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Marseillais, The Times, The Pall Mall Gazette, and The New York Times) took up Dahan’s
alleged murder as a cause célèbre. 103
Foreign consular officials eagerly championed Dahan’s cause. The French ambassador,
Vernouillet, wrote to the grand vizier objecting to the qā’id’s actions. Vernouillet explained that
this case was worse than the incident a few months earlier in which a Jewish man named Alluf
was burned alive by a mob in Fez. 104 Dahan’s death was “even more odious” because it was
committed by a “kaid representing the sultan.” 105 Vernouillet concluded:
It is necessary that His Majesty set an example, because otherwise all of Europe will take
the oppressed Jews under its protection, and we will be obligated to act officially to
suppress crimes that today we only raise unofficially with His Cherifian Majesty. 106
In particular, foreign officials insisted that al-Ntīfī be dismissed from his post and punished, as
an “example” to other Makhzan officials of the consequences of oppressing Jews. Vernouillet
threatened the Makhzan with extending European (or, in another version, just French) 107
protection to all Jews, much as Russia had threatened to do with Russian Orthodox Christians
living in the Ottoman Empire a few decades earlier. 108 These threats did not fall on deaf ears;
Makhzan officials—including the sultan—exchanged an unusually large number of letters about
the matter. 109
103
Kenbib, Juifs et musulmans, 225.
104
This, too, was something of a cause célèbre: see ibid., 209-13.
105
MAE Nantes, Tanger A 140, Vernouillet to Grand Vizier, no date. See also DAR, Yahūd, 32491, Muḥammad
Bargāsh to Mawlāy Ḥasan, 21 Shawwāl 1297, in which Bargāsh transmitted Vernouillet’s wishes to the sultan. For
the American consul’s involvement, see USNA, reg. 84, v. 47, Felix A. Mathews to William M. Evarts (US
Secretary of State), 29 September 1880 and 15 December 1880.
106
MAE Nantes, Tanger A 140, Vernouillet to Grand Vizier, no date.
107
Bargāsh reported to the sultan that the French ambassador told him secretly that if the qā’id of Ntifa were not
punished, he would take all the Jews under his protection (DAR, Yahūd, 32491, Muḥammad Bargāsh to Mawlāy
Ḥasan, 21 Shawwāl 1297).
108
On the extension of collective protection to Christians in the Ottoman Empire, see G. Baer, “Imtiyāzāt,” in
Encyclopedia of Islam, ed. P. Bearman, et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2003).
109
DAR, Yahūd, 32491, Muḥammad Bargāsh to Mawlāy Ḥasan, 21 Shawwāl 1297; 32510, Mawlāy Ḥasan to
Muḥammad Bargāsh, 26 Shawwāl 1297; 32715, Muḥammad Bargāsh to Mawlāy Ḥasan, 8 Dhū al-Qa‘da 1297;
32716, Muḥammad Bargāsh to Mawlāy Ḥasan, 10 Dhū al-Qa‘da 1297; 35132, Muḥammad Bargāsh to Mawlāy
357