The legal history of sovereignty has generally been told as a European story—a dimension of domestic and international law whose origins are located in the West. But the view from North Africa suggests that the evolution of territorial sovereignty (like that of legal belonging, usually referred to as citizenship or nationality) was closely bound up with the rise of extraterritoriality. The prerogatives of the various states claiming jurisdiction demanded a constant negotiation of belonging—and thus of sovereignty—on both sides of the Mediterranean. The often convoluted cases of individuals claiming extraterritorial privileges forced Maghribi Muslim rulers’ to articulate the nature of their authority over the those residing in their territory, as they contended with Western states’ interest in projecting their jurisdiction abroad. The expansion of extraterritoriality posed a significant challenge to the sovereignty of Muslim rulers. The response—strikingly similar from Tangier to Tunis—was to introduce nationality legislation that attempted to stem the tide of local subjects seeking extraterritorial privileges. This corresponds to some of the first attempts to define what Ottoman, Tunisian, or Moroccan nationality was—and further suggests the entanglement of legal belonging and extraterritoriality. The status of non-Muslims was particularly thorny in North African attempts to delineate sovereignty in the face of extraterritorial claims. This is in part because non-Muslims sought out foreign naturalization and protection in greater numbers than their Muslim counterparts; and in part because the preconceived notions of Western diplomats often presumed that the Islamic foundation of rule meant that non-Muslims were excluded from full membership in Maghribi polities. This paper offers an initial exploration of the ways in which conceptions of sovereignty among North African government officials, jurists, and ordinary individuals were forged with extraterritorial privileges in mind. I draw on correspondence in archives among government officials in pre-colonial Morocco and Tunisia, as well as the archives of the ministries of foreign affairs in France, England, the United States, and Italy. I argue that the problems stemming from ever-growing claims of extraterritorial privileges forced North African actors to articulate an emic understanding of sovereignty. A history of extraterritoriality can thus help us understand what sovereignty meant to Maghribis in the nineteenth century.