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

sultan on behalf of their local community. I examine individual and collective appeals to the
state separately in part because the vast majority of cases recorded in the registers of the Ministry
of Complaints concern individuals alone. While some petitions by groups of Jews are recorded
in the registers of the Ministry of Complaints, these represent a minority; most are found
elsewhere in the Makhzan archives. 110 Perhaps more importantly, the subject matter differs
rather markedly between the two types of appeal. Individual Jews mostly wrote about civil
matters, especially debts. Though criminal cases appear frequently in the registers, they almost
always concerned the desire to be paid an indemnity for a crime—which ultimately made the
case resemble a civil claim in many respects. Collective petitions, on the other hand, almost
always concerned criminal cases, such as the mistreatment of Jews by government officials.
Together, individual and collective petitions demonstrate the range of ways in which Jews called
on the Makhzan to ensure that their rights were respected and that justice was served.
110
I found only fourteen cases recorded in the registers of the Ministry of Complaints in which Jews collectively
appealed to the state—compared to 511 cases of individual appeals.
180