Dinner Etiquette of the Moors

 

Dinner with the Moors is, as with other nations, the important meal of the day. The guests are seated at a large, round table, having six legs about a foot long: the shortness of the table's legs enables the guests to sit cross-legged on the floor, and in the centre of the table is placed a large earthen bowl, with a beehive-shaped plaited grass cover. 
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Dinner Etiquette of the Moors

In Morocco one meets strange dinner customs, customs that by no means appeal to the more delicate taste of the Anglo-Saxon.
The house of the Moor, while covered with white plaster, and therefore of cheerful hue, is by no means equally light inside, for its walls have no windows on the outside and the entrance is by a heavy gateway, for the houses are built for defense as well as homes. Usually in addition to the gateway there are strong doors of wood.

The rooms are dark, long, and narrow and have high ceilings, a room 9 feet wide by 30 feet long and 12 feet high is a common inside measurement. These rooms, screened, as they are, from the hot Morocco suns, are cool, and, having comfortable divans and soft rugs, are most restful looking. 

While these rooms are protected from the sun, they have windows opening on the courtyard, for the houses are built around gardens or courtyards, and the courtyards are often tiled in squares in white and blue or white and black. The fountain in the centre has cactus or palms growing about it, and as the courtyard has no roof, sufficient light finds its way through the green shutters to the inmates.

A balcony supported by stone pillars runs around the courtyard, forming a shelter from either rain or sunshine, and sometimes a network of cords is stretched across the top of the yard, and over this trails of green, creeping vines grow, and add still further to the inviting aspect of the walled garden.

Dinner with the Moors is, as with other nations, the important meal of the day. The guests are seated at a large, round table, having six legs about a foot long: the shortness of the table's legs enables the guests to sit cross-legged on the floor, and in the centre of the table is placed a large earthen bowl, with a beehive-shaped plaited grass cover. 

A slave removes the cover, and a pile of yellowish-looking rice, called “koos koos,” rounded up mound shape, comes into view, and into this, after Allah has been duly praised, each guest thrusts his hands and passes the oily looking mass to his mouth as expe-. ditiously as possible. In addition to the rice, which forms the groundwork, so to speak, of the meal, there is sugar, young birds, meal, olives, eggs, and other cu riously mixed ingredients. Occasionally the host will fish out an unusually inviting morsel which he presses upon some guest.

As soon as one course has been finished another bowl takes its place, and, as there are about twenty in the course of the meal, their consumption takes some time, despite the speed made in dipping it out. Between each course a slave passes around the table with a brass bowl of goodly size, a can of water, and a towel Just one towel-and each guest washes his mouth, hands and arms in turn, all using the same towel. 

When the last course is consumed there is another turn, at praising Allah, and the dinner is ended, amid – Heaven save the unfortunate Anglo-Saxon present! – loud belching is from the guests, each striving to make a louder sound than his fellows, so as to: indicate the entire satisfaction of his stomach and his appreciation of his host's generous-fare. – The New York Times, 1908

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia