Sol Hachuel
vers 1817-1834 19th century
Refusing to be given another name, even under threat.
Who was Sol Hachuel?
The daughter of a Jewish merchant of Tangier, she was seventeen when a neighbour accused her of having secretly embraced Islam: if the accusation held, her refusal to confirm it became apostasy, punishable by death. Taken to Fez, pressed for weeks by the judges and by women sent to persuade her, she answered every time that she had been born a Jew. She was beheaded in a square in Fez in the spring of 1834. Moroccan Jews have called her Sol the Righteous ever since, and pilgrims still come to her grave.
In their own words
I was born a Jew and a Jew I shall die.