IX explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Colonialism and Otherness

  The narrator describes Moorish customs as savage or degenerate, contrasting them with Western norms, and highlights the power dynamics between European nations and Morocco.

• Religion and Hypocrisy

  The chapter details the strict religious prohibitions of Islam (e.g., mosque profanation) and the clever circumvention of pilgrimage wealth requirements through Jewish moneylenders.

• Satire of Tourism

  Blucher's near-disaster at the mosque and the narrator's wry observations about the tedium of Tangier for long-term residents satirize the tourist experience.

Characters to notice

• The Narrator

  Describes the group's adventures and observations in Tangier.

• Mr. Blucher

  Nearly rides into a mosque, which would have been a dire profanation.

• Hadji Muhammad Lamarty

  Stately and princely guide for the party's excursion.

• Jack

  Uses slang term 'skirmish' to describe pilgrims foraging for food.

• The Captain

  Mentioned in context of the Quaker City's departure from Gibraltar.

Key passages

• “Had Blucher succeeded in entering the place, he would no doubt have been chased through the town and stoned; and the time has been, and not many years ago, either, when a Christian would have been most ruthlessly slaughtered if captured in a mosque.”

  If Blucher had entered the mosque, he would likely have been chased and stoned; in the recent past, a Christian caught in a mosque would have been killed without mercy.

  Highlights the severe consequences of religious transgression in Moorish society.

• “When a man steals cattle, they cut off his right hand and left leg and nail them up in the marketplace as a warning to everybody.”

  For cattle theft, the punishment is amputation of the right hand and left leg, displayed in the market as a deterrent.

  Illustrates the harsh Moorish penal code.

• “The Moors reverence cats as something sacred. So the Spaniards touched them on a tender point that time. Their unfeline conduct in eating up all the Tetouan cats aroused a hatred toward them in the breasts of the Moors, to which even the driving them out of Spain was tame and passionless.”

  Moors consider cats sacred, so the Spanish soldiers eating all the cats in Tetouan provoked a hatred deeper than the historical expulsion of Moors from Spain.

  Shows cultural conflict and the symbolic importance of cats to the Moors.

• “I would seriously recommend to the government of the United States that when a man commits a crime so heinous that the law provides no adequate punishment for it, they make him Consul General to Tangier.”

  I suggest that the U.S. government appoint criminals too severe for ordinary punishment as Consul General to Tangier, as a form of exile.

  Satirizes the extreme isolation and boredom of the diplomatic post.