Beni Mellal, a town in central Morocco on the road between Fez and Marrakesh, sits in the foothills of the Middle Atlas Mountains in the agriculturally rich Tadla region, irrigated by abundant springs. It has long been an important market center. Its population is a mix of Berber-speakers descended from the mountains and Arabic-speakers from the plains.

It is unknown whether there was a Jewish community in 1688, when Mawlāy Ismāʿīl founded the qaṣba (walled town). In the 1880s, Charles de Foucauld noted three hundred Jews out of a total population of about three thousand, th…