2
Saint and Sufi:
Religious Notables of the Pre-Sahara

And if the [Rahmaniyya] shaykh were to depart from the zawiya to another place in the region, then the hurma (sacredness) would [also] leave with him.^[1]

The Mantle of the Saints

North Africa constitutes what might be termed the baraka belt. Its topography—physical and cultural—is shaped by saintly remains which even today inform collective popular memory and daily discourse.^[2] The tombs or commemorative shrines (qabr, qubba, maqam ) honoring those who were "close to God" created hierarchies of sacred space with economic and political implications as well as spiritual, moral, and emotional content. The saints were an expression of territorial and, by extension, historical authenticity; at the same time, many paradoxically were believed to have come from elsewhere.^[3] That elsewhere was either the cradle of Islam in the age of the seventh-century Arab-Muslim conquests or later Morocco during the "maraboutic crisis," or saintly diaspora of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. In any case, the result was much the same for the dominant style of Islam as lived in the Maghrib: descent from the Prophet, conferring special piety and virtue, merged with the activist Islam of the ribats ; organized tasawwuf (sufism or mysticism); and the veneration of holy persons.^[4] And baraka was in many respects a sort of badge of holy person status.

Baraka signified that ineffable, supernatural substance—grace, blessings, superabundance, purity, etc.—communicated from God to the faithful through those individuals who in life and death were endowed with uncommon piety (taqwa ) or ihsan (excellence).^[5] Yet the act of communication or transference was also important. Mere possession of baraka was not sufficient to attain holy person status; the possessor had to be able to transmit it to others. And the social recognition of baraka possession and its unequal distribution in society were fundamental to the construction of

3.
Ottoman Algeria. Reproduced from John Ruedy, Modern Algeria (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 
by permission of Indiana University Press.

the saintly persona. Baraka was not only associated with persons but with specific places as well. And baraka was portable; it could be removed from spaces hitherto regarded as infused with the holy or sacred when the possessor departed. In short, baraka helped to create the holy person because it confirmed his or her privileged relation to God and thus conferred a special niche within the social order.

The most visible expression of baraka was the ability to perform miracles (karamat ) which signaled a temporary suspension of the natural order of things through divine intervention.^[6] Karamat, "gratuitous favors freely bestowed by God," assumed any number of guises—from curing and healing, to foreseeing the future, and to warding off malign spirits. Nevertheless, not all great saints and sufis were miracle workers; indeed some eschewed demonstrations of thaumaturgic powers, emphasizing instead right conduct or humility. For serious saints and sober sufis, the karamat were cited in hagiographical accounts with a didactic intent—to teach and to edify—since it was rather the heroic virtues and exalted piety of the holy persons which made them close to God.^[7] Immoderate miracles could debase the currency of the miraculous and thus the holy person's piety. The miracles performed by various Rahmaniyya notables (or at least recorded by their biographers) tended to be sedate in nature. Sidi Muhammad b. Abi al-Qasim's karamat were linked to learning, purity, and moral rectitude; Shaykh Muhammad b. 'Azzuz's miracles were associated with incorruptibility in dealings with those wielding profane power. In contrast, the miraculous events ascribed to Bu Ziyan as the mahdi were more akin to mu'jizat (miracles performed by prophets) and regarded by his partisans as evidence of election to a divinely ordained prophetic mission.^[8]

When these prodigious credentials achieved public recognition as such, they confirmed the saint or the prophet and could be instrumental in building popular followings.^[9] Moreover, it is argued here that if many of the religious notables making up the Rahmaniyya were first regarded as saints by their communities and subsequently "became" sufis, the mahdi in gestation employed the implicit paradigm of the saint to construct a pious persona as well as a clientele. Conversely, there were hidden cultural norms governing the acceptable political behavior of the saint and sufi, norms which only became explicit in times of political crisis and upheaval.

Blessed with baraka, the product of their special piety and extraordinary virtue, the saints and sufis were called upon to provide a plethora of services and fulfill a number of related socioreligious roles. Protection, intercession, patronage, healing, and mediation were sought from those individuals who represented channels of grace and served as advocates as well as worthy ancestors. Some examples from the region under consideration illustrate

how the ideology of baraka and collective veneration of holy persons operated in a specific environment and gave shape to its political, moral, and even ecological configuration. The oasis of Sidi Khalid near Biskra housed an ancient mosque-shrine dating from the eleventh century and dedicated to Sidi Khalid, the saint-founder. Unlike many villages in the pre-Sahara, this oasis was without fortifications. Its inhabitants, many of whom claimed descent from the saint, regarded his baraka as sufficient security against outside attack. Along the same lines of saintly patronage and protection, the miraculous intervention of a local saint in Nafta meant that the oasis escaped pillage at the hands of the Hafsid Sultan during repeated sieges between 1441–1449.^[10]

Tuzar's palm groves shelter more than a hundred saints' tombs: "the saints, bearers of baraka, are the only deceased allowed burial in the gardens; to bury a non-saint there would have baneful effects."^[11] In the agnatic hagiography of oasis society, kinship is expressed in relationship to a saintly ancestor, who may or may not be the group's biological progenitor. To the patron saint (or saints) of the lineage and its gardens were added saintly protectors of town quarters, factions, or entire cities; moreover, patronage and mediation, while in some respects distinct, overlapped in practice.^[12] Saintly genealogy and patronage thus worked to distribute blessings and virtue in historical time and space. And cults in honor of saints assured the continual flow of baraka as well as communal access to patronage and mediation.

Organized saint veneration depends very much upon "successful shrines" where miracles, "the essential signs of the power of the saint," occur with "adequate frequency."^[13] In popular theology, it was the karamat of the holy person as much as the saint himself (or herself) which attracted pilgrims and supplicants. Women in particular made daily visits to the neighborhood shrine or corner saint either to seek individual blessings or during festive occasions.^[14] Saints' cults created networks of political and cultural control, and since oasis shrines attracted agriculturists and tribes-people, they reinforced rural-urban interdependence. Expressing the cultural specificity of a community, organized cults and shrines did, at times, form the locus for collective opposition to the intrusions of outside powers. Moreover, clan-dominated shrines in the pre-Sahara promoted the interests of specific religious families and challenged those of their saintly competitors.

Thus, local cult centers could be objects of rivalry in contests over various sorts of power; saints, both living and dead, represented either valuable political assets as allies or liabilities as opponents. And because holy persons were usually endowed with "potentially dangerous and an-

archic" charisma, and the act of pilgrimage contained possibly "chaotic and liminal" elements, central authorities sought to regulate shrines, pilgrimages, and the collective veneration of the saints.^[15] As successors to the Turks, the French colonial regime in Algeria would inherit this preoccupation with public devotional practices associated with saintly lineages and their zawaya .

The Political Economy of Saint and Sufi

Generally the exercise of religious as opposed to political authority tended to be distinct in eastern Algeria and can be explained in part by the historically dominant position of the city of Constantine. This contrasts with western Algeria, where sharifian aristocracies emerged in cities like Tilimsan (Tlemcen) and Mascara (al-Mu'askar). As Allan Christelow observed, "The aggressive sharifs of Mascara tried to combine political and religious roles in the Moroccan manner . . . [which] contained an implicit challenge to the authority of the Ottoman state."^[16] Moreover, Amir 'Abd al-Qadir's jihad arose in Oran after 1832 precisely because profane and sacred politics were traditionally conflated in the western beylik.

In eastern Algeria, where centralization approached that of Husaynid Tunisia, the bey of the Constantine does not appear to have formally confirmed provincial or rural sufi shaykhs to leadership positions. Nevertheless, the bey selectively extended tax exemptions, fiscal privileges, and honorifics upon sufi or saintly figures. These exemptions, combined with the ritualized offerings of clients and pilgrims, often placed local religious notables in the large landholding class. For example, Sidi 'Abd al-Malik, heading one of Biskra's leading saintly lineages, was found in the 1844 census to control properties second in extent only to those held previously by the beys.^[17]

In nineteenth-century Tunisia, the bey conferred letters of investiture upon the shaykh al-shuyukh (leader of the major sufi orders), who was frequently considered a saint and member of the ulama corps as well. These letters also served as patents of tax-free status since they publicly reconfirmed the privileged financial status of a particular zawiya and the family managing it.^[18] The Husaynid state's efforts to tap into the social prestige of saints and sufi shaykhs residing on the margins of the beylik's realms are significant. First, they show that ruling elites in the Tunisian capital also subscribed to collective beliefs regarding the power of the saint and the efficacy of baraka. Second, they express the active interest that central governments took in major zawaya, even or especially those located at the limits of the state. This interest in turn suggests that the political fortunes of the beylik and its dominant classes found mainly in the capital were tied

to the loyalties of provincial religious notables.^[19] This fact would become all the more true after 1830.

