Mellah
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A mellah (Arabic ملاح) is a walled Jewish quarter of a city in Morocco, an analogue of the European ghetto.
In cities, a mellah was surrounded by a wall with a fortified gateway. Usually, the Jewish quarter was situated near the citadel, i.e. the residence of the king or governor, in order to protect its inhabitants from the violence of the Muslim populace. In contrast, rural mellahs were separate villages inhabited solely by the Jews.
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[edit] History
[edit] 15th century
The first official mellah was established in the city of Fes in 1438. In the first half of the 14th century, the Marinids founded, alongside Fez, the town of Hims, which was initially allocated to the archers and the Christian militia. Then, in 1438 the Jews were driven from the old part of Fez to Hims, which had been built on a site known as al-Mallah, "the saline area". Ultimately, the term came to designate Jewish quarters in other Moroccan cities. Initially, there was nothing derogatory about this term: some documents employ the expression "mellah of the Muslims", and the Jewish quarter contained large and beautiful dwellings which were favored residences for "the agents and ambassadors of foreign princes". Later on, however, popular etymology explained the word mellah as a "salted, cursed ground" or a place where the Jews "salted the heads of decapitated rebels”, highlighting the outcast connotations attached to this word.
The mellah of Fez was not always successful in protecting its dwellers. On May 14, 1465, its inhabitants were nearly all killed by the rebels who overthrew the Merinid dynasty. That attack sparked a wave of violence against the Jews all over Morocco. The immediate cause of the anti-Jewish violence was the appointment of a Jew to the post of vizier.
[edit] 16th-18th centuries
For a long time, the mellah of Fez remained the only one, and only in the second half of the 16th century (around 1557) the term mellah appears in Marrakesh, with the settlement there of Jewish and Judaised populations from the Atlas and from the city of Aghmat (today's Taroudant), which had an ancient Jewish community. A Frenchman, who was held captive in Morocco from 1670 to 1681, wrote: "In Fez and in Morocco [that is, Marrakesh], the Jews are separated from the inhabitants, having their own quarters set apart, surrounded by walls of which the gates are guarded by men appointed by the King ... In the other towns, they are intermingled with the Moors." In 1791, a European traveller described the Marrakesh mellah: "It has two large gates, which are regularly shut every evening about nine o'clock, after which time no person whatever is permitted to enter or go out... till... the following morning. The Jews have a market of their own..." Only in 1682 the third mellah was founded in the town of Miknas, the new capital of sultan Ismail Ibn Sharif.
[edit] 19th century
At the beginning of the 19th century, around 1807, the pious sultan Sulayman forced Jews to move to mellahs in the towns of the coastal region, in Rabat, Salé, Mogador, and Tetouan. The new Jewish quarters were called mellahs everywhere except Tetouan, where the Spanish word juderia was used. In Salé, the new Jewish quarter was a long avenue with a total of 200 houses, 20 shops and trading booths, two kilns and two mills. In 1865, the mellah of Mogador, having become over-populated, was permitted to extend.
Jews resented their transfers to mellahs as a sudden and bitter exile and as the manifestation of segregation. Frequently, those who were unwilling to abandon their homes and businesses avoided the resettlement by converting to Islam.
[edit] 20th century onwards
Since the establishment of the State of Israel, in 1948, most Moroccan Jews have emigrated to the new Jewish state, encouraged by the Jewish Agency. As a result, nowadays mellahs are no longer Jewish neighborhoods.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Stillman, Norman (1979). The Jews of Arab Lands: A History and Source Book. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America. ISBN 082760198.
- Zafrani, H. "Mallah", Encyclopaedia of Islam Online, eds. P.J. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill Academic Publishers
