1. Zaynab bint Muhammad b. Abi al-Qasim, zawiya of al-Hamil, to commanding officer, Bu Sa'ada, December 1899, AGGA 16 H 61.

2. More than two decades have passed since Edmund Burke III in "Recent Books on Colonial Algerian History," MES 7 , 2 (1971): 241-50, urged historians to "begin the task of reassembling, out of the rubble of the colonialist tradition of historiography on Algeria, a history which focuses upon the Muslim inhabitants rather than the colonial regime as the prime object of study" (243). Several recent works on the nineteenth century that respond to Burke's intellectual call to arms are Colette Establet's Etre caid dans l'Algérie coloniale (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1991), and Allan Christelow's Muslim Law Courts and the French Colonial State in Algeria (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985).

3. Eric R. Wolf, Europe and the People without History (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982).

4. These religious figures are characterized as notables rather than elites in order to distinguish between various kinds of power and authority, which, however, could be intertwined. In both Ottoman and colonial North Africa, nonreligious elites, such as the shaykh al-'arab or the Muqrani clan of the northern Constantine, drew some, although not all, of their political authority from relationships with the state--either contesting it or supporting it--or both. State-derived authority would remain significant even after 1830 since opposition to the colonial order or political "mutualism" with it still defined, in large part, elite status. Religious notables on the other hand, tapped deep into other sources--sharifian descent, special piety, erudition, charity--the attributes demanded of the holy person. The most powerful belonged to a cosmopolitan republic of letters and learning, underwritten by an intensely sustained literacy. They thus wielded so-

ciospiritual and moral authority; their popular followings were evidence of communal recognition of their uncommon virtue. This did not mean that the state--whether the late Turkish or colonial--was unimportant to religious notables. It was, as will be seen.

5. The term "populist" was deliberately chosen to avoid the "high-low" polarities suggested by popular protest; the ordinary folk of the oasis and the learned shaykhs of Saharan zawaya shared to a great extent the same cultural assumptions. Moreover, there was considerable traffic between the domains of the written and oral traditions. On the current debate on popular culture, see Natalie Zemon Davis, "Toward Mixtures and Margins," AHR 97, 5 (December 1992): 1409-16.

6. Edmund Burke III, ed., Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 3.

7. In studying various kinds of militant action, the historian confronts a dilemma--how to investigate a wide range of social and political phenomena whose very nature entailed the destruction of indigenous written sources. The village of Za'atsha was completely razed by the French army in December 1849 as were a number of Rahmaniyya sufi centers after seditious activities, for example, the zawiya of Sidi Masmudi in the Awras after a small mahdist rebellion in 1858. While some written materials were salvaged by the French regime, so much more was destroyed--and with it Algeria's own history.

8. For a reconsideration of the concept of moral economy, see Robert P. Weller and Scott E. Guggenheim, eds., Power and Protest in the Countryside: Studies of Rural Unrest in Asia, Europe, and Latin America (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1982). One flaw in James C. Scott's "strong version of moral economy" is that the implicit sociocultural constraints upon the political behavior of notables and elites are ignored. And when Muslim leaders are considered, they are invariably relegated to a category apart, defined solely by Islam's assumed inherent propensity toward militant political action. This interpretation is seen in Michael Adas's "Market Demand versus Imperial Control: Colonial Contradictions and the Origins of Agrarian Protest in South and Southeast Asia," in Global Crises and Social Movements: Artisans, Peasants, Populists, and the World Economy , Edmund Burke III, ed. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988), 89-116, in which Adas seems to be arguing along lines not dissimilar to the colonial canon for North Africa--that Islam is somehow innately more prone to rebellion than other religious traditions.

9. Marcel Simian, Les confréries islamiques en Algérie (Rahmanya-Tidjanya ) (Algiers: Jourdan, 1910), 44.

10. The historical and numerical importance of the "ignorers" of the West during the colonial assault in Africa has been itself ignored in much of the literature. R. S. O'Fahey points this out in his excellent study Enigmatic Saint: Ahmad Ibn Idris and the Idrisi Tradition (Evanston, Ill.:

Northwestern University Press, 1990), as does Louis Brenner in West African Sufi: The Religious Heritage and Spiritual Search of Cerno Bokar Saalif Taal (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984).

