Jessica Marglin

Jews and Muslims in modern North Africa and the Mediterranean; legal history; Non-Muslims in the Islamic world; Mediterranean Studies

I specialize in the history of Jews in modern North Africa and the Mediterranean, with a focus on law. My first book, Across Legal Lines: Jews and Muslims in Modern Morocco (Yale University Press, 2016), is a study of Jews in the Moroccan legal system in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My second book is The Shamama Case: Contesting Citizenship across the Modern Mediterranean (Princeton University Press, 2022). This book tells the story of Nissim Shamama and the fabulously complicated lawsuit over his estate; in so doing, it argues for a new approach to the history of belonging on both sides of the Mediterranean. I am currently working on a history of extraterritoriality in the Middle East and North Africa during the long nineteenth century.