The community of Tillin is located 10 km away from Anzi, within the Ida Oultit tribe, in a valley on the mountainside. It probably existed since the sixteenth-century, possibly even since the eleventh-century, and was one of the most important Jewish communities in the region of *Tiznit, southwest of *Agadir. Until its gradual dispersion in the twentieth-century, when its members immigrated to *Tiznit, Inezgan, *Agadir, *Casablanca, and lastly to Israel (in 1963), the community consisted of about fifty families. They sold almonds and other agricultural products, and produced honey, in addition to their traditional occupations as jewelers, tinsmiths, saddlers, and cobblers. In the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries, Jewish merchants had business ties with Jewish companies in Agadir, and then *Essaouira (Mogador); they sent them leather and almonds for export, in exchange of fabrics and tea. In the twentieth-century, the economic situation seems to have deteriorated because of the development of the rival community in Tiznit.

The community boasted two synagogues and three cemeteries, which attest to its long history and large population in peak times. In the main cemetery lies the tomb of the holy man Mul l-Ḥajra or Mul l-Ḥajra al-Manjura, because of the rock that covers it. For the commemoration of his *hillula, in May or June, pilgrims came from western Sous—Agadir, Inezgan, Tiznit, Assaka—an area where other Jewish holy men are buried, such as Id Bu Tifassen, Til’int, *Iligh and *Tahala.

Bibliography

Anonymous, “Mellah de Tilline,” Archives of the Alliance Israélite Universelle  (Paris), file Tiznit (typed).

Corcos, David. “The Jews of Morocco from the Expulsion of Spain to the Mid-Sixteenth Century” (in Hebrew), in David Corcos, Studies in the History of the Jews of Morocco (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1976) 287-289.

Porte de Vaux, André de la. “Notes sur le peuplement juif du Sous,”Bulletin Economique et Social du Maroc, 15, n° 54-55 (1952): 448-459, 625-632.

דן מנור, אלישע אחר השני, אזור, ספרי צמרת, 2018, עמ׳ 7-55.