Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry ◆ Brandeis University

JEWISH STUDIES COLLOQUIA

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Judeo-Moroccan Traditions and the Age of European Expansionism in North Africa

Yigal S. Nizri, University of Toronto

This paper traces the ways in which Jews in sixteenth-century Fes perceived the “Battle of al-Qsar al-Kabir,” which took place in in the summer of 1578 in a location bearing the same name then as it does in modern day Morocco. These Fassi Jews, many of whom were familiar with the traumatic experiences of the expulsion from the Iberian peninsula only a few generations earlier, had historicized, ritualized, vernacularized, and ultimately “scripturalized” this battle. Similarly, another European assault, the French naval attack on the coastal towns of Tangier and Mogador in 1844, which has been crucial to the periodization of what has been labeled the “precolonial” period in the history of Morocco, was registered in a local Hebrew scroll (the “Tanjawi text”). The scroll narrates the appearance of the French at the port of Tangier. Much like the event of 1578, and in what can be seen now as a pattern of communal behavior, the Jewish community of Tangier established a special memorial day that was given the Spanish name “Purim de las Bombas (Purim of the Bombs).”  The paper examines these two literary historical episodes through three aspects—the Jewish, the Moroccan, and the historical—as well as the interplay between them.

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In August 1578, at a high point of the Portuguese-Morrocan wars, King Dom Sebastian

of Portugal (who reigned from 1557–78) led a large army into Wadi al-Makhazin in the

northwestern Moroccan interior, waging a “holy war” against the “infidels.” The

ensuing “Battle of al-Qsar al-Kabir” was a disaster for Portugal, a global power at the

time. It had a great deal of significance for Morrocan history and memory as well. 1

Mulay ‘Abd al-Malik, the Moroccan sultan; Mohammed al-Mutawakkil, his rival for the 2

throne and the former Moroccan sultan and nephew of ‘Abd al-Malik; and Don

Sebastian all lost their lives on the battlefield. Hence the event became known

popularly as the “Battle of the Three Kings,” also known as the “Battle of Wadi al-

Makhazin,” (معركة وادي املخازن) in Muslim Maghribi sources. As a result, and quite 3

unexpectedly, ‘Abd al-Malik’s brother, thirty-year-old Ahmad al-Mansur, became the

ruling sultan on the battlefield, a Sa‘adi ruler who would bring Morocco to the forefront

of world politics, diplomacy and trade in the final quarter of the sixteenth century. As

the young Portuguese king had no heirs, Portugal lost its political independence. In

1580, Philip II of Spain, a Spanish Habsburg monarch and son of a Portuguese princess,

inherited the throne of Portugal and united both crowns under his command, a

“unification” that lasted for sixty years.

Al-Qaṣr al-Kabīr (“a grand castle” in Arabic; often called in European languages Alcazarquivir, 1

Alcácer Quibir, Alcazar, Elksar) is a town located in northwest Morocco, 50 miles south of Tangier and approximately 20 miles from Larache on the Atlantic coast. The city, which dates back to the eighth century, became a refuge to Jewish and Muslim exiles from the Iberian Peninsula since June 1492. During the fifteenth century Portugal had occupied and establish several fortified outposts along the Moroccan coastline, among them: Ceuta (1415–1668), Tangier (1471–1661), Arzila (1471–1549), Ksar es-Seghir (1458–1550), Azamor (1513–1541) and Safi (1488–1541).

Mawlāy (Arabic: “my lord”), an honorific title borne by the Moroccan sultans of the Sharifan 2

dynasties (both Sa‘adi and ‘Alawi) who were descends of al-Ḥasan ibn ‘Ali ibn Talib.

For a detailed analysis of the Iberian and Moroccan political climates that had led to the battle 3

see Mercedes García-Arenal, Ahmad al-Mansur: The Beginnings of Modern Morocco (Oxford: Oneworld Publications 2009) 6–39. See also David Abernethy, The Dynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empires, 1415–1980 (Yale University, 2000) 48. On Sa‘adian Morocco (1554–1660) see Dahiru Yahya, Morocco in the Sixteenth Century: Problems and Patterns in African Foreign Policy (Essex: Longman House, 1981), and especially the chapter “The Reign of ‘Abd al-Malik and the Battle of al-Qaṣr al-Kabir, 1576-8,” 66-91. The study of sixteenth-century Morocco requires the larger context of the two dominant powers of the time, namely the Spanish Habsburgs and the Ottoman Turks. For a useful “Mediterranean” framework of the peninsular expansions in North Africa see Andrew Hess, The Forgotten Frontier: A History of the Sixteenth-Century Ibero-African Frontier (Chicago and London: 1978), especially chapter 5: “The Clash of Empires.” Although Morocco is not included in his illuminating account of the Mediterranean world during the times of Philip II, Fernand Braudel’s La Méditerranée (1949) offers a useful panoramic synthesis. See Braudel The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (vol. 2) (Univ. of California Press, 1995), ch. 4, “Lepanto”.

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This battle had its impact on Jewish observers and references to it are found in

Maghribi Hebrew chronicles from the period. While Jews in Morocco at the time were 4

not at the center of what could be seen as one of the most dramatic chapters in the

early history of colonial expansions into North African lands, the possibility of

Moroccan defeat, had the Portuguese won the war, would have had significant

ramifications on the lives of local Jews, many of whom were bearers of the traumatic

experiences of families that were expelled from the Iberian peninsula only a few

generations earlier. And so, the Battle of the Three Kings was commemorated in the 5

Moroccan Jewish calendar in the form of Purim Katan (“minor Purim,” sometimes called

“second Purim,” or “minor festival”) by generations to come.

One of the basic Jewish rituals of remembrance, Purim, after which the special

“minor” Purim was named, commemorates the story of divine deliverance of the

Jewish community in the ancient Persian empire (ruled by the Achaemenid dynasty in

the fifth century BCE) from a political plot by Haman the Agagite, the vizier of

Ahasuerus king of Persia, identified as Xerxes the Great (519–465 BC), to annihilate the

Jews, as it is told in the biblical Book of Esther (known in Hebrew as a scroll, Megillah).

Purim is celebrated annually on the 14th and 15th of the Hebrew month of Adar as a

result of rabbinical taqqanah―legislative enactment not derived from a biblical

commandment but instituted locally by the rabbis to be part of the halakhah, the

normative system of Jewish jurisprudence. “Minor” Purims, however, were instituted

in many Jewish communities to commemorate deliverance from danger or reversal or

abrogation of threat posed by a hostile government. In many instances, such events

were written into a special scroll meant to be read annually in the synagogue. Such

texts became in and of themselves objects of historical and scholarly interest. These

Studies devoted specifically to the Jews of al-Qsar al-Kabir are rare. For a brief historical 4

overview of Jewish life in Spanish Morocco see Michel Abitbol, “Juifs ibériques, musulmans et chrétiens après l’expulsion: le cas nord-africain,” in Henry Méchoulan (ed.), Les Juifs d’Espagne: histoire d'une diaspora, 1492–1992 (Paris: Liana Levi, 1992) 519–22. See also Yoseph Bengio, “The Spanish-speaking Jews of Morocco,” in Jewish Communities in Spanish Morocco [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Beth Hatefutsoth, The Nahum Goldman Museum of the Jewish Diaspora, 1983), Yom Tov Assis, “The Jews of the Maghreb and Sepharad: A Case Study of Inter-Communal Cultural Relations Through the Ages,” El Presente, vol. 2 (2008), 11–30; and David Corcos, “The Jews of Morocco from the Expulsion of Spain until the Middle of the 16th Century” [Hebrew], Sefunot 10 (1966): 55–111.

Less than two decades after Sephardi exiles had arrived in the Maghrib in 1492 they found 5

themselves deeply affected by the Spanish Reconquista, now being “exported” overseas, to port cities of Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya.

calendrical interventions “were always local in character or, at most, they were

observed over a certain geographic area, for all of them the original Purim served as a

paradigm, and the new events were interpreted accordingly.” In short, the second or 6

minor Purim serves two interdependent “historical pulses,” as it were, the mythical

and the historical, the transregional and the local, which in the context of my

discussion here can also be translated into Jewish and Maghribi histories, or “Judeo-

Moroccan”.

The Halakhic Molding of Historical Events

Moroccan and other episodes of “Minor Purim” raise several questions. What are the

halakhic parameters which governed and defined the possible interaction between

political events, often considered “external” to what has been canonized and

authorized by the rabbis as “intrinsically Jewish,” and current forms of ritual, law, and

bodily practices in the post-medieval Jewish contexts? What were the specific ways in

which certain Jewish individuals or communities understood, historicized, ritualized,

vernacularized, and ultimately “scripturized” such events? Further, did such

ritualization consolidate or weaken existing Jewish conceptions of history? Did such

ritualization facilitate or impede change in the attitude toward the governing (non-

Jewish) power? Can they be viewed merely as a “reaction” to external threat, or rather

as a practice that has more to do with dynamics that have been characterized, shaped

and codified within Jewish tradition itself? In recent decades much scholarly attention

has been given to these questions in various contexts. In the historiography of

Maghribi Jewish history such questions remain remarkably understudied. In the

Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Washington, 1982), 47. For 6

halakhic legitimization of instituting a minor Purim in North African rabbinic literature see Moses ben Isaac Alashkar (1466–1542), Shut Maharam Alshakar #49. A question sent from people of Lepanto (Spanish name of Naupactus, in west Greece) to Rabbi Alashkar (who was staying in a nearby city, Patras) reveals hesitations as to the level of implementation of local Purim custom. According to local rabbis, this special day, that was ordained in the city of Lepanto, ought to travel with the city’s Jews to other cities as well. In other words, locality was not a geographical concept but a communal one, as local traditions perceived to be obligatory not only on a local basis but to some extant were also binding elsewhere. See also Amram Aburabia’ (1892–1966), Shut Netivei Am #686b. Alashkar’s words resonated with rabbi Yosef Mashash (1892–1974): see “An Author’s Introduction” to the section “The Story of Purim of MeJaz” in Mashash’s Ner Mitzvah (Fez: Mas‘uod Sharvit & ‘Emram Hazan, 1939), 59-67. Named after the the Moroccan political dissident by the name of al-Jilali b. Mustafa, known as “al-Majaz” (the lazy), “Purim del Mejaz,” was yet another minor Purim in which the Jews of Meknes indicated the 16th of Adar a day of deliverance from al-Majaz’s failed rebellion in 1862.

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following pages, these questions will guide my discussion of Moroccan Jewish forms of

memory.

