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

sharī‘a courts were strictly bound by elaborate rules of procedure and evidence, the authorities
presiding over maẓālim hearings had far more leeway. 60 The nature of the judicial process in
maẓālim courts has often been compared to secular justice because it was not directly rooted in
Islamic law. 61 I hesitate to use a term like secular to describe any aspect of the functioning of the
Moroccan state, in which the sultan was considered the commander of the faithful and as much a
religious authority as a political one. 62 While not bound by jurisprudence (fiqh) as expounded by
jurists, the Ministry of Complaints was nevertheless part of a legal system which theoretically, at
least, conformed to Islamic law. 63
The origins of this ministry lie in broader efforts at state reform in nineteenth-century
Morocco. After France’s conquest of Algeria in 1830, the Moroccan government became
increasingly aware that a new kind of European imperialism threatened Moroccan independence.
This perception sharpened after the Makhzan’s defeat at the Battle of Isly in 1844, and again
after Spain’s occupation of Tetuan from 1860 to 1861. 64 As in the Ottoman Empire, the
Moroccan reforms began with the army, where the state attempted a complete reorganization. 65
60
Emile Tyan, Histoire de l’organisation judiciaire en pays d’Islam, 2 vols. (Paris: Libraire du Recueil Sirey, 1938),
v. 1, 156: Amedroz, “The Maẓālim Jurisdiction,” 641-42.
61
Nielson’s title for his book on maẓālim asserts his belief that secular justice and maẓālim were essentially one and
the same: Nielsen, Secular Justice in an Islamic State. See also Tyan’s discussion of the relationship between
maẓālim, siyāsa, and siyāsa shar‘īya (Tyan, Organisation judiciaire, v. 1, 162-64).
62
On this, see especially Hammoudi, Master and Disciple.
63
See Ibn Zaydān’s brief account of the Ministry of Complaints, in which he describes the role of the minister as
“answering the complaints in their various forms and issuing the orders about them from what the sultan ordered
according to the rules of the sharī‘a” (Ibn Zaydān, Itḥāf a‘lām al-nās, v. 2, 513).
64
See, for instance, Burke, Prelude to Protectorate, Chapter 2; Ayache, Etudes d’histoire marocaine, 97-138;
Pennell, Morocco since 1830, 48-53. Kenbib puts more emphasis on the 1856 commercial treaty with Britain,
which certainly contributed to Morocco’s declining ability to hold its own against foreign demands (Kenbib,
“Changing Aspects of State and Society”). The definitive work on the project of reform in Morocco is al-Manūnī,
Maẓāhir. On financial and administrative reforms in particular, see Na‘īma Harāj al-Tūzānī, Al-Umanā’ bi-’l-
Maghrib fī ‘ahad al-sulṭān mawlāy al-Ḥasan (1290-1311/ 1873-1894) (Rabat: Maṭba‘a Faḍāla, 1979), 31-67.
65
On military reform see Wilfrid J. Rollman, “The ‘New Order’ in a Pre-Colonial Muslim Society: Military Reform
in Morocco, 1844-1904” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1983); Bahija Simou, Les réformes militaires
au Maroc de 1844 à 1912 (Rabat: Université Mohammed V, Faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines, 1995);
Amira K. Bennison, “The ‘New Order’ and Islamic Order: The Introduction of the Niẓāmī Army in the Western
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