11. Clifford Geertz, Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 8-9.

12. Muhammad al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif al-khalaf bi-rijal al-salaf , 2d ed. (Tunis: al-Maktaba al-'Atiqa, 1982); and Ahmad ibn Abi al-Diyaf, Ithaf ahl al-zaman bi-akhbar muluk tunis wa 'ahd al-aman , 8 vols. (Tunis: al-Dar al-Tunisiyya lil-Nashr, 1963-1966).

13. On the nature and uses of hagiography, see Dale F. Eickelman, Moroccan Islam: Tradition and Society in a Pilgrimage Center (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976), 35-43, and his "Traditional Islamic Learning and Ideas of the Person in the Twentieth Century," in Middle Eastern Lives: The Practice of Biography and Self-Narrative , Martin Kramer, ed. (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1991), 35-59.

1. Muhammad ibn Salama, "al-'Iqd al-munaddad fi akhbar al-mushir al-basha Ahmad," MS. 18618, folio 82, Bibliothèque Nationale de Tunis. Salama was one of the few members of the elite baldi (old urban bourgeoisie) class from the Tunisian capital to travel in the south during the nineteenth century. Appointed to the post of qadi al-mahalla (jurisconsult of the beylical camp) in 1837, he participated in the expedition of 1838-1839, recording his impressions of the Jarid.

2. Eugène Fromentin (1820-1876), Un été dans le Sahara , new edition introduced and annotated by Anne-Marie Christine (Paris: Le Sycomore, 1981).

3. Much, though not all, of our information regarding the geography, history, and ecology of the pre-Sahara in the past century comes from European or colonial sources. In contrast to the medieval period, when the Sahara was written about by Arab savants (who were often merchants and missionaries), such as Ibn Hawqal, al-Bakri, al-Idrisi, Ibn Battuta, and Ibn Khaldun, indigenous Arabic sources for later centuries are less abundant. In large part, this is due to the cultural geography of the period; social mobility for ambitious provincial elites and notables dictated a movement from south to north--rarely the reverse. Nevertheless, the reports of the Tunisian qa'ids (provincial administrators) in the Jarid submitted to the central government in Tunis from the 1840s on are one valuable indigenous source, although these are mainly devoted to tax collection and political events. AGT, série historique, carton 20, dossiers ( dafatir ) 227-33.

4. Ibn Hawqal, the celebrated Arab geographer, visited the Sahara between 947-951 A.D. and remarked upon the flourishing state of oasis

agriculture in kitab sura al-ard (Beirut: Dar Maktaba al-Hayah, 1964), 92. Among numerous travel accounts from later periods is the 1710 description of Mulay Ahmad, a Moroccan pilgrim, in Adrien Berbrugger, trans., "Voyages dans le sud de l'Algérie," ESA 9 (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1846): 245; and L. R. Desfontaines, Fragmens d'un voyage dans les régences de Tunis et d'Alger fait de 1783 à 1786 (Paris, 1838) 2: 72. The term "civilisation du désert" is Robert Capot-Rey's, Le Sahara français (Paris: PUF, 1953), 371-72. On the present problems of oasis agriculture, see among numerous works Bruno Sternberg-Sarel, "Les oasis du Djérid," CIS 25 (1961): 131-45.

5. André Martel's Les confins saharo-tripolitains de la Tunisie (1881-1911) , 2 vols. (Paris: PUF, 1965), is a noteworthy exception to this.

6. This part of the pre-Sahara, comprising both southern Tunisia and southeastern Algeria, is what Jean Despois calls the "bas-Sahara" in Jean Despois and Robert Raynal, Géographie de l'Afrique du nord-ouest (Paris: Payot, 1967).

Geological and geographical unity were underscored by commonly shared cultural traditions. Charles Monchicourt, "Fête de l'Achoura," RT 17 (1910): 278-301, observed that an ancient, popular (pre-Islamic) carnival--the furja --was celebrated by peoples of the Jarid, Suf, and Warqala. Also important is that many of the inhabitants of this region were Kharijite (Islamic schismatics) in religious persuasion until at least the thirteenth century. The Ziban and much of the province of Constantine had been incorporated into the Hafsid state centered in Tunis from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries; on this see Robert Brunschvig, La Berbérie orientale sous les Hafsides des origines à la fin du XVe siècle, 2 vols. (Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1940-1947).

