FEYJOO Y MONTENEGRO, Benito Jeronimo. See FEIJO0 Y MONTENEGRO, B. J.
FEZ, Morocco, city, capital of the province of Fez, 95 miles from the Atlantic, 225 north east of Morocco. Fez is a city whose ancient glories have departed. The walls which en circled it have gone to ruin, and its curiously contracted thoroughfares are ill-kept, dirty and sunless. In place of its reported population of 400,000 in its palmy days it has dwindled to a fourth of that number. It contains over 100 mosques, one of which, El Carubin, has a cov ered place for women who may choose to par ticipate in public prayers, something unusual in Mohammedan places of worship. Good public baths are numerous. It is the entrepot of northwest Africa for goods of European manufacture. Its chief manufactures are leather and silk shawls and it was at one time the seat of a trade in red caps (fez), the dye for which was almost exclusively obtained here. Twice a year caravans go from Fez across the desert to Timbuktu. Fez has always been con sidered one of the chief seats of Moslem learn ing. Old Fez was founded in 793 by Edris II, a descendant of Mohammed, and continued the capital of an independent kingdom till 1548, when it was, together with its territory, con quered and annexed to Morocco. For upward
of a thousand years Fez has been one of the sacred places of Islam. When the pilgrimages to Mecca were interrupted in the 10th century, the western Moslems journeyed to this city, as the eastern did to Mecca; and even now none but the Faithful can enter Fez without express permission from the emperor. Pop. (estimated) 100,000.
FEZ, fez, Kingdom of, once independent, but now the most northern section of the em pire of Morocco; bounded north by the Med iterranean; east by Algeria; south by the river Om-er-begh or Morbeza, which separates it from Morocco proper ; and west by the Atlantic. It was conquered and united to Morocco in 1548.
See MOROCCO.
FEZ, a red, brimless cap, usually of felt or wool, first made in the town of Fez, Morocco. It is the Turkish national headdress, but is also found in Greece, Egypt, the Balkan states and Persia.