Mordecai Aby Serour, born in 1826 in Akka, Morocco, and died on 6 April 1886 in Algiers, was a Moroccan rabbi and explorer. During his life he was a merchant in Timbuktu, a correspondent of the Paris Geographical Society, and the guide of Charles de Foucauld in Morocco.
Family and education Mordecai Aby Serour was born in southern Morocco, in Akka,À l'époque, Akka était une oasis habitée d'une quarantaine de familles juives disséminées dans trois tchours. in the present-day Souss-Massa region, near the high mountains then known as the “Doubany”. At the time, Akka was an oasis inhabited by about forty Jewish families scattered among three *tchours*, under the domination of the Berber tribe of the Brybet.ou Ayt Û Mribet His father, Iaïch Aby Serour, was a jeweller, and his brother was born in Mhamid al Ghozlan. Mordecai was the fourth of Iaïch's seven sons.
At the age of five, he was sent to the community rabbi, where he learned to read and write. He was a diligent and devout child. At the age of nine, he left his village in the extreme south of Morocco alone and without money and travelled to Marrakech, in the centre of the country, which was famous for the Talmudic schools of its mellah. There he studied the Talmud and Hebrew. At thirteen, following his bar mitzvah in 1839, this gifted student was sent to Jerusalem to pursue rabbinical studies. On his journey, the young adolescent was received by the principal Jewish communities along his route, including those of Mogador, Tangier, Gibraltar, Provence, Salonica, Constantinople, Smyrna and Jaffa, before reaching Jerusalem. It took him three years to reach Palestine, where he spent four years in a yeshiva, emerging in 1846 with the title of rabbi..
He subsequently served the Jewish community of Aleppo in Syria for a year. This enabled him to save enough money to begin his return journey to the Maghreb. Travelling with caravaneers, he followed the route extending the spice and incense trade routes through Egypt and Libya, along the desert coast, through Tripolitania and Tunisia and into Algeria. He stopped successively in Tunis, Constantine, Philippeville (present-day Skikda), Algiers, where he lived from 1847 to 1858, and Oran, where he worked as a rabbi teaching the Talmud.Dossier d'Akadem.org. French Algeria, and the progress, education and freedom it offered Jews, enabling them to improve their social position, made a strong impression on him. He became Algerian and obtained a French passport, thereby becoming a French protected person. He would later regret that he had not learned French.
Travels in the Sahara
He subsequently went to Tamantit, in what is now southern Algeria, the former Jewish capital of Touat. There he established commercial contacts with Salomon Ohayon, a merchant from Mogador, and with caravaneers who at that time travelled from Marrakech towards the Sudan, passing through Akka.. Having made his fortune, he returned to his native village of Akka in 1858, where he found his father living in poverty. He became the family's principal support, since the family jewellery and goldsmithing business was no longer profitable during a period of famine.
He then decided to cross the Sahara with his younger brother Itzhak in order to reach Timbuktu, the mysterious Sahelian city, a holy city of Islam which was forbidden and particularly dangerous for non-Muslims. He thus became the first Jew to enter Timbuktu..
The beginning of his camel journey went well. He crossed Tindouf, Teghazza, Taoudeni and Bir Ounane, despite the scarcity of fresh water. However, after 49 days of travel, he was stopped at Araouane, in present-day northern Mali, by the sheikh of the Berabich Arabs, Cheikh Sidi Ahmed Abya Ould Muhhamad Ould-el-Rahal, a fanatic who swore to have the Jews killed..
Aby Serour was forced to promise to convert to Islam and gave him half of everything he possessed in exchange for his life, until they appeared before the "tholbas". There he declared that he wished to remain Jewish. Knowing Islamic law and Muslim traditions, he agreed to pay the jizya, the tax imposed by Islamic law on the People of the Book. At the time this amounted to “5 Mizen of gold per ear”, or 250 francs for the two travellers.
He and his brother remained at Araouane for a year, until they found a way of continuing to Timbuktu without being killed. When he eventually obtained permission to continue his journey, his brother remained behind at Araouane.
Stay in Timbuktu After facing several dangers, he reached Hamdallaye, the capital of the Fulani Macina Empire, by way of the Niger River. His arrival in Timbuktu as a Jew caused a public scandal among the Moorish merchants, scholars and general population. Aby Serour had to use his eloquence and his knowledge of the Qur'an to calm the situation. He was received by the ruler, Ahmadou Ahmadou, whom he persuaded to grant him — and any Jew or Christian who might subsequently apply — the right to reside and trade in Timbuktu in return for payment of the *jizya*. His business prospered in the city. He summed up his impressions by saying that “the population of Timbuktu is harmless”. In 1860, he sent for his brother, who had been waiting for him at Araouane, and continued to run his business.
In 1863, having made his fortune, he returned to Morocco to see his family, give his earnings to his father, sell his gold dust, ostrich feathers and ivory, and travel as far as Italy to purchase cheap goods and glass beads. He also tried to persuade family and friends to join him in the Sahel. He went to Mogador, made large purchases, and then set out again for Timbuktu with twenty-eight loads of merchandise and four relatives, travelling for twenty-three days. By 1864 there were enough Jews in Timbuktu to constitute a "minyan", and a normal communal life was established among those whom Mordechaï Abbi Serour had persuaded to join him: his brothers Josué (Ysou), Avraham and Yitzhaq Serour; Aharon (Aroun) and David Serour, sons of Josué; Yitzhaq, son of Aharon; Abraham Aby Serour, his cousin; Isaac Ben Mouchi; Moussa Mazaltarim, Mordechaï's brother-in-law; David Mazaltarim, Moussa's son; Rabbi Raphael; and Shimon Ben-Yaaqov.Voir Bederman, op. cit., p. 15.Haïdara, op. cit., p. 31..
