The Amazigh community of Morocco is renowned for producing talented experts in the art of weaving carpets, a result of ancestral knowledge and a symbol of the multicolored identity of this people as well as the entire country.

The Berber women, as this art is theirs, have managed to mobilize all the dexterity of their movements, the patience of their commitment, and the sincerity of their intention to achieve excellence in their work. Once finished, the carpet no longer belongs to its craftswoman. It is, facing the world, a reflection of Morocco’s face.

But there is another domain where all these qualities of an artist are at work, still in the heart of Berber soil, in the southeast of Morocco, where another weaving has begun to bring to light another reflection of Morocco’s face. Its threads are not of wool. They are of flesh and spirit. They have the color of joy as well as of pain. The framework that welcomes and blends them together is the long passage of time. Together, their weave tells the story of our humanity on Earth.

Kamal Hachkar, the child of Tinghir, is one of these weavers of history. In 2010, he returned to his native land, that of all his ancestors, holding in his hand a first strand, the memories of his grandfather about a time when Jewish communities still lived in Morocco, here in Tinghir as in many other territories.

Having left for France with his parents at a young age, Kamal had no idea what he would discover by pulling further on the thread of the past that his ancestor suddenly revealed to his gaze. He wanted to know more. Indeed, Kamal had undergone training as a history teacher in France, but he did not suspect the intensity that his initiative would provoke.

The awakening of the echo of a past we had forgotten

If Kamal Hachkar begins his work of collecting memories with the stance of filial curiosity, he continues it in Israel with the attitude of a researcher who connects the threads together, searching for Moshe, the old friend and accomplice of his grandfather, who once left his native land of Tinghir forever to join Israel; as others went to Canada, the United States, Europe… Kamal gives voice to the children of those who lived in Tinghir or elsewhere in Morocco, this land distant from their ancestors, and the land of their roots that they barely know.

With his camera and microphone, he awakens the memories of each individual and gives them both resonance and echo. The echo of a past we had forgotten, set aside in a remote corner of our memory, believing it to be extinguished forever, and the resonance of a timeless reality, of a true fraternity that was lived and that endures.

One Sunday evening, four million Moroccans confronting their history

At the end of its journey, the documentary takes the name “Tinghir – Jerusalem, Echoes of the Mellah” and is screened at numerous festivals in Europe, the United States, Canada, Jamaica, and Israel. Its first screening in Morocco takes place in April 2012 on the 2M television channel, on a Sunday evening at the beginning of the night. This broadcast of the documentary then meets immense success among the Moroccan population – the viewership reaches nearly four million people.

During the first screening in Tinghir, the crowd gathers. With these successful first steps, the documentary is screened in many places, and Kamal often accompanies its screening, both in Morocco and abroad, in big cities, universities, or small villages, to be in a position to hear the audience’s reactions and address the questions that such a subject inevitably raises.

The reception is always enthusiastic. For the older generations, the documentary reminds them of a cherished period in the secret of their hearts, a time when the presence of Jews in Morocco was as natural a reality as the seasons of nature that have always punctuated their lives. For young Moroccans, they observe with delight that Israeli women speak their language, sing the traditional songs they heard as children during festive moments in their communities, playing the same musical instrument. They discover that beyond distances, and of course beyond political conflicts, Jews and Muslims once lived together in Morocco in obvious harmony.

The photographs, yellowed by time, finally emerge from their hiding place

At the end of each screening of the documentary, the public’s reactions multiply and are ultimately always the same. Kamal understands that this honoring of Jews and Amazighs in prime time on Moroccan television had the effect of a fresh breeze that liberated speech. In many families, suddenly the elders begin to reveal to their grandchildren, for the first time, their connections with the Jewish community, and sometimes even blood ties. Old photographs, yellowed by time, suddenly emerge from their hiding places and find a caption under the astonished eyes of the younger generations. Many Moroccans recognize themselves in Kamal’s approach and his urgency to finally listen to the memory of the ancestors, to collect their words, to preserve their testimony.

Kamal understands that his documentary breaks the taboos surrounding this Jewish presence in the rural depths of Morocco, around this harmonious and joyful coexistence between Jews and Muslims, around this forgotten reality that there was a time in Morocco when one could be both Moroccan and of Jewish faith.

This breaking of the taboo is possible because it is done without any upheaval, but in the gentleness of the shared emotions among all the testimonies, in the texture of life stories that command respect.

The history of the Jews of Tinghir speaks to everyone

When asked what the main teaching of his documentary is, and after listening to the countless reactions from all these different audiences, Kamal realizes that the history of the Moroccan Jews of Tinghir speaks to everyone. Their lives bear witness to the experience of rupture, the forced departure from a beloved place, the exile to an unknown place.

There is ultimately nothing easier to share than these testimonies because the experience of exodus, the trauma it provokes, is an integral part of the adventure of our humanity.

For a moment, Tinghir becomes the heart of the world.

There was a time when the human community of Tinghir was strong in its diversity and the plurality of its traditions. At that time, harmony naturally connected the differentiations of each component of the whole. There was a time when this alloy broke down. Under the force of the grand history that surpasses each individual or due to the inherent fragilities of any human construction, the Moroccan of Jewish faith left Tinghir, while the Moroccan of Muslim faith remained, alone.

A lire : The lost destiny of Jews from South East Morocco

Reflecting on one’s identity beyond the walls

In 2012, the screening of the documentary “Tinghir – Jerusalem, Echoes from the Mellah” on Moroccan television sparked opposition from certain political groups. The Moroccan Parliament was prompted to debate the issue to determine who had authorized such a broadcast on the national channel. Among other criticisms, Kamal Hachkar was reproached for not addressing the Palestinian cause and for deviating too much from the collective religious or pan-Arabic narrative. In 2013, the Moroccan Ministry of Communication decided not to participate in the National Film Festival of Tangier, which had scheduled the documentary. Demonstrations took place both in opposition to and in support of the documentary. Moroccan and foreign media outlets published numerous articles on this controversy.

