History Of The Jews In Morocco

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Moroccan Jew s constitute an ancient community. Before the founding of Israel in 1948 , there were about 250,000 to 265,000 Jews in the country, but only 7,000 or so remain. UNDER THE ROMANS When the Jew s began to spread over the Roman Empire after the dissolution of the Jewish state in 70 , many of them doubtless settled in Mauretania . These settlers engaged in Agriculture , cattle-raising, and trades. They were divided into bodies akin to tribes, governed by their respective heads, and had to pay the Romans a capitation-tax of 2 shekels. Under the dominion of the Romans and after 429 of the Vandals the Mauretanian Jews increased and prospered to such a degree that Church councils of Africa found it necessary to take a stand against them. The Justinian edict of persecution for North Africa , issued after the Vandal rule had been overthrown and Mauretania had come under the dominion of the Byzantines (534), was directed against the Jews as well as the Arians , the Donatists , and other dissenters . In the 7th Century the Jewish population of Mauretania received as a further accession from Iberian Peninsula those who wished to escape west-Gothic legislation. At the end of the same century, at the time of the great Arab conquests in northwestern Africa, there were in Mauretania, according to the Arab historians, many powerful Berber tribes which professed Judaism . It would be very difficult to decide, whether these tribes were originally of Jewish descent and had become assimilated with the Berbers in language, habits, mode of life—in short, in everything except religion-or whether they were native Berbers who in the course of centuries had been converted by Jewish settlers. This question is complicated by the likelihood of intermarriage. However this may have been, they at any rate shared the lot of their non-Semitic brethren in the Berber territory, and, like them, fought against the Arab conquerors. ARAB CONQUEST AND THE IDRISIDS (703-1146) It was the Berber Jewess Dahiyah , or Damia , known as Kahinah , who aroused her people in the Aures , the eastern spurs of the Atlas , to a last although fruitless resistance to the Arab general Hasan Ibn Nu'man , and herself died in 703 . As in the Hellenic lands of Christendom , so also in Mauretania, Judaism involuntarily prepared the way for Islam ; and the conversion of the Berbers to Islam took place so much the more easily. Many Jewish tribes of the Berbers also accepted Islam while others persuaded by the fact that the other side had been successful. When, at the end of the 7th Century , Morocco came under the dominion of the Arab s, or of the Califate of Bagdad , another incursion of Arab Jews into Morocco took place. The Moroccan Jews, like all other Jews in the Islamic empire, were subject to the Pact Of Omar , which defined the status of dhimmi, or second class citizen for local non-Muslim populations. The dependence of Morocco upon the Caliphate Of Baghdad ceased in 788 , when, under the Idris Ibn Abdallah (known as Idris I), the dynasty of the Idrisids , the descendants of Ali , was founded and proclaimed its independent rule over Morocco. The Jews undertook a political role in the history of the subjection of Morocco to Idris I. After he had conquered Tangier and Volubilis , he wished to induce the Jewish tribes, which were inclined to remain faithful to the caliph of Bagdad, to join his army. To make them more pliant to his wishes he caused them to be attacked and robbed in some of their cities, as in Temesna, Chellah, and Magada, whereupon the Jews of Tadla, Fazaz, and Shawiya joined Idris' army under their general Benjamin Ben Joshaphat Ben Abiezer . After the combined army had met with some successes, the Jews withdrew, because they were horrified at the spilling of blood among those of their own tribesmen who were hostile to Idris and also because they had been made suspicious by an officer in Idris' army who wished to revenge himself upon Idris for adultery committed with his wife. The victorious Idris, however, took revenge by again falling upon them in their cities. After an unsuccessful resistance they had to conclude a peace with him, according to which they were required to pay an annual capitation-tax. Later traditions attribute even still greater indignities inflicted on the Jewesses of Morocco by Idris . Idris II , successor of Idris I, allowed the Jews to settle in a special quarter of his capital, Fez (founded in 808 ), in return for a tax of 30,000 dinars; in one of the many versions of the narrative of the founding of the city a Jew is mentioned. Moreover, at the end of the 7th Century , under Idris I, Jews could settle in different cities of the realm by paying the above-mentioned capitation-tax. UNDER THE ALMOHAD S (1146-1400S) The tolerance of the jizya (The tax demanded of dhimmis) paying Jews and Christians in the cities