4
Mahdi and Saint:
The 1849 Bu Ziyan Uprising

It has been well known (and generally accepted) by all Muslims in every epoch, that at the end of time a man from the family (of the Prophet) will without fail make his appearance, one who will strengthen the religion and make justice triumph. The Muslims will follow him, and he will gain domination over the Muslim realm. He will be called the Mahdi.^[1]

Of the many rebellions that rocked Algeria throughout the nineteenth century, Bu Ziyan's was the most dramatic. Based in the small village of Za'atsha, near the Rahmaniyya strongholds of Tulqa and al-Burj, the mahdist uprising was quelled only after the French army engaged in a long, bitter siege. By December 1849, the village was totally demolished, its inhabitants put to the sword, and the region devastated; thousands fled the ensuing repression; many more succumbed to the cholera epidemic unleashed by the confrontation. Lest others be thus tempted, the French commander had Bu Ziyan's severed head exhibited on a pole at the entrance to Za'atsha's ruins as a warning to future troublemakers.

As a vehicle for entering into the religiopolitical culture of nineteenth-century North Africa, Bu Ziyan's movement raises a number of issues. Why did a movement of violent social protest arise in the pre-Sahara nearly two decades after the French invasion and five years after Biskra's pacification? What part did Rahmaniyya or other sufi leaders play in either promoting or blocking the revolutionary potential of the self-proclaimed mahdi? What can this spectacular, if short-lived, rebellion tell us about the cultural norms governing the political behavior of religious notables? How did the experience of Za'atsha mold the subsequent positions of religious notables vis-à-vis the colonial regime and how did this eventually shape the course of Algerian and North African history?

Bu Ziyan's challenge to the colonial regime also represented a challenge to the Ziban's leading sufi notables—a dare or summons to political action of a particular and peculiar sort. While the sufi zawaya and their shaykhs nurtured traditions, both written and oral, regarding the "rightly guided one," the mahdi's appearance was fraught with perils. Chiliastic move-

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5.
The Ziban, Suf, Tuqqurt, and Warqala

ments under the mahdi's leadership threatened to vent popular social forces which could only be controlled with difficulty. More ominous was that false prophets might arise in guise of the Muslim redeemer. The task facing the sufi establishment, as guardians of the sacred law, of correct belief and right conduct, was to discern the base pretender from the one who would "fill the earth with justice."^[2]

The task facing the historian is rather different in nature, although no less daunting. "Historians prefer the curtain up and the lights on," observed Eugen Weber in his reappraisal of peasant politicization in nineteenth-century France.^[3] Yet quite the opposite prevailed during the Za'atsha revolt. In addition to the fragmentary or recondite nature of available written sources, many of the significant events preceding the 1849 rebellion were played out on an ill-lit stage with partially drawn curtains; others occurred backstage or outside the theater of action. Much of the information about what really transpired was buried, along with the rebels, under the debris.

The Antecedents

Between 1844, when Biskra fell, and 1849, as revolt took the French by surprise, an uneasy calm fell upon the pre-Sahara's oases. However, two millenarian movements erupted in 1845 as 'Abd al-Qadir's jihad approached its final denouement. Political circumstances in the north had an immediate impact upon the southern Constantine and may have paved the way for Bu Ziyan.

In 1845 a self-proclaimed prophet named Jamina organized and led a small anticolonial insurrection in the region of el-Arrouch. Jamina was well known to the Ziban's inhabitants since he had resided in the oases for at least a year before publicly advancing claims to mahdihood. There he had initially acquired a reputation as a local holy man through demonstrations of miraculous powers to the villagers who constituted his first popular following. Leaving the Ziban in 1844, Jamina and his partisans launched a rural protest movement the next year among the tribes just north of the city of Constantine, where progressive settler land expropriations were making inroads into the local agrarian economy. Jamina exchanged letters with Bu Ziyan, some of which were intercepted by French officials, until the eve of the 1849 Za'atsha insurrection.^[4] However, this particular rebel was not alone; there were other chiliastic figures creating unrest in the countryside during the same period.

The Dahra insurrection, inspired by Bu Ma'za, emerged from the intersection of two forces which also directly affected the Za'atsha uprising: the waning of the amir's movement and with it collective hopes for an Islamic state; and the indiscriminate application of harsh colonial "native

policies" upon even those Algerians opting for nonresistance to France. Since the humiliation of submission to the infidels carried no tangible rewards, this rendered "l'authorité française insupportable."^[5] In 1845 another rebellion broke out under the guidance of a young man of no more than twenty years. Popularly known as Bu Ma'za (Abu Ma'za, or the "man with the goat"), he assumed the provocative nom de guerre of Muhammad b. 'Abd Allah, the name inevitably associated with the mahdi. Revered among the sedentary tribal populations of the Chélif Valley and Ouarsenis Mountains as an ascetic and holy man, Bu Ma'za promised to drive the Europeans into the sea. Rebellions soon broke out in the Hodna and the Titteri and Kabyle Mountains, regions thus far little touched by the conquest but whose people were fiercely attached to their native land. During the repression that followed, the French army resorted to the cruelest of measures in "pacifying" the Algerians. In one instance, Pélissier, a future governor-general and marshall of France, caused eight hundred unarmed villagers to be methodically burnt to death in the caves where they had taken refuge.^[6]

During its latter stages, the Dahra movement found a resonance in the Ziban. In 1847, Bu Ma'za and a band of supporters drawn from the Awlad Na'il confederacy were chased into the oasis of the Awlad Jallal where Shaykh al-Muktar al-Jallali headed the Rahmaniyya zawiya. So great was Bu Ma'za's reputation as the redeemer and an intrepid warrior that the indigenous troops under General Herbillon's command fled in terror at the sight of the rebels' flags and messianic banners. Apparently even those Algerians who had enrolled in the French army preferred the dangers of desertion to fighting the mahdi. The news of Bu Ma'za's approach encouraged the oases of Sidi Khalid and Awlad Jallal to engage in their own rebellious behavior; the populace besieged the French-appointed qa'id in his residence.^[7] Significantly, the mahdi sought the assistance of the Rahmaniyya shaykh of Awlad Jallal, neither the first nor last example of political collaboration between a powerful sufi leader and a messianic figure. With the full backing of Shaykh al-Mukhtar, the insurgents used the fortified oasis as a base of resistance. Employing habitual tactics of retreat, the rebels withstood a first, devastating assault by the French army, offering a "vigorous defense."^[8]

Customary oasis warfare was effective as long as both sides marshaled roughly similar sorts of military technology; it was also predicated upon the principle, dictated by prevailing demographic structures in North Africa, that no side could afford to lose more than a restricted number of fighting men.^[9] In this confrontation, the besiegers enjoyed access to machines of war unavailable to the rebels—artillery. Moreover, by the mid-

1840s, France had committed tens of thousands of troops to the conquest of Algeria. The match was grievously unequal. Suffering heavy casualties from the extraordinary force of artillery attacks, the oasis of Awlad Jallal eventually sued for peace. After rendering war indemnities and hostages, the villagers were accorded an official pardon. Bu Ma'za, however, escaped the dishonor of defeat by fleeing the region but was finally captured elsewhere by General Saint-Arnaud in April of 1847. As for the hapless Rahmaniyya shaykh, Sidi al-Mukhtar was forced to abandon his sufi residence in Awlad Jallal to seek refuge among his tribal supporters, the Awlad Na'il. There he remained until 1849. Then the news of Bu Ziyan's prophecy prompted Shaykh al-Mukhtar to return to the Ziban, where he resumed militant politics, once again in concert with a mahdi.^[10]

Here several implicit patterns in the social construction of the mahdi can be detected. First, would-be rebels chose sites traditionally employed as retreats from central government oppression—the oases or mountains—as places to patiently fashion a clientele. Second, a mahdi-in-the-making invariably manipulated the cultural paradigm of the saint, blessed with baraka and the ability to perform miracles, to establish credentials as a holy person. And finally, self-appointed mahdis carefully solicited the moral sponsorship of recognized religious notables often associated with the great sufi orders, particularly the Rahmaniyya.

What the preceding indicates is that the Za'atsha revolt was not a purely local phenomenon, isolated from transformations elsewhere in Algeria or—as will be seen—from changes occurring in neighboring Tunisia and even France. In addition to the economic and social devastation that the pre-Sahara's peoples had endured for so long, the example of rebellious prophets may have inspired the Ziban's inhabitants, and particularly Bu Ziyan, to undertake uncommon forms of collective action.

These forms were unusual in that subordinate peoples elected, whenever feasible, to work "the system [of domination] to their minimum disadvantage," rather than engage in suicidal frontal assaults upon the oppressors.^[11] This had often been the case under the Turkish regime; this approach was also employed by 'Abd al-Qadir. In addition, mahdist solutions to political and social crises, while increasingly prevalent after 1845 in Algeria, were not the only type of collective action in North Africa's political repertoire. That mahdist-led revolt became the preferred mode of collective behavior for several decades indicates that other styles of protest had been discarded as ineffective or ignoble; traditional stratagems for foiling outside interference were exhausted.^[12]

For many Algerians avoidance of protest as a strategy for coping was relinquished at precisely the moment when the mahdi offered an alter-

native program for righting a topsy-turvy world. And the single most appealing element in that program was the promise of justice in an era when the administration of the law, whether indigenous or colonial, had ceased to function. If the time was indeed out of joint, that temporal disjointedness was most apparent in the realm of justice.^[13]

Nevertheless, popular protest depends to no small degree upon "opportunity," combined with a shared, profound sense of grievance. This means a fortuitous conjuncture or favorable set of circumstances for mobilization and militant action to eliminate the source of oppression. Ordinary people, believing that "the time is right," embark upon a selected course of action while jettisoning others. Even extraordinary people—those sent from God—were sensitive to the calculus of timing.^[14] In this respect, the field of power in Algeria was increasingly informed by a new rhetorical field of information about the detested Europeans, one composed of rumors, improvised news, gossip, and hearsay.

