5
Baraka and Barud:
Sidi Mustafa's Emigration to Tunisia

We have everything to lose from the ruin of the Algerian people; the damage will be even greater if the Algerians begin to emigrate. This is quite easy for the population of the Ziban so close to Tunisia.^[1]

The establishment of colonial regimes in nineteenth-century Africa raised anew the issue of the Islamic duty of hijra and demanded a redefinition of the concept of Dar al-Islam.^[2] Hijra, like travel, can be politically subversive in certain contexts. Political or social movements in Africa frequently had their genesis in the removal of pious Muslims from territory ruled by the impious. Thus, hijra could be the prelude to jihad, to the rise of a new sufi order, or to mass withdrawal to a space untainted by Europeans.^[3]

Compared with Bu Ziyan or the Sharif of Warqala, Mustafa b. 'Azzuz embarked upon a different course of action in his 1844 hijra to Tunisia—an apparent retreat from violent confrontations with Algeria's French masters. However, emigration did not constitute the final chapter of his political involvement. Rather emigration allowed Shaykh Mustafa to provide the institutional, material, and ideological components for sustained collective action. From his newly created sufi center in the Jarid, Sidi 'Azzuz channeled provisions, arms, counsel, and information to those opposing French rule across the border. Even without frontline participation in jihad, provincial notables heading large, prosperous, and strategically located zawaya could offer support to dissidents.

Hijra also provoked changes in collective notions of religious center and periphery. As the turbulent colonial frontiers were pushed relentlessly outward in Algeria, regional or local centers of Islam also shifted—south into the desert or across the frontiers into the Tunisian beylik. If the city of Constantine had long served as the Islamic core for eastern Algeria, after 1837 places like Tunis and the Jarid increasingly replaced Constantine as vital poles of attraction for Algerian Muslims.^[4]

By their political behavior, sufi notables, such as Mustafa b. 'Azzuz, reconstructed the relationship between center and periphery; indeed the

6.
Southern Tunisia and the Jarid

drastically transformed conditions in Algeria demanded such. Nevertheless, 'Azzuz's decision to depart was not in keeping with the responses of his Rahmaniyya associates in the Ziban. Most religious figures, and even many members of the 'Azzuz clan, elected to remain, despite social turmoil and the growing colonial presence, although, as discussed in the previous chapter, the Za'atsha revolt constituted a sea change in the political stance of sufi leaders residing in the Awras and pre-Sahara.

The Hijra of 1844

In the months between the first French incursions into the Ziban and the second taking of Biskra in May 1844, Mustafa b. 'Azzuz emigrated to the Tunisian Jarid. He was accompanied by Rahmaniyya disciples as well as family members—his wife, several daughters, and at least two young sons.^[5] While there is no information about the hijra itself, 'Azzuz and his followers probably traveled with a merchant caravan from the Ziban to Nafta via the oases of the Suf. The émigrés could have settled in the Suf since it was still completely outside of colonial control, remaining so until the defeat of the Sharif of Warqala's jihad in 1854. In 1844 there was no indication that the French would move against the quasi-independent Suwafa, whose salvation lay in isolation and the region's treacherous terrain. Moreover, in the Suf were several Rahmaniyya centers established earlier in the century by Muhammad b. 'Azzuz. Yet Sidi Mustafa chose instead to traverse the fluid frontiers into the beylik, although the 'Azzuz clan neither owned property nor had any sufi establishment there.^[6] Perhaps Sidi Mustafa's departure was initially intended as a temporary expedient since many Algerians at the time viewed the infidel occupation as a passing affliction.

Symbolically, the hijra was of immense importance. It signaled a refusal to reside in territory whose status had precipitously changed from Dar al-Islam to Dar al-Harb (enemy territory).^[7] As such it was an expression of avoidance protest, in this case elite protest based upon religious duty, directly linked to Biskra's capitulation to the French army. Nevertheless, events in the Ziban prior to 1844 may also have shaped the decision to emigrate. Sidi 'Ali b. 'Umar of Tulqa, Shaykh Mustafa's spiritual preceptor, was killed in 1842 during the interminable saff struggles. And splits within the 'Azzuz clan itself had erupted over the warrior-saint Husayn's political activities, to which were added older divisions among Rahmaniyya notables in the Awras and Ziban. In addition, some of the great families of eastern Algeria—the Banu Ghana and the Muqrani, for examples—had concluded unsavory alliances with the colonial regime to advance their interests against those of rivals. Indeed, Sidi Mustafa's older brother, Hasan, had been captured by French officials in 1841 largely due to al-Muqrani's

betrayal.^[8] By this time too, the French army had proven a formidable opponent against which new strategies had to be deployed.

Southern Tunisia represented a haven for organizing political action against the neighboring colonial state. Historically the Jarid had provided refuge to political agitators fleeing central government oppression. Due to location on the hajj route, its oases were in constant contact with Tripolitania, then an Ottoman regency, the Mashriq, and Hijaz.^[9] In addition to being a holy city, popularly regarded in the beylik as second only to al-Qayrawan, Nafta was strategically situated on the route to southeastern Algeria. Establishing a zawiya there placed Mustafa b. 'Azzuz in an optimal position for waging across-the-border holy war through the vehicle of the tariqa. At the same time, Shaykh 'Azzuz and his family were soon under the protection of the Tunisian ruler, Ahmad Bey, and within the confines of Dar al-Islam. Thus hijra embodied both physical movement and a spiritual odyssey offering purification for the polluting influence of the unbelievers.^[10] Flight from Biskra represented the fulfillment of religious obligation as well as a pragmatic response to unfavorable sociopolitical circumstances.

Moreover, the Jarid offered opportunities for expanding Rahmaniyya membership and networks in socioecological conditions identical to the Ziban. Emigration eventually conferred upon Mustafa b. 'Azzuz an altered spiritual identity as he became the focal point of a semi-independent sufi order whose members referred to themselves as 'Azzuziyya [followers of Sidi 'Azzuz]. (Indeed even today in Tala and the Jarid, people refer to the Rahmaniyya tariqa as the 'Azzuziyya in deference to the saint and sufi's memory.) Thus, physical withdrawal from one political zone to another conferred upon the emigrants an altered sense of religious place. Viewed from the long term, relocation brought the 'Azzuz family a degree of social mobility in subsequent generations which might not have occurred otherwise. Just as affiliation with the nascent Rahmaniyya tariqa transformed parochial saintly lineages into sufi notables by the early nineteenth century, emigration to the beylik eventually conferred baldi status upon some of Sidi Mustafa's sons and grandsons in the Tunisian capital at the century's end. Integration into the Jarid's political economy and saintly ecology through the idiom of sufism helped the 'Azzuz clan overcome their gharbi (i.e., from the West or Algeria) origins. Overcoming their afaqi (provincial) status resulted from the collective recognition of Shaykh Mustafa's piety, learning, and baraka, from his resistance to the French regime, and from his part in shoring up the Husaynid dynasty during the great revolt of 1864.^[11]

But first, what kind of social environment awaited the newly arrived émigrés from the Ziban? How did they employ the Jarid's geopolitical possibilities to engage in transborder political movements? In which ways did Tunisia's relatively greater integration into Mediterranean commercial and other networks shape political action? And to what extent was the spiritual ecology of sainthood and sufism in the North African context subject to ecological constraints upon collective social action? Simply stated, how did hijra influence the range of political options open to Sidi Mustafa b. 'Azzuz and his partisans?

Bilad al-Jarid: The Tunisian Pre-Sahara

Along the route leading from the Algerian Suf into the Tunisian Jarid, the sand dunes change subtly in color from white to amber; the distance from al-Awad, capital of the Suf, to Nafta is roughly 140 kilometers.^[12] In the past century, a loaded caravan reached Nafta, the first oasis on Tunisian territory, in three days; four days were needed to arrive in Tuzar, the region's provincial capital. Compared with the Suf's oases, which resembled large villages, Nafta and Tuzar were towns or even cities, as madina was understood in the cultural vocabulary of the period.^[13]

The bilad al-Jarid is located in southwestern Tunisia between the Shatt al-Gharsa to the north and the Shatt al-Jarid to the southeast. In a sort of isthmus separating the two shatts are the oases of Nafta and Tuzar, historically the most important Saharan towns in Tunisia; to the north are smaller oases such as al-Hamma and al-Widyan. The climate is typically pre-Saharan with insignificant rainfall and summer temperatures sometimes exceeding forty degrees centigrade. Intense heat, combined with abundant underground springs, make the Jarid one of the world's leading producers of high-quality dates. As Muhammad b. Salama, qadi al-mahalla , wrote in the late 1830s, "the best date is the daqla al-nur [whose] equal is not found outside of the Tunisian Jarid."^[14]

As was true for the Ziban, palm cultivation formed the linchpin of the Jarid's economy; textile production was also an important economic activity which undergirded commercial exchanges with other parts of Tunisia and Algeria as well.^[15] In the middle of the past century, the Jarid proper enclosed some 770,000 date palms.^[16] The wealth, power, and prestige of the clan were calculated by the number of gardens and trees to which it laid claim. Profits derived from trade and commerce, a crucial adjunct to agriculture, allowed merchant families to purchase more land, trees, and water rights.^[17] If the date-palm plantations permitted human life to exist in an unforgiving natural environment, trade and commerce, based upon

agrarian surplus, allowed the oases to flourish by sending out economic and social runners far and wide.

The Jarid's geographical situation was indeed fortuitous. Among the largest, wealthiest, and most active North African oases, Nafta and Tuzar owed their prominence to location. Both lay astride the intersection of two complex trade routes: the transversal or east-west line offered easy access to the ports of Gabis and Jirba only several days march from the Jarid; the north-south route reached Tunis through interior cities like Gafsa or al-Qayrawan.^[18] Moreover, as Antoine Carette shrewdly observed in 1844, Tunisia was "both the Paris and the London of the eastern Maghrib." Not only did the beylik supply Algeria with a wide array of manufactured goods and foodstuffs but also the Tunisian piaster was the preferred coinage for the Constantine. Areas as far removed as the Mzab, Ghadamis, and the Touat employed Tunisian currency. Even after 1830, the piaster retained its dominant position in the Algerian Sahara over the duro , a coin introduced by the colonial regime to exert tighter control over the fiscal, economic, and political life of desert communities.^[19]

Because of the beylik's geography, both the long-distance, luxury trade and the traffic in regional bulk commodities, often less valuable in worth, flowed through the Jarid's oases. The stock of the long-distance trans-Maghribi caravan trade was more likely composed of luxury goods that commanded high prices but were light in weight: fine Jaridi finished textiles, European cottons, silks from the Mashriq or Leghorn, perfumes, gold, or beautifully wrought firearms from Tunisian producers.^[20] Tuzar and, in particular, Nafta were Tunisia's Saharan ports opening onto a line of oases stretching nearly one thousand kilometers to the west, while at the same time funneling trade from Metlilli, Warqala, Tuqqurt, and the Suf either through southern Tunisia to the coast or up to Tunis.^[21]

The Jarid's two main oases served as vast entrepôts for products of diverse provenance—from the Maghrib, the Mashriq, Europe, or sub-Saharan Africa; these commodities were then distributed throughout the Constantine, the Algerian Sahara, and southern Tripolitania. More significant from a political viewpoint was the fact that the Jarid-Gabis region represented southeastern Algeria's outlet to the Mediterranean; the journey from Tuqqurt or the Suf to the sea via southern Tunisia was several days shorter than the routes through northern Algeria. And for decades after 1830, the Suf-Jarid-Gabis routes were beyond the colonial regime's grasp. This was a decisive factor in the contraband trade in armaments and other forbidden commodities and in the shape of political action along the Tunisian-Algerian borders.^[22]

Finally, the Jarid was also connected by caravan routes to southern Tripolitania, a source of grave concern to colonial authorities since the Ottomans in Istanbul had reasserted direct control over the Regency of Tripoli in 1835.^[23] A set of routes led across the Shatt al-Jarid's salt flats from Nafta directly to Ghadamis. Before Ahmad Bey outlawed the slave trade in Tunisia (by 1846), the Jarid had attracted caravans from Fazzan and Ghadamis bearing gold powder, ostrich feathers, and human cargo; slaves formed one basis for trans-Saharan exchanges in the period before abolition.^[24] Nafta's desert cosmopolitanism was reflected by its ethnic composition, in part the by-product of trade, migration, and the wages of tribal politics. The Banu Zid hailed from Biskra; while the Masa'ba and Zibda tribes were originally from the Suf, having settled in the Jarid in recent times. The inhabitants of Zawiya Sidi al-Ahmadi, a small oasis in Nafta's suburbs, claimed descent from the Awlad Sidi 'Abid in the Awras. Still other groups had come from Ifriqiya, the Nafzawa, the Wadi Righ, or sub-Saharan Africa.^[25] But there was another force that brought outsiders to the Jarid.

