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Old Synagogue at Ouirlane, Morocco

Description

The Ouirlane Mellah The Jewish community left Ouirlane in the 1950s and 1960s. These days the mellah of Ouirlane lies abandoned and in ruins. While the synagogue remains mostly intact, many of the other buildings are missing entire walls, and the usual entrance to the mellah is broken. Although no one lives in the mellah, it still sees occasionaly visitors, and the synagogue is now used to store hay. 

Mellahs Mellahs were specifically Jewish residential quarters established by law or custom in many communities of the Islamic world. The Moroccan term, mallah, originated from the name of the salt marsh in Fez where the first quarter was established in 1438. The name entered common usage as similar quarters were created in Marrakesh in the 16th century, Meknes in the 17th century, and many coastal towns in the early 19th century. The mellahs had practical benefits for the local authorities: having the entire Jewish community of a city located in one area made it easier to evaluate taxes and royal protection. While it was usual for Jews to be officially required to live in the mellah, there were exceptions: in Essaouira, wealthy Jews could move out of the mellah, and towns such as Tangier and Safi never established walled mellahs at all. Despite the walls, interactions between the Jewish and Muslim communities were frequent and occurred throughout the city. The physical segregation of Jews was eventually outlawed by the French colonial government.

Morocco By the late 1200s, the Jews of Morocco gained the ruling Berber dynasty's permission to openly practice Judaism. Morocco became a haven for Jews fleeing persecution in Spain; as many as twenty thousand Jews arrived in Morocco in 1492 after being expelled from Spain. By the seventeenth century, Jews lived in more than 250 communities in Morocco; Jewish traders were everywhere in the countryside, providing a connection between the costal cities and the smaller communities of the Sahara. During Spain's occupation of Tetouan in the early 1860s, many Jews fled from port cities to the countryside or even to Algeria. When the Crémiuex Decree of 1870 granted French citizenship to Algerian Jews, many Moroccan Jews settled in Algeria. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Morocco had the largest Jewish population of any Arab country, numbering between 110,000 and 120,000 people (about 2.5 percent of the population) in 1912. The population reached a peak of around 250,000 in the 1950s. Morocco gained independence in 1956, and a series of governmental decisions (including partially nationalizing the Alliance Israélite Universelle schools and temporarily forbidding postal relatiosn with Israel) made many Jews eager to emigrate. Once emigration policies were relaxed in 1962, more than 130,000 Jews left Morocco over the next thirty years, usually settling in Canada, France, or other Western European countries. Today, Morocco's Jewish population is less than five thousand people, most of whom live in Casablanca. 

Ouirlane, Morocco

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