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

payment of interest did not deserve to be notarized by the ‘udūl and instructed the qāḍī not to
help the Jews in such cases.
Makhzan officials sometimes explained Jews’ disobedience as a result of their close ties
to other government representatives. In late 1879 Aḥmad Amālik, the pasha of Marrakesh, wrote
to Mawlāy Ḥasan to convey complaints that the city’s muḥtasib, ‘Abdallāh b. Ibrāhīm, was
falsely accusing Jews of crimes that were not under his jurisdiction. 75 The sultan chastised
‘Abdallāh, but he responded that he had not accused anyone falsely nor was he overstepping his
jurisdiction. 76 Rather, ‘Abdallāh reported, he had rightfully arrested the brother and two sons of
a Jewess who lived in the home of the pasha Amālik—presumably Amālik’s sexual companion.
These three Jews had illegally slaughtered a female cow, despite ‘Abdallāh’s warnings not to do
so. 77 ‘Abdallāh clearly felt that his actions were justified and that the Jews were abusing their
sister’s and mother’s intimacy with the pasha to flout the law. A case from Radānā also involved
accusations that the Jewish petitioners were abusing their relationship with local officials. A
group of Jews claimed that their governor, al-Rāshidī, was mistreating them by demanding that
they engage in forced labor and imposing his own choice of shaykh on the Jewish community. 78
Al-Rāshidī responded, not without some exasperation, that he was treating the Jews according to
75 DAR, Marrakesh, Mawlāy Ḥasan to ‘Abdallāh b. Ibrāhīm, 14 Dhū al-Ḥijja 1296.
76 DAR, Marrakesh, 5601, ‘Abdallāh b. Ibrāhīm to Mawlāy Ḥasan, 17 Muḥarram 1297.
77 During “most of the drought-prone late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,” the Makhzan enforced a ban on
slaughtering female animals in order to preserve Morocco’s livestock (Holden, The Politics of Food in Modern
Morocco, 82). The ban was clearly enforced in 1879. Holden addresses this incident and explains that female
livestock was cheaper because Moroccans preferred the meat of male animals. The Jewish butchers in this case
sought to sell female meat, which cost them less, at the same price as male meat—both undercutting their
competitors and deceiving their clients. (It is not clear to me why Holden writes that the “muhtasib concluded that
the butcher’s relatives, and not a shohet [Jewish ritual slaughterer], had sacrificed a cow….” (ibid.), since the
muḥtasib specified that the three Jews who slaughtered the cow were butchers: see DAR, Marrakesh, 5601,
‘Abdallāh b. Ibrāhīm to Mawlāy Ḥasan, 17 Muḥarram 1297.)
78 BH, K 174, p. 79, 29 Rajab 1308.
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