7. Georges Yver, "Biskra," EI (Leiden: Brill, 1928), 1: 732-33; Jean Despois, "Biskra," EI , 2d ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1960), 1: 1246-47; and Jean Ghisolfi, "L'oasis d'al-Kantara, sud Constantinois," CHEAM 4, 294 (1938).

8. André Nouschi, Enquête sur le niveau de vie des populations rurales constantinoises de la conquête jusqu'en 1919 (Paris: PUF, 1961), 15; Jean Despois, L'Afrique du Nord (Paris: PUF, 1958), 56-70; and Robert Mantran, "Algérie turque et Sahara," Sahara, rapports et contacts humains (Aixen-Provence: La Pensée Universitaire, 1967), 61-72.

9. Raoul de Lartigue, Monographie de l'Aurès (Constantine: Marle-Audrino, 1904).

10. Youssef Nacib, Cultures oasiennes: Essai d'histoire sociale de l'oasis de Bou-Saada (Paris: Publisud, 1986); and idem, Chants religieux de Djurdjura (Paris: Sindbad, 1988).

11. Mohamed-Hédi Cherif, Pouvoir et société dans la Tunisie de Husayn bin 'Ali (1705-1740) , vol. 1 (Tunis: Publications de l'Université de Tunis, 1984); and Jocelyne Dakhlia, L'oubli de la cité: La mémoire collective

à l'épreuve du lignage dans le Jérid tunisien (Paris: Éditions la Découverte, 1990).

12. Anonymous, ''Étude sur le Sahara," 1839, AMG, Algérie, H 227; "Étude sur les oasis du Ziban," n.d., AMG, Algérie, H 230; and "Notice détaillé sur les zaouias, shuyukh, et mokkadem du cercle de Biskra," 1895, AGGA, 16 H 10.

Marcel Emerit, "Les liaisons terrestres entre le Soudan et l'Afrique du Nord au XVIIIe et au début du XIXe siècle," TIRS 11 (1954): 29-47; and C. W. Newbury, "North African and Western Sudan Trade in the Nineteenth Century: A Re-Evaluation," JAH 7, 2 (1966): 233-46.

13. Capot-Rey, Le Sahara , 356-65; Jean Despois, "Le Sahara et l'ecologie humaine," AG 70, 382 (1961): 577-84; and H. T. Norris, "Indigenous Peoples of the Sahara," in Key Environments, Sahara Desert , J. L. Cloudsley-Thompson, ed. (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1984), 311-24.

14. Lucette Valensi, Fellahs tunisiens: L'économie rurale et la vie des campagnes aux 18e et 19e siècles (Paris: Mouton, 1977); Abraham L. Udovitch and Lucette Valensi, The Last Arab Jews: The Communities of Jerba, Tunisia (New York: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1984); Elizabeth D. Friedman, "The Jews of Batna, Algeria: A Study of Identity and Colonialism" (Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 1977); Donald C. Holsinger, "Migration, Commerce, and Community: The Mizabis in Nineteenth-Century Algeria (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1979); and A. Sainte-Marie, "Aspects du colportage à partir de la Kabylie du Djurdjura à l'époque contemporaine," Commerce de Gros, Commerce de Détail dans les Pays Méditerranéens (XVI-XIX Siècles) (Nice: Université de Nice, 1976), 103-19.

15. The term peasant is employed as a rough equivalent for fallah , or tiller of the soil, farmer, cultivator, etc. In the indigenous Arabic sources from the nineteenth century, however, the term fallah is rarely used in state documents or letters to the bey expressing grievances from the oasis communities; rather the vaguer ahl al-Jarid (people of the Jarid) or sukkan (inhabitants) is employed as well as identity based upon membership in a specific lineage or kinship group.

The scholarly debate over what constitutes a peasant has produced an enormous literature; see Dale F. Eickelman, The Middle East: An Anthropological Approach , 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1989).

16. The Ziban and the Jarid enjoy unusually rich hydraulic resources which supported high population densities--twelve hundred inhabitants per square kilometer in the oases and near zero in the surrounding desert. Together Biskra's springs flow at a rate of five hundred liters per second; Tuzar has ten springs with similar flow capacities permitting the cultivation of some four hundred thousand date palms, supplemented by artesian wells. R. Arrus, L'eau en Algérie: De l'impérialisme au développement

(1830-1962) (Algiers: Office des Publications Universitaires, 1985); and Pierre-Robert Baduel, "Le pouvoir de l'eau dans le sud-Tunisien," ROMM 30 (1980): 101-34.