One notable example of the ways in which political events were understood in

the post-medieval European world is the institutionalization (in the seventeenth

century) of the 20th of the Hebrew month of Sivan as an annual fasting day by certain

eastern European Jewish communities. The halakhic genealogy of this practice in the

early modern period points to Rabbi Yosef Karo, the great sixteenth-century codifier of

Jewish law, who had listed in his Shulchan Aruch specific dates on which private fasts

should be conducted due to deaths and tragedies that have befallen the Jews from

Biblical times to the first century CE: “These are the days on which terrible events

occurred to our forefathers and it is fit to fast on these days.” He added that fasting is

also appropriate on certain dates on which historical disasters occurred, and on

Mondays and Thursdays. 7

In the following centuries commentators on the Shulchan Aruch would

expand the category of fasting on “Mondays and Thursdays” to apply to events that

took place in their own times. Thus, in the late nineteenth century, the Lithuanian

rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, the “Chofetz Chaim,” noted in his Mishnah Berurah, a

summary of the halakhic opinions made by post-medieval rabbinic authorities on

Karo’s work, that a fast day on the 20th of Sivan was issued in commemoration of the

devastating effect of the Cossack uprising in Ukraine between 1648–1657 on the Jewish

communities there. This indication bears a clear reference to previous commentaries

on the Shulchan Aruch. For example, reference to the fast day can be found in Magen

Avraham (Orach Chayim #580:9), which was compiled by the seventeenth-century

Talmudist, Rabbi Avraham Abele Gombiner, who was personally affected by violent

attacks. Similarly, the Lithuanian Shabbatai HaKohen (the “Shakh”), authored a special

scroll, the so-called Megillat ‘Efah in which he instituted a fast day on the 20th of Sivan in

commemoration of the victims of the Chmielnicki massacres. Although he had

prescribed the fast day for his family and descendants, in 1652, the Council of the Four

Lands (a supra-communal Jewish body active in the Polish part of the commonwealth

from 1580 to 1764) declared a communal and public fast on the 20th of Sivan.

References to the fast of the 20th of Sivan appear however in the commentaries on the

Shulchan Aruch by many Ashkenazi poskim (legal deciders), in works such as Ba’er Hetev

Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayim #580:1–3. 7

(the part authored by Yehudah Ben Shime‘on Ashkenazi) in the late eighteenth century

and Sha‘are Teshubah by Hayyim Mordecai Margolioth in the early nineteenth century. 8

From Divrei ha-Yamim to Special Days

Rabbi Shemuel ben Sa‘adia Ibn Danan of Fez III (d. 1622), whose epithet “the Third”

attests to the centrality of genealogy in the transmission of historical and

jurisprudential knowledge and authority in the early modern Jewish Maghrib, wrote a

summary of the events of al-Qsar al-Kabir from what can be seen as a Jewish

perspective. His entry was later subsumed into the work Divrei ha-Yamim, a Hebrew 9

and Arabic (written in Hebrew characters) chronicle of Jewish Fez complied over the

course of three centuries by scholar-rabbis of the Ibn Danan family. This kind of 10

historical writing was referred to by its authors using the Arabic word al-Tawarikh

(histories or chronicles). The dual role of the Ibn Danans as both chroniclers and 11

rabbis invites us to consider several interrelated questions: what is the affinity between

Yerushalmi, who followed the peregrinations of the fast day of the 20th of Sivan, had 8

noted some elements of “repetition” and homology, as Jews perceived the violence of 1648 as a reenactment of medieval commemoration of a martyrdom event of that took place on May 26, 1171, in the French town of Blois. According to Yerushalmi, such historical molding of past tragedy, in this case the twelfth-century crusades against the Jews of the Rhineland, in order to embrace a “contemporary” seventeenth-century event is an essential feature of what he calls “Jewish collective memory.” See Zakhor, 49–51.

Shemuel ben Sa‘adia, the RaSHBaD, was a notable rabbinic figure of the Jewish community of Fez 9

in the second half of the seventeenth century. His name appeared on more than 40 social, legal, and communal taqqanot which formed the basic foundation of autonomous Jewish life in the post-expulsion generations. For an overall review and appraisal of his work, theology, and exegesis based on the little of what remained of his corpus see Yisrael Maimaran, “Prakim behaguto shel rabbi shemuel ibn Danan” in Mishpaḥat Ibn Danan: Elef Shenot Hisṭoryah (Mekhon Bene Yiśakhar, Or ha-Ma‘arav, 2008), 175–248. See the introduction of the new edition of Sefer haTaqanot (The Book of Communal Ordinances): Shalom Bar-Asher, Spanish and Portuguese Jews in Morocco (1492–1753) Sefer haTaqanot (Jerusalem: Academon, 1990), 1–41.

One of the most notable Jewish families in Fez, the Ibn Danans hold historical records that date 10

to at least the fourteenth century. Their chronicle covers events from 1438 to 1724. See Nahum Slouschz, “The History of Fez and its Writers, the Ibn Danan Family,” [Hebrew], Sura, III (1957–58), 165–91.

Meir Benayahu, Divrei haYamim shel Fes: gezirot umeoraot yehudei Maroqo kefi sherashmum benei 11

mishpaḥat Ibn Danan le-doroteihem [History of Fez: Misfortunes and Events of Moroccan Jewry as Recorded by the Ibn Danan Family and Descendants] (Tel-Aviv: Hamakhon leḥaqer hatefutzot, [5]753/1993), 13. The comparative study of the historiographical similarities between the Hebrew Divrei haYamim and the Arabic Tārīkh is rare. A recent study about the tensions between Islamic historiography and Iberian historiography (in the context of the Portuguese expansion into the Indian Ocean region in the sixteenth century) may offer an insight in that direction. See: Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Intertwined Histories: Crónica and Tārīkh in the Sixteenth-Century Indian Ocean World,” History and Theory 49 (December 2010).

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the genre of historical writing and halakhic knowledge, and ultimately, practice?

Moreover, from the perspective of halakhic grammar, what constitutes an “event”?

And finally, how does a “new” event enter the Jewish calendar and how does such

inclusion affect our knowledge of local traditions? More broadly, these questions are

pertinent to the ways in which halakhic traditions work. 12

The event of 1578 was recorded in the Ibn Danan chronicle among various

entries dealing with calamities and misfortunes that befell the Jewish community, such

as acts of violence, exactions, epidemics, droughts, and famines. Susan Gilson Miller, 13

who has shown how valuable this chronicle is, argues that a “close attention to the text

shifts our understanding away from reading it as a self-referential lament, to

understanding it as a collective history in which actors saw themselves as instruments

of divine intervention in human affairs.” With this insight in mind let us turn to the 14

text itself, or more precisely, to the first printed version of part of it that was included

in a siddur (prayer book) of the Fassi community (the toshavim community, a Hebrew

term for “settlers” or “natives”), Ahavat ha-Kadmonim (love of the ancients), which was

The immediate connection between historical knowledge and halakhic knowledge was raised by 12

Sa‘adia Ibn Danan (b. c. 1440, Granada; d. 1492, Oran) in his Judeo-Arabic chronicle-essay Seder ha-dorot (the order of the generations).

Versions of this text were published in several languages as part of the Ibn Danan chronicle and 13

in scholarly articles. In a visit to Morocco in 1947 George Vajda located one manuscript of the Ibn Danan chronicle, which he edited and translated in 1948. See G. Vajda, Un recueil de textes historiques judéo-marocains (reprinted from Hespéris, 25–26, Paris, 1951); a description of the battle appears on pages 15-17. Several Hebrew versions of the Ibn Danan texts were published (not as liturgical texts but as chronicles): first by Ya‘akov Moshe Toledano, a Palestinian-born Moroccan scholar in his Ner ha-Ma’arav (Jerusalem, 1911) 93–9; second and partially by David ‘Ovadiah in 1979; and a critical edition by Meir Benayahu, in 1993. See David ‘Ovadyah, Fas ve-ḥakhameha, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Hotza’at Beit ‘Oved, 1979); Benayahu, Divrei haYamim shel Fes. The relevant passages as a study source for the Battle of the Three Kings were printed by Haim Zeev Hirschberg, Toldot ha-Yehudim be-Afriḳah ha-Tsefonit, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Mosad Byaliḳ 1965), 212–213, and appeared again in the English edition: Hirschberg, A History of the Jews in North Africa, vol. 2 (Leiden, Brill, 1981), 191–13. The complete Ibn Danan chronicle was reprinted recently by Benjamin Danan of the Association pour la Restauration de la Synagogue Danan de Fès. See: “Sefer Divrei haYamim shel Fes”in Mishpaḥat Ibn Danan: Elef Shenot Hisṭoryah (Mekhon Bene Yiśakhar, Or ha-Ma‘arav, 2008), 249–87.

Susan Gilson Miller, “The Mellah of Fez: Reflections on the Spatial Turn in Moroccan Jewish 14

History,” in Julia Brauch, Anna Lipphardt, Alexandra Nocke, eds., Jewish Topographies: Visions of Space, Traditions of Place (Burlington: 2008), 101–18. Citation on p. 107.

printed in Jerusalem in 1889—an important fact in and of itself. Albeit a liturgical 15

work, this book, and the circumstances that enabled its publication, reflect a new kind

of what may be called “print consciousness” among Moroccan Jews in the late

nineteenth century. What is more, the very printing of the Ibn Danan text in this 16

special siddur, captures the emergence of Morocco as a coherent geographical-political

unit.

By 1889, when the Hebrew story of the Battle of the Three Kings from Divrei ha-

Yamim, the chronicle of Ibn Danan, made its way to print as part of a prayer book, the

textual testimony of the battle had been circulating for almost three centuries through

copied manuscripts and oral transmission. It was most likely read, cited, or told

annually in the local synagogue during the special prayer of the minor Purim. As we

have observed, the Jewish remembering of al-Qsar al-Kabir in a form of special Purim

was not at all unique. Further, since the Middle Ages, the practice of writing historical-

literary scrolls in the context of a ritualized commemoration day has taken place,

particularly among Middle Eastern Jews. One major example of such a 17

commemoration day took place earlier in the sixteenth century on the other side of

North Africa, a festival which became known as the “Cairene Purim.” The Jewish

community of Cairo had established the 28th of Adar 5284 (March 3, 1524) as a holiday,

celebrated in the manner of Purim, to commemorate their deliverance from a series of

Sefer Ahavat ha-Kadmonim, printed by Shmuel Zuckerman (Jerusalem, 1889), 12:b–13a. The book is 15

labeled #636 in the indexical dictionary Sifre Yerushalayim ha-rishonim by Shoshanna Halevy (the first Hebrew books printed in Jerusalem in the second half of the nineteenth century, 1841–1890), (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1975). The printing house of Shmuel Halevy Zuckerman (b. Mezhyrich, 1857; d. Jerusalem, 1929) was located in the old city of Jerusalem for more than four decades. See David Tidhar, Entsiklopedyah le-halutse ha-yishuv u-vonav, vol. 3 (1949), 1256. For the most elaborate scholarship about this special book see: Shelomo Toledano, “Siddur Ahavat haKadmonim keminhag kehal hatoshavim be-fas” in Mishpaḥat Ibn Danan, 315–26.

