Solica Hatchouel, Jewish Martyr In Old Morocco

On her tomb in Fez, Morocco, beneath an elaborate Hebrew inscription, there is an epitaph in French for the martyred Mademoiselle Hatchouel (1817-34).  Her forename appears as Solica, although it appears in some sources in briefer form as Sol ("sunshine").

Frederick David Mocatta (1825-1905), scion of a prominent Sephardi family of bullion brokers whose members were at the heart of Jewish communal leadership in England, was told her story in detail in 1858 when he was visiting Morocco.

In the course of a letter written that July, which was published over two issues of the Jewish Chronicle  (7 and 13 August), he rather inexplicably gives her forename as Luna ("moon").

Here's what he wrote about her (13 August 1858), with no further comment from me:

'In the year 1834 there resided in Tangier a Jewish family named Hatchuel [sic], the eldest daughter of which was a lovely girl of 16.  Her mother was a woman of violent temper, and poor Luna (for such was our heroine's name) led a very unhappy life. One day when Luna had received more harsh words from her mother than she could bear, she sought refuge and advice from an old Moorish nurse who lived near, and the woman begged her to abjure her faith, embrace Mohammedanism, and thus separate herself from her shrewish mother for ever.

Long and earnestly poor Luna refused to listen to her adviser, till at last the Moorish woman, incensed at her obstinate firmness, closed the doors on her victim, and rushed into the presence of the cadi (judge) stating that a Hebrew maiden had voluntarily embraced Islamism, but was now endeavouring to relapse into Judaism, and abjure her new faith, and that no fear of punishment could ever induce her to do so.

Still the Moorish woman kept firm to her declaration, and as the oath of a Moslem is thought in that country of far more value than that of a Jew, her testimony prevailed, and poor Luna was sentenced either to embrace the Mussulman faith, or to be taken before the Imam (high priest) of Fez, for trial before the religious court of the capital.  Thus, by a painful journey of many days the unfortunate maiden was carried to Fez, and there brought before the Imam, who, after a solemn trial, condemned her to death, unless within a stated time she would abjure the religion of her fathers.

During the trial it chanced that one of the sons of the Sultan [of Morocco] caught sight of the fair Jewess, and struck by her great beauty, artless youth, and her unhappy position, he resolved to save her at all costs, to acquire the Hebrew maiden for his harem.  Thus, therefore, he represented the case in glowing terms to his father and begged him to grant a pardon; but the Emperor replied that absolute Sultan as he was, he still was powerless to revoke the edicts of the religious judge, and that unless the maiden would recant her faith the law must take its course.

In despair, this prince entreated Luna to embrace the Mohammedan faith, and sought by brilliant promises on the one side, and by the picture of death on the other, to cause her to change her resolution, but to no avail.  Luna declared that she would rather yield up her life to her Creator in all its maiden freshness, than live on in luxury, in the shame of apostasy.  And thus, the fatal day drew nigh, and the hour of her doom approached, but the Hebrew maiden remained unchanged in her resolve, and only sought the more to prepare her for her approaching end.

The sad story draws to a close, for on the appointed morn the maiden was dragged from her cell, and the barbarous steel severed her head from her fair shoulders, and Luna Hatchuel [sic] had sealed her constancy with her life's blood.

This sad history I heard from persons who had known the heroine, and from some, too, who had the honor of being related to her, and as their versions differed in many minor particulars, I have chosen that narrative which if not the most romantic at any rate appears to be the most probable.

Luna's tomb is at Fez, and Jews venerating her memory as that of a saint, make pilgrimages to her burial-place to carry away the dust from around it, which dust (my informant seriously told me), has the power of curing the sick, and healing the wounds.

A Spanish gentleman, who visited Tangier a few years ago, composed a tragedy upon this story, which he called "La heroica Hebrea," and which is often played at the theatre of Gibraltar.  A French artist [Alfred Dehodencq, 1822-82; detail from painting above], too, who resides in Tangier, has also made it the subject of a very clever picture.'

Getting Ahead as a Jewish Dhimmi in Old Morocco ...

In May 1906 a British writer and traveller called J. Budgett Meakin gave a talk on his impressions of Moroccan Jewry to the East London Communal League at the East London Synagogue. He revealed that he was not as interested in the Moroccan Jews whose Sephardi ancestors had migrated from Europe, and who tended to be merchants and traders in coastal areas, as in the older Moroccan Jewish community of the interior, whose forebears had lived in the country for over one thousand years. These were the Jews who fascinated him most. Their ancestors had fought the invading Muslim conquerors of North Africa; some had been converted to Islam themselves.