17. Le Comte d'Escayrac, Le désert et le Soudan (Paris, 1853), 10-11; and Vincent Guerin, Voyage archéologique dans la régence de Tunis , 2 vols. (Paris: Plon, 1862), 1: 250-65.

18. Henri Duveyrier, "Notice sur le commerce du Souf," RAC 3 (1860): 637-48.

19. Edmond Pellissier de Reynaud, Description de la régence de Tunis , vol. 16 of ESA (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1853).

20. James Richardson, 1845, "An Account of the Present State of Tunis," PRO/FO 102 (29).

21. Gapelin, 1844, "Rapport," AMG, Algérie, H 235; Warnier, n.d. (c. 1856), "Rapport sur l'Oued Souf et ses relations commerciales," AGGA, 22 H 26; chef de service des douanes, 1857, "Considérations sur le commerce et l'industrie des tissus de laine du Sahara," AGGA, 1 H 14; and de Fleurac, 1885, AMG, Tunisie, 36 H 29, no. 8.

22. Abdelhamid Henia, Le Grid, ses rapports avec le Beylik de Tunis, 1676-1840 (Tunis: Publications de l'Université de Tunis, 1980), 47-50.

23. A proverb from the pre-Sahara recorded by a Bureaux Arabes officer, 1868, AMG, Algérie, H 230 bis. The literature on pastoral nomadism is extensive; Jacques Berque's "Qu'est-ce qu'une 'tribu' nord-africaine?" in Éventail de l'histoire vivante: Mélanges à Lucien Fèbvre (Paris: Colin, 1953) 1: 261-71, remains the classic statement on the notion of tribe in North Africa; see also Philip S. Khoury and Joseph Kostiner, eds., Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990).

24. Douglas L. Johnson, The Nature of Nomadism: A Comparative Study of Pastoral Migrations in Southwestern Asia and Northern Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago, Department of Geography, Research Paper No. 118, 1969), 98-99; and Rada and Neville Dyson-Hudson, "Nomadic Pastoralism," Annual Review of Anthropology 9 (1980): 15-61.

25. The khammas were sharecroppers enjoying the right to some portion, usually although not always a fifth, of the harvest for which they provided labor; Valensi, Fellahs , 142-44.

26. Alain Romey, Les Sa'id 'Atba de N'Goussa: Histoire et état actuel de leur nomadisme (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1983).

27. The semiannual migration from the Ziban to the north followed three geographical lines. In the Zab Sharqi, the nomads ascended the Awras to reach Khenchela, Guelma, and Suq Ahras. From Biskra, they moved to Batna via al-Qantara and then fanned out in the Sétif region. Finally the Awlad Jallal skirted the limits of the Hodna mountains. Johnson, Nomadism , 98-105; Capot-Rey, Le Sahara , 250-84; Despois, L'Afrique , 221-32; and M. Dou, "Nomades et sédentaires à Biskra," n.d., CHEAM 2, 31 bis.

28. Donald C. Holsinger, "Trade Routes of the Algerian Sahara in the Nineteenth Century," ROMM 30 (1980): 57-70; and Benjamin E. Thomas, Trade Routes of Algeria and the Sahara (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1957).

29. This does not imply that borders between the two Turkish regencies were nonexistent as colonial authorities attempted to claim. The political frontiers between Algeria and Tunisia were more or less stabilized in the early eighteenth century in contrast to other parts of the Ottoman Empire. These were both physical--the presence of burjs , or forts, delimited the territory of the Tunisian beys or Algerian deys--and fiscal. Most pastoralnomadic groups, apart from those in the deep Sahara, were well aware of the identity of their fiscal masters. Daniel Nordman, "La Notion de frontière en Afrique du Nord: Mythes et réalités, vers 1830-vers 1912" (Doctoral diss., Montpellier University, Montpellier, France, 1975).

30. A. Cauneille, Les Chaanba, leur nomadisme (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1968).

31. Duveyrier, "Notice," 637-48; and anonymous, "Les populations musulmans du Souf et leur évolution politique," 1938, AGGA, 10 H 88 (7).

32. Mohamed-Hédi Cherif, "Document relatif à des tribus tunisiennes des débuts du XVIIIe siècle: Enseignements démographiques et économiques," ROMM 33 (1982): 76-95.

