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It is not entirely clear whether the complaints submitted to the Makhzan were heard in
person by the sultan in addition to being entered in the registers of the Ministry of Complaints. 91
The historian Ibn Zaydān (d. 1946) wrote that Mawlāy Ḥasan spent two days a week receiving
maẓālim petitioners. 92 However, the registers include entries written on all days of the week,
which suggests that the ministry functioned even when the sultan was not formally holding an
audience to receive petitioners. 93 The sultan also responded to complaints when he went on
military expeditions. 94 Sometimes the Minister of Complaints followed him, as is indicated by
the colophon of the second register in the series of four which records that it was completed “at
the royal encampment in Abū Ja‘ad [Boujad] in the presence of the sultan.” 95 However, it is
unlikely that petitioners were always able to follow the sultan on his peregrinations; it is thus
probable that the petitions which the sultan addressed while away from large cities were mostly
(if not all) presented only in writing. 96 There is clear evidence that at least some petitions were
91
Maẓālim courts in the Mamluk period normally received petitioners in person, though sometimes the petitioners
sent their written requests through intermediaries: Nielsen, Secular Justice in an Islamic State, 63.
92
Ibn Zaydān, Al-‘Izz wa-’l-ṣawla, v. 2, 50. (Ibn Zaydān reported in another work that Mawlāy Ḥasan only heard
maẓālim on Sundays: idem, Itḥāf a‘lām al-nās, v. 2, 516.) Ibn Zaydān further explained that the sultan would be
presented with a list of the complainants and would then summon them forth one by one to investigate (yabḥath)
their claims. His minister (presumably the Minister of Complaints) would stand behind him with an identical list of
the complainants.
93
The registers are organized in chronological order, noting the date, the day of the week, and whether the session
was in the morning or the evening.
94
Ibn Zaydān, Al-‘Izz wa-’l-ṣawla, v. 1, 240.
95
Khutima hādhā al-kunnāshu al-mubāraku bi-mukhayyami al-maḥallati al-sa‘īdati bi-Abī al-Ja‘ad fī wujhati
mawlānā: BH, K 174, p. 134, 10 Muḥarram 1308. On Boujad, see Dale F. Eickelman, Knowledge and Power in
Morocco: The Education of a Twentieth-Century Notable (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985). Similarly,
al-Nāṣirī reported that Mawlāy Ḥasan was on an expedition and thus away from Fez between Shawwāl 1306 and
some point in early 1307 (al-Nāṣirī only wrote that the sultan entered Tetuan on 8 Muḥarram 1307, spent fifteen
days there, then visited Tangier and Larache on his way back to Fez; he remained in Fez until Shawwāl 1307, when
he again set out on campaign: al-Nāṣirī, Kitāb al-istiqṣā, v. 8, 213-14 and idem, “Kitāb Elistiqṣā li-akhbāri doual
elmāgrib elaqṣā, translated by Eugène Fumey,” Archives Marocaines 9 & 10 (1906-1907): 370-1). The colophon of
the first register (BH, K 157) notes that it was completed in Fez on 16 Rajab 1307, so presumably the sultan had
returned to Fez by that time.
96
This is supported by Ibn Zaydān’s description of the sultan hearing maẓālim during the ḥaraka, which he
described as consisting of reading letters about complaints (Ibn Zaydān, Al-‘Izz wa-’l-ṣawla, v. 1, 240).
175