Moorish Literature | Page 8

principal person bears another name.
The popular poetry consists of two great divisions, quite different as to
subject. The first and best esteemed bears the name of Klam el Djedd,
and treats of that which concerns the Prophet, the saints, and miracles.
A specimen of this class is the complaint relative to the rupture of the
Dam of St. Denis of Sig, of which the following is the commencement:
"A great disaster was fated:[39]
The cavalier gave the alarm, at the
moment of the break;
The menace was realized by the Supreme Will,

My God! Thou alone art good.
The dam, perfidious thing,

Precipitated his muddy Legions,
With loud growlings.
No bank so
strong as to hold him in check.
"He spurred to the right,
The bridges which could not sustain his
shock fell
Under his added weight;
His fury filled the country with
fear, and he
Crushed the barrier that would retain him."
As to the class of declamatory poems, one in particular is popular in

Algiers, for it celebrates the conquest of the Maghreb in the eleventh
century by the divers branches of the Beni-Hilal, from whom descend
almost the whole of the Arabs who now are living in the northwest of
Africa. This veritable poem is old enough, perhaps under its present
form, for the historian, Ten Khaldoun, who wrote at the end of the
fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth, has preserved the
resumé of the episode of Djazza, the heroine who abandoned her
children and husband to follow her brothers to the conquest of Thrgya
Hajoute. To him are attributed verses which do not lack regularity, nor
a certain rhythm, and also a facility of expression, but which abound in
interpolations and faults of grammar. The city people could not bear to
hear them nor to read them. In our days, for their taste has changed--at
least in that which touches the masses--the recital of the deeds of the
Helals is much liked in the Arab cafés in Algeria and also in Tunis.
Still more, these recitals have penetrated to the Berbers, and if they
have not preserved the indigenous songs of the second Arab invasion,
they have borrowed the traditions of their conquerors, as we can see in
the episode of Ali el Hilalien and of Er-Redah.
The names of the invading chiefs have been preserved in the
declamatory songs: Abou Zeid, Hassan ben Serhan, and, above all,
Dyab ben Ghanum, in the mouth of whom the poet puts at the end of
the epic the recital of the exploits of his race:
"Since the day when we quitted the soil and territory of the
Medjid, I have not opened my heart to joy;
We came to the homes of
Chokir and Cherif ben Hachem who pours upon thee (Djazzah) a rain
of tears;
We have marched against Ed-Dabis ben Monime and we
have overrun his cities and plains.
We went to Koufat and have
bought merchandise from the tradesmen who come to us by caravan.

We arrived at Ras el Ain in all our brave attire and we mastered all the
villages and their inhabitants.
We came to Haleb, whose territory we
had overrun, borne by our swift, magnificent steeds.
We entered the
country of the Khazi Mohammed who wore a coat of mail, with long,
floating ends,
We traversed Syria, going toward Ghaza, and reached
Egypt, belonging to the son of Yakoub, Yousof, and found the Turks

with their swift steeds.
We reached the land of Raqin al Hoonara, and
drowned him in a deluge of blood.
We came to the country of the
Mahdi, whom we rolled on the earth, and as to his nobles their blood
flowed in streams.
We came to the iron house of Boraih, and found
that the Jewish was the established religion.
We arrived at the home
of the warrior, El Hashais:
The night was dark, he fell upon us while
we slept without anxiety,
He took from us our delicate and honored
young girls, beauties whose eyes were darkened with kohol.
Abou
Zeid marched against him with his sharp sword and left him lying on
the ground.
Abou So'dah Khalifah the Zemati, made an expedition
against us, and pursued us with the sword from all sides.
I killed
Abou So'dah Khalifah the Zemati, and I have put you in possession of
all his estates.
They gave me three provinces and So'dah, this is the
exact truth that I am telling here.
Then came an old woman of evil
augur and she threw dissension among us, and the Helals left for a
distant land.
Then Abou Ali said to me: 'Dyab, you are but a fool.'
I
marched against him under the wing of the night, and flames were
lighted in the sheepfolds.
He sent against me Hassan the Hilali, I
went to meet him and said, 'Seize this wretched dog.' These are the
words of the Zoght Dyab ben Ghanem and the fire of illness was
lighted