The Souss is a vast region in southwestern Morocco, located between the Atlantic coast south of Agadir, the Anti-Atlas Mountains, and the edge of the Sahara. The region extends uphill and eastward below the Anti-Atlas, from the Tizi n-Test pass to the bed of the Oued Souss below Lake Tifnout; downhill and westward from the mouth of the river near Agadir and along the Atlantic coast to the Akka and Tata oases on the edge of the Sahara, through the subregion of Massa in the Oued Noun, the Bani Mountains, the Tazerwalt and the Tafraout Valley. Arabs settled in the area as early as the eighth century, but the majority of the population remained Berber and spoke various Tashelhit dialects as their main vernacular. Until the early twentieth century, local Berber or Arab dynasties maintained their independence from the Makhzan (the Sherifan central government) and often rebelled against it, as in Tazerwalt with its capital in Iligh, which was periodically independent between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. In order to interdict the movement of Ottoman troops from Algeria in the sixteenth century, the Sa’di dynasty fortified Tarudant, its seat of power, building a qasba and high walls with a circumference of 7.5 kilometers (4.6 miles). Since then, the town has remained the region’s most important urban center. Over the centuries, it interacted with Marrakesh and the port of Agadir, and in the nineteenth century also with Essaouira (Mogador).

Since the Arab conquest, the Souss Valley along with the Draa Valley has served as one of the main passages in Morocco for trans-Saharan commerce; caravans going to and from Marrakesh (and later Essaouira) and even Fez found it a natural route for African gold dust and Saharan ostrich feathers. Besides its famous agriculture (grain, vegetables, fruit, saffron, almonds, walnuts, olives, and dates) and its vast forest of argan trees (producing oil and wood on which rural communities depended), the Souss Valley was also known, between the Middle Ages and the seventeenth century, for its copper mines and its abundant and highly prized sugarcane, which, once refined, was exported to Europe via the port of Agadir. The Jewish communities in the Souss, like those in the Draa Valley, were intensely involved in the trans-Saharan trade, including the minting of gold and silver coins, and in ore extraction. In the 1860s, Mordechai Abisrur (ca. 1830-1886), born in Akka, tried to develop a trans-Saharan family business in Timbuktu, where he sent his brothers and relatives. When this venture failed a few years later, he became a guide and accompanied Charles de Foucauld during his reconnaissance of Morocco in 1883 and 1884.

According to oral traditions still preserved by the Muslim inhabitants and by Jews from Ifrane (Oufrane) in the Anti-Atlas region, Jews have lived in the Souss, as well as on the Atlantic coast near Massa, since ancient times. The first written documents (including some of Arab origin) that mention Jewish communities in the Souss, however, are from the tenth century. From this date until their dispersion in the mid-twentieth century, the mostly rural Jewish communities of the Souss were scattered in discrete clusters of settlements. Starting from the mouth of the river below the Anti-Atlas, there were the communities of Tabia, Ighil n’Ogho, Taliwin, Aoulouz, Oulad Berrhil, and Ait Ihya in Ras al-Wad; Tarudant, Tiout, Ait Iyyoub, Arazan, Oulad Hassan, and Igli in the Tarudant region; Tazerwalt and Tahala in the Tafraout Valley in Iligh; Tata, Akka, Ifrane, Tamanat, Aguerd, and Goulimine in the Bani and Oued Noun; and Tillin, Assaka/Asni, and Tal’int, in Oulad Jarrar in the Tiznit region, as well as Tifnit itself, which only developed in the late nineteenth century.

