The present buildings are divided into old and new Fez.  The streets are so narrow that two men on horseback could scarcely ride abreast; they are, besides, very dark, and often arched over.  Colonel Scott represents some of the streets, however, as a mile in length.  The houses are high, but not handsome.  The shops are numerous and much frequented, though not very fine in appearance.  Fez contains no less than seven hundred mosques, fifty of which are superb, and ornamented with fine columns of marble; there is, besides, a hundred or more of very small and ill-built mosques, or rather, houses of prayer.  The most famous of these temples of worship is El-Karoubin (or El-Karouiin), supported by three hundred pillars.  In this is preserved the celebrated library of antiquity, where, it is pretended, ancient Greek and Latin authors are to be found in abundance with the lost books of Titus Livy.

This appears to be mere conjecture. [27] But the mosque the more frequented and venerated, is that dedicated to the founder of the city, Muley Edris, whose ashes repose within its sacred enclosure.  So excessive is this “hero-worship” for this great sultan, that the people constantly invoke his name in their prayers instead of that of the Deity.  The mausoleum of this sacro-santo prince is inviolable and unapproachable.  The university of Fez was formally much celebrated, but little of its learning now remains.  Its once high-minded orthodox mulahs are now succeeded by a fanatic and ignorant race of marabouts.  Nevertheless, the few hommes de lettres found in Morocco are congregated here, and the literature of the empire is concentrated in this city.  Seven large public schools are in full activity, besides numbers of private seminaries of instruction.  The low humour of the talebs, and the fanaticism of the people, are unitedly preserved and developed in this notorious doggerel couplet, universally diffused throughout Morocco:—­

  Ensara fee Senara
  Elhoud fee Sefoud

  “Christians on the hook
  Jews on the spit,” or

  “Let Christians be hooked,
  And let Jews be cooked.”

The great division of the Arabic into eastern and western dialects makes little real difference in a practical point of view.  The Mogrebbin, or western, is well understood by all travellers, and, of course, by all scholars from the East.

The palace of the Sultan is not large, but is handsome.  There are numerous baths, and an hospital for the mad or incurable.  The population was estimated, not long ago, at 88,000 souls, of which there were 60,000 Moors and Arabs (the Moors being chiefly immigrants from Spain), 10,000 Berbers, 8,000 Jews, and 10,000 Negroes.  But this amount has been reduced to 40,000, or even 30,000; and the probability is, the present population of Fez does not by any means, exceed 50,000, if it reaches that number.  Nearly all the Jews reside in the new city, which, by its position, dominates the old one.  The inhabitants of Fez, in spite of their learning and commerce, are distinguished for their fanaticism; and an European, without an escort of troops, cannot walk in the streets unless disguised.  It was lately the head-quarters of the fanatics who preached “the holy war,” and involved the Emperor in hostilities with the French.