When applied to orchards, gardens, or grain-producing fields, state-conferred fiscal exemptions could be more lucrative than the gifts or offerings that religious lineages received from their clients during the ziyara (the ritual visit by pilgrims, supplicants, or followers to the tomb of a local saint which was accompanied by donations; in the countryside these offerings tended to be in the form of rural produce). In the Awras, the collection of rural surplus by saintly sufi lineages through the idiom of the ziyara constituted one of the principal—if not the sole—means of capital accumulation.^[20] Nevertheless, it was understood that the great zawaya of the brotherhoods performed certain crucial religious and social services for the community; thus fiscal privilege and social obligation were wedded. And religious notables, particularly in the countryside, engaged in ritualized taxation—they collected contributions in kind, and less often in currency, from clients and pilgrims. Indeed, the act of pilgrimage demanded various kinds of transactions—spiritual, symbolic, and material. From this comes the dual meaning of ziyara in the popular idiom of saint cults: ziyara signifies both the visits or pilgrimages to local shrines and the offerings made to holy persons, living or deceased, associated with a particular cult center.^[21]

The death and burial of a saint, followed by the emergence of an organized cult of veneration to honor the holy person, created new "saint maps."^[22] To draw up a saint map of North Africa would produce a very complex document indeed. Ritualized visits, performed individually or as part of pilgrimage cycles to a tomb-shrine, enlarged the sociospiritual capital and material assets of privileged lineages (whether biological descendants of the holy person or not) managing the shrine. Nevertheless, the ziyara was a system of reciprocity; a symmetry of exchange existed since in return the faithful received counsel, instruction, edification, blessings, and cures—in short, salvation. Moreover, generosity and charity were popularly viewed as one of the most compelling virtues of the saint and sufi. Thus much of the revenue collected was redistributed in various forms. While part was converted into the working capital of a religious center, the remainder was recycled through social welfare services and hospitality into the local economy. The single most outstanding example of this was the Rahmaniyya zawiya of al-Hamil, founded after 1850 by Shaykh Muhammad b. Abi al-Qasim and administered by his daughter, Zaynab, from 1897 on.

Moreover, the contagious quality of baraka, believed most puissant in close proximity to the saint, also gave rise to a burial business or trade. After his death in 1897, Sidi Muhammad b. Abi al-Qasim's tomb in the

oasis of al-Hamil became a popular site for pious Muslims seeking a final resting place in sacred ground far removed from the contaminating influence of Algeria's European masters. Thus, colonialism both reinforced as well as altered the Maghrib's saint maps and French officials developed an intense, at times, obsessive interest in the political dimensions of spiritual cartography.

Finally, the saint's protection and patronage meant that shrines, as sacred spaces, were exempt from profane politics, at least in theory.^[23] In the oases, religious establishments (mosques, zawaya, and qubbas) and the suqs were universally regarded as politically neutral terrain. The same was true in tribal regions where embryonic cult centers and "explosive markets" coexisted. There various kinds of exchanges (economic, diplomatic, and otherwise) were concluded through the sacred armistice imposed and guaranteed by the holy person's presence.^[24]

Between Maghrib and Mashriq: The Rahmaniyya Tariqa, c. 1770–1830

And this saint [Mustafa b. 'Azzuz] entered Tunisian territory [from the Ziban] and disseminated the Rahmaniyya tariqa among the tribes.^[25]

North African saint maps were not fixed. In times of social crisis or political upheaval, the ranks of the holy men and women tended toward inflation. The reproduction of saints was especially fecund in regions like the Jarid and Ziban, which being "axial points of the eastern Maghrib" represented crossroads for the hajj, trade, and tribal migrations as well as provincial poles of religious attraction.^[26] For the Rahmaniyya tariqa, which emerged in the late eighteenth century, new and old saint maps converged to create a sufi order.

As Roy Mottahedeh observed, "Sufism was a special form of piety." From the early Islamic period, the more vaguely defined notion of taqwa, often associated with asceticism and supererogatory acts of worship, became an increasingly institutionalized ideal and mode of socioreligious behavior. While originally distinct in meaning, the three cultural personae of sufi, 'alim, and "leaders in piety" blurred over time. And by channeling piety or sanctity, organized sufism sought to control it.^[27] By the eighteenth century, sufi brotherhoods had long been highly articulated organizations with clear definitions of membership, initiation rites, and elaborate ceremonials. In North Africa in particular, the turuq (plural of tariqa , literally path or way; by extension, sufi order or brotherhood) tended toward strong leadership; their shaykhs wielded considerable moral authority and social

influence. And the vast majority of North African males (and to a lesser extent females) irrespective of region, social status, or occupation belonged to one or even several sufi orders.

Sufi orders often owed their origins to the travels of individuals driven by an intensely personal quest for knowledge, spiritual perfection, and the fulfillment of religious duties, particularly the hajj. The act of spiritual passage as well as physical displacement was instrumental in the creation of a number of new North African sufi orders, above all, the Rahmaniyya tariqa.^[28] In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, a Berber 'alim, originally from the Ait Isma'il tribe of the Qashtula (Guechtoula) confederacy, returned to his native Kabylia after a long sojourn in the Mashriq.^[29] Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Rahman had departed on the hajj in 1739–1740 and then remained in Cairo for three decades to study Khalwatiyya sufi doctrines at the feet of the order's master, Muhammad b. Salim al-Hifnawi (1689–1767–68).^[30] Upon his return to Algeria in the 1760s or 1770s, the Kabyle scholar began teaching, preaching, and initiating his fellow countrypeople into the Khalwatiyya way. Backed by the enormous weight of the Azhar tradition and his own piety and knowledge acquired at the wellsprings of Islam's center, Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Rahman first became the focal point of a saint cult in his honor and subsequently the founder of a sufi order named after him.^[31] While Sidi 'Abd al-Rahman and his spiritual successors viewed the Rahmaniyya as part of the eastern Khalwatiyya way, in a radically different social environment, the offshoot Maghribi tariqa assumed its own unique configuration.

The elaboration of a new sufi order represents a social movement due to the collective responses, popular and elite, to both the messenger and the message. By the eve of the saint-founder's death in 1793–1794, the Rahmaniyya had expanded considerably in terms of membership from its original matrix in the Jurjura Mountains. It counted followers in the Kabylia and Algiers region as well as in eastern Algeria, the Awras Mountains, and the pre-Sahara. Soon it would spill over the borders with Tunisia into the regions of al-Kaf and later into the Jarid. For some saintly lineages in the pre-Sahara, membership in the tariqa brought a large measure of social mobility. In part the later political behavior of these religious notables was a function of their Rahmaniyya affiliation which enmeshed previously autonomous and local saintly lineages into wider networks. Thus, the order's expansion, and the participation of provincial sufi leaders and their clients in nineteenth-century protest movements, were not distinct phenomena but were linked. Moreover, because of the nature of religious, political, and economic relationships in eastern Algeria, the development of the Rahmaniyya's Saharan branch at the eigh-

teenth century's end was tied to the province, and particularly to the city, of Constantine.

Constantine as a Mediating Center for the Rahmaniyya

Constantine is a fortress-like city perched on a series of deep gorges over the River Rummel (Wadi al-Raml) and situated at the confluence of the ecological regions discussed in the previous chapter—the Mediterranean coast; the elevated, semi-arid plateau; and the Saharan Atlas and Awras.^[32] Location made Constantine the nucleus of trade networks radiating out from the provincial capital and its hinterland and leading to seaports, to towns along the Tunisian frontiers, or to Saharan entrepôt cities.^[33] Eastern Algeria's most active center for exchanges in cereals, olive oil, dates, and livestock, Constantine was frequented by desert traders and pastoralists, sedentary Berber agronomists and colporteurs, and grain cultivators of the plains, not to mention large numbers of foreign merchants, mainly from Tunisia.^[34] Because Constantine's nearest port, Skikda, is fifty kilometers to the north with only mediocre maritime facilities, Tunis was its principal door to the Mediterranean and the Mashriq. Trade was brisk between regional market centers in Tunisia, like al-Kaf, Kasserine, Tuzar, and Nafta and towns in eastern Algeria.

Under Turkish rule, Algeria's eastern province was the largest, wealthiest, and most populous with the highest proportion of sedentary agriculturists and city dwellers. By the reign of Salah Bey (1771–1792), Constantine had become the most centralized of the three beyliks. Its capital historically dominated not only cultural and political life in this part of the Maghrib but also economic relations as attested to by the city's relatively flourishing commercial and artisanal industries. Trade, of whatever sort, was a monopoly of the beylik's rulers and closely supervised by them.^[35] Moreover, the beys shaped the political sensibilities of religious notables, whether residing in the capital or at the margins of the province. In the city, the higher-ranking ulama—qadis, muftis , etc.—were accorded state salaries commensurate with their office. The Turks rewarded the political loyalty of Constantine's great families by parceling out prestigious religious offices; the al-Fakkun (Ben el-Faggun) clan held the important function of shaykh al-Islam from the late sixteenth century until the French conquest in 1837.^[36] In addition, religious notables were normally not subject to taxation, and, more important, exercised theoretically exclusive control over the extensive hubus properties, a source of considerable social and financial power. Those claiming descent from the Prophet's house—and their numbers tended to swell over the centuries—were also excused

from taxation as were many sufi shaykhs and saintly lineages.^[37] By failing to respect ancient traditions of fiscal privilege, the French masters of Algeria created a deep sense of grievance among many religious notables after 1830.