Notwithstanding the estimates made by Charles de Foucauld in 1884 and the official censuses conducted by the French protectorate starting in 1931, it is difficult to establish the exact number of Jews who lived in the Souss in existence. According to reasonable estimates, there were about fifty-five hundred Jews in the early twentieth century. In the 1950s, the number rose to more than sixty-five hundred, including Agadir, whose population increased tenfold to reach two thousand. However, the increase was balanced by the emigration of many families from the Souss to Marrakesh and Casablanca. Besides the port of Agadir- where one thousand out of 2,300 Jews and some 12,000 Muslims died in an earthquake on February 29, 1960- the large mellahs retained their populations: Tarudant (950), Ighil n’Ogho (300), Aoulouz (250), Akka (150), Oulad Berrhil (150), while others saw a population decrease to the benefit of neighboring communities or new centers. In the twentieth century, Tiznit absorbed many communities from the Bani (notably Oufrane) and Oulad Jarrar (Tillin, Asska, Tal’int) and had four hundred Jews until it disappeared. Similarly, from 1936 on, the new community of Inezgane, a port located 7 kilometers (4 miles) from Agadir, attracted many families from the Souss who were seeking economic opportunities. It numbered about five hundred in the early 1960s.

Agadir was the natural port for the Souss until the final years of the eighteenth century and again in the twentieth century. Its small Jewish community, dating from the end of the fifteenth century if not earlier, grew significantly in the twentieth century. At the end of the eighteenth and in the nineteenth century, Essaouira became the main Moroccan port for trade with Europe, attracting thousands of Jews from the Souss. Voluntary migrations of Jews within the Souss took place at least as far back as the early sixteenth century. In the twentieth century, Agadir and especially nearby Inezzgane, the ports of Safi and El Jadida, as well as Marrakesh and Casablanca drew numerous Jewish families looking for work or a better way of life.

The latent political instability that prevailed in the area from the Middle Ages until the 1920s led to the forced displacement of many Jewish communities by belligerent Berber tribes, sometimes only temporarily. Jews fleeing a plague epidemic in Tarudant took refuge in Akka in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, according to a chronicle by the seventeenth-century kabbalist Jacob bu-Ifergan. At the end of Mawlay al-Yazid’s reign, in 1792, the pretender to the throne, Bu Ihlas, destroyed various rural communities in the Bani and massacred scores of Jews- some died at the stake for refusing to convert to Islam. The victims were buried in the new Ifrane cemetery, since then called me’arat ha-nisragim (Heb. The cemetery of the burned [alive]), which has become a sacred site, entry to which, according to tradition, is forbidden for Jews. This tragedy is recounted in a recently published Judeo-Arabic elegiac poem (qina), as well as in an Arab chronicle from the time published by Muhammad al-Mukhtar al-Susi. The community of Tahala was expelled from its mellah (mallah) by the Ait Mzal tribe at the end of the nineteenth century or early in the twentieth, according to an unpublished Judeo-Arabic qina describing the events that is sung on Tish’a B’Av, a traditional day of mourning.

Relations between Jews in the Souss and local leaders- whether appointed by the Makhzan, by pretenders, or by Arab or Berber rebels- should not be assessed only in the light of these sporadic persecutions or of the hardest blows inflicted by the Almohads in the Middle Ages. As was the case throughout Morocco, Jews submitted to the rules of dhimma. Although these were inconsistently implemented across time and place, they made Jews dependent subjects whose presence and religious practice were tolerated on Islamic soil, and whose families and properties were protected by Muslim power. In exchange, Jews had to acknowledge Islam’s superiority, faced discrimination in dress codes and other disabilities, and paid an annual capitation tax (jizya), which in theory was due from each individual adult male but in fact was assessed for the community as a whole. Jews in the Souss, like those in so many other places, lived under constraints that occasionally erupted in persecution and violence, sometimes organized, other times spontaneous. However, this was the exception and not the rule. In their permanent ambivalent relationship with Muslims, the Jews of the Souss developed socio-professional patterns and practiced specific occupations that enabled them to adapt and survive in the local economy, for better or for worse. They contributed to agriculture by lending small amounts of money to local peasants for seeds, cows, and sheep, in exchange for a share of the harvest and income from farming. Except on rare occasions, it was not until the nineteenth century that Jews were allowed to own land or olive or date trees. Since the Jews would not or could not do the agricultural work themselves, often living far from their holdings, they hired Muslim peasants to cultivate their land.

