The Colonial Dhimmi: Islamic Sovereignty and the Making of the Indigenous Jew in Protectorate Morocco

I also wish to give a shout out to our

stellar staff uh Cleo and Johanna

um for their their work on the

logistical support of these. Uh for, I see

a lot of faces a lot of students and I

would particularly like to say a couple

words about our Center because I think

that you have a lot of opportunities

available for you at the center,

including fellowships

um and uh FLAS fellowships and all

sorts of things. So for those of you not

familiar with the Center for near

Eastern studies at UCLA, CNES is a

research hub where over 100 faculty

from the humanities, social sciences, arts

and the law school collaborate in a

variety of research and pedagogical projects.

It's one of the oldest centers in the

country. It was founded in 1957. It is one

of the most distinguished also U.S

centers for interdisciplinary research

on the Middle East broadly construed. We

are actually a national Research Center.

We get funding from the Department of

Education that provides for this for

programming but also a tremendous amount

of funding for language learning. We get

very few applications from

undergraduates, so those of you who are

undergraduates please please apply in

the future for these things. These are

full year fellowships, plenty of

opportunities for you to take advantage

of this to learn or to perfect your

languages: Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Armenian–

all the language of the region.

Our colleague Aomar Boum will introduce

um our our speaker and talk a little bit

about the Averroës lecture series that

you're attending today. But I want to

briefly introduce uh introduce him. He's

very shy. Distinguished as he is, he does

not want to people to talk a lot about

him but, he is a socio-cultural

anthropologist and holds Maurice Amado

Endowed chair in Sephardic studies here

at UCLA. I think he's probably the only

Muslim who will have such endowed chair

of that sort. Aomar's stellar

ethnographic research

deals with North Africa and specifically

addresses the place of religious and

ethnic minorities in Mena region. He has

published widely on this topic. his

publication includes an important book

Memories of Absence: how Muslim

remember Jews in Morocco which was

published by Stanford University Press

and recently co-edited The Collection

with Sarah Stein who I also wish to

thank in the Center for Jewish studies

that have consistently collaborated with

us on this series. So grateful to you. And

they edited the book Holocaust and North

Africa which was published also by

Stanford press. Aomar just published a

graphic novel about Jewish communities

in North Africa and and many other

interesting books. So please join me in

welcoming my colleague Aomar.

Thanks Ali. It's a really humbling

moment for me personally to have my former

advisor, teacher and Professor Daniel

Schroeter among us.

Thanks Daniel for everything

for all your mentorship.

Good afternoon everyone. Before I

introduce our speaker Dr Daniel

Schroeter, professor and the Amos S. Deinard

Memorial Chair in Jewish history

in the department of history at the

University of Minnesota Twin Cities,

I would like to thank to begin by

thanking the staff the center for

Near eastern studies.

The staff of the Alan D. Leve

Center for Jewish studies especially

Cleo and Johanna and Chelsea and Viv for

their help with the series over the

years. I also acknowledge my colleagues

Ali Behdad and Sarah Stein for their support.

Written by a generous Anonymous donor,

the Averroës lecture series focuses on

Jewish communities living in Muslim

lands prior to the 20th century.

Averroës is the Latin name of Ibn Rushd

the 12th century Andalusian polymath whose

philosophical Works integrated Islamic

Traditions with ancient Greek thought.

Over subsequent centuries, his commentaries

on Plato and Aristotle influence Jewish

and Christian thinkers throughout Europe

among them Maimonides ,Thomas Aquinas, and

Baruch Spinoza.

The series built on UCLA strength in

having a large number of Faculty across

disciplines whose research touches

on this topic as well as a number of

research centers interested in a series

exploring the experiences and Legacies

of Jewish communities in the Muslim

world.

Let me now shift back to introducing Dr Schroeter.

Professor of History Dr Schroeter earned

a B.A. from the University of Washington

Seattle in history and near Eastern

languages in 1975. He's still young by

the way, don't get befooled by the years

here. An MA from University of Michigan Ann

Arbor in near Eastern studies in 1977

and a PhD in the University of

Manchester in near Eastern studies in

1984. Before joining the University of

Minnesota Twin Cities in 2008 as the

Amos S. Deinard Memorial Chair in Jewish

history Department of History, Dr

Schroeter served as the Shoshana Shier

distinguished visiting professor and

Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish studies at

the University of Toronto in 2016.

Visiting Professor at l'école des hautes études en sciences

sociales Paris in 2002. Teller Family

chair in Jewish history Department of

History University of California Irvine

between 1994 and 2008.

Professor [...] legislative

professorial professorship in Jewish

history Department of History the

University of Florida Gainesville

between 1989 and 1994. Many many many

other positions that I don't have time

to mention here. Dr Schroeter has

many fellowships and prizes over his

long and productive academic tenure. He's

literally one of the pillars of the

field and we are him in in our small

field we owe him a lot of gratitude here.

And I would like to mention some of

these

fellowships– the Ina Levine Invitational

Scholar Fellowship in Residence

at the Mandel Center for Advanced

Holocaust studies at the United States

Holocaust memorial museum in Washington DC

for the 2014-2015 Academic Year. The

Shoshana Shier distinguished visiting

professor at the Anne Tanenbaum Center for

Jewish studies at the University of

Toronto in Fall 2016 and most recently

Jean & Samuel Frankel Center for

Judaic Studies, the University of

Michigan. He was awarded the Shaul Ben-Simhon

prize for the study of North

African Jewry by Ben-Gurion University of

the Negev and the World Organization of

North African Jewry in 2018. Professor

Schroeter is the author of numerous

books and articles on the history of

Morocco and Jews of the Islamic World.