Linking Maghrib to Mashriq was the North African hajj, whose southern route followed the string of oases on the Sahara's upper lip from Morocco to the Jarid. Thousands of pilgrims arrived in southern Tunisia with the hajj caravan—as many as six thousand annually—bringing with them goods from the sharifian empire or Algeria. Enjoying close relations with the Hijaz and Egypt, the Jarid was also a cultural relay for parochial religious notables from places like Mali or Mauritania, who lingered there while en route to Tunis or points further east.^[26] With the establishment of effective French rule over northern Algeria at mid-century, the desert hajj route was preferred by many North Africans seeking to avoid restrictions imposed on the pilgrimage by colonial authorities, who were ever mindful of the political aspects of hajj. After Tunisia's incorporation into France's African empire in 1881, both Tunisians and Algerians used the southern pilgrimage itinerary to combine hajj with permanent migration to the Ottoman Empire. As late as 1885, the French ministry of war characterized Nafta as "a most active religious center; between Nafta's numerous zawaya and the holy cities of Islam, there exists a constant exchange of emissaries and propaganda."^[27]

From Tunis to the Jarid: Center-Periphery Relations

The winter mahalla dispatched from the capital to collect taxes and dispense justice reached the south only after a laborious journey of several weeks.

The central government's presence there was symbolized by several small garrisons and the dar al-bey in Tuzar, a somewhat dilapidated structure occupied solely during the annual winter expedition. The welcome accorded to the mahalla in any given year constituted an index of collective popular sentiment toward the state. It was not uncommon for some of the Jarid's more unruly inhabitants to attack the departing mahalla in a quixotic gesture of defiance, killing or wounding those hapless soldiers who had straggled behind.^[28] The French vice-consul to Tunis, A. Marcescheau, accompanied the 1826 expedition to the pre-Sahara. In addition to fiscal objectives, the mahalla served "to show to the inhabitants of the interior and along the frontiers as well as to neighboring peoples the sight of a prince at the head of a strong army and to consolidate the ruling family's authority by rendering justice and distributing [government] posts."^[29]

Thus, the beylical camp's yearly sojourn in the Jarid can be compared to the "royal progress" in Morocco; as such it was a visible expression of central government authority, however tenuous. Distance from Tunis did not mean that the elites in the capital were indifferent to their fractious province. The oases of the Jarid were far too prosperous, strategically located, and densely populated to ignore. The tribute rendered by the Jarid, however grudgingly, to the treasury was twice that extracted from the Sahil; Nafta alone paid more taxes than Baja, the regency's grain basket.^[30] Thus for the Hysaynid state, the Jarid represented a crucial source of revenue, which contrasts with the historic relationship between the adjacent Algerian Suf and central governments based in Algiers. Until the French army suppressed the Sharif of Warqala's revolt in 1854, the Suf's oases were left undisturbed since the resources demanded to collect tribute or impose order were scarcely worth the effort.

The Jarid's unfortified towns could not dispense with the central government, even one that attempted so little. The oasis communities were encircled by a number of redoubtable tribal groups—the Hammama, the Banu Zid, etc. In addition, Algerian tribes periodically crossed over the fluid borders for trade or plunder or both. Through the institution of the beylical camp, the central government resolved disputes involving the pastoralists and oasis dwellers—in periods when the state disposed of the means of violence to enforce its will.^[31] The political center prudently avoided entanglement in conflicts beyond its military or administrative capacity to resolve. More localized social struggles were left to the mediation of saintly lineages, local notables, or tribal big men. Thus, the political center was mainly concerned with large-scale political contests threatening the regency's tranquillity and the process of surplus extraction. In return for

rudimentary justice and security under the state's thinly protective mantle, the Jarid reluctantly rendered tribute to the Husaynid dynasty.^[32]

Housing the mahalla's forces, the dar al-bey was located on Tuzar's central square, which dominated the marketplace and suqs. The beylical camp's visit coincided with the winter date harvest, the period of the most intense economic activity for the oases and their surrounding pastoral-nomadic populations. Fairs held in Nafta and Tuzar attracted traders, merchants, and pilgrims from other parts of Tunisia, Algeria, and the deep Sahara. Caravans heading for the Suf left Jaridi towns almost daily in this period as did those moving east to Gabis, Jirba, and above all, Sfax, the south's principal seaport. Other merchant caravans, loaded with the region's prized textiles, dates, and other products destined for distribution in northern Tunisia, were organized during the winter harvest season; often they traveled back to Tunis with the beylical column, which provided protection in return for specified fees. Mahalla and market were, therefore, interlocking mechanisms for appropriating surplus and distributing goods across a wide region. And the mahalla-market symbiosis—a fiscal, commercial, and political complex—integrated cities on the Saharan semiperiphery into the wider economy and social fabric of the Husaynid state.

Despite long-standing ties to northern Tunisia, history and ecology fashioned a special cultural identity for the Jarid. Even in modern-day Tunisia, the Jaridis are regarded as somehow "different," a distinction they take pride in and cultivate. This finely tuned sense of otherness resulted in part from an ancient system of local self-rule intact until the reforms of Ahmad Bey. Fiscal semiautonomy in the pre-1837 era meant that local notables monopolized the privilege of assessing and collecting taxes, also acting as intermediaries between the political center and oasis lineages.^[33] Finally, the Jarid had an abiding tradition of defiant resistance to outside interference. The qa'ids' reports, dating from the first years of Ahmad Bey's reign, described the ahl al-Jarid as intractable, especially when it came time to render taxes to the central government. "And all of the Jarid is insolent and impudent; we who are here in Tuzar among the populace fear for our lives," wrote the qa'id to the khaznadar (state treasurer) in 1844.^[34]

After 1837, several forces for change intersected with peculiar intensity in southern Tunisia. Although many of these were present elsewhere, their confluence was heightened in the Tunisian pre-Sahara due to geography and age-old transborder ties. France's pacification of neighboring Algeria had an immediate impact upon the region. The colonial onslaught next door sent waves of political and religious émigrés into the Jarid. Intensified European interference in the Tunisian beylik, another expression of larger

imperial thrusts throughout Africa and Asia, spurred the Husaynid prince, Ahmad, to embark upon his own version of Tanzimat (the Ottoman Empire's official reform program). Moreover, pressures exerted upon Ahmad Bey by European suitors were prompted by political events along the Tunisian-Algerian borders. In short, the Jarid constituted the terrain par excellence for observing the local impact of global transformations and how provincial elites strove to manipulate those changes to their own purposes.

The Religious Ecology of the Jarid

Upon reaching Nafta in 1844, Shaykh Mustafa b. 'Azzuz immediately began constructing a sufi center, one of the largest in the oasis.^[35] Even today, the zawiya remains standing in the town's southwestern corner, located a certain distance from older saintly shrines such as the tomb of Sidi Bu 'Ali or the qubba of Sidi Brahim (Ibrahim) which also served as the Qadiriyya zawiya (see map 7). The latter is found in the oasis's ancient northern quarters along the rim of the "corbeille," a bowl-shaped depression some thirty meters deep where waters from underground springs well up to form a single wide stream before emptying into the gardens. Significantly, Sidi Mustafa chose to situate his new zawiya on the edge of Nafta's vast date-palm plantations, close to the only route leading to the Algerian Suf. Spatial location—distance from preexisting zawaya—translated and defined spiritual relationships with the older, more established oasis saints and their cults.

The Jarid was densely populated by saintly cohorts; historically it constituted a religious pole of particularly irresistible attraction. Not only did the region draw students and scholars from the central Tunisian steppes, the southeastern beylik, and eastern Algeria but its zawaya and centers of Islamic instruction also furnished pious, learned men to neighboring areas, including the pastoral-nomadic communities. The Jaridi tradition of religious education, including tasawwuf, in a crossroads context offered a fecund milieu for the production and reproduction of saints—for saintly inflation and for transregional veneration of especially virtuous hometown saints, such as Sidi Bu 'Ali. For both men and women, the networks of zawaya and shrines informed the rhythms of daily existence, defining spirituality and piety in culturally specific terms.^[36]

In addition to the ramified sufi orders, socioreligious life and spiritual allegiances revolved around local or regional saint cults and shrines, controlled by holy lineages such as the Shabbi clan of Tuzar.^[37] Among the plethora of oasis holy men, Sidi Bu 'Ali al-Nafti was the most revered; even today his tomb-shrine stands in the middle of a lush palm grove and is still the object of daily prayer sessions and an exuberant annual mawsim.

7.
Nafta in the Jarid

Known by the sobriquet "sultan-saint of the Jarid," he was believed to have come to southern Tunisia from the Moroccan Sus around 1200 A.D. after a sojourn in Biskra. Strong Kharajite tendencies still existed in southern Tunisia and Algeria at the time, and the saint was credited with coaxing the region's inhabitants back into the Sunni orthodox fold.^[38] While the saint was honored for over half a millennium because of his triumph over heterodoxy, by the early twentieth century the popular beliefs and practices associated with his cult were viewed with distaste by some reform-minded ulama in the cities.^[39]

Even before the French invasion, sufi notables from the Tijaniyya, Rahmaniyya, and reformed Qadiriyya turuq began arriving in the Jarid. In 1826 Algerian Tijanis from the Suf and Tamalhat created an establishment in the Jarid; the zawiya's extensive hubus properties were alienated to the benefit of the Tijani shaykhs of Tamalhat near Tuqqurt. Within Tuzar itself, an older saintly shrine was converted into a Tijaniyya zawiya in 1834. Other centers sprang up, invariably receiving tax exemptions from the Tunisian beys, many of whom, particularly al-Sadiq Bey (1859–1882), looked with special favor upon the Tijaniyya order.^[40] And as mentioned above, Tunisian state patronage of the Tijaniyya did not stop at the borders. Husayn Bey (1824–1835) conferred large sums of money upon the Tijani leader of Tamalhat, Sidi 'Ali al-Tammasini, who used the funds to build a mosque and hammam (bath house). Subsequent Tunisian beys offered lavish gifts to embellish Tijaniyya centers in southeastern Algeria.^[41]

With Biskra's capitulation to the French army in 1844, Rahmaniyya and Qadiriyya sufi notables arrived from the Ziban and began initiating followers into their respective "ways" as well as founding zawaya. While both Nafta and Tuzar boasted numerous religious establishments prior to this period, the activities of the major turuq in the region resulted in an even greater luxuriance of qubbas, mosques, and sufi centers. By the century's end, when the first statistics were gathered, Nafta boasted some 108 mosques, zawaya, qubbas, and shrines. In 1885, Tuzar counted fifty religious establishments.^[42]

The deeply rooted popular veneration for Sidi Bu 'Ali was not to be challenged by the bearers of reformed sufism in the nineteenth century. Traditionally, the annual pilgrimage in Sidi Bu 'Ali's honor attracted the faithful not only from southern Tunisia but also from the Awras, the Ziban, and even western Algeria. The saint's cult was at the center of a ramified network of zawaya and clients which made it into a sort of local brotherhood. In Tunisia, followers were found in Tuzar, Tunis, Gabis, and Sfax; in Algeria, Bône, Guelma, Khenchela, Biskra, and al-Awad had sizable followings.^[43] As was true in the Kabylia during the time of Sidi 'Abd al-Rahman, sufi notables arriving in the Jarid from elsewhere sought

accommodation with existing saintly lineages, sometimes incorporating older religious clans into the spiritual lexicon of the new. Indeed, the leading Qadiriyya muqaddam in Tuzar attempted to associate his tariqa's teachings and "proselytizing" with Sidi Brahim's cult. Somewhat later the Sanusiyya apparently did much the same with another saint and his cult, wedding the small Sanusi presence in the Jarid with that shrine.^[44]

