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Home of Stella Corcos, Essaouira, Morocco
Home of Stella Corcos, Essaouira (אסואירה ,الصويرة, ⵜⴰⵚⵚⵓⵔⵜ, Mogador), Morocco (מרוקו, المغرب).
According to Sidney Corcos, a former resident of Essaouira, the house at the back of Dar Souiri on Rue Mohamed Layachi used to be the house of Stella Corcos, a prominent Jewish English woman who opened the first school for girls in Essaouira–which was in fact the first school for Jewish girls in all of North Africa.
Description
Background on the Mellah of Essaouira
Essaouira was established by Alaouite Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Abdellah in 1764 on the site of a former Portuguese fortress. [1, 2] It quickly became a major domestic and international trading post, attracting many Jewish merchants, traders, and workers. [3, 4] In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Essaouira was home to one of the largest Jewish communities in the country. At one point, Jews made up about 40 percent of Essaouira’s population, growing so much that an addition to the mellah had to be built to accommodate them. [5, 6]
Mellahs, separate Jewish quarters, were established in multiple cities by an 1807 Sultan-issued dahir (decree). [7] Before then, Jews and Muslims lived together in the neighborhoods of Essaouira. [8] The name, mellah, comes from the salt marsh area in Fez where the first mellah was created. [9] Following the decree, poorer Jews populated the mellah while elite Jewish families resided in the casbah quarter outside the mellah walls. [10] The separation of casbah and mellah generated tensions between elite and lower-class Jews. [11] In Essaouira, “division was really a division of class and not of religion,” with intermarriage being widely acepted and places of worship were even shared amongst Muslims and Jews. [12]
Today, only a handful of Jews remain in Essaouira. [13] One of the reasons for this is the impact of French Protectorate (1912-1956), during which the French developed Casablanca and Agadir as seaports, limiting economic opportunities in Essaouira and incentivizing migration to larger hubs [14, 15]. Another, larger, exodus took place following the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, after which only about 2 percent of the Jewish population remained. [ 16, 17]
The Jewish quarter of Essaouira stands as a testament to the significant role of Jewry in the development of one of Morocco’s major port cities. Many sites of historical significance, including synagogues and old Jewish businesses, have been demolished or otherwise dilapidated over time. [18] Current Essaouira residents and others work to preserve remaining sites and redevelopment efforts are underway. [19, 20, 21]
The Home of Stella Corcos
Stella Corcos: Stella Corcos (1858-1948) was born in the United States, but later migrated to England with her parents, Abraham Duran and Rebecca Montefiore. While there, she met a distinguished Moroccan merchant by the name of Moses Corcos, married him, and then moved to Essaouira, Morocco in the 1880s. Wanting to counter the prominent Christian missionaries that were influencing the poor, Jewish youth, Stella decided to utilize her background in teaching. [22] She helped establish the Honor and Courage School (Kavod ve-Ometz), a tuition-free, all girl Jewish school, in tandem with the Anglo-Jewish Association and the Alliance Israélite Universelle. [23] The school was originally located in Stella’s home, but was then relocated to a building in the mellah. The curriculum was varied, with the young girls learning history, geography, math, and reading, as well as sewing, hygiene, English, and more. [24] 173 girls were enrolled in 1898, and it rose to 225 in 1907. It was considered a more successful endeavor than the similar English Boys School in the city. [25] Both the Honor and Courage School and Stella herself, had a positive impact on the Jewish community of Essaouira. Stella was a remarkable woman, with not only bringing free education to young Jewish girls, but she was the one to introduce a Jewish theater in Morocco, and was also successful in getting to meet with the Moroccan Sultan ‘Abd al-‘Azīz and having him authorize the addition of 150 houses to the overcrowded mellah. [26]
The house also had a small synagogue, however the original door is gone, since the house has been divided into smaller parts to host several families. While she left in the 1920s, a street was named after her in 2018. [27]
The Corcos Family: As one of the families arriving in Essaouira as the Sultan’s merchants (tujjar al-sultan), the Corcos family holds a prominent place in Essaouira’s history. [27, 28] One of the most influential merchants of the region, Abraham Corcos, was a member of the family who was active in the late nineteenth century. [29] He had close ties with the royal family in Marrakesh and served as Unites States vice consul. [30] Similar to Stella Corcos’s activities later on, Abraham Corcos made social reform a focus of his career, supporting efforts to boost funding for hospitals and one of the Alliance schools. [31] Today, the home of Stella Corcos stands as a reminder of the Corcos family’s work in Essaouria through the generations.
Sources
Notes
1 Daniel Schroeter, “Essaouira (Mogador)”, in Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, Executive Editor Norman A. Stillman. Consulted online on 13 July 2022.
2 “Jewish Quarter of Essaouira,” World Monuments Fund, last modified March 2021, accessed July 30, 2021, https://www.wmf.org/project/jewish-quarter-essaouira.
3 Ibid.
4 Daniel Schroeter.
5 “Jewish Quarter of Essaouira.”
6 Daniel Schroeter.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Emily Gottreich, “Mallāḥ,” in Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, ed. Norman A. Stillman, (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill), Accessed 20 July 2021.
10 Daniel Schroeter.
11 Ibid.
12 “A Pluralistic Community,” World Monuments Fund, 2019, https://www.wmf.org/slideshow/what-it-was-pluralistic-community
13 Daniel Schroeter.
14 “Jewish Quarter of Essaouira.”