of Morocco came to an end under the intolerant dynasty of the stern Almohades, who came into power in 1146 . Jews and Christians were compelled either to accept Islam or to leave the country. Here, as in other parts of North Africa , many Jews who shrank from emigrating pretended to embrace Islam . Maimonides , who was staying in Fez with his father, is said to have written to the communities to comfort and encourage his brethren and fellow believers in this sore time of oppression (see Ibn Verga ) . In the above-mentioned elegy of Abraham Ibn Ezra , which appears to have been written at the commencement of the period of the Almohads , and which is found in a Yemen siddur among the ḳinot prescribed for the Ninth of Ab, the Moroccan cities Ceuta , Meknes , Dra'a, Fez, and Segelmesa are especially emphasized as being exposed to great persecution. Joseph Ha-Kohen relates that no remnant of Israel was left from Tangier to Mehdia. Moreover, the later Almohads were no longer content with the repetition of a mere formula of belief in the unity of God and in the prophetic calling of Muhammad . Abu Yusuf Ya'qub Al-Mansur , the third Almohad prince, suspecting the sincerity of the supposedly converted Jews, compelled them to wear distinguishing garments, with a very noticeable yellow cloth for a head-covering; from that time forward the clothing of the Jews formed an important subject in the legal regulations concerning them. The reign of the Almohads on the whole exercised a most disastrous and enduring influence on the position of the Moroccan Jews. Already branded externally, by their clothing, as unbelievers, they furthermore became the objects of scorn and of violent despotic caprice; and out of this condition they have not succeeded in raising themselves. THE MERINIDS AND THE SAADITES After the Almohads , the Merinids ruled in Morocco until they were overthrown by the Saadites in the 15th Century . During the murderous scenes which were enacted in 1391 in Seville and were repeated in a large part of Spain and then across the sea in Majorca , the Spanish Jews were glad to seize the first opportunity to emigrate to North Africa in order to escape the persucution in Spain . A hundred years later, when the Jews were driven out of Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1496 , the sudden inroad upon Morocco and the whole of north Africa was repeated on a very much larger scale. This unexpected flood of Spanish immigrants, which soon caused overcrowding in the larger cities of Morocco, aroused uneasiness both among the Muslims, who feared an increase in the price of necessities, and among the Jews already settled there, who had hitherto barely succeeded in gaining a livelihood by following handicrafts and in petty Commerce . In addition to this unfriendly reception, the newcomers had to endure much from both great and small rulers eager for booty, as well as from the Moorish population (see Ibn Verga) . In Sale, in 1442 , many Jewesses were outraged; and in Alcazarquivir , the Jews were robbed of all they possessed. Many died of hunger and some returned to Spain ; most fled to Fez, where new trials awaited them. A terrible conflagration occurred in the Jewish quarter of that city, from which the historian of these events, Abraham Ben Solomon Of Torrutiel , then eleven years of age, escaped . A famine broke out soon after the fire, during which more than 20,000 Jews died in and around Fez. Notwithstanding these untoward events, the secret Jews or Maranos who were left in Spain and Portugal and who were determined to remain true to their faith under all circumstances so little feared the dangers and trials of removing to a foreign country that Manuel I , King of Portugal (1495-1521), felt obliged to forbid the Jews to emigrate without express royal permission. This prohibition was contained in two ordinances dated respectively April 20 and April 24 , 1499 . Nevertheless, with the aid of money and the exercise of shrewdness many Maranos succeeded in escaping to Africa . A certain Gonçalo of Loulé was heavily fined because he secretly transported Neo-Christians from Algarve to Larache on the coast of Morocco . A new group of Maranos was brought to Morocco through the definite establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal under Pope Paul III in 1536 . But in spite of all the suffering which Portugal had brought upon the Jews, there yet remained enough patriotism in the hearts of her rejected Jewish sons to cause them to help their former oppressors to preserve their old possessions on the Moroccan coast and to gain new ones. Through the strategy of a Jewish physician the Portuguese in 1508 succeeded in conquering the old seaport town of Safi , which had a large number of Jewish inhabitants and which, chiefly through them, had become an important commercial center . Two years later, in the same city, upon the reconquest of which the Moors had been steadily intent, was