In Search of Jewish Farmers: Jews, Agriculture, and the Land in Rural Morocco · 157illegal and ordered the destruction of a newly constructed synagogue in Iligh
in the Sous region of Morocco, where a new Jewish community had been estab-
lished. Oral tradition by the sharifian family of Iligh maintained that the same
jurist issued a fatwa, which argued that since the Jews of Iligh were “people of
the book” who had submitted to Muslim authority and who pay their capi-
tation tax (jizya), they had the right and the means to practice their religion,
hence legitimizing the synagogue. (In fact, the synagogue was not destroyed,
and the Jews obtained land for a cemetery.) There is no written record for the
latter fatwa, but the two counter explanations illustrate the way in which new
Jewish settlements came into being. Paul Pascon and Daniel Schroeter, “Le ci-
metière juif d’Iligh, 1751–1955: Étude des epitaphs comme documents d’histoire
demographique,” in La Maison d’Iligh et l’histoire sociale du Tazerwalt, ed. Paul
Pascon et al. (Rabat: Société Marocaine des Éditeurs Réunis, 1984), 121–22.
- For a general discussion of the control of Jewish properties in the Sous, see
Abdellah Larhmaid, “Jewish Identity and Landownership in the Sous Region
of Morocco,” in Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa, ed. Emily Benichou
Gottreich and Daniel J. Schroeter (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011),
59-72. - Ibid.
- John Davidson, Notes Taken during Travels in Africa (London, 1839), 60–61.
- Hugh Edward Millington Stutfield, El Maghreb: 1200 Miles’ Ride through
Morocco (London: Sampson Low, 1886), 70. - Pierre Flamand, Diaspora en terre d’Islam: Les communautés israélites du sud
marocain (Casablanca: Imprimeries réunies, 1959?), 84–95; Yoram Bilu and An-
dré Levy, “Nostalgia and Ambivalence: The Reconstruction of Jewish-Muslim
Relations in Oulad Mansour,” in Sephardic and Middle Eastern Jewries, ed. Harvey
E. Goldberg (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 290. - Nahum Slouschz, Travels in North Africa (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication
Society of America, 1927), 450–51. - Archives of Ittihad-Maroc, Casablanca (hereafter Ittihad), “Oulad Man-
sour,” 1951, Elias Harrus; Flamand, Diaspora, 84–85. - Slouschz, Travels, 459.
- Larhmaid, “Jewish Identity”; Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 1:116, 124.
- D. Jacques-Meunié, “Hiérarchie sociale au Maroc présaharien,” Hespéris
45 (1958): 259. - Ittihad, “Les Juifs dans les territoires du Sud: Ktawa et Mhamid,” Lieu-
tenant Vizioz, 20 February 1951; Dj. Jacques-Meunié, “Les oasis des Lektaoua et
des Mehamid,” Hespéris 34 (1947): 414. - Ittihad, “La terre et les Juifs à Sidi Rahhal et sa region (pays arabe)” [Al-
fred Goldenberg, 1949?]. - Ali Amahan, Mutations sociales dans le Haut Atlas (Paris: Maison des Sci-
ences de l’Homme, 1998), 73. - Ittihad, Docteur G. Baüp, Hôpital de Bou-Izakarn, “Enquête medo-social
au mellah d’Ifrane de l’Anti-Atlas,” 18–31 August 1954.