Migration, Information, and Social Movements

Timing and opportunity were closely linked to the fact that information networks crisscrossed the Mediterranean between Europe, particularly France, and North Africa even in the pre-wireless age. The heady, intense political ferment provoked by the 1848 revolution was not confined to the Metropole. Turbulence in Paris attending the birth of the Second Republic was recreated among the European colons in Algeria, many of whom immediately embraced republicanism and the revolution. Indigenous Algerians witnessed feverish political activity in places like Algiers, the scene of mass demonstrations, meetings, and public gatherings by civilians. The army, still ostensibly in control of the colony, but whose administration was increasingly resented by the settlers, appeared no longer fully in command. All of this was interpreted in a specific way by some Algerians, who, seeing the obvious discord among the conquerors, believed that the appointed hour for deliverance was at hand.^[15] Integrated into translocal networks of work, trade, and religion, the Ziban's inhabitants were soon aware of the European revolutions of 1848. News of civil strife in Paris and Algiers was rapidly carried from the coastal cities to the southern Constantine by the "Biskris," or migrant workers from the oases. In 1843, officials noted that the number of Biskris working in urban areas had increased relative to previous years. Another official report from 1855 showed that out of a total Muslim population of eighteen thousand in Algiers, some seven thousand were barranis living there temporarily.^[16] This may have been a direct response to unfavorable social and economic conditions in the pre-Sahara, a product of over a decade of political upheaval.

The activities of the Biskri community were, moreover, directly linked to rebellion in the oases. To explore the relation between labor migration, the dissemination of information, and the timing of popular protest, the barrani phenomenon needs additional amplification.

Thiriet, a colonial administrator investigating patterns of temporary labor exchange involving Saharan peoples, observed: "This form of sedentary nomadism propels migrants not toward the steppes to engage in pastoralism but toward the cities in the springtime and summer; there they trade or work at various jobs to provide their families with resources beyond those available from the date harvest."^[17] The continuous comings and goings of the Biskris, who returned after extended sojourns in the north, meant that some members of oasis society had at least a limited knowledge of European ways, the French language, and the contours of the colonial system.^[18] Indeed, it was the Saharan barrani community in Algiers that furnished military officers, such as Antoine Carette, with information regarding conditions in the great desert even before the French ventured into the region.^[19] To others in the colonial system, the labor migrants were a source of disorder. In 1852 a Bureau Arabe officer in the Ziban characterized the Biskris as a sort of rustic news service. Upon returning to the oases, they "spread about the most dangerous news and information. Their activities should be restricted in order to dampen insurrectionary ardor."^[20]

Many Biskris had witnessed the proclamation of the Second Republic in the capital and its attendant mayhem. And because some Biskris held the customary job of port worker, they were able to observe troop movements in and out of Algeria. Seeing contingents embarking for France during the 1848–1849 era, the Biskris spread the news that the soldiers were abandoning Algeria to defend their mother country against the English. Another rumor current at the time was that Great Britain—then regarded by the North Africans as a counterpoise to French imperial designs upon the Maghrib—had declared war against France.^[21] All of this information was distributed willy-nilly around Algeria (and surely enriched as it was passed along by word of mouth) and worked to undermine French authority at the local level.

In the words of one officer reporting from the period: "Between Algiers and the Ziban there exists a very active exchange of information through which the most absurd lies circulate. The natives are saying that the governor-general has promised a tax exemption for the Ziban and that Biskra's commandant has been removed from office."^[22] Also integrated into this network of spontaneous news was Jamina's jihad, then spreading into the Collo region in opposition to expanding colonization schemes which threatened the Algerian peasant with further loss of land.^[23] The

Biskris moving south from the Constantine or Algiers brought back information about Jamina's revolt. More provocative was that French troops were redeployed from Biskra's garrison to the north to quell Jamina's rebellion. This too was viewed by the Ziban's inhabitants as a signal of military impotence; tongues began to wag furiously and hopes for deliverance were raised.

Nevertheless, not all rumors were necessarily detrimental to French rule; indeed, colonial authorities promoted the dissemination of certain kinds of information favorable to France's interests. For example, in 1846 news of the Tunisian bey's official voyage to France was carefully spread around the Constantine. Ahmad Bey's state visit, characterized as the "great symbol," was full of ironies for Algerian political aspirations and hopes of salvation by Muslim rulers. The first such visit by a Muslim head of state (in this case de facto) to Europe, Ahmad's resolve to journey to France was prompted largely by unconfirmed rumors that the Ottoman sultan aimed to reimpose direct authority over its autonomous beylik. According to the North African rumor mill, the Ottoman fleet was en route to Tunisia in 1845 to chastise the Husaynid prince.^[24] While the rumor proved unfounded, Ahmad traveled to Europe to seek French guarantees of Tunisia's autonomy vis-à-vis the Porte—something Paris was happy to provide in view of France's long-standing diplomatic position regarding the Ottoman Empire's integrity. Thus, if the Algerians regarded the Tunisian bey as a potential savior from French colonialism, the Husaynid dynasty looked to King Louis Philippe to defend the beylik from Istanbul's centralizing embrace. According to the Bureau Arabe officer reporting from Biskra in 1846, the news of Ahmad's state visit

produced an excellent impression upon the [Algerian] population. By showing them the amicable relations that bind together our government and that of the Tunisian prince, the news of Ahmad Bey's trip to France must have silenced those who attempt to represent the Tunisian government as hostile to us and Tunisian territory as a safe asylum for our enemies.^[25]

Events, of course, were to prove otherwise. What emerges from this is that information, as much as access to contraband military supplies or popular support for political agendas, was a precious commodity, one fought over and bargained for.

Thus set in motion, the rumor mill continued to run along well-greased wheels and through intricate channels all over North Africa. Colonial officials in Algeria, and French diplomats and spies in Tunisia, complained throughout the century that the indigenous population frequently knew

of events in the Maghrib—or even in Europe—before they did. Small wonder that military officers repeatedly advocated that the movements of the Biskris between Tell and desert, or of other peripatetic groups, particularly popular religious preachers, be strictly curtailed. Only then would the insidious flow of rumors and information deemed harmful to France's imperium be halted.^[26]

Rumors of Revolt

While the written religious word reigned sovereign in nineteenth-century North Africa, oral communication was the principal information duct for the unlettered, who were in the majority. As seen in chapter 3, Algeria was awash in rumors; the political word-of-mouth pamphlet, as a genre of communication, flourished with peculiar intensity. In their spontaneity, rumors might be conceived of as verbal graffiti—as statements about power by the preliterate in a society in which full-blown literacy was difficult to achieve and thus traditionally restricted to urban or rural elites.^[27] Rumors can be political gossip writ large and democratically. Endless numbers of people, whether ordinary or otherwise, can actively participate as purveyors of improvised news, without the burden of written verification, although rumors often have a symbiotic relationship with writing.^[28] Rumors are rhetorical dialects or communicative vernaculars that employ persuasive language to interpret events as well as create facts. If their original inspiration may have been the written word, the persuasive power of orally conceived rumors might also cause them to be committed to writing. Thus, rumors about politics were akin to verbal revolutionary tracts.

The information transferal process itself produced endless virus-like mutations as news made the rounds from mouth to mouth and ear to ear. Nevertheless, rumors are grounded in fact, the realm of the possible or the arena of the desired; they must have an aura of half-truth about them at least. And rumors are a statement about power—the power of words, information, and communication to affect individual and, particularly, collective behavior. Finally, political rumors decenter the controlling discourse of ruling elites to the social periphery or margins since they represent ideological statements about what ordinary people think the normative should be.

Rumors and prophets thrive in situations of uncertainty, social dislocation, and political incoherence. In May 1849 Biskra's Bureau Arabe officer reported that "news [had] begun circulating in the region regarding the arrival of a mahdist leader who [was] endowed with superhuman powers and [would] chase the French out of Algeria."^[29] This statement was recorded at the very moment when Bu Ziyan's movement had already assumed a

particular configuration, that of a millenarian movement. To understand how that configuration came to be, two fundamental issues must be addressed: the nature of collective visions of the Muslim redeemer in nineteenth-century North African society; and how expectations regarding the mahdi were channeled to, and received by, ordinary people and elites alike.

Speculations about the mahdi's imminent arrival appear to have been integrated into the general fabric of village talk during the past century in much the same way that an upcoming wedding would dominate coffee-house palaver. And it was the maddahs who were largely responsible for disseminating the popular eschatological traditions regarding the "master of the hour."^[30] As discussed in chapter 2, poems and ballads extolling religious paragons—venerated sufis, saints, and even the mahdi himself—or tribal heroes were recited in rural and urban gathering places. Ruling authorities, deemed unworthy, were also mocked or satirized, a subtle yet potent symbolic expression of contestation.^[31] In the countryside, annual mawsims honoring tribal saints or village festivals were enlivened by storytellers, bards, and the maddahs. Even today in the Sahara, "there is always present everywhere a floating population of wandering entertainers, itinerant musicians, magicians, and storytellers who are constantly traveling about, singly or in small groups, from oasis to oasis all over the area."^[32] In the past century, this was all the more true. And since the maddah invariably came from the ranks of ordinary people, he spoke for and about them.

