Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World

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Tafilalet
(1,197 words)

Tafilalet (Tafilalt; Ar./Berb. Tāfīlālt) is a fertile region in southeastern Morocco, situated in the Ziz River basin on the northern edge of the Sahara Desert. It is famous for its date palm industry, and is the patrimonial home of the Filālī (nisba or adjectival form) sharīfs (Cl. Ar. shurafā’; Coll. Mor. Ar. shorfa), the rulers of the Moroccan Alawid dynasty since the seventeenth century. Tafilalet was also the name of an administrative district under the French.

Jews lived in the Tafilalet region at least as early as the end of the first millennium, when there was a Jewish community in…

Cite this page
Moshe Bar-Asher, “Tafilalet”, in: Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, Executive Editor Norman A. Stillman. Consulted online on 28 March 2024 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1878-9781_ejiw_COM_0020770>
First published online: 2010



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