The economic and political interests of western colonial powers shaped the
evolution of Jews' legal status in Muslim lands.
By Eli Barnavi
The emancipation of Jews who resided in Muslim lands
differed in pace, process, and product from the emancipation of their
coreligionists in Western Europe. These differences are all the more
fascinating in light of the fact that the Western European nations directly
influenced Jewish emancipation in the Muslim lands. The following article, which
describes the process by which western and eastern spheres of influence
collided over the question of Jewish citizenship in the Ottoman Empire,
Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria, is reprinted with permission from Eli Barnavi's A
Historical Atlas of the Jewish People, published by Schocken Books.
The change in the legal status of Jews in Muslim countries
was part of a general process of westernization that took place in these
societies between the end of theeighteenth
century and World War I. Basically, this meant the revocation of the Pact of
Omar--the series of regulations applied to the dhimmis (protected Christians and Jews) from the days of the first
caliphs (religious and civic rulers of the Muslim world who claimed succession
from Muhammad). Indeed, the advent of European-influenced reform, which left
its mark on all countries in the Middle East and North Africa (except Yemen and
Iran), brought with it considerable improvement in the social and political
status of the Jews throughout the Muslim world.
The western powers' concern with minorities--including Jews,
Christians, and Greeks--in the Islamic countries was not simply humanitarian in
nature. Dealing with these minorities conveniently served as a means of
intervention and control in regions of great strategic and economic importance.
For example, Sultan Abd Al-Majod's proclamation of two important decrees, the Hatt-i-Sherif (1839) and the Hatt-i-Humayun (1856), which inaugurated
a whole series of measures granting equal rights for all communities in the
Ottoman Empire, were issued as a concession to European pressure.
Emancipation in Tunisia was precipitated by the Batto Sfez
affair, which concerned a Jewish coach-driver executed in 1856 for having
blasphemed Islam. Scandalized, Jews and Europeans in Tunisia sent a delegation
to Napoleon III requesting his protection. The emperor responded immediately:
he sent a squadron and ordered the commanding officer to instruct the bey (the
provincial governor) to implement the principles of the Hatt-i-Humayun. On September 9, 1857, the "Pacte
Fondemental" proclaimed equal rights to all Tunisian subjects, freedom of
religion, and the abolition of the jizya,
the humiliating poll tax imposed on all the dhimmis.
The Muslim masses, however, regarded the pact as further evidence of
capitulation to the Christian west, and an insurrection of tribes ensued. While
the revolt resulted in a suspension of the pact, it also led to increased
European pressure to stabilize the region and ultimately to the establishment
of the French Protectorate in Tunisia in 1881.
In Morocco, the situation was even worse. The reigns of
Mulay Abd al-Rahman (1822- 1859) and his successors were marked by the pressure
of the Christian powers, and by increased Jewish involvement in the economic
and diplomatic spheres. As a result, Moroccan hostility toward the Jews
increased. During the Spanish-Moroccan War of 1860, anti-Jewish riots took
place in several towns. Prohibitive measures even more severe than restrictions
of Muslim law were imposed upon the Jewish populace in the interior. Although
Mulay Muhammed IV, in response to a plea from Sir Moses Montefiore, promulgated
a dahir (royal decree) granting the
Jews equal rights in 1864, there was no significant change in their status,
which continued to be determined by the Covenant of Omar. The royal decree was
ignored by local magistrates and pashas who accused the Jews as being agents of
European influence. As the date of the imposition of the French Protectorate
approached (1912), attacks on Jewish communities intensified.
The Jews in all Muslim lands, caught in the vicious cycle of
pervasive European influence and the rise of hostility against it, had no
alternative but to seek the protection of the western powers. Therefore, the
emancipation of these communities was entirely different from the process in
Europe. Rather than aspire to citizenship and integration with the local
society, the "Jews of Islam" measured their social success and
emancipation by the distance placed between themselves and the native
population.
From this point of view, Algeria constitutes a perfect
model. Forty years after the conquest, the Cremieux Decree (1870) granted the
Jews of Algeria French citizenship with all its rights and obligations. Thus,
with the stroke of a pen, France erased their previous humiliating status as dhimmis, elevating the Jews of Algeria
to the status of European colonists, and completely distinguishing them from
their Muslim neighbors, who remained simple "subjects."
Eli Barnavi is the
Director of the Morris Curiel Center for International Studies and a Professor
of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University. This article is reprinted with
permission from A
Historical Atlas of the Jewish People edited by Eli Barnavi and published by Schocken Books. © 1992 by
Hachette Litterature.