The jasus (spy) was another key figure in the exchange of information, although the art of espionage predated the colonial era.^[33] Due to its vulnerability, the Saharan trade had always attracted spies and counterspies. Merchants and caravan leaders often employed paid informants to alert them of the presence of bandits. Desert highwaymen—Saharan pirates—also used espionage to discover caravan departures, itineraries, and the nature of the goods transported. In addition, as the anthropologist van Gennep reported at the turn of the century, "all along the lines of springs and wells are caravan meeting points; here people quickly exchange news and information."^[34]

Through the spy's mediation, certain kinds of information were transmitted from one cultural zone, the European, to the other, the indigenous Muslim Algerian. Both communities covertly monitored each other's activities since, to a large degree, their strengths were inversely related, thus interdependent. Commerce, colportage, and spying naturally went hand in hand. Jean Mattei was a long-time resident of Tunisia whose profession as a merchant caused him to trade frequently with the beylik's southern tribes. In 1856 Mattei reported that "in the tribal tents the written and

popular [i.e., oral] prophecies about the 'Master of the Hour' [sahib alzaman] are constantly discussed."^[35] Mattei's command of Tunisian Arabic and appearance were such that he easily passed as a North African; he was also a spy for the French consulate in Tunis and frequented the beylik's coffeehouses, gathering politically useful information. Indigenous spies, paid by colonial authorities in Algeria, also reported similar conversations regarding the mahdi in town gathering places until late in the century. Moreover, Mustafa b. 'Azzuz's estranged brother, Mabruk, was employed by the French to monitor the seditious activities of the Rahmaniyya zawiya in Nafta during the Sharif of Warqala's mahdist rebellion.^[36] Thus, spying and rumor mongering were interrelated activities which mediated communications between two otherwise antagonistic communities; indeed spies probably provided much of the grist for news grapevines.

Collective expectations regarding the redeemer's appearance thus fed into the pulsating North African rumor mill which resonated in the countryside and the cities' densely populated Muslim quarters. Rumors accompanied spies, migrant workers, pilgrims, sufi couriers, and colporteurs on their journeys and then were disseminated in markets, mosques, zawaya, and cafes, where more rumors were collected. The return of the hajj caravan from the Hijaz set off a new salvo of hearsay as did the seasonal migrations of the tribes. Contained within the informal news pipeline from roughly 1830 on were endless reports of a mahdi-savior who was making his way from the Sus in Morocco or from the deep Sahara to save Algeria. Frequently rumors about the redeemer were intertwined with news that the Tunisian army was crossing the border to assist the mahdi in delivering the country from the rule of the impious. Another variation on the theme of external salvation was that the Ottoman sultan was poised for a military expedition. On the eve of Bu Ziyan's uprising, hopes for deliverance by Muslim rulers were not extinguished after two decades of colonial rule.^[37] And evidence suggests that the bey of Tunis may have actively sought to nurture those hopes among the Algerian populace.^[38]

Letters exchanged between sufi shaykhs in southeastern Algeria and southern Tunisia in the 1850s report similar sorts of news—the rise of a new mahdi from the Maghrib al-Aqsa (Morocco) and forthcoming military assistance from Tunis, Istanbul, and even the British government.^[39] Because they were visited by travelers, pilgrims, students, and merchants, often from distant places, rural or urban sufi centers functioned as major collectors and distributors of information. Moreover, sufi shaykhs maintained a fairly sophisticated system of couriers who carried letters between affiliated zawaya. In the Sahara, Rahmaniyya and Tijaniyya lodges were scattered along major trade routes. Therefore, due to numerous social welfare functions, the major sufi centers fed into sinuous information circuits.

Concerted colonial efforts to block the circulation of politically "inflammatory information" proved futile. Dismissed by French officials as nothing but vicious bruits , the rumors (akhbar , or "news" in Arabic) flourished with peculiar intensity in the chaos and uncertainty of mid-nineteenth-century Algeria. Rumors are not, however, idle gossip or meaningless chatter. As Anand A. Yang demonstrated for India under the Raj, they "emerge purposively rather than accidentally as they represent the preoccupations of a 'public' seeking to comprehend the exigencies of their precarious situations."^[40] In a society under siege, the rumors reveal not only what large numbers of people talked about but also how they interpreted events and what the public believed to be within the realm of possibility. As such, they offer an unusual glimpse into popular mentalités . The fact that sufi notables committed some of these rumors to writing indicates that the learned class shared the public's perceptions of the mahdi as heroic savior. Shaping and reflecting collective opinion, the hearsay also worked to maintain millennial aspirations and fervor at a heightened pitch.^[41]

Nevertheless, can a causal link be established between inflammatory information and apocalyptic sentiments, on the one hand, and mass political behavior, on the other? Key here is the implicit linkage made in the public mind between what appeared to be weakening French resolve to retain Algeria and the redeemer's advent. Rumors about the revolutions in Europe, settler unrest in Algiers, and French troop movements coalesced with the news of the mahdi's arrival—the time was "right." In the months preceding Bu Ziyan's rebellion, the Biskris transmitted unsettling information from the capital to the oases which had a perceptible influence upon indigenous attitudes toward those ostensibly in authority. Emboldened by the promise of the approaching "final days," several of Biskra's inhabitants threatened their French-appointed native administrator with the news of the mahdi's appearance. An unambiguous warning to collaborators, this threat represented the first small-scale rebellion against the prevailing system of domination, a prelude of things to come. Despite disturbing reports from other regions and untoward conduct by the subordinate, the markets of Sidi 'Uqba and Biskra remained open and seemed reasonably tranquil. Local French officials read calm in the suqs as a sign that nothing was amiss because political unrest usually erupted first in the markets, the single most important public forum for resistance. Nor were there any apparent preparations for combat. All was well—or so it seemed in the early months of 1849.^[42]

Thus, the confluence of a number of forces determined the timing of the 1849 revolt. Lacking was a catalyst or prime mover to transform economic grievances, perceptions of moral disarray, and deeply felt social malaise into a politically focused movement. It was Bu Ziyan who suc-

ceeded, where others had failed, in reinterpreting events, embodying discontents, and constructing an acceptable yet alternative program of social action. He collapsed the Sahara's tribal warrior ethos with traditions surrounding the mahdi and the activism of the medieval North African ribat; in so doing he achieved popular mobilization that momentarily transcended local divisions and antagonisms, something even powerful religious notables had failed to accomplish.

Who Was Bu Ziyan?

Nothing in Bu Ziyan's past made him a particularly likely candidate for the role of "Master of the Hour." One element working against his mahdist pretensions was that he was already well known to the region's inhabitants due to his part in the 1831 attack upon Za'atsha. Notoriety meant that Bu Ziyan could not claim to have been sent by heaven, as the Sharif of Warqala later did.^[43] Nor was the hero of Za'atsha, as far as we know, in any way connected with local religious elites. Had Bu Ziyan enjoyed sufi connections, his prophecy would have confirmed a pattern seen among other charismatic leaders, who frequently came from the margins of the Islamic establishment.^[44] As discussed in chapter 3, Bu Ziyan's fame rested upon military prowess rather than piety, miracle working, or religious scholarship. Predictably, later French colonial writers dismissed him as simply a "semi-fanatic, semi-brigand agitator."^[45] Nevertheless, military officers directly involved in suppressing the revolt extolled Bu Ziyan's valor and leadership qualities, while also employing that great explanatory device—Muslim fanaticism—to characterize the movement.

The sources are in apparent conflict regarding his exact social origins. One alleged that he had been a water carrier in Algiers in the 1830s, one of the occupations traditionally monopolized by the Biskris.^[46] Others maintained that Bu Ziyan had been a middling sort of landowner in the Ziban prior to his appointment as a local administrator by 'Abd al-Qadir.^[47] Lieutenant Seroka, perhaps the best informed, stated that he hailed from the Awras—from the Burj Awlad 'Aruz of the Wadi 'Abdi—and was of "humble rank."^[48]

Given the nature of the region's economy, it is possible to reconcile the contradictions in Bu Ziyan's biography; these diverse elements are not necessarily mutually exclusive. He could well have been of modest substance and sought work in Algiers, prior to returning to the pre-Sahara with some capital to invest in the date-palm gardens—as the Biskris had traditionally done. Moreover, if Bu Ziyan had indeed labored as a water carrier in the capital, it would confirm a second pattern in the recruitment of millenarian figures seen elsewhere, most notably in sub-Saharan Africa.

Not infrequently, those who declared jihad against the European occupiers had previously been in sustained contact with the "White Man's ways"; thus, cultural familiarity with, rather than distance from, colonial masters bred discontents.^[49]

Since Bu Ziyan did not leave behind any written accounts, speculations regarding how he gradually assumed the persona of the mahdi are perilous. It is known that he had been a partisan of 'Abd al-Qadir and held the minor post of shaykh of Za'atsha for several years until the French army took the Ziban in 1844. Then the position was taken away—perhaps in retaliation for Bu Ziyan's support of the amir—and given to an inept and despised figure, 'Ali b. 'Azug, who enjoyed no popular support in the oasis.^[50] Another source claimed that Bu Ziyan was a disappointed office seeker in the new political order established after 1844. His preference for the Bu 'Ukkaz saff, however, had disqualified him from any stake in that order since the opposing Banu Ghana clan were given direct control over Biskra by French commanders.^[51] These elements alone, however, hardly suffice as explanations for his later course of action, although between 1844 and 1849 he probably realized there was no room for him in the Banu Ghana brokered armistice. More significant is that Bu Ziyan assumed the mantle of the "expected one" in a period when millenarian expectations approached their zenith and had already been translated into rural mahdist-led movements in several places, notably the Dahra.

