REFUGEE
Bring me back to my town
where I belong
I missed all
my friends
my childhood
and all the walls.
It was so wonderful
and now all is destroyed
like it never was
my town
my town
my town
I try to scream so loud
but no one hears
my tears.
where I belong
I missed all
my friends
my childhood
and all the walls.
It was so wonderful
and now all is destroyed
like it never was
my town
my town
my town
I try to scream so loud
but no one hears
my tears.
I still have just the memories
from the past lives on my mind
my stories with my neighbors are gone
and every innocent kid
their dreams were raped
children died
and history like never exits.
I'm just a number now
without identity
like a dead man
counting the stars in the sky
awaiting the consciences
to hear their cries
and their pains
to hold them again
and lead them to their town.
from the past lives on my mind
my stories with my neighbors are gone
and every innocent kid
their dreams were raped
children died
and history like never exits.
I'm just a number now
without identity
like a dead man
counting the stars in the sky
awaiting the consciences
to hear their cries
and their pains
to hold them again
and lead them to their town.
Walilli (Volubilis), Morocco
Mauretania, west of Numidia, stretched from the Atlantic ocean to central Algeria to the Atlas mountains. It was inhabited by the Mauri (known to the Greeks as the Maurusii); the poet Titus Calpurnius referred to their raids into Spain during the reign of Nero. Earlier, the Phoenicians had called the area Mauharim ("Western land"). Their legendary king Atlas was credited with inventing the celestial globe. In 108 BCE king Bochos allied with his father-in-law Jugurtha of Numidia against Rome after being offered 1/3 of his kingdom, but then helped the Romans capture him in 106 BCE. Upon the death of his son in 33 BCE Mauretania became a client kingdom of the Roman empire under Iuba II of Numidia, who had been raised in Roma by Iulius Caesar and Octavis, who became emperor Imperator Caesar Divi filius Augustus in 27 BCE; soon after, he married he daughter of Cleopatra VII and Marcus Antonius, and they renamed their new capital Causaria (modern Cherchell, Algeria). He was succeeded by his son Ptolemaeus in 23, whom his 2nd cousin Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus "Caligula" invited to Roma in 40 and had assassinated, fearing him as a potential rival. In revenge his former household slave Aedemon led a Mauri revolt; meanwhile, Caligula was murdered in early 41 and succeeded by his uncle Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus. In 42 Claudius sent Gaius Suetonius Paulinus and Gnaeus Hosidius Geta against Aedemon. After the rebels were defeated in 44 Claudius divided the kingdom into 2 provinces, Mauretania Caesariensis and Mauretania Tingitana, with Walili (Berber for "oleander"), a city that had remained loyal to Rome, as its capital. Volubilis, as it was called by the Romans, was established on a shallow slope below the Zerhoun mountain, on a ridge above the valley of Khoumane (Xuman) north of the modern Meknes, and had been an important regional settlement since the 3rd century BCE. Pomponius Mela, the 1st Roman geographer, described it at the time as 1 of "the wealthiest cities, albeit the wealthiest among small ones" in Mauretania; in the 2nd century the city's population reached 20,000. It had roads to Lixus (near modern Larache) and Tinis (modern Tangier) but was separated from Mauretania Caesariensis by the Baquates tribal territory. Roman rule in Mauretania collapsed ca. 280, though Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus Augustus reorganized the remnant along the coastal strip. Volubilis was finally destroyed by an earthquake in the 4th century, though it was reoccupied in the 6th and 7th centuries by the Awraba tribe from Libya. In 788 Idris ibn Abdillah, Muhammad's great-great-great grandson, arrived there after an unsuccessful revolt against caliph Harun Ar-Rashid, married the daughter of the Awraba chief, and founded the Idrisid dynasty. After conquering much of northern Morocco and Tlemcen in northwestern Algeria he was poisoned by Harun's agents in 791. His son transferred the capital from Moulay Idriss, across the valley from Volubilis, to Fes in 808. The Rabedis, who had revolted in Cordoba in Al-Andalus (Cordova, Andalusia, in modern Spain), resettled Volubilis in 818, but the city was probably almost deserted by the 14th century. The local inhabitants came to believe that it had been built by the Egyptians and called the ruins Ksar Faraoun (the "Pharaoh's Castle"), and in the 17th century sultan Moulay Ismail ibn Sharif ransacked the site for building material for his new imperial capital at Meknes. Henri de la Martinière began excavating the place between 1887 and 1892. In 1915 Hubert Lyautey, the military governor of French Morocco, commissioned Marcel and Jane Dieulafoy to resume excavations, but they were unable to carry out the program that they drew up. Louis Chatelain took over their plan and used German soldiers captured during World War I to proceed; work continued on and off until 1941, when the 2nd World War forced a halt, but it resumed afterwards.
ReplyDelete