These books include among others The

Sultan's Jew: Morocco and the Sephardic

World;

Jewish culture and Society in North

Africa;

and Merchants of Essaouira: Urban society

and imperialism in

Southwestern Morocco 1844-1886 which

this is and and this book's earned the

translation of this book received the

Moulay Rachid National

Book Prize for the best translated book

of the year in Morocco.

Dr Schroeter is interested in the

history of the Jews of the Muslim and

Mediterranean worlds with a particular

focus on the Jews of Morocco. His

research focuses on the Jews of the

maghreb from the 15th century during the

20th centuries. Dr Schroeter seeks to

understand how Jewish cultures and

identities or constitute and transformed

beginning with the mass immigration of

Jews from Spain to North Africa in the

15th century and paying attention to the

continuous interactions between

different parts of the Mediterranean

diaspora until the late 18th century. He

researches the encounter of the Jews of

Morocco with Europe in the period of

Europe of European expansion and

colonialism with the Maghreb in 19 and

20th Centuries with a particular

attention to French colonialism and its

impacts on both urban and rural Jewish

communities. And with that I would like

to invite Dr Schroeter to talk to us

today about

The Colonial Dhimmi: Islamic Sovereignty

and the Making of the Indigenous Jew in

Protectorate Morocco.

You've really raised the bar very high. I

don't know if I can fulfill everyone's

expectations after a very generous

uh introduction but I do want to also

thank um Ali and the Center for Bear Eastern

studies and all those who have uh

helped you know put on this really

interesting and excellent uh lecture

series and welcome everyone.

I'm glad to see the so many

students uh also uh turning out for this

for this occasion.

Um thank you. Okay

so I won't get distracted,

the screen.

Let's see I'm sorry. okay

thank you.

all right yeah before I begin I want to

preface uh my remarks by saying this is

still a part of a work in progress, a

piece at least of the work in progress

that uh that I'm working on with Aomar

um and you'll you'll hear a bit more

about uh about this project in the

course of uh discussing this particular

subject which I want to focus on today

on uh on what I call The Colonial Dhimmi.

And I'll hopefully I'll explain why I sort of

if I had to coin that term to

describe

um the discussion or a subject that I'll

be talking about.

Um so in June 1941 when the news reached Morocco of the

implementation of the by the Vichy

government, of the revised and much more

severe statute of the Jews, Moroccan

Jewish leaders were in panic.

The lives and livelihoods of the entire

Jewish community of Morocco threatened

by the impending legislation

soon to be implemented by the French

protectorate authorities.

Leaders of Moroccan jewry turned to

the sultan Sidi Mohammed bin Yusef later

Better known as Muhammad V.

They turned to him for his help invoking

their status as dhimmi, indigenous

Moroccan subjects of the Muslim ruler.

The anti-jewish statutes modeled on the

Nazi Nuremberg race laws aimed at

marginalizing Jews from society and the

economy. So with the fall of France and

the establishment of the collaborationist

Vichy government,

most of France's colonies became a de

facto part of the Vichy regime. And the

Jews and the French protective Morocco

the largest Jewish Community uh in the

French Empire uh were subject to Vichy legislation at

the metropole. But Morocco was in

accordance to the Treaty of 1912 that

established the protectorate

a sovereign country or in theory, a

sovereign country ruled by

um by the sultan, an Islamic ruler of the

Alawite dynasty founded in the 17th

century, a Sharif descended of the prophet.

The preservation of the Dynasty and the

staging of a figurehead Monarch was

used to legitimize the protectorate and to

camouflage violence and exploitation of

France's occupation of the country.

To maintain the semblance of sovereignty,

all legislation on a national level had

to be signed by Royal Dahir as a

Sultan's edicts were called.

The Sultan's signature on laws drafted

by the French protectorate authorities as

the Sine qua non, the dynasty's existence

or continued existence.

Statute of the Jews was no exception and

it needed to be first adapted in Morocco by

dahir, part of Morocco's official

legislation.

The first dahir of

thank you

see how do I navigate to the next slide?

Oh there we go, sorry.

I'm not friends with technology.

Technology is not friends with me.

So what you're looking at is the first

adapted dahir of 1940 which was an

adaptation in Morocco of the

Metropolitan statute of the Jews

um and this was certainly alarming

enough.

Um it stipulated the removal of Jews

from range of professions and civil

service jobs

but in part because of the lackluster

support of the legislation by The

Residency- The Residency is what we what

refers to the resident General and his

offices and administration.

The French authorities actually

procrastinated in carrying out the

anti-jewish measures.

The steps that were taken uh following

the 1940 dahir had an negligible

impact on most of the Jewish population

who are likely much more concerned about

all the hardships and shortages

affecting the entire population during wartime.

The more severe stipulations of the 1941

statute and legislation that followed

was much more alarming as it aimed at

further defining and expanding the web

of excluded professions and eventually

stripping the Jews of their wealth and

expropriating their property and businesses,

aryanizing the economy as it was as it

was called.

So as a protectorate authorities were

deliberating about how and when to adapt

the revised Statute in Morocco, the Jews

turned the sultan to protect them.

How the sultan responded to the

situation is told and retold until today.

And as The Story Goes Muhammad the fifth

defied the French authorities

repudiating the racist anti-jewish laws

by asserting that Jews were under his

protection and that he made no

distinction between his subjects.

