perpetually, to fight with revolted tribes in the Atlas, to defeat one
Berber army after another, to carry his arms across the High Atlas into
the Souss, to adorn Fez with the heads of seven hundred vanquished
chiefs, to put down his three rebellious brothers, to strip all the
cities of his empire of their negroes and transport them to Meknez ("so
that not a negro, man, woman or child, slave or free, was left in any
part of the country"); to fight and defeat the Christians (1683), to
take Tangier, to conduct a campaign on the Moulouya, to lead the holy
war against the Spanish (1689), to take Larache, the Spanish commercial
post on the west coast (which furnished eighteen hundred captives for
Meknez); to lay siege to Ceuta, conduct a campaign against the Turks of
Algiers, repress the pillage in his army, subdue more tribes, and build
forts for his Black Legionaries from Oudjda to the Oued Noun. But
almost each year's bloody record ends with the placid phrase: "Then the
Sultan returned to Meknez."

In the year 1701, Ezziani writes, the indomitable old man "deprived his
rebellious sons of their principalities; after which date he consecrated
himself exclusively to the building of his palaces and the planting of
his gardens. And in 1720 (nineteen years later in this long reign!) he
ordered the destruction of the mausoleum of Moulay Idriss for the
purpose of enlarging it. And to gain the necessary space he bought all
the adjacent land, and the workmen did not leave these new labors till
they were entirely completed."

In this same year there was levied on Fez a new tax which was so heavy
that the inhabitants were obliged to abandon the city.

Yet it is written of this terrible old monarch, who devastated whole
districts, and sacrificed uncounted thousands of lives for his ruthless