On being struck with the fatal weapon, he was carried to his palace at
Dar-el-Beida, where he only survived a single day; but yet during this
brief period, and whilst in the agony of dissolution, it is said, the
tyrant committed more crimes and outrages, and caused more people to be
sacrificed, than in his whole lifetime, determining with the vengeance
of a pure fiend, that if his people would not weep for his death they
should mourn for the loss of their friends and relations, like the old
tyrant Herod. How instinctively imitative is crime! Yezeed was of
course, not buried at the cross-roads, (Heaven forefend!) or in a
cemetery for criminals and infidels, for being a Shereef, and divine
(not royal) blood running in his veins, he was interred with great
solemnities at the mosque of _Kobah Sherfah_ (tombs of the Shereefs),
beside the mausoleums wherein repose the awful ashes of the princes and
kings, who, in ages gone by, have devastated the Empire of Morocco, and
inflicted incalculable miseries on its unfortunate inhabitants, whilst
plenarily exercising their divine right, to do wrong as sovereigns, or
as invested with inviolable Shereefian privileges as lineal successors
of the Prophets of God! [6]
A civil war still followed this monster's death, and the empire was rent
and partitioned into three portions, in each of which a pretender
disputed for the possession of the Shereefian throne. The poor people
had now three tyrants for one. The two grand competitors, however, were
Muley Hisham, who was proclaimed Sultan in the south at Morrocco and
Sous, and Muley Suleiman, who was saluted as Emperor in the north at
Fez. In 1795, Hisham retired to a sanctuary where he soon died, and then
Muley Suleimau was proclaimed in the southern provinces
Emir-el-Monmeneen, and Sultan of the whole empire.
Muley Suleiman proved to be a good and patriotic prince, "the Shereef of
Shereefs," whilst he maintained, by a just administration, tranquility
in his own state, and cultivated peace with Europe. During his long
reign of a quarter of a century, at a period when all the Christian
powers were convulsed with war, he wisely remained neutral, and his
subjects were happy in the enjoyment of peace and prosperity. He died on
the 28th March 1820, about the 50th year of his age, after having, with
his last breath declared his nephew, Muley Abd Errahman, the legitimate
and hereditary successor of the Shereefs, and so restoring the lineal
descent of these celebrated Mussulman sovereigns. The most glorious as
well as the most beneficent and acceptable act of the reign of Muley
Suleiman, so far as European nations were concerned, was the abolition
of Christian slavery in his States. In former times, the Maroquine
Moors, smarting under the ills inflicted upon them by Spain and
breathing revenge, subjected their Christian captives to more cruel
bondage, than, ever were experienced by the same victims of the Corsairs
in Algeria, the stronghold of this nefarious trade.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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