Protection & inequality · Morocco · Twelfth–nineteenth centuries
Religious hierarchy, coercive rulers and segregated quarters shaped early anti-Jewish exclusion in Morocco.
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Twelfth–nineteenth centuries
Protection & inequality · A neighbour can be protected and still be subordinate
Religious hierarchy, coercive rulers and segregated quarters shaped early anti-Jewish exclusion in Morocco.
The terms of protection
Jewish communities could worship and maintain communal institutions under the dhimmi framework. In return, they paid a special tax and occupied a subordinate legal status. This helped sustain long Jewish residence, but made equality unavailable. Protection and discrimination were part of the same arrangement; enforcement changed across rulers and places.
When protection gives way to coercion
Under the Almohads in the twelfth century, Jews faced pressure to convert or flee. Maimonides wrote about forced conversion while living in Fez, before leaving again in 1165. His response addressed an actual survival dilemma. Persecution arose from a ruler’s drive for religious conformity, rather than from an inevitable conflict between neighbours.
The mellah’s boundary
Fez and later Marrakesh established separate Jewish quarters known as mellahs. In Marrakesh, Jews were transferred to a walled district in the sixteenth century. Such quarters could provide communal life and a measure of security while enforcing separation. The gate expressed the unequal place Jews were assigned within the city.