See the chapter “Maghribi Itineraries: Rabbi Raphael Aaron Ben Shime‘on” in my dissertation, 16

“Sharifan Subjects, Rabbinic Texts: Moroccan Rabbinical Writing, 1860-1918,” New York University, 2014, 93-146.

For a recent study of twelve North African piyyutim (liturgical poems), a related literary form to 17

the above mentioned historical-literary scrolls, see Ephraim Hazan, Rachel Hitin-Mashiah, eds., Mi Khamokha, Who is Like unto Thee: Local Piyyutim on Miraculous Deliverance in North African Jewish Communities [Hebrew] (Beer Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2012). The late Yosef Halevy has studied aspects of lamentatious poetry among Jewish writers (rabbis included) which were influenced by the political changes in the interwar period in the Mashriq. See Yosef Halevy, “The Reflection of Violent Incidents in Literature: Calamities in the Eye of Piyuttim and New Poetry in the Jewish East in Recent Generations,” in BeSod Yahid ve‘Edda: Tradition and Renewal in Hebrew Literature Written by Oriental Authors (Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2003) 84–120 [Hebrew].

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violent events which occurred during February 1524 as a result of the increased

tensions between the Ottoman Sultan Suleyman I and the newly appointed governor of

Egypt, Ahmed Pasha. And so, a special Judeo-Arabic scroll titled Megillat Pūrīm al-

miṣriyyīn, (the scroll of the Cairene Jewish community) was penned. Traces of this event

and its meaning can be found in the work of Jewish historiographers throughout the

early modern period. The key point that makes al-Qsar al-Kabir special is the fact that 18

the victory was not primarily “Jewish,” as some observers of this battle experienced it;

indeed, the Sharifian State (Morocco) claimed the victory and framed it as Moroccan.

“And in that very day three kings had died,” wrote Ibn Danan. One day versus

three kings. Theologically, it was the victory of the oneness of God over the Christian

concept of the trinity. And so, marked by the theologically driven justification of a holy

war—of which both the Portuguese cruzada (crusade) and the Arabic jihad testify—the

religious meaning alluded to in this battle should be noted, as the numeric metaphor

was not lost on Muslim and Jewish observers. In his account of the events, the great

Moroccan historian of the nineteenth century Aḥmad b. Khalid al-Naṣiri cites the

biographical dictionary of the sixteenth-century writer Ahmad Ibn al-Qadi (1553–

1616), Durrat al-ḥijāl fi ghurrat asma’ al-rijal, in which it is said: “Look at the wisdom of

Allah, the One, the invincible [who] exterminated three kings in one day […] and he

constituted/established only one—Abu al-’Abbas Ahmad I al-Mansur.” In that day, al-

Nasiri adds, “the extermination of the three and the establishment of one are a clear

sign of the abolition of the religion of the trinity [din al-Tathlith] and the victory of the

religion of the oneness of God [al-Tawhid].” Such theological inferences constructed a 19

larger political event as a Jewish one; the Jewish (and universal) God had emerged as

the real victor.

Among them Samuel ibn Nachman, Eliyahu ben Elqana Kapsali, Solomon ibn Verga, Joseph ibn 18

Yitzhak Sambari, David Conforte and Joseph ibn Joshua haKohen. On the events leading up to “the Cairene Purim,” in and of itself a historiographical and textual “event,” see the chapter “The Purim of the Cairene Jewish Community,” in Benjamin H. Hary, Multiglossia in Judeo-Arabic: With an edition, translation and grammatical study of the Cairene Purim scroll (Leiden; New York: E.J. Brill, 1992) 115–28.

Aḥmad b. Khalid al-Naṣiri, Kitab al-istiqṣa li-akhbar duwal al-Maghrib al-aqṣa, vol. 5 (Casablanca: Dar 19

al-Kittab, 1955), 84.

Circulation and Narrative

Aside from the story’s function as a part of prayer, and without any clear allusion to

Purim, rabbinical authors with a keen eye to history were familiar with stories about al-

Qsar al-Kabir. It is safe to argue that copies of the Ibn Danan text were in circulation

among the late nineteenth-century network of rabbinical elite in the geographical

triangle of Fez–Sefrou–Meknes, although their availability cannot tell much about the

scope of such circulation. The only clear indication that the chronicle enjoyed some

circulation is a shortened version of the story about the battle of al-Qsar al-Kabir that

appeared in Kisse ha-Melakhim (seat of kings), a nineteenth-century “world history”

chronology by R. Raphael Moshe Elbaz of Sefrou. This book, which was first printed in 20

Jerusalem only in 1985, is a historical essay based on an archetypical-temporal model of

the four monarchies, or world empires, which are described in dreams and visions in

the biblical Book of Daniel. The omitting of the sentences from the original Ibn Danan 21

text that deal with the special Purim may reflect a lack of interest in that tradition in 22

the context of Elbaz’s historical essay. And yet, there is reason to suggest that this

omission calls for interrogation as to the level of stability, validity, and popularity of

such a tradition prior to the mid-nineteenth century.

Outside of the Moroccan Jewish orbit, the historical episode of the Battle of the

Three Kings, as an inter-imperial war, had left its marks on the late sixteenth-century

Jewish historiographers, who fostered a slightly different narrative of the event than

Ibn Danan’s text. Two authors are worthy of consideration, David Gans (1541–1613), and

Joseph ha-Kohen of Avignon (1496-1578). Gans, author of the popular Hebrew chronicle

Son of Rabbi Samuel Elbaz (1790–1844), Raphael Moshe Elbaz (1823–1896), known as “the RaMa 20

of Sefrou,” was a rabbi, jurist, and liturgical poet in Sefrou. With his father, Elbaz transcribed entire collections from manuscripts. For a detailed biography and bibliography see תולדות רבני העיר צפרו in David Ovadia, Ḳehilat Tsafaru (The Community of Sefrou), vol 4, 66–74. To illustrate the investment of Elbaz in sixteenth-century texts I shall note that he wrote a commentary (titled: “Yad RaMa”) to the “kitzur” (Hebrew for shortening or abridgment) of the sixteenth-century legal code Sefer haTaqanot (the book of ordinances) penned by Refael Berdugo (1747–1821) of Meknes.

This edition of Kisse ha-Melakhim has been included fully in David Ovadia, Ḳehilat Tsafaru (The 21

Community of Sefrou), Vol 4. The bulk of Elbaz’s historical essay is devoted to the genealogy of Islam, and especially since the Muslim conquest of the Maghrib. Events are described according to both Hebrew and Islamic Hijri calendars. The section about the battle of al-Qsar al-Kabir is taken almost entirely from Ibn Danan chronicle. See David Ovadia, Ḳehilat Tsafaru, Vol IV (printed by the author, Jerusalem, 1985), 80.

“And therefore the sages have congregated and received upon themselves and their offspring, 22

to celebrate Purim and [to give] gifts to the poor since then and forever, until the coming of our righteous Messiah, may he appear speedily in our days.”

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Zemah David (the offspring of David), which was first published in Prague in 1592,

devoted one general sentence—in the world history section of his double-volume work

—to the 1578 war, which he calls “the war by the great ocean, next to Barbaria.” This 23

laconic description reflects a new mode of a codified classification of historic

knowledge in Hebrew but it does little to our understanding of the intricacies of power

dynamics among Christians, Muslims, and Jews. A more specific perspective on the

battle of al-Qsar al-Kabir, however, can be seen in an addition to the late sixteenth-

century manuscript, ‘Emeq- ha-Bakha (the vale of tears), a Hebrew chronoicle of “Jewish

sufferings” since the destruction of the second Temple to the time of the author, Joseph

ha-Kohen of Avignon. 24

Both works do not mention the impact of this battle on the Jews in Morocco and

their local traditions. However, ‘Emek ha-Bakha attributes a theologically charged

significance to the event, presenting it as part of a divine plot of vengeance against the

Portuguese nation, “for they have hurt His people and servants; on them, who accepted

them at first with friendship and affection, but later treated them faithlessly by

becoming their enemies.” The text is organized as an imaginary conversation between

God and his heavenly hosts:

In 1337 [1578] God sat on His throne to judge the peoples, and the Hosts

of Heaven stood to His right and His left. Said he: ‘who will persuade King

Sebastian, all his dukes and his servants, as well as the whole army of

Portugal to invade a country that does not belong to them? so that God’s

ire could manifest itself on them, for they have hurt His people and

servants; on them, who accepted them at first with friendship and

affection, but later treated them faithlessly by becoming their enemies?

Respected men have been burned by them, the countenances of the aged

have not been spared, they expelled peaceful women from their well-

apportioned homes, and when they gave birth to sons or daughters, they

did not remain with them, but were torn from their beards to march as

captives before the enemy. But now the days of vengeance have come to

See David Gans, Zemah David, Mordechai Breuer’s edition (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1983), 410. 23

First published by M. Letteris, Vienna, in 1852. French translation by Julien See, La vallée des 24

pleurs, Paris, 1881. An English translation by Harry S. May was published in 1971.

let this sinful generation feel God’s wrath. 25

Such historical linkage to the expulsion from the Iberian peninsula eight decades

earlier, which situates Jews (both “Portuguese” and “Moroccan”) and Muslims

(“Moors”) as objects of Christian animosity, may help us to explain the name “Purim de

los Cristianos” (the Purim of the Christians) that was given to this battle by northern-

Moroccan Jewish communities. The motive of divine vengeance which appears in ‘Emek

ha-Bakha would have a specific resonance in writings that convey the “Judeo Iberian”

perspective of the battle. I will return to this point later in my discussion about the

resurfacing of the battle in mid-nineteenth-century scrolls. Despite the fact that the

definitive victory in Wadi al-Makhazin was a Muslim victory, the crucial point here is

that the focus on a trope of divine revenge against the Christians forms a Jewish

historical perspective on the Muslim victory. 26

In fact, unlike the account of ‘Emek ha-Bakha, the Ibn Danan text clearly invokes

the notion of Muslim revenge against Christians: “[a]nd it was announced all over the

empire that they [Mulay ‘Abd al-Malik along with a heavy battalion] are going to take a

revenge on Edom.” Thus, in what can be seen as a shift in the historical coordinates, the

Hebrew phrase “revenge upon Edom,” a term which since the post-tannaitic period 27

referred to Christian Rome and thence for Christiandom in general, is now used to

portray a Muslim jihad against the “Edomites” who managed to complete the

reconquista of the Iberian peninsula in January 1492. In this regard, the homology

between Jewish and Muslim settings vis-à-vis the Christian enemy places the event of a

Judeo-Moroccan commemoration of the battle in the larger context of the Muslim

Sharifan state.

