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

A competing narrative of Moroccan Jewish history has developed mostly among
Moroccan historians. This scholarship does not take Western views of Moroccan Jews at face
value; it draws instead on material from the Moroccan archives to present a narrative in which
Jews were more or less well-treated by the Makhzan—and indeed Muslims more generally—
until the intervention of foreigners drove a wedge between Jews and Muslims. 7 In this view,
foreigners’ intervention on Jews’ behalf was a divide-and-conquer strategy to which Jews
(perhaps unwittingly) fell prey. These historians have done a great service to the field by
introducing sources in Arabic (especially those from Moroccan archives) into the historiography
of Jews in Morocco. Nonetheless, their approach can be just as misleading as the one which
paints the Makhzan as the villain and foreigners as the heroes. Ultimately, however, this
Moroccan school of Jewish history is far less developed than the neo-lachrymose approach.
Perhaps more importantly, my disagreement with this school is about big conclusions rather than
interpretations of historical events. For the most part I do not dispute these historians’ portrayal
of how Jews interacted with either the Makhzan or with foreigners. Rather, I disagree with their
conclusions about how to understand the relationship between Jews and the Makhzan before and
after the intervention of foreigners became widespread.
Ultimately, both schools see foreigners as more or less successfully inserting themselves
between Jews and the Makhzan. The neo-lachrymose historians posit a relationship in which
foreigners placed themselves between an oppressive state and its Jewish victims, whereas
Moroccan historians of Jews portray one in which foreigners drove a wedge between a benign
Makhzan and its fortunate Jewish subjects. Instead, I propose a more flexible relationship
7
See especially Laroui, Origines; Aḥmad Tawfīq, “Les Juifs dans la société marocaine au 19e siècle: l’exemple des
Juifs de Demnate,” in Identité et dialogue : Juifs du Maroc (Paris: La pensée sauvage, 1980). This is also true to
some extent of Mohammed Kenbib: see especially Kenbib, Juifs et musulmans.
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