The Convergence of Judaism and Islam: Religious, Scientific, and Cultural Dimensions

7. The Martyrdom of Sol Hachuel: Ridda in Morocco in 1834

7 The Martyrdom of Sol Hachuel Ridda in Morocco in 1834 Juliette Hassine In memory of my late brother, Raphael Hassine Judeo-Muslim ties in Morocco deteriorated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. An important historical development that characterized the tense relationship between Jewish communal leaders and the Muslim authorities is the beheading of a Jewish maiden before a crowd for the crime of ridda (apostasy). As an initial step, it will be necessary to delineate the concept of ridda, how the law was applied in Morocco in 1834, and how the Jewish leaders reacted against this particular case. The victim was 17-year-old Sol Hachuel of Tangier, also known by the members of her community as Sol Hatsadiqqah (Sol the Righteous).1 Jews in central and southern Morocco called her Lala Soulika (Dame Soulika). A Moslem court in Fez condemned her to death by beheading in the year 1834.2 Her prosecutors claimed that she converted to Islam and then reverted to Judaism. She firmly denied the charge. Evidence for our arguments concerning the state of relations between Judaism and Islam at the time will be adduced from piyyutim (Jewish religious poetry) and texts written about her. Another important source for an examination of the credibility of the reservations of the Jews regarding the administration of justice and law in Morocco is a book by a French Christian traveler called A. Rey. His Souvenirs d’un voyage au Maroc , published in Paris in 1844, includes an important chapter describing the stages in the case, showing that each stage corresponds to the ridda 110 r Juliette Hassine procedure as set out in Malikite law, still in force in Morocco today. A Muslim religious personality acquainted with the case almost certainly provided the author with the information. The field of the relations between Jews and Muslims in Morocco has not heretofore been analyzed in the light of case studies such as the ridda event. Furthermore, no other researchers have described the execution of Sol Hachuel against the backdrop of the Islamic legal framework and Jewish sources (using some manuscripts not previously available). This research is thus the first of its kind.3 The reign of Sultan Abd al-Rahman, who confirmed the young girl’s death sentence, has been studied and described on the basis of official documents by Ahmad Ibn Khālid Al-Nasiri Al-Salawī. The chronicle called Kitāb Elistiqsa liackhbari doual al Magrib Alaqsah (Book of the Chronicles of the Far Western Maghreb) is extremely important for understanding the social and legal structure surrounding the sultanate.4 The archives of the Muslim authorities of Fez remain closed to scholarly study. Herein, we shall rely on rare Hebrew sources together with two manuscripts , one in Hebrew and the other in Judeo-Arabic, which until we discovered them were not previously known to scholars. We are referring to a piyyut in a manuscript by Rabbi Yedidiah Monsoniego, which opens: Remember the righteousness of a woman of valor and discuss her formidable strength and tell it to your children.5 ‫זכרו‬ ‫חיל‬ ‫אשת‬ ‫צדקת‬ ‫ספרו‬ ‫לבניכם‬ ‫שיחו‬ ‫נוראותיה‬ ‫ועזוז‬ and to a q#sā, which begins with the verse “Bisam Allah qaomi aouel klamí lerav La῾lami” (In the name of God, my shelter, I will dedicate my words to the Master of the Universe).6 This q#sā Bisam Allah qaomi is of the type current in the literary circle of malhun.7 Because of the subject matter’s complexity, we shall not discuss every paragraph dealing with the ridda issue, but restrict ourselves to a few select paragraphs. We shall also refer to other piyyutim published in editions not readily available today together with the Judeo-Arabic q#sās in manuscript form. According to the laws of protection (dhimma), which defined the status of the Jews as dhimmi or a protected minority under Islamic rule, rulers and judges were not permitted to force a Jewess to become a Muslim.8 In this historic context, it was illegal to treat Sol as a Jewess accused of ridda. The Martyrdom of Sol Hachuel: Ridda in Morocco in 1834 r 111 Therefore, in our opinion she was tried as a Muslim and brought to the scaffold as a Muslim, though she was a Jewess. The crime of ridda constitutes a complex topic in Muslim law. Hanafi law states that if a Muslim denies his religion he is offered the opportunity to return to Islam. Thus he...