Creation of the mellah and expulsion from the medina

The discovery, in the old city of Fès, of what was identified as the tomb of Idris II, founder of the city, made it a sacred space from which non-Muslims were to be excluded.

The Jews, who had until then lived in the medina, were transferred to the new quarter, Fès Jdid, on land near the sultan's palace that bore the Arabic name for salt, *mellaḥ*. The word would henceforth designate, throughout all of Morocco, the Jewish quarter.

The displacement was not merely a relegation: proximity to the palace offered protection, and it is this ambiguity — enclosed, hence exposed; close to power, hence protected as long as it holds — that would define the condition of Moroccan communities until the protectorate. Fès would confirm this a generation later, when the fall of the Marinids delivered the mellah to the crowd.