capital, where they number about 8,000, they occupy a separate quarter administered by a " political rabbi," ignorant of the Pentateuch and of the Talmud, but armed with the right to impose taxes, fines, the bastinado, and even issue interdicts against private families. Twice enslaved, the Jews of Tripoli are very inferior to those of Mauritania in intelligence, hence adhere far more tenaciously to the old orthodox practices and hereditary customs. A few Koptic families, who arrived with the Arabs, have maintained them- selves in distinct groups in Tripolitana, where, however, they are not sufficiently numerous to exercise the least social influence. More active, although also numerically weak, are the Jer^ba Berbers, immigrants from the Tunisian island of Jerba. These are the richest dealers in the bazaar of Tripoli, although obliged to compete with 4,000 Maltese, who are Arabs by descent, Christians in religion, British subjects politically, partly Italians in speech, and French in education. This half European colony is yearly reinforced by true Europeans, mostly Italians, guests who hope soon to be masters, and who are meantime establishing schools to diffuse their national speech. In 1884 the Italians numbered 800 out of a total of 1,000 continental Europeans. Topography. West of Mukhlar, on the Trijwlitan shores of the Great Syrtis, there is not a single town, or even a permanent village comprising more than a few hundred huts. For a space of some 300 miles nothing is to be seen except groups of tents,