The bourgeoisie of Constantine, whose total population is estimated at twenty-five thousand souls prior to 1830, was among the most prosperous in the region due to land holdings in the city's hinterland and involvement in local, regional, or international trade, an activity frequently combined with state office. Much to its advantage, the city enjoyed particularly close economic and cultural ties with the Tunisian beylik, resulting in a constant flow of caravans as well as students and scholars between Tunis and Constantine. In contrast to the western province, urban and rural communities were more intimately linked due to the structure of the province's ecology and economy. Some leading tribal shaykhs from the south or the mountains maintained residences in the city. And the members of aspiring religious families from the Awras or the pre-Sahara not only studied at the city's numerous madrasas but also frequently stopped off there for extended periods while performing the hajj.^[38]

Unlike the Kabylia, the Rahmaniyya's original locus, Constantine was the domain par excellence of the scholar and the faqih (Muslim jurist); here the Islam of the countryside fused with urban, mosque-centered Islam. In 1830 the city boasted over a hundred mosques, madrasas, zawaya, and other religious establishments; the courses offered in the principal mosques drew large popular audiences as well as those versed in the religious sciences. Constantine had a substantial ulama corps, many of whom had studied in places like al-Azhar in Cairo, the Zaytuna in Tunis, or the Qarawiyyin in Fez. While the city was not as brilliant a center of Islamic learning as its competitors to the east and west, still it represented a cultural lodestar for provincial religious clans seeking to educate their sons or to enter into state service as qadis or katibs (scribes).^[39]

Rahmaniyya Expansion from Constantine, c. 1780–1830

While the Rahmaniyya's original matrix was the Kabylia, Constantine's importance as a religious center meant that it acted as a disseminator of the doctrines of the nascent tariqa. In this the Bash Tarzi family, who as the name indicates were of Arab-Turkish origins, played a crucial role. Sometime in the 1770s or 1780s Mustafa Bash Tarzi visited Sidi Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Rahman al-Azhari at his zawiya in the Jurjura Mountains. Sidi Muhammad's reputation as an 'alim, faqih, sufi, and member of al-Azhar's inner circle had brought religious scholars from all over Algeria to his side. Swayed by Bash Tarzi's erudition and piety (and perhaps his family or-

igins), the saint-founder initiated him into the order and designated him a muqaddam (sufi representative authorized to initiate others).^[40] Bash Tarzi was instructed by his shaykh to spread Rahmaniyya teachings in Constantine to combat "the worldliness of its inhabitants." Subsequently he and his successors and kinsmen established several Rahmaniyya centers in their native city and its environs. Eventually the tariqa spread throughout the northern Constantine as well as along the eastern borders with Tunisia and into the pre-Sahara.

The Bash Tarzis' religious credentials were already well established prior to joining the order; they had provided Hanafi qadis and imams to the city's Islamic institutions from the early Ottoman period on. While the Bash Tarzis were eminent, they did not occupy the highest rung of the religious pecking order, long monopolized by the Banu al-Fakkun. This fact may be significant in explaining the Rahmaniyya's appeal to certain strata of religious elites. The Bash Tarzi's association with the new tariqa helped to promote the Rahmaniyya while also enhancing the family's own fortunes and social standing.^[41] At the same time, social conditions in Constantine nurtured the movement represented by Sidi 'Abd al-Rahman al-Azhari. Relative to other urban areas in Algeria, Constantine was the most receptive to ideas from outside; it enjoyed close ties with Tunis and the Mashriq, and its ulama corps was firmly embedded in the city's social fabric. Moreover, Constantine enjoyed two decades of enlightened rule under Salah Bey, who, following the example of his predecessors, proved especially solicitous of the men of religion.^[42]

The tariqa's rapid expansion owed much to recruitment strategies which incorporated local religious notables into its leadership. The Bash Tarzis chose privileged saintly lineages from the Ziban, such as the 'Azzuz of al-Burj, to represent the order and proselytize among the pre-Sahara's villages and tribes.^[43] This was in keeping with the franchise principle which had facilitated earlier Rahmaniyya expansion in the Kabylia.^[44] Rather than posing as competitors to local holy men, which in parts of the Kabylia had provoked opposition, older saintly clans in the pre-Sahara were made muqaddams; their religious clients were assimilated to Rahmaniyya networks.^[45] In the southern Constantine as in the north, the Rahmaniyya was "wedded to maraboutic morphology; this led to an imbrication of the order with the Kabyle style of saint veneration."^[46] And as was true of most North African turuq, Rahmaniyya murids (sufi novices) and shaykhs distinguished themselves by carrying a special sort of misbaha (prayer beads), distinctive clothing, and specific forms of address used when encountering other members. These external cultural signposts gave tangible expression to inner spiritual commitment as well as to intense socioreligious bonds.^[47]

At the popular level, other forces attracted ordinary people to the Rahmaniyya. Geographically, the order gained followers in regions where the tribes' seasonal movements brought them from the desert to summer pasturage in the Tell. Moreover, the first Rahmaniyya zawaya established along the borders between Algeria and Tunisia were found precisely in market towns such as al-Kaf or Tala which handled commercial traffic between the two regencies.^[48] Sa'adallah asserts that the tariqa's urban membership swelled during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries due to its accessibility to those of humble rank.^[49] After Salah Bey's demise, Constantine was beset by grave sociomoral dislocation and rebellions, followed by the 1805 famine which brought widespread suffering.^[50] Prolonged political chaos may also have encouraged ordinary people to join the Rahmaniyya tariqa. Moreover, if poetry is an indicator of collective sentiments, Sidi 'Abd al-Rahman al-Azhari had become a heroic cult figure in Constantine's popular quarters.

One of Constantine's most remarkable poets during this period was Shaykh al-Rahmuni al-Haddad, who composed at least one madih (panegyrical poem) in honor of the Rahmaniyya's founder. Popular bards frequented the city's cafes, where they entertained clients with tales, songs, and ballads composed in local dialects. The poet was an important figure in the social landscape since he not only served as a barometer of public opinion but also shaped the communal moral consensus. Al-Haddad's praise poem extolling Sidi 'Abd al-Rahman's piety was recited in the city's gathering places sometime in the first decade of the nineteenth century. In it, saintly virtues were contrasted with lamentations regarding the reversal of the natural order and Islam's corruption in Constantine.^[51]

Equally significant is that the poet dedicated his verses to the mahdi, the religious figure deemed capable of righting a world turned upside down. Here it should be noted that collective expectations of the redeemer's imminent appearance seem to have been heightened among most, if not all, strata of North African society from the late eighteenth century on. In part this was related to the fact that the year 1200 in the Islamic calendar came in 1785–1786; the start of a new century—in this case the symbolically charged thirteenth century—was viewed as an event of cosmic significance. And as David Robinson has shown in his study of Umar Tal's movement, many Muslims in West Africa viewed that century as holding forth the promise of "expected revival, turmoil, and possibly final judgement."^[52]

While there is little hint of millenarian anticipation in Sidi 'Abd al-Rahman's original teachings, after his death, and above all, after the French invasion of Algeria, millenarian expectations reached a fever pitch.^[53] Several Rahmaniyya zawaya served as cores for mahdist-led revolts which

were either led or supported by sufi notables. And if the madih was a cultural medium that was widely employed in North Africa to honor saints, sufis, and the pious, later, in the context of militant resistance to the colonial order, the praise poem promoted messianic rebels. One example was Bu Ziyan, who after proclaiming himself the mahdi in 1849, launched an anti-French rebellion that was endorsed by some Saharan Rahmaniyya elites, among them, the 'Azzuz clan.

The 'Azzuz of al-Burj: The Transformation of a Saintly Lineage

Sidi Muhammad b. 'Azzuz (1756/57–1819) was among the first to introduce Rahmaniyya teachings to the inhabitants of the southern Constantine. The 'Azzuz were a privileged saintly lineage whose members had long dominated the ritual life of the oases and tribal peoples.^[54] In the past century, the Ziban was composed of four clusters of oases: the Biskra area, the most important; the Zab Dahrawi, second to Biskra in population, and the site of several important Rahmaniyya centers as well as Bu Ziyan's uprising; the Zab Sharqi, the Ziban's eastern wing located along the transversal, east-west route leading to the Jarid; and the Zab Qibli, the southernmost section. As was true of most Saharan villages, stout walls protected the oases from attacks by unruly neighbors, state fiscal authorities, or the surrounding pastoral-nomadic peoples.

The Zab Dahrawi encompassed eight villages or towns, each internally organized according to kinship. In addition to engaging in date-palm cultivation, textile production, and trade, the villagers owned livestock cared for by allied pastoralists; in return, the oases functioned as storage places for the pastoral nomads during the migration season.^[55] Thus, this subregion was characterized by the sedentary-nomad mutualism discussed earlier. Two towns, al-Burj and Tulqa (Tolga), were blessed with abundant water resources which accounts for their agricultural and commercial prosperity. For centuries both had served as modest outposts of Islamic learning as well as local pilgrimage sites. Due to the affiliation of religious elites with the new tariqa, al-Burj and Tulqa were the most active in disseminating Rahmaniyya doctrines.

