Extraterritorial Expansion

This chapter argues that Jews frequented consular courts in addition to all the other legal venues available to them—particularly local Jewish and Islamic courts. Tracing Jews' efforts to move among different jurisdictions demonstrates the expanded legal mobility of Jews with extraterritoriality. This movement, in turn, shows why it was so important for consular court officials to adapt to the practices of local legal institutions—particularly shariʻa courts. In fact, the movement of individuals between local and consular courts required both sets of officials to adapt to the existence of the other institutions; consular officials relied on Islamic standards of evidence, while shariʻa courts attempted to control forum shopping among Islamic and foreign courts.

Appeals in an International Age

This chapter utilizes four case studies to illustrate how Jews increasingly saw foreigners—both diplomats and international Jewish organizations—as a resource when they believed they had been victims of abuse. Yet while Jews wrote more and more petitions to powerful figures in Europe and the Americas, they also continued to demand their rights from the Makhzan; outside intervention did not replace Jews' appeals to Moroccan government officials, but it did expand the number of options to which Jews had access and thus change their legal calculus. Similarly, as increasing numbers of Jews acquired foreign protection or nationality, the numbers of Jews using consular courts rose.

The Sultan’s Jews

This chapter draws on the records of the Ministry of Complaints and other government correspondence to argue that Jews were tied to the state in part through their ability to demand redress from the Makhzan. This bond became particularly crucial for the sultan to reinforce as foreigners questioned the Makhzan's ability to properly protect its Jewish subjects and used the alleged abuses of Jews as an excuse to meddle in Morocco's internal affairs. Jews regularly petitioned the government when they felt they had been denied their rights; doing so forged a practical bond that reaffirmed their link to the sultan as protector of dhimmīs.

Epilogue

This concluding chapter returns to the Assarraf family, tracing some of the descendants' trajectories out of Morocco and across the Moroccan-Jewish diaspora to France, Israel, and the United States. In reflecting on the departure of the vast majority of Morocco's Jews for Israel, Europe, and the Americas, the chapter reinserts law into the broader story of Jews' experience in modern North Africa. The far-flung traces of Jews' legal lives in nineteenth-century Morocco tell a story about mobility in the context of inequality, about integration in the face of high social and legal barriers, and about the deceptions of colonial modernity. The chapter also considers how these stories make us rethink the nature of interreligious relations and the place of law in both transcending and reinforcing hierarchies of difference.

Breaking and Blurring Jurisdictional Boundaries

This chapter looks more closely at the interplay between Jewish and Islamic courts. It discusses instances in which Jews chose to bring cases to Islamic legal institutions even when they could have remained in Jewish courts, and when Muslims similarly chose to use Jewish legal institutions rather than stay in Islamic ones. The chapter also argues that Jews' and Muslims' movement across jurisdictional boundaries caused judicial officials from both communities to accommodate the realities of legal pluralism. Islamic law and Jewish law converged toward each other—Islamic law by accommodating the existence and validity of Jewish legal institutions, and Jewish law by accommodating the presence of Muslims in Jewish courts.

The Law of the Market

This chapter focuses on the Assarrafs and the ways in which they engaged Muslim notaries public and shariʻa courts to sustain their quotidian business dealings. It shows that Jewish merchants like Shalom and Yaʻakov Assarraf used local Islamic legal institutions frequently because of their extensive commercial relations with Muslims. The absence of a formal banking system and the increasingly short supplies of cash, especially in rural areas, meant that Jewish merchants sold most of their wares on credit. In order to ensure that extending credit would be profitable, Jewish merchants relied on shariʻa courts to document and enforce the debts they accumulated. Islamic legal institutions were thus central to how Jewish merchants did business.

The Legal World of Moroccan Jews

This chapter offers a topography of courts, notaries, and judicial officials, including both how they functioned and how they fit together. It describes how Jews in particular—as subordinate subjects with increasingly international clout—were received in these institutions. The chapter first focuses on the Jewish quarter where the Assarrafs lived, before exploring the notaries public and Jewish courts that together made up the main institutions applying Jewish law. It then turns to the heart of Fez, where the city's main Islamic legal institutions were situated, before expanding this map to include legal networks on a national and international scale. The map drawn in this chapter thus serves as a reminder of how the different legal orders functioning in Morocco stood in relation to one another.

Introduction

This introductory chapter presents the Assarraf family as the focal point of study, before providing an overview on the Jewish, Islamic, and international legal background of this family and that of many other such families in Morocco. It brings up the intersections inherent in the legal system that Jews in Morocco have enjoyed, highlighting the potential for this subject for further academic study. In particular, the Assarrafs' movement between Jewish and shariʻa courts is relevant to Jewish, Middle Eastern, and legal historians, for somewhat different reasons—and as the chapter shows, contrary to prevailing opinion, the Jews were not isolated within their own legal system.