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

4. Jews and Muslim Space

4 Jews and Muslim Space 92 Clearly, Jews felt most at home in the mellah, where, even if they didn’t always enjoy the total autonomy sometimes suggested, they nonetheless owned property , practiced their religion with minimal interference, maintained their own institutions, worked, and raised their families: activities, moreover, which they had been carrying out in that same space for several hundred years. Jews felt sufficiently secure to defend this “citadel of their independence”1 against intruders , even using physical force when it seemed necessary. The mellah’s gate was locked from within, not from without. But once they ventured beyond the mellah’s walls, Jews’ confidence quickly eroded and was replaced by an acute sense of vulnerability. Jews who found themselves in one of the city’s Muslim quarters faced potential humiliation, sometimes in the form of insults, rocks, urine, or spit hurled their way. More often, however, a subtler means of abasement and control was at work in the medina: Muslim space was where a Jew became a dhimmE. dhimma and the negotiation of muslim space Up to now, the abstract notion of dhimma has largely been passed over in favor of the rich record of inter-communal relations at our disposal. Inadequate as it may be for explaining how Jews actually lived among Muslims, particularly in a context as distant in time and place from the medieval Arabian ideal as modern Morocco, dhimma is nonetheless a recurring motif in the language and content of many Moroccan sources,2 particularly those dealing with how Jews and Muslims interacted in areas of the city outside the mellah . One particular aspect of dhimma, its sumptuary laws, stands out as a consistent cause of Jewish ambivalence about the medina, and so warrants further investigation. The Pact of ªUmar states that non-Muslims living under Islamic rule are required to accept the following restrictions in their dress: “We shall not attempt to resemble Muslims in any way with regard to their dress, as for example , with the qalansuwa [conical cap], the turban, sandals, or parting the hair (in the Arab fashion) . . . We shall always adorn ourselves in the traditional fashion.”3 Although originally intended to prevent administrative mistakes , gradually such restrictions came to be read as signs of humiliation. Nowhere in the Muslim world, however, were they ever enforced for any great length of time.4 In Morocco, for instance, where Jews were the only group subject to such restrictions, they were only reintroduced by Mawlay Sulayman in 1815 after having fallen into disuse.5 Their application on the local level continued to vary widely, in Marrakesh as elsewhere. The following is a description of the dress of a Jewish woman in Marrakesh during the late eighteenth century, a time when sumptuary laws appear to have been little in force: The dress of the Jewish women consists of a fine linen shirt, with large and loose sleeves, which hang almost to the ground; over the shirt is worn a Caftan, a loose dress made of woolen cloth, or velvet, of any colour, reaching as low as the hips, and covering the whole of the body, except the neck and breast, which are left open, and the edges of the Caftan being embroidered with gold. In addition to these is the geraldito, or petticoats, made of fine green woolen cloth, the edges and corners of which have sometimes a gold ornament; this part of the dress is fastened by a broad sash of silk and gold, which surrounds the waist, and the ends of it are suffered to hang down behind, in an easy manner; when they go abroad, they cover the whole with the haick, the same used by the Moorish women. The unmarried Jewesses wear their hair plaited in different folds, and hanging down behind; and to this they have a very graceful and becoming method of putting a wreath of wrought silk round the head, and tying it behind with a bow. This dress sets off their features to great advantage, and distinguishes them from the married women, who cover their heads with a red silk handkerchief, which they tie behind, and over it place a silk sash, leaving the ends to hang loose on their backs. None of the Jewish women have stockings, but use red slippers, curiously embroidered with gold. They wear very large gold earrings at the lower part of the ears, and at the upper, three small ones set with pearls or special stones...