The Jews of Islam by Lewis Bernard

Author:Lewis, Bernard
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2014-09-22T04:00:00+00:00

FOUR

The End of the Tradition

IN NOVEMBER 1806 James Green, Esq., His Britannic Majesty’s consul general “in all the dominions of the Emperor of Morocco,” undertook an unusual demarche. At the request of a number of Jews in Gibraltar, subjects of His Britannic Majesty, he had asked the sultan “to annul certain order, said to be by his Imperial Majesty made, prohibiting all persons professing the Hebrew religion in general from appearing in any of his dominions wearing the European dress.” Mr. Green reported that he had obtained an audience from the sultan, who “was pleased to declare that he annulled that order.” The Gibraltarian Jews, anxious for a Moroccan as well as a British record of this annulment, sought an assurance from Mr. Green “to state whether such declaration of His Imperial Majesty is already published in his dominions, and whether we are now permitted to appear there with our usual dress, it being of much importance to us, who find ourselves occasionally under the necessity of going there on matters of Trade.”1

The episode is significant in a number of respects. The Rock of Gibraltar had been in British possession since 1704, and despite a treaty commitment demanded of Britain by Spain not to permit “Jews or Moors” to establish themselves on the rock, the British authorities had winked at the establishment and development of a sizable Jewish community. Indeed, by the end of the eighteenth century Jews formed a major if not preponderant element of the civil population.2 The great majority of these Jews had come from the neighboring kingdom of Morocco, where most of them still had family and business connections on which they depended for their livelihood. British Jews did not achieve full civil emancipation until the nineteenth century, but already in the eighteenth century Jews who were natural-born British subjects enjoyed substantial civil and human rights, among them the protection of His Majesty’s representatives when traveling abroad.

The Moroccan authorities took a somewhat different view. In accordance with a practice followed by some Muslim states, they regarded treaties with Christian governments as applying only to the Christian subjects of those governments. Jews, irrespective of their political allegiance, were just Jews, and when Jews from foreign lands entered the Muslim domains they were regarded not as musta’min, enjoying the privileges attached to that status, but as dhimmis, subject to the restrictions that term conveyed. In their own eyes and in those of the British authorities, the Jews of Gibraltar were British subjects, and it was normal for them to wear the same clothes as the rest of their compatriots. In the eyes of the sultan and his officers, they were Jews, and it was improper for them to wear anything but the distinguishing garb assigned to that status. At some point, presumably because of the intrusion of foreign Jews wearing European clothes to save themselves from the vexations to which they would otherwise have been exposed, the sultan apparently found it necessary to promulgate specific rules to this effect.

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