However, there are hints of competition either between the old saints and the new or between the shaykhs of recently imported tariqas in the Jarid. For example, gentle rivalry for spiritual prestige and popular followings between the Rahmaniyya and reformed Qadiriyya is still remembered in popular lore as a sacred tournament. In a saintly contest pitting Sidi Mustafa b. 'Azzuz against Sidi Brahim b. Ahmad, the "winner" was selected by the miraculous intercession of Sidi Bu 'Ali at the shrine of Nafta's patron saint. Contention between oasis holy men cloaked several layers of social conflict—that of sufi orders and zawaya as well as that of town quarters and lineages—in a sacred idiom.^[45]

If one saint interceded on behalf of another, sufi-saintly figures could be made to intervene historically in the invented genealogies of the lineage. Through the manipulations of collective memory, saintly origins were conflated with those of the local clan, creating a double myth of origin. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Banu 'Ali of Nafta advanced sharifian claims by portraying themselves as the biological descendants of Mustafa b. 'Azzuz. Even though 'Azzuz had only settled in the quarter of Nafta belonging to the Banu 'Ali in the 1840s, the clan attributed Andalusian origins to Sidi Mustafa, who was later said to have resided there since the ninth century. And by linking Sidi Mustafa to themselves and to Andalusia, the Banu 'Ali thus tied the Algerian Rahmaniyya shaykh and their own lineage to one of the exalted hubs of Islamic mysticism in the medieval Muslim west.^[46]

The central government and its representatives were solicitous of the Jarid's older saintly clans or turuq and the newly arrived sufi notables from across the borders. Gifts, honors, religious endowments, and exemptions from most forms of taxation were granted to the oasis holy men. Side by side with the zawaya and local shrines were madrasas constructed by Tunisian rulers to win favor in the region.^[47] Moreover, religious edifices were considered haram (sacred), and those seeking asylum normally found protection within their walls; the sacred and therefore politically neutral space of these establishments was usually, although not always, respected by government authorities.^[48]

Thus, in the Jarid as elsewhere in North Africa during the period, distinctions between the 'alim, saint, and sufi blurred. The compromise between the orthodoxy of the urban mosque or the state-endowed madrasa

and the vibrant populist spirituality of the saint's shrine and cult still held; reform-minded, activist sufism coexisted in harmony, for the most part, with older expressions of collective piety.

The Growth of the Rahmaniyya-'Azzuziyya, 1844–1866

In a remarkably short period of time, Shaykh 'Azzuz and his disciples constructed one of the wealthiest and most powerful of North Africa's Rahmaniyya centers, giving concrete expression to the shaykh's moral and spiritual authority as well as his social empowerment. In creating a substantial popular following, Sidi 'Azzuz retraced the earlier steps of his sufi master, Sidi Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Rahman al-Jurjuri, although in radically changed, politically charged circumstances. In part the expansion of the 'Azzuz-directed Rahmaniyya after 1844 was effected through the growth of Shaykh Mustafa's own family. Two more sons were born shortly after the hijra to Nafta. Of his many daughters, two were eventually married to provincial religious notables in northwestern Tunisia. Ruqaya was given to Sidi al-Hajj Mubarak in Tala and al-Hajja to Shaykh 'Abd al-Malik of Tebursuq; both of these small towns, close to the borders with Algeria, boasted Rahmaniyya centers established in the early decades of the century. Two other daughters were wedded to religious families in al-Aghwat and Syria; the rest apparently remained in Tunisia. The choice of spouses for Sidi 'Azzuz's daughters was in concert with endogamous sufi marriage practices and served to cement ties between the 'Azzuz of Nafta and religious notables elsewhere.^[49] In addition, one of Mustafa's seven brothers, Muhammad, assumed the headship of Rahmaniyya members in al-Qayrawan and among tribal groups in that city's hinterland. The remainder of Sidi Mustafa's brothers appear to have resided in Algeria, where they continued to direct Rahmaniyya establishments. Nevertheless, family visits between the two countries, clandestine or otherwise, were frequent. After 1881 French colonial authorities on both sides of the borders attempted to monitor such visits; requests for travel permits by sufi figures were denied as often as they were conferred.^[50]

Sufi notables performing the hajj frequently initiated members into their tariqas during journeys to the Haramayn. Shaykh Mustafa b. 'Azzuz made the pilgrimage to Mecca on at least one occasion around 1850–1851. This explains the existence of Rahmaniyya-'Azzuziyya members in the oases along the Tunisian-Tripolitanian borders and even in Ghadamis; these disciples were most likely introduced to the Rahmaniyya "way" by Shaykh 'Azzuz while en route to the Hijaz. Until recently in Lebanon, Syria, and Medina there still existed Rahmaniyya-'Azzuziyya circles whose

silsilas revealed their creation a century earlier by Shaykh Mustafa b. 'Azzuz of Nafta.^[51] Thus, the hajj produced a curious twist to Rahmaniyya religious geography for the order returned to its original eastern matrix.

Due to Sidi Mustafa's energetic proselytizing, the Rahmaniyya spread from the Jarid into southeastern Tunisia and then the Regency of Tripoli. Tariqa circles and secondary zawaya paralleled the east-west caravan routes linking the Ziban and Suf with the Jarid and Mediterranean ports along the beylik's southern reaches. Many communities located along the commercial trunk line connecting southwestern Algeria with Tunisian seaports were Rahmaniyya disciples attached by patron-client ties to the 'Azzuz clan of Nafta.^[52] Secondary zawaya were created in the Nafzawa, Gabis, Jabal Matmata, and Zarziz. Important tribes, like the Farashish and Majar of the central Tunisian plains between Gafsa and al-Kaf were religious clients as were the Marazig and Awlad Ya'qub. Also regarded as 'Azzuz followers were the Awlad Ahmad and the Farjan, who camped on the Tunisian-Algerian borders.

In 1860 one European traveler witnessed how ordinary people honored sufi notables and how popular veneration was translated into collective rituals. In the course of his journey from the Suf to the jarid, Henri Duveyrier, the French explorer and spy, traveled with a caravan of merchants and pilgrims from Tunisia, Tripolitania, and Algeria. Many were brothers affiliated with the Nafta Rahmaniyya. While the caravan labored across the dunes separating the Suf's oases from the beylik, 'Azzuz's followers chanted prayers to the accompaniment of music. Then, "a Jaridi man, seated on a camel, seized a drum and recited a long, improvised ballad dedicated to the marabout of Nafta, Sidi Mustafa b. 'Azzuz; the refrains of the song were repeated by other young men in the caravan singing in unison as a choir."^[53] Rituals of veneration were a visible expression of implicit transactions between religious patron and client; protection was perhaps the most important return expected from the ziyara.

Duveyrier's account reveals how the saint's patronage facilitated both commercial and spiritual exchanges or pilgrimage between regions and groups in the Sahara. Desert holy men often furnished travelers, merchants, and pious wayfarers with the 'inaya , a sort of passport guaranteeing safe passage through the balad al-barud (the land of gunpowder) and underwritten by the saint's baraka. Duveyrier witnessed the 'inaya at work during his 1860 trip, one fraught with dangers from bandits and turbulent tribesmen. While en route from al-Awad to Nafta, advance scouts for the caravan warned that an encampment of unruly Hammama warriors was nearby, blocking the main passageway into the Jarid. Fearful, the members of the caravan refused to proceed any farther toward their destination. An

emissary was dispatched to Nafta to seek Sidi Mustafa b. 'Azzuz's counsel. Apparently, the shaykh furnished a safe conduct to the caravan for it reached Tunisian territory shortly thereafter without incident.^[54]

Finally, a nexus between pilgrimage, trade, and information networks can be posited based upon eyewitness accounts by Duveyrier and other travelers. Upon arriving in Nafta, the members of caravans proceeded immediately to the residence of Shaykh 'Azzuz. There they rendered homage to their patron, offered thanks for his role in ensuring a safe journey, and made pious offerings. It can be assumed that the travelers also brought news of events across the border in Algeria. Like desert markets, Saharan sufi centers functioned as collectors not only of religious tribute but also of information, which made them "bureaus of public opinion."^[55] Roughly two decades after his hijra to the beylik, Sidi 'Azzuz counted numerous followers in many places in Tunisia and Algeria; roughly three-quarters of the Suf's inhabitants considered themselves associated in one way or another with the saint and sufi of Nafta.^[56] Religious affiliation was articulated by specific forms of public behavior which gave outward expression to inner commitment: "The followers of Shaykh Mustafa b. 'Azzuz, leader of the Saharan Rahmaniyya, can be readily distinguished by a long white chaplet which they wear upon their necks and under their burnus; the brothers associated with the Rahmaniyya greet each other in a manner different from other orders by crossing their hands twice, one after the other."^[57]

Along with the growth of a following, the 'Azzuz family soon acquired substantial property in the Jarid and elsewhere. A little over a decade after their arrival in the beylik, the zawiya in Nafta controlled nearly seven thousand daqala al-nur date palms and over one thousand ordinary trees. Date-palm gardens, water rights, and other forms of productive wealth alienated to sufi notables were generally held as hubus. Prior to the institution of the 1841 qanun (tax) on date palms, part of Ahmad Bey's overhaul of the fiscal system, date palms held as hubus by saintly lineages were subject to a tax in kind, the tamr al-hubus . Yet this was a much lighter imposition than those taxes levied on other social groups and reflected the state's deference for religious rank. After 1841, religious properties were totally exempt from taxation.^[58]

Due to the 'Azzuz clan's sufi prominence and sharifian descent, their tax-free status was periodically renewed by the central government in written decrees; however, this privilege was in exchange for the socioreligious services provided by the Nafta zawiya to those in need.^[59] One such decree dated 1859–1860 stated: "We renew our decree to the pious, blessed, pure shaykh and saint, Sidi Mustafa ibn 'Azzuz, regarding the privileges [attached to] his zawiya found in the region of Tuzar."^[60] Reconfirming the

privileged financial and socioreligious status of the zawiya and its leadership, the decree also reveals the active interest central governments took in sufi shaykhs located at the state's limits, even—or particularly—those who had recently emigrated from Algeria. After 1854, when the French army established a permanent presence just across the beylik's frontiers in the Suf, courting religious notables in strategic places like the Jarid became all the more compelling.

