Exile in the Maghreb entails the first attempt to describe the historical reality of the legal and social conditions of the Jews in the Muslim countries of North Africa , principally Algeria and Morocco , over a period of a thousand years from the Middle Ages (997 CE) to French colonization (1830 Algeria/1912 Morocco). This book is not a formal history but a chronological anthology of documents drawn from literary (section A) and archival sources (section B), most of which are published here in Hebrew for the first time.

In section A, Arabic and Hebrew chronicles and Muslim legal and theological texts are followed by accounts culled from European travelers , captives, diplomats, doctors, clerics, and adventurers. Each document is introduced and annotated in such a way as to bring out its importance.

The second section (B) reflects the diplomatic activity deployed by humanitarian organizations in favour of North African Jewry. Spanning the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these are mainly drawm from the archives of the Alliance Israelite Universelle (Paris) and the Anglo-Jewish Association (London). The documents are richly elucidated with illustrations taken from the international press.

The present book is not a translation of Exile in the Maghreb, which appeared in New York in 2016, but follows a different structure. An effort has been made to introduce new documents from Hebrew sources and thus 16 unpublished Hebrew documents (approx. 40% of the archival section) are presented here for the first time. This book presents new and illuminating insight into the status of Jews under the Crescent. The Jews of North Africa were the only minority under Islam in this region and their history reflects Judaism’s exclusive encounter with Islam.