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

complaints was a foreign subject or protégé, Jews directed their appeals exclusively to the
Makhzan.
When Jews’ petitions were successful it is usually impossible to know whether their
appeals to foreigners caused the Makhzan to heed their claims or whether the Makhzan would
have acted without foreign pressure. Yet identifying the ultimate motive for the Makhzan’s
actions is not necessary for the purposes of my argument. It would be disingenuous to contend
that foreign pressure on the Moroccan state had absolutely no effect on the Makhzan’s
relationship with its Jewish subjects. (On the contrary, I argue below that foreign intervention
had a significant impact on how the Makhzan portrayed the status of Jews in Morocco.) In most
cases, it seems likely that the Makhzan heeded foreign advocacy on behalf of Moroccan Jews to
some degree in its resolution of Jews’ legal problems. However, my argument is not that the
Makhzan would have treated Jews exactly the same way without foreign intervention, but rather
that Jews did not perceive foreigners as their only bulwark against injustices committed by the
state or its representatives. Rather, Jews collectively appealed for redress to foreigners and to
the Makhzan in order to maximize their chances of obtaining their desired goal, just as individual
Jews shopped among the different legal institutions available to them in the hopes of finding the
most favorable venue.
The long and stormy relationship among the Jews of Demnat and their governor, al-Ḥājj
al-Jilālī al-Dimnātī, is a good example of the ways in which Jews attempted to cover all their
bases in their appeals for redress. In Chapter Six, I examined instances in which the Jews of
Demnat appealed to the Makhzan between 1864 and 1889 concerning al-Jilālī’s abusive
behavior. Here, I discuss these Jews’ often simultaneous appeals to diplomatic officials and
foreign Jewish organizations—appeals which garnered significant interest, including in the
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