In the rural communities and in towns such as Tarudant or Tiznit, besides the trade in foodstuffs, speciality products like sugar and tea, and imported fabrics, Jews worked as cobblers, mattress-makers, tinsmiths, sometimes as carpenters, and often as Jewelers, especially silversmiths. Many were peddlers, leaving their families between the holidays of Sukkot and Passover and traveling from one village to the next, and from one market to the next, offering their skills in handicrafts and selling knick-knacks to rural population. In places where there were no Jews with whom they could lodge, peddlers would spend the night with Muslims, from whom they purchased butter and eggs, which they could eat without fear of transgressing the rules of kashrut. They often acted as local agents for Jewish merchants engaged in international trade in Agadir and, after its foundation, Essaouira; the peddlers would ship grain when they were authorized to do so, as well as eggs, dates, sweet or bitter almonds, goat and cow hides, and ostrich feathers from the Sahara, and would sell imported luxury goods, such as tea, sugar, English cotton goods, or candles, Jewish women began to acquire American Singer sewing machines in the twentieth century. Working of male and female Muslim clients, they made traditional dresses and clothing for retailers or tailored outfits for wealthy customers, visiting them at home to take measurements or to sew on-premises.

The often close relations between Jewish and Muslim women was reflected in their development of a common oral tradition, in Arabic in Judeo-Arabic communities, and in Berber in Judeo-Berber or bilingual communities. A study of Berber influences on the Judeo-Arabic of Tarudant found that most of the Jews in the Souss were bilingual until the nineteenth century, both at home and in interactions with Muslim neighbors. This common repertoire of oral tradition- poetry, songs, stories, sayings, and riddles- was supplemented by common magical beliefs and veneration of the same saints.

Economic ties and cultural closeness were especially apparent on the night of the Mimouna, at the end of Passover: Jews would bring baskets full of unleavened bread (matza), Jewish culinary specialities such as egg omelets and mashed potatoes, or dishes containing meatballs as gifts to their Muslim acquaintances in the countryside. The Muslims would serve them mint tea and would give them fresh milk, butter, honey, wheat, barley, and dried fruits, all of which were needed for the preparation of the festive Momouna meal.

Until their departure from the Souss, the Jewish communities led a strictly religious life under the guidance of local rabbis. Small communities would hire itinerant rabbis to perform circumcisions, slaughter animals, and conduct High Holiday services. Khalifa Malka, a merchant, poet, and exegete, was the dominant rabbinic figure in Agadir in the eighteenth centuries, Tarudant developed an original tradition of mysticism around the kabbalist Rabbi Moses ben Maimon Elbaz and his disciple Jacob bu-Ifergan, whose major works are currently being published. In the mid-seventeenth century, Rabbi Isaac ha-Kohen and, in the eighteenth century, his descendants of the Kohen Azugh family in Tarudant and Ras al-Was, were venerated as saints by the Jews of the Souss. To this day, hundreds of pilgrims from all over the world come every year to celebrate the hillula, the anniversary of their deaths, and pray for God’s favor at the graves of David ben Barukh ha-Kohen Azugh, venerated as a miracle-worker, and of Khalifa Malka in Agadir (moved in 1927).

The thriving of Jewish life of the Souss came to an end in the 1950s and early 1960s when the communities decided, or were persuaded, to depart en masse from the places where they had dwelled for centuries and settle in Israel. Before their emigration, Alliance Israelite Universelle schools opened in Tarudant in 1929 and twenty-five years later in other communities, such as Tiznit, Akka, Tahala, Iligh, Ighil n’Ogho, and Oulad Berrhil. The modern education they provided was based on the French language and general subjects. Whether in Tarudant or in rural communities, however, the Alliance’s pedagogical model never succeeded in transforming the traditional lifestyle of the Jews of the Souss. It was only migration- first to Casablanca for some, then to Israel for most- that brought new prospects for advancement in modern society.

 

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