The first detailed colonial study of the Ziban was carried out only in 1839; thus information for earlier periods is sketchy, particularly in view of the destruction wrought by the French army.^[56] Al-Burj, home of the 'Azzuz, was second in size to Tulqa; both oases suffered cruelly from epidemics, particularly the plague years of the early 1820s.^[57] Al-Burj counted some eight hundred people in 1839; it enclosed at least four mosques and eleven zawaya and smaller shrines, which implies a religious density—in terms

of ratios between Islamic establishments and population—similar to the much larger oases of the Jarid.^[58] At the town's center was the great mosque sheltering Sidi 'Abd al-Rahman b. Dalim's remains; the saint was popularly venerated as the founder and patron of al-Burj. Sidi Dalim's tomb-shrine was located near Bab al-'Ain, the main water source for the gardens, which suggests a link between his baraka and oasis fertility. The 'Azzuz claimed to be Sidi Dalim's descendants, a crucial component of their elevated socioreligious status prior to joining the Rahmaniyya tariqa.^[59]

Known as the "light of the Sahara," Sidi Muhammad b. 'Azzuz was from a powerful family of awliya' who had settled in the Ziban fourteen generations earlier.^[60] Most, if not all, of the region's saintly lineages traced their origins back to the Saqiya al-Hamra' in the Moroccan Sus—that breeding ground for the holy persons who unleashed the maraboutic diasporas centuries earlier.^[61] These myths of origin had a double advantage. First, they bestowed an eastern Arab and, vastly more important, a sharifian genealogy upon these families—or at least made socially credible their appropriation of that ancestry. Second, that many local holy persons in Algeria and Tunisia claimed Moroccan origins conferred the beneficial status of the politically neutral "stranger" in a society perilously divided by saff affiliations. Moreover, sharifian descent and generic saintliness were closely associated in both popular lore and erudite traditions, as were two other crucial attributes of the saintly persona, science and mysticism. Until the appearance of renewed sufi orders like the Rahmaniyya and the Tijaniyya in the eighteenth century, sainthood and saintliness for most North Africans was linked to the Saqiya al-Hamra'.

Prior to becoming a Rahmaniyya notable, Sidi Muhammad already enjoyed the status of both saint and scholar due to kinship with the Prophet's family as well as his ability to work miracles, public recognition of his piety, and his advanced Islamic knowledge. As was true of other saintly lineages in the oasis environment, the 'Azzuz's moral authority and social standing had multiple sources: their monopoly of Islamic learning and literacy, baraka, their relatively large land and water holdings, and their politically ambiguous niche as "outsiders." This last factor meant that successful saints were the most effective mediators in endemic village disputes or in struggles pitting oasis inhabitants against the pastoralists.^[62] Moreover, the 'Azzuz family had long administered a religious center in al-Burj—the zawiya connected with the collective devotion of Sidi Dalim—although they had not apparently belonged to any ramified sufi order prior to joining the Rahmaniyya.

Sidi Muhammad was born in al-Burj and educated by his father, Ahmad b. Yusuf, who was also venerated as a waliy. In keeping with hagiographical

conventions of the period, Sidi Muhammad is credited with learning the Quran by heart as a young boy under his father's guidance; more advanced studies in the religious sciences were also completed at the al-Burj zawiya. At some point, the young man was seized by a desire to immerse himself in the study of tasawwuf; he departed for the Jurjura Mountains, then the nucleus of the newly created Rahmaniyya order still under the spiritual direction of Shaykh 'Abd al-Rahman al-Azhari. There 'Azzuz was initiated into the tariqa at the hands of the order's founder, a source of immense spiritual prestige. Sidi 'Abd al-Rahman then bade Muhammad b. 'Azzuz to seek further instruction in Constantine under Shaykh Bash Tarzi, the city's leading Rahmaniyya notable; it is uncertain, however, when this occurred or how much time 'Azzuz spent in eastern Algeria's capital.^[63] There is no indication that Muhammad b. 'Azzuz ever studied in the Mashriq; thus his intellectual and religious credentials were established in Constantine, although he did journey to the Haramayn to perform the pilgrimage.

Sometime in the 1780s, Bash Tarzi appointed Sidi Muhammad as the order's muqaddam for the Ziban, an honor which he held until his death in 1819. This appointment affirmed his special place within the tariqa's hierarchy, confirmed his personal piety, and increased his stature as an 'alim. Sidi Muhammad composed a number of scholarly works related to his position within the tariqa, among them a treatise on sufism and a legal commentary.^[64] Affiliation with the Rahmaniyya later increased the 'Azzuzes sociospiritual capital, making them one of the pre-Sahara's most influential families and thus a power to be reckoned with by the French. Their material fortunes may have expanded as well. An inflation in the number of clients, pilgrims, and supplicants to the zawiya brought a concomitant increase in ziyaras and pious donations. Conversely, it appears that the clan's clientele became part of the expanding sufi network; the ranks of the Rahmaniyya swelled as local saintly lineages joined the tariqa.^[65] Thus, the social mobility of religious clans and the social recruitment of a embryonic sufi order were mutually reinforcing.

In the pre-Sahara, Sidi Muhammad in turn chose sufi disciples from among the leading saintly families of the Jabal Awras and Biskra region: 'Ali b. 'Umar al-Tulqi of Tulqa; Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz b. Muhammad of Khanqa Sidi Naji in the Jabal Cherchar; al-Mukhtar b. Khalifa from the Awlad Jallal, a small oasis just south of al-Burj; Mubarak b. Khuyadim of Biskra; and Sadiq b. al-Hajj b. Masmudi of the oasis of Sidi Masmudi in the Awras. These disciple-advocates spread Rahmaniyya doctrines in ever-widening circles until the tariqa counted followers throughout the Awras, in al-Hamil near Bu Sa'ada, and as far south as Tuqqurt, Warqala, and al-Aghwat. While Sidi Muhammad b. 'Azzuz's spiritual and moral authority

preserved harmony among his sufi associates during his lifetime, competition over spiritual turf emerged immediately after his death in 1819. The French army's arrival in the Ziban during the 1840s further complicated relationships among notables of the Saharan Rahmaniyya.^[66]

By the late 1790s, Sidi Muhammad was also initiating murids into the Rahmaniyya in the oasis of al-Awad (El Oued) near the Tunisian border. The shaykhs of the main sufi turuq vying for followers in this period and later—the Rahmaniyya, the Tijaniyya, and the Qadiriyya—employed two strategies for implanting their respective "ways" among sedentary or tribal peoples. One was matrimonial; marriages were concluded with women from locally prestigious lineages which served to cement sociospiritual relations between tariqa notables and a particular family, tribal fraction, or village. Marital alliance might also be combined with a second strategy—designating the head of a saintly lineage to serve as a tariqa's na'ib (representative). In the Suf, Shaykh Muhammad's choice fell upon Sidi Salim, a powerful but quite local saint, who headed a Rahmaniyya circle there. Nearly a century later, the Rahmaniyya establishment in al-Awad was still associated with Sidi Salim's progeny. By then two religious structures dominated the Suf's capital. The older was a large zawiya built in memory of Muhammad b. 'Azzuz in the 1820s by one of his wealthy followers. The second building was the great mosque dedicated to Shaykh Muhammad's son, Mustafa.^[67] Situated at the base of a hill overlooking al-Awad, the mosque's high, square minaret, constructed of several superimposed stories, can still be seen today from a considerable distance.

None of the Suf's Rahmaniyya zawaya ever attained a status similar in reputation to those in the Ziban, Awras, or Jarid. Perhaps the competition from traditional religious centers like al-Burj, Tulqa, Khanqa Sidi Naji, or Nafta was too great to overcome. Then too the isolation of the Suf's oases, with their small sedentary populations and higher percentage of pastoralists, may have worked against regional religious prominence, although under the French regime these same conditions would confer a large measure of political autonomy. Sidi Muhammad b. 'Azzuz did not attempt to spread Rahmaniyya teachings into the Tunisian Jarid. It was rather his son and successor, Mustafa, who made Nafta and Tuzar into leading Rahmaniyya centers after emigrating from French-held territory in the 1840s.

Several years before his death, Shaykh Muhammad b. 'Azzuz made the pilgrimage to the Hijaz. On this long and dangerous voyage, he was accompanied by his closest spiritual intimates, 'Ali b. 'Umar al-Tulqi and 'Abd al-Hafiz b. Muhammad of Khanqa Sidi Naji; their selection to journey with 'Azzuz was a sign of particular favor.^[68] Sidi 'Ali b. 'Umar and Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz were more than mere students of Shaykh Muhammad; they were

his murids, or disciples. The master-disciple relationship was the cornerstone of the sufi way. A lifelong friendship, it forged spiritual kinship and loyalties (or rivalries) which usually endured over generations, thus recreating the order's silsila (in sufism, a chain of spiritual descent) over time.^[69]

Destined for Cairo and then Mecca, the Maghribi caravan which Sidi Muhammad b. 'Azzuz joined in 1816 or 1817 had initiated its journey in Morocco; among its numerous pilgrims was the future Moroccan sultan, Mawlay 'Abd al-Rahman (reigned 1822–1859). The presence of this prominent member of the ruling class and shurafa' furnished Sidi Muhammad with the opportunity to perform a miracle, at least according to his hagiographer. Despite the fact that 'Abd al-Rahman was not the heir apparent, Shaykh Muhammad miraculously predicted his unanticipated accession to the throne as 'Alawi sultan.^[70] How should this karama be interpreted? Whether the incident took place is irrelevant; rather it should be seen as an ideological and moral statement about various kinds of power. In the very least, the miracle underscored Shaykh Muhammad's claims to baraka. Yet the ability to foresee the political future of a scion of the Maghrib's oldest Muslim dynasty might be taken as a subtle expression of the morally superior powers of the saint and sufi. The socially leveling effect of the hajj, whose caravan juxtaposed the mighty with the humble, is another implicit theme.

