n.

THE PLACE OF  MOROCCO  IN  FICTION

SO many a distant land has come to be a hackneyed
stage for the imaginative writer, that it is remarkable
how rarely Morocco has served as a scene for- drama,
poetry or fiction. References to this country or its
people—as in the case of Othello, or of the kings
in Marlowe's Tamburlaine — and instances of casual
adventure on its coast, chiefly in the piracy days—
as when Robinson Crusoe, among others, found himself
captured by Salli rovers—are indeed not lacking, but
they are invariably the misleading notions of those
altogether ignorant of Morocco itself With one or
two exceptions, even the few who have sat down to write
a '*' Morocco story " have been no better informed, so that
as yet we have no work of any class of fiction which
conveys reliable conceptions either of the past or the
present conditions of life in the land of the Moors.*

The  attention   of  playwrights   was   earlier   turned   to

Morocco   than   that   of novelists.     Just   three   centuries

Peele                ago  the  famous "battle  of the  three  kings,"

<George).             in which perished the rash Dom Sebastian in

°^'^^'^'''^'''        1578,  near   El   Kasar,  became  the  theme  of

* The present reviewer has therefore endeavoured to utilise fiction as a
medium for the presentation of a picture of Moorish life and thought, more
complete than would have otherwise been possible, in an as yet unpublished
novel, Sons of Ishmael.

519