THE TWO GREAT MOORISH RELIGIOUS 
DANCES 
By GeorcGE Epmunp Hotr 
AMERICAN VICE AND DEPUTY CONSUL-GENERAL, TANGIER, Morocco 
With Photographs by the Author 
WoNWICE each year does Tangier, 
which is called by the Moors “the 
i Infidel City” and is left off the 
map of Morocco designed by the follower 
of the Prophet, lose its right to the charge 
of infidelity. Twice each year is the 
tinge of Christianity overcome by the 
glowing, barbaric colors of Mohamme- 
dan fanaticism, and twice each year does 
the Christian in Tangier feel himself as 
an insignificant atom in the mass of 
Moorish life. ‘These two occasions are 
those of the celebration of the great Mo- 
hammedan religious dances, the Aisawa 
and the Hamadsha. 
All the rest of the year, even during 
the joyful observance of the Moalood, or 
birth month of Mohammed the Prophet, 
when there is much feasting and praying 
and fantasia, the foreigner in Tangier 
may feel that Mohammedanism and all 
its followers and possessions are things 
for his amusement or for his boredom; 
but when this same foreigner stands for 
three or four hours or more on the safe 
balcony of his hotel or watches from his 
window a hundred white-robed figures, 
the center of a crowd of thousands of 
Mohammedans, dancing wiidly without 
cessation; when he hears the intermina- 
ble beat of the low-voiced drums and the 
never-ceasing monotony of the shrill 
pipes; when he sees the banners of the 
Prophet, malignant green and red and 
gold, then this Christian foreigner feels 
that here is something which he cannot 
understand ; that here are people voicing 
the ideals of the Mohammedan world, 
which somehow seems to become. sud- 
denly larger, and that he himself has had 
a mistaken conception of what Moham- 
medanism means. And when his eyes 
behold the rise and fall of glittering axes 
upon shaven heads of man and boy, and 
he hears the peculiar rattle of contact 
between head and weapon, and sees the 
beginning of the red flood, which grad- 
ually spreads down over face and neck 
and garments, witnesses the ecstasies of 
pain in the name of Allah, then somehow 
the sun seems to become unbearably hot, 
the air stifling, the shriek of the pipes 
and the beat of the drums simply infer- 
nal, and with it all comes just a faint 
impression of what fear might be, and 
the desire to get away from it all to the 
realities of life, for certainly this mob of 
dancing, singing demons is not real! 
The two annual dances are given by 
separate sects, which have wide influence 
not only over Morocco, but over Algeria 
and Tunisia and eastward as far as 
Egypt. Tales there are told of the sect 
of the Aisawa which now, it is said, in 
interior Tunisia, along the French Sa- 
hara, in interior Algeria beyond the 
French railroads, and in the wilderness 
of Morocco, is planning a crusade under 
the red banner which shall drive out the 
contaminating Christian from Africa. It 
is claimed by those who have seen much 
of North African life and have traveled 
much among the people who have never 
seen the coast that the Aisawa is a secret 
organization, now less religious than po- 
litical; that its members are united with 
the secret object of raising a jehad, or 
holy war, which will restore to the North 
Africans their old-time independence and 
supremacy. Knowing this, the gradually 
decreasing influence of the annual dance 
in Tangier becomes a consideration of 
interest. 
Time was when Christians at the time 