The narrative circulation of divine revenge on behalf of the (Andalusian) Jews,

which may have originated in ‘Emek ha-Bakha, reappeared and was maintained in

Based on the English edition by Harry S. May (p. 117–18).25

The idea of a “Muslim revenge” appears quite frequently in modern scholarship. For example: 26

“Hispano-Muslim arquebusiers gained a measure of revenge against their Christian enemies.” Andrew Hess, The Forgotten Frontier: A History of the Sixteenth-Century Ibero-African Frontier (Chicago and London: 1978), 98.

Ezekiel 25:14, with relation to the (biblical) Edomites: “And I will lay my vengeance upon Edom 27

by the hand of my people Israel: and they shall do in Edom according to mine anger and according to my fury; and they shall know my vengeance, saith the Lord GOD.”

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writings that embraced a “Judeo-Iberian” perspective of the battle. And so, according to

Nomologia o Discursos legales (Amsterdam, 1629), an essay written in Spanish by the

Portuguese Jewish scholar Immanuel Aboab (d. 1628), the Portuguese nobility were

made prisoners of Jews in Fez. In the wake of the war, these prisoners were taken to 28

Fes to be sold in public auction as slaves. Aboab had heard that the captives had

considered themselves somewhat fortunate to be purchased by descendants of those

whom their ancestors had persecuted:

God allowed that in the forth generation almost all of the Portuguese

nobility, [headed by] their king Don Sebastian, came to Africa to

be destroyed and captured at the very same place where their

grandparents had cruelly and unjustly ordered the wretched Jews to

disembark. It was there that the “flower” of Portugal [the elite] ended,

and those who remained were brought to Fez, where they were sold as

slaves at the herald’s cry in the squares inhabited by the Jewish

descendants of those persecuted innocents. It pleased the Lord to exact

that revenge on them. The sage David Fayon, a resident of Alcaçarquiuir,

and a student of R. Judah Aboab told me that those miserables could not

find a greater comfort than being sold to the Jews [of Fez] as slaves, as

they knew their natural piety. Be praised ever and always, our Lord, God

of Israel who never has nor will abandon his people. 29

Interestingly enough, the popularity of the historical linkage that places Jews and their

“vengeful” God at the center of a narrative that deals with an event that took place on

Fourteen thousand Portuguese, among them almost the entire Portuguese nobility, were taken 28

captive by Ahmed Al-Mansur. During the 1580s these captives were the made the object of an entire ransom industry. After 1578, the Mellah of Fez was home to a particularly large number of Portuguese prisoners who stayed in the Mellah while the demands for their ransom were met. See Mercedes García-Arenal, Ahmad al-Mansur: The Beginnings of Modern Morocco (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2009), 71.

“permitió el Señor, que a la quarta generación, viniesse quasi toda la nobleza de Portugal, y su 29

Rey don Sebastião á Africa, para ser destruidos, y captivos en el mismo lugar, adonde sus abuelos, indigna, y cruelmente, mandaron a desembarcar los afligidos israelitas. Alli acabó la flor de Portugal, y los que quedaron fueron lleuados á Fez, donde fueron vendidos a voz de pregonero, en las plaças donde habitauan los Judios sucessores de los innocentes perseguidos; que quiso el Señor mostrarles essa vengança. Y me contaua el Sabio Dauid Fayon vezino de Alcaçarquiuir, y discipulo del Rab Iehudá Adoab, arriba nombrados, que no tenían mayor consolación aquellos miserables, que ser vendidos por esclauos a los Judios, conociendo su natural piedad. Sea para siempre loado el Señor Dio de Israel, que nunca desamparó, ni desamparará á su pueblo.” Nomologia o Discursos legales, ch. 27, p. 308.

Muslim soil, and between Muslims and Christians, was quite dominant in modern

historiography as well. For example, the description from Immanuel Aboab’s Nomologia

was cited nearly verbatim (without the mentioning of Aboab) in Volume 9 of Heinrich

Graetz’s Geschichte der Juden, published in Leipzig in 1888, a year prior to the printing of

the Moroccan siddur in Jerusalem. At the end of his long account regarding the

“expulsion of the Jews from Navarre and Portugal,” the most widely read nineteenth-

century historian of the Jews wrote:

Eighty years later, Manoel’s great-grandson, the adventurous king,

Sebastian, led the flower of the Portuguese people to fresh conquests in

Africa. In a single battle the power of Portugal was broken, her nobility

slain, or cast into prison. The captives were carried to Fez, and there, in

the slave-market, offered for sale to the descendants of the barbarously

treated Portuguese Jews. The unhappy Portuguese nobles and knights

were, however, glad to be bought by Jews, as they well knew the mild

and humane nature of the followers of the ‘God of vengeance’.” 30

From Joseph ha-Kohen and Immanuel Aboab, to Heinrich Graetz and to some extent to

Cecil Roth as well, the narrative of a battle between Christians and Muslims was shaped

not necessarily according to a Judeo-Moroccan perspective, such as the one we find in

Ibn Danan’s text, but according to a Judeo-Iberian perspective dominated by traumatic

memories of expulsion and forced conversion. I will return to this point later in my

The English translation is taken from Heinrich Graetz, History of the Jews, vol. 4 (Philadelphia: 30

Jewish Publication Society of Amepica, 1894) ch. XIL, 381. In the popular book, The Jewish Book of Days (first appeared in London, 1931), Cecil Roth offered his readers around the world “a synopsis of modern Jewish history, from the settlement of the Jews in Europe down to the Balfour Declaration.” Under the title “Deliverance,” an entry devoted to August 4th, Roth gave a short narrative that is taken directly from Graetz, and ultimately Imanuel Aboab’s Nomologia. Roth: “[d]eliverance of Jewish communities in Morocco 1578. ―Sebastian, the young king of Portugal, fired with crusading zeal, had espoused the cause of a pretender to the throne and landed on the coast. He was, however, overwhelmingly defeated at the ‘Battle of the Three Kings’ near Alcazir Kebir, where the flower of the Portuguese nobility was destroyed. It is on record that those who fell into the hands of the compassionate Jews, whose fathers they had so ruthlessly persecuted and expelled, now considered themselves fortunate in the extreme: for they received at their hands only the kindest and most considerate treatment. Nevertheless, the local communities realized the danger they would have been in had the result of the battle been otherwise, and instituted a local festival to be celebrated each year on the anniversary of their escape (Ellul 1st). At Tangier this is called the Purim de las Bombas: at Tetuan, the Purim de los Christianos.” See Cecil Roth, The Jewish Book of Days: A Day-by-day Almanac of Events from the Settlement of the Jews in Europe to the Balfour Declaration (New York: Hermon Press, 1966), 184–185. Roth nevertheless, confused the Purims of 1578 (“Purim de los Christianos”) and 1844 (“Purim de las Bombas”).

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discussion about the emergence of northern Moroccan traditions of the special Purim

in the ninetieth century.

Nes, Ma‘aseh and Event

The circumstances that made possible the printing of the text of the Ibn Danan

chronicle take us to the Jerusalem of the late ninetieth century. Behind the printing of

the Fassi siddur in Jerusalem was the rabbi and entrepreneur Raphael Aaron Ben-

Sime‘on. As the editor of Ahavat ha-Kadmonim, Ben-Sime‘on framed al-Qsar al-Kabir in 31

the following way. In small letters in the first line, which provides orienting

instructions to the prayers, we read: “[o]n the second day of Elul, after the reading of

the Hallel prayer, read the following phrases of praise and acknowledgment for the

miracle [nes] that had happened on that day.” Right after, in slightly larger letters, we

read: “[here is] the story [ma‘aseh] that has occurred for which we are marking Purim

on the first day of Elul.” Despite the seemingly contradictory terms nes (“miracle”),

which is often used to refer to a divine/miraculous intervention, and ma‘aseh (“story”

and also “event”), which usually refers to historical and political events, here their

juxtaposition appears complementary.

A rather long chain of transmission precedes these headings, comparable to a

Muslim isnād, detailing the transmission of a manuscript through three generations of 32

Born in Salé, Morocco, on July 4, 1847, Ben-Shim‘on moved to Ottoman Jerusalem in 1854, where 31

he spent the next three decades of his life. In 1888 and 1890, he traveled back to Morocco on behalf of the Jewish Maghribi community of Jerusalem, which sent him on several fundraising missions to Europe and North Africa. In February 1890 he was called by Cairo’s Jewish community to serve as the chief rabbi (hakham bashi) of Cairo, a communal position he held from 1891 to 1921. In June 1921, after retiring from his position as the chief rabbi of Cairo, he moved back to Palestine. After a short period in Jerusalem, Ben-Shim‘on moved to Jaffa, a city in which a growing number of Moroccan Jewish families have been residing since the 1830s. He lived there until his death on October 24, 1928, and was buried in Jerusalem. A rabbinical emissary who travels from Jerusalem to his native country Morocco in the late nineteenth century, Raphael Aharon Ben-Shim‘on was a prominent figure in the formation of what can be viewed as a new phase of “print consciousness” among Jews in Morocco, as well as among Moroccan Jews in the Mashriq at the time. His various textual and cultural activities in Morocco as well as the contours of his biographical standpoint as a “Maghribi” scholar outside of Morocco will be at the focus of dissertation. See note 17.

