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

abrupt end after his death, as the Makhzan was notably less successful at imposing its will during
the reigns of his sons Mawlāy ‘Abd al-‘Azīz (1894-1908) and Mawlāy Ḥafīḍ (1908-12). 39 The
reforms of the second half of the nineteenth century not only changed the Makhzan’s theoretical
role in the Moroccan legal system, but also increased the Makhzan’s ability to fulfill that role.
The older view of a chaotic government is certainly untrue for Mawlāy Ḥasan’s reign,
and at the very least misleading for those of his predecessors. Although there were certainly
some local officials who resisted the sultan’s authority—or even escaped it entirely—the
Moroccan state in the nineteenth century was not entirely devoid of means by which to enforce
its will. Rather, sultans sent letters to their subordinates throughout Morocco ordering them to
conform to the state’s conception of justice. When an individual felt that he had been wronged at
the hands of local authorities, or simply that the local official had failed to help him resolve his
legal disputes, he had the option of appealing directly to the central state. In hundreds of
instances, the sultan responded to such petitions with instructions to the local official either to
render justice himself, to hand the case over to a qāḍī, or to send the parties concerned to the
sultan who would personally ensure that justice was done. Although it is not always clear to
what extent the sultan’s instructions were followed, there is evidence that the sultan followed up
with officials whom he suspected had ignored his orders. While there were undoubtedly many
instances in which local officials mistreated their charges and got away with it, correspondence
preserved in the Makhzan archives tempers the picture of near total anarchy painted by so many
European observers. The Makhzan’s role as an effective court of appeal despite the Moroccan
state’s relatively high level of decentralization has largely been ignored. Yet decentralization did
not mean the complete absence of central government, nor did it mean that arbitrariness always
39 See esp. Laroui, Origines, Chapter 8; Pennell, Morocco since 1830, 108-11.
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