Declaring oneself the redeemer, on the one hand, and persuading a potential audience of this so as to construct a following, on the other, may appear to be sequential activities, structured in a cause-and-effect relationship. However, the ability to build a clientele could, in the cultural system of nineteenth-century North Africa, also validate the authenticity of the religious mission; the lines between cause and effect were blurred and could be reversed. In convincing ordinary people of his messianic claims, Bu Ziyan closely adhered to an implicit mahdist "script" and appears to have been fully conversant with the popular traditions concerning the signs, personality traits, and attributes identifying "the one sent from heaven." Simply stated, the creation of a community of devotees and the construction of the mahdist persona were simultaneous and mutually reinforcing activities.

"The Christians Will No More Enter Za'atsha Than They Will Enter Mecca"

In the early months of 1849, Bu Ziyan was beset by divinely inspired visions and disturbing dreams, universally regarded in that society as constituting a means of "access to the invisible world."^[52] He dispatched

emissaries to the Awras and Biskra to inform the populace of these portents from on high. Before long Bu Ziyan's otherworldly experiences entered into the rumor mill: "People were constantly speaking about [him] and much preoccupied with this man from Za'atsha who had seen the Prophet and grouped around him numerous partisans."^[53] In addition to publicizing these supernatural visitations, which brought the pious and the curious to his side, Bu Ziyan also proceeded quite methodically to fashion a base of support by sacrificing sheep every day and distributing food to the poor; he held lavish banquets and entertained visitors. Since these rituals of sacrifice and the cultural behavior normally associated with them were outside of the normal liturgical cycle, they may have signaled a break in the ordinary flow of time, thus hinting at the mahdi's arrival.^[54] However, up to this point, there was not much to distinguish Bu Ziyan's gradually emerging call to prophecy from the initial stages of the saint in gestation. Then came more visions and supernatural signs; the Prophet Muhammad announced in a dream that Bu Ziyan was the mahdi. The suspension of historical time was near; conquering piety was at hand.^[55]

Nevertheless, some refused to believe that the Prophet had so honored the man from Za'atsha. To win over skeptics, Bu Ziyan predicted that other signs would soon follow. Once again the Prophet appeared in a nightly vision and seized Bu Ziyan by the hand, which turned green in color, a manifestation of mu'jizat , or those miracles attributed to prophets. The crowds gathered to behold the mystery, and his residence became a pilgrimage site as villagers arrived from far and wide. Divine election was finally confirmed—and any remaining skeptics won over—when the Prophet reappeared a third time, informing Bu Ziyan that "the reign of the impious had come to an end and the rule of the true believers is about to commence."^[56] Having convinced an audience of his prophecy, Bu Ziyan then expanded the public nature of his preaching; his message combined exhortations to piety and right conduct with moral censure of local religious notables, who were upbraided for the "disorders of their private lives." At the same time, the new mahdi capitalized upon widespread dissatisfaction with the recently imposed colonial fiscal regime.^[57]

Only in May 1849 did French officials have an inkling of the unfolding movement. By now the authorities sensed that the calm was deceptive but were frustrated in attempts to gather information through paid spies; apparently even indigenous informants had defected to Bu Ziyan's cause. Lieutenant Seroka, then a Bureau Arabe officer in Biskra and later wounded during the siege, was sent to investigate the rumors. Among them were disquieting reports going around the oases that "Algeria would soon be ruled by the Muslims again." The Ziban's French-appointed representa-

tive, Muhammad al-Saghir b. Ghana chose to ignore or minimize the explosive situation. Engaged in behind-the-scenes bet hedging, he surmised that rebellion would not be detrimental to his own interests, neither the first nor last time that supposed French allies turned a conveniently blind eye to unrest from below.^[58]

At this critical juncture, blunders by those ostensibly in power served to transform an incipient movement of militant opposition into a full-scale uprising. Discovering the source of popular agitation, Seroka, and a small band of soldiers sent from Biskra, attempted to arrest Bu Ziyan in Za'atsha's marketplace in full view of the crowd. The mahdi miraculously escaped for a time. A second effort failed once again in the suqs when the people, by now carrying arms, rushed to Bu Ziyan's defense, delivering him from the French. Outnumbered, Seroka and his troops fled ignominiously for their lives. The populace interpreted this initial victory as evidence that their colonial masters were no longer equal to the task of ruling. Soon after, jihad was solemnly proclaimed from the minaret of the mosque attached to the Rahmaniyya zawiya; other oases in the Zab Dahrawi also declared open support for the insurrection.^[59]

More than a month elapsed, and still the French did nothing to punish the villagers; this too was read as an indication of weakness. Finally, a small contingent of French soldiers led by Colonel Carbuccia arrived in July to end the sedition. The rebels retreated to Za'atsha, where they were protected by dense palm groves and shielded by walls and moats. Undermanned and unfamiliar with the peculiar exigencies of oasis warfare, the French contingent was forced into humiliating retreat the next day after costly losses. News of this second victory spread like wildfire and provoked further unrest in the Ziban, the Awras, and Bu Sa'ada.^[60] The hour of deliverance was at hand.

Between July and September, however, no further clashes occurred in the pre-Sahara, mainly because the French army was distracted by insurrection in the northern Constantine. Moreover, a full-scale military expedition was virtually impossible due to the intense heat of summer. Another key element in the delay of hostilities was the annual migration of the Saharan tribes. Until the first autumn rains brought adequate pasturage, the tribes were absent from the Ziban, having moved tents and flocks over the mountains into the cooler, grain-growing plains. Without the additional manpower of tribal allies, the sedentary population of the oases was insufficient to withstand a long siege. Both sides—French and Algerian—bided their time.

The rebels used this reprieve to organize and prepare for the forthcoming Armageddon. Bu Ziyan continued to preach jihad from the Rah-

maniyya zawiya in Za'atsha; significantly, he called for the taking of Biskra, the symbol of France's presence as well as the gateway to the eastern Sahara and the Tell. By capturing Biskra, Bu Ziyan's forces could then advance into the northern Constantine to expel the infidels. While assuring his followers that victory would come from God, Bu Ziyan also undertook practical measures to achieve large-scale mobilization. He turned to adjacent regions which traditionally maintained religious, commercial, and political ties with the Ziban. Letters and emissaries were dispatched far and wide to solicit material and moral support. Many villages and tribes beyond the southern Constantine also declared their support; a local uprising was assuming the proportions of a transregional movement.^[61]

The response of Bu Sa'ada's populace underscores many of the forces for political action just discussed. Under the leadership of a local saintly figure, Muhammad b. Shabira, who maintained a constant correspondence with Bu Ziyan, Bu Sa'ada also recognized the mahdi.^[62] But first specific anxieties had to be identified with the savior's call to arms. Muhammad b. Shabira, a member of Bu Sa'ada's shurafa', had not engaged in political activities until Bu Ziyan launched his jihad in 1849. A peaceful man of religion, Shabira was propelled to militant action by rumors, spies, and popular fears about European interference in the oasis's internal affairs. In addition to unsettling letters from Bu Ziyan calling for holy war and rumors about "the man with the green hand," news of Colonel Carbuccia's setback reached Bu Sa'ada. At this juncture, colonial officials sent an indigenous spy to investigate the extent of the hubus properties held by sufi and other religious notables; these properties were targeted for possible incorporation into the French-controlled public domain. A tactless move, it only inflamed indigenous elites and ordinary people alike. Other rumors circulated that the infidels sought to create a European settler presence in Bu Sa'ada. Thus threatened, Shabira and his followers declared holy war. Here we can see how quite local concerns were collapsed into the mahdi's program for universal deliverance.^[63]

As Bu Sa'ada and other oases prepared for combat, the inhabitants of the Ziban, and particularly Za'atsha, stockpiled their villages with provisions ample enough to endure a long assault. The rebels concocted bullets made of date pits and covered with a thin layer of lead since this precious war metal was in short supply; they mined the houses with gunpowder, some of which may have been supplied by Shaykh Mustafa b. 'Azzuz, then residing in the Rahmaniyya zawiya in the Tunisian Jarid.^[64] Finally, as autumn approached, noncombatants—children, women, and the elderly—were sent away for safety, although Bu Ziyan's extended family remained in the oasis as a sign that victory was assured. Nevertheless, a number of

women elected to stay and fight along with their menfolk. If Bu Ziyan was a visionary, he was also a pragmatic mahdi who drew upon his prior experience as the spearhead of the 1831 uprising. His worldly brand of millenarianism contrasts sharply with other messianic leaders in North Africa or elsewhere, who often were singularly indifferent to the material dimensions of militant social protest since divine intervention would preserve them from harm.^[65]

On the eve of the great conflict, Bu Ziyan had acquired many of the essential attributes expected of a mahdist leader in North African society: charisma, religious legitimacy conferred by the Prophet Muhammad and evidenced by mu'jizat, a large popular following, and a prophetic program to inaugurate the realm of justice and remove the source of evil and oppression. To these were added his own personal qualities of military prowess, which was prized in desert society, and political astuteness, perhaps acquired through earlier contacts with the colonial regime. Colonial authorities themselves contributed to Bu Ziyan's movement by failing to arrest him, which was read as yet another miraculous event, confirming his prophecy. Moreover, military officials did not immediately respond to the developing challenge to their authority. This too was interpreted as a symptom of feebleness; European might was crumbling in the face of the mahdi's power. By the summer of 1849, Bu Ziyan "was the real master of Za'atsha and his numerous partisans in the oases of the Sahara and in the Awras Mountains made him a dangerous personage."^[66] Despite his revelations and proficiency in achieving popular mobilization, the mahdi felt compelled to seek the patronage of the region's sufi leaders and saintly lineages.