From sanad, “support” in Arabic; the term isnād relates to the chain of authorized transmission 32

attesting to the historical authenticity of a particular hadith of the Prophet.

the Ibn Danan family. We than get to the text of the chronicle Divrei ha-Yamim itself. 33

The way in which the Portuguese crusade of 1578 was institutionalized in the Jewish

calendar of the Toshavim can be seen in the last and reflexive sentence of the text,

which reads as follows:

And the war was very intense on Elul 2, 5338 [August 5, 1578]. And

therefore the rabbis have congregated and received upon themselves

and their offspring to celebrate Purim and [to give] gifts to the poor

since then and forever, until the coming of our righteous Messiah, may

he appear speedily in our days. Amen, may it be so. 34

With the rabbis’ decision, the historical account of the battle transforms into a

calendrical event and a prayer, and is preserved as such. The literary framing of the

event is also important for understanding the reasons for the commemorations of the

battle. In his French edition of Ibn Danan’s chronicle, which was published in 1948, the

great scholar George Vajda omitted some crucial elements of the textual (and

ultimately historical) framing of the story. This is, however, important material that

can shed light on the ways in which Ibn Danan understood the course of the

momentous events. Of particular significance are the biblical references Ibn Danan

employs in this framing. For example, the Hebrew year “to creation” HASLAV 5336

(1576), which relates to the situation two years prior to the battle, is replaced by the

Hebrew word/code SHALVA (meaning “peace” and “serenity”), an anagram with an

allusion to a verse in Psalm 122: “peace-within-your-palaces,” reflecting some sense of

“I found written in a manuscript of the sage, the wholesome and the complete, his honor, the 33

holy, Harav Rabbi Shemuel, son of that righteous of our elders, the exemplary [muvhak] rabbi HADOM honor of the virtueous saint Harav rabbi Shaul Ibn Danan may his righteous memory be blessed, who came across a manuscript of our great elder, teacher and rabbi, the Maghribi light [ner haMa‘aravi] hadom, honor of the exalted holy, Harav rabbi Shemuel ibn Danan, may his virtue stand us and blessed be his memory.”

This anecdote is rather interesting as Sebastian himself emerged from the battle as a Portuguese 34

Messiah, becoming the core of a cult calling to restore Portuguese power and unity. See Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, The Ten Lost Tribes: a World History (Oxford, 2009), 176. The death (or disappearance) of the heirless young monarch Dom Sebastian in 1578, and the loss of political sovereignty of Portugal to Habsburg rule in 1580, led four impostors to claim, on different occasions, (in 1584, 1585, 1595, and 1598) that they were the legendary Sebastian. Stories about the Messiah who merely had gone into hiding, in penance for having lost the battle, but who would return to help Portugal in its darkest time, bore clear messianic overtones, a cultural phenomenon that was called Sebastianism. See also the first chapter of Mary Elizabeth Brooks, A King For Portugal: The Madrigal Conspiracy, 1594–95 (Madison and Milwaukee: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1964).

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security of Jewish life under Moroccan rule. Similarly, in the following sentence, which

resonates with Job 16:12, Ibn Danan relates, “[g]iven our many sins, the verse ‘I was at

peace but he hath broken me asunder,’ has occurred to us.” Only after he presents this

temporal locution does the author start with a more straightforward telling of the

story: “[when] Mulay ‘Abdelmalek, Glory-to-the-sultan, came from the Algerian cities

accompanied by a small battalion and some Turks.” 35

In addition to the invocation of biblical references, Ibn Danan points to some

concrete local historical precedent. “And I saw my lord my father Abba Mari,” writes

Ibn Danan, “crying on the eve of Passover as if it was the eve of the 9th of Av, lamenting

the destruction that took place in the medina of Marrakech.” The destruction of the

Jewish neighborhood of Marrakech was perceived and lamented through the lens of the

destruction of Jerusalem. This parallelism between Jewish time and Maghribi time, 36

which appears in Moroccan rabbinic literature throughout the early and modern

periods, is a clue to understanding the notion of two “historical pulses” mentioned in 37

the beginning of this essay.

The Ibn Danan text may be closer to the facts than was initially though by

modern scholars. Although it has been rarely mentioned in modern scholarship, aside

from the Ibn Danan text there was another “Jewish” text, a testimony from the

battlefield itself, that corroborates and testifies to the details propounded by Ibn

Danan. A special report made by the Jewish physician of Mulay ‘Abd al-Malik, the

reigning Moroccan sultan at the time of the battle, was preserved in the British

Archives (appearing in print first in 1903). A copy of the report, six and a half pages

long, was preserved in English, although, as the source indicates, it was “probably

translated from Italian.” The circumstances that brought about the report’s inclusion

and preservation in the Elizabethan records are seemingly connected to the English

expansion of international commercial activity at the time, as well as to the constant

His return to Morocco marked the beginning of a civil war between uncle and nephew that 35

lasted for some two years.

See ch. 4 “Réjouissances: 5538-‘Il a envoyé la délivrance a son peuple’,” in Lucette Valensi, Fables 36

de la mémoire: la glorieuse bataille des trois rois (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1992), 107–17, and especially her concept of “un double archétype” (109). The Ibn Danan text, according to Valensi, is characterized by motives and archetypes associated with “sacred history.”

This is not unique to Moroccan Jewish discourse, as Jews everywhere are always fitting present events 37

into biblical and traditional Jewish national theo-chronological frames.

conflict between the English, Spanish and Portuguese governments. “The copy of a

letter,” said the document, was “written from the camp of the King of Moroccos, Mullie

Molloque [Mulay ‘Abd al-Malik] by a Jew, physician to the said King; directed to his

brother.” As the Jewish historian Jacob Rader Marcus pointed out, the actions of the

Jewish physician who accompanied the sultan on the battlefield are “somewhat

confirmed by the statement of Danon.” Indeed, Ibn Danan writes: “[a]nd despite the 38

death of Mulay ‘Abd al-Malik, we did not know how he died. Some of his servants have

concealed the secret and said that he is still alive.” In the letter of the Jewish 39

physician we read:

This victory was much furthered by the lack of knowledge of the King’s

death, and we went with him further, with the banners and renegades

of his guard, halberds and pikemen and others; and only the son of

Mahomet Zarcon [Mohammed Zarqun, a Qaid from El Araich] and I, and

Mussalya [a Muslim] knew of his death, and we went on and made

them believe that the King’s pleasure was so, for every foot I would

light from my horse feigning to speak with him. And so our men began

to bring with them Christians, men and women, captives, and came

where the King was; and we made them believe that he was asleep, and

that neither we nor they should wake him. 40

Jacob Rader Marcus, “Notes on Sephardic Jewish History of the Sixteenth Century,” Hebrew Union 38

College jubilee volume, 1875–1925 (Cincinnati, 1925), 391. In this article Marcus transcribed the full text of the letter, along with few other documents concerning the “sociological presentation of Jewish life” as reflected in the economic activities of the New Christians in the late sixteenth century. Of course, by “Danon” Marcus is referring to Ibn Danan, of which his text he encountered in Toledano’s Ner ha-Ma’arav, (Jerusalem 1911), and not in Ahavat ha-Kadmonim.

As happened on a much larger scale with Dom Sebastian.39

Calendar of State Papers, Foreign series, of the reign of Elizabeth, Volume 13: 1578–1579, Edited by Arthur 40

John Butler (London: Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1903), 167. The English translation is loaded with mistakes, some of which derived from misapprehension of the original Spanish of the text. In the next decade, when the agents of the French Protectorate regime in Morocco were fully in power, the French official Henry de Castries (1850–1927) published the letter in Spanish (with elaborated footnotes in French), which may be the language it was originally written in. See document CXIX: “Lettre d’un médecin juif à son frère,” in Henry de Castries, Les sources inédites de l’histoire du Maroc Première série, Dynastie Saadienne Archives et Bibliothèques d'Angleterre, vol 3, pt. 1, series 1 (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1918), 312–21. Moroccan historian Mohammed Boukhalfa had published the letter in Arabic, at length (the translation was made by ‘Abd al-latif al khatib, the governor of Tetuan, who found it in the collection of Henri de Castries). According to Boukhalfa, “the tabib yahudi (Jewish physician) sent a report to his brother in Fez on the 16th of August 1578.” See Mohammed Boukhalfa, الطريق ملعرفة القصر الكبير (Tetuan, 1972), 78–79.

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Days of Joy and Days of Calamity

In 1896, seven years after Ahavat ha-Kadmonim was printed in Jerusalem, Saul Pinchas

Rabbinowicz, a Lithuanian Jewish historian, included the “Moroccan Purim” of 1578 in

a chronological glossary of fifty dates of commemoration marked in the Jewish

calendar (what he called “Y’mei asson ve-Y’mei sasson”, days of joy and days of

calamity) that were observed by Jewish communities “mostly in Germany but also in

Italy, North Africa, Asia and Poland.” Placed in between the dates of the Battle of 41

Copenhagen of 1807 and the Black Death in fourteenth-century Mainz, events that were

of great consequence to local Jewish communities in Denmark and Germany, the Jewish

Moroccan event is presented as follows:

2nd of Elul: a holiday to Moroccan Jews as they were saved from the

Spaniards [sic] that were besieging the city in the year 1570 [1578]. This

Purim is celebrated in Tetuan according to all the rules of Purim, and it is

called ‘Purim de los Cristianos’ [Purim of the Christians, in Spanish] and at

Tangier this day is called ‘Purim de las Bombas’ [Purim of the Bombs, in

Spanish]. 42

Publishing such a glossary in 1896 in a Hebrew Almanac in Poland bore a symbolic

meaning as Jews in Eastern Europe marked the 800th anniversary commemoration of

the Roman Catholic military expedition to the holy land, known as the “First Crusade.”

Thus, a political event that took place in the Maghrib was incorporated into the larger

trajectory of Jewish history at a time when such global schemes had already been

established by the critical activity of the nineteenth-century’s secular Wissenschaft des

Saul Pinchas Rabbinowicz, “Megilat Ta‘anit shel Galuyot” (Scroll of Fasts of Exiles), Almanac 41

Ahiasaf, Warsaw: 1896–7, 131–42. See also Bulletin Mensuel de l'Alliance Israélite Universelle, 1888, 113. The title is an allusion to Megillat Ta‘anit (“Scroll of Fasting”), a Pharisaic Aramaic chronicle dated to the first century CE which enumerates thirty-five eventful days commemorating glorious deeds or joyful events in the life of ancient Jews.

The mistake in the date of the event (1570 instead of 1578) in Almanac Ahiasaf had led Ya‘akov 42

Moshe Toledano to duplicate it in his Ner ha-Ma’arav (Jerusalem 1911), 92. Despite this mistake, the ambiguity around the nature of the event and its tradition (in the sentence “a celebration of Purim was ordained to the Jews of different cities... and especially Tetuan and its surroundings”) manifests a nineteenth-century awareness around the tradition of the 1578 battle. See the following section regarding the “Tanjawi texts.”