In the end, the Tangier festival awarded Kamal Hachkar the Prize for Best Debut Work. The controversy surrounding the documentary dwindled because it was based on a misunderstanding: the documentary is not a political tool. It has nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It does not promote any ideological agenda. It passes no judgment.

At the very least, one could have recognized the philosophical significance of the documentary:

Young Moroccans are not familiar with the real history of Morocco

Kamal was right. It is indeed the identity dimension that must have sparked both enthusiastic reactions and objections. And this is the second lesson that the documentary unveils: too few Moroccans, especially young people, truly know the breadth and depth of Morocco’s identity.

Clearly, they do not know the real history of Morocco.

This journey, however long it may be, has already begun. The reactions of the Moroccan public to the documentary illustrate a thirst for knowledge regarding history at the individual level, within families, in relation to their particular roots and respective genealogies. Slowly, the appetite to know more is sharpening.

A new chapter between the Jews and Morocco can now be written

Tinghir has certainly lost its Jewish communities; families have been separated, friendships have been broken, and traditions have been forgotten. The bitterness of the rupture remains unaltered, but today memories can be displayed openly and without taboo.

Kamal Hachkar carries within him the conviction that Morocco must rediscover the face of its deep-rooted identity anchored in the vastness of history. Indeed, and thanks to the late King Hassan II, many Israelis return to Morocco every year. Many Moroccan Jews from all over the world visit Morocco for their holidays, making pilgrimages to the places of their ancestors.

It is also true, and Kamal echoes this sentiment in his new documentary project “In Your Eyes, I See My Country” that many young Israelis of Moroccan origin want to experience life in Morocco, and conversely, many young Moroccans, Muslims therefore, wish to discover Israel.

To proudly display the virtues of Morocco’s universality

A new chapter may truly be unfolding in Morocco, as elsewhere. Confrontations rooted in nationalist inspirations seem to be giving way to the recognition that a common destiny could once again be asserted among communities that were once in symbiosis, despite the ruptures, tears, and distances. The magic of connection could once again be at work. The richness of diversity could once again be a source of blessings for all.

Morocco could proudly display, both to its own people and to the world, the plurality of its identity and the virtues of its universality.

What a beautiful adventure it is to attempt the writing of this new chapter in Morocco’s history!

This adventure sketches the future in light of the past for the illumination of the present.

Kamal Hachkar believes in it, as do many others with him. His work as a filmmaker intersects with his former profession as a teacher. He knows how knowledge is the key to all inner wealth. He knows that it is the children and the youth who are the future architects of this new face of Morocco.

The challenge is to awaken them to this challenge, to reignite in them the desire for this conquest, and above all, to awaken their appetite for the long term, the time before, so rich in all its legacies, and the time after, so vast with “all these impossibilities to make possible.”

Tinghir-Jérusalem – Les échos du Mellah : documentary film directed by Kamal Hachkar – Une co-production Les Films d’un Jour – 2M – Berbère TVVoir sur Youtube.

Dans tes yeux, je vois mon pays : the new documentary film by Kamal Hachkar Watch the trailer on Vimeo.

The post From Tinghir to Jerusalem, the weaving of Morocco’s universality appeared first on Southeast-morocco.com.

Legend or historical fact? The once-hidden presence of a Christian princess within the walls of the Aït Ben Haddou ksar is supported by tangible evidence that cannot be ignored. Southeast-morocco.com conducted its own investigation to determine whether the most visited site in southeastern Morocco—an iconic showcase of traditional Amazigh earthen architecture—may, in fact, have roots that reach far deeper into history than commonly believed.

In 1883 the French explorer Charles de Foucauld is travelling all over Morocco to explore uncharted territories beyond the massive Atlas Mountains, in the very part of the country rebelling against the authority of successive sultans and thus called the bled es sība, which means the land of anarchy. On October 18, he writes down in his travel journal his joy of finally discovering a grove of palm trees on the edge of the village of Tikirt, where he is about to stop and rest after a long tiring walk.

Charles de Foucauld has just crossed the Telouet pass, one of the rare points through this veritable mineral partition, that cuts Morocco in two.

In order to venture into this insecure area, where solely the law of the Amazigh tribes prevails, he has donned the clothing of a Jewish traveller, and his guide, Rabbi Mordecai Aby Serour d’Akka, accompanies him, bringing with him his long experience of exploration which, in particular, allows him to enter the Berber villages unheeded, thanks to their Jewish communities. Indeed, at the end of the 19th century, it seemed to Charles de Foucauld more judicious to travel under the guise of a people who, although both accepted and discredited, had been present in these lands since ancient times. This way he was unlikely to attract attention, rather than in the style of a European, who would necessarily be perceived as a Christian; that is, as a possible enemy.

He takes advantage of this stay in Tikirt, where he resides for a week, to get a closer look at the ruins of an ancient citadel, in a place called Tasgedlt located a few kilometres away, and around which, in his own words, “a thousand-year-old legend is woven”. The account he writes in his notebook makes it easy to imagine how the story could have been related to him, in such a way as to arouse the curiosity of any witness:

Having walked the few kilometres up to the village of Tasgedlt, he observes, from afar, the remains of what can be assumed to be a fortress, distinguishable through its towers, and that stretches all along the sides of a hill. The place is scattered with other ruins of further buildings.

He takes the time to sketch the whole, as well as the most prominent part in the shape of a wide front door. Even today, what remains of the building, and the imposing width of the surrounding walls, suggests the importance of the place and gives credence to the idea that this place must have indeed once been the residence of someone of great nobility.

In search of the lost princesses

Charles de Foucauld admits, however, to having little faith in the reality of this beautiful legend. He explains that the account given to him by the villagers of Tikirt establishes that the arrival of Muslim armies from the 7th century onwards brought about the downfall of this Christian monarchy and caused the precipitous departure of the princesses. He also opines that the ruins must have been the remains of old kasbahs built by any one of the sultans. Each of these three places where, according to the legend, the sisters are said to have settled, bear similarities to each other.