One member of this circle, Isaac ben Mouchi, voluntarily converted to Islam. Isaac Aby Serour died in 1867, followed by Abraham Aby Serour in 1870. et Isaac Aby Serour en 1867 puis Abraham Aby Serour en 1870 meurent The small community soon encountered difficulties. Because of external pressure from Moroccan merchants who were commercial rivals and who had previously contented themselves with regularly plundering his caravans, all his property was confiscated by the city's governor in 1869, while he was away. Together with his brother, Serour left the region permanently in 1871, having narrowly escaped death and having been robbed again on the journey back to Akka by the Oulad Bou Sbaâ. He nevertheless made one final attempt to recover his wealth from Timbuktu, but without success. He returned to Akka, where his father had meanwhile died. His family, which refused to share the inheritance with him, forced him to settle in Algiers and teach at the local synagogue. He subsequently moved with his wife to Mogador.
Correspondent of the Paris Geographical Society
In 1869 he met the French consul in Mogador, Auguste Beaumier. Since 1866, Beaumier had been fascinated by this travelling rabbi, who knew the mysteries of the *bilâd as-sûdân*, the western Sahara, the "land of the Blacks"; had lived peacefully in a Jewish trading community in Timbuktu; and spoke Arabic, Berber, Fulani and Bambara.
On returning to his native region, Serour recounted his African adventures to Beaumier. Beaumier translated his story from Judeo-Arabic into French, and it was published in the *Bulletin de Paris Geographical Society: la Société de Géographie de Paris*, for which Serour worked from 1870 to 1878, under the title *Premier établissement des Israélites à Timbouctou* (“The First Jewish Settlement in Timbuktu”)., sous le titre Premier établissement des Israélites à Timbouctou.
He subsequently worked for French learned societies, travelling through distant regions and collecting specimens of flora and minerals.
In 1873, Beaumier introduced Serour to Samuel Hirsch,. director of the Alliance Israélite Universelle school in Tangier. Between 1870 and 1874, Beaumier sent letters to the AIU headquarters in Paris suggesting that Serour might become a French agent in the *bleds* of southern Morocco.
It was in order to acquire scientific training that he travelled to Paris, where he caused a sensation. He was introduced to the explorer Henri Duveyrier, who taught him how to use geographical instruments. Articles about him appeared in *Le Monde illustré* and the *Journal officiel*, and he met leading figures in the scientific world.
On returning to Morocco, he undertook several expeditions and supplied scientific material to French scholars of the Paris Geographical Society in fields including geography, cartography and archaeology. Among other things, he brought to Western attention the existence of the Daggatoun, a nomadic tribe of Jewish origin living on the margins of the Sahara, who told him, “We are Jews and our ancestors came from Tamentit.” Richard Gottheil, wikisource:Jewish Encyclopedia/Daggatun, Jewish Encyclopedia. La découverte de Serour est publiée dans le Bulletin de la Société de Géographie (Dec., 1895 ; voir Bulletin All. Isr. ii. 42, 1880; La Grande Encyclopédie, xxiii. 254; Meakin, Land of the Moors, p.17.. This discovery attracted little attention, however, except from the AIU, which employed him for a time to learn more about the Jewish groups of the Sahara whose dialects Serour knew.
His relationship with the Paris Geographical Society and the AIU ended in 1880.
Guide to Charles de Foucauld
Following the death of the French consul, Serour once again fell into obscurity. He left Morocco to teach the Talmud in Oran, Algeria. He lived in poverty there and his health deteriorated.
On the advice of Oscar MacCarthy of the Algiers library, the explorer Charles de Foucauld hired him as a guide for an expedition to Morocco, a country then closed to Christians.. Serour carried out this mission at considerable risk to his life, passing Foucauld off as a Russian Jew named Joseph Aleman. The two men claimed to be emissaries from Palestine collecting funds for rabbinical schools in Jerusalem responsible for training Moroccan rabbis.
With Serour, Foucauld lived as a poor man, eating kosher food with families who offered them hospitality, attending the synagogue and observing the Sabbath. As Foucauld himself wrote, he accepted the humiliation of “degrading” himself by disguising himself as a Jew in order to have greater freedom in his work.
While they were still in Algeria, they encountered French officers of the 4th Chasseurs d'Afrique at Tlemcen on 13 June 1883. The officers did not recognise Foucauld. One of them mocked him, saying: “Look at that Jew squatting there eating olives. He looks like a monkey.”, p. 64., p. 83.
Foucauld and Serour entered Morocco and were given hospitality by Jewish families. One of them would climb onto a roof to take measurements while the other kept watch, distracting any curious onlookers.J-J. Antier, op. cit., p. 67.
In particularly dangerous regions they had to negotiate with *caïds* or hire horsemen to protect them. On one occasion, while climbing the High Atlas, the three Arabs accompanying them as supposed protectors robbed them of everything except their lives and Foucauld's instruments and notebooks.A. Vircondelet, op. cit., p. 87.
The two travellers took refuge with a Jewish community, which protected them, and eventually returned to Algeria after almost eleven months of travel rather than the five originally planned.J.-J. Antier, op. cit., p. 72.A. Vircondelet, op. cit., p. 89.