The "Rightly Guided One" or Base Impostor?

In many respects, desert sufi elites resembled their urban counterparts, the big-city ulama, in their predilection for social order over disorder as long as the holy law was upheld. As men of the pen, most preferred the zawiya's studious calm to the boisterous game of tribal politics—Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz of Khanqa Sidi Naji is a perfect example of this position. If the saints championed communal opposition to wicked rulers, since they enjoyed a theoretical immunity from state repression, at the same time the ideal of saintliness was that of flight or retreat from violent confrontations.^[67] Nevertheless, saintly leaders had to be responsive to the demands and needs of their clienteles since one of the social indicators of sainthood was collective recognition of piety expressed in the form of popular followings. Thus, the political behavior of religious notables was governed by clusters of implicit cultural codes that were highly contextual in nature.

The myriad responses of local religious notables to the French advance into their respective spiritual bailiwicks were examined in the previous chapter. During this critical period, the different, if ambiguous, positions of Rahmaniyya and other sufi leaders toward the colonial regime and its native allies began to congeal. Moreover, avoidance protest, bet hedging, and apparent accommodation were not mutually exclusive strategies for beleaguered religious notables. Procrastination and temporizing represented attempts to cope until the true intentions of the infidels could be ascertained. At the same time, confusion over France's aims in the Sahara—bolstered by colonial pacts with desert princes like the Banu Jallab of Tuqqurt—added to the collective sentiment of uncertainty but also conferred some measure of political maneuverability. Bu Ziyan's public prophecy abruptly ended the era of ambiguity and feigned compliance. An event long anticipated yet feared, it raised even more catastrophic uncertainties about the true identity of the would-be redeemer.

If the rise of a new saint was a cause for rejoicing within the community, the coming of the mahdi provoked both jubilation and trepidation among religious authorities. The traditions regarding his appearance in time were contradictory; they also warned that impostors would arise to lead the unwary into error. The dilemma faced by members of the provincial Islamic establishment—local saints and sufi notables—was to distinguish the divinely guided from the vile pretender.^[68]

What then was the reaction of Rahmaniyya shaykhs to Bu Ziyan's self-proclaimed mission? Tulqa's sufi elite had already opted for political neutrality and nonresistance as early as 1844. After Mustafa b. 'Azzuz's departure for southwestern Tunisia that same year, Sidi 'Ali b. 'Umar's nephew, 'Ali b. 'Uthman (died 1898), assumed direction of the Tulqa Rahmaniyya center and its secondary zawaya in the Ziban.^[69] Based upon his behavior even before the long siege, Sidi 'Ali b. 'Uthman and his family demurred to publicly recognize the authenticity of Bu Ziyan's mahdist claims; the outbreak of warfare failed to shake their resolve to eschew militant politics. Throughout the cruel siege months, Shaykh 'Ali of Tulqa continually offered his good offices, vainly seeking to effect reconciliation between French authorities in Biskra and the rebels, many of whom were Rahmaniyya brothers. Resolving traditional oasis conflicts was one of the functions expected of saintly mediators; mediating an apocalyptic struggle pitting the infidels against members of the community was new. Nevertheless, Shaykh 'Ali's refusal to sanction Bu Ziyan's movement did not discourage Tulqa's inhabitants from joining in the rebellion. They not only sent fresh recruits to Za'atsha but also dispatched a small band to attack the residence of the shaykh al-'arab in Biskra.^[70]

The stance of Tulqa's sufi leaders toward the mahdi may have been determined by more than theological doubts regarding the legitimacy of Bu Ziyan's divine calling. Older saintly quarrels may also have been at work. After Mustafa b. 'Azzuz's hijra to Tunisia in 1844, any semblance of unity among the Saharan Rahmaniyya was effectively ended. Shaykh 'Ali b. 'Uthman was opposed by some Rahmaniyya figures, most notably Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz of Khanqa Sidi Naji. The lack of cohesion among Rahmaniyya notables at this pivotal juncture was one element working against concerted political action. Clearly evident here is the interplay between older "maraboutic politics" and anticolonial resistance, including mahdist-led movements.

In contrast to those in Tulqa, the region's other Rahmaniyya leaders decided to confer their sociospiritual support to the rebellious prophet by the summer of 1849. On the eve of Colonel Carbuccia's abortive attack, Rahmaniyya shaykhs and their followers gathered in the oasis of Sidi Khalid, not far from Za'atsha. There Mustafa b. 'Azzuz's brother, Muhammad, headed the order's small zawiya. After much discussion, a general call for jihad was publicly announced. The 'Azzuz clan of al-Burj threw in their lot with the rebels; one of Mustafa b. 'Azzuz's brothers joined the battle as a combatant and lost his life in the final showdown. Another sibling, Mabruk b. 'Azzuz, earlier estranged from his family, fought for a time with Bu Ziyan but managed to escape the carnage of late November. In the oasis of Sidi Masmudi, the Rahmaniyya shaykh also lent moral support to Bu Ziyan's movement by preaching jihad to clients in the Awras. A large number of peasants and tribesmen from Sidi Masmudi participated in the hostilities.

When the news of Carbuccia's defeat reached Sidi al-Mukhtar, head of the Rahmaniyya zawiya in Awlad Jallal, he returned to the Ziban from his refuge with the Awlad Na'il. Shaykh al-Mukhtar recruited insurgents from the oases around Awlad Jallal and drew the great Saharan tribe of the Awlad Sassi into the insurrection. As he had done two years earlier during Bu Ma'za's revolt, Shaykh al-Mukhtar was instrumental in achieving popular mobilization based upon tariqa loyalties and patronage ties with tribal groups. In addition, he offered his services to Bu Ziyan in the event of an attack upon Biskra.^[71]

In the Jabal Cherchar, however, Bu Ziyan's prophetic claims initially encountered skepticism. Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz, whose influence stretched from the Zab Sharqi to the southeastern end of the Awras, hesitated to sanction the mahdi. The shaykh entertained grave doubts about the authenticity of his messianic pretensions, particularly Bu Ziyan's dreams in which the Prophet announced his selection as the "rightfully guided one." Perhaps

too the fact that Bu Ziyan was not a member of the region's religious establishment prior to 1849 made his calling suspect. Despite his own personal misgivings, Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz eventually, albeit reluctantly, joined with the rebels. Intense pressures from below—from the shaykh's tribal clientele in the Awras—forced him to alter his stance.^[72] Here is a striking example of how ordinary people, the rank and file composing the popular followings of revered religious figures, also molded the political behavior of these notables. The unlettered mountain folk exerted their own form of moral suasion from below to force reluctant sufis out into the political arena. Thus, despite—or perhaps because of—his supernatural visions, Bu Ziyan sought the backing of sufi notables and their public acknowledgment of his prophecy. However, the important matter of sequence remains largely unknown: did Bu Ziyan wait until the movement had acquired a critical mass among the villagers to solicit Rahmaniyya confirmation of his mission? Or was his following in the oases dependent upon the blessings of certain activist sufi notables from the start? What is significant is that the endorsement of some prominent Rahmaniyya leaders transformed a local rebellion into a regional and transregional insurrection and that the would-be mahdi felt obliged to court those leaders. This hints at a symbiotic relationship between popular messianic figures and the rural Islamic establishment.

"Bu Ziyan and His Followers Are Like the Prophet's Companions"

A pragmatic millenarian, Bu Ziyan also sought to enlist outside help; letters were sent to the Tunisian ruler, Ahmad Bey, soliciting assistance.^[73] This effort at international diplomacy raises several issues about how the rebels viewed their undertaking. If indeed God was on their side, why was additional support deemed necessary? And if the realm of justice was imminent, what role would established dynasties, such as the Tunisian Husaynids, play in the new socioreligious order? Importuning Ahmad Bey for help does, however, suggest that those preparing for the coming battle believed in the rumors then raging about forthcoming military assistance—indeed they probably contributed to the fund of improvised news.

By the autumn of 1849, Bu Ziyan had come to incarnate divinely ordained opposition to the French for many in Algeria and elsewhere in the Maghrib. The battle cry of the insurgents—"the Christians will no more enter Za'atsha then they will Mecca"—is symbolically suggestive of how the movements' participants interpreted their cause. The universal, normative core of Islam—the sacrosanct city—had been conflated with the rebellion's locus, a small oasis on the Sahara's brow; thus, the great religious "center out there" and the local center of revolt were one and the

same. And in their struggles against the impious, Bu Ziyan and his partisans had been transformed by the collective religious imagination into the Prophet's companions.

