Note 123 — ARMS

To-day the craft of finely decorating arms is not forgotten in Morocco. “A silversmith advanced to show a half-completed silver-sheathed and hafted dagger, engraved with pious sentences, as, “God is our sufficiency and our best bulwark here on earth,” and running in and out between the texts a pattern of a rope with one of the strands left out, which pattern also ran round the cornice of the room we sat in, and round the door, as it runs round the doors in the Alhambra and the Alcazar, and in thousands of houses built by the Moors, and standing still, in Spain. The dagger and the sheath were handed to me for my inspection, and on my saying that they were beautifully worked, the Caid said keep them, but I declined, not having anything of equal value to give in return.”—Cunninghame Graham; Mogreb-El-Acksa, p. 234.