Control of the means of production, tax privileges, and the offerings of the pious furnished Shaykh Mustafa with the wherewithal to fulfill the social mandate expected of him—charity, education, and mediation. The social welfare dimension of the Saharan zawaya was observed by the British explorer James Richardson. During his 1845 journey in the Jarid, Richardson visited the Rahmaniyya center of Sidi Mustafa b. 'Azzuz then only recently established: "There were at the time of our visit to him [Shaykh 'Azzuz] about two hundred people in his courtyard who all subsisted on his charity. We were offered dates, couscous and a seed which had the appearance of a dried apple seed. The saint also distributed beads and rosaries, giving some to one of our party."^[61]

Tax exemptions aside, whether the bey or his local representatives bestowed any other favors or material prerogatives upon Sidi Mustafa prior to his role in quelling rebellious behavior during the 1864 insurrection is unclear. However, Shaykh Mustafa was held in high esteem by both Ahmad Bey and the governor appointed to the Jarid in 1850, Ahmad Zarruq. The bey met personally with Sidi 'Azzuz "more than once," although when and where were not specified.^[62] Toward the end of his life Ahmad Bey frequently enjoyed "social intercourse with people of distinction such as Shaykh Mustafa b. 'Azzuz."^[63] Apparently the shaykh made periodic trips to Tunis, and while in the capital Sidi Mustafa resided in a small zawiya not far from the qasba which served as a place of retreat.^[64] No wonder that Jean Mattei, the French consular agent in Sfax, informed the French representative in Tunis that "Mustafa Ben Azouz [sic ] feels that he is strongly protected by the Bardo."^[65]

Ahmad Bey's solicitous treatment of Sidi Mustafa reflected his general posture toward other Algerian notables residing in the beylik. From the 1830s until 1881, many members of Algeria's religious or political elites, including the last bey of the Constantine, were welcomed by Tunisia's rulers, who also provided the immigrants with financial resources to lead lives consonant with their social rank. After the Sharif of Warqala's defeat in 1855, Sliman b. Jallab, the former sultan of Tuqqurt and the sharif's comrade in arms, found comfort and a modest pension—for a time—at the bey's court. Two years later, Sidi al-Hajj 'Umar, head Rahmaniyya shaykh in the Jurjura, fled to Tunis after the Kabylia's tribes were crushed by

the French army. There Muhammad Bey (1855–1859) granted Sidi al-Hajj 'Umar a subsidy; from the beylik's capital, the sufi notable attempted to direct the religious affairs of the distant Kabyle zawiya. Finally, as mentioned above, beylical largesse toward powerful sufi figures did not stop at the borders with Algeria. The beys of Tunis periodically accorded rich offerings to the Rahmaniyya of Khanqa Sidi Naji and the Tijaniyya of Tammasin and Gummar.^[66]

In providing for Algerian refugees, the beys were moved by a number of motives both pious and pragmatic. The Rahmaniyya tariqa, and especially the Tijaniyya order, were highly esteemed by ruling circles in Tunis; Muslim solidarity with the besieged Algerians was also a factor. Courting sufi leaders established along the confines with the colonial state was a way of controlling, perhaps even encouraging, their politicoreligious activities. And the bestowing of gifts upon those notables still residing in colonial Algeria might also be read as a subtle reaffirmation of the transborder strength of Islamic ties. This was not lost on Léon Roches, appointed as French consul to Tunis in 1855. Roches reported to the governor-general of Algeria, not without some trepidation, the lavish reception that Ahmad Bey accorded the Tijani shaykh of Tammasin in 1856 during the sufi shaykh's visit to Tunis while en route to the Haramayn.^[67] What really incensed Léon Roches was the Tijani leader's hostile public stance toward France while in the Tunisian capital. For were not the Tijaniyya of Algeria loyal to French interests?

The Zawiya as Political Refuge

Like the Suf, the Jarid had a natural vocation as a refuge for political malcontents. Each uprising in Algeria during the colonial offensive sent rebels across the borders into the Jarid or other parts of Tunisia. In addition, Muslims seeking asylum from infidel rule often made their way into the beylik via Nafta. Some remained there for generations; others relocated in Tunis or the Mashriq, particularly after the 1881 French invasion. This movement of peoples from Algeria into Tunisia is an extremely significant phenomenon for both countries, yet its importance is often overlooked in histories of the past century. While accurate figures are difficult to come by, the migratory pump to Tunisia apparently created enough of a critical mass to change local politics and the local economy in certain border regions. Moreover, since migration is a specific kind of transformational displacement affecting individual and communal political consciousness, it was not accidental that the twentieth-century Tunisian nationalist movement involved a number of Algerian exiles, the best example being 'Abd al-'Aziz al-Tha'albi, leader of the Old Dustur party.^[68] Thus forced emigration frequently led to a heightened degree of politicization.

The colonial regime's response to Algerian emigration to Tunisia (or Morocco) was somewhat belated. In 1850 a series of draconian ordinances were passed to circumscribe the displacements of Muslim Algerians, whether for purposes of trade, religion, or family affairs. In the Constantine, where these laws were first applied, the measures were prompted by the Za'atsha uprising and the colonial regime's gradual discovery of the sufi turuq and their significance to society.^[69] Moreover, from mid-century on, the intricate social networks, historically joining the Algerian Sahara to Tell, encountered growing obstacles as civilian settler communities expanded into the fertile northern plains.^[70] This rerouted socioreligious and other types of interchanges to the southeastern routes linking Algeria to Tunisia and to Ottoman-ruled Tripolitania. Saharan provinces under the fitful jurisdiction of indigenous elites, nominally allied to France, became all the more attractive as avenues of escape.

Sidi Mustafa received a steady stream of Algerian visitors to his sufi center, among them pilgrims, students, and political refugees. Some were only sojourners impelled by the Islamic duty for religious instruction. One important notable seeking learning at the Nafta zawiya was 'Ali b. 'Uthman, the nephew of 'Ali b. 'Umar of Tulqa and a kinsman of Sidi Mustafa's through marriage. After Mustafa b. 'Azzuz's departure from the Ziban in 1844, 'Ali b. 'Uthman had become head shaykh of the Rahmaniyya in the Algerian pre-Sahara. At some point, Shaykh 'Ali studied at Sidi Mustafa's side in the Jarid; the fact that he returned subsequently to French-ruled Algeria indicates that the borders were still sufficiently porous to permit such displacements.^[71] Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz, leader of the Rahmaniyya zawiya in Khanqa Sidi Naji, also maintained close ties with Shaykh Mustafa after 1844. Indeed with the defeat of Bu Ziyan's movement late in 1849, Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz fled to Nafta, where he succumbed to the cholera epidemic then raging; his sons remained allied with the Tunisian branch of the 'Azzuz clan until late in the century.^[72] This too indicates that decrees passed in Algiers were difficult to enforce until 1881, when Tunisia passed under direct French rule.

The learned and the pious were not the only visitors welcomed at the 'Azzuz zawiya in the Jarid. During the turbulent period between 1844 and 1866, the year of Sidi Mustafa's death, a number of political activists sought refuge there. After the second siege of Biskra, the shaykh of Sidi 'Uqba, Muhammad b. Ahmad b. al-Hajj, and his supporters joined Shaykh 'Azzuz temporarily in the Jarid. In 1846, Muhammad b. Ahmad was even received with great pomp and circumstance in Tuzar by the bey al-mahalla (the heir apparent to the Husaynid throne) then leading the annual tax-collecting column. Also present at the time was a French official, E. Pellissier de Reynaud. Outraged at the welcome accorded the shaykh, who had, among

other things, led the attack against the Biskra garrison two years earlier, Pellissier made official protests to the bey. Describing the shaykh of Sidi 'Uqba as "a rebellious French subject" and "dangerous" to France's interests, Pellissier demanded that Tunisian officials intern him in a province well away from the borders with Algeria. Ahmad Bey countered that the honors bestowed upon 'Abd al-Qadir's former khalifa were consonant with his family's prestigious origins as shurafa'. The bey cunningly attempted to draw distinctions between the religious realm and the strictly political, an argument that France rejected. Despite constant pressures, Tunisian officials refused to forcibly remove the shaykh of Sidi 'Uqba from the Jarid, and unending French demands that the same be done with Shaykh Mustafa b. 'Azzuz also went unheeded.^[73]

Not by coincidence, Lieutenant Prax was dispatched to the Jarid the following year. Prax was a French naval officer and amateur ethnographer of Saint-Simonian persuasion. In 1847 he was entrusted with an exploratory mission to collect information about the oases and peoples of the pre-Sahara. Significantly, he had been sent to the Sahara by the ministries of war, foreign affairs, commerce, and education in Paris. His official instructions were to travel to al-Awad and Tuqqurt via the Tunisian beylik and to cross into the colony from Nafta—instead of following the more conventional itinerary from northern Algeria. In the Jarid, Prax gathered information regarding the political and commercial influence exerted by Tunis upon the Suf and Tuqqurt and the degree of beylical support for Algerian refugees, including the shaykh of Sidi 'Uqba. This appears to have been the first unequivocal demonstration—at the level of Parisian ministries—of Tunisia's importance to colonial strategy in the Maghrib; in this strategy, primacy of place was accorded to the oases of the Jarid.^[74] In large measure, that primacy was the consequence of Mustafa b. 'Azzuz's hijra to Nafta and the presence of Algerian émigrés along the beylik's borders.

During the revolt inspired by the Sharif of Warqala, the zawiya's role as a haven for dissidents would become glaringly apparent. As that uprising ground to an inglorious halt, the shaykh of Sidi 'Uqba again looked to the 'Azzuz of Nafta for protection and asylum. To shield his own family from the rigors of combat, the shaykh of Sidi 'Uqba placed them in Mustafa b. 'Azzuz's care; in 1857 Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Hajj died at the Nafta Rahmaniyya zawiya, where the 'Azzuz clan ministered to him. Another participant in the Warqala movement, Nasir b. Shuhra, a former French ally, also employed the Nafta zawiya as a base of operation. With the rebellion's final rout late in 1855, the sharif himself sought and found solace at Sidi Mustafa's side.^[75] The tradition of political protection was carried on even after 'Azzuz's death in 1866. During the aborted revolt centered in

al-'Amri, a small oasis in the Ziban, one of the movement's leaders, Sidi Mustafa b. Mabruk, fled to the Jarid in 1876. And after the great 1871 Muqrani insurrection in the northern Constantine, which provoked unrest in southeastern Algeria, some of the rebels again sought asylum at the Rahmaniyya-'Azzuziyya center in southern Tunisia.^[76]

The Jarid's zawaya were able to provide material support to activists largely because of integration into the local political economy. In Nafta, the Rahmaniyya zawiya controlled by the 'Azzuz owned camels, placed in the care of client pastoralists, which were used for transport. The zawiya also served as a storage place for goods. Also housed there were arms and supplies acquired through razzias by dissident Algerian tribal leaders, participating in the Sharif of Warqala's movement.^[77] Its location, therefore, made the Rahmaniyya zawiya in Nafta particularly well suited to facilitate the traffic in contraband gunpowder between southern Tunisia and eastern Algeria.

Nevertheless, migrants and refugees invariably provoke unwelcome changes. As growing numbers of Algerians settled in the Tunisian oases to escape French rule or unfavorable economic conditions, Sidi Mustafa was called upon to mediate disputes between the Jarid's inhabitants and the newcomers. With Tunisia's economy deteriorating mainly due to unfavorable world market forces after 1850, relations were increasingly strained as letters from the Jaridis to local authorities reveal. One complaint filed with Tuzar's majlis (council) by the oasis's inhabitants in 1861–1862 contained the following economic grievance: "[We] have suffered injury and heavy loss in livelihood from the mass of immigrants from Algeria. . . . the newcomers, tempted by the life of ease, have bought up cooking oil [and other commodities] so that the price of these items has been raised and there are shortages."^[78] Among the Algerians seeking refuge in the Jarid were also French-paid spies, one of whom was Muhammad b. Rabih. At some point, Rabih agreed to act as France's consul in Tuzar and to discretely monitor Shaykh Mustafa's political activities for the French representative in Tunis. Despite his somewhat ambiguous—even compromised—position vis-à-vis his own countrypeople, Rabih later stipulated that he was to be buried in the cemetery attached to the 'Azzuz's zawiya in close proximity to the very special dead.^[79] Apparently espionage for the infidels did not preclude veneration for saintly patrons.

Cross-Border Manipulations: The Affair of the Shurafa'

The period between Ahmad Bey's reforms and the great revolt of 1864 represented a long season of discontent in Tunisia. In the Jarid the bey continued to rely upon traditional notables to implement new fiscal mea-

sures until 1849. The next year Ahmad Zarruq was named governor. Zarruq was an authoritarian, energetic figure regarded as doubly foreign by the Jarid's inhabitants; he was a member of the ruling elite in Tunis and worse a mamluk (literally, "owned" or "possessed") by birth from the house of Larbi Zarruq Khaznadar. His mandate was two-fold: to end the Jarid's ancient autonomy by instituting a new fiscal system and to construct an administrative apparatus placing local notables more firmly under the political center's thumb.

Zarruq's assumption of office encountered immediate resistance in the Jarid; letters of objection poured into the capital complaining of his conduct. Things came to a head in the spring of 1851 when missives from the Jarid's shaykhs decried the outbreak of "disturbances owing to violence and extortions in tax collection."^[80] Soon thereafter a large contingent of Nafta's population left Tunisia for the French-ruled Suf in a collective expression of protest rejecting Zarruq and the bey's reform program. Since ancient times, kinship, religious, and commercial ties had existed between the Suf and the Jarid. Estimates of the numbers of people involved vary from five hundred to seven hundred.^[81] This migration placed Ahmad Bey in a quandary.

