This article examines the intersection between extraterritoriality--privileges afforded to European subjects in the Islamic Mediterranean--and various forms of state membership. To capture the multiplicity and instability of state membership, I introduce the phrase “legal belonging”--a neutral, umbrella term that encompasses a wide range of bonds between individuals and states (usually referred to as subjecthood, nationality, or citizenship). Adopting the methods of global legal history, I look at how laws regulating legal belonging responded to the extraterritorial context of the Mediterranean in both European and Middle Eastern states. In so doing, I offer an alternative to the centrifugal narrative of modernization, which presumes that modern citizenship was invented in Europe and then exported to the Islamic world. Instead, I contend that the evolution of legal belonging on both sides of the Mediterranean developed in response to the challenges and opportunities presented by extraterritoriality. The article consists of two cases studies: first, I look at the regulation of legal belonging in Tunisia, the Ottoman Empire, and Morocco, arguing that this legislation responded to the challenges posed by extraterritoriality. Second, I examine the influence of extraterritorial regimes on the nationality of Algerians under French colonial rule.

This article uses a single, transnational legal case that played out between Italy and Tunisia in the 1870s and 1880s to tell a truly global history of international law—that is, one that goes beyond the boundaries of the West. Samama v. Samama was a fabulously complicated case that dragged on in Italian courts for almost a decade. The crux of the legal arguments concerned the nationality of Nissim Samama, a Jew born in Tunis; Samama’s nationality, in turn, would determine which legal system regulated his estate. The Italian civil code enshrined respect for the national law of a foreigner, but such foreigners were presumed to be Western. A case involving the national law of Tunisia and the status of Jews called the very foundations of the international legal system into question. In putting Samama’s nationality on trial, the case opened up debate over fissures in the emerging theory of international law: How could non-Western states like Tunisia fit into an international legal order? How did Islamic law intersect with international law? What was the status of Jewish nationhood in a world increasingly based on exclusive nationalities? The Samama case offers access to the voices of European international lawyers debating the ambiguities of their field, as well as those of Maghrebis articulating their own vision of international law. The resulting arguments exposed tensions inherent to an international legal system uncomfortably balanced between universalism and Western particularism.

Cet article emploie la microhistoire d’une affaire transnationale qui se déroulait entre l’Italie et la Tunisie pendant les années 1870 et 1880 pour éprouver le droit international grâce à une approche qui va au-delà des frontières de l’Occident. L’affaire Samama contre Samama présente un litige fort compliqué, examiné par les cours de justice italiennes pendant près d’une décennie. La principale difficulté du procès concernait la nationalité de Nissim Samama, un juif né à Tunis, et, partant, l’ordre juridique qui pouvait décider de sa succession. Le Code civil italien promettait de respecter les droits nationaux des ressortissants étrangers, mais ces derniers étaient a priori considérés comme occidentaux uniquement. Or une affaire où il était question à la fois du droit tunisien et du statut des juifs interrogeait les fondements mêmes de l’ordre juridique international. En portant devant les tribunaux le problème de la nationalité de Samama, le procès dévoilait plusieurs failles et tensions au sein des théories émergentes du droit international : comment des États non occidentaux tels que la Tunisie pouvaient-ils s’intégrer dans l’ordre juridique international naissant ? Comment le droit international envisageait-il le droit musulman ? Quel était le statut de la nation juive dans un monde de nationalités de plus en plus exclusives ? Les actes d’un tel procès permettent de prendre la mesure des débats et des réflexions entre les spécialistes de droit international sur les ambiguïtés propres à leur discipline. De même, ils donnent un accès privilégié à la façon dont les Maghrébins concevaient le droit international. Les controverses qui en résultent mettent au jour les tensions inhérentes à un droit international qui ne cesse d’hésiter alors entre particularisme occidental et universalisme.

This article begins from the premise that the margins can shine light on the center, and uses the experience of Jews (thought of as marginal in the Islamic world) in Moroccan courts (similarly thought of as marginal in Islamic history) to tell a new story about orality and writing in Islamic law. Using archival evidence from nineteenth-century Morocco, I argue that, contrary to the prevailing historiography, written evidence was central to procedure in Moroccan shari‘a courts. Records of nineteenth-century lawsuits between Jews and Muslims show that not only were notarized documents regularly submitted in court, but they could outweigh oral testimony, traditionally thought of as the gold standard of evidence in Islam. The evidentiary practices of Moroccan shari‘a courts are supported by the jurisprudential literature of the Mālikī school of Sunni Islam, the only one prevalent in Morocco. These findings have particular relevance for the experience of non-Muslims in Islamic legal institutions. Scholars have generally assumed that Jews and Christians faced serious restrictions in their ability to present evidence in shari‘a courts, since they could not testify orally against Muslims. However, in Morocco Jews had equal access to notarized documents, and thus stood on a playing field that, theoretically at least, was level with their Muslim neighbors. More broadly, I explore ways in which old assumptions about the relationship of the written to the oral continue to pervade our understanding of Islamic law, and call for an approach that breaks down the dichotomy between writing and orality.

After France's 1830 invasion of Algeria, Algerians residing outside of the new French colony could potentially be considered French subjects. A number of Moroccans, eager to partake of the legal and financial advantages of foreign nationality, crossed the border into Algeria and obtained documentation falsely attesting to their Algerian origins; they then returned to Morocco, where they convinced French consular authorities to register them as French subjects. This article uses the story of one such pseudo-Algerian, Masʿud Amoyal, to explore the phenomenon of Moroccans who assumed the legal identities of Algerians. In Morocco and elsewhere in the Middle East, the responses of individuals like Amoyal to new legal categories created by European colonization point to the importance of expanding colonial historiography beyond the borders of imperial states. Examining the strategies of pseudo-Algerians in Morocco demonstrates the value of a transnational approach for understanding the full impact of European imperialism.