Upon his return from the Haramayn, Sidi Muhammad succumbed to an outbreak of plague which reappeared several years later in a more virulent form, carrying off a good portion of the pre-Sahara's population.^[71] Muhammad b. 'Azzuz left behind at least two daughters and six sons, some of whom continued their father's work within the Rahmaniyya tariqa. Nevertheless, this second generation would have to adjust to a radically different political environment after 1830. Sidi Muhammad's tomb-shrine, located within the Rahmaniyya center in al-Burj, soon made the oasis into a favored pilgrimage site. Until well into the present century, his blessings and intercession were sought by the faithful from Algeria and Tunisia.^[72] Sidi Muhammad's spiritual capital was surely enlarged by performing the hajj, since the returning pilgrim's place in local Muslim society was profoundly altered by fulfilling this fundamental Islamic duty. In the vicinity of his qabr, the saint's baraka was all the more potent, thus beckoning the faithful to his final resting place.

However, even before 1819, al-Burj's zawiya had attracted such a large following that it could no longer accommodate its disciples. Not all of the zawiya's visitors were necessarily Rahmaniyya members; the tariqa's leadership normally offered social services to the community at large, irre-

spective of sufi affiliation.^[73] Moreover, the region's political economy—the villages served as collective tribal granaries—also played a part in the zawiya's popularity. During their winter sojourn in the oases for the date harvest, transhumant peoples visited sufi centers, shrines, and mosques. Tribal children were sent to the kuttab (schools) attached to the larger zawaya to learn the Quran; and the notables associated with a particular zawiya performed religious or spiritual services for the tribes.^[74] Shaykh Muhammad's biographer, al-Hafnawi, mentions that he was called upon both by ordinary people, who "used to appeal to him to settle peacefully their disputes," and by the umara' (tribal leaders) "to quell unrest."^[75] In addition, sufi zawaya served as sanctuaries for those fleeing state justice or tribal vendettas. An aman (amnesty) for whomever sought a zawiya's protection was often arranged for by its head shaykh; political refugees sometimes resided in sufi centers for extended periods of time. For example, the Rahmaniyya shaykh of al-Hamil, Muhammad b. Abi al-Qasim (1827–1897), sheltered dissidents in the family zawiya for decades.

To house the influx of students and scholars, the larger Rahmaniyya zawiya in Tulqa became the tariqa's Saharan center after 1819, although Sidi 'Ali b. 'Umar's selection as Shaykh Muhammad's spiritual successor played a not insignificant role as well.^[76] What was at stake here was not merely spiritual authority but also charismatic leadership, which could, in the belief system of the period, be transmitted from one generation to the next. Spiritual succession often meant special access to the fund of baraka accumulated by a venerated saint and sufi.

The Saints and Sufis of Tulqa

Tulqa is situated to the northeast of al-Burj and on the route to Bu Sa'ada; some forty kilometers separated it from Biskra. Its abundant water supply supported intensive irrigated agriculture, extensive date-palm gardens, and a population—estimated at roughly four hundred households in 1839–second only to Biskra's. Despite Tulqa's relatively modest size, the oasis boasted numerous religious establishments: six mosques and at least seventeen zawaya, qubbas, and smaller shrines.^[77] By the nineteenth century, the town was formed of three agglomerations, each surrounded by walls and ramparts. The oasis's numerous springs and wells moved the French painter, Eugène Fromentin, to characterize it as "the Normandy of the Sahara" during his 1848 visit.^[78]

Tulqa is one of the region's oldest oases. In Roman times it sheltered a small fortress, and it figures quite early in historical accounts of the Islamic period.^[79] In the first decade of the fourteenth century, a movement which was "half feud, half rebellion" against the Hafsid state erupted there. The revolt was centered in a zawiya near Tulqa and led by Sa'ada, a local

holy man or murabit. Since Tulqa's importance as a pilgrimage site in subsequent centuries was partially due to this zawiya's presence and its traditions of Islamic reform as well as militant resistance to the state, it is instructive to consider Sa'ada's jacquerie.

Little is known of Sa'ada until he challenged the Hafsid governor, although as a youth he was greatly influenced by his mother, a holy woman fervently devoted to Islam. After completing religious studies in Taza, Morocco, Sa'ada returned to Tulqa, where he initiated his public ministry by admonishing the people to "command the right and forbid the wrong."^[80] His message combined exhortations to return to Sunni Islam with appeals to suppress non-Quranic taxes and brigandage in the region. This program, plus the social composition of his following, which included Arab tribal leaders, humble folk, and groups normally belonging to rival leagues, alarmed the governor, who moved to expel the troublemakers from Tulqa. Naming his movement the "Sunniyya" or "murabitun," Sa'ada had the zawiya built as a locus of opposition to the state; next the rebels laid siege to Biskra on two occasions, although without success. Sa'ada's execution by the central authorities in 1305–1306 did not, however, end the rebellion, which sputtered on and off for decades. The long-term historical significance of the episode was that the Ziban's inhabitants, many of whom held Kharajite beliefs, were "reconverted" to Sunni orthodoxy. Centuries later the movement remained embedded in the popular collective memory.^[81]

Bu Ziyan's 1849 revolt bears an uncanny resemblance to Sa'ada's in several crucial respects; the use of the zawiya as a matrix for concerted action aimed at overturning the political order is one striking similarity. Then too the rebellion's agenda, set by the pious, ascetic Sa'ada, who was not from the local Islamic establishment, collapsed social and economic grievances—banditry and illicit (non-Quranic) taxation—with religious renewal. Moreover, neither Sa'ada nor Bu Ziyan advocated withdrawal or avoidance protest since both rebel leaders launched offensives against Biskra, the symbol of central government authority and oppression in the Ziban. In addition, Sa'ada's revolt ended when his tribal contingents migrated to their winter pasturage in the Sahara, leaving him undermanned as state forces counterattacked; the same scenario occurred in 1849. Finally, the Hafsids skillfully co-opted the movement's religious leadership by offering the coveted post of qadi of Biskra to the local holy man heading the rebellious community after Sa'ada's death.^[82] Here too there are resonances with the later reactions of some Rahmaniyya notables to the French takeover of the pre-Sahara after 1844.

Sa'ada's zawiya, however, survived its charismatic founder's death, and his clan remained in control of the religious establishment for generations. Credited with miraculous powers, Sa'ada's descendants became local saints

who provided safe conduct to travelers and merchants in the region for which they normally received some kind of remuneration.^[83] The provision of security to those traversing regions divided by tribal quarrels can be regarded as temporary patronage, undergirded by the principle of baraka. Thus, safe conducts guaranteed by the saints constituted portable baraka, a sort of preventative or preemptive mediation in a lend-lease form. And this was not limited to Tulqa since other zawaya and privileged lineages were still responsible many centuries later for maintaining social order along the region's trade routes.

It is uncertain whether the ancient zawiya implicated in Sa'ada's rebellion was the same religious center later administered by the Rahmaniyya shaykhs of Tulqa. According to family legend, the ancestors of Sidi 'Ali b. 'Umar al-Idrisi al-Hasani (died 1842) had emigrated from the Saqiya al-Hamra' sometime in the fifteenth century.^[84] Why they were attracted to the Ziban is a matter of conjecture, although the murabitun movement centered in Tulqa may have been a factor. The town's location on the transversal hajj route from Morocco to the Haramayn may also have played a role in their establishment in the Biskra area. Until their adherence to the Rahmaniyya tariqa in the last decade of the eighteenth century, Sidi 'Ali's lineage did not belong to any of the older sufi orders. Their social status sprang from multiple roles as baraka brokers, mediators, imams, and educators; their religious establishment served as a local center of Islamic learning and culture. As was the case with the 'Azzuz, Sidi 'Ali's family had long served as intermediaries between sedentary and tribal clients as well as between government authorities and the oasis's inhabitants.^[85] Indeed, Sidi 'Ali b. 'Umar's peacekeeping efforts cost him his life in 1842.

Because there is relatively more information on Tulqa for the precolonial period, the oasis can serve as a paradigm for the general arrangement of social relations and local political forces. The town was split into two saffs; the first was under the Awlad Ziyan who formed a rustic aristocracy; the second group, more heterogeneous in composition, called themselves the "ahl Tulqa," or simply the "people of Tulqa." This saff grouped together the oasis's original inhabitants and masters—before the Awlad Ziyan seized control sometime in the distant past. Since the Awlad Ziyan claimed "Fasi" origins (i.e., from Fez), they too may have migrated to the Ziban during the great maraboutic diaspora; their dominant position might have initially rested upon religious grounds.^[86]

By the early nineteenth century, however, the Awlad Ziyan had evolved into secular notables with makhzan status, that is, with ties to the central government. Under the Turkish system, Tulqa's inhabitants enjoyed the exclusive privilege of serving as retainers in the great household of the dey

of Algiers; whether this right was converted into local authority in the Ziban is uncertain but not unlikely. The Awlad Ziyan thus represented a group of hereditary administrators who exerted an uneasy control over the adjacent villages of al-'Amri, Fughala, and Za'atsha. In the Ottoman period, the shaykhs of Tulqa were exempt from taxation and received the burnus of investiture from the bey of the Constantine. They levied taxes upon the villagers, half of which in theory were remitted to the bey's treasury. Bloody fighting not infrequently erupted between the Awlad Ziyan and the ahl Tulqa or the other villages, inevitably provoked by fiscal exactions. In addition, quarrels and pitched battles with nearby al-Burj, which was outside of Tulqa's administrative ambit, were a semipermanent feature of oasis life. Therefore, the daunting task for religious notables, such as the 'Azzuz family or Sidi 'Ali b. 'Umar's clan, was not so much to prevent disputes as to manage social conflict when it erupted by effecting temporary reconciliations.^[87] This task devolved even more so upon local Rahmaniyya shaykhs after the fall of the Turkish regime in 1830 and particularly with the French army's arrival in the pre-Sahara during the 1840s.

