Tangier

Traditions of Early Settlement.

Sultanate in northwestern Africa. In antiquity it formed a considerable part of Mauritania. The latter was originally an independent kingdom, but in the year 42 of the common era it was made a Roman province and divided into Mauritania Tingitana, in the west, corresponding approximately to the Morocco of to-day, and Mauritania Cæsariensis, in the east, corresponding to the greater part of the modern Algeria. Mauritania, as indeed the whole of northern Africa, appears to have been settled by Jewish colonists even before the destruction of the Temple. Indefinite and fabulous traditions concerning such early settlements have been handed down among the Berber Jews of the Atlas and Rif mountains, the district of Sus, and the oasis of Tafilet and many other oases of the western regions. These Jews may be regarded as the descendants of those early settlers. The Jewish colonists of Borion assign their first settlement in the country to the time of Solomon, claiming that he himself built their synagogue, which in the sixth century was transformed into a church by Emperor Justinian (Neubauer, "Where Are the Ten Tribes?" in "J. Q. R." 1:23). Davidson, who traveled through the Atlas region and became acquainted with the Jews there, says they claim that their ancestors all left Jerusalem before its destruction and did not go as exiles to Babylon, and that they pretend never to have heard of Jesus of Nazareth (Andrée, "Zur Volkskunde der Juden," p. 197). These traditions are to some extent supported by the existence of Hebrew inscriptions in the province of Fez ("Ha-Lebanon," 3:110; Neubauer, c.), in Volubilis, in the extreme west of Mauritania near what was afterward called "Fez" (Schürer, " Gesch." 3:26; P. Berger, in "Bulletin Archéologique du Comité des Traveaux Historiques et Scientifiques," No. , pp. 64 et seq., Paris, 1892), in Al-Ḥamada, in the southern part of the province of Tafilet (Horowitz, "Marokko," p. 205, Leipsic, 1887; Henry S. Morais, "The Daggatouns," p. 9, Philadelphia, 1882), and, it is claimed (Morais, c.), in Tementit (comp. Jew. Encyc. 4:562, s. see see DIASPORA).

Under the Romans.

When the Jews began to spread over the Roman empire after the dissolution of the Jewish state (70), many of them doubtless settled in Mauritania, which province the Romans wished to civilize. These settlers engaged in agriculture, cattle-raising, and trades. They were divided into bodies akin to tribes, governed by their respective heads, and had to pay the Romans a capitation-tax of 2 shekels. Marcus Fischer ("Toledot Yeshurun: Gesch. der Juden Unter Regierung Mohadis und Imam Edris," Prague, 1817), and, following him, D. Cazès ("Essai sur l'Histoire des Israélites de Tunisie," pp. 28 et seq., Paris, 1889) have much more to say concerning these newcomers, their relations to the old inhabitants, their religious and civil life, their habits and customs, basing their statements on the verbal communications of "native historians." As Fischer, however, does not give his sources in detail, his information can be used only with caution. It is not known whether the Jews of Mauritania were in communication with their coreligionists in Palestine and Babylon; but, since the Talmud has some acquaintance with the customs of the Mauritanians (Yeb. 63b), such a communication does not seem wholly improbable.

Under the dominion of the Romans and (after 429) of the Vandals the Mauritanian Jews increased and prospered to such a degree that Church councils of Africa found it necessary to take a stand against them. The Justinian edict of persecution for northern Africa, issued after the Vandal rule had been overthrown and Mauritania had come under the dominion of the Byzantines (534), was directed against the Jews as well as the Arians, the Donatists, and other dissenters (E. Mercier, "Histoire de l'Afrique Septentrionale," 1:167, Paris, 1888). In the seventh century the Jewish population of Mauritania received as a further accession from Spain those who wished to escape west-Gothic legislation. At the end of the same century, at the time of the great Arabian conquests in northwestern Africa, there were in Mauritania, according to the Arab historians, many powerful Berber tribes which professed Judaism. It would be very interesting to know, although difficult to decide, whether these tribes were originally of Jewish race and had become assimilated with the Berbers in language, habits, mode of life—in short, in everything except religion-or whether they were native Berbers who in the course of centuries had been converted by Jewish settlers. However this may have been, they at any rate shared the lot of their non-Semitic brethren in the Berber territory, and, like them, fought against the Arab conquerors.

Berber Jews.

