The Martyrdom of Sol Hachuel: Ridda in Morocco in 1834 r 113Note also the following reference to the witnesses in Bisam Allah qaomi:
On the day that they prepared the contract and came to their master
and gave witness...
we wait for them to be destroyed for their perjury
יום עמלו כאגטהום וזאוו לסידהום וסהדו סהודהום...
עלא סהאדת זור נראהום בלבדיקא
]ביום שעשו השטר ובאו לאדונם והעידו עדיהם
על עדות השקר נראה אותם בכליון[These quotations from Jewish contemporaries show that the conduct
of the trial followed the legal precepts of interrogation of the witnesses
and signed statements witnessed by the court scribe. The authors’ claims
attack the witnesses. They cite perjury and forged documents in what may
be called a “plot.” They view Sol as a pious Jewess who had never con-
verted to Islam.
The piyyutim refer to signed affidavits. In the q#sā Bisam Allah qaomi,
the anonymous poet mentions a kagt (document), which would be inter-
preted by the Jews as a signed affidavit or even a marriage contract.
Rey writes in his book that Sol admitted that she pronounced the
Shahāda, i.e., declared her allegiance to Islam in a moment of weakness
but immediately repudiated her words. She used these words in an at-
tempt to prevail upon those who came to arrest her not to take her away
with them. These men claimed that if she had something to repudiate, it
was a sure sign that at some stage she had sworn allegiance to Islam and,
as such, they had sufficient grounds to arrest her. When she resisted ar-
rest, they tied her hands behind her back with a silk handkerchief and
threatened that if she did not go willingly, they would take her by force.^13
In a report received by the painter Alfred Dehodencq in the early 1850s,
Sol fell in love with a Muslim and married him, but when her husband
suddenly passed away, she decided to return to her faith and community.^14
And thus the two events—the declaration of faith and the marriage—
are included in the non-Hebrew traditions about Sol. However, these
should be discussed as hypotheses and not as indubitable truth, given that
to date no one has yet produced any documents confirming the theory.
Therefore, in Sol’s case we must relate to these hypotheses as possible ac-
cusations in the ridda trial.