The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-06-02
Queer business methods among inc Oriental TailOrs, Sh0emakers and Saddlers


Copyright. 1907, by Frank G. Carpenter
 Tunis. "AKE a seat upon one of the magic carpets of the Arabian Nights and A fly across the Atlantic ocean and over the Mediterranean to the shores of North Africa. Direct your genii to :. set you down beside me on the top of the Kasbah in this snow-white city of Tunis, and let us travel together through this one of the oldest populations of the oriental world. Before we start cast your eyes over the vast expanse of buildings below you. We are high above the city and 1t stretches about on all sides, looking like great blocks of ice, with here and there the white dome of a marabout or Mahommedan saint, and the square marble-faced towers of a mosque rising above them. That reddish brown sections of buildings, lying be- yond on the edge of the water, is the new French quarter; and that wide, glossy avenue, running across Lake Tunis, is the canal which has been recently built to bring the great ocean steamers right up to the town. There are blue mountains on our right with white buildings upon them and away off at the left oyer the lake we see the snowy houses of Sidl Bou Said and the white cathedral which marks the site where old Carthage once stood. That was a mighty city more than twenty-five centuries ago, but this town, above which we are standing, was founded even before Carthage, and it throve until 1t was supplanted by its Phoenician rival.
 Cosmopolitan Tuns.
 The Tunis of today is rapidly growing. and 1t is now one of the most cosmo- poitan towns of the world. It contains, with it's suburbs, in the neighborhood of three hundred thousand souls. It has something like fifty thousand Italians; 1t has fifty thousand Jews. far different in costume and appearance from the Israelites of our country and also thou sands of Maltese, Sicilians and Spaniards. It's French are somewhat fewer than the Italians, bat they include large garrison of soldiers, dressed in gay uni- forms who form striking figures wher- ever they go.
 The most important part of the Tu- nisian population is the Mohammedan element. This numbers at least one hundred thousand, and It's members form the chief inhabitants of old Tunis, the great snowy town under our feet. They are orientals of the orientals and they live in world of their own. They do not like Christians and tolerate us only because they must. Their town is shut off from the. rest of the city by an enormous wall, and the French rule is such that they are allowed to have their own customs and do about as they please. One dare not enter any one of the hundred old mosques where they. go daily for prayers; he must not visit their schools, and he who would attempt to go into one of their houses without permislson might be killed, and l doubt If the French would object. | have visited most of the great cities Aof the oriental world; I have traeveled Through India, Turkey and Egypt, and II have yet to find a section so strictly eastern as the streets of cd Tunis They are ns rrow and winding In some of them you can touch the walls on both sides and others are SO narrow that the fat Tunisian Jewesses have to suck in their breath in order to pass. The white houses which wall these streets are almost without windows, and the few windows which exist are so high up above the street that a field glass