In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

1 Mellahization The Juderea is also, as it were, a citie of itselfe, where dwell the Jewes. John Smith, English merchant in Marrakesh, 1604 12 In the summer of 1555, in compliance with a papal bull, the ghetto of Rome was created. Within less than half a decade, across the Mediterranean in the great, dry plain of the Hawz, the Jews of Marrakesh met a fate not unlike that of their Roman coreligionists when they too were transferred to their own “city within a city.” Located where the royal stables had once stood, the new walled Jewish quarter of Marrakesh was in fact the second of its kind in Morocco after that of Fez, founded in 1438. Like its predecessor, the new Jewish quarter in Marrakesh was also called a “mellah,” a name that originally referred to the salt-marsh area to which the Jews of the northern Moroccan capital had been transferred. Interestingly, the Roman ghetto had similarly inherited its name from its predecessor, the Venetian foundry (getto or ghetto) where a policy of Jewish confinement had been put into official practice in 1516. The two terms continued to follow parallel trajectories, moreover, with “ghetto” and “mellah” each eventually becoming a generic term for a Jewish quarter within their respective environments. While such parallels may be striking, their significance should not be overstated . For just as Rome is not Marrakesh, the mellah is not a ghetto. The analogy often drawn between the two overlooks profound differences separating the North African Jewish experience from the European one, most notably the stark contrast between the Islamic principle of tolerance, for- mulated in the Pact of ªUmar in the seventh century and known in Arabic as “dhimma,”1 and Christian Europe’s formative theological bias against its Jewish subjects. At the same time, it is important to recognize that Jewish quarters within the Islamic world, and even within Morocco itself, vary greatly in their spatial attributes, patterns of inter- and intra-communal relations, and social and economic development. While many recognizable continuities cut across Moroccan Jewish society, each of Morocco’s mellahs (and by the early 1900s most Moroccan towns had one) was nonetheless created at a specific time and place and evolved according to local and regional exigencies . Understanding this process begins with understanding the origins of each mellah. Prior to the founding of Marrakesh, Jews lived in the village of Aghmat Aylan, the one-time capital of the Rehamna tribe, about eight miles southeast of the city’s future site. The first Jewish inhabitants of Marrakesh probably came from Aghmat and other nearby villages, though it is unclear exactly when they were allowed to settle in the city definitively,2 and whether they were subsequently banished under the Almohads (Ar. al-Muwannid[n, 1147–1269), who rejected the concept of dhimma toleration altogether. By the Saªdi period (1511–1659), however, it is clear that Jews were well-established residents of the Marrakesh medina. As indicated above, they were transferred to their new quarter a century or so after a similar event took place in Fez, within a few years of the establishment of the Roman ghetto, and during the reign of the Saªdi dynasty in Morocco. But when exactly? Since the Moroccan chroniclers are all but silent on the subject of the mellah (as they are on most aspects of Jewish history), a good place to start is with the accounts of foreign visitors to Marrakesh during this period, beginning with the famous voyager Leo Africanus.3 Leo came to Marrakesh at least twice during his travels to Africa, in 1511–1512 and 1514–1515, and both times was struck by evidence of the city’s being ravaged by war and famine. In fact, it seemed to Leo that Marrakesh had more ruins to its name than people: The city is sparsely populated. Only with great difficulty is one able to reach [the Kutubiya], because of the ruins of buildings blocking the route. The poor city is two-thirds uninhabited. One can truly say it has grown old before its time.4 Although Leo’s comments may partly reflect elitist attitudes toward the south typical of a one-time denizen of Fez (he emphasizes the fact that there was only one bookstore in the city, and also that the sole professor to be found at the local madrasa [college] was “crassly ignorant”5) population decline and general decay were nevertheless real...

Share