Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/216

200 The character of Ismail is almost self-evident, when one visits the works of his hand. It was in 1673 that he ascended the throne of Maghreb and moved his capital from Fez to Meknes, which attracted him not only because of its strategic position, its olive-groves, pure air and "healthy water," but also because of his own desire to quit Fez with its network of intrigue in favor of the supplanted Merinides, who had brought such glory to the city of Idris II. The shadow of Mulay Ismail is to be met everywhere in Meknes the moment one enters the gate of Bab Mansur el-Aleuj and is surrounded by the high, massive walls of lime and beaten earth. This is not a single enceinte but an apparently never-ending series of walls, surrounding old palaces, mosques, pavilions, harems and gardens. The sweat and blood of almost sixty thousand Christian prisoners and slaves and of many tens of thousands of other workers, driven in here from the different tribes to help execute the plans of the Sultan, were the cement which consolidated the work of Mulay Ismail and at the same time were the venom which was to destroy it.

Mulay Ismail himself personally superintended the work of construction and was everywhere followed by a giant from the Sudan, who carried a sword, a rifle, a poignard and a great whip. The smallest fault or mistake, or even sometimes just a caprice of Ismail, blotted out the life of a worker or brought down upon his body the blows of the stinging lash. The Christian slaves who were ransomed, the monks and the foreign ambassadors, such as Cavelier, Moutte, Jourdan and Stewart, have left many records in their memoirs, testifying to the