33. C. Jest, "Note sur les Ouled Amor du Souf," TIRS 18 (1959): 169-78.

34. Gapelin, 1844, "Rapport," AMG, Algérie, H 235.

35. Baudot, 1876 report, AMG, Algérie, M 1317.

36. Duveyrier, "Notice," 637-48; and anonymous, "Étude sur le Sahara," 1839, AMG, Algérie, H 227.

37. The Bureaux Arabes files, particularly the F 80 1426 sous-série, AGGA, contain endless references to contraband, which, together with banditry, has always flourished in deserts and mountains.

38. Nikki R. Keddie, "Socioeconomic Change in the Middle East since 1800: A Comparative Analysis," in The Islamic Middle East, 700-1900: Studies in Economic and Social History , Abraham L. Udovitch, ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 761-84.

39. Geneviève Bédoucha, L'eau, l'amie du puissant: Une communauté oasienne du sud-tunisien (Paris: Éditions des Archives Contemporaines, 1987).

40. Valensi, Fellahs , 112.

41. Capot-Rey, Le Sahara , 347-51; Habib Attia, "Modernisation agricole et structures sociales: Exemple des oasis du Djérid," in RTSS 2 (1965): 59-79; and idem, "Water-Sharing Rights in the Jerid Oases of Tunisia," in Property, Social Structure, and Law in the Modern Middle East , Elizabeth A. Mayer, ed. (New York: SUNY Press, 1985), 85-106.

42. The Sahara constituted more of a political problem for the colonial regime than a site of potential economic ventures; Europeans invested in only a few regions, such as the Wadi Righ and Biskra, where new sources of water were found to cultivate the daqala al-nur date for export. Elsewhere European investors were discouraged by the labor-intensive nature of oasis agriculture, the intricate system of water/land rights, and low returns. The lack of interest in the Sahara--until the discovery of petrol and natural gas in the late colonial period--is attested to by the sparse number of Europeans residing there; Arrus, L'eau en Algérie , 160-73, and 212, note 87.

43. Anonymous, "Étude sur le Sahara," 1839, AMG, Algérie, H 227; and "Étude sur les oasis du Ziban," n.d., AMG, Algérie, H 230.

44. Bédoucha, L'eau ; and Dakhlia, L'oubli .

45. In Biskra, Tuqqurt, and Warqala, the predominant system of water distribution was that of open canals linked to artesian wells or other sources of water. Jean Lethielleux, Ouargla, cité saharienne des origines au début du XXe siècle (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1983); and Madeleine Rouvillois-Brigol, Le pays de Ouargla (Sahara algérien): Variations et organisation d'un espace rural en milieu désertique (Paris: Publications du Département de Géographie de l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1975). In the Suf, a somewhat different system obtained; Claude Bataillon, Le Souf: Étude de géographie humaine (Algiers: Institut de Recherches Sahariennes, 1955); and Ahmed Najah, Le Souf des oasis (Algiers: Éditions de la Maison des Livres, 1971). Water distribution in the Jarid at the turn of the century was studied by P. Penet, L'hydraulique agricole dans la Tunisie méridionale (Tunis: La Rapide, 1913); for present-day Tunisia, Jean Duvignaud, Chebika, suivi de retour à Chebika 1990 (Paris: Plon, 1991).

46. Cf. to Morocco, Gilbert Grandguillaume, "Régime économique et structure du pouvoir: Le système des foggara du Touat," ROMM 13-14 (1973): 437-56.

47. De Fleurac, 1885, AMG, Tunisie, 36 H 29, no. 8; and Attia, "Modernisation," 69-76.

48. When French officials inventoried property owners in Biskra after 1844, they found that the religious clan headed by Sidi 'Abd al-Malik held property and water rights second only to the bey of the Constantine; anonymous, "Renseignements sur Biskra," 1844, AGGA, 10 H 18.

49. Augustin Berque, "Essai d'une bibliographie critique des confréries musulmanes algériennes," BSGAO 39 (1919): 135-74, 193-233; Jacques Berque, De l'Euphrate à l'Atlas (Paris: Sindbad, 1978) 1: 20; and Latifa Lakhdhar, Al-Islam al-Turuqi (l'Islam confrérique) (Tunis: Cérès, 1993).

50. Anonymous, "Considerations politiques sur les sédentaires et nomades d'Ouargla," n.d., AGGA, 10 H 52; and anonymous, "Itinéraire de Biskra à Tuggurth," 1851, AMG, Algérie, M 1317.

