Mellah: The Jews Quarter at the Medinas of Morocco. A New Interpretation of the Minority's Space in The Islamic City

Abstract

Mellah, in Morocco, is the walled quarter of some cities where the Jewish minority was forced to live in a dominant Muslim context even though they had religious freedom and quite autonomy. From different origins and with various features, all of them were isolated from the city, but they recreated the same urban structure. They showed the exercise of power in the pre-colonial Morocco; each new dynasty created an exclusive neighbourhood for Jews, minority dhimmi, according to the Islamic law, which was under the protection of the Sultan. Life in the mellah (cannot be compared to the European ghetto), leaded a specific Judeo-Moroccan identity, as much as his complex relationship with the Muslim community in the Medina. Both spaces constitute a single structure of coexistence, manifestations, not so different, of the same story that affected, in different ways, to both communities. The concept of Islamic city was forged by the French orientalists of Alger, who under the colonial spirit, defended that its "urban disorder" was a result of social disorganization; mellah segregation would be one more effect. In this preconceived and simplistic scheme, minority communities are marginal exceptions to the "true essence" of the Muslim city. The following scholars although considering each city in its context, and recognizing the differences in societies of which they were composed, rarely watched the interaction and influence among mellah and medina. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.