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Rh shadow of some minaret stands guard and throws its protecting mantle across the way. Others are more or less shaded by squares of ragged cloth, by mats of straw or reeds, by woven willow and laurel twigs or by dense growths of vines that are led across trellises.

Fez el-Bali, owing to its science and art, occupies in the world of Islam a place comparable with that of Constantinople and Bagdad, possessing every element of life within its limits—schools and temples, wise ulema, Godfearing Imams, an aristocracy with a fine artistic sense and with a thorough grounding in politics and, near them, enterprising manufacturers and merchants, distributing their products to the Sudan, Senegal, Egypt and the country of the Bantu Negroes. It is possible that they gained this spirit of commercial enterprise through the infusion of Jewish blood, as masses of Hebrews, not wishing in the time of the Sultan Yakub Abd el-Hakk, to obey the command for all Jews to go and live in the despised quarter, or Mellah, accepted Islam and in time intermarried with Berbers, producing a mixed type with strong Jewish appearance and characteristics. This Fezan bourgeoisie controls the economic and commercial life of the city, managing all the greater undertakings and leaving only the lesser commerce to the Jews of the Mellah.

All the commercial operations of the Moroccan wholesalers are carried through in the kisaria, or market, in the fonduks, or warehouses, or in the innumerable suks with their unending rows of shops. Each branch of commerce or industry groups itself together in a sort of clan, having its common interests and its more or less unified commercial policy, directed by a council of merchants