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

In designing its new army, the Makhzan looked to a number of sources of inspiration, including
the Ottoman Empire (especially Egypt), France, Britain, and ‘Abd al-Qādir’s rebel army in
neighboring Algeria. 66
Mawlāy Muḥammad (IV, reigned 1859-1873) created the Ministry of Complaints as part
of this broader overhaul of the government. 67 Scholars working on other places and periods have
observed that the right to petition the central authority for redress had a centralizing and state-
building effect since it helped assert the authority of the central government and undermine the
power of local elites. 68 Governments who wanted to accelerate their efforts at centralization
often established a national court of appeal to facilitate this sort of direct access to the
government. Although clearly the sultan’s role as ultimate arbiter of justice was nothing new in
the 1860s, the Makhzan did have an increased incentive to assert its authority and consolidate its
power. It seems quite likely that the creation of the Ministry of Complaints was a reform
particularly aimed at increasing the Makhzan’s control over events at the local level, while also
improving its image in the eyes of the populace. 69
Yet the creation of the Ministry of Complaints was not only part of a broader reform
movement; the impetus for implementing a centralized system to handle petitions seems to have
stemmed at least in part from the Makhzan’s desire to convince western diplomats that it was
Maghrib and its Legitimation, 1830-73,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 36, no. 4 (2004). See also
Laroui, Origines, 272-84.
66
Bennison, “The ‘New Order’ and Islamic Order,” 599.
67
al-Manūnī, Maẓāhir, v. 1, 43. Mawlāy Muḥammad also created the Ministry of War (wizārat al-ḥarb). It is
possible that the absence of a maẓālim tribunal in Morocco previous to the mid-nineteenth century is related to the
attitude of the Mālikī jurists towards maẓālim; Tyan claimed that because Mālikī qāḍīs were entitled to practice
siyāsa (discretionary punishment), they did not have any need for maẓālim, which explains the absence of this
institution from Mālikī states (Tyan, Organisation judiciaire, v. 1, 163).
68
Lex Heerma van Voss, “Introduction: Petitions in Social History,” International Review of Social History 46,
Supplements 9 (2001): 4-5. See also Ginio, “Coping with the State’s Agents.”
69
Lex Heerma van Voss has observed, “even if the idea of a good person heading the state was a myth, it may well
have been recognized as a useful myth at both the writing and reading ends of the petitioning process” (van Voss,
“Introduction: Petitions in Social History,” 5).
169