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

Justice) and wizārat al-maẓālim (the Ministry of maẓālim, a term discussed shortly). 53 The
ministry had a rather short history—it was created between 1859 and 1873 and was abolished
under the French Protectorate in 1912—which is perhaps why scholars have largely ignored it. 54
In order to understand the ways in which Jews appealed to the Ministry of Complaints, it is first
necessary to trace the origins of this institution and how it functioned.
The Ministry of Complaints had much in common with the maẓālim courts which were a
feature of many Islamic states since the ‘Abbāsid period. 55 Maẓālim (singular maẓlima) refers to
53
The only discussion of the Ministry of Complaints is a paper by Wilfred Rollman delivered at the Middle East
Studies Association annual meeting in November 2008 entitled “The Ministry of Complaints and the Administration
of Justice in Pre-Colonial Morocco.” Rollman’s study focuses on refuting claims made by Michaux Bellaire about
this institution (in Edouard Michaux Bellaire, “Un rouage du gouvernement marocain ; la beniqat ech chikaïat de
Moulay Abd el Hafid,” Révue du Monde Musulman 5, no. 6 (1908)), and does not seek to write a general history of
the institution. I am deeply grateful to Professor Rollman both for alerting me to the existence of the Ministry of
Complaints registers at the Bibliothèque Hassaniya in Rabat and for sharing his paper with me. Other than Michaux
Bellaire’s article, there are few contemporary accounts of this ministry. Al-Nāṣirī does not mention the institution in
his Kitāb al-istiqṣā. Ibn Zaydān mentions it only briefly: Ibn Zaydān, Itḥāf a‘lām al-nās, v. 2, 513, 16 and v. 3, 69
and idem, Al-‘Izz wa-’l-ṣawla fī ma‘ālim naẓm al-dawla, 2 vols. (Rabat: al-Maṭba‘a al-Mālikīya, 1961), v. 2, 50-54,
in which he includes some examples from the Ministry of Complaints records (from 1311 AH). Aubin seems to
have thought that the Minister of Complaints was responsible only (or primarily) for complaints submitted by
Makhzan officials (Aubin, Morocco of To-Day, 165). See also al-Ḥasan b. al-Ṭayyib b. al-Yamānī Bū ‘Ishrīn, al-
Tanbīh al-Mu‘rib ‘ammā ‘alayhi al-ān ḥāl al-Maghrib (Rabat: Dār nashr al-ma‘rifa, 1994), 44-5. For mentions of
the ministry in secondary literature, see Goulven, Traité d’économie, 22; Caillé, Organisation judiciaire, 18;
Mohamed Lahbabi, Le gouvernement marocain à l’aube du XXe siècle (Rabat: Editions techniques nordafricaines,
1958), 173-81; al-Manūnī, Maẓāhir, v. 1, 43; Cabanis, “La justice du chrâa et la justice makhzen,” 60; Pennell,
Morocco since 1830, 79. Lahbabi is the only scholar to devote more than a few sentences to the institution, though
most of his analysis is about al-Māwardī’s theory of maẓālim and the little he says about the Moroccan Ministry of
Complaints is, I believe, misleading. Cabanis mistakenly states that the Ministry of Complaints disappeared after
Mawlāy Ḥasan’s reign. Pennell inexplicably writes that Mawlāy Ḥasan founded this ministry; I have found no
evidence to support this.
54
I have found no precise date for the founding of this ministry.
55
On the maẓālim courts, see H. F. Amedroz, “The Maẓālim Jurisdiction in the Aḥkām Sulṭāniyya of Māwardī,”
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1911): Emile Tyan, Histoire de l’organisation judiciaire en pays d’Islam
(Leiden: Brill, 1960), 433-525: Jorgen S. Nielsen, Secular Justice in an Islamic State; Maẓālim under the Baḥrī
Mamlūks, 662/1264-789/1387 (Leiden: Brill, 1985): idem, “Maẓālim,” in Encyclopedia of Islam, ed. P. Bearman, et
al. (Leiden: Brill, 2003). Although classical Islamic sources trace maẓālim courts back to the time of the Prophet,
Nielsen concludes that we do not have firm evidence of their existence in Islamic states before the ‘Abbāsid period.
On the Ottoman divan-ı hümayun (which functioned as the equivalent of a maẓālim court), see Heyd, Studies in Old
Ottoman Criminal Law, 227; Eyal Ginio, “Coping with the State’s Agents ‘From Below’: Petitions, Legal Appeal,
and the Sultan’s Justice in Ottoman Legal Practice,” in Popular Protest and Political Participation in the Ottoman
Empire: Studies in Honor of Suraiya Faroqhi, ed. Eleni Gara, M. Erdem Kabadayi, and Christoph K. Neumann
(Istanbul: Bilgi İletişim GrubuYayincilik Müzik Yapim ve Haber Ajansi Ltd., 2011). On women’s petitions to the
divan-ı hümayun see Fariba Zarinebaf, “Women, Law, and Imperial Justice in Ottoman Istanbul in the Late
Seventeenth Century,” in Women, the Family, and Divorce Laws in Islamic History, ed. Amira El Azhary Sonbol
(Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996). See also Ursinus, Şikayet in an Ottoman Province, esp. 18, 23,
166