'Ali b. 'Umar's first encounter with the Rahmaniyya order and its founder came as he returned from a pilgrimage to the Hijaz. Stopping off in Constantine, where news of Sidi Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Rahman's preaching and miracles had created a sensation among the learned and the unlettered alike, Sidi 'Ali made his way to the Rahmaniyya zawiya in the Jurjura. (While the exact date of this is uncertain, it must have occurred prior to 1793–1794, the year of Sidi Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Rahman's death.) There Sidi 'Ali was initiated into the tariqa by Shaykh 'Abd al-Rahman himself, a sign of favor which was later converted into considerable sociospiritual prestige, for Sidi 'Ali eventually received the very important sufi honorific of qutb (literally, "pole").^[88]

Leaving the Kabylia for his native town, Sidi 'Ali b. 'Umar began teaching Rahmaniyya doctrines in the Ziban. However, membership in the new tariqa meant that he became a disciple and subordinate of Shaykh Muhammad b. 'Azzuz of al-Burj, the muqaddam for the order's Saharan affiliates. Several decades later, Shaykh Muhammad b. 'Azzuz passed over his numerous sons and disciples to select 'Ali b. 'Umar as his spiritual heir. Sidi 'Ali held the office of Rahmaniyya shaykh al-shuyukh from 1819 until 1842, when death surprised him in that quintessential saintly function—mediation. In addition, Muhammad b. 'Azzuz entrusted Sidi 'Ali with the education of his son Mustafa b. 'Azzuz, who spent several years at the Tulqa zawiya as a student. The subjects offered to students were not only the Quran, hadith, and fiqh but also classical Arabic literature, kalam or theology, and the mystical sciences. As important, Tulqa boasted an espe-

cially fine library enclosing some three thousand manuscripts by the middle of the past century; many had been brought back from the Mashriq by Rahmaniyya notables when performing the hajj, as Sidi 'Ali had done with his spiritual preceptor, Muhammad b. 'Azzuz.^[89] While the exact dates of Mustafa's stay in Tulqa are unknown, he probably studied under Sidi 'Ali in the 1820s, as first his disciple and then his future successor. Moreover, the fact that Mustafa was sent to learn at Sidi 'Ali's side indicates that Shaykh 'Azzuz had chosen this particular son to continue his work as a leading Rahmaniyya muqaddam.

Shaykh-murid ties between the 'Azzuz of al-Burj and their counterparts in Tulqa eventually spanned several generations. Following the practice of endogamy among religious clans, Muhammad b. 'Azzuz wedded one of his daughters, Dhakhira, to Sidi 'Ali b. 'Umar.^[90] Thus, the two families were closely tied not only by the Rahmaniyya link but also by matrimonial bonds. Their alliance endured for nearly a century. Yet spiritual association eventually gave way to struggles between the 'Azzuz clan in the Tunisian Jarid and Sidi 'Ali's successors. Bitter quarrels over religious clients and dwindling offerings were largely the product of the 1881 French conquest establishing Tunisia as a protectorate.

The growth of the Rahmaniyya order in Tulqa, underwritten by Sidi 'Ali b. 'Umar's spiritual intimacy with both the founder-saint and Shaykh 'Azzuz, enhanced the clan's fortunes and those of the oasis. Symbolic of the older linkage between the saints and oasis economy was the location of their zawiya near 'Ain Umm Kara, the spring that furnished Tulqa with water before flowing into the gardens. The zawiya was also situated close to the town's main suqs along the road leading from Tulqa to al-Burj.^[91]

Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz of Khanqa Sidi Naji

At the oasis's center is a group of well-built houses clustered together like the buildings of a fortress; rising above them is the qubba of Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz. The dwellings of Khanqa Sidi Naji are better kept than elsewhere in the Jabal Cherchar. The town resembles rather an Egyptian village with its small, industrious quarters; surrounding it is a wall which was recently repaired after a pitched battle with the oasis of Liana over the division of water [from the Wadi al-'Arab].^[92]

As discussed in chapter 1, the southern Awras has always participated in the Ziban's social, political, and religious rhythms. Thus, the Rahmaniyya movement as well as later movements of anticolonial protest found a resonance in the region. The amicable ties uniting Rahmaniyya notables of Tulqa and al-Burj in the precolonial and early colonial eras contrast

markedly with those between Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz b. Muhammad of Khanqa Sidi Naji and his saintly nemesis, 'Ali b. 'Umar. The spiritual enmity between these two sufi centers was politically significant. It reveals the process of tariqa fragmentation that often followed the death of a charismatic shaykh, in this case Sidi Muhammad b. 'Azzuz. Moreover, rivalries among branch Rahmaniyya centers constituted an important element in "maraboutic politics" (to use Eickelman's term) and, by extension, in regional contests for power. Competition for religious hegemony shaped to no small degree the individual responses of Rahmaniyya shaykhs to the colonial regime after 1830.

The oasis of Khanqa Sidi Naji emerged during the breakdown of central government authority in the early sixteenth century. The town's founders, the Awlad Nasir b. Sidi Naji, had served as guardians of Sidi 'Uqba b. Nafi"s tomb-shrine near Biskra until endemic tribal warfare forced them to retreat into the Jabal Cherchar. In the southern Awras near the Wadi al-'Arab, they established a village and religious center that was frequented by the Namamsha tribal confederacy when migrating between the Sahara and Tebessa. Eventually, two families, the Awlad Sidi Naji and the ancestors of Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz, shared—and disputed—control of the oasis and mosque-shrine.^[93]

Shaykh 'Abd al-Hafiz's clan was yet another saintly lineage of sharifian pretensions, although they traced their origins to Fez and not the Saqiya al-Hamra'. Arriving in the Ziban sometime in the seventeenth century, the family established religious centers in Biskra and Zariba al-'Arab, an oasis immediately south of the Jabal Cherchar and located along the commercial routes linking Biskra to the Tunisian Jarid. For reasons unknown, the Awlad Sidi Naji invited the Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz's ancestors to reside in Khanqa Sidi Naji, an offer they soon regretted; the newcomers founded a zawiya which also served as an educational establishment. Predictably, relations soured between the recent arrivals and the town's former masters; internecine struggles constantly broke out, lasting until well into the colonial era.^[94] The decision by Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz to join the Rahmaniyya order must be seen against the backdrop of these ancient disputes. Membership in the new, dynamic sufi tariqa further delineated the boundaries between the warring lineages since the Awlad Sidi Naji belonged to the older Qadiriyya order; Rahmaniyya affiliation may also have given 'Abd al-Hafiz a sociospiritual edge over his rivals, the Awlad Sidi Naji.

Sidi Muhammad b. 'Azzuz visited 'Abd al-Hafiz (1789–1850) in Khanqa Sidi Naji on a proselytizing mission sometime after being named Rahmaniyya muqaddam in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Impressed by his devout, bookish nature, Shaykh 'Azzuz initiated the local

saint into the order and chose him to represent the Rahmaniyya in the Jabal Cherchar. In addition, Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz studied at the al-Burj zawiya under Shaykh Muhammad and accompanied him on the pilgrimage to Mecca; both of these activities endowed 'Abd al-Hafiz with added moral and spiritual prestige. While the Rahmaniyya shaykh of Khanqa Sidi Naji had all the virtues expected of an 'alim, sufi, and saint—piety, erudition, and asceticism—he appears to have differed in personality from his peers. Less activist than Muhammad b. 'Azzuz or his son Mustafa, Shaykh 'Abd al-Hafiz preferred the studious calm of his zawiya to the bandwagon enthusiasm of the first generations of Rahmaniyya leaders. The shaykh's retiring, though charismatic, personality, influenced his relations with other Rahmaniyya notables and ultimately his involvement in anticolonial protest movements.