Judentums and Haskalah movement. The formation of these specific Judeo-Moroccan 43

traditions during the second half of the ninetieth century was shaped in dialogue with

the European discourse on calamities on the one hand and the Wissenschaft on the

other.

“Purim of the Bombas”: The Battle of Isly and the Tanjawi Texts

The name “Purim de los Cristianos,” which was used by northern-Moroccan Jews most

likely only since the nineteenth century, is indeed linked to the 1578 battle of al-Qsar

al-Kabir. However, what Saul Pinchas Rabbinowicz has called “Purim de las Bombas”

had nothing to do with the Jewish ritualization of the late sixteenth-century event but

rather to a recent event that took place in Tangier more than two and a half centuries

later, five decades before Rabbinowicz’s “Megilat Ta‘anit shel Galuyot” was published. In 44

the following section I would like to view the memory of the battle of 1578 and the

communal behavior which had emerged as a reaction to it through another watershed

battle that took place in 1844 on Moroccan land, the “Battle of Isly.” My sense of

“conscious anachronism” allows me to view the ways in which the Ibn Danan text may

have served as a prototype of sorts. In other words, it is only with the perception of the

latter event that one can fully understand the meaning ascribed to the “first” event in

The “Moroccan” Purim made it into later Jewish glossaries. In the middle of the twentieth 43

century, a prominent figure in the field of folklore in Israel, Yom Tov Lewinsky published a list of 90 “special Purims” throughout the Jewish world. See Lewinsky, Sefer ha-Mo‘adim: Parashat Mo‘adei Yisrael, ‘Erkam, Giluyeihem ve-Hashpa‘atam be-ḥaye ‘Am Yisrael uve-Sifruto mi-yeme Kedem ve-’ad ha-Yom ha-zeh (The Book of Festivals: The Tale of Jewish Holidays, their Values, Discoveries and Influence in the Life of the Jewish People and its Literature from Ancient Times to the Present), vol. 6 (Tel-Aviv: Agudat ‘Oneg Shabat’ a. y. Devir, 1956) 297-322. Interestingly, the last Purim on this list, chronologically speaking, was called “Purim Hitler,” which took place on 2 Kislev 5703/ November 11, 1942, in Casablanca, Morocco, when local Jews celebrated their relief in a synagogue only a few days after the Allies invaded Morocco on November 8, 1942. On Jewish Moroccan textual fashioning of those events, mostly in Judeo-Arabic, see the chapter “Qasidas, Haggada and Two Megillot from Morocco” in Michal Saraf, Megilat Hitler beTzefon Afrika (The Hitler Scroll of North Africa: Moroccan and Tunisian Jewish Literature on the Fall of The Nazis) (Lod: Habermann Institute For literary, 1988), 7–51. For a literary analysis, contextualization and translation of “Haggada de Hitler” see the recent article by Avishai Bar-Asher, “How Is This Night Different from the Night of Trente Neuf? The Haggadah of Hitler from Morrocco,” Pe’amim 114–15 (2008): 137-96 [Hebrew].

Note that by the late ninteenth century the event was celebrated as “a Moroccan event,” not 44

only by the Polish chronicler, but by Moroccan Jews themselves. Further, by that point, the battle and its commemoration had at least six, fairly “local” names: “Purim dos Portugueses,” “Purim de los Cristianos,” “Purim de Tanger,” “Purim de Sebastian,” “Purim Edom,” and “Purim of Elul”.

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the sixteenth century.

In the summer of 1844 the French navy attacked the coastal towns of Tangier

and Mogador and defeated the Moroccan army in a decisive battle near Isly River,

northeast of Oujda. Following the battle of Isly, European commercial penetration of

Morocco intensified, further weakening the already declining capacity of the makhzan

(Moroccan government) to rule. This battle has been crucial to the periodization of

what would be labeled the “precolonial” period in the history of Morocco. As for the 45

battle itself, what could have been seen as a minor incident in European history was

actually a major cataclysm on the local level. Much like the event of 1578, and in what

could be seen now as a pattern of communal behavior, the Jewish community of

Tangier established a special memorial day that was given the Spanish name “Purim de

las Bombas.” They also kept a scroll, dated to 1848–1849, narrating how the French

appeared at the port of Tangier on the seventh day of the Jewish month of Av.

Interestingly enough, around the same time another Hebrew scroll solely devoted to

the event of 1578, similar in length and style, appeared in Tangier. By the mid-46

nineteenth century these two scrolls were lumped together as “special Purim scrolls”

indicative of a particular northern-Moroccan Jewish culture, mainly that of Tangier

(hence I call them “Tanjawi texts”).

The popular name “Purim de los Cristianos” that was given to this celebratory

event reflects certain artillery and technological advantages that can be associated

See the chapter “Morocco and the West, 1860–1900” in Edmund Burke, Prelude to Protectorate in 45

Morocco: Precolonial Protest and Resistance, 1860–1912 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 19–40.

The two full Hebrew texts were first published in an academic forum in 1935. See M. Ginsburger, 46

“Deux pourims locaux,” Hebrew Union College Annual 10 (1935): 445–50. Later I will mention the circumstances which brought about this publication. A Spanish version of “Purim de los Cristianos” (of 1578) was made by Francisco Cantera Burgos, “El ‘Purim’ del Rey Don Sebastian,” Sefarad: Revista de estudios hebraicos, sefaríes y de Oriente próximo, vol. 6 (1945), 219–25. The text was also translated into Portuguese: José de Esaguy, O minuto vitorioso de Alcacer-Quibir: Batalha do Mohácen, 4 de Agôsto de 1578 (Lisbon: Divisão de Publicações e Biblioteca, Agência Geral das Colónias, 1944). A French translation of both scrolls was made by Abraham Issac Laredo, “Les Purim de Tanger” Hésperis 35 (Rabat: 1948): 193–203. Finally, an edited translation of the scroll of “Purim of the bombs” (of 1844) was included as an appendix in Susan Gilson Miller, “Crisis and Community: The People of Tangier and the French Bombardment of 1844,” Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 27, no. 4 (1991): 593–94. For the Hebrew text, see Appendix II.

with Napoleonic military campaigns in the decades prior to 1844 (“bombas”). The 47

Hebrew scroll of 1844 itself employs a mixture of terminologies pertaining to the new

warfare, on one hand, and the expressions found in biblical weeping prophecies on the

other: “Barely was this said when all of a sudden a great noise reached us, shaking and

breaking. A sound of fear in our ears. We heard huge stones from the furnaces of iron,

called bombas falling in front of our walls like sparks from a mad boiler, like sharp

arrows of death.” The usage of the Spanish term bombas (singular, bomba), which 48

appears in the scroll in Hebrew transliteration, suggests the localizing effects names

have had on the ways in which Jewish communities in Morocco were organized. Other

Hebrew descriptions of the battles of 1844 have employed different terminology. 49

Susan Gilson Miller, who studied the particularities of the 1844 bombardments

and its perception by local Moroccan civilians, points out that “the trauma it caused

was such that it was written about, sung about, and woven into local mythology and

lore.” These practices reflect a certain sense of historicity that is rooted in what she

It is possible to argue that the title “Purim of the Bombas” was nevertheless “borrowed” from 47

other events that occurred prior to 1844, and in Italy. According to Cecil Roth, who dedicated a detailed study to the annual festive “local celebrations” by Jews during the last decade of the eighteenth century, when the French revolutionary wars and its subsequent events affected Italy—“where the antiquity of the various communities, their long and chequered history, their keen historical sense, and their unique power of self-expression all combined to favour the institution” of a special Purim—two events occured that bear similar names. Thus, escaping a mob scene during the siege over Fossano on the forth day of Passover on April 26, 1796/18 Nisan 5556, Jews sought refuge in the local synagogue. A French shell that burst through the wall of the synagogue’s vestibule caused the assailants to run away, an escape seemed a direct act of God. A golden inscription in Hebrew in that synagogue proclaimed this event as נס של / Similarly, a “deliverance” took place a few years later, on 5 Kislev 5560 .(Miracle of the Bomb) הבומבאDecember 3, 1799 at Cuneo. While the city was besieged by the combined Austrian and Russian forces, a shell fell in the synagogue without exploding. The commemoration of this event became known as “Purim della Bomba”. See Cecil Roth, “Some Revolutionary Purims (1790–1801)”, Hebrew Union College Annual, vol. X (1935): 451–83.

An edited translation of the scroll of “Purim of the Bombs” was offered by Gilson Miller as an 48

appendix to her study of the event. See Susan Gilson Miller, “Crisis and Community: The People of Tangier and the French Bombardment of 1844,” Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 27, no. 4 (1991): 593-94. Compare with Jacob M. Toledano, “Hayehudim be-Tangier,” HUCA, vol. 8-9 (1931–1932), 490.

In a “printer’s introduction” to Berit Avot (Livorno, 1848), a collection of sermons and responsa 49

by Abraham Coriat (d. 1845), a kabbalist and dayyan from Essaouira, Eliyahu Benamozegh, a nineteenth-century Moroccan Livornese rabbi, scholar, and publisher, one can find reference to the bombardment of the port of Essaouira by the French in 1844, during which much of the literary corpus of Coriat was destroyed. Also, family ties played some role, as Benamozegh’s maternal uncle, Yehuda Coriat, was the father of Avraham Coriat. Another Hebrew source to the event was written by the Tetouani Rabbi Yosef Ben Adhan’s “memories,” a supplement to Shufraya deYossef (Alexandria, 1897).

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calls “local history.” Furthermore, claims Gilson Miller, this text exemplifies “the 50

traditional relationship between Jews and the Muslim authority.” The Jewish political

consciousness that emerges out of the 1844 scroll, she adds, is indicative of a pattern of

behavior that would become more visible later in the ninetieth century with Morocco’s

tumultuous confrontation with the European powers. Finally, she asserts that the

Purim scroll of 1844 “offers insight into the Jewish experience at the deeper psychic

level, suggesting how the crisis elicited a complex communal response having far-

reaching social implications.” While these arguments are fully substantiated in Gilson 51

Miller’s analysis, it is the implied contradiction between the “traditional relationship

between Jews and the Muslim authority,” and a presumably new pattern of communal

behavior that I would like to elaborate upon and call into question in this section.