Enduring significance of the story of

the good Muslim King

is in its adaptability to the changing

political context of Morocco's

transitions since World War II– The

anti-colonial Struggle, Independence, and

Morocco's positioning itself in the Middle East

Sahara and in the international arena.

The story and the contested debates

about its historicity also reflect the

politics of identity of Moroccan Jews in

the formation of a global diaspora. And

these are things which we will be

exploring at Great length in our book.

Today's talk is a kind of prequel to The

Story of the Savior King that was being

told– that was first being told when

Jewish leaders appealed the sultan as

Dhimmi subjects in 1941.

Well admittedly I was rather surprised

to find that Jews invoked their status

as dhimmi in supplication to the

monarch or in the subsequent discourse

surrounding the story. The language of

equality and citizenship is used. So the

Islamic concept of the dhimmi literally

implies a protective person under a kind

of contract of protection known as the

Dhimma which is guaranteed by the Muslim rulers

the people of the book

that nonetheless was predicated on their

acceptance of an inferior and separate

status from Muslims, not equality.

Citizenship as such.

But this arrangement one could say it

guaranteed a large measure of stability

and security for Jews in Morocco and

throughout the Islamic world for much of

history as the protection of the dhimmi

this responsibility of the ruler. Indeed

it was really a sign of the strength of

ruler's ability to protect his dhimmi

subjects.

Yet in contrast

the discrimination of Jews

uh in Morocco under Islamic rule as it

was perceived or represented by

Europeans was one of the pretexts for

foreign interventions. It has therefore

been presumed that the modern uh and

reformed monarchy under the supposed

tutelage of France would have repudiated the

discriminatory dhimmi laws

and would have instituted the idea of

citizenship based on the principle of

equality for all Moroccan subjects.

In invoking their status as dhimmi,

Jewish leaders were in effect saying

that France was no longer able to offer

the protection promised by the

protectorate authorities.

In a secret memorandum submitted by two

French high French officials to the

resident General, it was reported that

Jewish leaders quote, refrained from

questioning the legal ground of

anti-jewish laws because of their

unwavering Devotion to France knowing

that his majesty the sultan would be

violating Islamic law if he were to

ratify by dahir measures contrary to the

letter and spirit of the Quran.

Christensen Jews can in effect live in

Muslim territory and exercise all of the

non-canonical meaning non-islamic

occupations provided that they pay taxes

and respect the Muslim religion. In

effect the definition of the dhimmi.

The Vichy anti-jewish laws

fundamentally exposed the fiction that

Morocco was an independent sovereign

state by questioning the religious

Authority invested in the sultan as

Islamic ruler whose Duty was to protect

his dhimmi subjects. Loyalty or at least

acceptance by uh acceptance of France as

the protecting power

um was dependent on the extent to which

the Islamic ruler was seen as exercising

his moral religious authority.

The French officials were anxious about

the potential destabilization of the

system that might result from the

issuance the Royal dahir of the

anti-jewish laws.

In referring to the Islamic dhimma system

in all but name as fears were mounting

with the new wave of anti-jewish

legislation, the French were justifying

their actions by the belief that the

Jews understood their position as what I

call colonial dhimmis.

Following the collapse of the Vichy

regime Moroccan, Jewish leaders again

restored their allegiance to Republican

France while understanding that this was

a privilege that they could could enjoy

on condition that they remained Colonial

dhimmis, indigenous Moroccan subjects of

the Islamic Sovereign in the French

Empire, not citizens of France.

But in the Nationalist struggle after

World War II when Muhammad V emerged as

the unifying figure who led Morocco to

Independence, the story of how the sultan

had courageously protected the Jews

during the Vichy regime became part of

the Nationalist anti-colonial narrative

and it subsequently allowed Jews to

imagine themselves as part of the

Moroccan nation owing to the unwavering

protection of the pious Islamic King. As

part of the national narrative,

the story emblemized that Morocco had

since ancient times been a place of

Refuge for Jews and that the Alawite

Kings had always been solicitous to the

welfare of their Jewish subjects

and that this was reciprocated by the

timeless veneration of Jews for the

Moroccan monarchy. The symbiotic bond

between the Moroccan rulers and the Jews

continued seamlessly through the colonial and

post-independence period and follow the

the Moroccan Jews into into the Moroccan

Jewish diaspora from Ashdod to Paris

from Caracas to Buenos Aires from

Montreal to yes to Los Angeles. And

actually thank you Aomar for sharing this

Photograph but you see a picture of that uh

well-known Moroccan Jewish synagogue

Em Habanim with its set up and you see

the Kings, the three kings since

Independence. Mohammed the fifth, uh

the pious King in white uh on your I

guess on your right uh being being

celebrated for an occasion.

Um so the reverence of Moroccan Jews of the

Alawite Kings throughout the Moroccan

Jewish diaspora however contrary to

popular belief is a relatively recent phenomena.

It was produced by the fundamentally

transformative role played by colonial

rule in the making of both the colonial

monarchy and the making of the colonial

Dhimmi as indigenous subjects. And this

largely accounts for the strength of the

monarchy and the attachment of Moroccan

Jews throughout the diaspora to the

kingdom of Morocco to the state.

But if we turn the page backwards to the

second decade of the 20th century

Moroccan Jews would likely have imagined

a very different scenario and future.

After the establishment of the uh of the

protectorate, Moroccan Jewish leaders had

no Illusions about who held the reigns

of power in Morocco.

