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

of Muslims from becoming protégés or nationals of foreign states. Much like Jews, Moroccan
Muslims who acquired patents of protection abused their status in order to further their own
pecuniary interests. 25 Kuran’s theory about the impact of protection on the legal choices of
Ottoman subjects is inapplicable to the Moroccan case, where Jews and Muslims both had access
to consular courts and thus to the expanded opportunities for forum shopping which they
provided.
Nonetheless, while protection was not an exclusively Jewish issue, there is little question
that Jews acquired patents of protection or became naturalized abroad in disproportionate
numbers compared to their Muslim neighbors. 26 Jews’ acquisition of protection was particularly
disruptive to the social order because of its implicit challenge to the dhimma pact which had
heretofore guided the relationship between the sultan (and by extension the Moroccan state) and
his non-Muslim subjects. 27 Indeed, Jewish protégés came to form something of a new
aristocracy and a patent of protection became practically de rigueur for membership in the elite
echelons of Moroccan Jewish society. 28
Protection was far more than a legal status which gave access to consular courts; it was a
ticket to social advancement, permission to avoid taxes, a tool to more effectively collect unpaid
debts, and an excuse for foreign diplomats to chip away at the Makhzan’s authority. In many
ways the system of protection was the defining controversy of nineteenth-century Moroccan
politics. The impact of protection on the Moroccan legal system was anything but negligible,
v. 1, 321-34; Etty Terem, “Al-Mahdī al-Wazzānī,” in Islamic Legal Thought: A Compendium of Muslim Jurists, ed.
Oussama Arabi, David S. Powers, and Susan Spectorsky (Leiden: Brill, Forthcoming).
25
There are numerous examples of this in the archives: see, e.g., DAR, Tetuan, 825, Muḥammad Ash‘āsh to
Muḥammad Bargāsh, 14 Rabī‘ II 1281 (about a Muslim who abused his Portuguese protection); Fez, 23322,
Mawlāy Ḥasan to Muḥammad Bargāsh, 28 Ṣafar 1302 (about a Muslim who abused his French protection).
26
Kenbib, Juifs et musulmans, 193-252; idem, Les protégés, 225-44.
27
See Laroui, Origines, 310-14.
28
Jean Louis Miège, “La bourgeoisie juive du Maroc au XIXe siècle” in Judaisme d’Afrique du Nord aux XIXe-XXe
siècles, ed. Michel Abitbol (Jerusalem: Institut Ben Zvi, 1980).
277