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

The epilogue brings us briefly into the colonial period, providing a sketch of how the
French transformed the Moroccan legal system and how these changes affected Jews’ (and
Muslims’) legal strategies. It points the way towards further research on the socio-legal history
of Morocco under French rule, a field that remains wide open to future scholars.
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When Jewish jurists referred to the legal institutions of non-Jews, they used the term
‘arkaot shel goyim. 111 The word goy (pl. goyim) can be translated as “nation,” such that the
phrase literally means “the courts of [the] nations”—although goyim had come to denote non-
Jews more generally and, more specifically in the Moroccan context, Muslims. When Moroccan
Jewish legal authorities discussed the use of sharī‘a and Makhzan courts, they described them as
‘arkaot shel goyim. For our purposes, the courts of the nations also evoke the consular courts
which were run by the various nations with diplomatic representation in Morocco. Most fitting
about this idiom is the multiplicity of legal venues it suggests. The courts of the nations
encompassed all non-Jewish legal institutions, capturing the legal pluralism which characterized
nineteenth-century Morocco and, indeed, the legal history of Jews in the Islamic Mediterranean
more broadly.
111
The term ‘arkaot shel ‘ovdei kokhavim (“courts of idol worshippers”) was initially used in the Babylonian
Talmud (Gittin 9b), but in later halakhic literature the term ‘arkaot shel goyim became standard.
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