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

non-Muslims’ tendency to frequent Islamic courts. 18 On the contrary, the notarial practices of
Jewish and Islamic courts in Morocco were strikingly similar.
Scholars have yet to fully explore the reasons behind the lack of central record-keeping
practices in either type of court. While this is not the place for a full discussion of why sharī‘a
courts did not keep systematic records, it is important to consider some factors that may have
contributed to Moroccan courts’ notarial culture. Despite increasing efforts to consolidate the
state’s authority and centralize its government in the mid-nineteenth century, the Makhzan
nonetheless remained weak—especially compared to the Ottoman Empire, which had far more
extensive judicial record-keeping practices. One must also consider the possibility that the
approach of Moroccan sharī‘a courts to legal procedure simply did not include centralized record
keeping. Introducing archival practices like those of the Ottomans would thus have been an
innovation—one that there might have been no reason to initiate.
Nonetheless, both sharī‘a courts and batei din did produce written records of their
activities, which makes it possible to reconstruct their functioning on the basis of documentary
evidence. When the majority of Jews living in Morocco left for places like Israel, France, and
the Americas, many brought their family archives with them. 19 Of the documents that were left
18
See the oft-quoted line of the Radbaz (Rabbi David b. Solomon Avi Zimra, d. 1573, who served as chief rabbi of
Egypt under the Ottomans): “All that happened is written in the sicil (Ottoman court records), and is kept for many
days, and every man can seek justice on the basis of what had been written” (quoted in Shmuelevitz, The Jews of the
Ottoman Empire, 51). See also arguments about the greater efficiency and enforceability of Ottoman courts, which
was at least to some extent linked to the keeping of records (e.g. Al-Qattan, “Dhimmis in the Muslim Court,” 433).
19
Many, however, did not bring these documents with them or even destroyed them while they were still in
Morocco. I had a conversation with a Moroccan Jewish gentleman in his sixties still living in Casablanca who
explained to me that after his father died, he and his siblings found a safe (“coffre fort”) in his father’s house which,
when opened, turned out to be filled with legal documents from Jewish and Islamic courts. The children agreed that
these documents were now useless and discarded them—to the future chagrin of many historians like myself!
Undoubtedly this story could be told of countless Moroccan Jewish families, especially those who left Morocco and
thus would no longer have any use for these sorts of legal documents.
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