Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎478v] (81/238)

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MOROCCO: THE SULTAN AND THE
BASHADOURS.
By Ion Perdicaris.
The presence, in January and February, of no less than
four of the representatives of the Powers at the coast town
of Rabat during the temporary stay there of the young
Sultan, Mulai Abd-el-Aziz, and his Court, has afforded
the Ministers of England, Austria, Germany, and France
the opportunity of treating directly with His Shereefian
Majesty, instead of conducting negotiations from Tangier.
The object of Sir Arthur Nicolson’s visit was to confirm
and ratify the arrangements discussed last summer in
London with the Sultan’s special envoy, Sid el-Mahdi-
el-Menebhi, who, it may be remembered, afterwards visited
Berlin, whence he returned, suddenly, and, apparently, in
disgrace, attended by Raid Sir Harry Maclean.
Those who knew what was passing at the Shereefian
Court, then at Morocco City, the southern capital of the
Moorish Empire, thought, indeed, that it was only the
presence of “ the Raid, together with urgent remon
strances from the English Legation at Tangier, which
saved Menebhi from arrest on a serious charge of pecula
tion. The inference was that England had suffered an
awkward check, since it was evident that the old Moorish
faction with Sid Fedoul Gharnit, long Minister for Foreign
Affairs under the late Sultan, Mulai el Hassan, and
certainly one of the most wily and adroit of Moorish
\ izirs, was then in the ascendant. To-day, however,
Menebhi is, more than ever, a power at Court—a circum
stance which favours a radical change of policy, together
with the possible reform of many old customs that (< were
more honoured in the breach than the observance.”
Nothing, indeed, has more surprised those who best
know Morocco than this sudden change of attitude on the
part of the officials, in whose hands, for the moment at