The Heroine from the Harem – and Jewish Dhimmitude in Old Barbary

My latest dip into historical archives turns up this not uninteresting little item from the London Voice of Jacob (24 June 1842). It tells of a stubbornly Christian captive rescued from Muslim slave traders by two Jews. If only the Coptic girls of the present day, seized from their families and forced to convert to Islam, could be rescued from their living nightmare the way the trafficked (and uncommonly lucky) Christian girl in this report – probably captured somewhere along the Mediterranean coast by Barbary corsairs, who took innumerable Europeans (and Americans) into captivity and enslavement over the centuries – was rescued from hers:

"According to private communications ... from Alexandria [is] a curious fact concerning two Jews, Messrs. T. Sonino and Guiseppus di L. Marpurgo [sic; Guiseppe di L. Morpurgo?], of Trieste, who succeeded whilst travelling near the mouth of a channel of the Nile, called Mahmudin, in releasing, though not without endangering their own lives, a Christian female slave from Turkish captivity. She had been conveyed, some time previously, into the harem of a powerful dignatory of Constantinople, who out of revenge, because she persisted in remaining faithful to her belief, sent her to Alexandria, to have her sold there as a slave.

Under the pretext of a walk, she was brought to Mahmudin, to be embarked for Cairo; she, however, resisted vigorously, and attracted by her cries, the above gentlemen, among many other persons, came to the spot; recognising that the person so ill-used was a Christian, they interfered, without being deterred by the imminent danger to which they exposed their lives, and a great crowd of fanatical Arabs having gathered round them, and having succeeded in releasing the heroic girl, they brought her to Alexandria, where the Russian vice-consul took her under his protection, and thus put a stop to all further persecution [of her]."

And here’s a report from the same newspaper (28 March 1845), concerning the degraded dhimmi Jews of the Barbary States; it’s actually an extract from Notes on North Africa, the Sahara and Soudan (New York, 1844) by William Brown Hodgson, formerly US Consul in Tunis:

"Jews are numerous in all the villages of Biscara and the Wadreng. They enjoy an efficient protection among the Berber tribes in all the wide regions of Algiers and Morocco. This is afforded by a system of individual relationship, which may be compared to that of patron and client. Every Jew has his particular Sidi, patron or magister, who is responsible for his acts, and to whom he looks for counsel and protection. The defence of his Jewish dependant is a point of honour with the free Amazirgh, or Numidian; and he will protect him from injury or aggression at the risk of his life. Such is the patronal relation of the Israelites among the Scbelechs [sic] or Berbers of Morocco, where their numbers are estimated at half a million. The Arabs do not yield to them this protection. Deprived of civil rights in Barbary, the social condition of the Jews merits investigation."