The chief Rabbi of Fez, Vidal Hasarfaty

adapted in 1918 the traditional prayer.

He who gives salvation to Kings [...]

reciting all the synagogues of Fez on

Saturdays as he put as it's put

here to exalt and magnify and lift up

higher the government of France. May its

mighty glory be exalted. Dismissive to

all the rabbis of all the congregations

of Fez he explains that the prayer

traditionally for a king is for the

government of France, a Republic. And the

Jewish people are now under its protection.

Nowhere in his message nor in the

formulaic prayer for government was the

reigning sultan, Moulai Youssef

mentioned even though the Jews were his subject.

There's a picture of Moulai Youssef.

I tried to find the picture where it is

where he wasn't scowling but I guess

that was his typical

um look or at least how he was captured

um.

So, need not be necessarily a

reflection of this personality.

Okay so what I would say is this was not so much

rejection of the sultan but a clear

recognition that the sultan no longer

will get power in the country and thus

was no longer able to protect the Jewish

community. So apart from some elite

Jewish artisans who continued to work in

the palace and other Jews who could reap

benefit from maintaining a special

connection to the monarchy which

remained after all an important

institution for colonial rule,

Sultan Youssef had become all but

irrelevant to the leaders of the Jewish

community and the Jewish masses for the

strong bond and the pre-colonial period

between the Alawite Dynasty and the Jewish community

mediated by Jewish leaders was based on

reciprocity and interdependency. Jews performed important

functions for the ruler who is duty

bound to protect his dhimmi subjects. The

more powerful the Monarch able to

provide stability and

um um in the country as a whole and to

protect his subjects the stronger the

relationship um between the monarchy and the Jews.

Somewhat of a you could say even of a

truism you could say this system. But the

system was undermined by the French

occupation and the disempowering of the

monarchy and the protectorate system.

Just for for those who don't know this

history but during the

protectorate of Morocco from 1912 to

1956 the Sultan of the Alawite dynasty was

under the control and the authority of

the French resident General and the

administration, the country is divided

into three zones– a French

and Spanish protectorate established in

1912 in an international zone of Tangier

that formally came into being in 1923.

Um the preservation of the uh Alawite

dynasty was a cornerstone of uh Colonial

policy in Morocco devised by the first

resident General Hubert Lyautey, the key

architect of the Moroccan protectorate

system. So there you can see a picture

then already Lyautey I guess visiting

visiting Morocco

with the newer resident General and then

you see the young Sultan uh Mohammed V

and his uh grand vizier Muhammad El Mokri

Lived through the pre-colonial

independence period uh

that that I think he passed away in 1957

at the ripe

old age of not sure. If anyone knows,

exactly over a hundred for sure.

Um so this system right the protectorate

system was based on the theory as I said

that Morocco was a sovereign country that

needed the um tutelage of France protectrice,

the protecting power that would restore

stability and help modernize the country,

French created a kind of neo-[...] with

sharifian offices representing the

various sections of the government

bureaucracy. It served as a kind of

facade of sovereignty so they had

uh right uh various offices and but then

in control, truly where it was the

residency in the French civilian and

military offices.

By maintaining the sultan with governing

institutions under the guise of indirect

rule, the French protectorates sought

discreetly to rule the country while

gaining the acceptance of the Moroccan

population. It could also help legitimize

French Supremacy over all of Morocco

including the Spanish protectorate

as well.

Um for all Moroccans were considered

part of this sovereign country under the

reigning Alleyway monarch.

Um the the Moroccan Sultan was also represented as a symbol

for Islam and was very important for

France's larger French

imperial Islamic policy. And here

famously uh they built a uh a mosque

still there today because the

Grand Mosque of Paris was inaugurated in

1926. You see the uh Sultan

um there as well and again

the visit of um

of the uh um of the sultan. So still the young

Mohammed Ben Youssef uh and you have the

different sort of officials of uh uh

protocol. um and the rector of the mosque there

then Benghabrit

Uh as well so so it's a kind of staging

you could say uh and and really uh it

kind of exploitation of the symbol of

this this holy figure, this uh

figurehead Monarch as a way to really

gain uh uh authority in a sense or over

over the larger world,

larger Islamic world and French

particular role uh in

um representing itself as as uh as a

sort of protector and respecter of Islam.

The Jews were very much a part of the

system also of this colonial system. And

many of the educated elite uh who had

benefit especially those who had

benefited from the expanding network of

the Alliance Universelle and other

Jewish leaders and saw their interests

tied to France hoped to see French

citizenship granted to the Jews which

was a case in Algeria that the Cremieux

decree of 1870. But the French had no

intention of expanding uh the privilege

of citizenship to Moroccan Jews as a

whole and to repeat what had become uh

seen as a grave error by uh in

Algeria and in much of the colonialist

thinking. You could say uh the Cremieux

decree had been such a you know had been

a mistake. It had disrupted the hierarchy

and it provoked discord and resentment

towards colonial rule by the Muslim

majority population. And so instead when

they French moved into Tunisia and then

in Morocco and established the

protectorate, the idea of granting Jewish

citizenship en masse was out of the

question for the French Administration

and so Morocco, Moroccan Jews were to

be were to be defined as indigenous

subjects of the sultan. So it is in this

logic that the French had no reason to

abrogate dhimmi status even if some of the

discriminatory stipulations were

abandoned. Abolishing the dhimma by

decree would not only question the rap

the rationale of refusing French

citizenship to the Jews but it would

disrupt the hierarchy and challenge the

traditional religious prerogatives of

the Sultan of exercise of the Muslim

religion, the very symbol of Moroccan

sovereignty that legitimized the

protectorate.

