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

ehind, a large number were undoubtedly destroyed, 20 though others were discovered by dealers
who knew the value they could fetch with collectors and libraries in Europe, Israel, and
America. 21 Today, legal documents from Jewish and Islamic courts in Morocco are literally
scattered throughout the world; I consulted collections in Israel, Belgium, Morocco, the
Netherlands, and the United States. 22 The fact that most Moroccan Jews no longer live in
Morocco actually makes it easier to study how Jews used Moroccan sharī‘a courts than to study
how Muslims used these institutions; most of the legal documents concerning Muslims remain in
the hands of families still living in Morocco who have no interest in donating such documents to
archives or libraries and rarely make them available to researchers. 23
The fact that sources for the functioning of sharī‘a courts and batei din come not from
state archives but from portions of family archives which have ended up in larger collections has
necessarily shaped the nature of my research. While scholars have reflected constructively on
ways to read different kinds of state archives, we cannot assume similar kinds of logic inhered in
20
Concerning the destruction of such legal documents, Professor Leon Buskens explained to me that he had found
two large boxes full of manuscript documents in Hebrew, Arabic, and Judeo-Arabic—including many legal
documents—in a scrap paper heap in Marrakesh; luckily Professor Buskens was able to buy the lot, which is now
preserved in the Special Collections division of the Library of the University of Leiden under the catalogue numbers
Or.26.543 (1 and 2) and Or.26.544. Undoubtedly, however, the majority of such manuscripts which ended up in
scrap heaps were not discovered by either scholars or dealers, and were simply used as scrap paper or otherwise
discarded.
21
Paul Dahan, of the Centre de la Culture Judéo-Marocaine in Brussels, has built up an impressive personal
collection of Judaica and Jewish manuscripts from Morocco, including a large number of Jewish and Islamic legal
documents. Dahan acquired the vast majority of his collection from dealers in Morocco, Europe, and Israel.
Similarly, the Judaica Collection at Yale Library recently acquired a large number of Jewish manuscripts from North
Africa, including legal documents from Morocco (mostly in Hebrew but some in Arabic): this collection was bought
from dealers in Jerusalem. Finally, Yosef Tobi, a professor emeritus of Jewish history at the University of Haifa,
bought a collection of nearly 2,000 Islamic legal documents and a large number of Hebrew manuscripts from a
dealer in Fez; I discuss Tobi’s collection of Islamic legal documents in further detail below.
22
See the list of archives consulted at the end of the dissertation. There are, of course, yet more private collections,
to which I have not managed to gain access; one in particular is that of the Erzini family from Tetuan. Nadia Erzini,
an historian in her own right, is currently the custodian of the family’s archives but has not as yet given scholars
permission to do research in the collection.
23
Besides the fact that few archives or libraries find it valuable to collect such documents (the library of al-
Qarawīyīn in Fez is an exception as they are supposedly in the process of cataloging a large collection of Islamic
legal documents), many families might still find legal use for such documents, such as to prove their claim to
property. Unlike for Jews living outside of Morocco, Islamic legal documents belonging to families still in Morocco
might potentially still be of use.
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