This paper explores the utility of 19th- and 20th-century taxation and court records as toolsfor mapping the changing social topography of rural Morocco. Little serious work has been donewith such records to date, and it is hoped that this paper will encourage more researchers to usethis material.1 As a subset of the Moroccan official record, legal and tax recordsobviously have an epistemological character differing from that of private correspondence andeven other administrative records. Yet in the post-modern era, it is obvious that this cannot besimply reduced to the official record providing us with truth while private correspondence is amixture of fiction and possible truth. All sources need to be scrutinized both in the traditionalways of the historian and, more generally, as reflecting social forces conceived broadly.