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

consular archives preserved in the various countries which had a diplomatic presence in
Morocco.
In relying almost exclusively on sources produced by institutions in Morocco—especially
sources in Arabic generated by sharī‘a courts and the Makhzan—I follow the spirit of what
Jacques Berque dubbed an internal history of the Maghrib. 100 Berque stressed the importance of
relying on internal sources, by which he meant mostly chronicles, juridical literature,
biographical dictionaries, and other such writings. Undoubtedly, though, Berque would have
welcomed the use of archival sources as well, although these were hardly available (or not at all)
when he was active as a scholar. Since Berque’s pioneering work, a number of scholars have
called for a similar emphasis on internal sources for the history of Moroccan Jews. 101 I follow in
the footsteps of historians who have pioneered the use of Moroccan archival material to write the
history of Jews. 102
Although my sources come from all over Morocco, the major cities are far better
represented than are rural areas or small towns. Large urban centers like Fez, Marrakesh,
Tetuan, and Essaouira—which all had significant Jewish populations—appear repeatedly in the
documents I examined. Some smaller cities also appear more often than their size might suggest;
this is usually because the Jewish communities of these cities were relatively large, such as in the
case of Demnat where Jews made up about a third of the total population. 103 Morocco during the
nineteenth century was a highly diverse society with important regional differences and the
100
See esp. Jacques Berque, L’intérieur du Maghreb, XVe-XIXe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1978) and idem, Ulémas,
fondateurs, insurgés du Maghreb: XVIIe siècle (Paris: Sindbad, 1982).
101
See esp. Ayache, “Recherche sur le judaisme marocain,” 34-5. For recent work which draw heavily on sources
from Moroccan archives, see, e.g., Stacey E. Holden, The Politics of Food in Modern Morocco (Gainesville:
University Press of Florida, 2009); Sahar Bazzaz, Forgotten Saints: History, Power, and Politics in the Making of
Modern Morocco (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010); Ellen Amster, Medicine and the Saints: Science,
Islam, and the Colonial Encounter in Morocco, 1877-1956 (Austin: University of Texas Press, Forthcoming).
102
I have in mind the work of Mohammed Kenbib, Daniel Schroeter, and Emily Gottreich in particular.
103
Levin, “Demnat.”
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