However, his conclusion contradicts his own observation that these large territories have always been beyond the control of any sultan. Above all, it clashes with the amplitude of this legend which has carried the tale of these princesses for centuries, and which is based on other factual observations that the explorer strangely did not make in his time.

It is in fact within the ksar of Aït Ben Haddou, located a few kilometres from the Tasgedlt’ ruins, that, in the maze of narrow streets, there is a disturbing element that reinforces the glow of this legend. An oral tradition in this village indeed reports that a very old well, located between the two surrounding walls that once protected the village and its granary, bears the name of Anou n’Tarmouyte; in other words the Christian’s well.

Better yet, when divulging a little more about this strange name, the elders of the ksar community enjoy telling their own version of the story. According to them, King Ouâd would have indeed existed in very distant times, but he had had four daughters, not three. This fourth, named Aïssatou, had taken over power upon the death of her father and is said to have settled precisely in that place known today as the ksar of Aït Ben Haddou.

So, they say, it was she who had the well dug, and indeed, when the Muslim troops arrived, she would have been forced to flee to escape the warrior attacks and would have left the village through its north gate in order to head towards Telouet, in the hope of reaching the other side of the Atlas Mountains.

Today, a ruined tower overhangs this old well. But in the past, this tower was part of the northern gate of the ksar through which Princess Aïssatou ran away, and this ruin is nowadays known as L’Borj n’Tarmouyte, which means the Christian’s tower.

Morocco, a place of an intermingling of confessions and traditions

Located on the banks of the Ounila river, the fortified village, igherm in the Amazigh language, Aït Ben Haddou, has been world famous ever since its UNESCO classification as a world heritage site in 1987. Its singular silhouette stands as the symbol of Amazigh architecture in Morocco, and ultimately of Morocco as a whole. The village of Aït Ben Haddou was once a staging point for the large camel caravans of the trans-Saharan trade, but, nevertheless, Charles de Foucauld and his guide passed by without stopping. The explorer thus missed out on the story of Aïssatou, the fourth Christian princess.

The legend and its narrative which still linger in the memories of the elders remind us that in Morocco, before the 7th century and the arrival of the first troops of General Oqba Ibn Nafi al-Fihri from the Arabian Peninsula, the Amazigh population, the native population of these territories, had, over a period of nearly a thousand years, already welcomed many communities from the East bearing Phoenician, Jewish, Roman or Christian culture.

And what about these intermingling populations that have blended all these faiths and traditions? How far could this learned mixture have extended? On what fertile or even arid lands was it able to flourish as a community, principality or kingdom?

The homelessness of the oppressed as the primary vehicle for spreading the faith

The last words uttered by Jesus of Nazareth, as reported in the Gospel according to St. Mark, might suggest that the expansion of Christianity is, above all, based on ideological voluntarism:

Reality, as so often, is more complex. After his death, the disciples and faithful followers of Jesus, commonly called the Galileans, constitute just one more group among an undoubtedly dominant but later fragmented Judaism, which found itself in a crisis as to its meaning. However, during the initial process of Christianization, their migration very quickly began following their expulsion from Jerusalem in the 35s A.D after the lynching of one of these Jews’ first charismatic figures. This was, the so-called Stephen, who has since been regarded as the first of the Christian martyrs.

These first exiles will quickly settle in nearby regions, such as Antioch or Cyprus, Phoenicia or Damascus, to constitute the first centres of what would slowly become a new religion.

In the year 70 AD, the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Roman armies under Nero’s leadership sets in motion a long-lasting dynamic scattering of the Jewish people, mixing all faiths.

The emergence of African Christianity

These exiled populations arriving in the territories of North West Africa is self-evident, particularly because of the attraction of Carthage, today’s Tunisia, a city under Roman occupation since its destruction in 146 BC., and where a large Jewish community had already been living. As history tells us, twelve Christians, as the martyrs of Scilli, were executed in Carthage during the year 180 by order of the proconsul of Africa. Barely fifty years later, a Christian community will be consolidated to the point where, in the 240s AD, the bishop of Carthage, their leader, could establish a council bringing together nearly a hundred other bishops from the surrounding Christian communities.

Bishop : The word comes from the Greek Eπίσκοπος / episkopos which literally means “supervisor”, that is to say moderator, responsible for a community. Source: Wikipedia

Carthage will thus become a focal point of Christianity in Africa from which emerge important personalities, all of them Berbers converted to the new Christian faith, such as Tertullian, Cyprian or Augustine of Hippo, who will go down in history as Saint Augustine.

At the end of the 2nd century, the writer and philosopher Tertullian testifies in one of his books that the expansion of Christians was energetic. He addresses the Roman authorities as follows:

Christianity is thus known for having first established itself in the already Romanized cities of the former Berber kingdom of Mauretania, better known as the Moorish Kingdom, under various sovereigns such as Bocchus, Juba II or Ptolemy. This was the case in Tangier (Tingis) or in Volubilis, in Asilah (Zilis), Ceuta (Septem), Larache (Lixus), Tétouan (Tamuden-sis) or Salé (Salensis).

But it was still under the threat of violence that the dispersal of the new believers increased and caused some of them to leave risk areas such as large cities in order to take refuge further inland, to be exact beyond the High Atlas Mountains. The fierce persecution of African Christians at the beginning of the 4th century, under the authority of the Roman emperor Diocletian, must thus have caused innumerable exoduses.

The Amazigh kingdoms as a place of refuge for Christianity

It will take until the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine in the year 313 that a lull could allow the new religion to expand more tranquilly over the following decades. But this last period of persecution by the power of Rome also resulted in the emergence of a divergent ideological current within fledgling Christendom, which reached a significant following among the poorest and least educated communities, principally in vast rural areas.