 'The Berber Jews,’ he explained, as recorded in a Jewish Chronicle report (18 May 1906),

‘dare not travel , dared hardly do anything except under the protection of some powerful Sheikh or other important personage in the locality. Everyone was practically the serf of someone who protected him. Without this protection the life of the Jew would not be safe, and yet a few dollars might sometimes be considered sufficient “blood-money” for them. Not only could the Jew not leave the place in which he resided unless under this protection, but he was not allowed to take his wife with him under any circumstances; she was kept as a sort of hostage until his return home. Until recent years the sultans of Morocco allowed no Jewesses to leave the country.”

Budgett Meakin went on to say:

“There had long been intimate relations between the Jews of Morocco and Palestine ; quite a number of the most famous rabbis of Jerusalem had been supplied by the schools of Fez (which contained the main Jewish settlement in Morocco) and other parts of the country. Up to that time the Jews of Morocco had ... refused to accept many of the teachings of the rabbis [i.e. the Talmudic sages] ... and had for this reason been compared by some scholars with the Karaite Jews. It was not until a later period that they came into contact with the Talmudic section of the country [the Sephardim].”

They were subject to discrimination by their Muslim overlords:

‘None of the men were allowed to wear bright colours, and though there was a time when the sultan decreed that they should all wear costumes of bright yellow, they were now only allowed to dress in black; they had to wear a black fez, in contradistinction to the red of the Moors. In some of the districts the men had the curious custom of wearing tufts of their hair on either side of their forehead, and it was a curious fact that one of the tribes reported to be of Jewish origin (the Udála) wore precisely similar “sheaves” on their foreheads. The Jewish costume consisted of a black robe, or gabardine, and black slippers. The women were allowed to wear what they liked, although in the streets in the interior, they covered themselves up; the Jewesses, however, unlike the Moorish women, had no objection to their faces being seen ... He regretted to say that the Jewesses on the coast, whom they were used to see going about in becoming costumes, had taken to the hideous Paris fashions which Western Europeans were compelled to adopt.... The time to observe the sumptuous costume of the Jews was at the family festivities .... [At weddings] everybody who cared to walk in and partake in the festivities was perfectly welcome; and the spread of good things was quite unique. It was the custom for the guests who were quite unable to consume all the delicacies allotted to them to sweep them off the table and carry them away in their pockets! Music was being played while the guests assembled, and there was a general atmosphere of luxury. The ladies invested as much of their money as they could in jewellery, brocade, and other ornaments, which they wore on these occasions. The elaborate dresses, which were of silk and velvet, were decorated with real gold braid; and were handed down from generation to generation.

A Jewish Wedding in Morocco, by Eugene Delacroix

Unlike the homes of Muslims, whose passageways had a bend in them so as to prevent passers-by looking into the courtyard and seeing the women, the homes of Jews had no such restrictions. The mellahs (Jewish quarters) tended to have poor drainage, and since refuse piled up in the streets, “the roads in the Mellah were always increasing in height – sometimes the middle of the street was a couple of feet higher than the sides.”

The gates of the mellahs were shut at sunset:

“This was not only awkward for the people, but it was also a protection in times of trouble, when it is as well that the Jews should be safe in their quarters. As the Jews contributed a great deal towards the regular and irregular taxation – of which latter there were plenty – and were important traders and successful in commerce generally, they were regarded with jealousy by the Moors, and there was no love lost between them, feeling running sometimes very high. Once or twice when a new sultan had come to the throne, in order to reward the populace and secure their favour, he had issued an edict that a general pillage of the Jews might take place. The last time such an event had occurred was a hundred years ago... but if the present dynasty were upset, or if any of the fanatics were to overthrow the present condition of things in Morocco, the first to feel its effects would be the Jews, who had accumulated great wealth, and thus offered opportunities for pillage.”

Budgett Meakin went on to explain that those Moroccan Jews who were not agents for European commercial interests (and therefore not under the protection of European powers) suffered many legal disabilities in Morocco, such as not being permitted to give evidence against a Muslim, and being forbidden to strike a Muslim, even in self-defence.

In this state of dhimmitude there was one way to get ahead:

‘When anyone was decapitated, the Jewish butchers were forced to pickle the head in salt, that was why the Mellah got the name of “salted place,” but it was also known as the “saltless” or “rotten” place.'

Oy!

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."