15 Carmen Ascanio-Sanchez, Miguel Suárez Bosa, and Juan Carlos Almeida Pérez, “Tradition and Modernity: The Water Sector in Morocco During the French Protectorate (1912-1956),” African Historical Review 51 (1): 67–86, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1080/17532523.2019.1628491.
16 David Schroeter.
17 Shlomo Deshen, “Israel, State of,” in Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, Executive Editor Norman A. Stillman, accessed July 30, 2022.
18 “Jewish Quarter of Essaouira.”
19 Ibid.
20 “Wandering Through the Mellah,” World Monuments Fund, 2018, https://www.wmf.org/blog/wandering-through-mellah#:~:text=The%20Mellah%20is%20the%20old,its%20story%20before%20it%20disappears
21 Aomar Boum. Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco,
Stanford University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=1358595.
22 Sidney Corcos. ‘Corcos, Stella’. In Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, edited by Norman A. Stillman, Phillip I. Ackerman-Lieberman, Yaron Ayalon, Avigdor Levy, Vera B. Moreen, Meira Polliack, Angel Saenz-Badillos and, and Daniel Schroeter.
23 Daniel Schroeter, "Anglo-Jewry and Essaouira (Mogador), 1860—1900: the social implications of philanthropy." Transactions & Miscellanies (Jewish Historical Society of England) 28 (1981): 60-88.
24 Ushi Derman, "The Woman Who Founded the First School for Jewish Girls in Northern Africa," Museum of the Jewish People.
25 Daniel Schroeter, "Anglo-Jewry and Essaouira (Mogador)," pp. 66
26 Ibid, pp. 67
27 Ibid, pp. 64
28 “Who Left: Ongoing Significance to the Jewish Community,” World Monuments Fund, 2018, https://www.wmf.org/slideshow/who-left-ongoing-significance-jewish-community
29 Daniel Schroeter, "Anglo-Jewry and Essaouira (Mogador)," pp. 69-70
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid.
Works Cited
“A Pluralistic Community,” World Monuments Fund, 2019, https://www.wmf.org/slideshow/what-it-was-pluralistic-community
Ascanio-Sanchez, Carmen, Miguel Suárez Bosa, and Juan Carlos Almeida Pérez. “Tradition and Modernity: The Water Sector in Morocco During the French Protectorate (1912-1956).” African Historical Review 51 (1): 67–86. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/17532523.2019.1628491.
Boum, Aomar. Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco,
Stanford University Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=1358595.
Corcos, Sidney. ‘Corcos, Stella’. In Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, edited by Norman A. Stillman, Phillip I. Ackerman-Lieberman, Yaron Ayalon, Avigdor Levy, Vera B. Moreen, Meira Polliack, Angel Saenz-Badillos and, and Daniel Schroeter. https://referenceworks.brillonline.com:443/entries/encyclopedia-of-jews-in-the-islamic-world%252Fcorcos-stella-SIM_0005800.
Derman, Ushi. "The Woman Who Founded the First School for Jewish Girls in Northern Africa," Museum of the Jewish People. Last modified March 8, 2020. https://www.anumuseum.org.il/blog-items/woman-founded-first-school-jewish-girls-northern-africa/.
Deshen, Shlomo. “Israel, State of.” In Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. Executive Editor Norman A. Stillman. Accessed July 30, 2022.
Gottreich, Emily. “Mallāḥ. ” in Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, ed. Norman A. Stillman, (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill), Accessed 20 July 2021.
“Jewish Quarter of Essaouira.” World Monuments Fund. Last modified March 2021. Accessed July 30, 2021. https://www.wmf.org/project/jewish-quarter-essaouira.
Schroeter, Daniel. “Essaouira (Mogador).” In: Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic
World. Executive Editor Norman A. Stillman. Consulted online on 13 July 2022.
Schroeter, Daniel. "Anglo-Jewry and Essaouira (Mogador), 1860—1900: the social implications of philanthropy." Transactions & Miscellanies (Jewish Historical Society of England) 28 (1981): 60-88.
“Wandering Through the Mellah,” World Monuments Fund, 2018, https://www.wmf.org/blog/wandering-through-mellah#:~:text=The%20Mellah%20is%20the%20old,its%20story%20before%20it%20disappears
“Who Left: Ongoing Significance to the Jewish Community.” World Monuments Fund, 2018. https://www.wmf.org/slideshow/who-left-ongoing-significance-jewish-community
Photographs
From Derman, Ushi. "The Woman Who Founded the First School for Jewish Girls in Northern Africa," Museum of the Jewish People. Last modified March 8, 2020. https://www.anumuseum.org.il/blog-items/woman-founded-first-school-jewish-girls-northern-africa/.
1 Corcos, Sidney. “Stella Corcos’ girls’ school in Mogador, Morocco, 1885-1900c., The Corcos Family Archive, Jerusalem.”
2 “Stella Corcos Duran, 1940c.”
3 Cohen, David. “Jewish children from Marrakech in a summer school in Mogador, 1945. Beit Hatfutsot, the Oster Visual Documentation Center”
4 Beit Hatfutsot collection. “Gala night’s program of the Stella Corcos girls’ school, Mogador, Morocco, late 19th century.” Original document at Bibliothèque de l’Alliance israélite universelle, Paris