The Sultan and Queen Victoria - Fragment

Fragment

The Sultan and Queen Victoria

From
NONPLUS—fragments: An accident in biography
by Sydney Afriat

Concerning the one time
HM Consul, Mogador, Morocco

Presented to Moira MacFarlane
HM Consul, Florence, Italy

Honoured guest at the annual lunch of
The Cambridge Society—Tuscany & Umbria
Circolo dell’Unione, Florence, 22 November 2008

Attached
another Fragment

Encounter in Marrakesh
where UK again has part

The Sultan and Queen Victoria

    A certain foreign gentleman wanted, ironically, to know if Mogador belonged to
    the Sultan or to Queen Victoria. The response, with hand on heart, was ‘Bijujhum
    ya señor’—‘To both, sir’.
                                                                   R. I. N. Johnston
                                                  Morocco: The Land of the Setting Sun
                                                                 London, 1912. P. 40

That there has been a French presence in Morocco is well known. Much less common
is awareness of any British connection, let alone the particular connection celebrated
in Johnston’s story,
     To my knowledge this connection is largely a Mogador phenomenon. And this
writer comes out of the heart of it, with family a pillar of Victorian British civilization
on the Barbary coast throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth.
     For a start close to home, my mother's mother Miriam Corcos Anahory had her
own English school, the only school of my mother. Her cousin Stella Corcos had
another, sponsored by the Anglo-Jewish Association. That English was spoken so
much in Mogador is without doubt connected with the existence of these two schools.
     It happens my father went to neither, but to the Rabinical school, so his English
was not so good. My parents always spoke Arabic together, or perhaps more precisely
I suppose, some form of Judeo-Arabic that included Hebrew and Spanish elements, a
local counterpart of the Ladino spoken by many Sephardis related to mediaeval
Spanish, or the Yiddish of the Ashkanazis related to mediaeval German. Moreover, I
never learnt that language. And not knowing the language of my parents was a good
start to coming to Italy for over half a century and being married to an Italian for
nearly forty years and not learning Italian.
     I share a pattern with grandmother Miriam Anahory, since she had in fact been
born in England of Maghrebi parents. Her mother was a Corcos and her father a
Rabbi imported to England to minister to the Spanish and Portuguese community.
Visiting the ancestral lands she married a merchant of Mogador, a Kabbalisitc mystic,
Moses Anahory whose notable achievement was with the guitar. Perhaps for support
of family she started her own school. She was well educated in the usual English girls
boarding school fashion, and a musician. Her old age was spent in Jerusalem, together
with her sister Aida, and I used to have communications from there, though I never
met her. She seemed to be remembered as highly venerable by everyone.
       The name Anahory, for more recent cases in the last 500 years, is known from
pre-Inquisition Spain, and Morocco. The origins go back 2000 years, to what was then
Babylon. It is Aramaic, not Hebrew, and so unusual in the wider Jewish community.
Rabbis of the Talmud who were considered erudite were given the name “Anahory”
or “Nehorai”, meaning “to illuminate”.
     England used to have interests and be well represented in Morocco. There was
even an issue of stamps from the English Post Office in Tangier. But there was a
withdrawal as a result of the Treaty of Algeceiras of 1912. By this treaty France gave
up interests in Egypt and in exchange England gave up interests in Morocco.
However, some elements of England got left behind, especially in Mogador.
     There had been pressure on Morocco from colonial powers in about the middle of
the nineteenth century. The granting of consular protection to individuals served to
expand influence and promote trade. It may also have been meant to promote

divisions in preparation for conquest—but no need now to dwell on politics. Beside
such cases, and additionally picturesque, we have the children of the British Consul
who had never been elsewhere, and when he died they got left behind in Mogador, to
remain there all their lives. Beside my visits to her earlier, I remember Emily Broom’s
interview on BBC radio after the war. A particular interest of it had been that, since
she had never been anywhere else to disturb her from the timewarp, she remained a
most perfect Edwardian.
     Mogador is the old port of Morocco and used to be important. But when
Casablanca grew up to the North and Agadir to the South, it lost its status. That is,
were one to forget its rebounding significance as a station on the hippy circuit, like
Katmandu and a few other places. When our house on Rue du Rif was last visited, it
was taken over by a group of hippies. This is the house given us by the Sultan in the
nineteenth century, with the appointment as Royal Merchants to develop foreign
trade, especially with England.
     Also, it is celebrated as a mythical city by the once quite well known song “The
Mad Maharaja of Mogador”. And again, as the setting of the play “Captain
Brassbound’s Conversion” by Bernard Shaw, who got his inspiration from R. B.
Cunningham Graham's Magreb-el-Acksa. Then there is the film of Shakespeare’s
“Othello” made by Orson Wells exploiting the ready-made film props provided by the
city, on the ramparts of the port, among fortifications with rows of old cannon, and
such features.
     Though it does have earlier history, Mogador was founded in 1764 by Sultan Sidi
Muhammed ben Abdallah. It is on the Atlantic coast west of Marrakesh and was then
intended to be Morocco’s main seaport for trade with Europe.
     The name Mogador has a foreign character, is mostly used by foreigners, and
since departure of the French has been largely given up in favour of the more
indigenous name Essaouira, meaning Picture City, in Berber, or Arabic, or both.
There is more to be said about that, but to continue the pursuit of Mogador, it could be
taken to be just another of the fairly frequent Portuguese colonial relics found up and
down the coast. Along the wide sandy beach to the South going towards Agadir, after
three kilometers one comes to a broken up rocky ruin washed around by the sea,
which everyone calls “The Portuguese Fort”. It makes the obvious turn around point
in any excursion on foot, or ideally high speed on a horse, along the beach in that
direction, beyond which would seem to go on for ever, and it is very familiar. That
contributes to making the Portuguese idea stick. Possibly there is some place in
Portugal called Mogador, or something like that, and colonials are always giving the
hometown name to places they take over. However, there is quite another view about
how the name happened—more to do with Scotland, than with Portugal!
     A familiar landmark of Mogador is the tomb of Sidi Mogdoul, or Saint Mogdoul,
the local saint. It is said he was a Scottish mariner with name MacDougal who got
wrecked on the coast some centuries ago and acquired the status—and pronunciation
of his name—by which he is now respected And from Mogdoul to Mogador is just
one step!
     I am indebted to J. S. G. Simmons, Codrington Librarian at All Souls, for telling
me of Danial Schroeter’s delivery, “Anglo-Jewry and Essaouira (Mogador), 1860-
1900”, that I knew nothing about though it happened when I was at the College, and
incidentally on Codrington Day. I met Schroeter later in Istanbul, at the Symposium
marking the 500 years since the Ottomans admitted Jews leaving Spain, and even
sent boats to pick them up.

