Mogreb-el-acksa: A Journey In Morocco

R. B. Cunninghame Graham's trek into the Moroccan interior beyond Marrakesh is a classic example of British adventure travel. His ostensible purpose was to reach the forbidden city of Tarudant, where it was claimed no Christian had ever set foot, and which he attempted while variously disguised as a Turkish doctor and a sheikh from Fez. In the end, Cunninghame Graham's mission was a failure: halfway to his goal, he was captured and held prisoner for four months in the medieval castle of Kintafi in the Atlas Mountains. But his loss was the reader's gain, as Edward Garnet points out in his introduction, for "the episode of this enforced detention in (a) strange semi-Arcadian, semi-feudalistic scene, while the traveller watches day after day the panorama of Berber life...is unique in the literature of travel". Part history, part social commentary as only the British wrote it, Cunninghame Graham's account of his travels makes fascinating reading nearly a century later.