1904] Partition of Morocco 03 



Saladin has been badly restored, it is said by a Russian Prince in 

 Constantinopolitan taste, the ancient wooden sarcophagus having been 

 removed by him ; also it is still adorned with ribbons placed there by 

 the irrepressible Emperor William. We are to leave for Egypt again 

 to-morrow morning. 



" 2&th March. — By train to Beyrout. We had for travelling com- 

 panion, AH Pasha Abd el Kader, the old Algerian Emir's second son, 

 with whom we had much talk. He is more of a Circassian in ap- 

 pearance than an Arab, and is not unlike the late Sultan Abdul Aziz. 

 He is a great personage in Syria, and at all the stations where we 

 stopped he was greeted by acquaintances, who kissed his hand, for he 

 holds a semi-religious position here. He would not agree to my propo- 

 sition that the people of Damascus were prosperous or contented, but 

 did not give his reasons. He is a fat and heavy man, without great 

 intelligence, but possessed of a certain dignity. His elder brother, 

 Mohammed, whom we knew in 1880, lives now in Constantinople; 

 another brother, he told me, was in Morocco, taking part in the war 

 there, but none of them are allowed to go to Algeria. He has had 

 news, he said, of an arrangement which had been come to between 

 France and England for the partition of Morocco. He had travelled in 

 France and England, but speaks no European language." [This news, 

 casually given me by Ali Pasha Abd el Kader, was the first I received 

 of the Anglo-French Convention, afterwards known as the Entente, 

 whereby the two Governments agreed to divide Egypt and Morocco 

 between them, the first step of the coalition between England, France, 

 and Russia against Germany, the initial cause of the Great War of 

 1914.] 



"315? March. — Returned to Sheykh Obeyd yesterday. The Somali 

 War has been stopped, but whether through my letter to George 

 Wyndham or otherwise, I do not know. 



"yd April (Easter Sunday). — Dined with the Mufti, and dis- 

 cussed the affairs of Islam. He told an amusing story of an episode 

 which had happened to him while an exile at Damascus. There was 

 in London at that time (1883) a certain Rev. Isaac Taylor, who had 

 conceived the idea of bringing about a union between the English 

 reformed Church and Islam upon a basis of their common monotheistic 

 creed. In this he was encouraged by the old Persian, Mirza Bakr, 

 who carried the idea to Syria, and made Propaganda for it, to a cer- 

 tain extent obtaining Mohammed Abdu's sympathy, who, with others, 

 drew up a letter to Taylor, which he signed with two more of the 

 leading men of the Damascus Ulema. Taylor was of course delighted, 

 and had the letter at once published, as being the general opinion of the 

 Mohammedan learned of Damascus, and arguing from it that the 

 union between Christian and Moslem was on the point of accomplish- 