This current, called Donatism, was opposed to the new alliance that was being established between Christianity and the Roman Empire. Its followers and thinkers sought to define a vision of faith more anchored in what they call the Holy Spirit, that is, the flow of the spirit of God among humans. This current will end up being considered as heretical and will be strongly opposed. But by then, it will have diffused a vision of the Christian religion strongly linked to the worship of the saints and the martyrs. This is not to forget the ease with which the Amazigh tribes welcomed Sufism a few centuries later and, in rural Morocco, allowed the establishment of a popular tradition dedicated to the glory of the saints illustrated by the emergence and the increase of the zaouias.

Zaouïa : is a Muslim religious building which constitutes the center around which a Sufi brotherhood is structured. By extension, it often refers to the brotherhood itself. Source: Wikipedia

The scenario of chaos resumed with the invasion of the Vandals from Europe in 430. This period of great violence lasted almost a century and saw the emergence of another version of Christianity, called Arianism, which once again brought about a new cycle of persecution, confiscation of property, destruction of places of worship and forced conversion. Again and again, the consequence of this was a new exodus for Christians loyal to their original faith. Once again this exodus was into the interior territories of the country, where various Berber kingdoms and principalities had emerged fiercely resistant to all successive invaders.

All these excluded and persecuted peoples had to find benevolent havens of peace in these Amazigh territories. The heads of these kingdoms, often Christian, carried Roman titles for a long time, as did the sovereign Masuna within the Kingdom of the Moors and the Romans, and who was designated as the Rex gentium Maurorum and Romanorum.

At the end of the 5th century, the kingdom of Altava took over from the Kingdom of the Moors and Romans and brought to life a Christian Berber culture in the territories of the former province of Mauretania Caesarean. Today this corresponds central and western Algeria and part of north-eastern Morocco.

The melodiousness of their existence resonates until today

The establishment and influence of Christianity in North Africa is therefore a reality throughout the first centuries of the first millennium. It is more than likely that its spread was beyond urban sites towards interior territories where the powers of the moment didn’t wield any authority. The confessional confrontation with the paganism widespread among the indigenous Amazigh populations must certainly have created friction, but important theological or religious bridges must also have facilitated conversions to Christianity.

We also know that the arrival of Islam to the shores of the Atlantic coast in the 7th century did not result in the immediate disappearance of the presence of Christianity. The complete erasure will take place five centuries later under the authority of the Almohad dynasties, at the same time as the disappearance of other currents, such as Shiism and Kharijism, throughout the Maghreb.

Despite the absence of historical sources that can attest to this today, it is therefore more than likely that the territories of south-eastern Morocco were able to welcome a Christian kingdom.

The existence of Doula, Zelfa, Stouka and Aïssatou, the four princesses’ daughters of the King of Ouâd, is therefore just as probable, as is their reign over the lands today united and named the rural Moroccan commune of Aït Zineb.

The persistence of their memory today among the inhabitants of the ksar of Aït Ben Haddou, just as at the time of the explorer Charles de Foucault, reinforces the possibility of this reality and mainly because the melody of their first names still resonates in the name of the places that once hosted them.

Where Doula Bent Ouâd had settled, in the fortress of Tasgedlt visited by Charles de Foucauld, the douar today bears the name of Tadoula, the prefix “Ta” indicating the feminine form of a name in the Amazigh language. Today, the douar where Stouka Bent Ouâd is supposed to have been living is named Taskoukt.

And the Ksar of Aït Ben Haddou, which once was the home of Princess Aïssatou, has for centuries been named after its official founders, the Aït Aïssa family.

A final clue sheds light on the legend in a most masterly fashion, so as to validate it forever: Aïssa is the Arabic translation of the name of Jesus.

Version française : Il était une fois au Sud Est du Maroc, quatre princesses chrétiennes …

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Their presence, long perceived as something self-evident, gradually faded away, leaving behind abandoned synagogues, deserted mellahs and scattered stories suspended between memory and oblivion.

The reasons for their departure were many. Political changes, economic upheavals and new aspirations led to a mass exile towards Israel, Europe and North America. Yet despite the distance, this diaspora has kept an unbreakable bond with its native land, where the echoes of its passage can still be heard.

To rediscover this history is to lift the veil on a little-known facet of Moroccan heritage, and to understand how this legacy continues to shape the identity of the south-east of the country.

Version française

Three centuries later, the founding of Carthage, in present-day Tunisia, intensified these migratory movements. The Greek myths surrounding the giant Atlas, together with the irresistible attraction of the ocean, would forever magnetise both sides of Africa.

Then came the Romans, the Byzantines, the Ottomans, the Arabs. Over the centuries, the lands of north-western Africa became a crossroads of passions and ambitions, an eldorado for every kind of project, a crucible of constant cultural mixing and the workshop of the slow, laborious construction of a country: Morocco.

Very early on, scattered within these human tides, Jewish communities settled here and there, following their wanderings with no other aim than to find a place where they could stop and build a life, often after fleeing another land.

They then took part in the life of their host territories, joining their hands, hearts and intelligence to the labour of the other communities already present, and of those that would join them later. Together, generation after generation, they helped weave the plural identity of what would become Morocco.

The making of a mosaic people

The first waves of Jewish immigration are believed to have arrived aboard Phoenician ships, on the coasts near the mouth of the Oued Noun, in the region of Guelmim in southern Morocco. From there, different groups gradually moved inland, especially towards the valleys of the Drâa, the Tafilalet and the Dadès, and towards the High Atlas.

One legend tells that King Solomon sent Jewish explorers to the Drâa region in the 10th century BC in search of gold. It is also said that some groups may have reached the area directly by crossing the continent at the time of the first destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 586 BC, following the mass deportation of the surviving Hebrews to Babylon.

Historically, the only concrete proof of the ancient Jewish presence in Morocco dates back to the 2nd century BC. It consists of funerary objects found in the ruins of the Roman site of Volubilis, bearing inscriptions in Hebrew and Greek.