As noted above, Shaykh Muhammad b. 'Azzuz's death in 1819 produced dissension among his closest disciples. Now the leading Rahmaniyya muqaddam for the Sahara, Sidi 'Ali b. 'Umar undertook a spiritual coup against his sufi peer in Khanqa Sidi Naji. Accompanied by disciples from Tulqa, Shaykh 'Ali traveled to the Jabal Cherchar and had a mosque-zawiya constructed not far from Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz's sufi center. The parvenus sought to woo clients away from 'Abd al-Hafiz, thereby undermining his religious authority. Spiritual competition even led to armed clashes between the two Rahmaniyya groups. The victims regarded the takeover as a provocative act, a saintly casus belli . Sidi 'Ali's untoward behavior suggests that he felt threatened by Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz, or at least that he was overzealous in interpreting his mandate as Rahmaniyya muqaddam. However, the scheme failed for lack of popular support; the competing sufi lodge was abandoned several years later.^[95]

Most colonial writers interpreted Shaykh 'Abd al-Hafiz's lasting antipathy toward his Rahmaniyya competitor in Tulqa as simply wounded amour propre; they dismissed intersufi contention as but another example of petty "clerical quarrels."^[96] Yet the incident demonstrates both the causes of, and the forms assumed by, local maraboutic politics. It also reveals implicit contradictions in the socially constructed persona of the North African holy person. The literature, indigenous and colonial, invariably casts the saint and sufi in the role of peacemaker; yet these same religious notables might also disturb the very peace they theoretically guaranteed. Thus, pious mediators could themselves, in certain circumstances, trigger communal discord and social conflict. Moreover, the clashes that erupted between the two warring shaykhs' clienteles indicate that elite strife also directly involved the humbler members of society. Finally, this incident sheds light upon the question of acquired versus inherited loyalties within

the idiom of sufism. It suggests that the older ties of religious allegiance between village or tribal clients and privileged saintly lineages took precedence over acquired loyalties to a new sufi order and its leader—Sidi 'Ali b. 'Umar—who significantly came from outside the Awras mountains.

The animosity between the Rahmaniyya clans of Tulqa and Khanqa Sidi Naji would intensify with initial colonial sweeps into the pre-Sahara after 1844. These sufi rivalries help to explain the collective and individual political behavior of Rahmaniyya leaders when confronted by the dual challenge of foreign conquest and revolutionary apocalyptic movements led by mahdis. After Bu Ziyan's defeat in 1849, Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz's idiosyncratic form of avoidance protest expanded his fund of popular veneration to the benefit of his sons who succeeded him as Rahmaniyya shaykhs.

The social trajectory of the saints of Khanqa Sidi Naji clearly demonstrates how a strategic alliance with an energetic sufi order worked to elevate a parochial religious lineage from local to regional social prominence. Membership in the new tariqa apparently fostered friendships with "big city" ulama. Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz resided with the Bash Tarzis at their zawiya in Constantine when en route to perform the hajj on several occasions prior to his death in 1850. His sons founded secondary Rahmaniyya centers in oases, such as Liana, Tamarza, and Khayran, located significantly on the borders between Algeria and Tunisia and later even in Tunis. At first these zawaya were under the 'Azzuz's patronage, with whom the family also concluded matrimonial ties, but they subsequently became semi-independent.^[97]

Also working in Shaykh 'Abd al-Hafiz's favor was the region's political economy. Khanqa Sidi Naji lay astride tribal migratory regimes and commercial routes linking the Awras and eastern Zab with the Tunisian Jarid. Because of location, the oasis-town was a trading center that traditionally provided guides for caravans. The Rahmaniyya zawiya participated in commercial exchanges as well as extending protection to travelers, pilgrims, and merchants. Its mosque-school provided education to tribal and sedentary clients, offering subjects such as mathematics and astrology in addition to the more conventional Islamic sciences. By the middle of the past century, many of the Jabal Cherchar's inhabitants were allied, in one way or another, with the Rahmaniyya establishment under Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz's direction.^[98]

Secondary Rahmaniyya Centers: Awlad Jallal and Sidi Masmudi

Located at the base of the Ahmar Khaddu range in the southern Awras mountains, the oasis of Sidi Masmudi is sheltered in the upper reaches of

the Wadi al-Abyad to the northeast of Biskra. Being of much more modest stature than Tulqa or al-Burj, the zawiya of Sidi Masmudi is difficult to document for the precolonial period; information for the post–1830 era comes mainly from its leaders' participation in rebellion. Some of the Arabic sources mention Sidi Masmudi's shaykhs only in passing, if at all.^[99] The Rahmaniyya zawiya was founded by Sadiq b. al-Hajj al-Masmudi (died 1862), one of Muhammad b. 'Azzuz's disciples, and subsequently a political ally of Mustafa b. 'Azzuz. The tariqa leaders of Sidi Masmudi were intimately involved in the 1849 uprising at Za'atsha, mobilizing their intrepid tribal followers to come to Bu Ziyan's aid. Despite—or perhaps because of—Bu Ziyan's defeat, Shaykh Sadiq and his sons declared another smaller jihad in 1858; two decades later, a second chiliastic movement erupted in 1879.^[100] Thus, Bu Ziyan's messianic bid for power inspired two subsequent mahdist movements led by Sidi Sadiq and his descendants. Here is evidence that a tradition of religiously based political behavior was transmitted over several generations through the medium of Rahmaniyya notables and the sufi centers they controlled.

Outside of the Awras, another secondary Rahmaniyya center grew up, one which linked the Bu Sa'ada region to the Ziban. Muhammad al-Mukhtar b. Khalifa b. Abd al-Rahman (died 1862) was yet another disciple of Shaykh Muhammad b. 'Azzuz.^[101] He established a Rahmaniyya zawiya in the oasis of Awlad Jallal, located to the southwest of Biskra, sometime in the early part of the nineteenth century. The family's origins matched those of the other religious clans discussed above—sharifian descent and migration to the Ziban from Morocco centuries earlier. Prior to joining the nascent Rahmaniyya movement, Muhammad al-Mukhtar enjoyed the status of a local holy man and member of the provincial ulama. Many of the family's clients were pastoral-nomadic peoples, such as the Awlad Na'il tribe, who looked to the saints to resolve the interminable disputes over water and pasturage.^[102] When the Bu Ziyan uprising broke out in 1849, Sidi al-Mukhtar joined together with the 'Azzuz of al-Burj to openly back the rebels; moreover, he had earlier dappled in rebellious activity opposing the French regime. Nevertheless, a decade after Za'atsha's defeat, Shaykh al-Mukhtar refused to lend succor to those involved in the 1858–1859 revolt led by the Rahmaniyya elite of Sidi Masmudi; he even denied sanctuary to the defeated rebels in his zawiya in Awlad Jallal.^[103]

Shaykh al-Mukhtar's death in 1862 unleashed strife over the question of spiritual succession among his sons and clients. The quarrels undermined unity and ultimately worked to the advantage of the great zawiya of al-Hamil, which assumed leadership of the Saharan Rahmaniyya under Shaykh Muhammad b. Abi al-Qasim's aegis by the century's close. Shaykh

Muhammad's own brand of accommodation with and subtle opposition to the colonial regime represented both a break with and a continuation of earlier Saharan Rahmaniyya patterns of coping with unfavorable political conditions. The shaykh's death in 1897 brought his only daughter, Zaynab, to the headship of the zawiya as well as new challenges for the tariqa's religious notables.

By this time, a little more than a century had elapsed since the death of the Rahmaniyya's founder, Sidi 'Abd al-Rahman al-Azhari al-Jurjuri. In that period, the Rahmaniyya in the Kabylia and the Sahara had come to be composed of intersecting networks of zawaya, clienteles, and sacred spaces. The order's major centers were directed by saintly lineages with more or less hereditary rights to privileged positions within the tariqa's loosely defined hierarchy. Moreover, Rahmaniyya affiliation enlarged the spiritual authority and social influence of these lineages. Their local prestige, moral authority, and economic well-being were contingent upon a number of factors: the push and shove of spiritual diplomacy; ties to (or compromises with) traditional authorities; participation in the local economy; the demands of clienteles; and finally the personality of the head shaykh.

By the eve of the first colonial thrusts into the pre-Sahara, the new tariqa claimed followers in a wide region stretching from Bu Sa'ada and the Ziban to the Tunisian borders, and from the southern Awras to the Wadi Righ.^[104] If the original Rahmaniyya zawiya in the Jurjura sheltering the saint-founder's remains constituted the single most important site for the entire order, the establishments in Tulqa and al-Burj were regionally prominent; while the centers at Sidi Khanqa Naji, Sidi Khalid, and Sidi Masmudi were of lesser distinction. The political upheavals of the French conquest would upset the relative importance of these sufi centers. Eventually several new Rahmaniyya complexes—in the Jarid and in al-Hamil—would partially eclipse those in the Ziban and Awras. Significantly, these two zawaya were both located outside, or at the margins of, the colonial system of domination.

Profane Politics, Sacred Politics

Older saintly quarrels, the ideology of the holy man, and the political economy of the desert shaped the later responses of religious notables to the French invasion. But what of the ties between "secular" political elites and sufi leaders of the emerging Rahmaniyya order? Information on relationships between provincial or rural Muslim notables and traditional central authorities or their local representatives is not abundant.^[105] Yet these older relationships are also crucial to an understanding of the conquest era since France at first attempted to control her fractious African prize by relying upon Turkish ruling formulas. And if the deylical regime

collapsed precipitously in 1830, many of the traditional political arrangements endured in one form or another for decades after the fall of Algiers.

It can be posited that the ruling caste in provincial capitals, like Constantine, bestowed honors, privileges, and other forms of both symbolic and material recognition upon desert religious notables, such as the Rahmaniyya lineages of the Ziban. Nevertheless, the Rahmaniyya's founder, a Berber from eastern Algeria, enjoyed a somewhat ambiguous relationship with the Turkish rulers in Algiers. On the one hand, according to the founder-saint's biographer, Muhammad al-Hafnawi, the pasha (dey) invited Sidi Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Rahman to the capital to instruct him and his family in sufi doctrines from the East. This the saint and sufi obligingly did, even residing in the ruler's household for a time. While al-Hafnawi cited this incident as a moral parable regarding rightful sufi adab (conduct) in the palaces of the mighty, he also implied that religious notables could dwell among the most powerful without necessarily incurring moral opprobrium.^[106] On the other, some within ruling circles in Algiers viewed Sidi Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Rahman as a potential danger to the political order. His movement, based upon eastern Khalwatiyya reformism, was deemed menacing due to the social composition of his popular following—among the bellicose Kabyle mountain folk of the Jurjura only imperfectly within the political center's grasp. Only the saint's departure from the capital in the early 1790s, and perhaps the threat of unrest from his partisans, saved him from harm.

