Huge Archive of Almost Two Thousand Commercial and Legal Documents – Assaraf Family of Fez – Late 19th and Early ...

Huge Archive of Almost Two Thousand Commercial and Legal Documents – Assaraf Family of Fez – Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries – Important Source of Information on the History of Fez Jewry
Huge archive of about 1900 commercial and legal documents, from the collection of the Assaraf family in Fez, Morocco. Late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Assaraf family of Fez was one of the most prominent Moroccan-Jewish families, due to their wealth, their ties with the government and the influence they yielded. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the family supplied food and other items, such as fabric and tools, to Berber tribes who were isolated from the large Moroccan cities. The transactions executed by the family members were authorized by the Sharia (Islamic law) courts, in accordance with the law at that time.
The present impressive collection comprises authorizations, documents and certificates, of transactions made by three generations of the Assaraf family, beginning in the mid-19th century and up to the 1920s. These documents were preserved in the family archive.
These documents and certificates were written for the most part by the Sharia court in Fez, and are written entirely in Arabic, with the calligraphic signatures of the judges in the Islamic court. The documents provide many facts, and include sale and purchase contracts of property in the mellah (Jewish quarter) of Fez, with data regarding the Jewish residents of the city, alongside much information on the mercantile activities of the Assaraf family, shedding light on the economic state of the city, the relations between the Jews and the Muslims in Fez, and more.
The documents and certificates were accordion-folded for safekeeping, and a brief summary of the content of the document is noted on the outside in Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic (Hebrew characters, Western script).
Historian Jessica Marglin based her doctorate thesis on the present collection (J.M. Marglin, In the courts of the nations: Jews, Muslims, and legal pluralism in nineteenth-century Morocco, Princeton University, 2013; later published as a book: J.M. Marglin, Across Legal Lines: Jews and Muslims in Modern Morocco, Yale University Press, 2016). See also a review of documents in this collection in an article by Prof. Yehoshua Frenkel, Commercial and Judicial Documents from the Assaraf Archives in Fez: A New Historical Source for the Jewish History in Fez at the End of the XIXth and the Beginning of the XXth Centuries, Miqqedem Umiyyam IX, pp. 77-92.
Approx. 1900 paper documents. Size varies. Overall good condition.