the capital of a kingdom of the same name in Barbary, in Africa. It is described as a very large place, surrounded with high walls, within which there are hills and valleys only the middle being level and flat. The river, which runs through the city, is divided into two streams, from which canals are cut into every part of the town; so that the mosques, colleges, palaces, and the houses of great men, are amply supplied with water. They have generally square marble basins in the middle of the court of their houses, which are supplied with water by marble pipes that pass through the walls. They constantly run over, and the stream returns back into the street, and so into the river. The houses are built with brick or stone; and are adorned on the outside with fine Mosaic work, or tiles like those of Holland. The wood-work and ceilings are carved, painted, and gilt. The roofs are flat; for they sleep on the tops of the houses in summer. Most of the houses are two stories high, and some three. There are piazzas and galleries running all round the court on the inside, so that you may go under cover from one apartment to another. The pillars are of bricks, covered with glazed tiles, or of marble, with arches between. The timber-work is carved and painted with gay colours, and most of the rooms have marble cisterns of water. Some of the great men build towers over their houses several stories high, and spare no expense to render them beautiful; from hence they have a fine prospect all over the city.

There are in this city 700 mosques, great and small; 50 of which are magnificent, and supported with marble pillars, and other ornaments. The floors are covered with mats, as well as the walls to the height of a man. Every mosque has a tower or minaret, like those in Turkey, with a gallery on the top, from whence they call the people to prayers. The principal mosque is near a mile and a half in circumference. The middle building is 150 yards in length, and 80 in breadth, with a tower proportionally high. Round this to the east, west, and north, there are great colonades 30 or 40 yards long. There are 900 lamps lighted every night; and in the middle of the mosque are large branches, which are capable of holding 500 lamps each. Along the walls are seven pulpits, from which the doctors of the law teach the people. The business of the priest is only to read prayers, and distribute alms to the people; to support which, there are large revenues.

Besides the mosques, there are two colleges built in the Moorish manner, and adorned with marble and paintings. In one of them there are 100 rooms, besides a magnificent hall. In this there is a great marble vase full of water, adorned with marble pillars of various colours, and finely polished. The capitals are gilt, and the roof shines with gold, azure, and purple. The walls are adorned with Arabic verses in gold characters. The other colleges are not near so beautiful, or rather all are gone to ruin since the neglect of learning.

There are hospitals in the city, where formerly all strangers were maintained three days gratis. But the estates belonging to them have been confiscated for the emperor's use. There are above 100 public baths, many of which are stately buildings. People of the same trade or business live in streets by themselves.

Though the country about Fez is pleasant and fertile, and in many places abounding with corn and cattle, yet a great part of it lies waste and uncultivated, not so much for want of inhabitants as from the oppression of the governors; which makes the people choose to live at some distance from the high roads, where they cultivate just as much land as is necessary for their own subsistence.

Round the city there are fine marble tombs, monuments, and gardens full of all manner of fruit-trees.

Such are the common accounts of this city. The following are given by M. Chenier in his Recherches Historiques sur les Maures.

Fez was built in the end of the eighth century by Edris, a descendant of Mahomet and of Ali; whose father, in order to avoid the proscriptions of the calif Abdallah, retired to the extremity of Africa, and was proclaimed sovereign by the Moors. Sidi Edris, having succeeded to the throne of his father, built the city of Fez in the year 793. He caused a mosque to be erected, in which his body was interred, and the city ever afterwards became an asylum for the Moors, and a place of devotion. In the first moments of fervour FEZ

Vour which a new worship inspires, another mosque was built called Carubin, which is perhaps one of the largest and most beautiful edifices in Africa. Several others were successively built, besides colleges and hospitals; and the city was held in such veneration, that when the pilgrimage to Mecca was interrupted in the fourth century of the Hegira, the western Mahometans substituted that of Fez in its stead, while the eastern people went to Jerusalem.