Moreover, the interest that governing elites took in rural or provincial holy men did not stop at the borders of the two Ottoman regencies. The Husaynid rulers of Tunis courted sufi leaders in neighboring Algeria as a matter of policy, conferring gifts and establishing hubus to their benefit. For example, both the Rahmaniyya zawiya of Khanqa Sidi Naji and the Tijaniyya centers of Gummar (Guémar) and Tammasin (Témacin) in southeastern Algeria received Tunisian subsidies. The generosity of Tunisia's princes to religious notables in Algeria would assume political importance after 1830.^[107] But what of relations between religious notables and the local secular elites upon whom the rulers in distant capitals inevitably relied to govern places like the pre-Sahara?

Collective social action in the post–1830 period cannot be fully grasped without understanding the surrounding political milieu within which privileged saintly lineages had always operated. Mention has been made of the fact that saints and sufis, such as Sidi Muhammad b. 'Azzuz, were compelled by their peacekeeping functions to resolve disputes for tribal shaykhs.^[108] Religious clans, like the 'Azzuz of al-Burj, were enmeshed in a political culture dominated by the play of the saffs or leagues and the struggles of

tribal warlords, above all, the Bu 'Ukkaz and Banu Ghana. Moreover, the fragmentary evidence that exists for the precolonial era raises issues about the truism of the holy man's professional neutrality, which may have been in practice more nuanced than previously thought.

The Rahmaniyya of Tulqa traditionally maintained amicable ties with central authorities—or rather with their regional delegates. Sidi 'Ali b. 'Umar was the friend and adviser of the Banu Ghana's leader, who headed one of the saffs that divided the pre-Sahara's inhabitants into two political camps.^[109] While the saffs were a much older mechanism for venting as well as containing political struggles, in the late eighteenth century the leagues of the southern Constantine became embroiled in a fierce contest between the Banu Ghana and the Bu 'Ukkaz for the coveted post of shaykh al-'arab, a contest discussed in detail in the next chapter. In addition to friendship and patronage with the Banu Ghana, the Rahmaniyya notables of Tulqa were also on amicable terms with the oasis's local secular shaykhs, the Awald Ziyan. Significantly, in the Jabal Cherchar, Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz's rivals, the Awlad Sidi Naji, were also aligned with the Banu Ghana, which suggests that the Rahmaniyya shaykh may have been on the opposing side.^[110]

In contrast to the leaders of Tulqa, the 'Azzuz of al-Burj appear to have had a preference for the Bu 'Ukkaz clan. Shaykh Muhammad even sent the eldest of his eight sons, al-Hasan, to be educated from childhood on at the Bu 'Ukkaz's zamala (a tribal camp or settlement; in Turkish North Africa, a tribal cavalry serving the state). There Hasan was raised as a sort of warrior-marabout, reminiscent of the older Maghribi tradition of the ribat. The French commandant, Jospeh-Adrien Seroka, who eventually fought against Hasan b. 'Azzuz in the Ziban, provided this portrait of him, one of the few such descriptions of a sufi personage from the period:

There was something extraordinary about his appearance; his head was as large as a bull's, his arms and legs were enormous, his voice was like a lion's roar. Seeing his thick mass, made rather for the leisure of the zawiya than the life of a soldier, one would never have believed that he [Hasan b. 'Azzuz] was an accomplished cavalryman and fierce warrior.^[111]

In marked contrast, Hasan's brother, Mustafa b. 'Azzuz was given a scholar's education and groomed as a future leader of the Saharan Rahmaniyya. Another younger sibling, Muhammad, was shaykh of the small Rahmaniyya center in the oasis of Sidi Khalid; other males in the lineage also followed religious careers. Thus, Hasan's training was unique among the eight male offspring of Shaykh Muhammad b. 'Azzuz. Confiding a son to the Bu 'Ukkaz for warrior training may have been a calculated strategy to

cement relations between powerful desert warlords and a sufi order then in the process of expansion. This strategy would have protected not only the 'Azzuzes' interests but also those of the nascent tariqa. Conversely, the Bu 'Ukkaz may have sought legitimacy by associating themselves with the leader of the most dynamic sufi order in the Sahara at the time. Finally, enrolling a son in a "secular' profession ensured that sainthood, baraka, and leadership were not disputed, and thus dissipated, among family members from a single privileged lineage.

Given the close ties between the two sufi clans, the fact that the 'Azzuz of al-Burj opted for one saff while the Rahmaniyya notables of Tulqa were associated with the opposing political league appears perplexing. Nevertheless, it may have been a form of saintly realpolitik—bet hedging dictated by the rapid shifts in the political wheel of fortune as first the Banu Ghana and then their opponents momentarily gained power. This form of coping to ensure political survival was repeatedly relied upon by many Muslim notables during and after the conquest period.

From Religious Hinterland to Religious Center and Back Again

In characterizing the ulama corps associated with the Azhar mosque-university in Cairo, John Voll observed that "the various parts of the Islamic community were in constant interaction. The local religious establishment itself was not a closed corporation."^[112] This observation applies equally to the Saharan sufi notables and saints just considered; many of them participated in the Islamic ecumene forged, in large part, by itinerant, cosmopolitan scholars. The continual circulation of Muslims of elevated or modest social rank to and from the Hijaz implicated religious hinterlands in larger sociospiritual currents.

The annual pilgrimage was the single most important transregional vehicle for integration into the Islamic mainstream; the hajj also frequently brought social mobility as well. Fulfilling one of the duties of Islam meant that the returning hajji or pilgrim inevitably acquired a new social status within the community. A sojourn in Mecca, regarded as a microcosm of the universe, enlarged spiritual horizons and deepened the sense of what it meant to be a Muslim.^[113] In addition, the North African caravan, composed of thousands of Maghribi and West African pilgrims, disseminated new ideas, information, and rumors along the route stretching from Taza in Morocco to the Holy Cities. Several of the most activist African sufi orders of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had their origins in pilgrimages to the Mashriq and Haramayn; this was particularly true of the Rahmaniyya.

Thus, the geographical displacement necessitated by pilgrimage produced other displacements as well—spiritual quests concerned with the soul's journey, the search for religious knowledge and social enhancement, were all intimately related. As seen in the biographies of Rahmaniyya notables, provincial religious figures often pursued advanced studies in Constantine, Fez, or Tunis before setting out for the Mashriq. After performing the hajj, they might linger for years in institutions like al-Azhar to complete their education. In doing so, they invariably shed their provincial status and acquired a new social rank through intimate association with the Islam's normative core. The peregrinations of these notables, their ties to the great hubs of Islamic science, integrated local patterns of religious belief and ritual into the wider Muslim community. The re-creation of Islam's universal traditions in a culturally specific setting is manifest in the Rahmaniyya libraries and manuscript collections housed in the zawaya on the Sahara's rim.

Even when travels for pious purposes took them no farther than Maghribi cities, rural religious figures frequently prolonged their stays in urban madrasas and mosque-universities for years. In the city, the more fortunate were able to form sociospiritual alliances with high-ranking ulama families. Whether temporary or prolonged, sojourns in North African capitals meant that scholars hailing from remote villages or humble towns had access to information about political events or intellectual debates from the wider Islamic world. When they returned to their respective towns or tribes, which the vast majority did, individuals like Sidi Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Rahman or Shaykh Muhammad b. 'Azzuz then served as social conduits between metropolis and countryside. In short, sufi notables of small-town origins fashioned multiple contacts with urban social milieux, whether in their own countries or more far-flung areas of the Dar al-Islam, through the mechanisms of tariqa membership, education, and pilgrimage.

Paralleling the hajj were the numerous regional pilgrimages or ziyaras in North Africa which brought together different groups from widely dispersed areas at certain times in the liturgical year. Thus, despite apparent isolation, the pre-Sahara's oasis and tribal communities shared in a number of local, regional, and transregional networks. Even the oasis peasant, seemingly tied to the relentless date cultivation cycle, participated in these networks. Along with the movement of commodities and pastoral-nomadic groups, a certain degree of labor exchange occurred between desert and coastal cities. Indeed, given the ecological restraints imposed by the environment, survival in the densely populated oases depended upon the maintenance of ties with the outside. The smooth functioning of the local economy depended upon the unhampered movement of individuals and

groups, whether to trade, search for pasturage, perform the pilgrimage, or complete an education.

Like the hajj, affiliation with one or several of the great ramified sufi turuq was another element working against social closure. It was precisely this lack of closure—the cross-border relations generated by religion, commerce, and politics—that alarmed Algeria's French rulers. The vast, open expanses of the desert with its ill-defined frontiers plagued the colonial regime first in Algeria and later in Tunisia. Conversely, France's tireless efforts to close off or monitor the borders between the North African states would eventually transform the nature of the Rahmaniyya movement and the political behavior of its privileged lineages.