The very metaphor of a pattern—behavioral or textual—may suggest some

connections between the Ibn Danan text and the two “new” scrolls. It is clear that both

of the Tanjawi (i.e., of Tangier) Purim scrolls related to the events of 1578 and 1844

were in circulation from the mid-nineteenth century onward. However, their

authorship and precise date remained questionable. This ambiguity may explain why

their direct or implied connections to the Fassi text of the Ibn Danan chronicle, which

was first available in print in Jerusalem in 1889 (in the liturgical form of Ahavat ha-

“Like most Moroccan cities, Tangier has its own body of written and oral tradition that makes 50

up the distinctive cultural apparatus of the community, reinforcing a strong sense of local identity... This feeling of distinctiveness is bound up with a particular historical consciousness, and is as much a quality of Jewish Tangier as it is of Muslim. Moreover, both groups traditionally shared certain attitudes toward local history, including an obsession with events as signs and symbols, a selective interest in historical ‘facts’, and an acute awareness of the immanence of God in the affairs of humankind.” Gilson Miller, “Crisis and Community,” 587.

Ibid., 588. 51

Kadmonim), was never addressed. While some observers have mistakenly regarded the 52

scroll related to 1578 as an authentic late sixteenth-century literary product, others 53

have focused on each of the scrolls separately, or have compared the two scrolls with

an implied assumption that they represent two distinct, but comparable historical

perceptions of Jews’ relation to time, space, and authority.

For example, Gilson Miller has compared the two textual representations of the

1578 and 1844 Purims as if they were products of different authors and perhaps even

different times, and not as two texts that may bear similar characteristics and

functionalities albeit related to different events. My reading of these scrolls seeks to 54

The question of authorship of the scrolls does not play any role in Gilson Miller’s analysis. 52

Regarding the 1844 scroll she notes: “The scroll is two pages long and its author is unnamed. Most Jewish families in Tangier possess a copy, often handwritten and ornamented.” Gilson Miller, “Crisis and Community,” 596. Similarly, previous scholars had paid attention to circulation but not to authorship. In an article from 1945 Burgos (“El ‘Purim’ del Rey Don Sebastian,” 221) noted that as of 1937 it is rare to find any given Jewish family in Tangier who does not have a copy of the 1578 scroll (“que en 1937 comprobó que es rara la familia israelita de Tánger que no posea una copia de tal documento para celebrar todos los años el ‘Purim de Sebastian’”). Writing in Portuguese, José de Esaguy testified that “[the] méguilá [can be found]... in sinagogas de Ceuta.” In his analysis of the period, Hirschberg mentions the bombardments of Tangier and Mogador, and adds, “Of course great suffering was also caused to its Jewish inhabitants. In memory of their miraculous escape, the Jews of Tangiers... introduced a ‘Purim’ to be observed on the 21st of Ab.” However, there is no mention of the scrolls. See Hirschberg, A History of the Jews in North Africa, vol. 2 (Leiden, Brill, 1981), 305.

In a discussion about the “invention of tradition” of local Purims among the Mediterranean 53

Jewish communities during the sixteenth century, Elliott Horowitz wrote: “[a]fter Sebastian was defeated and killed in the ‘Battle of the Tree Kings’ at Alcazaequebir, a local Purim [...] was observed on the first of Ellul. On this occasion a specially written scroll was also read, as was customary in Cairo.” In addition, added Horowitz in a footnote, “for the Hebrew text of the scroll” one should go to M. Ginsburger’s article “Deux pourims locaux” (see below). It seems to me that the existence of a special Judeo-Arabic scroll in Cairo, Megillat pūrīm il-miṣriyyīn, around 1524, has led Horowitz to assume that similar text was written and used in Morocco around 1578. However, as I hope to show here, there is no evidence of a written scroll in Morocco before the middle of the nineteenth century. See Elliott Horowitz, Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence (Princeton University Press, 2006), 305–6. Similarly, Lucette Valensi writes about a material object that was apparently in communal circulation for many generations (“ce ‘rouleau’ qui rapportait l’histoire et que l’on se passa de main en main au fil des generations”). Although theoretically her distinction between the scarcity of the Ibn Danan chronicle and the availability of what she calls “la megillah du Pûrîm” is valid―given the different textual genres―such scroll was apparently in use only over two and a half centuries after the event of 1578. See Valensi, Fables de la mémoire: la glorieuse bataille des trios rois (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1992), 115.

Gilson Miller, “Crisis and Community,” 589-590. According to her, the singularity of the 1844 54

scroll stands out for several reasons, which can be summarized as follows: (1) The paradigm of the biblical Purim: the 1844 text does not mention a villain, a reflection of the ambivalence toward the French as both rescuers and oppressors; (2) Authority: unlike in the 1578 scroll, the role of Jewish community leaders is obscured; (3) Language: the sultan is called Adonenu hu Malkenu (our Lord, our King) and Morocco—Artzenu (our country); (4) Historicity: the bombardments are detached from any context—temporal and spatial; the event takes the shape of a religious ritual.

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entertain a few other possibilities to explain the relationship between them. I agree

with Gilson Miller that the particular socio-textual elements are understandable given

the proximity in time and space to events that were a reality for the author of the

supposedly later scroll. But is it possible that both scrolls were written by the same

author (or at least the same circle), and, accordingly, there are no “earlier” and “later”

scrolls? What kind of story, other than the one about “a complex communal response”

to political crisis, might they tell about the emergence and circulation of local

traditions in the nineteenth century? Were the author(s) of those mid-nineteenth

century scrolls aware of the traditional commemoration day of the battle of al-Qsar al-

Kabir not only through oral transmission but from the chronicle of Ibn Danan which

was made public only later that century in Ahavat ha-Kadmonim?

As stated, the authorship and precise date of these Purim scrolls remained

questionable. However, a close reading of them makes it safe to assume that both texts

were written around the same time and most likely by the same author (or at least

within the same circle). Moreover, since the authorship of the 1844 account can be

related to one of the known communal figures of Tangier at the time, Moshe Bengio, a

rabbi and dayyan in Tangier from 1833 to 1853, it is possible that both Purim scrolls

which relate to the events of 1578 and 1844, were written by him. Nevertheless, we 55

know only the names of the scribes who seem to have copied these scrolls from an

older source written closer to the event of 1844. Thus, in the late nineteenth century

these texts were copied by Moïse Toledano, “a teacher in Tangier,” and later

Both scrolls contain many biblical quotations, certainly showing a learned basis.

However, in the text of 1578 the Spanish word for Baptism (Bautismo), referring to the

fear of a mass forced conversion by Dom Sebastian of Portugal, is transliterated into

Hebrew letters, as it would have been pronounced in Haketia, the spoken language of

Jews in Northern Morocco, with a zayin as if it were a “z.” Someone familiar with

standardized Spanish pronunciation would have used the letter samekh as it should be

pronounced like an “s,” although the verb is bautizar. This idea might allow for Bengio,

Moshe Bengio, who had succeeded his father-in-law, Chief Rabbi Abraham Toledano when the 55

community was reestablished, spent much time in forming the institutions of the reestablished community. See M. Mitchell Serels, A History of the Jews of Tangier in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (New York: Sepher-Hermon Press, 1991), 7, 265. See Jacob M. Toledano, “Hayehudim be-Tangier,” HUCA, vol. 8-9 (1931–1932), 491, where the name Rabbi Moshe Bengio is mentioned. Burgos (“El ‘Purim’ del Rey Don Sebastian,” 221) also mentions the name Bengio; his translation (of the 1578 text) is based on a “copia que dice pertenecer a la familia Aarón Begió.”

or even possibly Toledano, to be the author of this scroll too, as some of the older

megurashim families from the imperial cities still spoke Judeo-Spanish. 56

Abraham Issac Laredo (1895–1969), an active member of many communal

organizations in Tangier and a frequent contributor of articles about Jewish issues, who

in 1948 translated the scrolls into French for the professional Moroccan periodical

Hésperis, testified that all the synagogues of Tangier possess “un phylactère de

parchemin,” a (single) scroll of parchment on which the two scrolls were written.

These texts, he added, were recited publicly in the synagogue by the prayer leader

during the morning service of each of these Purim days, on Av and Elul. In other 57

words, they filled the same liturgical and communal function. Furthermore, a closer

reading of the texts shows some indication that they come from the same author. The

most interesting example is usage of the exact Hebrew phrase borniyot gedolot to denote

the greatness of both the French Naval force, and Dom Sebastian’s army. This phrase 58

is very uncommon, and its repeated appearance in both scrolls may shed light on the

texts’ authorship.

Regarding the threat of a forced mass conversion by Dom Sebastian of Portugal,

mentioned above, the most important historical anecdote that the Tanjawi text adds to

the story of Ibn Danan is this: Don Sebastian, the Tanjawi scroll relates, had intended to

either baptize all the Jews who were “sitting in the Maghrib,” or kill those who would

Abraham Moise Tanji of Tetuan keeps the zayin transliteration. I thank Mitchell Serels for his 56

valuable help on this point about transliteration and for providing me information about Abraham Moise Tanji.

It is not uncommon, Laredo added, to find copies of these scrolls in the hands of some of the old 57

families of the city: “A Tanger, toutes les synagogues possèdent un phylactère de parchemin sur lequel sont écrites ces deux meghilla-s. Chacune d'elles est donc lue le jour du purim qui lui correspond. L’officiant doit faire la lecture en public, pendant la prière du matin. il n'est pas rare de trouver des copies de ces meghilla-s chez les vieilles familles de la ville.” Abraham Issac Laredo, “Les Purim de Tanger” Hésperis 35 (Rabat: 1948): 203. His article featured pictures of the two texts written by the same scribe. Other printed facsimiles of the manuscript can be found in Lucette Marques Toledano, “Deux Purim marocains,” in Sarah Leibovici, ed., Mosaïques de notre mémoire: Les judéo-espagnols du Maroc (Paris : U.I.S.F., Centre Don Isaac Abravanel: 1982) 67–84.

The terms borni and borniyot appear twice in the Babylonian Talmud (for example, Trac. Rosh 58

Hashanah 23a) in reference to “a gallant ship” which Rav defined as “this is a large borni.”In his commentary, based on the Old French, Rashi invokes the word dromont, a large medieval warship. These terms are most likely a Hebrew rendering of liburnian or liburna, a type of standard battle ship that was used by the Roman navy. The medieval lexicographer Nathan ben Jehiel of Rome, a contemporary of Rashi and the author of Sefer ha‘Aruch, arrived at similar definitions. See Alexander Kohut, Aruch Completum, vol. 2, (Vienna, 1890), 195. See also Jeremie Helpern, Teḥiyat haYamaut ha‘Ivrit (la renaissance de la marine juive) (Tel Aviv: Hadar, 1960), 22. 