Moreover, the mahdi had convinced his partisans by miracles, words, and deeds that they would defeat the French as they had the Turks. God had ordained total annihilation for the Europeans, who, in the popular discourse, were "worse than the Turks." Rumors ran riot. According to one, the infidels were trapped by the Kabyles, who had retaken Skikda, and by the Tunisians, who held Annaba; thus, the French army's access to the sea was blocked. This kind of news attracted fighters from outside of the pre-Sahara, who swelled the ranks of the insurgents. Bu Ziyan sent letters to areas as far removed as the Jurjura Mountains calling for jihad. Among those responding from the northern Constantine was al-Hajj Musa, the Darqawi leader who had earlier opposed 'Abd al-Qadir in the 1830s due to the amir's negotiations with the French. Sidi Musa brought with him to Za'atsha some sixty followers. Another religious charismatic, Muhammad ibn 'Abd Allah, the instigator of a small uprising near Collo, also arrived in the oasis. In addition, many religious leaders who had fled the Ziban in 1844 returned to the region. The former shaykh of Sidi 'Uqba, Muhammad al-Saghir, left the safety of Nafta's Rahmaniyya zawiya, crossing the border with his forces in an attempt to link up with Bu Ziyan. French spies in the Tunisian Jarid reported that Shaykh Mustafa b. 'Azzuz was also involved in the Za'atsha affair, mainly by supplying gunpowder and preaching revolt.^[74]

As the French army began moving contingents down from the northern Constantine in September, victory over the unbelievers seemed assured. Then came a serious setback, a sign of what lay ahead. In the middle of September, Shaykh 'Abd al-Hafiz, pushed by his restive tribal clients to assume a front-line part in the uprising, reluctantly left his zawiya in the Jabal Cherchar. While popular pressures were probably the decisive factor in moving the aging shaykh to action, saintly disputes may also have been a factor. 'Abd al-Hafiz's adversaries—the Rahmaniyya of Tulqa and the Awlad Sidi Naji of Khanqa Sidi Naji—were in the opposing Banu Ghana camp, which probably made Bu Ziyan's cause all the more attractive. Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz's entire life had been devoted to study, teaching, and spiritual exercises, thus he was especially unsuited for the rigors of militant action. At the head of several thousand warriors from the Awras and Zab Sharqi, the sufi shaykh established a bivouac near the small oasis of Sariana commanding the route to Biskra. The objective was to join up with Bu Ziyan's forces; together they could take the Ziban's capital, which many predicted would "fall without firing a shot." Believing that the French army was enfeebled and that Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz's baraka was potent, many of the tribesmen arrived poorly armed or without weapons at all; the saint's

blessings were deemed sufficient protection. Some villagers, anticipating the material rewards of apocalyptic victory, rode mules loaded with empty sacks in order to partake of war booty or to raid Biskra's lush gardens. They were cut to ribbons in a rapid surprise attack. Commandant Saint-Germain and his vastly superior forces led a nocturnal assault upon Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz's band outside of Sariana as September drew to a close. Those who were spared retreated in confusion back to the mountains.^[75]

The Rahmaniyya banners, tent, and baggage belonging to Shaykh 'Abd al-Hafiz were captured during the rout. The saint, who desired nothing but the serenity of his zawiya far from the rigors of war, fled into the Awras "almost naked." Despite this crushing contretemps, the shaykh appears to have been convinced by then of the authenticity—or at least the urgency—of Bu Ziyan's mission. A month later as Za'atsha was besieged by the French army, Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz joined forces with the Rahmaniyya leader of Sidi Masmudi and the shaykh of Sidi 'Uqba, Muhammad al-Saghir, in a second assault upon Biskra, which was also repelled by superior French forces and armaments.^[76]

The quandary that Bu Ziyan's jihad posed for sufi leaders, like Shaykh 'Abd al-Hafiz, is poignantly illustrated by the saint's behavior on the eve of his ill-fated military campaign. Striving to meet the demands of religious clients—to fulfill his obligations to disciples and preserve his prestige—the shaykh also made covert diplomatic overtures to the enemy. He wrote a conciliatory letter to colonial officials in Biskra in a last ditch effort to remain in good standing should the unthinkable occur. In his letter the shaykh declared that he had no reason to oppose French rule. Pressed by his clients to lead the jihad, he as their religious patron was obliged to follow suit.^[77] Ultimately the decision to engage in popular protest would make Shaykh 'Abd al-Hafiz a political exile. The sufi notable's actions might be interpreted as merely self-interested equivocation. Yet this incident lays bare all the competing, contradictory social forces confronting religious notables during the conquest era. It also reveals that ordinary people wielded influence over the political behavior of privileged saintly lineages in certain circumstances.

The Final Showdown: The Siege of October to November

On 7 October, General Herbillon, commander of the province of Constantine, and four thousand French and indigenous soldiers arrived before Za'atsha with munitions and supplies sufficient for a prolonged siege.^[78] Soon other contingents poured in until eight thousand men were assembled. To determine the rebels' resolve, Herbillon ordered the date-palm trees demolished; this was met by rifle shot indicating that negotiations were futile.

While the technological odds were on their side—the French army was equipped with heavy siege craft—lack of experience in oasis warfare hampered the colonial war machine. As the siege dragged on, morale deteriorated among the French soldiers since living conditions were miserable. An outbreak of cholera, introduced into the pre-Sahara by battalions from Sétif, decimated the army, further undermining esprit de corps. Moreover, the rebels were by then well organized and displayed the utmost indifference to death as they made sorties from the fortified oasis to attack the infidel encampment. While Bu Ziyan's forces killed a number of soldiers, the epidemic carried off many more.^[79] The deadly confrontation became a test of France's will to retain the entire Sahara; eventually the fallout from Za'atsha would extend the turbulent colonial frontiers ever further in the desert.

With the cooler weather, the tribes began moving their flocks down from the Tell to the desert winter pasturage. This alarmed the French military; a rapid, decisive defeat was imperative since the pastoral-nomadic groups would most likely join the insurrection. Learning of the demoralized state of the European soldiers, the Sharaqa and Bu 'Azid tribes decided to lend aid to the besieged; they assembled in a small oasis near the Wadi Jadi for an attack from the rear. Alerted in time, General Herbillon mounted another nighttime sortie, which overwhelmed the tribes since it caught them by surprise; their chiefs surrendered on 15 November, and those who could escape fled south toward Tuqqurt. The rout was interpreted as a portent of doom by some of the Ziban's people; many sought to flee Za'atsha, now nearly encircled by soldiers and continually pounded by deadly artillery. Even al-Hajj Musa, an intrepid warrior, counseled Bu Ziyan to consider departing. Then the Rahmaniyya leader of Awlad Jallal, Shaykh al-Mukhtar, one of the mahdi's most fervent supporters, had disturbing visions. The Angel Gabriel (Jibril) had appeared to him in a dream warning that the Muslims would suffer ruin at Za'atsha and their leaders would perish. Despite the inauspicious news, Bu Ziyan persisted, believing that divine assistance was forthcoming as promised by the Prophet. His courage and steadfastness convinced many to take heart and remain, although much more than personal valor was at stake. Za'atsha's fate was seen as "a supreme struggle that would determine the authenticity of Bu Ziyan's prophecy and whether the last hour had arrived for the Christians."^[80] To depart would have belied his own claims to be the awaited one. And should the mahdi prove to be a base pretender, his supporters would suffer heaven's displeasure.

As long as Za'atsha's gardens were not severed from the adjoining villages, resistance was possible since fresh combatants from contiguous oases replaced the dead or wounded. Women too were among the fighters.

During the fifty-two day ordeal, village women helped in repulsing the attack. Not only did they exhort their menfolk to acts of bravery, as was the custom in the Sahara, but they also took up arms, fighting alongside the men. Then the cholera epidemic began to take its toll among the rebels as it had already done among the Europeans. Exacerbating the losses from disease was the punishment that modern firepower bestowed on the oasis's ancient defenses, so invincible when faced by traditional foes. Here, as in innumerable other encounters between colonial armies and indigenous forces in Africa or Asia during the nineteenth century, the advanced military technology available to Europeans proved decisive.^[81] In addition to intimidating cannonry, other tools of empire were at work. By 1849, the French army in Algeria was equipped with a new type of rifle, the carabine à tige , or bolt-action rifle, which replaced the older, and much less accurate, carabine à munition . Bu Ziyan's followers, in contrast, were armed with muskets of diverse origins and uncertain quality. Finally, after great losses, the French had completely encircled Za'atsha; a military cordon sanitaire isolated the village from other oases in the Zab Dahrawi.^[82]

By 26 November the end was in sight; both sides knew what the future held. The relentless artillery had carved gaping breaches in Za'atsha's walls, and soon soldiers poured into the narrow, debris-strewn alleys and garden pathways. Bu Ziyan convened his followers in the town mosque. After leading them in prayer, he enjoined the few survivors to fight to the death. Later that day, French troops trapped the mahdi, together with his family—two young sons, a daughter, his wife, and mother—in the abandoned residence of the French-appointed qa'id. The mahdi emerged from the house brandishing a rifle; "I am Bu Ziyan," he calmly stated to the officers as he knelt down to pray. After being forced to witness his family's massacre, the rebellious prophet was placed against a wall, the order given to prepare arms. "You were the strongest; God alone is great, may His will be done" were his last words. Shots rang out, and the hero of Za'atsha fell to the ground. Bu Ziyan's head was offered as a prize of war to General Herbillon, who had it displayed on the gatepost for all to see. Throughout the remainder of the day, the silence was broken only by the sound of explosions as soldiers detonated gunpowder caches underneath the few houses still standing.^[83]

The Aftermath

The revolt was immensely costly for both sides. Its suppression involved the French army in the longest, bloodiest siege experienced thus far in Algeria. Over fifteen hundred soldiers and officers perished in combat, and perhaps as many again died from cholera. Predictably, Za'atsha produced

a number of ex post facto studies of oasis warfare in French military circles in anticipation of future such insurrections.^[84] Analysts of the period regarded the battle as the most grueling test to date, far more so than the two sieges of Constantine over a decade earlier. Moreover, this epic confrontation in a small oasis on the Sahara's upper rim proved significant to the history of Algeria writ large. The commitment of so many soldiers and resources to the battle diverted attention away from other rebellious regions, delaying the Kabyle campaign, which began in earnest only in the 1850s. As the news of the terrible suppression spread, it instilled fears of similar reprisals among the Ziban's populace, who demurred, for the most part, to support openly the Sharif of Warqala's jihad several years later.^[85]

Beyond the purely military or political realms, the Za'atsha affair directly affected colonial attitudes and policies toward sufis, saints, and holy men in North Africa. It raised the level of French consciousness regarding the potentially revolutionary role of popular and elite religious figures in collective protest. From 1850 on, a distinct genre in colonial historiography and in quasi-scientific studies of indigenous society emerges—the corpus of literature devoted to the turuq, the saints, and the so-called marabouts.^[86] Obsessions with a "sufi menace" dominated French colonial thinking until at least the turn of the century.