Making Jews indigenous dhimmi subjects

thus had great symbolic value for the

colonial monarchy a symbol of the Muslim

rulers enduring authority over his

Jewish subjects. In turn, in real terms of

disempowered uh sultanate little

practical or institutional control over

his Jewish subjects. He exercised little

real authority in the reformed judicial

system. There was no longer any effective

mechanism for which Jews could appeal to

the sultan to intercede on their behalf

with claims of injustice as they had

been able to do in the past.

Neither was there an effective way for

appealing to the French authorities. The

Affairs of the Jewish Community were

regulated by dahirs

that implemented reforms of the Jewish

Community but came at the initiative of

the of the residency not the sultan. For

the Jews being dhimmi subjects of a

disempowered sultan meant Jews

themselves were disempowered.

As subjects of the sultan Jews were

considered to be Moroccan citizens but

with no clear idea what that meant when

the protectorate began uh in Morocco

there was no legal concept of

citizenship. French jurists came to

determine uh that the legal precedent

for citizenship was the notion of

Perpetual Allegiance, which referred to a

clause um in the Madrid convention uh or

conference or the Treaty of the

conference which was an international

meeting that sought to bring together

the powers to control the abusive system

of protection or capitulations as it was

known in the Ottoman Empire. In this

system native Moroccan Protege of foreign powers might

be exempt from local laws and taxes and

would come under the jurisdiction of the

protecting power. And so a

disproportionate number of these protege

were Jews who enjoyed extra territorial

rights and increasingly as well they

were able to obtain uh foreign

nationality uh right and and could then

return to Morocco

um as foreign nationals rather than as

dhimmi subjects.

So there's a clause here that you're

looking at of the convention that

stipulated that after a period of time

Moroccan subjects naturalized abroad and

returning to Morocco would have to abide

by Moroccan law.

So that's the territorial rights enjoyed

by Moroccan Jews was a constant source

of friction between Morocco and the

foreign powers in the 19th century and

on a symbolic level this was

significant since Jews, as dhimmis were

already proteges a sense of Islamic

ruler. And when confided with foreign

protection the hierarchical system was

challenged.

Already Jews were positioned as

intermediaries with Europe and Moroccan

Jewish Elites navigated between the

advantageous and privileged ties with

the sultan and the new opportunities

that the connections to foreigners

facilitated. For the European powers and

European Merchants Jews were used to

penetrate and dominate Morocco

politically and economically for the

sultan [...]

and the ulama, this amounted to a

grave threat to Moroccan sovereignty. To

counterbalance this challenge, the

Sultans ,especially under Moulay Hassan

the first um whose Reign was 1873-1894.

um we sought to consolidate the Royal

alliance with the Jews and incentivized

Jews not the sidestep Sultan's authority.

By uh the increasing number of personal

um dahirs or writs of protection that

Moulay Hassan the first conferred to

influential Jews, some of whom were also

proteges of foreign power, was part of a

strategy to demonstrate his solicitude

while at the same time consolidate his

hold on the Jewish community and in

this manner, the question of dhimmi status

of the Jews became entangled in the very

definition of sovereignty which

anticipated I would argue the creation

of the colonial monarchy.

For the Moroccan rulers,

the dhimma contract was integral to the

Islamic legal and moral code that

provided stability as they saw it. And

protection of non-muslims within the

Islamic State insured by the ruler as

arbiter of justice.

For the foreign powers the inequities of

Islamic law and the discrimination

against the Jews as it was perceived and

represented became a justification for

intervention and a pretext for expanding

the system of protection.

European Jews and their organizations

exercising their own new bound rights as

citizens and post emancipation Europe

sought to ameliorate the conditions of

their co-religionists in the Middle East

and North Africa through the language of

emancipation.

Well the goals of European Jews and

European governments differed. They did

join forces in highlighting the

oppression of the Jews reporting on

incidents of violence and arbitrary

actions taken by Muslim authorities as a

justification intervention. An increasing

number of Jews including in the interior

of the country turned simultaneously to

Jewish organizations and to the sultan

to request intervention on their behalf.

The persecution of the Jews of Morocco

as it was perceived and represented

had become internationalized and a

justification for more intervention of

the foreign powers. These pressures from

the Moroccan government were in

conjunction with efforts by the European

powers with the support and sometimes

the initiative European Jews across the

Middle East and North Africa to reform

the legal system and transform the

status of religious minorities. The

Ottoman Empire, a few of the large

Christian minorities whose loyalties

were questioned and who were often tied

to the interests of European states, the

incentive to eliminate the dhimmi status

was much greater than in Morocco not

only as a result of foreign pressures

but by reformers in the Ottoman Empire

were interested in strengthening the

Empire from within. And so by the mid

19th century, dhimmi status was

eliminated by decree in the Ottoman

Empire, by the semi-autonomous dynasty of the khedives

in Egypt, by the Ḥusaynid dynasty of

Tunisia, a country nominally part of the

Ottoman Empire. And under foreign

pressure to implement the reforms the

so-called Tanzimat reforms of the Ottoman Empire.

European Jews were deeply involved in

these efforts and in the late uh by the

late 19th century, Morocco seemed like an

outlier in maintaining the old system.

