Talk:Walls of Marrakesh

Mellah
This is a great article. But I have a quibble with one sentence:


 * "Sultan Moulay Abdallah al-Ghalib also transferred the Jewish population of the city to a new Mellah district on the east side of the Royal Palace, expanding the eastern outline of the kasbah in the process."

Unfortunately, I don't have currently access the references related to it, but I am wondering about the verb "transferred". My understanding is that the Jewish population was forbidden by edict from living in the city from Almoravid times, but a Jewish district developed informally outside the city walls near the Bab Aylan gate. I know it may be mere pedantry, but "transferred the Jewish population of the city" suggests there were Jews living inside the Medina + Kasbah before that, rather than outside of it. Do your sources confirm/disprove that? It would seem to me the Mellah was created c.1558 to concentrate Jewish residents from the outskirts of the city, rather than from inside the city itself. The wording "transferred" seems to suggest Jews were living inside the Medina + Kabsbah until they were expelled in 1558 rather than prohibited from entering since its founding in 1070s. In other words that the prohibition on Jewish residency had been relaxed sometime between the 1150s and 1550s. It would be helpful to be clear which was the case Walrasiad (talk) 06:14, 8 June 2023 (UTC)


 * All the sources I've read state clearly that the Jewish population was living inside the medina, at least in the 16th century at any rate. (Not inside the Kasbah though, or at least there's no mention of that in particular.) This is what Deverdun 1959 (p.363-364) indicates this when discussing the creation of the Mellah as well as the concurrent creation of the Mouassine Mosque, supposedly in the area where many Jews were living until then. (Salmon, also cited, is probably following Deverdun.) In a more recent example, it's similarly discussed in Almela 2019 (see sections starting on p.278 and on p.281 in particular). You can find a more thorough discussion about the Mellah's creation in Gottreich 2003; who indicates that Marmol, in particular, tells us that they were living in the center of the city, among other locations. Unsurprisingly, the exact details are still up for further speculation, but there is general consistency between authors on this.
 * Deverdun (p.139-140) does indeed mention that Jews were initially barred from living in the city after its Almoravid foundation, according to al-Idrisi I think, but suggests that this restriction could have been relaxed under Ali Ibn Yusuf. He does speculate that there was an extra muros Jewish neighbourhood near Bab Aylan, but he says this is hypothetical. If all this is true, then evidently Jews moved into the city at a later period (Gottreich suggests there would have been an influx at the time of the Saadis, since Marrakesh's renewed status would have attracted newcomers). R Prazeres (talk) 07:43, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
 * PS: I think the current wording should be plenty sufficient for this article, as it's not the focus here, but all this would be good content for Mellah of Marrakesh, where I just noticed that citations to scholarly sources are lacking in its discussion of the early Jewish history of the city and the Mellah's creation. R Prazeres (talk) 07:50, 8 June 2023 (UTC)