Apportioning Sacred Space in a Moroccan City the Case of Tangier, 1860–1912

chapter 6 Apportioning Sacred Space in a Moroccan City The Case of Tangier, 1860–1912

Susan Gilson Miller

In the lexicon of Muslim-Jewish relations in Morocco, of social and religious life. The first Jewish quarter no single word is more redolent with meaning was created in Fez in the fifteenth century; other than the word mellah, the Jewish quarter of the mellahs followed in later centuries. What was dis- Moroccan town. In the popular mind, the mellah tinctive about the Jewish quarter, how it fitted was synonymous with Jewish society, representing into the urban landscape, and what kind of segre- the subordinate and separate status of Morocco’s gation it implied, are important questions not yet single largest religious minority. To many European fully answered. Some historians argue that Jews visitors, the mellah evoked an image of the forlorn welcomed the security of a closed quarter, while ghettoes of the Middle Ages. French diplomat others cite texts that speak of their forced removal Eugène Aubin, writing at the turn of the last cen- from the Muslim town as a calamity. Whether tury, recognized the distinctions to be made between construed as a prison or a safe haven, or some mellahs of the coast and those of the interior, not- combination of both, the mellah felt like alterna- ing, however, that all were similar in one respect: tive space, subject to its own rhythms, rules, and within their walls “the great mass of the Jewish practices.2 population continues to live in poverty and squa- lor. The Mellahs are overpopulated … [their] filth and stench … make them hotbeds of frequent epi- 2 Studies concerning the mellah include “Mellâh,” by demics.” The Jewish quarter of Essaouira was espe- Georges Colin, Encyclopedia of Islam, 1st edn; “Mallâh,” cially shocking, giving the impression of “a human by H. Zafrani, Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edn; J. Benech, anthill … it is a squalid, wretched place, where one Essai d’explication d’un mellah (Baden Baden: n.p., 1949); does not breathe freely except on the terraces, K. Brown, “Mellah and Madina, A Moroccan City and Its where a whole regiment of women and children Jewish Quarter (Salé ca. 1880–1930),” in S. Morag and I. take the air.”1 Ben Ami and N. Stillman, eds., Studies in Judaism and This scene of abject poverty was the exterior Islam presented to S.D. Goitein (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1981), face of a complex urbanity shaped by longstand- 253–82; L. Brunot and E. Malka, Textes judéo-arabes de Fès (Rabat: Ecole du Livre, 1939); David Corcos, Studies in ing social and formal arrangements. Architecturally, the History of Jewish Morocco (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, the mellah was a unit distinct from the rest of the 1976); Shlomo Deshen, The Mellah Society (Chicago, il: town, surrounded by high walls and heavy gates. In University of Chicago Press, 1989); M. Gaudefroy- a city made up of enclosures, it was a small enclave Demombynes, “Marocain mellah,” Journal Asiatique 2 within the greater encirclement of the outer walls. (1914): 651–58; J. Goulven, Les mellahs de Rabat-Salé Administratively, it had its own governing hierar- (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1927); J.O. Hunwick, “The Rights of chy responsible for taxes, decorum, and public Dhimmîs to Maintain a Place of Worship, A 15th Century safety, its own shops and markets, its own tempo Fatwâ from Tlemcen,” al-Qantara 12 no. 1 (1991): 133–55; R. Le Tourneau, Fès avant le Protectorat, 2nd edn (Rabat: Ed. La Porte, 1987); Susan Gilson Miller, Attilio Petruccioli, and Mauro Bertagnin, “Inscribing Minority Space in the 1 Eugène Aubin, Morocco of Today (London: J.M. Dent, Islamic City: The Jewish Quarter of Fez (1438–1912),” 1906), 285–95. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 6 no. 3

In Moroccan parlance as well as in some Western cause of the widening gulf between Jews and the minds, the mellah became a metaphor for the Muslim majority.5 removal of Jews from the mainstream of social life. The difficulty with interpretations based solely on Along with distinctive dress, special taxes, and other Moroccan and European sources is that they reduce restrictions, the enclosing walls of the mellah became the Jewish experience to a subsidiary factor in the a signifier of Jewish “otherness,” a charged symbol evolution of larger issues like the progress of Jewish representing the alienation of Jews from the wider Westernization, or the rise of Moroccan national- society. Citing the “highly consistent” testimony of ism. The Jewish response to the city becomes nineteenth century European visitors, American enmeshed in historical discourses external to itself, historian Norman Stillman speaks of the “pariah” rather than being considered as a component of a status of Jews in pre-modern Morocco and of their central debate within the Jewish community about “highly ritualized degradation in the major towns religiosity versus secularization that was much closer and cities.”3 Nationalist historians of an indige to home. This debate consumed Moroccan Jewish nous cast adopted a different point of view, arguing intellectuals at the end of the nineteenth century that the Jewish exit from the mellah was a revolt and shaped their attitudes on important issues of against the social compact that traditionally had the day. Our interest here is in imagining the urban governed Muslim–Jewish affairs. Moroccan sociolo- situation from a Jewish perspective: how Jews con- gist Abdallah Laroui, commenting on “the end of strued their ties with Muslims, how they defined Islamic sovereignty” in nineteenth-century Morocco, themselves vis-à-vis the wider society, how external laid some of the blame for its dissolution at the relations were tempered by internal dynamics, how doorstep of the mellah. The Jewish passion to west- Jews developed their own particular perspective on ernize, he declared, allowed Jews to “escape from life in the city (Figure 6.1).6 the situation of the Muslims” and to engage in “arro- gance and rebellion” against the ruling authority.4 Whether one rejoiced in Jewish emancipation or lamented it, the underlying assumption was that flight from the Jewish quarter was an inevitable consequence of modernity, a symptom as well as a

(September, 2001): 310–27; Daniel Schroeter, “The Jewish Quarter and the Moroccan City,” in New Horizons in Sephardic Studies, ed. Y. Stillman and G. Zucker (Albany, ny: suny Press, 1993); H. Zafrani, Poésie juive en Occident Musulman (Paris: Geuthner, 1977), and by the same Figure 6.1 Street scene, about 1910. These distinctive twin author, Mille ans de vie juive au Maroc, culture et histoire, gates are still found today in well-preserved religion et magie (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 1983). condition in the upper part of the Tangier Madina. For a comprehensive overview of Muslim–Jewish rela- Collection Gérard Lévy, Paris tions in Morocco, see M. Kenbib, Juifs et musulmans au Maroc, 1859–1948 (Rabat: Université Mohammed V, 5 Daniel Schroeter and Joseph Chetrit, “The Transformation 1994). of the Jewish Community of Essaouira (Mogador) in the 3 Norman A. Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands: A History and Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” in H.A. Goldberg, Source Book (Philadelphia, pa: Jewish Publication Society, ed., Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jewries, History and 1979), 84–85. Culture in the Modern Era (Bloomington, in: Indiana 4 A. Laroui, Les origines sociales et culturelles du national- University Press, 1996): 99–118. isme marocain, 1830–1912 (Paris: François Maspero, 1977), 6 The primary sources used in this study are from the Actas, 310–11. or “Minutes” of the meetings of the Junta, the governing