"Morocco was closely linked to developments in Spain, where the largest and most prosperous Jewish population in the world lived during the Middle Ages. But, as the Reconquista by the Catholic monarchs progressed in Spain, Jews were increasingly persecuted. After a wave of anti-Jewish violence in 1391, many Jews sought refuge in Morocco, where the ruling dynasty, the Marinids, was more hospitable to them. Spanish or ‘Sephardic’ Jews settled throughout the country, particularly in the northern cities (such as Tetuan), which became major destinations for Iberian refugees. Fez received a large number of Jewish immigrants, and as the city’s Jewish population grew, the Marinid Sultan ‘Abd al-Haq b. Abu Sa’id decided to confine the Jews to a special quarter near the palace in 1438. The immediate cause of the sultan’s decision was a Muslim massacre of the Jewish community, following allegations that Jews had placed wine in the mosques of Fez. The sultan intervened by relocating the Jews to a quarter next to the imperial city in ‘New Fez.’ But broader context of the inter-religious tension may well have been competition between Jews and Muslims over urban space, especially in light of the growing immigration of Spanish Jews. The spot chosen by the sultan was called the mellah and soon the new Jewish quarter swarmed with thousands of arrivals from Spain, following the expulsion of Spanish Jewry in 1492. The term mellah came to be used for other quarters in Morocco where Jews resided in a designated, enclosed district of the city. […]


In many of the places they settled in Morocco, the new arrivals from Spain were collectively known in Hebrew as the megorashim (or ‘those expelled’), to distinguish them from the native Jews, the toshavim (or ‘residents’). In northern Morocoo, the refugees usually formed the majority of the community. In Fez, which contained Morocco’s largest Jewish community during this period, Spanish refugees exercised enormous influence on the religious and cultural life of the community. Their influence was also significant in the southern and eastern communities. In Debdu, a community in eastern Morocco where the majority of the town’s inhabitants were Jewish, Jews of Spanish origin appear to have formed the dominant family groups. In Marrakesh, the Spanish refugees were concentrated in one area and maintained separate synagogues. A French observer noted in 1903: “In Marrakesh there are both native and Spanish Jews. Each sect possesses synagogues and a Talmud-thora of its own…” Over the centuries, however, the descendants of Spanish Jewry in many Moroccan communities assimilated aspects of the indigenous Jewish culture, and thus gave bieth to a new, uniquely Moroccan cultural synthesis."