Fleeing over the border to evade taxes or beylical justice was by no means a novelty for some subjects in nineteenth-century Tunisia. Pastoral-nomadic groups had always done this; recalcitrant tribes habitually crossed into the Constantine as the mahalla approached only to return home when the coast was clear.^[82] Yet the presence of the French army along the frontiers complicated cross-border movements not only for ordinary people but also for Tunisian rulers. Profoundly troublesome for Ahmad Bey was that the emigration of 1851 involved a somewhat unusual community—prestigious religious notables, the shurafa' of Nafta, who by seeking asylum in the Suf came indirectly under French rule. Naturally, colonial authorities in Algeria eagerly seized upon the incident as proof that the Husaynid prince was unequal to the task of governing effectively.^[83]

By resorting to migration as a political tool, the Tunisians sought to force the bey to dismiss a state agent deemed odious; at the same time, their pardon by the Tunisian ruler would remove the stigma attached to asylum with the infidels. A series of letters setting forth the emigrants' grievances were sent to Tunis; the charges leveled against Zarruq entailed not only fiscal improprieties but also transgressions of customary religious norms: "We have fled from Nafta to the Suf and abandoned our homes because he who governs, Ahmad Zarruq, violated the sanctity of the zawaya of the Jarid and established tradition; we have nothing left; we fled barefoot and naked; we fled out of fear of total ruin in torment."^[84] From the letters, it appears that Nafta's zawaya had been used as fiscal-political havens,

according to custom, and that the governor had refused to honor the sanctity of those establishments. In addition, a deputation of forty notables from the shurafa' traveled to Tunis to plead their case directly before Ahmad Bey in June 1851.^[85]

Unmoved, the bey ordered the shurafa' to pay their taxes to Governor Zarruq; to do otherwise would set dangerous precedents. The group returned to French territory. Predictably, the incident sparked rumors, one of which held that the émigrés had organized a delegation to go to Istanbul and petition the Ottoman sultan, Abdulmejid.^[86] While this cannot be confirmed, the rumors reveal once again what people believed to be within the realm of possibility and indicate that even the bey's subjects looked to the Porte for redress of grievance. The imbroglio ended with the eventual return of the shurafa' to the Jarid after mediation by colonial authorities—an ominous event. However, Ahmad Bey's worst-case scenarios—that the Ottomans in Tripolitania would intervene or that the colonial regime would manipulate the incident to annex the Jarid—went unrealized.

The 1851 emigration, which paralleled the inverse movement of Algerians to the beylik, is significant for a number of reasons. We can see one of the strategies available to provincial communities for deflecting unjust central government interference into local matters, which constituted a violation of the older moral economy. Moreover, the incident embodied growing popular dissatisfaction which also may explain the initial appeal of the Sharif of Warqala's rebellion to Tunisian subjects. Viewed in the longue durée , these discontents represented harbingers of things to come in the next decade—the great Tunisian uprising of 1864. State intrusion into the fiscal, and thereby social, relations of the Jarid, so long accustomed to semiautonomy, may have expanded the ranks of Sidi Mustafa's clients due to the increased demand for intermediaries. Finally, the incident provides evidence that Sidi Mustafa's rapidly expanding religious following was the product not only of participation in Algerian resistance but also of his ability to focus and interpret disturbing changes in Tunisia for ordinary people.

It is unknown if Mustafa b. 'Azzuz was present in Nafta during the initial stages of the 1851 clash. Sometime in 1850 he performed the hajj to the Haramayn, returning to southern Tunisia via the port of Gabis only in March 1851. The French commercial agent in Gabis, Augustin Espina, observed Shaykh 'Azzuz's entry into the town from the Hijaz, also noting that local opposition to Ahmad Bey's fiscal reforms had increased palpably:

A few days ago Mustafa ibn 'Azzuz arrived in Gabis; it would appear that the visit of the shaykh had as its objective anti-French propaganda. 'Azzuz is a famous marabout who is very much ven-

erated and who is extremely influential in speaking. Ordinarily he resides in Nafta but he has just returned from Mecca and was greeted by the leading notables of Gabis. Upon his departure for the Jarid, the local authorities accompanied him on his journey to a place some twenty-five miles outside of Gabis [on the route toward Nafta]. This dangerous man is hostile to the French, whom he accuses of advising the bey to impose extraordinary taxes this year. Wherever he goes, 'Azzuz preaches jihad; however, if in terms of influence he is another 'Abd al-Qadir, 'Azzuz does not have, judging from his past, either the courage or the military prowess of the Amir.^[87]

Here the rhetorical power exerted by the saint and sufi as moral preceptor and guide emerges. Shaykh 'Azzuz interpreted distressing changes for the populace so as to make sense of disorder; he also exonerated the Tunisian ruler, his patron. Opprobrium for unpopular tax measures was placed upon the Europeans, whose meddling in the beylik's internal affairs was increasingly apparent by the 1850s. While there is no information on the shaykh's activities while in the Haramayn, his stay there may have enhanced 'Azzuz's awareness of European inroads elsewhere into Dar al-Islam since the Hijaz functioned as a collector and distributor of news from all over the Muslim world. By virtue of his travels, hijra, and position as head shaykh of a crossroads zawiya, Mustafa b. 'Azzuz too sat at the center of a network of communications. This conferred upon him access to information unavailable to others. Finally, Sidi Mustafa's energetic denial of Ahmad Bey's responsibility for the beylik's financial malaise anticipated the shaykh's later support for the regime during the 1864 uprising.

Thus, Mustafa b. 'Azzuz's emigration in no way hampered continued involvement in collective bids to reshape politics in southeastern Algeria but rather made involvement possible. At the same time, residence in Tunisia spared him from concessions to the infidels, an advantage not enjoyed by his sufi peers remaining on French-held soil. In Algeria, other Rahmaniyya notables, such as the shaykh of al-Hamil, Sidi Muhammad b. Abi al-Qasim, were forced by political circumstances to rely upon internal hijra or withdrawal to engage in cultural survival.

The Shaykh, the Beylik, and the World beyond Tunisia

Shaykh 'Azzuz is a dangerous individual who should be interned as far from the borders with Algeria as possible.^[88]

In November 1851, the French consul in Tunis officially protested to Ahmad Bey, as many subsequent consuls would, about the political ac-

tivities of religious notables enjoying beylical protection. On this particular occasion, the object of Gallic wrath was the 'Azzuz family of Nafta. Accusing Shaykh Mustafa of inciting rebellion from his zawiya in southwestern Tunisia, the consul demanded that Ahmad Bey curb the shaykh's "subversive behavior." Among the charges levied against the Rahmaniyya leader were spreading rumors inimical to France's interests, disseminating hostile propaganda, and harboring Algerian rebels at his sufi residence. To bolster his case, the consul presented the bey with a letter written by Shaykh Mustafa to another sufi leader still residing in Algeria; the missive, carried by a sufi courier, had been intercepted by colonial authorities several weeks earlier. In the letter, 'Azzuz sought to dissuade a Tijaniyya shaykh from fleeing to the Jarid, assuring him that the appointed hour to chase the infidels from Algeria had arrived. The Tunisian ruler's response to French allegations was predictably equivocal. Soothingly, Ahmad Bey replied that the religious authority of Nafta's Rahmaniyya shaykh was a sufficient guarantee of order and security along the borders; the representative of France to the Bardo was needlessly concerned.^[89]

Much of the information about Mustafa b. 'Azzuz in the post–1844 era was generated by his unfailing involvement in across-the-border politics as well as in Tunisian affairs. French officials (and to a lesser extent British agents) in North Africa kept abreast of his various activities through native spies and European informants. This has prejudiced the data toward the "political" as understood in the vocabulary of nineteenth-century Europe. Lamentably, the few Arabic sources available from the period carefully skirt the issue of the more mundane features of activist sufis and saints, in keeping with the traditional hagiographic paradigm for holy persons. Ahmad ibn Abi al-Diyaf noted tersely that Sidi 'Azzuz was revered by the people because he "renewed the faith of the tribes, urged people to accomplish their religious duties, and worked miracles."^[90] This could fit any number of provincial religious notables in North Africa; what is not stated is more significant than what is. Also absent from al-Diyaf's account are the larger, more ominous forces gathering around Tunisia by the time of Ahmad Bey's reign.

By the 1840s, the fate of Husaynid Tunisia had become entangled in the Eastern Question; both France and Great Britain feverishly courted the bey and Tunisian ruling elites.^[91] Jealous competition for Tunisia's hand in a political marriage also included the Ottomans and later the Italians; these passionate diplomatic courtships had a resonance in the pre-Sahara as well. The number of European visitors to the Jarid in the nineteenth century is remarkable in view of the uncertainty of the journey, its length, and the imminent danger of attack from tribes or bandits. Normally the visitors

traveled south with the annual beylical mahalla or appointed escorts; the rulers did not generally authorize foreigners to travel in the hinterland unaccompanied by Tunisian dignitaries. This was more out of fear of retribution from more powerful European governments—should some mishap occur—than a desire, as seen in Morocco at the time, to limit foreign penetration of regions beyond the government's effective grasp. The presence of foreigners in southern Tunisia was not fortuitous but rather part of the process whereby the outside world increasingly encroached upon the beylik.^[92]

French and British travelers in the Jarid arrived with several objectives in mind. Frenchmen had basically two goals: to assess the Tunisian state's clout in the countryside and to monitor the activities of Algerian émigrés as well as the beys' involvement in things Algerian. The British had similar objectives but additionally desired to probe and check French influence upon the Tunisian realm where possible. At least four Europeans met personally with Sidi Mustafa between 1845 and 1860, recording their impressions in detailed reports that also contained specific information on trade, tribal politics, and other provincial notables. These sources naturally reveal the prejudices of foreign observers but can be employed as eyewitness accounts as long as their Eurocentric bias is flushed out.

James Richardson, a well-known English explorer, traveled to the Jarid in the winter of 1845 with the mahalla, then under the command of Ahmad Bey's cousin and later successor, Muhammad al-Sadiq. Significantly, Richardson was accompanied by the son of the British consul in Tunis, Richard Reade. Richardson's 1845 report, later submitted to the British consul, judges Shaykh 'Azzuz quite favorably, although the Englishman generally viewed Tunisian society with a jaundiced eye. The oasis of Tuzar was dismissed as nothing but a "miserable assemblage," yet Nafta's Rahmaniyya shaykh was praised:

As soon as the native escort of troops entered Nafta, they went directly to the shrine of Sidi Bu 'Ali according to the custom. There are two famous saints here, one of them [is Sidi Bu 'Ali]; the other is Sidi Mustafa ibn 'Azzuz [who] has the character of being a very clever and good man which also his intelligent and benevolent appearance betokens and [is] not a fanatic like Sidi 'Umar 'Ubayda of al-Qayrawan.^[93]

Five years later the Frenchman Ducouret, journeying in the guise of a convert to Islam under the name of Hajji 'Abd al-Hamid Bey, also wrote of his passage through the Jarid in 1850. Docouret was undoubtedly a spy gathering information for several French ministries in Paris; while his

intelligence mission does not necessarily flaw the data, his report, like that of any European, must be used with caution.

One sees at Nafta two or three beautiful mosques and a number of maraboutic centers, the main one being that of Sidi Mustafa ibn 'Azzuz [who is] the former khalifa of 'Abd al-Qadir and the declared enemy of France, whom he still opposes daily by unleashing upon her territory numbers of brigands who are his followers. Sidi Mustafa is very rich and an intimate friend of General Zarruq as well as a friend of Sidi Ahmad [Bey]. It is imperative, therefore, that this individual be brought to the government's attention for sooner or later he will create for us grave difficulties.^[94]

Ducouret's observations reveal Parisian ministerial interest in provincial religious leaders, an interest which evolved into the French maraboutic myth and obsession with sufi orders by the century's end. While it is uncertain whether his lengthy report reflected official beliefs in the Metropole or helped to shape them, still Ducouret's account shows what colonial officials in Algeria and France believed. And while Ducouret was most probably a mountebank, nevertheless his assertion that Sidi Mustafa was an intimate of both General Zarruq and Ahmad Bey can be verified by reference to Ahmad ibn Abi al-Diyaf's work.

