Bidspirit auction | (MOROCCO). JOSEPH GOULVEN. Les Mellahs

(MOROCCO). JOSEPH GOULVEN. Les Mellahs de Rabat-Salé. FIRST EDITION. Text entirely in French. A profusion of illustrated and photographic plates. Preface by Georges Hardy, former Director General of Public Education in Morocco and Director of the Colonial School in Paris. Illustrations by Hainaut. Uncut copy. pp. xii, 163, (4). Foxed in places. Later boards bound in with original pictorial wrappers by Jabin bookstore Orientalist, Paul Geuthner. 4to. Paris, Paul Geuthner, 1927. The scores of photographs in this book depict Jewish life in the mellahs (ghettos) of the twin cities of Rabat and Sale, where Jews had been resident for millennia. Almost every city in Morocco had neighborhoods reserved for inhabitants of the Jewish faith. These neighborhoods, known as mellahs, were not ghettos in the strict sense of the term, as Jews could frequent the other districts of the city and vice versa. However it is thanks to the mellahs that Moroccan Jews were able to preserve their identity without assimilating with the rest of the cities’ inhabitants. Joseph Goulven (1886-1972) was employed from 1913 as a colonial administrator in Morocco. The goal of his research, begun in 1913 and completed in 1924, was to study Moroccan Jewish customs from birth through death. The decade required to complete his project indicates the difficulty he encountered when penetrating and studying the relatively unknown Jewish population, which remained isolated within the shelter of its walls, perpetuating traditions unchanged for centuries. To the author’s credit his quest resulted in an enduring documentary record, before the incessant flow of modern life modified or erased many of the ancient characteristics of Jewish life in Morocco.