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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The Mellahs of Southern Morocco: Report of Survey |
Author: | Goldberg, Harvey E. |
Year: | 1983 |
Periodical: | Maghreb Review |
Volume: | 8 |
Issue: | 3-4 |
Period: | May-August |
Pages: | 61-69 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Morocco |
Subjects: | Jews Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Religion and Witchcraft |
Abstract: | The Jews of Morocco were mainly an urban population, but a significant proportion lived in small towns and rural mellahs at a considerable distance from the urban centres. The term mellah is used here in the sense of a concentration of Jewish residents. Sometimes a mellah was a distinct hamlet separated from the neighbouring Muslim village, while at other times it was a 'quarter' within a Muslim village or town. There were many such small Jewish communities in southern Morocco up to the time of independence, and even through the early 1960s. The present article draws an initial portrait of these communities, highlighting aspects of their internal structure and social and cultural life and at the same time placing them in a broader regional context. The data were collected as part of an ethnography salvage project carried out in 1983 among former residents of these communities now living in Israel. App., notes. |