The 1850 mission was soon followed by another, that of the French diplomatic officer (elévè-consul ) Charles Tissot in 1853. Tissot's trip with the mahalla to the Jarid that year may have been prompted by Ducouret's findings submitted to the ministry of war in Paris. As the military column laboriously made its way south to the oases, Tissot noted a Rahmaniyya zawiya located near Tala and recently built at the expense of the 'Azzuz clan of Nafta.^[95] Tissot's preoccupation with Shaykh 'Azzuz was clearly motivated by the Sharif of Warqala's rebellion, which by 1853 was assuming alarming proportions in neighboring Algeria. In that year the sharif and his followers had abandoned al-Aghwat after a bloody French siege and taken refuge in the region between the Mzab and Tuqqurt. The Frenchman was clearly attempting to measure the degree of popular or elite support for the insurrection among the inhabitants of the Suf and Jarid. Tissot's report was based upon a meeting held in the Nafta zawiya between Shaykh 'Azzuz and a native North African, Ahmad b. Abi Ilah, who acted as a guide and interpreter.

I [Tissot] have spoken of a famous marabout in Nafta, Mustafa ibn 'Azzuz, who has in this oasis one of the Regency's largest zawaya. His influence in the country is immense and stretches all

over Algeria, and particularly in the south in Tuqqurt, Warqala, Tammasin, and the Suf, where he has followers who are as numerous as they are devoted to him. The saint complained politely [to the interpreter] that he had not been visited by the representatives of France during their stay in Nafta and expressed fears that this was the result of false rumors spread about by his enemies implicating him in the latest uprising in Algeria. Far from being an opponent of France, he [Sidi Mustafa] more than anyone understood and accepted the Divine will that had placed Algeria in French hands; no one deplored more than him the shedding of blood, spilled by the false prophets who provoked warfare in God's name.^[96]

Not content with verbal pledges of loyalty to France, Sidi Mustafa wrote two letters restating his lack of enmity toward the French masters of Algeria; one was for the governor-general of Algeria, Randon, the other for the director of the Bureau Politique of the Bureaux Arabes. Both missives were entrusted to the Algerian interpreter, who was to transmit them to colonial officials across the border. Tissot concluded his report by observing that the sufi leader's energetic denials of involvement in Algerian insurrections had convinced him of quite the opposite. Moreover, Tissot, as Ducouret had claimed three years earlier, contended that he had obtained irrefutable evidence regarding the Rahmaniyya shaykh's participation in the arms and gunpowder trade through southern Tunisia. "Mustafa ibn 'Azzuz is the most active agent in the contraband gunpowder traffic which is ceaselessly carried on between Gabis and Algeria."^[97]

Tissot's meeting with the saint and sufi is replete with significance. Shaykh 'Azzuz's actions demonstrate that he was entirely conversant with the command structure of French Algeria as indicated by his letters addressed to the most powerful officials in the colonial hierarchy. The saint's protests about his political innocence, advanced to counter allegations concerning rebellious activities, reveal that the Rahmaniyya leader was well apprised of what French officers in Algeria were saying about him. This information had surely been acquired through the rumor mill and purveyed to Nafta by spies, pilgrims, or traders. Moreover, since most of his kinspeople still resided in Algeria, Sidi 'Azzuz prudently sought to stay within the good graces of French authorities, even from the safety of the beylik. Finally, 'Azzuz's reference to "false prophets" indicates that he was aware of the Sharif of Warqala's movement and of the colonial nomenclature employed both to describe—and dismiss—mahdist-led uprisings.

This same appreciation of the nature of the European challenge is revealed in Shaykh Azzuz's 1860 meeting with the explorer Henri Du-

veyrier. While Duveyrier's account is subject to some caution, particularly in view of his later alarmist work on the Sanusiyya order, the veracity of his observations from this period can be ascertained by reference to other sources.

The saint ['Azzuz] received me in a very polite manner and he took pains to make me understand that all beings, Muslims, Jews, and Christians, were his children, all those whom God had created. He gave his approval to my studies and blessed us. His zawiya was full of people, notably the Suf's inhabitants who had come with me in the caravan. Shaykh 'Azzuz asked me to give him a great deal of detailed information regarding electricity, steam engines, and many other similar things. In sum, I think that he is an enlightened man, quite above the ordinary.^[98]

The fact that Shaykh 'Azzuz questioned his French visitor at length about steam engines and electricity suggests that the sufi and saint grasped, if only dimly, the material bases of European power, which, after three decades of French military pacification, were painfully apparent to many North Africans. By 1860 the steamship crossing from Marseille to Algiers had been reduced from five days to forty hours; many North African hajjis were beginning to make the voyage to the Holy Cities on European steam vessels. Moreover, the land telegraph, a form of electronic imperialism, had already made its appearance in parts of Algeria; in 1861 it was supplemented by a submarine cable linking the Metropole with Algiers. The shaykh's awareness of the "tools of empire" indicates that he had access to information, provided by other North Africans, about the curious, if repellent, infidels.^[99] Finally, if the reports of Ducouret, Tissot, and other colonial writers are accurate, it seems that the Rahmaniyya leader realized that some kinds of power came out of the barrel of a rifle.^[100]

Barud and Baraka

The Rahmaniyya leader appears to have been associated with the commerce in munitions flowing between southern Tunisia's coast and Algeria by the late 1840s or early 1850s—that is, during the period of the movements led by Bu Ziyan and the Sharif of Warqala. Nevertheless, the sufi shaykh did not fashion the intricate sequence of exchanges making the arms trade possible. Rather Sidi Mustafa's participation in that trade sprang from the fact that he headed a zawiya situated near the fluid borders in a region where Mediterranean and Saharan commerce converged. By aiding Algerian political figures in obtaining desperately needed gunpowder, Shaykh 'Azzuz merely drew upon existing tariqa and commercial networks. More-

over, Sidi Mustafa had a compelling example in the Amir 'Abd al-Qadir, who had been in the arms business throughout his jihad as were numerous West African religious leaders in the century.^[101] Indeed, Ahmad Bey himself was accused by the French of sending arms to 'Abd al-Qadir by way of Biskra in 1841.^[102]

The Jarid's location on the margins of the state made these activities feasible—despite efforts by Tunisian central authorities and French officials to end the trans-Mediterranean trade in firepower. The illicit traffic in munitions was part and parcel of a larger series of exchanges termed "contraband" or "smuggling" by both the Husaynid dynasty and the colonial regime. While the ability of both states to intervene in the affairs of the previously autonomous periphery escalated in the century, some age-old strategies for survival endured and new ones were created.^[103]

The active participation of a saint and sufi in the international commerce in the instruments of warfare may seem paradoxical. Yet Shaykh 'Azzuz's actions reflected a long North African tradition whereby the divinely conferred protective powers of the holy man encompassed the salvation afforded by firearms. Barud, like baraka, had in the popular imagination something of the miraculous and magic about it.^[104] The amazing grace of rifles and gunpowder was intimately linked in popular discourse to legends about saints and their karamat. One leitmotiv was the immunity of some holy persons—whether mahdi, waliy, or sufi—from the destruction wrought by guns. The nearly universal claim of aspiring mahdist leaders was that "powder counted not against him" or that his adversaries' bullets would be miraculously deflected in flight or transformed during their trajectory into watermelons, raindrops, etc. Numerous examples from nineteenth-century ethnography confirm that the magical, the sacred, and North African hopes for deliverance from French oppression were symbolized by gunpowder.

In the Kabylia, the inhabitants of the village of Koukou conserved earthen jars containing gunpowder bequeathed by a powerful saint who had died several centuries earlier. According to legend, the miraculous transformation of the substance into high-grade gunpowder would signal that the appointed hour for the infidels' expulsion had arrived.^[105] When a Turkish army threatened the Tijaniyya center at 'Ain Madi in the first decades of the past century, the inhabitants implored Ahmad al-Tijani, then in Fez, to save them—either by his saintly presence in the oasis or by furnishing them with arms to resist the invaders.^[106]

Not only did the mantle of the saints include protection against firepower but also rural zawaya in some parts of the Maghrib supplied clients with munitions. The Mzabis habitually stored armaments in their mosques, and

the Darqawi zawaya in Algeria housed both arms depots and workshops for repairing firearms. By the end of the past century, some Sanusiyya centers deep in the Sahara enclosed veritable arsenals of largely European weaponry in response to the growing threat of foreign occupation. Finally, among the articles brought back by Algerian hajjis from the Haramayn were both firearms and gunpowder, prohibited by colonial laws; these were often concealed in trunks or in vials ostensibly filled with water from the sacred springs.^[107]

Borders and Guns: The International Arms Trade

Whatever happens we have got the Maxim gun and they have not.^[108]

The international arms traffic between Europe and the Maghrib sprang from the fact that the Mediterranean's southern shore had become a new frontier in Western struggles for global hegemony. While the French conquest of Algeria in 1830 did not initiate the transfer of military technology from one side of the Mediterranean to the other, that conquest—and the resistance it encountered—accelerated the transferal. From 1830 until the imposition of the 1881 protectorate upon Tunisia, French diplomatic and military correspondence revolved obsessively around three related issues—the borders between Algeria and Tunisia, guns, and sufi orders. There were endless calls for sealing the frontiers, limiting the movements of Algerians, particularly religious figures, and suppressing the "contraband" arms trade between the two countries. While French and Tunisian authorities had more or less delimited the northern borders by the 1840s, the vast desert expanses between southwestern Tunisia and the southern Constantine remained a "hotbed of quasi-permanent political disorder," at least in colonial eyes.^[109]

In large measure, the turbulent frontiers were the product of collective protest in Algeria, which found a resonance in the beylik due to refugees like Mustafa b. 'Azzuz, who provided comfort and support to rebels. Sedition along the borders convinced colonial lobbyists in Algeria and the Metropole that Tunisia must be appended to France's African département to bolster Algerian security. Indeed, some writers at mid-century began referring to the Jarid as the "natural annex" to the southern Constantine.^[110] As the century wore on, French pressures upon the beys to police regions adjoining the frontiers mounted until the Tunisian Khrumir tribe provoked yet another border incident in 1881, thus providing the long-awaited pretext to invade. One of the clauses of the Bardo Treaty, imposed upon Muhammad al-Sadiq Bey in May 1881, enjoined the ruler to ter-

minate the clandestine arms trade and restrict the legal sale of armaments as well.^[111]

Thus, the arms trade between Europe, Algeria, and Tunisia in the post–1830 period was the product of a number of conjunctures: shifts in the balance of power between Europe and adjacent Muslim empires, relations among the Great Powers vying for spheres of influence, and quantum leaps in Western arms technology after 1850. The rapidly outmoded military stocks of European arms factories eventually found their way via the world market into non-Western regions.^[112] Moreover, the colonial advance into Africa was as much the cause as the consequence of new forms of warfare and violence, which developed with pitiless efficiency after the introduction of the quick-firing breechloaders in the 1870s. At the same time, technology, and especially military prowess, became the European gauge par excellence to calibrate the cultural development of non-Western societies.^[113] While the military component of Western technological virtuosity has received by far the most scholarly attention, the actual processes and mechanisms by which some of that technical superiority filtered down to non-Western peoples is still only imperfectly understood.

For indigenous political actors in the Maghrib or elsewhere, access to European military might was the sine qua non of political action. Continued unrest in Algeria until, and even after, the great revolt of 1871, fueled a relentless demand for ever greater quantities of gunpowder and firearms. Before the introduction of rapid-firing rifles, North Africans possessed arms more or less equal in quality to those issued to the French army, although never in sufficient quantities.^[114] European muskets fell to the tribesmen from desertions by native troops or captures of munitions depots. 'Abd al-Qadir obtained firearms both through regular channels—agreements with the French and the Moroccan sultan—and smuggling operations with British suppliers via Gibraltar.^[115] However, the arms race posed two great difficulties for the North Africans: guaranteeing steady supplies of imported munitions and, once obtained, maintaining firearms in working condition. Few tribes or villages boasted artisans skilled enough to effect repairs on the newer European rifle models. While there were indigenous specialists who had traditionally manufactured firearms and gunpowder (for examples, the Kabyles, the Mzabis, and skilled artisans in Tunis), they were not organized to produce in mass quantities; moreover, locally made gunpowder was often of uncertain quality.^[116]

One of the components needed for making gunpowder—sulfur—had to be imported for the most part. The price of sulfur in North African markets fluctuated in direct proportion to the fortunes of war, or peace, at any given moment. Another essential ingredient, potassium nitrate (or saltpeter), was

found in pure form throughout the Maghrib, usually near the desert shatts. Beginning in the 1840s, French officials imposed severe import restrictions upon sulfur coming in from Tunisia as part of a larger effort to erect a commercial and political quarantine around Algeria.

