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Friday, November 22, 2019

A forgotten massacre of Jews in Morocco, 1860

Wikipedia says
Tétouan has been home to a significant Sephardi Jewish community which immigrated from Spain after the Reconquista and the Spanish Inquisition. This Jewish Sephardi community spoke a form of Judaeo-Spanish known as Haketia.[40]

In 1790, a pogrom happened, started by Sultan Yazid. The mellah was pillaged and many women raped.[41] The Jews lived in a mellah, which is located inside the old medina.
I cannot find any account that  corresponds to the horrors narrated in this article in The Occident, Thursday, April 05, 1860.

On February 6, 1860, Spanish soldiers who were then fighting in Morocco entered Tétouan, a town very close to the Straits of Gibraltar. Apparently the Sultan's soldiers got wind of an impending surrender and took the opportunity to attack the Jews of the city - stealing and breaking anything of value and raping the women, as happened 70 years earlier.



How many other such forgotten massacres occurred over the centuries in Arab countries that were supposedly so friendly to Jews?

It looks like the city recovered. The Muslims mostly fled the city leaving mostl Jews and Christians. Roughly half the population was Jewish in 1861. The first school of the Alliance Israélite Universelle was opened in Tetuan in 1862, just after the Spanish troops left the city.




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