Since the Damascus affair of 1840, the

leader of the British Jewish community

sir Moses Montefiore

um was at the forefront of the ongoing

International campaign that sought to

defend Jews from persecution in foreign

lands. His active involvement in the

interest and Welfare of co-religionists

in the Muslim World led this

octogenarian Jewish leader to Morocco in

the winter of 1863 to 1864 following an

incident involving the execution of a

Jewish boy in the Atlantic coastal town

of [...], a story that's well well known

maybe to many of you and told and retold.

He meets with the sultan in Marrakesh

Mohammed IV and obtains a dahir which you see

here, which ordered Muslim governing

authorities to treat the Jews

with justice in accordance with the Sharia.

The sultan wish to placate Montefiore

and the foreign powers who backed him up

by issuing uh you know by the issuing of

the of of the dahir and deploying to a

certain extent the liberal language of

equality familiar to Europeans but at

the same time, to have affirmed the

existing legal system based on upholding

the uh the dhimma. That's the best way to

ensure Justice. From the point of view of

contemporary Moroccan intellectuals at

the time the dahir had very negative

repercussions and it could be said that

the dahir did result in heightening

tensions between Jews and the

authorities in Morocco and to increase

foreign intervention. The Moroccan

monarchy also realized the extent to

which the Jewish question had become a key

means by which foreign powers encroached

on Moroccan sovereignty. While the Montefiore mission and

dahir he secured from the sultan

became part of the larger historical

Narrative of Jewish emancipation and

empowerment.

Less known is the extent to which the

dahir was used to expand monarchical

power in the words of the dahir into all

of our provinces. [...]

The Montefiore dahir enabled the

sultan to articulate a policy on the

Jewish question based on religious

precepts and the idea that the sultan

had authority over all the Jews in

his realm. It's kind of an innovation in

that sense right, almost like a

proto-national statement of of Royal

authority over all the all the Jews in

in the realm.

um the dahir it should be noted was

not only issue therefore for foreign

consumption but also as a means to

consolidate the [...] the central

government's control of the territories.

And so the dahir was renewed by

Mohammed the fourth successor Moulay Hassan

who faced with the growing

foreign encroachments in centrifugal

forces in Morocco saw it into reign in

powerful Regional Chiefs uh through

military campaigns to confront uh to

collect taxes which included collecting

the jizya, the tax from the Jews. Uh this

involved also exercising control of his

Jewish subjects even in the far-flung

peripheries of the country.

The Montefiore dahir was constantly

invoked by British and then French

Jewish organizations backed by foreign

powers to demand that action be taken uh

when the allegations of maltreatment of

Jews by powerful dynastic Chiefs on the

peripheries were reported when the this

where the sultan exercised little control.

So asserting authority over his Jewish

subjects throughout the country was not

only a way for Hassan the first to

counteract the exploitation uh of the

Jewish question by foreign powers for

imperialist aims but also part and

parcel of a centralizing

proto-nationalist efforts of Hassan the

first strengthening uh the position of

the sultan as protector of the Jews of

the entire country as a reciprocal

relationship based on mutual interests

of the Islamic rule and his Jewish

subjects. So herein really lies the

foundations of the colonial dhimmi during

the period of the protectorate, the

Montefiore dahir as it came to be

known and its renewal uh was still being

invoked by the Jewish Community as the

guarantee that Jews were protected

subjects to the sultan. For it could be

understood as simultaneously based on

the one hand on Islamic precepts upheld

by the Islamic Sovereign and on the

other hand, the liberal principles of

equality supervised by the colonial

powers that served the French

Administration and Authority well as a

deflection from France being obligated

to extend rights to the Jews. It was the

Islamic ruler uh and and the [...]

officials were responsible for the

welfare of Moroccan Jews as indigenous

subjects the sultan under the auspices

of the colonial authorities. And for this

reason the Montefiore dahir remained one

of the very few pre-colonial dahirs of

any sort cited in the protectorate

um for it established the principle that

the sultan was the upholder of justice

for his subject throughout the kingdom

and Jews thus in this way really became

essential elements in defining the

nation and in the creation of a modern

monarchy in the colonial period. At least

I would make that argument.

None of this would have been evident

however in 1918 when Rabbi Vidal

Hasarfaty exhorted Moroccan Jewry to

recite the traditional prayer to the

French, a rational decision in the wake

of the French conquest of Morocco still

underway and with the

disempowerment of the monarchy. Yet as

colonial dhimmis, Jews lost many of the

powers they had enjoyed in the older

hierarchical system.

So the the French sought to replace the

authority of religious institutions of

which the sultan traditionally upheld

such as reducing the powers of the

Sharia courts uh or put it and then

putting them under their control.

The jurisdiction of the Sharia courts

were reduced basically to matters of

personal status. Well the power of the [...]

courts or authorities were

expanded but then under the surveillance

and controls of the civilian and Military

controllers administrators. And as

Colonial dhimmis, Jews were also greatly at

disadvantage in the system. Just like the

Sharia courts Powers were reduced. So

were the rabbinical courts and reduced

at least in theory only to religious

um cult and personal status matters. And

again also under the surveillance of the

French authorities, they also reduce or

put under their controlled local

community councils right who also had

reduced authority. A new position the

Inspector General of Jewish institutions

was created in 1919, an office of the

Department of Sharifian Affairs. The

pro French Jewish notable Yahya Zagury

was appointed to this post and served

for many years as principal advisor for

the French to control Jewish Affairs.

Zagury in a sense in a way was the

symbolic parallel of the Court Jew of

pre-colonial times serving instead as

intermediary between the French

government and the Jewish community.

