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

otherwise, saying that they had learned that the murderers were in fact present in the region
under al-Ṭayyib’s jurisdiction. Even after Safi’s Jews sent a delegation to al-Ṭayyib he refused
to prosecute the murderers. Finally the Jews wrote to al-Mukhtarī in the hopes that he would
pass the case on to the sultan. In an attempt to express how dire the situation was, the Jews of
Safi also noted that Am‘amar left behind a widow and four young daughters who were now
destitute.
In February 1893 the Jews of Marrakesh again complained about a murder, though this
time the incident happened in the city itself. 87 The community first began to worry when two
Jews, a tailor and a goldsmith, went missing from the millāḥ. Everyone, both men and women,
was looking for them, but to no avail—until someone heard that a few days before Mawlāy
Qudūr had asked the two missing Jews to come to his residence to sell him their wares. The
leaders of the Jewish community received permission to search Qudūr’s house and sent two
‘udūl and three sofrim to record their findings (another instance of using both Jewish and Islamic
courts simultaneously). During the investigation they found the bloody shirt of one of the
missing Jews in a ditch behind Qudūr’s house. Qudūr then took refuge (ḥurm) in the tomb of al-
Ghazwānī, a local saint, presumably due to the overwhelming evidence against him. The Jews
wrote to the sultan to make sure that Qudūr was properly punished and that the murdered Jews’
families received some sort of compensation. 88
87
DAR, Yahūd, 18182, ‘Abbās b. Dawūd to Mawlāy Ḥasan, 24 Rajab 1310 and DAR, Yahūd, 18186, Jews of
Marrakesh to Mawlāy Ḥasan, 28 Rajab 1310. On this incident see also Gottreich, The Mellah of Marrakesh, 102.
Gottreich has it “Qadur,” though I think “Qudūr” is more likely.
88
The following are additional complaints concerning murders, which upon further investigation were determined to
be accidents: BH, K 174, p. 90, 28 Sha‘bān 1308 (in which the Jews of Misfīwa complained about a tribe (the Ait al-
Ḥājj) who they claimed had killed the sister of a local Jew; when the sultan’s representative Mawlāy ‘Uthmān
investigated he found that the Jewess had died from a stone falling on her while she was sleeping, and the Jews
accepted his formal testimony by signing a release absolving the Ait al-Ḥājj of any responsibility); BH, K 174, p.
118, 13 Shawwāl 1308 (in which the Jews of Rabat claimed that the murder of a Jew was never investigated;
Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Swīsī, the qā’id of Rabat, responded that the death occurred during the sultan’s stay in
252