19th century
Affair of Safi
1863·Safi, Tanger
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
two Jews executed on charges of poisoning, Moses Montefiore obtains from the sultan an edict of protection
The affair begins in Safi, on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, with the death of a Spanish consular agent and the accusation of poisoning leveled against Jews of the city. Two of them are executed, one in Safi, the other in Tanger where he had been transferred, following a summary proceeding conducted under consular pressure.
The echo of these executions reaches Europe and prompts Moses Montefiore, then nearly eighty years old, to travel to Morocco. Received by Sultan Mohammed IV, he obtains from him an edict ordering that the Jews of the kingdom be judged according to the law and protected from arbitrary treatment. The text will remain largely a dead letter in the provinces, but it will be invoked for decades as a reference.
- Period :
- 19th century
- Type :
- Trials and executions
- Region :
- Egypt and Maghreb
- Country :
- Maroc
Correspondance et journal de voyage de Moses Montefiore ; archives diplomatiques britanniques sur la mission au Maroc.