51. Lucette Valensi, "Calamités démographiques en Tunisie et en Méditerranée orientale aux XVIIIe et XIX siècles," AESC 24, 6 (1969): 1540-62.

52. Anonymous, "Étude sur le Sahara," 1839, AMG, Algérie, H 227.

53. Charles Tissot, 1857, AMAE, Tunisie, mém./docs., vol. 8, no. 32; and de Fleurac, 1885, AMG, Tunisie, 36 H 29, no. 8.

54. Pierre Bourdieu, The Algerians (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962), 13. Here saff is employed in a more general sense for systems of political alliance making and breaking rather than the specific connotation attached to leff by Robert Montagne for Moroccan Berber political organization; Ernest Gellner, "Leff," EI , 2d ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986), 5: 715.

55. Charles Tissot, 1857, report, AMAE, mém./docs., vol. 8, no. 32; Mustapha Kraiem, La Tunisie précoloniale , 2 vols. (Tunis: Société Tunisienne de Diffusion, 1973) 1: 145-53; and Cherif, Pouvoir et société , vol. 2.

56. Anonymous, 1924, "Renseignements concernant les soffs du Mzab et du sud Constantinois," AGGA, Algérie, 10 H 38.

57. James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), 2.

58. Gapelin, 1844, "Rapport," AMG, Algérie, H 235; "Notice sur les relations commerciales que Tougourt entretient avec Tunis," 1845, AMAE, Tunisie, c.c., vol. 54; 1856, "Rapport sur l'Oued Souf et ses relations commerciales," AGGA, Algérie, 22 H 26; and Henri Duveyrier, ''Excursions dans le Djérid ou pays de dattes," RAC 2 (1860): 542-59.

59. Anonymous, "Étude sur le Sahara," 1839, AMG, Algérie, H 227; Antoine-Eugène Carette, Recherches sur la géographie et le commerce de l'Algérie mériodionale , vol. 2 of ESA (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1844); and E. Pellissier de Reynaud, Description .

60. Barbara K. Larson, "The Rural Marketing System of Egypt over the Last Three Hundred Years," CSSH 27, 3 (1985): 494-530; and F. Benet, "Explosive Markets: The Berber Highlands," in Trade and Market in the Early Empires , K. Polanyi, ed. (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1957), 188-217.

61. Laurence O. Michalak, "The Changing Weekly Markets of Tunisia: A Regional Analysis," (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1983).

62. Anonymous, "Étude sur le Sahara," 1839, AMG, Algérie, H 227; Gapelin, 1844, "Rapport," AMG, Algérie, H 235; anonymous, "Renseignements sur le cercle de Biskra," 1845, AGGA, 10 H 18; and anonymous, "Rapport," 1856, AGGA, 22 H 26.

63. A. J. Wensinck, "Mawsim," in EI , 2d ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990), 6: 903; and Sophie Ferchiou, "Les fêtes maraboutiques en Tunisie--'Zarda'" in Actes du 1er Congrès d'Études de sCultures Méditerranéennes d'Influence Arabo-Berbère (Algiers: SNED, 1973), 532-37.

64. Anonymous, "Itinéraire de Biskra à Tuggurth," 1851, AMG, Algérie, M 1317; and the reports of the Tunisian qa'ids in AGT, carton 20, dossiers 227-33, armoire 1. Not all exchanges took place within the context of markets. Nor were these exchanges, whatever their venue, purely eco-

nomic in nature--many had a cultural or symbolic dimension whose social importance exceeded material value. And specie was chronically in short supply in many parts of Algeria and Tunisia, particularly the pre-Sahara. Many transactions, whether concluded in market centers or not, were effected through barter.

65. Michalak, "Weekly Markets," 72-73.

66. Gapelin, 1844, "Rapport," AMG, Algérie, H 235; the storyteller's political importance in North African society was alluded to by numerous writers; Auguste Cour, "Constantine en 1802 d'après une chanson populaire de Cheikh Belqasem er-Rahmouni El-Haddad," RA 60 (1919): 224-40; and idem, "La poésie populaire politique du temps de l'Emir Abdelqader," RA 59 (1918): 458-84.

