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similar to the individual petitions discussed in the previous chapter, there are a number of
elements which distinguish them. The Makhzan official’s actions (or lack thereof) in a particular
case had to threaten the entire Jewish community of a city in order to merit collective action.
Most of these cases concern violent crimes like murder, indicating that the Jewish petitioners
believed that their resolution would have implications for the treatment of Jews more generally. 82
Cases about which individuals petitioned, on the other hand, mostly concerned civil matters like
the non-payment of debts—problems which were troublesome for individual Jews but rarely
threatened the entire Jewish community.
Nonetheless, the murder cases about which Jews petitioned the Makhzan collectively did
not differ drastically from those found in the Ministry of Complaints registers. In these cases,
the victims’ coreligionists appealed to the central government, usually after attempting to resolve
the case through their local Makhzan official. The insecurity of rural areas meant that it was
fairly common for Jews traveling in the countryside on business to be attacked and even
murdered (as discussed in Chapter Five). A number of collective petitions concerned the murder
of Jews far from urban centers. 83 For instance, in the summer of 1880, Muḥammad Bargāsh, the
influential Jews took it upon themselves to write on their coreligionists behalf without any official position
designating them as communal authority figures.
82
I have found only one case which concerned civil litigation, yet even in this case it is clear that the entire Jewish
community was threatened. In 1909 the Jews of Fez wrote to al-Madīnī al-Mazwārī concerning their
impoverishment over the last seven years, which was caused in part by their inability to collect the money owed to
them by their debtors. Even the richest Jew among them was unable to collect the money he was owed, which
prevented him from paying the taxes owed by the community. The Jews suggested that legal proceedings were
necessary—implying that their local officials were not enabling them to pursue these debts in court: DAR, Yahūd,
Jews of Fez to al-Madīnī al-Mazwārī, 12 Shawwāl 1327. See also Michael Hickok’s observation that Ottoman
officials made a similar distinction between homicide cases in Ottoman Bosnia which threatened public safety and
those that did not. Ottoman state officials described those cases which threatened public security as “brigandage” so
that the governor would have jurisdiction over them: Hickok, “Homicide in Ottoman Bosnia.”
83
DAR, Fez, 5987, Mawlāy Ḥasan to Sa‘īd b. Farajī, 1 Rabī‘ II 1299 (in which the Jews of Fez complained about
the lack of security on the roads leading from the Bāb al-Ḥadīd and the Bāb Sīdī Bū Nāfi‘—which had led to a
number of robberies and murders of Jews; the sultan commanded the governor of Fez to station guards along these
roads to prevent the crimes); BH, K 171, p. 30, 8 Sha‘bān 1307 (in which the Jews of Meknes complained that the
governor of a tribe murdered one of their coreligionists while on his way back home after five months spent selling
goods in Zemmour; the sultan ordered that the governor be reprimanded and that he return the money he took from
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