Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/59

 CHAPTER V

THE CITY OF THE MOORS

HE Hadars, or Berbers, are the oldest element in the population. They are mixed with Arabs and are the real Moors of history, whom Europe has many times seen invade her soil and who have brought to her their civilization, the evidences of which remain in the Alhambra, in numerous Alcazars and in other structures throughout Spain.

While we were visiting the northern quarter of Tlemsen, exclusively inhabited by Hadars, Zofiette suddenly stopped and listened. I followed her lead but heard nothing save the twang of an ordinary instrument and a song, sung in a melancholy voice, which came floating out through the door of a dingy-looking café. However, Zofiette continued to listen attentively and finally said:

"They play here the real Andaluza which we heard in Granada."

The trained ear of the violinist had made an interesting ethnographic discovery, which had not long before become a fact established through other and independent channels. Scholars had found among the Hadars descendants of the Andalusian Moors, who returned here from Spain during the fourteenth century and brought