Birth of a Nation

Round about Fez, Morocco, where the fez was invented and is still worn, thousands of drums began to beat monotonously one night last week, thousands of pipes to squeal, and a million Morocco Negroes to cavort and celebrate the 240th anniversary of the mass marriage from which they all sprang.

In 1690 the Sultan Moulay Ismail, "The Bloodthirsty," fell to grieving over the moral and physical disintegration of his Arab soldiers. He noticed that the black slaves brought to him from distant Senegal were lion-muscled, superbly built, and as fierce fighters as those ancient Arabs from North Africa who in the 8th Century had swept across southern Spain.

Shrewd, His Majesty determined to breed a new, better army. He sent troops of Arab slave drivers to beat the forests of Senegal for blacks. From the roundup, 10,000 of the most perfect men, 10,000 of the soundest maidens were selected, sent to Gao.

From Gao the captive lines of men and maidens marched north to Marrakesh (Morocco City). Once inside the city, chains were knocked off, the Negro men were told to pick their own brides and mate with them forthwith. The great mass-mating lasted for weeks. Sultan Moulay Ismail obtained as an eventual result the most powerful army in North Africa. He benevolently gave each couple a strip of land to till and the choice of either a donkey or a camel.

Among the million-odd descendants of the mass marriage who celebrated its anniversary last week, none are more famed than the "Senegalese Black Guard," all six feet tall and black as ebony. Night and day they guard the person of Morocco's present Sultan, sparse-bearded, 19- year-old Sidi Mohammed (TIME, Aug. 12).

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