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petitions which is also used to describe the registers of official correspondence from other
ministries. 87
The geographic distribution of petitioners who appeared in the Ministry of Complaints
records was quite extensive. Much of the time the location of a particular case was not given and
only the local Makhzan official’s name was recorded; at other times, the name of the tribe was
mentioned. 88 The few indications of location show that cases came from all over Morocco, and
from both urban and rural areas. 89 In the case of Jews’ appeals, it is often difficult to tell where
the Jewish petitioners actually lived; since many Jews traveled far from their homes in order to
peddle goods, the incidents which led them to appeal to the Makhzan often occurred while they
were traveling. 90 The entries in the Ministry of Complaints registers normally gave the location
of the crime, not the victim’s home. There were considerable differences between inland and
coastal cities, between rural and urban areas, and among different Jewish communities in
Morocco—differences which undoubtedly informed the kinds of cases brought to the Ministry of
Complaints. Unfortunately, we rarely have enough geographic data to systematically trace the
impact of location on how Jews used the Ministry of Complaints.
87 Muḥammad Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī, Tāj al-‘arūs min jawāhir al-qāmūs, 20 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-fikr, 1994), v. 11,
525; Stern, “Petitions from the Mamluk Period,” 263. See also A. de Biberstein Kazimirski, Dictionnaire arabefrançais,
4 vols. (Cairo: Imprimerie V. R. Egyptienne, 1875), v. 4, 933-4. Dozy specifically associates tawqī‘ with
notes taken at the audience of a qāḍī (Dozy, Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes, v. 2, 830). A number of other
registers preserved in the Makhzan archives are described as makātīb al-tawqī‘, and have nothing to do with the
Ministry of Complaints (including BH, K 159, K 165, K 166, K 172, K 175, K 185, K 195, K 204, and K 205).
88 See, for instance, BH, K 181, p. 242, 23 Muḥarram 1310; this entry concerns debts owed to dhimmī Kohen al-
Tawīl (“The Tall”) by the Banī Yāzigha (a tribe in the region of Fez).
89 Cases range from Oujda in the northeast (BH, K 174, p. 124, 15 Shawwāl 1308) to Essaouira in the southwest
(BH, K 181, p. 236, 13 Muḥarram 1310). Many of the entries concern rural areas, such as a case pertaining to two
insolvent debtors under the jurisdiction of the governor of Taza (BH, K 181, p. 253, 8 Ṣafar 1310).
90 Deshen, The Mellah Society, Chapter 3.
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