It was the Berber Jewess Dahiyah, or Damia, known as Kahinah, who aroused her people in the Aures, the eastern spurs of the Atlas, to a last although fruitless resistance to the Arab general Ḥasan ibn Nu'man, and herself died (703) the death of a heroine (Ibn Khaldun, 1:207 et seq., 3:193 et seq.; Mercier, c. 1:212 et seq.; August Müller, "Der Islam im Morgen- und Abendland," 1:420). As in the Hellenic lands of Christendom, so also in Mauritania, Judaism involuntarily preparedthe way for Islam; and the conversion of the Berbers to Islam took place so much the more easily. Many Jewish tribes of the Berbers also accepted Islam, some being forced thereto, others persuaded by the fact that the enemy had been successful. Nevertheless many Jewish Berber tribes have survived to the present day in their old habitations in the mountains of Morocco and in the oases of the desert, although as regards customs and mode and views of life they have been greatly influenced by Islam. In language and external appearance they are wholly Berber. In recent times (1857) a Moroccan Jew, Mordecai Abu Surur, has given information concerning such a Jewish Berber tribe known as the DAGGATUN, whose members are very numerous and spread over the whole desert, although residing chiefly among the Tuaregs in the oasis of Ajaj. According to their own traditions, these Daggatun have lived in the Sahara since the end of the seventh century, when they were driven out of Tementit, their early home and the former capital of the Jewish Berbers, because they would not accept Islam. There is said to be a similar tribe called the Maḥajri more toward the east (Horowitz, "Marokko," P. 59, Leipsic, 1887; comp. Jew. Encyc. 4:410, s. DAGGATUN).

Under the Idrisids.

When, at the end of the seventh century, Morocco came under the dominion of the Arabs, or of the Arabian califate of Bagdad, another incursion of Arab Jews into Morocco took place. The Moroccan Jews, like all other Jews in the Islamic empire, were subject to the Pact of Omar. The dependence of Morocco upon the califate of Bagdad ceased in the year 788, when, under the Imam Idris, the dynasty of the Idrisids, the descendants of Ali, was founded and proclaimed its independent rule over Morocco. The Jews undertook a political rôle in the history of the subjection of Morocco to Idris, the founder of this dynasty. After he had conquered Tangier and Volubilis, he wished to induce the Jewish tribes, which were inclined to remain faithful to the calif of Bagdad, to join his army. To make them more pliant to his wishes he caused them to be attacked and robbed in some of their cities, as in Temesna, Chella, and Magada, whereupon the Jews of Tadla, Fazaz, and Shauwiyah joined Idris' army under their general Benjamin ben Joshaphat ben Abiezer. After the combined army had met with some successes, the Jews withdrew, because they were horrified at the spilling of blood among those of their own tribesmen who were hostile to Idris and also because they had been made suspicious by an officer in Idris' army who wished to revenge himself upon Idris for adultery committed with his wife. The victorious Idris, however, took revenge by again falling upon them in their cities. After an unsuccessful resistance they had to conclude a peace with him, according to which they were required to pay an annual capitation-tax and to provide twenty-four virgins annually for Idris' harem. Later traditions attribute even still greater indignities inflicted on the Jewesses of Morocco by the lust of Idris (Marcus Fischer, c. pp. 32 et seq.). Idris II., successor of Idris I., allowed the Jews to settle in a special quarter of his capital, Fez (founded 808), in return for a tax of 30,000 dinars; in one of the many versions of the narrative of the founding of the city a Jew is mentioned (FEZ). Moreover, at the end of the seventh century, under Idris I., Jews could settle in different cities of the realm by paying the above-mentioned capitation-tax ("Rauḍ al - Ḳarṭas," translated by A. Beaumier: " Histoire des Souve- rains du Maghreb," p. 55, Paris, 1860).

Types of Moroccan Jewesses.Tangier. Tetuan.(From paintings by Portaels.)

Intellectual Activity.

