The Martyrdom of Sol Hachuel: Ridda in Morocco in 1834 r 121completely different worlds, different not only religiously and socially but
also culturally.
Indeed, the Jewish writings about Sol Hachuel in the texts and manu-
scripts that we have quoted herein could be principally classified as apolo-
getic literature, and consequently these poems should not be relied upon
as historical documents faithfully reflecting the total system of relation-
ships between the two communities. Therefore, literary criticism as cul-
tural hermeneutics could assume that these same manuscripts and texts
try to construct a narrative and a tradition about Sol Hachuel, and for
that purpose, it was preferable to the authors to bring out matters such as
incomprehension and barriers between the two communities rather than
to deliver a balanced picture of this issue (Sol’s case) in order to represent
the broader relationships between the Muslims and Jews in Morocco in
the first half of the nineteenth century.
Notes
- Regarding the surname, we have adopted the form used by Eugenio Maria Romero
in his play El Martirio de la Joven Hachuel (Gibraltar: Imprenta Militar, 1837), three years
after Sol’s execution. - The Jewish community of Fez has retained its official documentation of Sol Ha-
chuel’s execution, found in Yahas Fez, a collection of sources on the history of the Jews
of Fez. In 1879 the leader of the Jewish religious court, Avner Israel Ha-Tzarfati, sent the
material to Isidore Loeb, one of the heads of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. (I would
point out that two poems about Sol were published earlier in 1844 in Qol Ya ̔aqov by
Ya ̔aqov Berdugo in London.) The documents may be found in David Ovadiah’s book
Fez we-Khahameha (Fez and Its Sages), 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Beit Oved, 1979). Sol is re-
ferred to in 1:157. - This work is part of a wider research project on Moroccan Jewry in the first half of
the nineteenth century, which has occupied me for more than six years. This discussion
about the ridda issue forms part of a chapter dealing with the relations between Jews
and Muslims during the period. I have published an article in Hebrew on Sol Hachuel,
“Le-Itzuv Demuta shel Giborat Tarbut lefi Teqstim” (The formation of a popular hero-
ine reflected in texts), which appeared in an anthology, Isha be-Mizrah, Isha mi-Mizrah
(Woman of the Orient, Woman from the Orient), ed. Tova Cohen and Shaul Regev
(Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2005), 35–54 (see especially the bibliography,
53–54). - The chronicle was translated separately by Eugène Fumey, orientalist and diplomat
in the French diplomatic service, who served in Tangier between 1897 and 1903 (the year
of his death) and it was published in parts 9 and 10 of Archives marocaines (Paris: Ed.
Leroux, 1906, 1907).