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

petitioner turned down a proposed settlement: one Jewish creditor would not accept livestock as
payment for a debt. 128 In another case, two Jewish victims of theft rejected the thieves’ offer to
compensate them with ninety-four riyāls for two donkeys; presumably the Jews believed the
donkeys were worth more. 129
Corrupt Makhzan officials could also hinder the settlement of Jews’ complaints, although
reports of this kind were relatively rare. 130 I found a handful of cases in which officials kept the
indemnity they had seized from the murderers or the thieves—such as a murder case in which the
Makhzan official reportedly refused to hand over the blood money “out of greed” (ṭama‘an). 131
In another instance, two Jewish creditors accused their local Makhzan official of taking a cut of
the debt owed to them by two Muslim debtors. 132 The official’s vehement denial—he swore that
he was innocent before ‘udūl, qāḍī, two soldiers, and the two debtors—suggests that such
accusations were taken seriously.
128 BH, K 157, p. 125, 27 Rabī‘ II 1307. See also BH, K 174, p. 100, 14 Ramaḍān 1308; p. 299, 1 Jumādā I 1310.
In addition to the Ministry of Complaints records, see DAR, Fez, 35356, Idrīs b. Muḥammad to Muḥammad b. al-
Madanī Banīs, 8 Dhū al-Qa‘da 1289, in which the Jewish creditor refused to settle (though the details of the case are
not included).
129 BH, K 174, p. 90, 28 Sha‘bān 1308 and BH, K 181, loose sheet, 11 Shawwāl 1308 (the second entry seems to
repeat what was recorded in the first). For other examples of a Jew refusing settlement, see BH, K 181, p. 219, 9
Dhū al-Ḥijja 1309; p. 279, 6 Rabī‘ II 1310.
130 See, e.g., BH, K 181, p. 231, 30 Dhū al-Ḥijja 1309 (in which the governor incites the debtors not to pay). A
similar type of case is recorded in BH, K 181, p. 147, 5 Ramaḍān 1309, and in the follow up on p. 161, 22 Ramaḍān
1309, in which the Makhzan official assigned to settle a debt owed to the Jew Ibn ‘Amūr asked to be relieved from
his responsibility; the sultan responded rhetorically, asking why he had appointed this official in the first place if not
to make sure that the people under his jurisdiction obeyed the law.
131 BH, K 171, p. 7, 20 Rajab 1307. For theft cases see BH, K 181, p. 164, 27 Ramaḍān 1309 (in which the official
failed to hand over the indemnity, though it seems that this was caused by a lack of information about the case); BH,
K 181, p. 253, 5 Ṣafar 1310 and p. 275, 28 Rabī‘ I 1310 (in which another Makhzan official wrote to the sultan on
behalf of a Jew who lived under his jurisdiction and requested that the sultan order the recalcitrant governor to give
the Jewish victims their due). See also DAR, Marrakesh, Muḥammad b. ‘Azūz to Aḥmad b. al-Ṭāhir, 16 Jumādā I
1282, in which the ṣāḥib of the duwār (collection of houses or tents typical of Moroccan tribal regions) where a Jew
had been stolen from refused to hand over what he had confiscated from the thief (either the stolen goods or their
equivalent in cash—the letter does not specify). In another case from 1905, Mawlāy ‘Abd al-Ḥafīẓ, who was then
governor of Marrakesh (and later became sultan), sent a total of eight letters to the qā’id al-Madanī al-Ajlāwī trying
to force al-Ajlāwī to settle the theft case of the Jew ‘Azīz Rūzā—suggesting that al-Ajlāwī’s refusal to cooperate
posed a serious obstacle to settlement (DAR, Yahūd, ‘Abd al-Ḥafīẓ to al-Madanī al-Ajlāwī, 10 Jumādā II 1323; see
also letters of 14 Jumādā II, 10 Rajab, 29 Shawwāl, 23 Ramaḍān, 8 Dhū al-Qa‘da, 15 Dhū al-Qa‘da, and 25 Dhū al-
Qa‘da).
132 BH, K 157, p. 146, 27 Jumādā I 1307.
214