The Ziban's inhabitants interpreted the fall of Za'atsha as a judgment from God and the outbreak of cholera as divine retribution visited upon those who had not perished as martyrs during the siege. In the epidemic that ravaged the region for several years after 1849, some oases lost nearly three-quarters of their population. The nearby pastoral-nomadic peoples suffered cruelly as well. Many fled Algeria for Tunisia to escape vengeance, disease, and the devastation inflicted upon the Zab Dahrawi, where some ten thousand date plams—the very basis of the economy—were systematically cut down by the French army in retaliation. From the ruins of Za'atsha—the town was thoroughly demolished and its gardens destroyed—eight hundred bodies were uncovered. As a warning to future insurgents, the French army chose to leave the razed village as it was; no one was permitted to reside there again. In the words of one contemporary witness, Za'atsha constituted a monument to "des horreurs qui n'avaient pas de nom" ["indescribable horrors"].^[87]

The events of 1849 provoked different sorts of responses, ranging from passive resistance to mass emigration not only to neighboring Tunisia but also to more distant lands.^[88] That same year a Kabyle Rahmaniyya shaykh, Sidi al-Mahdi, publicly called upon his clients to emigrate from the colony to Syria; some three thousand people eventually departed for the Ottoman-ruled Mashriq.^[89] In December 1849, the governor-general of Algeria,

Cavaignac, wrote a letter to the minister of foreign affairs in Paris deploring the movements of Algerians, both ordinary people and elites, out of the colony.^[90] Since the porous frontiers between Tunisia and Algeria were a favored escape route, the Tunisian beylik became increasingly critical to French imperial strategy.

For those religious notables who had participated openly in the Za'atsha movement, emigration or withdrawal to inaccessible regions was imperative for survival. Commanding tribal warriors from the Tunisian border regions, the shaykh of Sidi 'Uqba had sought to coordinate operations with Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz and the Rahmaniyya shaykh, Sadiq b. al-Hajj, from the oasis of Sidi Masmudi in the Awras. Together they aimed to relieve Bu Ziyan by supplying fresh combatants, although their coalition collapsed after several defeats at the hands of the French army. The shaykh of Sidi 'Uqba withdrew once more from the Ziban, seeking refuge in the noman's-land between the Suf and the Tunisian Jarid until the Sharif of Warqala declared revolt in 1851. Likewise, the Rahmaniyya leader of Sidi Masmudi escaped to his sufi sanctuary in the mountains, still outside of French control; a decade later a small mahdist uprising erupted from the zawiya under Sidi al-Sadiq's auspices.^[91]

Twice defeated in 1849, Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz also retreated back to his Rahmaniyya zawiya in Khanqa Sidi Naji. Because of his advanced years and spiritual authority, colonial authorities officially pardoned him in January 1850. Nevertheless, remaining in Algeria was intolerable for the Rahmaniyya shaykh; soon thereafter, he went to Nafta to reside with his sufi associate, Sidi Mustafa b. 'Azzua, in accordance with the duty of hijra. While in the Tunisian Jarid, Shaykh 'Abd al-Hafiz succumbed to the cholera epidemic still raging in the region. He died in July 1850; his body was transported from the Jarid back to the family Rahmaniyya center in the Jabal Cherchar.^[92] According to popular lore, however, the shaykh had not perished. Rather he was once again enclosed alive in the tomb, from which he continued to bestow his baraka upon clients and family members. His sons were regarded by ordinary people not as his spiritual heirs but as mere representatives of the still-living saint.^[93]

Elsewhere in Algeria, Za'atsha's repression brought to heel other rebellious groups who had emulated Bu Ziyan by raising the flag of revolt. As discussed above, Bu Sa'ada's inhabitants had rallied around a local saintly leader, Shabira, who kept in touch with Bu Ziyan and convinced the townspeople to participate in jihad. There "the market became the rendezvous of the insurgents; the rebels bought arms and ammunition in the city's markets for holy war and everywhere in the streets, in the houses, gunpowder was being made."^[94] By 9 November, however, Bu Sa'ada's populace realized that they were outnumbered by French forces and laid down their

arms. When the nearby tribal peoples of the Awlad Na'il learned of Za'atsha's fate and the execution of the mahdi and his family, they also sued for peace. Soon thereafter, a military headquarters, including a fort and a local Bureau Arabe, was established in Bu Sa'ada, to supervise the townspeople and the pastoral nomads, above all the Awlad Nail, who traded in the markets there. The cruel lessons of Za'atsha were not lost on a religious notable residing in a small oasis not far from Bu Sa'ada—Sidi Muhammad b. Abi al-Qasim of al-Hamil. The saint had only recently in the village created a madrasa, which would later serve as the nucleus for one of the largest Rahmaniyya complexes in Algeria. Shaykh Muhammad's strategy for containing foreign domination through nonviolent means was surely a consequence of the events of 1849. Finally, the mahdi's demise may have also vindicated the neutralist position of political fence-sitters like the Rahmaniyya notables of Tulqa who had preached calm and compromise.

Nevertheless, the deeper social significance of Za'atsha did not end at mid-century; many refused to believe that Bu Ziyan and his family had died. Rumor had it that the mahdi had foiled death by flight; others held that one of his sons had survived the carnage. Several years later, another Saharan rebel, the Sharif of Warqala, claimed to be associated with Bu Ziyan's son, al-Qasim, whose body was never recovered from the ruins. By tapping into the reputation of the hero of Za'atsha, the sharif attempted to incite another uprising. Paradoxically, defeat only served to increase Bu Ziyan's stature as a paladin and legend whose deeds were incorporated into the fund of local epic lore. Through the cultural medium of oral ballads and poetry, the events of 1849 were woven into the collective historical memory; Za'atsha remained vivid in the popular imagination long after the final showdown.^[95]

Collective Memory, Poetry, and Social Protest

Thus far the narrative of the 1849 uprising has largely been based upon written accounts left by European participants in the struggle. Most of the rebels were illiterate, although as mentioned above the French army uncovered letters in Bu Ziyan's house; some of the mahdi's correspondence was intercepted en route by colonial authorities.^[96] Viewing the events from the perspective of the mahdi's followers is, however, rendered less daunting because several fragments of praise poetry composed in Bu Ziyan's honor were recorded at the time in their original vernacular Arabic.^[97] These ballads are significant not only for what they say but also for how they came to be. Their existence points to a much larger fund of verse inspired by rebellious prophets and disseminated in popular milieus. And the two ballads offer clues about the channels through which millenarian traditions were transmitted to ordinary people.

Poetry dedicated to local folk heroes—whether saints, rebels, or mahdis—was recited during social or religious gatherings by rural and urban maddahs, often to the accompaniment of music.^[98] In North Africa, the word maddah traditionally had a wider connotation than the more restricted classical meaning of "panegyrist." Beaussier's dictionary of Algerian Arabic, first published in 1897, defines the maddah as "a kind of religious minstrel who attends festivals to sing the praises of the saints, of God, and of holy war, and who is accompanied on the tambourine and flute."^[99] In the largely oral society of the countryside, poets represented the collective historical memory of the community as their verses were passed on by word of mouth across generations. But they were more than mere chroniclers, satirizers, or entertainers. The maddahs were "arbiters of words" in the same way that the saints were the arbiters among men or between humankind and God.^[100] And through the mediation of the local bard, eschatological lore, conserved in the countryside by sufi zawaya, was woven into publicly narrated epics.^[101]

As discussed in chapter 2, popular poets wielded considerable political clout since they both shaped and reflected public opinion—much as rumors did—a fact recognized by indigenous North African leaders and colonial authorities. Even 'Abd al-Qadir cringed at the satirical verses composed by one recalcitrant maddah from the Oran when the amir's jihad was in its most exalted phase.^[102] Bu Ziyan, however, had nothing to fear from the Ziban's bards, who were florid in their praise. But these verses were more than popular eulogies for they were intended to make sense of disturbing events in much the same way that rumors did. Indeed, given the cultural fact that storytelling talents were so widely diffused throughout the society, rumors and ballads were mutually reinforcing; both mirrored public opinion, which viewed the coming struggle as the decisive moment in the long-awaited final showdown between good and evil.

