Zaynab's Cousin: "Hard and Stony Is His Path"

When Muhammad b. al-Hajj Muhammad finally assumed full responsibility for the sufi establishment, the worst had happened. During the lengthy, at times bitter, court proceedings, the zawiya had forfeited its control over some of its lands, flocks, and other forms of wealth. Reduced material assets diminished the center's ability to provide social welfare services, which brought a corresponding decrease in moral and religious prestige. By 1910 al-Hamil's economic situation was so precarious that the new Rahmaniyya shaykh petitioned the French government to borrow money, thus falling into the very snare that Zaynab and her father had carefully avoided—financial dependence upon, and by extension political subjugation to, the colonial regime.^[147] By the eve of the Great War, however, colonial officials were rather less concerned with sufi leaders on the Sahara's edge since other, more compelling, preoccupations confronted them: massive emigration from western Algeria, indigenous resistance to service in the French army, and increasing urban restiveness, where new political voices were being raised, if not heard, for the first time.^[148] Therefore, Muhammad b. al-Hajj Muhammad's pleas for credit advances were regarded more as a minor irritation than an opportunity to shape the course of Muslim politics.

In 1912, another European woman, Helen C. Gordon, journeyed to al-Hamil, attracted to the oasis by its reputation as an "Arab university

town." Over eight years had passed since Zaynab's death, yet her memory remained vivid among the villagers and zawiya's clients and would endure for decades thereafter.

So beneficent had been her sway, so charitable was she that "her memory is still green in the hearts of her people," and by children her name is spoken as one would whisper that of a revered saint, with awe and to bear witness to the truth of some statement they have made which is open to suspicion.^[149]

Gordon also noted that, while pilgrims continued to arrive in the oasis to offer alms to Zaynab's cousin and seek his baraka, Muhammad b. al-Hajj was "secretly considered to be avaricious and worldly" by the people.^[150] Since his female cousin's pious reputation continued, even from the grave, to completely overshadow his in the eyes of the faithful, the Rahmaniyya shaykh looked elsewhere for gratification. When the sister of the English monarch visited al-Hamil in search of the exotic, Muhammad b. al-Hajj Muhammad expended lavish sums to honor her with an elegant luncheon. His efforts were inspired less by the dictates of customary hospitality than by the feverish expectation that he would be rewarded by some sort of magnificent medal or decoration. Bitter disappointment awaited him when the king's sister bestowed upon the shaykh no more than her photograph.^[151] Under Muhammad b. al-Hajj's direction, the sufi zawiya was transformed into a "folkloric" center, a sort of ethnological museum where "Mauresque hospitality" entertained bored Europeans in search of colorful, authentic, yet domesticated native ambience. The cost of providing these distractions, complete with oriental food and drink, to demanding Western guests depleted the zawiya's coffers, at the expense of its social welfare services.^[152] Thus, after 1904, al-Hamil experienced a fate similar to that of many other sufi centers in North Africa: localization, marginalization, and exoticization. These processes were frequently accompanied by an overly cozy relationship between religious notables and the colonial regime, which ultimately left sufi leaders open to charges of "collaboration" by Muslim reformist and nationalist forces after the Great War.^[153]

Viewed in the short term, Zaynab's victory over her cousin and French officialdom was Pyrrhic. Fearing that her rival would squander the zawiya's resources, she fought successfully to retain management of al-Hamil's spiritual and mundane affairs. By dying intestate, she exposed the sufi establishment to a debilitating legal quarrel which ultimately led to direct French intervention in the zawiya's internal affairs, diminishing its ability to function as a cultural redoubt for a society under siege. Yet it could be argued that al-Hamil's socioeconomic importance would have dwindled

anyway with the emergence of new, urban-based political forces and of the Reformist Ulama of Shaykh 'Abd al-Hamid b. Badis (Ben Badis), centered in Constantine. Nevertheless, the Algerian religious revival and nationalist movements were the cultural heirs of pious saints and sufis like the shaykh and his daughter.

This was not lost on one fervent reformer and nationalist, Ahmad Tawfiq al-Madani (1899–1954), an Algerian by origins but Tunisian by birth. The cofounder of the Tunisian Dustur (Old Destour) party and editor of the journal Ifriqiya , al-Madani was accused by Tunisian protectorate authorities of supporting 'Abd al-Karim's revolt (1921–1926) and the Moroccan rebel's drive to create an independent state in the Rif. In 1925, al-Madani was officially expelled from Tunisia and returned to the country of his forefathers, where he helped to launch the Association of the Reformist Ulama in 1931. In his memoirs, al-Madani devotes a section to the zawiya of al-Hamil, which the fiercely nationalist writer characterized as "ma'qil al-'uruba wa al-Islam," (the refuge of Arab culture and Islam). He also noted that "after the death of Shaykh Muhammad b. Bilqasim [sic ] his daughter, al-sayyida Zaynab bint Muhammad, devout, chaste, and worthy, took over the direction of the zawiya, whose capacity [to provide] knowledge increased along with its prosperity."^[154]

Even today, some three thousand pilgrims make the annual ziyara to al-Hamil from the distant Jurjura Mountains. Proceding as a cohort, they depart from the Kabylia in May after the olive harvest; a portion of the harvest is brought as gifts and offerings specifically dedicated to the zawiya. Again in autumn, two to three hundred Kabyle pilgrims come to al-Hamil to spent the night there in proximity to the very special dead. As late as 1985, the zawiya of al-Hamil still claimed five hundred sufi members; its educational activities persisted, although in a much attenuated form, even after independence from France.^[155]