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attribute the Makhzan’s efforts to address the complaints of Demnat’s Jews to foreign
intervention. Fenton and Littman, for instance, depict this incident as evidence of the Italian
ambassador’s effective advocacy on behalf of Moroccan Jews. 19 Aḥmad Tawfīq is one of the
few scholars to argue that European intervention was not the motivating factor in Mawlāy
Ḥasan’s decision to grant the Jews of Demnat redress. 20
Yet whatever the motivations behind the sultan’s response, omitting any mention of the
numerous appeals sent by Demnat’s Jews directly to the Makhzan leaves out a crucial part of the
story. While there is little question that the Jews of Demnat appealed to foreign consuls and
Jewish organizations, the Demnati Jews also appealed to the Makhzan about their complaints. 21
Significantly, the petitions to the Makhzan suggest that opinion was severely divided among the
Jews of Demnat, both as to the nature of the complaints and how to address them. In a legal
document sent to Mawlāy Ḥasan from August 7, 1884, a number of Demnati Jews complained
not about their governor, but about fellow Jews who had sought the protection and intervention
of foreigners. 22 That fall, the sultan sent a representative, al-Bāshīr al-Ḥabash, to Demnat to
investigate claims made by Demnati Jews that their governor was mistreating them. 23 The Jews
who had originally complained about al-Jilālī refused to cooperate with al-Ḥabash. However,
some Jews who had remained in Demnat came before al-Ḥabash and al-Jilālī and testified that
to Aḥmad b. al-‘Arabī al-Manabhī (see DAR, Demnat, Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Murabī to Muḥammad b. al-‘Arabī,
22 Shawwāl 1302).
19 Fenton and Littman, L’exil au Maghreb, 327-9.
20 Tawfīq, “Les Juifs de Demnate,” especially 156-8; idem, Īnūltān, 310-14. While Kenbib discusses Jews’ appeals
to the Makhzan, he accords more importance to the Demnati Jews’ overtures to European consular officials (Kenbib,
Juifs et musulmans, 235-40). See also Ben-Srhir, Britain and Morocco, 196-200.
21 On appeals to consular officials, see, e.g., DAR, Yahūd, 36130, Mathews to Mawlāy Ḥasan, 7 Dhū al-Ḥijja 1301.
On appeals to the AJA, see the letter from the Jews of Demnat to the AJA published in The Jewish Chronicle on 6
February 1885, p. 11 (reprinted in Fenton and Littman, L’exil au Maghreb, 332-6). On appeals to the Makhzan, see
Mawlāy Ḥasan’s account of Jews’ complaints to him in DAR, Demnat, Mawlāy Ḥasan to al-Ḥajj al-Jilālī al-
Dimnātī, 1 Sha‘bān 1302.
22 DAR, Yahūd, 15597, 14 Shawwāl 1301. This petition is discussed at greater length in Chapter Six.
23 DAR, Demnat, Muḥammad b. Mūsā al-Ribāṭī to Mawlāy Ḥasan, 22 Dhū al-Ḥijja 1301.
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