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

By subjecting the suit to Moroccan jurisdiction, Benchimol managed to put his adversary
at a considerable disadvantage. Whereas Benchimol was certainly familiar with the workings of
sharī‘a courts, Rey was completely ignorant of Islamic law. Similarly, Benchimol had a
linguistic advantage over Rey, who was dependent on interpreters for all his dealings with
Muslim judicial authorities. The resolution of the case puts Benchimol’s strategy into even
sharper relief. In 1840, the case was finally brought before the Tribunal de commerce
(commercial tribunal) in Marseille. 122 The Marseille court ruled that Gassal and Benchimol had
to pay Rey 21,872 francs, which included the interest on the money they owed. Benchimol
appealed the ruling through his lawyer in Marseille, but it does not seem that he was successful
in overturning the court’s decision. 123 Although Benchimol may not have known that the
Marseille court would rule against him, he almost certainly was aware of his advantage over Rey
in a sharī‘a court. There is little doubt that Benchimol declared himself a Moroccan subject in an
attempt to have the dispute adjudicated by a qāḍī.
In other instances, Jews who believed that they would get a more favorable ruling in a
sharī‘a or Makhzan court chose to appeal to Moroccan legal institutions even though the case fell
under the jurisdiction of a consular court. In 1884, Avraham b. Sa‘ūd, a Moroccan Jew and a
British protégé living in Essaouira, summed up the reasons for avoiding a consular court thus: “If
you rely upon the English Consul to get you your right, your case is spoilt. For he has no
judiciousness (ḥukm).” 124 While in this instance Ibn Sa‘ūd was referring to problems with the
122
MAE Nantes, Tanger A 138, Extrait du registre du greffe du tribunal de commerce de Marseille, 22 December
1840. There is no explanation preserved in the archives for why the case was appealed in Marseille; it seems likely
that the French consular officials put sufficient pressure on both the French and Moroccan governments to concede
to Rey’s demands despite the conventions spelled out in the treaties.
123
MAE Nantes, Tanger A 138, Benchimol to Méchain, 15 July 1841. At this point the archival trail peters out and
it is not clear whether Benchimol and Gassal ever actually paid the money they owed to Rey.
124
In ittakalta ‘alā qūnṣu al-injilīzi yaqifu ma‘aka wa-ya’khudhu laka ḥaqqaka fa-qad ḍā‘a ḥaqquka li-annahu lā
ḥukma lahu (FO, 631/7, Statement recorded in Arabic, translated in English, and signed by the British consul in
323