The Mellah of Marrakesh: Jewish and Muslim Space in Morocco's Red City

3. Muslims and Jewish Space

3 Muslims and Jewish Space 71 Dubbed Marrakech la Rouge in French and al-mamr1º in Arabic for its red ochre visage, Marrakesh was surely an Orientalist’s dream city. As the winter home of the sultan, it bore the all-important title of “royal capital,” for which reason it was also a city to which foreigners had only restricted access, its inaccessibility reinforced by the impressive walls that surrounded it. Built by the Almoravid sultan ªAli b. Yusuf, they formed a hexagon almost six miles around, twenty feet tall, and five feet thick.1 But the remoteness of Marrakesh and its late Westernization only served to increase the city’s mysterious allure for European observers. Then there were its markets, bursting with all the “exotic” exports of Africa. Tropical and desert fruits, animal hides, and Morocco’s finest crafts filled the many s[qs of the medina, and three times a week the wool market was transformed into an auction block, where slaves were paraded and sold to the highest bidder. Finally, the Jmaª al-Fna provided in abundance the snake charmers, acrobats, musicians, storytellers, magicians, and healers that were quickly becoming the stuff of legend in Europe . Astute observers were also careful to note the city’s classical tripartite plan: the Kasbah for the ruling class, the medina for the Muslim masses, and the mellah for the Jews. Such efforts at segregation were apparent even in non-residential areas. In addition to its cemetery, the mellah maintained its own prison, which was used by the guard of the main gate (as well as the Figure 3.1. Map of Marrakesh by Paul Lambert, 1867. From Said Mouline, Repères de la mémoire: Marrakech (Rabat: Royaume du Maroc, Ministere de l’habitat, 1993). shaykh al-yah[d) to punish Jews for minor infractions.2 Segregation was also the rule in the medina prison, where the city’s more serious criminals were kept, and where several rooms were set aside for Jews.3 A special prison for female offenders, known by the Persian term m1rEst1n, stood adjacent to the medina prison and did double duty as an insane asylum. It also had Jewish inmates, though it is unclear whether or not they were kept apart from Muslims .4 Segregation was the rule even outside the city proper: As confirmed by Ali Bey,5 Lambert,6 and Erckmann,7 the leper colony (n1ra) beyond Bab Dukkala, established several centuries earlier by the Saªdis, continued to function in the pre-Protectorate period and contained a separate section for Jewish sufferers, complete with its own synagogue. As indicated by the above, boundaries between Jews and Muslims and the hierarchies of space they implied were certainly the ideal in Marrakesh, both for the Orientalist observer and for the Moroccan authorities (not to mention for Jews themselves, for whom self-segregation has long been an important element in communal life8). But to what extent were they also a reality ? Separate institutions surely helped shape the ways in which relations between the communities were conducted, but did they ever succeed in fully isolating Jews from Muslims in Marrakesh, or vice versa? Moreover, what does the answer to this question hold for our understanding of the role of Jewish space within Moroccan society; or, conversely, the role of Muslim space within the lives and imaginations of Jews? By carefully examining the points of intersection between the populations of the mellah and the medina in this chapter and the next, we can discover the extent to which “ethnic quarters” actually functioned as inter-communal space. The Muslim presence in the mellah was hugely significant not only because of the number of individuals involved,9 but also because of what their presence meant. Like the Jewish presence in Muslim space, it was primarily motivated by economic concerns. The muntasib, in defending his right to intervene in the economic affairs of the mellah, put it this way: “The commerce and crafts of the mellah are linked to the medina because they are all markets .”10 Of the many goods that passed through Marrakesh, Jewish merchants dealt mainly in oil, sulfur, almonds, apricot kernels, cotton, barley, and wax. Hence such products were often made available for purchase in the Jewish quarter first, after which they were resold in other parts of the city. Muslim shoppers were naturally attracted to these goods, and hence were especially...