Massacre of the Jewish quarter during the capture of the city by Tamim ibn Ziri; the survivors reduced to captivity

Fès had been home since the early days of Islam to a considerable Jewish community, one of the most learned in the Muslim West: it was there that Isaac Alfassi taught, and it was from there that the family of Maïmonide came.

The city fell into the hands of Tamim ibn Ziri, a Zenata chieftain, amid the struggles that set the Berber principalities against one another following the collapse of the caliphate of Cordova. The Jewish quarter was given over to massacre; those who survived were reduced to captivity, and their possessions divided. This is the first great massacre attested in a Moroccan city, and it stems from no religious policy: it belongs to the ordinary pillaging of a conquered city.

The community reconstituted itself, and Fès remained for centuries a center of learning. It endured other ordeals — the Almohad conquest, then the riots of the Merinid and Alaouite eras — but none effaced it.