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

cases they made up close to half of the urban population. 8 Jews also played an outsized role in
society, especially on the economic and political levels. They were particularly well-connected
to networks of international trade and often occupied privileged positions among the country’s
commercial elite. 9 These financial ties involved Jews more directly in the increasingly important
diplomatic relationships among the Makhzan and foreign powers with interests in Morocco.
Jews acted as intermediaries, often working as interpreters and even consuls, and their role in
international trade put them at the front and center of many of the political issues of the day. 10
Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, Jews in Morocco were also increasingly well-connected
to Jews in the West, particularly in France, Britain, and the United States. In all three countries
Jews developed organizations whose goal was to assist Jewish communities that had not yet been
emancipated. The most famous of these was the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU), a French-
Jewish organization created in 1860 which both advocated on behalf of Jewish causes worldwide
and created a network of Jewish schools in the Mediterranean basin and beyond with the intent
of bringing enlightenment values to “backwards” Jewish communities. 11 The budding network
of AIU schools in Morocco, and Moroccan Jews’ increasingly close ties to their coreligionists in
8
This was true of cities like Demnat (where in the late nineteenth century Jews constituted about a third of the total
population: Sarah Frances Levin, “Demnat,” in Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, ed. Norman Stillman
(Leiden: Brill, 2010)) and Sefrou (where in 1905 the Jewish population was estimated as constituting half of the
total population: Thomas Kerlin Park and Aomar Boum, Historical Dictionary of Morocco (Lanham, MD:
Scarecrow Press, 2006), 318). In Marrakesh in 1926, Jews made up about 9% of the total population (P. de Cenival,
“Marrākush,” in Encyclopedia of Islam, ed. P. Bearman, et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2003)).
9
See esp. Daniel J. Schroeter, Merchants of Essaouira: Urban Society and Imperialism in Southwestern Morocco,
1844-1886 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); idem, The Sultan’s Jew: Morocco and the Sephardi
World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002). For the early modern period, see Mercedes García-Arenal and
Gerard Albert Wiegers, A Man of Three Worlds: Samuel Pallache, a Moroccan Jew in Catholic and Protestant
Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).
10
See esp. Mohammed Kenbib, Juifs et musulmans au Maroc, 1859-1948 (Rabat: Faculté des lettres et des sciences
humaines, 1994); idem, Les protégés : contribution à l'histoire contemporaine du Maroc (Rabat: Faculté des lettres
et des sciences humaines, 1996); Khalid Ben-Srhir, Britain and Morocco during the Embassy of John Drummond
Hay, 1845-1886 (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005), Chapter 4.
11
On the AIU in Morocco, see Michael M. Laskier, The Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Jewish Communities
of Morocco, 1862-1962 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983). The other organizations were the
Anglo-Jewish Association and the Board of Delegates of American Israelites.
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