Until the arrival of Arab tribes from the 7th century onwards, more than a thousand years passed during which Jewish, Berber and sub-Saharan communities shaped a coherent social and cultural space together. Judaism, Christianity and paganism all found expression there, depending on the period, the various local powers and the foreign occupying forces, such as the Romans, the Vandals and the Byzantines.

The growing influence of Islam naturally changed the situation. It protected Jewish communities from the major Roman or Byzantine persecutions by placing them under the status of dhimmi. This social position, discriminatory in practice, nevertheless guaranteed them a real and more bearable form of protection, one that could even become more flexible depending on the mindset of successive sultans, and above all of local chiefs.

While the Almohad period plunged Jews back into persecution, the other sultanates allowed a communal symbiosis to develop between Jewish, Arab and Berber components. This was even stronger in rural areas, where these human groups, brought together, came to form one and the same community. Each retained its cultural singularity, but over time many of these cultures mixed and were transformed.

The German historian, Shlomo D. Goitein, was able to state:

In Morocco, a common destiny was being forged between these communities, without intention, and even without awareness. It rested both on the unprecedented accumulation of a shared past and on the tragic upheavals of history and of individual lives.

Thus, in the 17th century, Morocco became a land of exile for the three communities together — Berber, Arab and Jewish — then driven out of Andalusia. This forged a certain closeness between them around the nostalgic memory of the Iberian eldorado, and helped enrich their common culture.

The Drâa Valley, a cradle of settlement and influence

Because of its geographical position, south-eastern Morocco was one of the privileged territories for the settlement of Jewish communities. Their presence was so significant that the only documentary sources shedding light on the history of this region before the arrival of Arab tribes are said to be Hebrew manuscripts dating from the 12th century.

These accounts mention the arrival, around the 5th century BC, of nomadic Jews travelling in camel caravans, and their settlement at the site of Taourirt N’Tidri — the hill of Tidri — near present-day Zagora. Even today, stone and rammed-earth remains can still be seen there, bearing witness to the ancient Jewish presence.

From Tidri, Jews spread to other neighbouring localities such as Beni Sbih and Beni Hayyoun, Amzrou south of Zagora, Asselim N’Ougdz, Tamnougalte, Tazroute, Tagmadarte and Mhamid El-Ghizlane.

Within the flow of these same mythical accounts, mention is also made of the founding of the town of Tamegroute by Jews, as the capital of a Jewish kingdom of the Drâa. This kingdom is said to have dominated the region from the 7th century until the end of the 11th century, when the arrival of the Muslim Berber tribes, the Sanhajas of the Almoravid sultanates, plunged Jewish communities back into a cycle of persecution and definitively deprived them of any possibility of exercising authority over the territories.

Tamegroute stood out for its urban character and, above all, for its cultural influence. Hebrew learning enjoyed great renown there throughout southern Morocco. The Talmudic scholar Moïse Abraham Halevy Ed-Draoui remains the emblematic figure of this period in the 10th century.

The Dadès Valley, the Ziz and the whole Tafilalet

Important Jewish settlements were also established in the Dadès Valley, notably at Tiylite, a few kilometres from present-day Kelaa M’Gouna.

A 12th-century work entitled Kitâb Al Istibṣar, written by an anonymous Arab geographer, refers to Tiylite as a madina, meaning a town. It describes it as a place through which caravans passed, equipped with a fortress, garrisons and the presence of a wali, or governor.

Tiylite was indeed a point of convergence for populations from neighbouring regions, as shown by the list of families buried in its Jewish cemetery: Ait Ouzzine, Ait Tazarine, Ait Ofilal, Imeghrane, Ait Hnana, Ait Icho, Ait Messoud, Ait David.

The Todgha and Dadès valleys also welcomed large Jewish communities from Andalusia after its reconquest by the Spanish Catholic monarchy. The ksar of Asfalou thus became a major place of residence for the Jews of Todgha, followed by the ksar of Tinghir, Taourirte and Ait Ourjdal.

The importance of the Jews in Todgha is explicitly carried in a local Amazigh popular song:

In the Tafilalet, around the Ziz basin, many Jewish settlements prospered. They experienced major economic and social growth with the founding of the city of Sijilmassa by the Zenata Berbers. After the decline of this radiant city in the 14th century, Jews continued their destiny in other ksour, such as the ksar of Tabouâssamte, Almamoun, Alfouqani, as well as the ksour of Beni Moussa and Moucheqlal.

Read also : Sijilmassa, the mythical city that shone the true heart of the Maghreb

The Tafilalet is also the native region of great Jewish rabbis such as Rabbi Ya’akov Abehssera, born in Rissani in 1889, Rabbi Moul Tria and Rabbi Moul Sedra.

The names of Jewish families still echo in local collective memory: Benchetrit, Benitah, Bensemhoun, Dahan, Illouz, Mamane, Nezri, Teboul Hazout, Bensaid, Zenou, Amoyal, as well as the Benhamou and Azeroual families in Boudnib.

Once the establishment of mellahs became the norm in Morocco’s major cities from the 19th century onwards, the towns and villages of south-eastern Morocco also created these areas reserved for Jewish communities. Some of them gained considerable renown, such as those of Rissani, Erfoud and Demnate.

Ouarzazate, too, was home to significant Jewish populations, notably in the villages of Telmasla, in the Kasbah of Taourirte, in Tamassinte, Imini and Tikirt. Rabbi Yihia Ben Baroukh Cohen Azogh rests in Tifoultoute. Agouim also hosts the tomb of Rabbi David Ou Moshé, born in Jerusalem. The village of Tazenakhte was especially renowned for the presence, in its synagogue, of an important theological document known as the Sefer Tislit, or the Scroll of Tislit.

