IN THE COURTS OF THE NATIONS - DataSpace - Princeton ...

100, and 50 riyāls respectively). 153 Aḥmad responded that he had only received eight riyāls in
the transaction recorded as fifty: only twenty riyāls in the transaction recorded as 100: and only
sixty riyāls in the transaction recorded as 200. In other words, while Ya‘aqov sued for a debt of
350 riyāls, Aḥmad claimed that he had only received eighty-eight riyāls. This sort of inflation of
amounts in bills of debt was a common way of charging hidden interest without appearing to
violate the prohibition on charging outright interest. 154
Moreover, the presiding qāḍī did not seem particularly perturbed by this sort of
allegation. On the contrary, in three of the four cases the judge did not attempt to verify the
defendant’s claim concerning illegal interest. The exception is a case concerning a debt of 3,000
riyāls, an amount significantly larger than most debts. In this case, Shalom claimed that al-
‘Arabī b. Laḥsan al-Dūblālī al-Ya‘qūbī and his two guarantors al-Mu‘ṭī b. Ḥamm al-Dublālī al-
‘Ajīwī and al-Ḥājj ‘Abdallāh b. Muḥammad al-Shayẓamī owed him 3,000 French riyāls. 155 First
al-‘Arabī, and then al-Mu‘ṭī his guarantor, testified that Shalom had only given him half the
amount he claimed—which had been paid already—even though he wrote the bill of debt for the
full amount (i.e. 3,000 riyāls). One month after the initial lawsuit was filed, al-‘Arabī and al-
Mu‘ṭī voluntarily produced proof in the form of a lafīf testifying that the debt was for only 1,500
riyāls, which they had already paid (I gather that this was voluntary because the qāḍī never
demanded such proof). The documentation trails off at this point, making it hard to know
153 TC, File #1, 30 Rabī‘ I 1309. See also File #7, 4 Sha‘bān 1284; File #6, 19 Rabī‘ II 1292; File #8, 26 Ṣafar 1293.
154 See especially the discussion of this type of hidden interest in MAE Courneuve, CP Maroc 53, Féraud to
Flourens, 28 September 1887: ”Les sommes accusés dépassaient en général du double, souvent des deux tiers les
avances réelles. Ce mode d’agir est, d’ailleurs, général dans un pays où la loi religieuse qui est en même temps la
loi civile n’admet pas le prêt à intérêt. Le préteur prend ses précautions en conséquence et les prend largement.” A
similar strategy was used to hide interest on loans made in the Ottoman Empire: Gerber, Crossing Borders, 154-5.
On other ways to avoid the outright charging of interest in Morocco, see also Ghislaine Lydon, On Trans-Saharan
Trails: Islamic Law, Trade Networks, and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Nineteenth-Century West Africa (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009), 315-18; Schroeter, “Views from the Edge,” 186.
155 TC, File #6, 19 Rabī‘ II 1292.
108