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Nonetheless, we cannot understand the strategy of the Jews of Fez without accounting for their
appeals to both foreign consular officials and the Makhzan.
Given what we have seen of Moroccan Jews’ forum shopping, it should come as no
surprise that Jews similarly wrote collective appeals to both the Moroccan state and foreigners.
The strategy of “covering all the bases” is particularly important because it exposes the weakness
of the argument that Jews saw foreigners’ intervention as their only hope to obtain justice. We
should be even less surprised, then, that Jews collectively petitioned the Makhzan when the
object of their complaint was a foreign subject or protégé. Yet the historiography of Jews’
relations with consular officials and international Jewish organizations has largely ignored Jews’
appeals to the Makhzan against foreigners.
One such incident occurred in 1868 when the Jews of Tetuan appealed to Muḥammad al-
Slāwī with a complaint against a local Spaniard. 33 The unnamed Spaniard, described as a
Christian (naṣrānī), lived in the millāḥ. 34 He had rented a house there from the Makhzan, as well
as a store in the abutting oxen market (sūq al-faddān). Rather than taking the normal route from
his house to his store, which would have taken him through the millāḥ’s sole gate, the Spaniard
instead opened a door connecting his house directly to his store. The Jews of Tetuan explained
that the Spaniard was allowing a number of Muslims to enter the millāḥ through this new door,
adding that when they “saw the Muslims entering the millāḥ through [this door], and especially
the troublemakers (fāsidūn) among them, they became afraid.” 35 Al-Slāwī spoke to the Spanish
consul in Tetuan asking him to make the Spaniard close up the door, but the consul claimed that
the door had been there when he arrived and thus that he was powerless to seal it. Al-Slāwī
33
DAR, Tetuan, 26945, Muḥammad al-Slāwī to Muḥammad Bargāsh, 26 Dhū al-Ḥijja 1284. Al-Slāwī was
probably a Makhzan official in Tetuan, though I was unable to find any information about him.
34
It was common for foreign Christians in many Moroccan cities to live in the Jewish quarter.
35
Wa-ḥīna yaraw al-yahūdu al-muslimīna dākhilīna li-’l-millāḥi minhā wa-khuṣūṣan al-fāsidīna minhum taḥaṣṣala
lahum al-khawf.
342