besieged by a large Moorish army. Thereupon two Portuguese Jews, Isaac Bencemero and a certain Ismail, brought assistance to the besieged with two ships manned by coreligionists and equipped at their own cost . In Safi, the Jews were allowed to live as such by Emanuel's permission; also in Asilah after 1533 , which had long been a Portuguese possession. In the quarrels which afterward took place between the Moors and the governors of Azamur in 1526 , Abraham ben Zamaira and Abraham Cazan, the most influential Jew in Azemmour in 1528 , served the Portuguese as negotiators . The Jews Abraham and Samuel Cabeça of Morocco also had dealings with the Portuguese generals. When, in 1578 , the young king Sebastian with almost his whole army met death, and Portugal saw the end of her glory, at Alcazarquivir , the few nobles who remained were taken captive and sold to the Jews in Fez and Morocco. The Jews received the Portuguese knights, their former countrymen, into their houses very hospitably and let many of them go free on the promise that they would send back their ransom from Portugal . The numerous newly immigrated Jews, whose descendants have faithfully adhered to the use of their Spanish dialect down to the present day, and who far surpassed the older Jewish inhabitants of Morocco in education and in intellectual acquirements, come into the foreground in the following period of the history of Judaism in Morocco. With their skill in European commerce, in arts and handicrafts, much of which had hitherto been unknown to the Moors , and with their wealth, they contributed largely to the great rise and development of the Moroccan Kingdom under the Alaouite Dynasty reign, who began to rule in 1550 . UNDER MOULAY RASHID AND MOULAY ISMAIL charm against scorpions from Morocco.]] The Jews suffered much during the great conquests of Moulay Rashid , who united the separate parts of Morocco into one single state, and wished to add to it all northwest Africa . According to Chénier, when Al-Raschid took the city of Marrakech in 1670 , at the desire of the inhabitants he caused the Jewish councilor and governor of the ruling prince Abu Bakr, together with the latter and his whole family, to be publicly burned, in order to inspire terror among the Jews . He also tore down the Synagogue s of the city, expelled many Jews from the Berber region of Sus and treated them tyrannically. His demands on the Jews in the way of taxes were enormous; he had them collected by Joshua ben Hamoshet, a rich Jew, to whom he was under obligations for various services and whom he appointed chief over the Jews. He even ordered the Jews to supply wine to the Christian Slave s. Moulay Rashid's successor was his brother in 1721 . IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY The condition of the Jewish community was unchanged under Mohammed III (1757-89), who distinguished himself by his attempt to introduce Europe an culture into his kingdom. His eldest son, Moulay Ali, governor of Fez , courageously opposed his father's suggestion to impose a tax upon that city in favor of his other brothers, which tax was to be paid by the Jewish community. He stated that the Jews of Fez were already so poor that they were unable to bear the present tax and that he was not willing to increase still further their excessive misery . His minister was the Jew Elijah Ha-Levi , who had at one time fallen into disgrace and had been given as a Slave to a smuggler of Tunis , but had been restored to favor . The accession to the throne of Yazid , on the death of Mohammed III in 1789 , led to a terrible massacre of the Moroccan Jews, having refused him their support in his fight with his brother for the succession. As a punishment the richer Jews of Tetouan , at his entry into the city, were tied to the tails of horses and dragged through the city. Many were killed in other ways or robbed, and Jewesses were outraged. The Spanish consul, Solomon Hazzan, was executed for alleged treachery, and the Jews of Tangier , Asilah , and Alcazarquivir were condemned to pay a large sum of money. Elijah, the minister of the former king, who had always opposed Yazid in the council, quickly embraced Islam to avoid being persecuted; but he died soon after. The cruelty of the persecutors reached its climax in Fez. In Rabat , as in Meknes , the Jews were ill-treated. In Mogador , strife arose between the Jews and the city judge on the one hand, and the Moorish citizens on the other; the dispute was over the question of Jewish garb. Finally the Jews were ordered to pay 100,000 piasters and three shiploads of gunpowder; and most of them were arrested and beaten daily until the payment was made. Many fled beforehand to Gibraltar or other places; some died as Martyr s; and some accepted Islam . The sanguinary events of the year 1790 have been poetically described in two ḳinot for the Ninth of Ab, by Jacob ben Joseph al-Maliḥ and by David ben Aaron ibn Husain .