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refuse to convert. The Jews of Morocco, the text states, were forewarned by “two

Marranos that had arrived with the Portuguese army” about this plan. This anecdote 59

conveys a valuable “Judeo-Iberian” perspective of the battle that is nevertheless 60

missing from the Ibn Danan text. Since the story taken from the chronicle of Ibn Danan

was preserved and later printed in a liturgical book of the Toshavim (Hebrew term for

“settlers” or “natives”), Fassi Jews who did not originate in Spain or Portugal, to whom

the adjective Kadmonim (Hebrew for “ancient”) in the title of the prayer book is

attributed, one can see two distinctive traditions at play. 61

Similarly, decoding the acronym of the Hebrew dates in both texts—of Ibn

Danan and the scroll—suffices to reveal and explain the different perspectives they

bring. While the Ibn Danan text indicates the year 5338 by the Hebrew code HASLAV,

the author of the later scroll turns this date into a Hebrew verb embedded in a phrase

based on Psalms 111: “The year [in which] He has sent redemption unto his people.”

From a later perspective the “victory” over Sebastian could not have been but a story of

a past event whose results were already known. Furthermore, this victory is presented

as a Jewish victory over the Christian ruler on Moroccan land (or “lands”). While the 62

1578 story in Ibn Danan chronicle places the Jews of Fez as a marginal group, a detail in

a much larger geopolitical scheme (represented by the “three kings”), the scroll tells a

Yerushalmi (Zakhor, 47) briefly mentions this rather peculiar detail, and adds “just as had been 59

done to the whole of Portuguese Jewry in 1497.”

The “Judeo-Iberian” perspective of the battle requires further investigation. In his work on 60

Marrano history and literature, the nineteenth-century German historian and rabbi Meyer Kayserling claimed that Don Sebastian had financed his campaign against the infidels in Morocco largely with money taken from the “geheimen juden” (the so-called “Marranos” or “Conversos”) who lived in Portugal. In exchange for protecting their property from being confiscated by the inquisition and the right to emigrate, Dom Sebastian had extracted 225,000 ducats from those Jews. See Meyer Kayserling, Geschichte der Juden in Spanien und Portugal (Berlin: J. Springer, 1867), 159. E W Bovill wrote that it was the Moriscos (Spanish Muslims who were forced to convert to Christianity) who paid this amount: “the Moriscoes were allowed to purchase for 225,000 ducats freedom from confiscation of goods as punishment for sinning against the inquisition,” however, the substantial cost of arms and equipment, he added, “were to be financed by borrowing from the Jews against an undertaking to repay in three years’ time with 92,000 quintals of pepper.” See E. W. Bovill, The Battle of Alcazar: An Account of the Defeat of Don Sebastian of Portugal at El-Ksar el-Kebir (London: Batchworth Press, 1952), 62 and 66.

Mitchell Serels has called the Purim of 1578 a “uniquely Tangierian Jewish celebration.” See 61

Serels, A History of the Jews of Tangier in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, 12.

Both the chronicle and the scroll refer to Morocco in plural, “artzot haMaghrib” (the lands of the 62

Maghrib), invoking most likely the Arabic form of اراضي املغرب which was common in Moroccan Muslim historiography.

story of “a miracle” that befalls all the Jews of Morocco. The Purim of Ibn Danan—of the

Fassi community and Ahavat ha-Kadmonim—is a celebration of a Moroccan victory over

external threat, of Islam over Christianity (Nekama be-Edom). On the other hand, the

Purim of the Tanjawi text tells a story of a Jewish victory over Christianity that

happened to have taken place in a Muslim land (“in the land of their enemies,” based

on Leviticus 26:44). Theologically, it tells a story of a redemptive God who did not reject

his people and did not violate his covenant with them.

The text of Ibn Danan is not only a primary document of Moroccan Jewish

memory but also of “general” Moroccan history, and perhaps even colonial history.

Although there is no known Arabic contemporary account of the battle, it was recited, 63

memorized, and repeated in poetry of celebration, an important Maghribi medium for

disseminating information about the nasara (Christians), where. A key figure in this

written genre of poetry was Ahmad Ibn al-Qadi (1553–1616), a prominent writer at the

time of the new ruler Mulay Ahmad al-Mansur. Al-Qadi, who became intimately

acquainted with Ahmad al-Mansur, was himself captured in 1586 by Christian pirates,

but was ransomed by his master after eleven months. In gratitude, al-Qadi dedicated all

his works to his royal benefactor. His long poem about the battle of Wadi al-Makhazin

provided the immediate listeners, as well as future generations of readers, with details

about the course of battles, the causalities, the tactics, and finally, the glorious

ascendancy of the Muslim warrior. Eventually, this poem, along with numerous other

poems written in the court of al-Mansur, became the basis for the construction of

national Moroccan memory. In terms of Maghribi historiography, a chapter about the 64

battle of Wadi al-Makhazin is included in the most important source for the history of

the first of the Sharifan dynasties of Morocco, the chronicle of the Sa‘adi sultans of

Morocco, Nuzhat al-ḥādī bi-akhbār mulūk al-qarn al-ḥādī (1724) by Moroccan historian

and biographer Mohammed Al-Ifrani (1670–1745). 65

European observations (mainly from the Peninsula) were also limited. See “Note on the 63

Contemporary Account of the Battle of Alcazar,” in Bovill, The Battle of Alcazar, 187–88.

On al-Qadi see Nabil Matar, Europe Through Arab Eyes, 1578–1727 (New York: Columbia University 64

Press, 2008), 3–28, 47–51. There might be a Portugese equivalent to this, the epic Os Lusíadas (the Luisads, first published in 1572) by Luís Vaz de Camões (c. 1524–1580). Eventually, poems written in the court of al-Mansur became the bases for the construction of national Moroccan memory just as Camões’s poetry became for Portugal.

I consulted the French translation: Nozhet-Elhâdi: Histoire de la dynastie saadienne au Maroc (1151–65

1610), (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1888), 131–39.

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The memory of Wadi al-Makhazin was carried well into post-independence

Morocco (since 1956). Major public sites like streets and squares virtually all over the

state were given the name “Wadi al-Makhazin.” As the Moroccan postcolonial era was

shaped by policies of nation-building, the government has allocated the 4th of August

as one of its official “national memorial days” (الذكريات الوطنية), the only one among a list

of 26 days that refers to an event that did not take place in the twentieth century (also

labeled “Commémoration de la Bataille d’Oued El Makhazen à Ksar Kbir, 4 aout,” in French).

The Borj-Nord Museum of Moroccan weaponry in Fez, housed in a fortress tower built

in 1582 by Ahmad al-Mansur, exhibits a massive 12-ton cannon that was used during

the 1578 battle, employing complimentary narratives of technological advantages and

Muslim victory. In 2008 a cornerstone for a new special museum in the city of al-Qsar

al-Kabir was laid in accordance with the 430th anniversary of the battle. The museum

named Museum of Resistance and of the Army of Liberation (متحف املقاومة وجيش التحري)

was inaugurated in 2011. As the history of early modern Morocco has often been

viewed through the lens of postcolonial national pride, public statements made by

officials asserted the historical importance of the battle for the protection of Islam, the

sacred religion, and the reinforcement of the Moroccan kingdom and its ability to

obliterate the interests of colonial invasive ambitions.

This chapter of Moroccan national history was not lost on Jews of postcolonial

Morocco. A popular Judeo-Arabic history book printed in Casablanca in 1953, History of

the Jews of Morocco in Arabic, includes a short description of the battle, without any 66

mentioning of the special Purim. The “Jewish” component of the battle, however,

appears to be the “benevolent treatment” of Portuguese captives by Jews, a narrative

Isaac D. Abbou, Hisṭoryah del-Yahud del-Maroḳ bil-‘Arabiya (Casablanca: Yehudah Razon, 1953). The 66

book is an adaptation of the third part of a book in French by Isaac D. Abbou (1896–1961), a community leader in Casablanca, Musulmans andalous et judéo-espagnols (Casablanca: Antar, 1953). The explanation for a popular history book being translated into Judeo-Arabic, and information about its readership, is given by the translator H. Nahmany in the introduction (p. 7): “[w]hen we read this book and understand it thoroughly, it appears to us that we need to make sure that whoever is Jewish will read [this book], will understand [it] and teach it to his children. And when we saw too many of our brothers, the HAMON like us, of the cities and VILLAGES, that are not able to afford [books], or can not read and understand it but in Arabic, the language they spaek and understand intellectually. It is our DUTY of course to ask for PERMISSION from Monsieur Yishak D. Abbu, and we translated this book from French to Arabic.”

invocation of Immanuel Aboab’s Nomologia. In 1978, on the fourth centennial 67

anniversary of the battle, the Casablanca-based Conseil des Communautés Israélites du

Maroc sent out letters to all the synagogues in the country, calling them, exceptionally,

to include the Jewish event in the civic calendar by celebrating the special Purim on

August 4th and 5th. Written in both Arabic and French, the letter, which contained a

narrative of the 1578 event was meant to be read in the synagogues. 68

Returning the subject to the realm of rabbinic texts, the Jewish memory of the

“Battle of al-Qsar al-Kabir” further shows the historicity of rabbinic texts in the

Maghreb and also demonstrates how their authors were in dialogue with their cultural

environment. As we have seen, the Hebrew texts around an event which was organized

along the lines of a Muslim-Christian axis had shifted with time and communal needs.

And so, the complications introduced into the story by the history of Iberian Jewry

across the Gibraltar “convert” the Muslim side almost seamlessly into a Jewish side.

Furthermore, the fact that a scroll appears in the nineteenth century together with

another scroll relating to a more recent event tells us more about how Jewish memory

works: not only did the nineteenth-century nes “remind” people of the sixteenth-

century one, it also “reinforced” its validity, perhaps suggesting a pattern of a “cosmic”

divine plan playing out through nissim in the region in a longue durée style, and thereby

adding a Jewish mystical dimension to the “this-worldly” Moroccan history.

The phrase “les captifs et les traitèrent avec bienveillance,” is taken from French (p. 300), a 67

reference to Jornada de Africa (Lisbon, 1607), an account written by Jeronimo de Mendoça, a Portuguese chronicler who was himself a captive in Morocco. Jeronimo de Mendoça described the Portuguese prisoners who were sent to the Mellah, writing that they were the luckiest of all the hostages because they were so well treated by the Jews, who “mourned a thousand times their banishment from Spain.” See García-Arenal, Ahmad al-Mansur, 71.

This point is mentioned by Lucette Valensi, Fables de la mémoire: la glorieuse bataille des trois rois 68

(Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1992), 113–14.

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