These measures were designed to impede extralegal exchanges of any kind, particularly those involving gunpowder, firearms, or the components for making gunpowder. However, these labors were doomed to failure in the period since the land borders with Tunisia, particularly in the south, were impossible to supervise; and Tunisian ports, from whence much of the contraband armaments originated, were only imperfectly policed by beylical authorities. Thus, France's control over the arms business in Algeria—indeed mastery over her rebellious African département —depended to no small degree upon the good will of Tunisian rulers and upon the Husaynid state's ability to govern its own provinces.

Tunisia in the Age of Change from Above

Paradoxically, a sequence of changes initiated by Ahmad Bey after 1837—together with the spillover effect of collective protest in Algeria—inadvertently accelerated the international arms trade, and other extralegal exchanges, between Western Europe and the Maghrib. And if Ahmad's reform agenda was intended to fortify his realm against outside interference, quite the opposite eventually transpired. Moreover, local resistance to the Tunisian version of Tanzimat may have enhanced the sociospiritual authority of religious notables, such as Mustafa b. 'Azzuz.

Ahmad Bey's reign represents a sea change in modern Tunisia's history, mainly, but not exclusively, because of the reforms imposed upon his largely unwilling subjects. His modernization program bore a resemblance to that of Muhammad 'Ali Pasha of Egypt; indeed Ahmad may have consciously emulated the Egyptian ruler. Upon taking the throne, the bey inaugurated new fiscal policies, organized a conscript army, and established modern commercial, industrial, and educational facilities, patterned upon Western institutions with assistance from European advisers. It was a delicate, and ultimately, ruinous balancing act. Only internal consolidation of Tunisia's population and resources could thwart the political ambitions of European and Ottoman suitors; yet his subjects had to remain reasonably content as well. In some cases, Ahmad Bey's reforms expanded state power at the expense of provincial autonomy. Yet in regions distant enough from the political center—four hundred kilometers separate the Jarid from Tunis—some of these reforms had at first little immediate impact. Others, mainly fiscal changes, or the abolition of slavery and the slave trade, directly touched local communities and economies, although unevenly.^[117]

Compared to Muhammad 'Ali Pasha, Ahmad Bey's reform program was less radical; nor did Tunisia have an internal communications system similar to the Nile or a crop eagerly sought on world markets like cotton. And Ahmad, again unlike Egypt's wily Pasha, was not particularly enamored of the mundane details of day-to-day administration. In contrast to policies in Egypt, Ahmad Bey's modernization decrees did not include expanded bureaucratic structures for the Tunisian hinterland. Aside from the regular correspondence maintained between regional administrators and the capital, few innovative institutional linkages between ruling elites in Tunis and the countryside were devised. Instead the traditional pattern of "concessionary administration" was reinforced and augmented in the beylik.^[118] The political center's laissez-faire approach conferred a degree of maneuverability upon some social groups since Tunis lacked loyal cadres in sufficient numbers to enforce its policies. Even the French protectorate, armed with an eminently more formidable bureaucracy, proved unequal to the task of policing Tunisia's tribes and frontiers until early in the present century.^[119] Nevertheless, the sedentary grain-growing populations of the north and the Jarid's oases were within relatively easy reach of Ahmad's fiscal reform measures.

In the early 1840s, the Jarid's age-old fiscal autonomy faced its first assault. Beylical decrees extended government monopolies to include salt, hides, and tobacco, important items in the Jarid's economy. In addition, the mahsulat (indirect tax upon commodities sold or bartered in oasis or tribal markets) was imposed upon the Jarid for the first time. These greatly augmented the total amount of revenue owed to the central government. Moreover, customs duties on caravans entering southern Tunisia were raised, which together with the ban on slavery after 1841, discouraged trade with Ghadamis and other Saharan emporia, or at least rerouted it. In the Mediterranean ports, customs duties on exports—Jaridi dates and textiles, grains, raw wool—and imports were either raised significantly or subject to taxation for the first time.^[120] Finally, the bey's agents attempted to co-opt Jaridi notables, such as the shaykh of the Awlad al-Hadif clan in Tuzar, with offers of the lizma (or tax farm) for the new mahsulat.^[121]

In states poised between tradition and modernity, provincial or rural peoples frequently had at their disposal a ready cache of strategems for thwarting the smothering embraces of ruling elites—the "weapons of the weak." The very existence of strategies to preserve local autonomy was precisely what compelled reform-minded rulers, like Ahmad Bey, to embark upon ambitious overhauls of the system.^[122] Many of the responses of both ordinary people and local notables in Tunisia to increased fiscal pressures after 1837 resembled those found elsewhere in the Ottoman

Empire, particularly Egypt. Short of militant protest, these included evasion, bribery of local officials, emigration or flight, banditry, black markets, and smuggling—neither new nor mutually exclusive defense mechanisms. What was novel for Tunisia after Ahmad ascended the throne was the larger political matrix within which his centralizing program, and the responses it generated, became ensnared. Ironically, some reforms, originally intended to enhance the center's control over its periphery, actually reduced its coercive force. Local opposition to the state, combined with world market forces and colonial policies in next-door Algeria, ultimately undermined the Tunisian experiment in Perestroika. In short, heightened fiscal demands presented enough of a threat to older currents of exchange to induce a number of people to engage in risk-taking enterprises such as smuggling.

Smuggling and Smugglers: An Overview

Tunisia's ancient, very intense involvement in the Mediterranean world is dictated by her geography. The coastline stretching from the Cap Bon in the north to her southernmost tip invites "unregulated commerce," or, from the state's perspective, contraband. No mountain chains rise up to sever the interior from the sea as in the Tabarka region or along most of Algeria's Mediterranean littoral. As one drives along the coastal road from Sousse to Gabis at midday, land and water seem to merge. Sandy inlets, and flat, protected beaches offer endless nooks and crannies for landing small craft undetected; once ashore, easy access to the hinterland is assured.

The very notions of smuggling and contraband are state centered. After 1840, moreover, the definition of what constituted illegal or extralegal exchanges was expanded. For both the colonial and beylical governments, contraband was the sale, importation, or exportation by nonstate agents of commodities legally subject to state monopolies—firearms, ammunition, tobacco, and agrarian products such as grains and olive oil.^[123] For local communities, smuggling was in part the continuation of older patterns of exchange which, because of state regulation, now had to become clandestine. In some cases, alternative black markets were organized to frustrate meddling by the political center. In the inaccessible reaches of Tunisia's interior, covert rural suqs were set up, often with access to Algerian markets, to evade local tax farmers.^[124]

From the reign of Ahmad Bey on, smuggling evolved into an increasingly institutionalized mode of exchange so that a dual or shadow economy eventually resulted. Cunning entrepreneurs engaged in contraband and black market operations to circumvent monopolies, market taxes, onerous customs duties levied in ports or on the overland caravan trade, and the periodic prohibitions on the import or export of certain commodities. Most

in demand were the very instruments granting a measure of local empowerment in the face of the state's intrusive power—European gunpowder and firearms—items theoretically the exclusive purview of central governments.

The sub rosa trade was exceedingly complex; it was not confined to North Africa but was a Mediterranean-wide system or systems of interlocking exchange that grew steadily in scale and intricacy as the century wore on.^[125] At times the transfer of military technology from Western manufacturers to African or Asian markets was carried on with the blessings of European governments; at others it was regarded as inimical to the interests of European nations struggling for global superiority.^[126] For Tunisia, the contraband traffic held perilous international as well as domestic repercussions since many coastal smugglers were members of the beylik's resident foreign community. Above all, the Maltese, who numbered in the thousands and were British protégés, acted as mediating agents in illegal networks of exchange.^[127]

The contraband trade, whether in firearms or other commodities, involved diverse congeries of people: oasis dwellers, pastoral nomads, foreign traders, native merchants, and sometimes provincial religious notables. Impecunious functionaries—beylical port officials or qa'ids along the borders—charged with stifling unregulated commerce could be persuaded to turn an obliging blind eye when need be. Smuggling functioned as a relay operation composed of interlocking chains of petty importers, retailers, middlemen, and transporters. Particularly well situated to deal in forbidden goods were traders in oases or southern ports and those communities located near the pervious frontiers. Nevertheless, the contraband traffic was not confined to these areas since the sources mention endemic clandestine exchanges in Tunis, the Cap Bon, and Sousse.^[128] Aside from the Maltese, and perhaps the Algerian Suwafa, a professional "class" of smugglers does not appear to have evolved during Ahmad Bey's reign as was the case in Anatolia under the European Tobacco Regie.^[129] By the 1870s, however, Tunisians and Algerians living near the borders had formed business associations specifically designed to procure firearms and gunpowder for sale in black markets.^[130] Not surprisingly, these transactions were most frequently concluded by barter. One consular report from 1864 stated that "the Tunisian tribes come to the beaches near Gabis to trade their olive oil [with the Maltese] for British gunpowder with which they are increasingly supplying themselves." Yet when circumstances demanded, even tribal customers found currency to purchase contraband munitions.^[131]

Accurate assessments for the volume or value or value of economic exchanges effected through irregular channels are naturally difficult to come by.

Informed observers from Ahmad Bey's reign maintained that the customs receipts from Sfax reflected only a fraction of the total amount of imports; if smuggling were taken into account, the volume of trade would have to be doubled or tripled. Estimates of exports from Sfax must also be increased substantially to account for the total value of commercial movements, including contraband, from southern Tunisia's most active port.^[132] The American representative in Tunis reported that in April 1864, admittedly an unusual year, he was "assured by trustworthy merchants who possess ample means for obtaining practical knowledge that the exports and imports of the regency are probably five or six times greater than represented [in official records]."^[133] Even the bey himself encountered the problem of smuggling as the following incident demonstrates. A Sardinian merchant in Tunis who routinely furnished the court with European goods sold imported luxury textiles valued at 150,000 piasters to Ahmad Bey. The ruler, desiring to know the textiles' declared value, requested the customs receipts from the port of La Goulette. There were none; the goods had been brought into the beylik illicitly.^[134]

The increasing state regulation of both domestic and international trade in Tunisia came at precisely the moment when the demand for Tunisian products soared in Algeria due to the French conquest. Evaluating the volume or value of overland caravan exchanges between the beylik and Algeria at mid-century is hazardous. Impressionistic sources reveal, however, that commercial exchanges between the Jarid and eastern Algeria were at least as important as those between southwestern Tunisia and the rest of the beylik. Moreover, the trade balance was probably in the Jarid's favor, particularly after the 1837 fall of Constantine severed the oases of the Ziban, Wadi Righ, and Suf from northern Algeria, making Tunisian markets more attractive.^[135]

This was not lost upon colonial officials, although French authority in the southern Constantine was largely nonexistent before 1844 and only partially, if brutally, restored after the suppression of Bu Ziyan's rebellion in 1849. After 1844, a douane was established in Biskra, and the customs bureau succeeded at times in discouraging (or more likely rerouting) smuggling between the Ziban and Tunisia. In addition, the colonial regime passed a number of laws to inhibit the arms trade and restrict overland commerce involving the two countries; decrees were enacted in 1843, 1851, 1860, and 1867. While the French military occupations of al-Aghwat, Tuqqurt, Warqala, and al-Awad from 1852 to 1854 enhanced political and economic control over Saharan merchants and markets, parts of the Suf and Mzab continued to operate as freewheeling desert "free ports" until late in the century.^[136] A similar situation obtained along Algeria's western

frontiers with Morocco, where smugglers conducted a flourishing contraband trade in staples and guns until the present century.^[137]

