The Martyrdom of Sol Hachuel: Ridda in Morocco in 1834 r 119Shi ̔a, or Hamami law. Yedidiah Monsoniego claimed that Sol was tor-
tured for two months. Was this during the tuba period, which suggests
it lasted two months? If this were indeed the case, it would have been
exceptional and would also have represented a gesture of goodwill and an
attitude of human kindness and consideration for the girl by the Muslim
court. Rabbi Monsoniego, who composed his piyyut to mark the end of
the thirty-day mourning period, did not see things this way.^28
In some cases, the death sentence was considered insufficient, and the
body was burned or thrown into a river. This decision was left to the qa-
dis, who were always uncertain about how to dispose of the remains of
heretics. To bury them in a Muslim cemetery is forbidden, nor should
their bodies, unlike other Muslim departed, be treated with the respect
required by Islamic teachings. For example, they did not say the Shahāda
prayer over them while facing in the direction of Mecca. In the q#sā Bisam
Allah qaumi, one of the Muslim women says:
Look at those features,
they do not merit burningראה דאק לגנזור
מא יסתאהלסי חריקא
]הנה הפנים היפות ההן
לא תיאות להן השריפה[These words confirm the popular custom that the body of one condemned
to death for apostasy (ridda) was incinerated, for which there certainly
was historical precedent.^29 When the community found a Muslim guilty
of betrayal, his body was burned and subsequently mutilated.^30 In Sol’s
case, we find no evidence that her body was mutilated by the crowd pres-
ent at the execution. Sol was sentenced as a Muslim, and the authorities
responsible for disposing of her body could decide whether to bury it,
burn it, or throw it into the river. If the body was buried in a Jewish cem-
etery, this would have been the result of an agreement between the Mus-
lim authorities and the Jewish community and therefore a demonstration
of goodwill.
According to Jewish sources, the crowd did not mutilate the body,
proving that the Muslim judicial authorities in Fez remained in control of
the execution. These authorities apparently agreed to give her body to the
Jewish community, even though Sol was treated as an apostate Muslim