The first ballad was attributed to Muhammad b. 'Umar of the small oasis of Lishana which adjoined Za'atsha; his verses were composed before the movement's demise in November 1849. Two years later, in 1851, Muhammad b. 'Umar was incarcerated by French officials in Biskra for singing this same ballad during village festivals. The maddah was deemed a threat to public order solely by virtue of his poetry, which indicates the potential political influence of both the poet and of the Za'atsha epic.^[103]

Muhammad b. 'Umar refers to Bu Ziyan as both the mahdi and the "bey of the Sahara," which indicates that the hero of Za'atsha had collapsed both the warrior traditions of the desert with those of the redeemer. The rebels were, according to the poet, armed in a manner that would excite the admiration of any tribesman. They carried "richly ornamented pistols,

long-barrelled rifles, and curved daggers," and were amply supplied with British gunpowder, the most coveted ammunition in North Africa at the time since it was believed the most deadly. Backing the combatants were their womenfolk, whose shrill cries exhorted them to brave deeds, a reference to culturally acceptable female participation in desert warfare. Moreover, the struggle was situated not only within the sociocultural milieu of the Sahara but also within its recent historical context. The poet portrayed the French siege as the culmination of a long series of confrontations with outsiders. Just as the 1831 attack by the last bey of the Constantine failed before Za'atsha, so would the present assault by the Christians. In concluding his ballad, Muhammad b. 'Umar once again waxed eloquent over the virtues of British gunpowder, then compared his verses to the beads of a Muslim rosary.^[104]

The second ballad, by another local maddah, 'Ali b. Sharqi, also glorified Bu Ziyan and his uprising, although its tone was somewhat more doleful than the first. Here we also see how the besieged viewed their situation during the fifty-two-day ordeal. Hordes of infidel soldiers from all over Algeria had converged upon the oasis like "a plague of locusts."^[105] Cannon shot and the smoke of firearms filled the air as did the thunder of the enemy's drums. Yet with the help of God and Bu Ziyan, the hero of holy war, the impious will be buried at Za'atsha, sang 'Ali b. Sharqi. So great was Bu Ziyan's reputation that he was known in the Tunisian cities and tribes; even the Ottoman sultan had heard of him.^[106]

Each of the poems depicted Bu Ziyan as both the long-awaited one and a local folk hero; valor on the battlefield earned him as much popular veneration as did his divinely ordained mission conferred by the Prophet Muhammad. Thus, powerful symbols and historical events were refashioned and interpreted in such a way as to give the movement's supporters some measure of certainty of what lay ahead—triumph—after decades of uncertainty. Here it should be pointed out that the maddahs did more than narrate stories; they were regarded as blessed with the power of divination. And in the early autumn months of 1849 the future appeared to be guaranteed by Bu Ziyan. Through the mahdi's leadership, the community's collective redemption would be attained: "Bu Ziyan will assure our salvation in this world and in the next, . . . the man with the sword. . . . Bu Ziyan and his followers are like the Prophet's companions. . . . I sing the praises of my hero, . . . the first among the faithful. . . . Even the angels say that Bu Ziyan will be victorious, . . . the valiant, the one who does not yield."^[107] The appeals to reigning Muslim rulers and princes for legitimacy suggest that the besieged situated their struggle within the much wider politicoreligious context of the Islamic umma (community of believers),

which implicated all Muslims in the confrontation.^[108] While the beleaguered Tunisian prince, Ahmad Bey, certainly entertained no thoughts of coming to the aid of rebels holed up in Za'atsha, documents in the Tunisian state archives indicate that officials in the beylik were anxiously awaiting the siege's outcome. A letter written by the Jarid's governor to Tunis in November 1849 noted the harb shadid (violent war) then raging in the Ziban and recorded the death of Bu Ziyan in a terse manner.^[109] The fact that Ahmad Zarruq, the Tunisian governor, did not feel obliged to provide officials in Tunis with any further details regarding Bu Ziyan's identity or the nature of his movement implies that beylical authorities were already conversant with events in the Ziban. Moreover, letters discovered by French officers in Bu Ziyan's headquarters in the demolished oasis showed that he had corresponded with the Tunisian central government. Compromising letters from a number of indigenous Algerian leaders, who ostensibly had submitted to France and were regarded as colonial allies, were also uncovered. Whether Ottoman officials in Tripolitania had a hand in the uprising as the French maintained at the time is, however, a matter of conjecture.^[110] However, Bu Ziyan's movement was deemed important enough by British officials to earn space in the London Times .^[111]

In the eyes of the North Africans, the battle for Za'atsha was an epic struggle—comparable to those waged by the Prophet Muhammad and his Companions against the polytheists of Mecca in the early seventh century—to right a world turned upside down by foreign conquest. The movement's constituency is a powerful indicator of the revolt's nature and ideology. Among those battling the forces of evil, "who swarmed like locusts" upon the village, were individuals from places far removed from the Ziban: Algerians from the Oran, subjects of the Tunisian bey and the Moroccan sultan, and even some Arabs from the Hijaz. In addition, twenty different tribal groups from the eastern Sahara sent contingents.^[112] Bu Ziyan had indeed succeeded—for a brief time at least—where others had failed; the older saff divisions had been overcome for a while, and a translocal coalition of forces put together, consolidated by their collective belief that the realm of justice was within reach.

The ballads praising Bu Ziyan were recited long after the mahdi's death. His story was integrated into the Sahara's folkloric and cultural traditions and became part of collective historical memory. Thus Bu Ziyan could claim a certain victory in defeat. According to a Bureau Arabe officer in Biskra:

We have often said that the memory of Za'atsha has remained in the heart of the Ziban like a ferment of hatred which will not be dissipated for a long time. The defense of the oasis, the battles waged there, have become the theme of popular songs. Bu Ziyan and the heroes of jihad are therein glorified. It is known that

these songs have been recited publicly in the oases, particularly during religious festivals which draw large crowds.^[113]

The rumors that nurtured Bu Ziyan's movement did not cease with the oasis's destruction; rather more improvised news, now confused with the horrors of cholera, both fueled and reflected the collective sense of anguish. In response to the devastating epidemic of 1849–1851, a program to introduce basic European medicine was initiated in the Ziban.^[114] Efforts by local officials to inoculate indigenous children encountered determined opposition; the events of 1849 were again evoked by the distrustful parents. Biskra's inhabitants were ordered to bring their children to the French doctor for inoculation; fifty youngsters were vaccinated. Wary of foreign medicine and of colonial intentions, the populace soon spread the rumor that the French were forcing families to give up their offspring and that the vaccination program was but a pretext to abduct Muslim children. Convinced by the rumors, the parents refused to obey, saying that they "would rather be buried under Za'atsha's ruins" than render their children.^[115] Za'atsha had became a poignant symbol of passive resistance in nonviolent confrontations with French authorities.

Thus, this bitter conflict in a rather remote corner of the pre-Sahara was regarded by many in North Africa as a decisive encounter—as decisive as the 1885 clash between General Gordon and the Sudanese Mahdists in Khartoum or 'Abd al-Qadir's last stand on the Mulwiyya in 1847.

The Algerian Pre-Sahara in the Aftermath of 1849

The Za'atsha insurrection provoked a sea change in colonial thinking about and strategies for policing the Sahara and its diverse populations. After 1849, new military and administrative policies were elaborated in which the oases and pastoral nomads figured prominently for the first time.^[116] By 1850, the French military had come to realize that a stranglehold over key markets was as important to pacification as battalions of soldiers. Thus, colonial strategists more or less consciously emulated their Turkish predecessors, who had always employed economic or market pressures to bring their more restless subjects to heel; Turkish blockades of vital foodstuffs and supplies had on more than one occasion coaxed insurgents to lay down their arms. And possession of Biskra, the heart of the Ziban, meant that the colonial regime held one of the main passageways between Tell and Sahara after 1849.

Nevertheless, when the passes into the north were closed, rebellious groups situated near the frontiers with Algeria's neighbors unfailingly turned to Tunisia or Morocco for grains, guns, gunpowder, and other necessities. In addition, the Ottomans lodged a garrison in Ghadamis, a

strategic oasis-emporium for the trans-Saharan trade, in 1842. The Ottoman drive to reassert direct sovereignty over Tripolitania after 1835 made French penetration of the eastern Sahara all the more imperative. Yet without the 1849 revolt and, above all, the Sharif of Warqala's jihad further military expansion into the desert would have been less urgent.^[117] In addition, Shaykh Mustafa b. 'Azzuz's across-the-border activities, and the migration of Algerian dissidents to his zawiya in the Tunisian Jarid, focused colonial attention upon the beylik as well.

For colonial officials in Algeria, victory at Za'atsha assured the continued occupation of Biskra, portal to the Sahara, while at the same time necessitating future campaigns southward which thrust the edges of the colonial state outward. In terms of geopolitics, the 1849 victory gave the French military a desert beachhead from whence the pacification of more distant oases could be undertaken, although not without encountering more mahdist-led resistance: al-Aghwat fell in 1852, followed by Tuqqurt, Warqala, and the Suf by the end of 1854. Propelled by the activities of rebellious prophets and dynamic sufi leaders, the turbulent frontier was being relentlessly expanded until it reached the Tunisian borders in the mid-1850s. While nearly three more decades elapsed before Tunisia was added to France's African possessions, the first calls for the beylik's occupation were made in this period. And in these calls for French overlordship of Tunisia, Mustafa b. 'Azzuz of Nafta figured prominently.

In contending with rapidly changing political conditions after 1830, Sidi Mustafa b. 'Azzuz embraced a course of action different from some of his Rahmaniyya sufi peers in the southern Constantine—hijra to a neighboring Muslim country. From his sufi zawiya, constructed in the Tunisian Jarid after 1844, Shaykh 'Azzuz was involved in both the Za'atsha and Warqala jihads. And while Sidi 'Azzuz did not lead bands of armed rebels, he was instrumental to the elaboration of movements of social protest. Like other Rahmaniyya notables, Shaykh 'Azzuz combined strategies of apparent accommodation, when circumstances demanded, with rejection of colonial hegemony. If he chose not to confront European technological and military might head on, nevertheless, Sidi Mustafa's response to French domination paralleled in a sense the reaction of Bu Ziyan and his supporters. By the rebellion's later phase, the Za'atsha insurgents sought to create a "city of God" in the desert which, after the final triumphant encounter with the forces of darkness, would usher in a new social order. In the same period, Shaykh 'Azzuz was also engaged in laying the basis for a new social and political order—on the other side of the Algerian border. And his style of moral combat drew Tunisia and the Tunisians into the political wilderness of Algérie Française .