When the Arabs had overspread Asia, Africa, and Europe, they brought to Fez the little knowledge they had acquired in the sciences and arts; and that capital conjoined, with the schools of religion, academies where philosophy was taught, together with medicine and astronomy. This last gradually degenerated; ignorance brought astrology into repute, and this quickly engendered the arts of magic and divination.

Fez soon became the common resort of all Africa. The Mahometans went thither for the purposes of devotion; the affluence of strangers introduced a taste for pleasure; libertinism quickly followed; and, as its progress is most rapid in warm countries, Fez, which had been the nurse of sciences and arts, became a harbour for every kind of vice. The public baths, which health, cleanliness, and custom, had rendered necessary, and which were everywhere respected as sacred places, became scenes of debauchery; where men introduced themselves in the habit of women; youths, in the same disguise, with a distaff in their hands, walked the streets at sunset in order to entice strangers to their inns, which were less a place of repose than a convenience for prostitution.

The usurpers who disputed the kingdom of Fez after the 16th century overlooked these abuses, and contented themselves with subjecting the masters of the inns to furnish a certain number of cooks for the army. It is to this laxity of discipline that Fez owed its first splendour. As the inhabitants are beautiful, the Africans flocked thither in crowds; the laws were overturned, morals despised, and vice itself turned into an engine of political resource. The same spirit, the same inclinations, the same depravity, still exist in the hearts of all the Moors. But libertinism is not now encouraged; it wears there, as in other places, the mask of hypocrisy; and dares not venture to show itself in the face of day.

The Mahometans of Andalusia, those of Granada and Cordova, migrated to Fez during the different revolutions that agitated Spain; they carried with them new customs and new arts, and perhaps some slight degree of civilization. The Spanish Moors carried from Cordova to Fez the art of staining goat and sheep skins with a red colour, which were then called Cordova leather, and now Morocco leather, from that city where the art is less perfect. They manufacture gauzes at Fez, silk stuffs, and girdles elegantly embroidered with gold and silk, which show how far their ingenuity might be carried if industry were more encouraged.

There is still some taste for study preserved at Fez, and the Arabic language is spoken there in greater purity than in any other part of the empire. The rich Moors send their children to the schools at Fez, where they are better instructed than they could be elsewhere.

Leo Africanus in the 16th century, gave a magnificent description of this city, from which most of those that have been afterwards made are copied: but its situation, its schools, and the industry and great ubiquity of its inhabitants, are the only circumstances that give it any preference to the other cities of the empire. There are some pretty convenient inns here, consisting of two or three stories. The houses have no elegance externally: the streets are ill paved, and so strait that two persons riding abreast can hardly pass. The shops are like stalls; and have no more room in them than is sufficient to serve for the owner, who is always seated with his wares around him, which he shows to the passengers. But though the Moors of Fez are more civilized than the rest, they are vain, superstitious, and intolerant; and an order must be obtained from the emperor before a Christian or a Jew can be allowed to enter the city.

The situation of Fez is exceedingly singular. It lies in the bottom of a valley surrounded by little hills in the shape of a funnel; the declivities are divided into gardens planted with tall trees, orange shrubs, and all sorts of fruit-trees; a river meanders along the declivity, and turns a number of mills, which distribute the water abundantly to all the gardens, and almost to every house. The descent to the city, which stands in the centre, is long; and the road lies through these gardens, which it traverses, in a serpentine direction.

The gardens, seen from the city, form a most delightful amphitheatre. Formerly each garden had a house in which the inhabitants spent the summer. These houses were destroyed in the times of the civil wars, and in the revolutions to which Fez has been subject, and few individuals have restored them. The situation of Fez, however, cannot be healthful; moist vapours fill the air in summer, and fevers are exceedingly common.

On the height above Fez, in a plain susceptible of rich cultivation, stands New Fez, finely situated, and enjoying excellent air, containing some old palaces, in which the children of the emperor live, and where he sometimes resides himself. New Fez is inhabited by some Moorish families, but by a greater number of Jews.

Fez is seated on the river Cebu, W. Long. 4° 25'. N. Lat. 33° 58'.

FEWEL. See FUEL.