Mulai Hashem, a native of Tafilelt, tells me that the Jews are very numerous in his country. He says there are two races of Jews among them, one race has been in Tafilelt since eight years previous to the Hegira of Mohammed, the other having been brought in by a chief named Mulai Ali, the son of Mulai Hassan.
Mulai Ali, says my informant, had purchased these Jews from some distant country of the East—where he found them in great distress—and he gave fifty pieces of money for each: what money he does not know.
Mulai Hashem says that these two races are thus distinguished. The older race have the whole head shaved. The colony brought by Mulai Ali leave a small segment of a circle unshaved on the top of the forehead. These latter also wear a black cap, somewhat pointed at the top, where it is made to curl down on one side of the face.
The Jewesses are not dressed like those that live in Tangier, but in the costume of the Moorish woman, and wear rich dresses with jewels. They are however to be distinguished from the Moorish woman by the arrangement of their hair, which the latter draw backwards from either side of the forehead over the temples to the back of the head; whereas the Jewesses (unmarried) twist their hair in circles on the top of the head. The married Jewesses are not allowed by the law to show their hair. This law, by the way, is not from the Bible, but is an invention of the Rabbis.
The Jews, said Mulai Hashem, are well treated in Tafilelt, whilst they behave well and according to the rules laid down for them; which, by the specimen of one that he gave, appear sufficiently humiliating—viz. that should a Jew pass or be passed by a Sheríf, he, the Jew, must take off his shoes; or, if mounted, must dismount, unless specially absolved by the Sheríf.
He tells me that they exercise all the crafts which are practised in the country, except tilling the soil. It appears that the Jews themselves seldom, if ever, accompany the ‘kafilas’ (caravans), but, he says, they have commercial dealings with the Sudan country.
It would appear that the Tafilelt Jews are much at their ease, if one may judge from the joking adage—according to Mulai Hashem common in Tafilelt—that ‘forty Mohammedans work for one Jew.’ Mulai Hashem said that the Filali Jews, or Jews of Tafilelt, speak the Shloh tongue as well as the Arabic, and whenever they wish to say what they would not have known to Moors or others they speak in Hebrew.
A learned Jew of this country tells me that all Arabs and Moors whose names are composed with Ben are of an Israelitish origin.
Mulai Hashem tells me that the following oath is administered in his country to the Jews, and that they will rather give back anything they may have come by unjustly than take so grave an oath:—
‘By God, there is no other God but He, the Eternal and Just—who uttered His word upon the mighty hill—and by the truth of the existence of the two palm-trees which meet together over the river Sebts, and by the Book of Moses—peace be upon him—and by the Ten Commandments delivered unto Moses, and by all that is contained in his Book, the Gadi, God forbid that I should add or diminish in this affair, else may God destroy my memory, and may the name of my family be never mentioned in the world.’