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put it, “in all medieval Muslim states, subjects with a grievance had the right to approach the
ruler and submit to him, or his deputies, their petitions; this was an important means of making
justice prevail, which was, theoretically at least, the chief raison d’être of rulership.” 45 In
petitioning their sovereign, dhimmīs were not very different from their Muslim neighbors, except
that the state was in some ways doubly obligated to protect the rights of its non-Muslim subjects
as reflected in the dhimma contract.
The symbolic power of successfully protecting the weak provided an additional motive
for ensuring justice for dhimmīs. Protecting Jews was an important way in which the ruler
demonstrated his strength. Aḥmad b. Khālid al-Nāṣirī, Morocco’s most famous nineteenth-
century historian, summed up the success of Mawlāy Ismā‘īl’s reign (1684-1727) in these words:
When a woman or a dhimmī traveled from Oujda [in the northeast] to Wādī Nūl [in the
southwest], they would not find anyone asking them from where they had come or where
they were going… not a thief nor a highway robber was found in the country during this
time. 46
In other words, according to al-Nāṣirī, a sultan demonstrated his power by his ability to
guarantee even the safety of dhimmīs, who, like women, were among the most vulnerable
members of society. Of course, al-Nāṣirī had his own motivations for penning this description of
idem, “A Petition to the Fāṭimid Caliph al-Mustanṣir Concerning a Conflict within the Jewish Community,” Révue
des Etudes Juives 128 (1969); Cohen, Jewish Self-Government, 261-63; Marina Rustow, “At the Limits of
Communal Autonomy: Jewish Bids for Intervention from the Mamluk State,” Mamluk Studies Review 13, no. 2
(2009). On collective petitions in particular, see Goitein, “Petitions to the Fatimid Caliphs,” 32-38 and Stern, “A
Petition to the Fāṭimid Caliph,” 212-13. On petitions by Christian monks during the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods,
see idem, “Petitions from the Ayyubid Period,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 27, no. 1
(1964) and idem, “Petitions from the Mamluk Period (Notes on the Mamluk Documents from Sinai),” Bulletin of the
School of Oriental and African Studies 29, no. 2 (1966). On a petition by Jews during the Mamluk period, see Mark
R. Cohen, “Jews in the Mamluk Environment: The Crisis of 1442 (A Geniza Study),” Bulletin of the School of
Oriental and African Studies 47, no. 3 (1984). On petitions by Jews to the Ottoman central government, see
Ursinus, Şikayet in an Ottoman Province, 27-30; Wittmann, “Before Qadi and Vizier,” Chapter 2.
45
Stern, “Petitions from the Mamluk Period,” 237. See also Ursinus, Şikayet in an Ottoman Province, 3-5. On
petitions by Muslims in Egypt, see John Chalcraft, “Engaging the State: Peasants and Petitions in Egypt on the Eve
of Colonial Rule,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 37 (2005); Baldwin, “Islamic Law in an
Ottoman context,” Chapter 2; idem, “Petitioning the Sultan in Ottoman Egypt,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental
and African Studies 75, no. 3 (2012).
46
Aḥmad b. Khālid al-Nāṣirī, Kitāb al-istiqṣā' li-akhbār duwal al-Maghrib al-aqṣā, 9 vols. (Casablanca: Dār al-
Kuttāb, 1956), v. 7, 97.
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