The town of Iligh, located in the district of Tazeroualt (Tāzarwālt) in the Anti-Atlas Mountains in the southwestern Sous region of Morocco, rose to importance when Būdamī‘a (d. 1659), the great-grandson of the venerated saint (murābiṭ) and sharīf Sīdī Aḥmad ū-Mūsā (Sī Ḥmad ū-Mūsā) made it his capital in the 1620s. ‘Alī Būdamī‘a exploited the weakness of the Saʿdian dynasty after the death of Sultan Aḥmad al-Manṣūr to build a base of political power. He accomplished this largely through his control of trade in the western Sahara which was conducted by Jews from nearby Ifrane, many of who…