So the system obviously greatly limited

the authority of the autonomous immunity

the Jews had enjoyed as dhimmi subjects to

the sultan

um you know as as we've talked about and

the whole the whole [...] court system

that was created and run by Muslim who

ruled on many legal matters on now took

charge of matters formally under the

jurisdiction of the rabbinical courts. So

denied French civil status, Jews could

not take full advantage of the French

courts unless they were French citizens.

It's therefore no surprise the Jewish

leaders saw little to gain and remaining

indigenous subjects of the sultan and

most continued to hope and advocate for

change of status that would allow them

to obtain political rights reserved to

French citizens.

So when Moulai Youssef died in 1927

there was hardly an echo in the Jewish

Community though perhaps there was some

pleading concern based on collective

memory of the Jewish community that

inter regnums could create habit for the

Jews. The quick selection of Mohammed bin

Yusef and his coronation alleviated any

fears the community had. It was of course

expected by the French authorities the

Jewish leaders would pay their respects

for the deceased Sultan and participate

in the ceremonial inauguration of

Muhammad V. Jewish notables in Fez came

to present their condolences to the

palace and [...]

together for the procession of wisdom

notables and ulamma leaders

representatives of the Jewish Community

were present of the elaborate coronation

ceremonies in Rabat.

For the Jewish leaders and subjects, the

Sultan celebrating the inauguration of

the reign of Mohammed bin Yusef in

1927 was a recognition that the colonial

monarchy was an extension of French

power in Morocco. Yet in the collective

imagination of rock and jury the

ascension of Mohammed V in 1927 was

greeted with an outpouring of joy by

Jews throughout the kingdom, a

celebration of the glorious reign of the

king whose love and concern for the Jews

never wavered.

The French reliance on the monarchy as a

symbol of Moroccan sovereignty to

legitimized Colonial domination

eventually came back to haunt them. The

colonial monarchy itself under Muhammad

V was able to use the symbolic Capital

invested in his office to

turn the tables and build national

political power that eventually rid

Morocco of colonial rule. This process

began in the 1930s, so not initially at

the instigation of the young and still

politically inexperienced Sultan. It was

rather the incipient nationalist

movement that adopted for itself the

colonial monarchy as the popular symbol

of national unity in order to press

their demands to the French authorities

for greater autonomy and power for all

Moroccan subjects of the sultan, Muslims

and Jews. The watershed moment which is

well known to everyone a student of Moroccan

history uh for the Nationalist

movement came in 1930 following the

promulgation of a law popularly known as

the Berber decree.

The law was the culmination of a Berber

uh policy that sought to separate the

Arabs from the jurisdiction of the

Berber or as as we as the preferred term

today is the Amazigh population which

represented at least half of the

population of the country. In particular

it mandated that the French Napoleonic

Code would replace the Sharia for

criminal matters and for the emerging

nationalist movement, this measure

blatantly exposed the French aim to sow

deeper divisions in the country pursuing

a policy that was an affront to all

Muslims. It also revealed the French

facade of respecting Islam, articulated

through the performance of the sultan,

commander of the faithful and descendant

of the prophet.

Enlisting the sultan is the symbol to

the Nationalist cause, this was a

tremendous tremendous value to the

nationalists. The sultan thus came to be

identified with the the nation

and thus his adoption is a national symbol uh in

the struggle for autonomy, ultimately for

Independence. There's certainly more than a small measure of

irony that it was the French themselves

that enabled the nationalists to rally

their movement around the figure of the

sultan by their by the fact that the

French themselves are promoting the

Prestige of the monarchy.

In contrast to the nationalists the

French of course used the symbolism of

the sultan to placate the pop uh the the

population to conceal their true

intentions of domination and with the

larger interest in their domination of

the larger French Empire with its

millions of Muslims that colonized

Muslims in different parts of the world.

But so the result of this in a sense was

a kind of discursive battle between the

residency and the nationalists over the

symbols of the monarchy. The result of

the struggle over who owned the monarchy

was that both sides for contrary

purposes elevated the prestige of the

sultan among the Moroccan population.

So in this battle over the monarchy

symbolism, Jews represented for both

sides important symbolic components of

the indigenous Moroccan population both

the nationalists and the protectorate

authorities were opposed to the Jews'

upward mobility and their quest to

acquire French citizenship. Both were

dependent on the same definition of Moroccan

nationality based on the

principle of perpetual allegiance to the

sultan. However the French goal

encountering Jewish claims for French

naturalization is citizenship always

justified by the principle of perpetual

allegiance was to deny all Moroccans all

Moroccans political rights and to

further consolidate colonial rule.

The nationalists opposed Jews seeking

foreign nationality for the opposite reason.

Strengthening Moroccan sovereignty and

Independence through the symbol of the

sultan as as National unifier of all his

subjects, Muslims and Jews, as well.

So seizing on the momentum

produced by a growing and large protest

movement that began in 1930,

the nationalists rallied around the

sultan as the unifying symbol of the

nation to push for reforms and this was

represented in the national press that

was launched in 1933. L'Action du peuple

published in Fez succeeded by La Volonté des pauvres.

The call for an official holiday on November

18th to Mark the Ascension of Muhammad V

was launched in October of 1933. You can

see this in the publication of L'Action du Peuple

with the picture of the

sultan. So it was nationalist paper later

shut down by the authorities.