The position of the Jews was on the whole favorable under the later Idrisids; under the Aghlabites, who overthrew the Idrisids in 986; under the Zirids, who drove out the Aghlabites; as also under the Almoravids, who, under Yusuf ibn Tashfin, seized the government in 1062 and who provided many Jews with new homes, through the foundation in 1062 of their new residential city Marrakesh (Morocco). Indeed, in the period from 900 to about 1150 an activity in the intellectual life of the Jewish communities may be traced in many Moroccan cities. The most important community was that of Fez, to which JUDAH IBN ḲURAISH sent an open letter in regard to the study of the Talmud, and with which the geonim Sherira and Hai ben Sherira carried on a halakic correspondence (Zunz, "Ritus," p. 53; comp. also Harkavy, "Teshubot ha-Ge'onim," No. 47, p. 24; No. 386, p. 200). Here in Fez the father of the gaon Samuel ibn Ḥofni was active as a Talmud scholar and ab bet din (Zunz, c. p. 191; Steinschneider, "Hebr. Bibl." 20:132). Here, in the tenth century, were born the philologists DUNASH BEN LABRAṬ and Judah ben David Ḥayyuj (c. 950) and, in theyear 1013, in a village near Fez, the halakist Isaac Alfasi; all these were educated in Fez. Here the writings of Saadia appear to have been studied; for two scholars of Fez—Abudani and David—brought thence Saadia's "Yeẓirah" commentary to Kairwan for Jacob ben Nissim (see "Orient, Lit." 1845, 6:563), who had not previously known of the work. Segelmesa, like Fez, had an academy, whose rosh bet din at one time was Joseph ben Amram. The latter sent his learned pupils to one of the academies of Babylon in order to obtain legal decisions (see Harkavy, c. Nos. 68, 283, pp. 38 et seq.). It was also in Segelmesa that Solomon ben Nathan in the eleventh or twelfth century wrote his siddur in Arabic with a philosophical introduction (Neubauer, "Cat. Bodl. Hebr. MSS." Nos. 896-899), the dependence of which work upon that of Saadia leads to the conclusion that the latter's influence had taken root in Africa at an early period (Zunz, c. pp. 27-54). Abraham ibn Ezra in an elegy on the trials of the Jews in Spain and in the northern part of Africa appears to have extolled Segelmesa with good reason as a city of wise men and of Talmudic learning (Neubauer, in "Isr. Letterbode," 6:32; Jacob Egers, "Divan des Abraham ibn Ezra," p. 69, No. 169, Berlin, 1886). In the same poem Dra'a (Drah) appears as a seat of Jewish learning, together with Ceuta and Mequinez. From Dra'a a certain Mar Dunash addressed halakic questions to Isaac Alfasi (see Harkavy, c. No. 443, p. 235). Harkavy remarks (c. p. 392) that if this Dunash is identical with the Dunash living in Seville, who is mentioned by Joseph ibn Migash, he, as well as Alfasi, must have emigrated from northern Africa to the south of Spain. The Jews of Morocco were of course chiefly Rabbinites, although in Dra'a and Fez there were a few Karaites (Neubauer, "Where Are the Ten Tribes?" in "J. Q. R." 1:110).

Under the Almohades.

The tolerance enjoyed by the tribute-paying Jews and Christians in the cities of Morocco came to an end under the intolerant dynasty of the stern Almohades, who came into power in 1146. Non-Mohammedans were to be tolerated no longer; Jews and Christians were compelled either to accept Islam or to leave the country. Here, as in other parts of northern Africa, many Jews who shrank from emigrating pretended to embrace Islam. Maimonides, who was staying in Fez with his father, is said to have written to the communities to comfort and encourage his brethren and fellow believers in this sore time of oppression (see Ibn Verga, "Shebeṭ Yehudah," ed. Wiener, p. 50). In the above-mentioned elegy of Abraham ibn Ezra, which appears to have been written at the commencement of the period of the Almohades, and which is found in a Yemen siddur among the ḳinot prescribed for the Ninth of Ab, the Moroccan cities Ceuta, Mequinez, Dra'a, Fez, and Segelmesa are especially emphasized as being exposed to great persecution. Joseph ha-Kohen ("'Emeḳ ha-Baka," ed. Wiener, p. 20) relates that no remnant of Israel was left from Tangier to Mehedia. Moreover, the later Almohades were no longer content with the repetition of a mere formula of belief in the unity of God and in the prophetic calling of Mohammed. Abu Yusuf Ya'ḳub al-Manṣur, the third Almohadic prince, suspecting the sincerity of the supposedly converted Jews, compelled them to wear distinguishing garments, with a very noticeable yellow cloth for a head-covering; from that time forward the clothing of the Jews formed an important subject in the legal regulations concerning them (BADGE). The reign of the Almohades on the whole (1146-1269) exercised a most disastrous and enduring influence on the position of the Moroccan Jews. Already branded externally, by their clothing, as unbelievers, they furthermore became the objects of universal scorn and of violent despotic caprice; and out of this condition they have not succeeded in raising themselves, even down to the present day.

Immigration of Spanish and Portuguese Jews.