Tranchant de Lunel, M. Raymond Koechlin, M. Gaillard, M. Ricard, and
many other French scholars, have written of Moslem architecture and art
in articles published either in "France-Maroc," as introductions to
catalogues of exhibitions, or in the reviews and daily papers. Pierre
Loti and M. Andre Chevrillon have reflected, with the intensest visual
sensibility, the romantic and ruinous Morocco of yesterday, and in the
volumes of the "Conferences Marocaines," published by the French
government, the experts gathered about the Resident-General have
examined the industrial and agricultural Morocco of tomorrow. Lastly,
one striking book sums up, with the clearness and consecutiveness of
which French scholarship alone possesses the art, the chief things to be
said on all these subjects, save that of art and archaeology. This is M.
Augustin Bernard's volume, "Le Maroc," the one portable and compact yet
full and informing book since Leo Africanus described the bazaars of
Fez. But M. Augustin Bernard deals only with the ethnology, the social,
religious and political history, and the physical properties, of the
country; and this, though "a large order," leaves out the visual and
picturesque side, except in so far as the book touches on the always
picturesque life of the people.

For the use, therefore, of the happy wanderers who may be planning a
Moroccan journey, I have added to the record of my personal impressions
a slight sketch of the history and art of the country. In extenuation of
the attempt I must add that the chief merit of this sketch will be its
absence of originality. Its facts will be chiefly drawn from the pages
of M. Augustin Bernard, M. H. Saladin, and M. Gaston Migeon, and the
rich sources of the "Conferences Marocaines" and the articles of
"France-Maroc." It will also be deeply indebted to information given on
the spot by the brilliant specialists of the French administration, to
the Marquis de Segonzac, with whom I had the good luck to travel from
Rabat to Marrakech and back; to M. Alfred de Tarde, editor of
"France-Maroc"; to M. Tranchant de Lunel, director of the French School
of Fine Arts in Morocco; to M. Goulven, the historian of Portuguese
Mazagan, to M. Louis Chatelain, and to the many other cultivated and
cordial French officials, military and civilian, who, at each stage of
my journey, did their amiable best to answer my questions and open my
eyes.

NOTE

In the writing of proper names and