In 1893 Moulay Hassan, Sultan of Morocco, presented Madani, Chief of the Glaoua, with a ponderous Krupp cannon. From that moment, the history of the country changed, and this is an account of the meteoric and bloody rise to power of the Glaoua, once an obscure tribe in the High Atlas Mountains. Under Sultan Moulay Abd El Aziz, spendthrift and decadent, El Glaoui, Pasha of Marrakesh, became a legendary feudal figure and the survivor of fierce internecine rivalries. It was El Glaoui who, shortly before attending Elizabeth II's coronation in London, ordered the severed heads of his enemies to be mounted on his gates. Drawing on the work of Walter Harris, a Times correspondent who could - and did - pass as an Arab, the author has set out to recreate this history of characters, action, intrigue and remote and exotic places.