1. Various questions can, besides, be asked at a more general level, in connection with the relations between oral knowledge and scriptural knowledge, culture and oral literature, ritual and oral literature, and so on. This is neither the occasion nor the place to consider them. Note, in passing, my comments in Poésie juive en Occident musulman (Paris, 1977), on the intellectual itinerary of the educated poet and the oral transmis sion of knowledge (pp. 98-100), recalling the interdict (taboo) which affected writing, principally concern ing the oral Law, the Aggadah, the targumim (Aramaic paraphrases of the Bible), or even the liturgy, as evidenced by a large number of Talmudic texts: ‘Whoever commits the halakot to writing is comparable to the man who throws the Torah into the flames' (Temurah 14b, Gittin 60b); ‘Those who set in writing the Aggadah, "the Jewish legend", have no part in the future world' (Talmud of Jerusalem, Shabbat XVI, 1) and so on.

2. Lahan (Hebrew) or lahn (Arabic) means song, melody, prosodic and musical model; it is sometimes re placed by the Hebrew no'am (‘melody’), and peles (‘measure’). (Piyyut [plural, piyyutim] refers to a poem, especially a liturgical poem inserted in a statutory prayer.)

3. For these communities, see my work, Deux mille ans de vie juive au Maroc (new Moroccan ed., Mille ans de vie juive au Maroc, Paris, 1983). Here are some historical details: The Jews were the first non-Berber peoples to settle in the Maghreb and they continue to live there to the present-day… My researches into the Berber-speaking Jewish milieu have confirmed my theory of the Judaization of the Berber tribes at the beginning of our era … The Jews of the Maghreb, like all those of the land of Islam, experienced the condition of dhimmi, a condition that was admittedly often precarious but with juridical status and, all in all, liberal (with a very marked degree of judicial, administrative and cultural autonomy).

Their misfortunes increased with the advance of the Reconquista; the backwards ebb of the Spanish Jews towards the lands of the Maghreb which their ancestors had left some centuries earlier began well before the Edicts of 1391. The Portuguese and Spanish ‘Expelled' of 1492 and 1497 arrived in successive waves and settled, either temporarily or permanently, in the land of the Berbers [Berberie], bringing with them their old Castilian language, their scholarship, their community institutions set down in their Tagganot (Rabbinic ordinances), their usages and customs, and their spirit of enterprise, which made them, faced with the autochthonous population, a socio-culturally dominant group from which the intellectual élite and the bourgeoisie of ‘notables' was recruited.

After the creation of the state of Israel (1948) and the advent of independence in countries of the Maghreb, the massive emigration of entire communities was witnessed, the majority to Israel, but also to France, Spain, Canada and elsewhere. With the dislocation and dispersion of these societies a whole sys tem of old structures, with rich and original linguistic and cultural traditions, disappeared. In 1948 there were 268,000 Jews in Morocco. In 1987 only 18,000 remained. The population decline continues, with a perceptible increase in departure rates among young people in particular, who go elsewhere for post-secondary education and hardly ever return to the country.

4. Shefok (h) or the mutation of a verb form into a legendary figure. It is the word with which the second part of the liturgy of the Eve of the Passover (Pesah) starts. See my work, Littératures dialectales et populaires juives en Occident musulman, pp. 386-387: ‘Pour out thy wrath upon the heathen that have not known thee, and upon the kingdoms that have not called thy name. For they have devoured Jacob, and laid waste his dwelling place.' (Psalm 79: 6-7). These two verses, to which some communities add Psalm 79: 25, Lamentations 3: 66 and various others, serve as an introduction to the second part of Hallel, recited after the meal and beginning with, ‘Not unto us, O Lord …'. This passage, which has been described as a cry of anger against the accusation of ritual murder, is, according to certain commentators (see the edition of Wilna, 1892), a projection into the messianic era and the disturbed period (the wars of Gog and Magog) which will preceed the coming of the Messiah; the wrath of God is thus called down in anticipation on his enemies and on those of the Messiah-Redeemer.

Practices: while this passage is being recited, the house door is customarily left open to allow the prophet Elijah to enter (or to see that no child's body has been left, the material proof of ritual murder of which Jews living in Christian communities during the Middle Ages were accused).

5. See my Pédagogique juive en terre islam, p. 36. The initiatory ritual of kuttab simultaneously marks the ‘betrothal' of a five-year-old child with the girl destined for him by his parents and whom he must later marry, and his ‘nuptials', his union with the Torah, for the ceremony takes place on the first day of the festival of Shavu'ot which commemorates the revelation of Sinai and the ‘gift of the Law', and is accom panied by a first initiation into the Hebrew alphabet.

6. Adab (Arabic) originally signified the practice of politeness, etiquette, socially elevated conventions, the exercise of an ethic and social know-how. This term has evolved towards a more specialized meaning in the study of the classic humanities and great works of literature, suggesting a refined spirit or elegance of style … Treatises concerning adab began to be composed in the eleventh century.

7. Two very significant and highly representative titles effectively convey this profound nostalgia for the country:

a) that of a mystery drama in three acts, entitled The Messiah, or Requiem for a Moroccan king, by Gabriel Bensimhon, a writer for the theatre and the cinema who was born at Sefrou, Morocco (the original Hebrew edition won the University of Tel Aviv prize for 1978; there is also a French version).

b) that of a collection of poems, entitled sefer ha-ha^c na^c (‘The Book of Mint’), the work of the poet Erez Bitton, also from Morocco, published at Tel Aviv in 1979.

8. See Haïm Zafrani, Poésie juive en Occident musulman, pp. 286, 288, 296, 297.

9. See Haïm Zafrani. (1973). Les Juifs du Marooc, vie sociale, économique et religieuse, Études de Taqqanot et Responsa. Paris, pp. 223-228 and passim.

10. See also for Franco-Arabic bilingualism François Desplanques. (1976). Traditions populaires et création littéraire dans la poésie de Bachir Hadj-Ali. Revue de l'Occident Musulman et de la Méditerranée, 22, pp. 37-46.

11. Songs recorded by Gloria Lévy on a disk entitled ‘Sephardic Folk-Songs', accompanied by notes made by Professor M.J. Bernadete.

12. See François Desplanques, op. cit.