A symbiosis between Jewish and Muslim communities

Jews and Muslims therefore shared a common existence within an equally common destiny. This fusion gave rise to a mixed culture, Judeo-Berber-Arab in character, in which many elements of identity were shared, such as the veneration of saints and ritual ceremonies around their tombs. On the Muslim side, this was the Moussem; on the Jewish side, the Hiloula. Often, the two communities venerated the same saints under different names.

Thus, in the Drâa region, Jews and Muslims celebrated a pilgrimage to the tomb of the same saint in Tidri, known as Isaac Akkouim by Jews and Sidi Moussa by Muslims. In Demnate, another saint named Haroun Ben Cohen was also venerated by local Muslims under the name Bou Lbarakat, meaning “the one who grants blessings.”

This cultural harmony between Jews and Muslims is also illustrated by family names, since only a small minority of Moroccan Jewish surnames have Hebrew or Aramaic roots. Most Jewish names reveal a local Berber, Arab or sub-Saharan connotation, or refer to a profession, a tribal affiliation or a geographical origin.

Jewish know-how in the service of the common good

While Jews in the great imperial cities often played important political and economic roles with the sultans, as influential advisers, financial managers or diplomatic agents, their role in the territories of the south-east was crucial to the development of localities and the organisation of their economies.

The prosperity of trans-Saharan trade rested largely on their involvement, thanks to their ancestral knowledge of the desert and of nomadic life. This know-how, together with their command of local languages, allowed them to open routes between remote regions, enabling their artisans to take part in weekly souks: blacksmiths, goldsmiths, gunsmiths, locksmiths, tailors, shoemakers, makers of saddles and babouches, carpets and blankets.

A perfect example is given by Rabbi Mardochée Aby Serour of Akka, who accompanied the French explorer Charles de Foucauld during his reconnaissance journey through Morocco in 1883.

Around the year 1070, the Andalusian geographer Al-Bakri described the Jews present in Sijilmassa as specialists in masonry and architecture. Throughout south-eastern Morocco, they were indeed the builders of many kasbahs and ksour, and the engineers of many agricultural facilities, especially those related to irrigation.

But it was in trade that Jews naturally acquired lasting skill and reputation. A popular saying illustrates this beautifully:

An uprooting marked by heartbreak

The 20th century would bring profound upheavals to the communal fabric that had been woven over the centuries between the Jewish and Muslim communities of Morocco.

On the one hand, the French Protectorate encouraged the rural exodus of Jewish families towards the major cities, drawn by access to Western modernity and no doubt by a hope of emancipation. On the other hand, France supported the development of modernised education based on the secular model of the French system.

The Alliance Israélite Universelle, a French organisation, thus offered mass schooling to young Jewish girls and boys, including those from the poorest families, and therefore also in rural Morocco.

The second half of the 20th century, from Morocco’s independence onwards and in the context of the various conflicts between Israel and the surrounding Arab countries, saw the departure from Morocco of the immense majority of Jews, even though they had become Moroccan citizens.

Mrs Fadma, originally from Ouarzazate, who died during the Covid-19 lockdown at the age of around 120, recalled those moments of separation with regret:

The eclipse of Jewish communities from Morocco’s national narrative

More than two thousand years later, the traces of the Jewish communities in south-eastern Morocco are gradually disappearing. They can still be found in the names of certain villages, in family names, in popular legends and in local customs.

Although oral tradition still manages to preserve some memories of all these shared communities of life between Berber, Arab and Jewish populations, time may erase them forever if nothing is done to highlight and preserve them, further eclipsing the Jewish share in Morocco’s national story.

The history of this participation of Jewish communities in the construction of Morocco remains little known, especially among younger Moroccan generations. Some initiatives have emerged in certain major Moroccan cities to counter this historical amnesia and restore all its colours to the collective story. Here in south-eastern Morocco, however, as with so many other facets of this region’s rich mosaic of memory, nothing has yet been done.

The testimony of a Moroccan Jewish woman who left for Israel expresses a clear wish:

The mystery of this Jew, Moroccan forever, remains intact

In the end, once the pilgrimages have passed and all memories have faded, there will remain the indelible scar of the heartbreak caused by the mass exodus of the Jewish community.

The heartbreak of entire families torn away from a land that had become native to them — and even more than that, a land of origin.

The heartbreak of being removed from a country that had become theirs.

And finally, the heartbreak felt by all those who watched leave the men and women with whom, despite everything, despite periods of persecution, constraints and humiliations, they had shared, over the centuries, the experience of having become Moroccan.

The history of Jews in Morocco thus unfolds across a very long path where light and shadow intertwine, faithfully reflecting the journey of our shared humanity. Yet one singular fact can be observed, and every testimony confirms it: the Moroccan Jew, whether from the south-east, from other rural regions or from the great cities, has left. But wherever he may be in the world — in Israel, in Europe, in Canada or anywhere else — he keeps his Moroccan component present and alive within him.

Between the suffering and the beauty of his existence in Morocco, the mystery of the Jew, forever Moroccan, remains intact.

This mystery undoubtedly sheds light on the past of all Moroccans and of all Moroccan territories. It could also illuminate their future, if the awakening of memory could be understood as the illumination, in all its colours, of the great and beautiful history of Morocco — a kingdom then fully proud of its plural identity.

The post The lost destiny of the Jews of South-Eastern Morocco appeared first on Southeast-morocco.com.

This article begins with that simple question. It invites us to look again at North African history from a different angle, and to understand how the Berber — or Amazigh — identity, long neglected or underestimated, could have become a powerful source of cultural unity across the region.

From the ancient origins of the Berbers to their living legacy in languages, traditions and ways of life, this is a return to the source: a way to see how shared memory can help shape the future of the Maghreb.

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Had this simple phrase echoed in the minds of Moroccan schoolchildren throughout their years at school — as “our ancestors, the Gauls” once did for French children — the face of Morocco might have been changed.