Encounter in Marrakesh
It was 1937 or 38, when I was at a prepschool, Downsend, Leatherhead near
Ashstead, Surrey, at the beginning of Summer holidays, when as usual we went to the
house in Mogador. I had been having trouble with my chronic asthma problem and
my father decided to take me to Marrakesh for the dry air. We went to stay at the
Hotel Mamounia, then new but already famous.
     Going round the large and dense garden we encountered an Indian alone and
seated on a bench, who spoke to us in English. He said immediately, though we had
said nothing, that we were there for my health, and prescribed some rigmarole
involving flowers.
     Returning to the hotel, arriving at the clearing in front, I heard a voice say
“There’s Churchill!”, and saw someone standing not far away, dressed in riding
clothes and carrying a crop, and speaking with others, in a way that made a marked
impression on me, as being not ordinary at all, and it struck me as quite curious. At
that time I knew nothing about Churchill. I was told he frequently went to Marrakesh,
and painting was one of his pursuits there.
     Later I learnt that El Glaoui, Pasha of Marrakesh, was staying at the hotel and,
becoming aware of my father’s presence there, had been in touch and we were to meet
     The meeting took place that afternoon and included El Glaoui’s companions at
the hotel: Churchill, Lloyd George, and Thompson, Lloyd George’s secretary. For an
extra dimension of coincidence, Malcolm Thompson told us he already knew we were
in Morocco—from his son who was at my school! (of course that might have been a
link that woke up El Glaoui to our being there).
     Lloyd George was more my size and I was seated at an extremity next to him on
one of the benches so, though still slight, I had more communication with him than
the others.
     It needs to be appreciated that the Marrakesh region is almost a separate country,
more Berber than Arab. It is among tribal territories that had been governed by war
lords without allegiance to the Sultan.
     Without comparison with the hereditary right and Chereefian (title for a
descendant of the Prophet) Majesty of the Sultan, the Glaoui had effectively
eliminated opposition and ruled by no other right.
     Another observation is that Berbers and Jews had lived together in Morocco since
long before arrival of the Arabs, they knew each other very well. When Thami El
Glaoui, mindful of compromising ambiguities, removed himself from Morocco during
the Rif War and took himself to London, he spent, I gather, just about every day with
my father, who gave him the latest news. Hence this encounter in Marrakesh was
animated by old friendship.
     An anecdote I recall is that one day a secretary of El Glaoui came to my father’s
office (I suppose 21 Mincing Lane in the City where I used to be dragged, near Tate
and Lyle), and asked if care could be taken of a parcel he had with him. It was some
time, perhaps years, later a secretary turned up again and, stirring up recollection of
the parcel, asked if he could be permitted to take charge of it. He was about to leave in
possession of the parcel when my father asked, out of understandable curiosity, what
was the nature of the contents. It was explained that the parcel contained valuables
that could be useful for incidental needs while on a journey, as it were like travellers
checks, which of course at that time had not been invented. In other words, gold,
silver, precious stones … imagination is in overload to picture the contents.

Michel Abitbol (ed.), Communautés juives des marges sahariennes du Maghreb.
   Jerusalem, 1982.
— , Temoins et acteurs: Les Corcos et l’histoire du Maroc contemporaine.
   Jerusalem:, Institut Ben Zvi, 1977
Gavin Maxwell, Lords of the Atlas: Adventure, Mystery, and Intrigue in Morocco,
   1893-1956; The Rise and Fall of the House of Glaoua. The Lyons Press, New
   York, 2000.
Marvin Rintala, Lloyd George and Churchill: How Friendship Changed Politics.
   Madison Books, 1995 (I came across this interesting book at the same time as my
   search for the Lloyd George biography by Thomson.)
Daniel J. Schroeter, “The Jews of Essaouira (Mogador) and the Trade of Southern
   Morocco.” In M. Abitbol (1982), pp. 365-90.
— , “Anglo-Jewry and Essaouira (Mogador), 1860-1900: the social implications of
   philanthropy.” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, sessions
   1981-1982, Volume XXVIII & Miscellanies Part XIII, 1984. Paper presented to
   the Society on 28 April 1982 (see earlier reference).
— , Merchants of Essaouira: Urban society and imperialism in southwestern
   Morocco, 1844-1886. Cambridge University Press, 1988. Cambridge Middle East
   Library. . (Essaouira = Mogador)
Malcolm Thomson, with the collaboration of Frances, Countess Lloyd-George of
   Dwyfor, David Lloyd George: The Official Biography. London, Hutchinson.
   (Thomson was his secretary 1925 to 1940, I met both in Marrakesh 1937 or 38, I
   recently got this together with the Rintala 1995 book about Lloyd George and
   Churchill.)