This week, we continue the series of excerpts of an English translation of Relation de la captivité du Sr. Moüette dans les royaumes de Fez et de Maroc, où il a demeuré pendant onze ans (The Story of the Captivity of Sieur Moüette in the Kingdoms of Fez and Marocco, Where He lived for Eleven Years), the book published in 1683 that relates the experiences of Germain Moüette, who at the age of nineteen had the misfortune to be captured by corsairs from Salé.
Last week, remember, the ship Moüette had been travelling on was captured by corsairs from Salé, and he had been transferred to one of the corsair ships. We pick up the story from there.
As soon as we came aboard the corsair ship, ten of us were fettered together with a single long chain. When they had examined all that was in our ship and were satisfied, they made their way back to Salé, from whence they had come.
We reached that place on the twenty-fourth of October.
An English ship been awaiting the return of any corsair vessels and lay at anchor before the bar.[1] Spying our two vessels, they immediately set sail, but having only fifty men aboard were perforce restricted to cannonading us in an attempt to force us to surrender. The corsairs came up to the bar and endeavored to get over it, but the tide being at ebb, the water was too low. They had to put out to sea again and kept along the coast. The English ship pursued the corsairs so close and tore them in so many places with cannon shot that the pirate ship I was aboard was obliged to run itself and its prize upon the rocks where we had all liked to have perished.
Courtebey Reis [the captain of the second corsair ship] slipped away under cover of night and escaped into the small port of Fidela, twelve leagues from Salé.
As we were trying to come ashore from our wrecked ship, a young and beautiful Norman maiden gentlewoman who was travelling with Madam de la Montagne fell into the sea, as did her maid. The Christian seaman hastened to their relief, yet could only save the maid, for the mistress sank under the keel of the vessel and was drowned. At our coming ashore, we found her body stark naked on the sand, the Moors having stripped her of all she possessed.
The Alcaide, Hamett Benyencourt, Governor of the castles and the two towns of Salé, along with Hache Abdelcader Marino, the Intendent of the Marines, came the next day, which was the twenty-fifth, to the place where we were, to conduct us to the town, from which we were about two leagues.
It might be appropriate here to provide a short description of Salé.
The town stands on the banks of the Guerou [Bou Regreg] River, which descends from the mountains of Zaovias [the Middle Atlas mountains) and divides it into two parts, that on the river’s north shore is properly called Sala in the language of the country, and Salé in ours. The richest Jewish and Mohammedan merchants live there. It is encompassed with good walls about six fathoms high and two yards or so thick, made of clay and red sand knit together with lime after the manner of the country. The walls have battlements upon them and are flanked with good towers. They were almost entirely ruined before the reign of Moulay Archy, who caused them to be well repaired.
That part of the town located on the river’s south shore is called Raval [Rabat], and it makes up a much larger compass than the other. There is an abundance of gardens within the circumference of the town walls, which encircle a great field where the inhabitants might grow enough grain to feed 1,500 people. Its walls are very ancient, and there is a tradition in the country that they were built by some of the first Christians slaves brought into Africa by the generals of Jacob al-Mansor, who conquered Spain, the rest of the slaves being taken to Morocco [i.e., Marrakech] to build the famous aqueducts which are still to be seen there.
On the southeast and south quarter stands a high tower called Hassan’s Tower, which serves as a landmark for ships to come in on. At the foot of it are docks to build ships, and for them to winter. A man may ride on horseback up the to the top of the tower as easily as if it were a hill because the ascent has no steps. It was built by the same King’s order, along with a mosque that is now all in ruins, by the architect who raised the famous tower of the mosque that is now the cathedral of Seville and also the great mosque at Morocco [Marrakech].
There are at present two castles at Salé, the old is located directly at the mouth of the river. Its walls, standing on rocks on the river’s shore, are very lofty, and they shelter the Governor’s house that adjoins them from any cannon fire.
There is nothing regular in the structure of this castle, for it is neither square nor triangular, but they built it as the ground would allow. The walls fronting the river are for the most part made of square stones, with several towers newly built by Moulay Semien. Within this castle and before its principle gate, which is almost all rotten, is a fort raised high. Placed on it are several cannons that command the town. Below, on the point of the rocks next to the sea, facing the bar, is a bastion equipped with five cannons to secure the vessels that anchor in the road[2] and to cover the retreat of any pirates if they are pursued by Christian vessels.
The walls next to the sea are low and very easy to be scaled, for within they are filled up with earth almost to the top, and without there are many heaps of dung and earth as high as they are, which would render the entrance very easy. On that part of the walls there are above twenty indifferent pieces of ordnance [i.e., cannons] that serve also to defend the road.
There is a subterranean passage leading from the bastion into the castle.
Within, it has no water to drink but what is preserved in a cistern which receives all that falls on the flat roofs of the houses when it rains and is conveyed to it by several spouts. There is also a well, but the water is brackish and only serves for cattle.
For the next installments of Germain Moüette’s Relation, see the next post here in this blog.
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[1] Salé was situated on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, on the south bank of the Bou Regreg River, about 155 miles (250 kilometres) south of the Strait of Gibraltar. The town itself stood a little upstream from where the river emptied into the sea. The “bar” mentioned here refers to the sandbar that lay across the river’s mouth and that had to be crossed for ships to reach the port. Ships could only successfully cross the bar when the weather was calm enough and the tide high enough.
[2] The word “road” used here is an archaic term referring to the area of deeper—and so safer—water outside a harbor where ships could anchor while awaiting an opportunity to come into port.
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