French military authorities in Algeria simply lacked the means to survey closely desert trade or to curtail the movements of peoples. Each new customs office, law, and mounted patrol inspired enterprising smugglers to work out counterstrategies for circumventing state regulation. From the 1840s on, growing quantities of Tunisian products and European goods, above all, British gunpowder, originally imported into the beylik, were introduced fraudulently into Algeria. These were distributed all over the Sahara and as far north as Constantine and Sétif, usually, though not always, in markets unfettered by colonial supervision. Some contraband merchandise from Tunisia found its way into French-held markets, where it was passed off as "indigenous" products from the Suf.^[138] Not insignificant quantities of Tunisian dates and olive oil, imported into Algeria illegally, were then sent to France under the guise of colonial products, which enjoyed duty-free status in the Metropole. (In contrast, products from the Jarid exported directly to Europe had to pay hefty export duties and also import duties in Marseille.) Also smuggled between the two countries were salt and the components for making gunpowder, sulfur and saltpeter. Tobacco grown in the Suf was clandestinely transported to the Jarid for sale despite—or because of—the beylical monopoly.^[139]

As crucial as armaments to popular protest were grains—wheat and barley—the demand for which constituted the flywheel of the desert to Tell exchanges. Depending upon the annual harvest, wheat in Tunisia was frequently subject to export restrictions. During outbreaks of rebellion in Algeria, the price of wheat rose precipitously due to scarcity, particularly in Saharan markets. To contain the Sharif of Warqala's long insurrection, French authorities severed defiant oases from customary grain sources in Biskra's markets. Rather than lay down their arms, the rebels turned to the Tunisian Jarid for foodstuffs and supplies, furnished by traders in the Suf. Smuggled wheat from northern Tunisia nourished insurgent Algerian tribes and oases during the early 1850s, permitting the sharif's movement to endure as along as it did.^[140]

But there is another crucial piece to our trans-Mediterranean contraband puzzle. While many native Tunisians and Algerians participated, the fractious Maltese made smuggling their commercial fiefdom. The Maltese formed the single largest resident European community in Tunisia. This was the result of Malta's propinquity—a mere 320 kilometers separate it from Tunisia—and of a demographic boom which by the 1820s had rendered the island one of the most densely populated in the Mediterranean world

with 350 inhabitants per square kilometer. Thus, unfavorable economic conditions in Malta sent waves of migrants to the Tunisian littoral and eastern Algeria in search of a better life. Moreover, the Maltese were culturally akin to the Tunisians; they spoke a form of Tunisian Arabic and some had converted to Islam, although the vast majority were Catholic. While the Maltese occupied the lowest social niche among the Europeans in North Africa, official if grudging British protection, combined with integration into Tunisian society, allowed them to act as primary conduits for trans-Mediterranean exchanges. One of the mainstays of the Maltese island economy, so poor in natural yet so abundant in human resources, was either the production of local gunpowder or the transshipment of British armaments to North Africa. During the turbulent 1850s in the Italian peninsula, Maltese smugglers supplied rebels there with gunpowder as well.^[141]

The Maltese in the beylik tended to live either in the capital or in seaports scattered along the inviting Tunisian coastline, where they organized the nocturnal unloading of goods at unsurveyed points: Italian and British textiles as well as products from Great Britain's colonies, English hardware, rifles, and gunpowder. Conversely, the Maltese smuggled Tunisian commodities out, avoiding the expense and bother of obtaining an export license—the tadhkira —from officials. Many exported goods were destined for Malta since the island was chronically short of foodstuffs and raw materials: dates, olive oil, wax, hides, and wool. Consular documents in French and British archives for the 1840–1870 period report that Jaridi dates, an important dietary source of sugar, were exported fraudulently from Sfax and Gabis to Malta and elsewhere in the Mediterranean. The contraband trade in dates spiraled after 1868 when Tunisian state export duties were raised from one piaster per fifty kilograms to twenty-five piasters, an increase of 2,500 percent.^[142]

Thus, contraband, smuggling, and black market operations represented local responses to increasing central government regulation in Tunisia and Algeria as well as to global transformations in the balance of power. As defense mechanisms of the weak, these responses, taken in the aggregate, partially attenuated the Tunisian state's (and Moroccan kingdom's) extractive power, its control over trade and commerce, and its monopoly over the means of violence.

Shaykh Mustafa b. 'Azzuz and the Contraband Trade

As the Sharif of Warqala's rebellion peaked in the early 1850s, the contraband gunpowder traffic between Malta, southern Tunisia, and Algeria

flourished as never before, although Bu Ziyan's movement and others like it had earlier nurtured the trade. In addition to supplying Algerian rebels with firepower, this commerce gave some Tunisian tribes access to European military technology. While a few traders and caravans specialized in armaments, more frequently firearms were transported along with Tunisian foodstuffs and other commodities, which found a ready market in Algeria due to the disruptions of war. Gunpowder imported from Malta was unloaded either at unguarded inlets along the Tunisian coast or right in the ports with the complicity of underpaid customs officials. Then the smugglers could chose between several possible routes leading to Algeria.

From Gabis, caravans generally crossed the oases of the Nafzawa directly to the Jarid; from Sfax, however, smugglers went to Gafsa. In Gafsa several alternative routes existed; choice of routes was dictated by the presence of beylical authorities, French military operations along the borders, or the geographical placement of Algerian demand. Just beyond Gafsa, one road led to Kasserine, Tala, and Qal'a al-Sanam, eventually reaching Suq Ahras, Guelma, and finally one of Constantine's suburbs which functioned as a distribution point for contraband firearms and gunpowder. A second route connected Gafsa with Tuzar and Nafta and the Jarid with the Suf; once in al-Awad, a bifurcation led some caravans south to Warqala, Tuqqurt, the Mzab, and even al-Aghwat. The inhabitants of the Suf and the Mzab specialized in the arms trade and in general were regarded as inveterate smugglers.^[143] Other caravans took gunpowder from the Suf to the Ziban, where the oasis of Sidi 'Uqba was an active shipping center for munitions, supplying the Jabal Awras, Bu Sa'ada, and the Awlad Na'il. Some European firearms and gunpowder thus introduced into Algeria eventually reached as far west as Morocco.^[144] Finally, to facilitate redistribution, concealed munitions depots were created at relay points near crossroads; for example, contraband gunpowder was stored in al-Manzil on the outskirts of Gabis, and at Khaba, to the south of al-Kaf. Despite precautions taken by smugglers, mounted French patrols and customs officials periodically surprised the unlucky, thereby providing documentation for clandestine traffic.^[145]

Let us track a shipment of gunpowder being transported from the southern Tunisian coast to markets in Algeria during the early 1850s. In this particular instance, Maltese purveyors unloaded small boatloads of gunpowder and other products coming from Malta onto the beaches adjacent to Gabis after greasing the palms of customs agents. Then part of the shipment was sold to another Maltese trader, Francesco Bartalo, a middleman and longtime resident of Gabis. As most of his fellow smugglers did, Bartalo stored the contraband munitions in his home in the European

quarter. (On more than one occasion, this produced tragic accidents when casks of gunpowder exploded.) Since smuggling operations were small in scale, and organized along family lines, and because the Maltese had been placed under Great Britain's flag, Tunisian or French authorities had difficulty suppressing the traffic. From Gabis gunpowder caravans, organized by native Tunisians often from the commercially important Jewish community, set out west across the Nafzawa. Tribal groups specializing in transport furnished animals, usually camels, to carry the contraband to Nafta. Involved in this were the Marazig, the Ghrib, and the Banu Zid, among other tribal groups, most of whom were religious clients of Mustafa b. 'Azzuz in Nafta.^[146]

Once in Nafta, the gunpowder was turned over to the shaykh of the Rahmaniyya center. In Tissot's words, the contraband was "placed under the protection of Sidi Mustafa" and most likely stored at his zawiya in the oasis, which being a sacred and inviolable space, was off limits to authorities. The gunpowder was then resold at a profit to a group of merchants from the Suf who had traveled to Nafta expressly for this purpose. The Suwafa were led by Sahili b. al-Hajj 'Umar, who, acting as yet another middleman, had the smuggled items transported over the frontiers by the Sha'amba tribe. From the Suf the gunpowder was subsequently sold again to various clients and customers by Algerian merchants. In Tissot's 1853 report, the only named purchasers were religious figures—the Tijaniyya shaykh of Tammasin and Muhammad b. 'Abd Allah, the Sharif of Warqala; in addition to gunpowder, these leaders had also had foodstuffs imported from the Jarid's markets into southwestern Algeria. While the sharif had declared an anti-French jihad in 1851 and desperately needed firepower to pursue his rebellion, the involvement of the Tijaniyya is more problematic. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the Tijani elites of both western Algeria ('Ain Madi) and the eastern Algeria (Gummar and Tammasin/Tamalhat) were ostensibly among France's staunchest indigenous religious allies.^[147] Nevertheless, in the turbulent conquest years, access to firearms represented an insurance policy against the future wages of war both for sufi leaders and their followers.

While calculations regarding the quantities involved in the gunpowder traffic are no more than "guesstimates," Tissot reckoned that between 2,500 and 3,000 camel-loads of gunpowder—roughly 60,000 kilograms—passed through southern Tunisia to Algerian markets in 1852. Seizures made by Tunisian or French officials in the period suggest that Tissot's estimate may not be too exaggerated; smaller quantities of firearms were also confiscated.^[148] After the final defeat of the Algerian phase of the

sharif's rebellion late in 1854, the head of the Bureau Arabe, Warnier, took inventory of the forbidden goods available in the Suf's markets:

The contraband trade has no agents more active or intrepid than the Suf's inhabitants. It is the Suwafa who, despite all the measures enacted, have caused this great stream of British and Tunisian products to flow into our markets. When we arrived here, we found in the villages of the Suf a great quantity of rifles, almost all of British manufacture; their price varied from thirty to thirty-five francs. Gunpowder is also found in abundance; the Suwafa told us that they acquire these munitions from Sfax and Gabis, where entrepôts are found belonging to Maltese traders. In these last years, the Suwafa imported a huge quantity of British gunpowder and a good portion of it was sent to the Kabylia.^[149]

Moreover, other Rahmaniyya-'Azzuziyya zawaya may have participated in the trade between Algeria and Tunisia. One secondary zawiya affiliated with Nafta was located in Tala and under the spiritual administration of Sidi al-Hajj Mabruk, who was Mustafa b. 'Azzuz's son-in-law. In the middle of the past century, the village of Tala consisted mainly of a large armaments depot and the sufi center, associated with the 'Azzuz clan and situated on a principal caravan route linking the beylik with Tebessa. While the involvement of Tala's Rahmaniyya zawiya in the arms trade is a matter of speculation, it is not unlikely given that the village functioned as an important relay station in the transborder traffic.^[150]

Conclusion

The hijra of Shaykh Mustafa, and others like him, entangled Tunisia in the political and economic forces that were transforming her hapless neighbor into an eternal piece of French soil. While eastern Algeria had historically maintained multiple ties with Tunisia, these changes differed substantially in nature, scale, direction, and international implications. Ironically, the efforts of Algerian exiles, perhaps with behind-the-scenes encouragement from Tunisian authorities, to check the French advance in their homeland ultimately jeopardized the beylik's precarious independence vis-à-vis the Great Powers. Moreover, the elaboration of the arms traffic across southern Tunisia provided tribal groups with firepower which eventually reduced effective Husaynid control over its periphery, thus providing justification for increased French intervention. By manipulating trans-Mediterranean and trans-Maghribi commercial, religious, and communications networks to local advantage, Shaykh 'Azzuz and other activists unwittingly brought the turbulent frontier onto Tunisian soil; in 1881 the long-term conse-

quences of this became painfully apparent. Energetic religious notables like Sidi Mustafa 'Azzuz thus undermined the very social order they strove so mightily to defend and preserve.

In its latter stages, the Sharif of Warqala's rebellion drew anticolonial protest squarely into Tunisian territory for the first time, mainly due to Shaykh Mustafa b. 'Azzuz's presence in the Jarid. And if the fiscal and other reforms initiated by Ahmad Bey drove some to construct alternative marketing strategies—branded as contraband by the state—local opposition to the same changes imposed from above explains why the sharif's jihad, originally centered in Algeria, elicited popular support for a time from among the bey's subjects as well.