This week, we continue with yet another excerpt from the captivity narrative of John Foss, the American who, in October, 1793, was captured by Barbary corsairs from Algiers.
Last week’s excerpt provided some details about the city’s mosques and bath houses, the languages spoken, the styles of dress, and more.
This week’s excerpt deals with the makeup of the population and with governance.
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The present inhabitants of the territory of Algiers are composed of many different nations.
The Turks are the first people among them, and control all the government and power in their own hands, and no man can hold any post of great distinction among them except he is a real Turk. The Cologlies are next to the Turks in power. These are persons born of a Moorish mother, the father being a Turk. The Arabs trace their descent from the disciples of Mahomet, who formerly subdued Algiers. Moors, or Moriscos, were driven out of Spain about the end of the sixteenth century. Renegados, Levantines, Jews, and Christian slaves, with a crowd formed of the posterity of all these different people, make up the rest of the population.
The Cologlies, Moors, and Arabs are the most numerous inhabitants of the city and of the nearby towns. They compose the great body of the inhabitants.
The Arabs are thieves and murderers by profession. These robbers traverse the country in considerable troops, on horseback: They assault & plunder the caravans. As recently as 1750, a body of 50,000 Arabs attacked a caravan of merchants coming from Mecca, killed 60,000 persons, and plundered the caravan of everything valuable, even though it was escorted by a Turkish army.
As to the general nature of these Arabs, they are mostly of a lazy, idle disposition, and cursed with all the vices of mankind: mistrustful to the last degree, false, jealous, and the very picture of ignorance! They stile themselves Musselman, or true believers, yet there is no confidence to be put in their word upon any occasion whatever, except when they promise to do you an injury, in which promise they seldom fail, and on which you may safely rely.
They are often famed by Spanish historians for men of gallantry, but I could never think they are inclined that way, though I believe them nearly to equal the Spaniards in cowardice. They are but indifferent soldiers, and the greatest part of their skill consists in the management of a horse, and it must be confessed that they manage these animals with a great deal of dexterity.
They abominate the very name of and cultivate the most inveterate hatred against Christians, and they are continually, like ravenous wolves, seeking means to destroy them. Mahomet has taught them in his Alcoran, (or Koran, for the two names appear to be synonyms) that all of his faith who are slain fighting against the Christians will immediately enter into Paradise in triumph. He even tells them their horses, if they die in battle, are translated into heaven, for they hope to have the pleasure of riding there as well as on earth.
They believe women have no souls and are only formed for propagation. Women are therefore not allowed to enter their mosques because they deem them incapable of being received into heaven: Yet the women say their prayers secretly at home.
The men have usually a string of beads in their hands, like the Roman Catholics, and for every bead they say a short prayer, and as they say it, they let the bead drop through their fingers. These prayers consist only in the different attributes of God, such as: “God is good; God is great; God is infinite; God is merciful; etc.
The commanders of those wretches only differ from their subjects in having a larger propensity of their ill qualities, with the addition of a degree of cruelty and avarice.
All foreigners are allowed the free use of their religion. However, the established religion in all of Barbary is Mahometanism. All of them have much respect for idiots—whose protection in some cases, screens offenders from punishment for notorious crimes.
In the main, however, the Moors of Barbary, as the inhabitants of these states are now generally called, (because the Saracens first entered Europe from Mauritania, the country of the Moors) have adopted the very worst parts of the Mahometan Religion, and they seem to have retained as much of it as countenances all their vices. The men commit the most unnatural crimes with impunity.
Everyone is amazed to find these people so submissive and patient under so excessive and cruel a tyranny. But it should be understood that they are taught to believe that if they fall by the hand of their king, whom they call Xerif, or Sherief, (which signifies Mahomet’s successor) they immediately go up to Heaven—and those who would not willingly be sent to Heaven before their time, must be very particular how they conduct themselves.
The manner in which his authority is exercised, corresponds with that by which it was obtained.
The Dey has a corps of guards, a very necessary, though perhaps a fruitless precaution, as any private soldier who has the courage to assassinate him stands an equal chance of becoming his successor.
An experiment of this description was once made when six private soldiers entered into a conspiracy to murder the Dey of one of the Barbary states. They entered his palace and gave him a mortal wound, by thrusting a scimitar into his side in the midst of a crowd of people. He fell down and expired, exclaiming; “Has nnobody the courage to kill a villain?” One of the conspirators instantly ascended the vacant throne and, brandishing his naked scimitar, declared that he would do justice to all!
His five associates meanwhile endeavored to enforce the title of their new sovereign, and none present seemed to give themselves any concern about what had happened. He had not remained above ten minutes in this situation, however, when an old soldier unobserved took aim with a musket or blunderbuss and shot him dead. Upon this, the five others were immediately dispatched by the people present.
Such scenes as these do not unfrequently occur in such tyrannic countries.
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For the next installment of John Foss’s narrative, see the next post here in this blog.
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For those who may be interested…
The above excerpt from John Foss’s narrative comes from A journal, of the captivity and sufferings of John Foss; several years a prisoner at Algiers: together with some account of the treatment of Christian slaves when sick—and observations on the Manners and Customs of the Algerines, second edition, originally published in 1798, pp. 63-68.
As usual, I have lightly edited and abridged the original text to make it more accessible for modern readers.
Corsairs and Captives
Narratives from the Age of the Barbary Pirates
The Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson
The story of the Barbary corsair raid on Iceland in 1627