[In]Secure Space: The Mellah of Fez, Morocco, 1834-1956

This dissertation investigates the struggle over architecture and urban form in Fez, Morocco from nineteenth century to the present. It examines the mellah, the walled urban quarter that historically segregated the Jewish community from the Muslim majority in this iconic North African city. The quarter has indicated the significant presence of a Jewish minority as well as historic restrictions placed upon the community by the region's rulers. This study considers the mellah's structure and appearance under the waning imperial power of the Alawite dynasty, the colonial administration of the French Protectorate of Morocco, and the current constitutional monarchy of the Kingdom of Morocco. Moroccan nationalism and the current administration were and are highly invested in the nation's Islamic identities. The markers of its Jewish past and foreign intervention by Western States have resulted in the mellah 's continued marginalization, in effect displacing it from a critical position to an ancillary one. Abandoned by its Jewish population in the mid-twentieth century, Moroccan Muslims would repopulate but not revitalize the quarter. The mellah stands as a repository for the Jewish community's past achievements but also serves as a reminder of forced segregation and the status of Jews as second-class citizens. Historically unhinged, economically disadvantaged, overpopulated, only vaguely on the tourist map, and rarely a destination, the mellah is a non-place, but it is not a dead place. Its urban landscape contains altered structures not found in other parts of the historic city. Institutional neglect inadvertently preserved evidence of difficult episodes for the former capital city in its minority quarter. More than any other district in Fez, the mellah recorded failed or arrested modernization attempts generated from within existing models of urban design and inscribed in its hybrid and transcultural forms. This study posits that the vulnerability of former Jewish space enabled the quarter to most adamantly express the upheavals enacted in Fez during the last two centuries. Analysis of the multiple meanings attributed to mellah help to redefine Fez in the twenty-first-century and acknowledge the city's past traumas.