So though the protectorate authorities were

alarmed by the militancy of the newly

founded nationalist party. They could

hardly ignore the call to celebrate the

sultan. It was the symbol again there's a

symbol that they used of Moroccan

sovereignty in the bedrock of

legitimizing the protectorate. Shortly

thereafter the first Throne day

um was authorized and promoted by the

protectorate authorities.

um and and the that was the first Throne

Day actually was authorized by The

Authority but then it was made official

um the following year uh it was uh as as

a national as a kind of national holiday.

But for the nationalists it became a

site for rallying anti-colonial protests

Well the French could only attempt to

harness it for their own purposes by

attempting to control the events that

took place on the annual occasion when

it was held. The contest between the

nationalists and The Residency and

appropriating the symbol of the sultan

uh for the contrary this is continued

throughout the 1930s and the national

anti-colonial protests accelerated as

did efforts by the French authorities

to suppress the movement. Yet the very

contest of its symbolism of the monarchy

elevated the statue of this of the

sultan among the population on the

national scale and so the throne day [...]

um

yeah

uh itself became an elaborate annual

celebration with the day off work, music

was played in the souks, which were

decorated with sharifian and French

flags and banners. And carpets were

spread out into the streets. In the main

cities there were uh where there were

royal residences the French civil and

military authorities accompanied by the

pashas and [...] officials marched in

procession through the different

quarters of the Town including the mellahs

to officially participate in the

festivities and delegations of officials

and notables paid their respects to

members of the royal family with some

charitable societies distributing goods

clothing and money to the poor.

It was in the interests of both the

nationalists and the residency, that

Moroccan Jews would take notice of the

elevated status of Mohammed bin Yusef

Although for different reasons. The

Arabic language and pro-nationalist

monthly magazine Majallat al-Maghrib

translated an article that appeared in

the French language press,

a newspaper The French Press

representing the interests of the

European settler community. Uh and that

wrote um sorry and and I translate here,

The president of the Jewish community of

Rabat on the occasion of Throne day sent

instructions to the community to recite

the prayer of "Kings"– right the previously

mentioned prayer– an homage to his

majesty the sultan.

It is known that His Highness is much

beloved by all Moroccan Jews who take

every opportunity to show their strong

attachment to him the aforementioned prayer was recited in

every synagogue in great celebration at

the moment that the Scrolls of the

Mosaic law were taken from the ark and

the faithful stood reverently and chanted

amen from the depths of their heart.

The article then includes a translation

of the prayer itself whether this marked

a turning point in which henceforth the

Jews in Morocco in a national scale

began again to recite the traditional

blessing for the government on [...]

right

And the name of the sultan is unknown.

However the fact that the article uh

appeared in this French press in the [...]

Marocaine with a translation of the

prayer. Uh actually I never was able to

find the original French article but I'm

assuming it's uh it's true.

um

but it demonstrated that the Jewish

leadership in Rabat was interested in

encouraging Jewish communities

throughout Morocco to participate in

showing their allegiance to the sultan

and it was important to demonstrate this

to the French authorities if only

um if only to prove their continued

loyalty to France by accepting their

status as indigenous Jews confided on

them by the French. Otherwise why run the

article which could only have been

written with the collaboration of Jewish

informants.

Significantly as well, the article also

appeared in the Arabic language press

that was sympathetic to the goals of the

nationalists whose initiative was the

reason that you know that the Throne Day

was inaugurated in the first place.

For the nationalists demonstrating the

Jews were loyal subjects to the sultan

was also very important to them if only

as a counter the hegemonic control of

the colonial monarchy by the by the

French.

What can be certain is that the French

controlled performance of the ceremonies

of Throne day and the delegations of

Jewish notables including lay and

religious leaders were annually a part

of the celebrations and participation

and participated in some of the official

processions which included meandering

through the mellahs attending receptions

with Muslim and French civil and

Military authorities of the Sultan's

palaces.

The formal participation of Jews in the

uh in this in the um ceremonial

ceremonial aspects of Throne day

indicated that in the vertical ties that

Jewish leaders sought to consolidate the

highest authorities in the land the

figurehead Sultan had become all the

more important in the colonial system.

So for the the mass of uh of Jews,

stop the oh

congratulations me.

Um anyway so for the mass of Jews, there was very

little evidence about how the attitude

towards the monarchy may have shifted in

the 1930s, still still looking.

But there is some indication at least to

think that the elevation of the Sultan's

prestige on a national scale, his image

of of the infallible and pious figure

may have reignited the smoldering

memories of the benevolent and

protective Monarch who could bring

Improvement to the lives of the many [...]

This historical memory was sustained by

the French who created a symbolic

monarchy a sultan who was above politics,

his only concern being the welfare of

his subjects both Muslims and Jews.

And if we think about against the dismal

landscape of the 1930s with economic

depression growing incidents of violence

and altercations between Muslims and

Jews, the rise of the Third Reich

political Strife in Palestine that was

galvanizing the Arab world including

Moroccan nationalists, the increasing

anti-Semitism of European settlers

who now their number actually surpassed

the total Jewish population of the

country and the hostility towards the

Jews of at least some in the French

Administration, the symbol of the

irreproachable benevolent Sultan

promoted by both the French and the

nationalists helped the Jews to imagine

their place in the emerging nation.

As I think um the stage was set for the story to

unfold of Muhammad V assuring the

protection of his Jewish subjects when a

weakened France abdicated their

responsibility that defined the

protectorate and

at least metaphorically speaking broke

the colonial dhimma contract. In the

vacuum, the Jews turned to the sultan and

the prestige the monarchy to invoke

their status as dhimmis protected by

the good Muslim King Mohammed V. Thank you.