And if, alongside them, young Algerians, Tunisians, Libyans and so many others across North Africa had learned the same refrain — our ancestors, the Berbers — the face of the world itself might have been different.

Imagine this small tune passing through the minds of children, generation after generation. The peoples of the Maghreb might today have understood themselves, naturally and historically, as belonging to one shared national and cultural space.

Better still, the North African origin of anyone living or travelling in Europe might have been immediately understood as part of a Berber identity. More than any visa, it could have become a true passport — a way of moving freely through the world.

Of course, this is fiction. Today, it belongs only to the realm of impossible utopia.

The populations of the southern Mediterranean were, from a very early stage, exposed to inevitable mixtures with peoples coming from every horizon. Some territories, because of their position, became crossroads more than others. Morocco, at the junction of two continents, is one of them.

Here, the cultural traces left by successive waves of human movement were engraved more deeply than elsewhere.

The identity of peoples, between alchemy and narrative

In reality, the process through which countries build their identity has little to do with the genealogy of peoples. It is often more a matter of dialectic than of history.

The aim is not only to tell the history of a people, but to construct its narrative. The strict historicity of such identity narratives is often secondary.

In the end, it is almost always a kind of alchemy. Human diversities are melted together, fused and recomposed until they emerge as a third, synthetic unity — the unity that allows a nation, at a given moment in its history, to become a body and to exist.

This is the very process through which Morocco, in the preamble to its 2011 Constitution, stated that its unity, forged by the convergence of its Arab-Islamic, Amazigh and Saharan-Hassani components, had been nourished and enriched by its African, Andalusian, Hebrew and Mediterranean tributaries.

Everywhere, in a once-shared past, there is the Berber

Whatever narrative is being built, whatever human diversities are being brought into alliance, the makers of national identity always work with elementary materials, with primal components.

And everywhere in northern Africa, in a past once shared by all, there is the Berber.

Wherever one stands between the eastern and western edges of Africa, there has always been this same human substratum, born of a deep past common to all the territories concerned.

This is a factual reality. It is indelible, despite the many attempts to erase it over the centuries. It remains undeniable, despite the ambiguity carried by this enigmatic name: Berber / Amazigh.

The Berber human presence is now widely recognised as the oldest common denominator linking so many peoples and nations. Yet one fact stands out: these peoples and nations were unable to claim this common ancestor, and therefore unable to share him.

The Berber paradox through time

The mystery attached to the word “Berber” partly explains the difficulties that emerged, century after century, in building a Berber identity capable of gaining broad recognition.

Gabriel Camps, one of the major specialists on the subject, expressed what could be called the Berber paradox with striking clarity:

The historian does not try to resolve the paradox. Faithful to the rigour of his discipline, he notes that the ancient Berbers may not have shared one truly common language, but they did possess …

Read also: Tifinagh: from stone to digital, the living alphabet of the Amazigh world

This writing system, Libyco-Berber, survives today in the Tifinagh alphabet of the Tuareg, the Amazigh community that has preserved some of the deepest foundations of Berber origin.

But very early on, Punic writing, then Latin, and finally Arabic, took over among these peoples. Linguistic Arabisation eventually became socio-cultural Arabisation, to the point that, in some countries, almost entire populations came to say they were Arab, to believe they were Arab, and therefore, in social and cultural terms, to become Arab.

And yet, Gabriel Camps expressed this paradox in particularly striking terms:

The paradox is clear.

Across North Africa, without interruption over time, a powerful mixture took place through successive Punic, Jewish, Roman, Vandal, Byzantine, Arab, Turkish and finally European impulses.

Yet everywhere, a local identity remained alive. It endured despite the accumulation of external contributions. Very early on, this raised a question: what was this Berber presence that could absorb the foreign newcomer while still preserving its own continuity?

This mystery troubled the minds of successive arrivals. It led them, again and again, to make the Berber foreign to the very lands they had just discovered — to imagine him, like themselves, as someone who had come from elsewhere, from some distant place, rather than simply from here.

The Berber, the “other” who had to come from elsewhere

In the 5th century BC, the Greek historian and geographer Herodotus was among the first to describe the peoples living west of Egypt. He called them Libyans, distinguishing between those who lived as nomads by the sea and those who were farmers, settled in houses among mountainous and wooded landscapes — clearly the regions of the Atlas — whom he called the Maxyes.

Several centuries later, his Roman counterpart Sallust refined this portrait of the indigenous populations. The nomadic group would later be associated with the name Gaetulians, while the sedentary group retained the name Libyans. According to Sallust, together they represented the humans present in these territories since prehistoric times: primitive hunter-gatherers whom he described as…

Unsurprisingly, the Roman historian imagined them as having been civilised by peoples from the East — more precisely the Medes and Persians — who were said to have settled there.

Gabriel Camps explains that the term Maxyes is the Greek rendering of Imazighen, the plural of Amazigh, used by indigenous groups to identify themselves as a community.

In this way, all the foreigners who came to the territories between Egypt and the Atlantic Ocean named the local populations according to their own phonetic understanding of this ancient name of identity: Meshwesh for the Egyptians, Mazices or Madices for the Romans, Mazigh for the Arabs.

Camps developed the theory that the appearance, in ancient accounts, of Mede tribes supposedly coming from the East may in fact have resulted from a distortion of the Roman name Madices — that is, the Imazighen encountered locally.

This linguistic distortion would have been driven by a difficulty: the difficulty of imagining that non-Romanised indigenous populations could possess their own cultural and civilisational qualities.

In search of an impossible origin

Imazighen, Maxyes, Madices, Medes… This litany of names designating the Berber would later be synthesised under the generic term Moors, used to describe non-Latinised North Africans.

Yet throughout the centuries, observers continued to give the Berber an ancestry external to the land in which he lived. There remained a persistent tendency to connect this mysterious Berber, although clearly present there, to some distant root.

The Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea argued for a Phoenician origin. Saint Augustine, from his city of Hippo near Carthage, saw Canaanite roots in his compatriots. Another Greek historian, Strabo, saw nothing less than Indians behind the Moors.

Herodotus claimed that the Imazighen were descended from the Trojans, while Plutarch described the great Greek hero Heracles leading Mycenaean communities towards Mauretania Tingitana — northern Morocco — around 1500 BC.

In the 14th century, the famous geographer Ibn Khaldun was even more categorical:

European historians of the 19th century continued this frantic search for Berber origins. Here and there, they gave credit to Oriental or Indian theories, even going so far as to attribute the dolmens and other megalithic monuments discovered in Algeria to Celtic, Gallic — and therefore French — or more broadly Nordic origins.

This “stranger”, indigenous for 9,000 years

Anthropological research paints a very different picture, one detached from free from ideological bias.

Of course, human presence in North Africa, and in the Maghreb in particular, goes back to very ancient times.

It is now accepted that the different human representatives identified in the Maghreb — from the early Homo sapiens of Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, through the Aterian humans of Dar es-Soltane, to the Mechta-Afalou type represented at Afalou Bou Rhummel in Algeria — evolved locally, each in their own period, without needing to be explained by an external origin, and in parallel with other human developments elsewhere in the world.

One must then wait until around 9000 BC for a new human type, coming from the Near East, to settle in large numbers as far as the ocean. This type would be called Proto-Mediterranean and became known through the rise of the Capsian culture.

This newcomer developed along different branches, each carrying specific morphological characteristics. Two major tendencies can be distinguished: on one side, more robust types; on the other, more gracile types, with the whole range, as always, expressed through infinite nuances.

Over the millennia, these Proto-Mediterraneans spread across a large part of the Mediterranean world, from Libya to Italy.

And so Gabriel Camps was able to confirm:

The unfolding of the Berber tree

The Berber thus anchored his genealogical root firmly in the very lands of his development: the Maghreb.

And in the same broad movement as other human groups across the planet, he entered the radical transformations of the Neolithic period, with settled life, agriculture and animal husbandry.

He would continuously receive and assimilate human and cultural contributions from the East, from the Sahara and from the European continent through Spain. Some of these contributions would prove more influential than others, especially the Bedouin migrations of the 11th century, which sealed the Arabisation of the populations.

But in every era, these Maghreb territories and their human communities acted as powerful civilisational crucibles. From them emerged peoples, cultures, kingdoms and, much later, nations.

Across the millennia, this original Berber would thus become an actor in the wider course of human evolution.

He would be the bovidian herder whose presence is found in rock art. He would be the chariot driver of the equidian period, crossing the vast expanses of the Sahara armed with his javelin.

Having become a horseman, he would be the Gaetulian observed by the Roman conquerors, and then the Garamantian nomad, true ancestor of the Tuareg, a proud warrior carrying his long sword.

Before that, he would have been the Libyan described by Herodotus, or the Maxyes.

He would become the Numidian of the great Masaesylian and Massylian kingdoms, with King Massinissa.

Finally, the Berber would cross the centuries under the name of Moor, from the westernmost lands of the continent to Andalusia.

Under the gaze of Ibn Khaldun, the Berber would unfold not as a set of localised peoples, but as a tribal lineage.

He would be the Sanhaja, son of Znag, the camel-driving nomad. He would also be the Zenata, among the first to undergo deep Arabisation.

Both would found major dynasties: the Almoravids, from whom a vast empire would emerge, and the Marinids.

He would also be the Berber of the Masmuda tribe, from which the great Almohad dynasty would flourish — a power whose reach would reunite all the original territories of its Proto-Mediterranean ancestor.

The mosaic of a borderless story

The Berber — the Amazigh of ancient times — would not only unfold through tribes, peoples, cities and kingdoms. He would also give rise to many powerful and radiant figures, whose names would be engraved on the pages of a borderless story, truly shared by all of North Africa.

He would be Sheshonq I, Pharaoh of Egypt in 950 BC and founder of the 22nd Dynasty; the famous King Massinissa, who contributed to Rome’s victory over Carthage in 202 BC; and also Jugurtha, king of Numidia, Juba II, Ptolemy of Mauretania and Masuna, king of the Kingdom of the Moors and Romans at the beginning of the 6th century.

Over the centuries, the Berber would carry countless destinies: that of Dihya, the Zenata Berber queen; that of Tin Hinan, born in Tafilalet and queen of the Tuareg of Hoggar; that of Augustin, bishop of Hippo; Arius, priest of Alexandria; Donatus Magnus, bishop of Africa; Tertullian, Father of the Church of Rome; and Macrinus, Diadumenian, Caracalla and Aemilian, all Roman emperors.

He becomes Tariq ibn Ziyad, the Umayyad general who set out to conquer the Iberian Peninsula in 711. He travels through unknown lands under the name of Ibn Battuta, one of the greatest explorers of the Middle Ages.

He expresses his thirst for freedom under the names of Lalla Fadhma N’Soumer, Abdelkrim el-Khattabi and Assou Oubasslam, military leader of the Moroccan resistance to French colonialism.

He develops all his talents in the figures of Mohand Ou Lhocine, Kabyle poet and mystic; Si Mohand Ou Mhand; Muhammad Awzal; the Algerian writer Kateb Yacine; Mohamed Choukri; Mouloud Mammeri; Jean Amrouche; the singer Idir — and so many others, men and women of every time and every land, crossed and brought together by this unfathomable, unalterable thread of Amazigh origin.

The conclusion is unequivocal: on these lands of North Africa, from Egypt to the Atlantic Ocean, the Berber stands at the heart of the history unfolding there. He has been both the ink and the paper of a story without author and without title. And yet his spirit remains present and alive, proud and free, where he settled, took root, and then became a tree of existences, 9,000 years ago.

Read also: The Lost Destiny of the Jews of South-Eastern Morocco

Read also: Tin Hinan, the legendary berber queen of the Tuareg

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