67. Anonymous, 1839, "Étude sur le Sahara," AMG, Algérie, H 227; and "Itinéraire de Biskra à Tuggurth," 1851, AMG, Algérie, M 1317. Colportage represents another form of subsistence migration; the Kabyles dominated colportage in the nineteenth century, serving as bearers of information and rumors as well as goods.

68. Georges Marty, "A Tunis: Éléments allogènes et activités professionelles, djerbiens, gabesiens, gens du sud, et autres tunisiens," IBLA 11, 42 (1948): 159-87; and idem, "Les algériens à Tunis," IBLA 11, 43-44 (1948): 301-34; and AGT, A-1-14 to 20; A-2-21 and 22.

69. Anonymous, 14 March 1852, AGGA, 1 H 9.

70. Thiriet, 1938, AGGA, 10 H 88 (7).

71. The term murabit had different meanings depending upon the time and place. In the medieval period, it designated religious reformers issuing from frontier redoubts, or ribats . In the nineteenth-century lexicon of eastern Algeria and Tunisia, it meant "men, devoted to God's adoration and linked to Him, who enjoyed a reputation of saintliness which conferred upon them the title of 'waliy', friend of God" (Marcel Beaussier, Dictionnaire pratique arabe-français , new ed. by Mohamed Ben Cheneb [Algiers: Jules Carbonel, 1931], 378). The French equivalent of this complex term-- marabout --was used and misused throughout the colonial period, giving rise to considerable confusion regarding the precise social and religious identity of the marabout. The term was employed less frequently in indigenous Arabic written sources from eastern Algeria and Tunisia than waliy (roughly "saint," although with some important differences when compared with sainthood in Christianity). The term waliy also encompassed a multiplicity of subtle cultural meanings which shifted with social context, region, and period. Moreover, the terms sufi and waliy were not necessarily coterminous in meaning, although they were frequently confused in the literature and conflated in social practice.

While the rendering of waliy and murabit as equivalent to "saint" is problematic, there has not been much scholarly debate on this matter; see

Julian Baldick, Mystical Islam: An Introduction to Sufism (New York: New York University Press, 1989), 16-17.

72. Dakhlia, L'oubli , 208, reports that a "semiliterate" individual from Tuzar evoked the names of over one hundred saints. Nacib, Chants religieux , 12, noted that in the Jurjura's oral poetry the most frequent themes were the saint and death.

73. Even today, Nafta's inhabitants recount the legend of Sidi Bu 'Ali, who was born in Morocco during the thirteenth century and traveled to the Jarid to reintroduce orthodox Sunni Islam to its inhabitants, many of whom were Kharijites. According to local lore, the holy man visited Tuqqurt en route to Nafta, where he collected some date pits which he then had planted, thus assuring fertility as well as orthodoxy.

74. Fanny Colonna, "Saints furieux et saints studieux ou, dans l'Aurès, comment la religion vient aux tribus," AESC 35, 3-4 (1980) 642-62; and Francois Masselot, "Les dattiers des oasis du Djérid," Bulletin de la Direction de l'Agriculture (Tunis, 1901).

75. Nacib, Chants religieux , 110.

1. Muhammad al-Sadiq Basha Bey, 1276 AH (1859/1860), to Mustafa b. 'Azzuz, AGT, H, carton 81 bis, dossier 987.

2. The colonial production on saints and sufis, while of uneven quality, is extensive; see the numerous entries in Pessah Shinar's Bibliographie séléctive et annotée sur l'Islam maghrébin contemporain: Maroc, Algérie, Tunisie, Libye (1830-1978) (Paris: CNRS, 1983). For the postcolonial period, Jacques Berque's enormous contributions, for example, L'intèrieur du Maghreb, XVe-XIXe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1978), deserve first mention. Other recent works are Hassan Elboudrari, "Quand les saints font les villes: Lecture anthropologique de la pratique sociale d'un saint marocain du XVIIe siècle," AESC 40, 3 (1985): 489-508; Houari Touati, "Approche sémiologique et historique d'un document hagiographique algérien," AESC 44, 5 (1989): 1205-28; and Mohamed El-Mansour, "Sharifian Sufism: The Religious and Social Practice of the Wazzani Zawiya," in Essays in Honour of David Hart , Ernest Gellner and G. Joffé, eds. (Cambridgeshire: Means Press, 1992), 1-15.

3. Jacques Berque, Structures sociales du Haut-Atlas , 1st ed. (Paris: PUF, 1955), 239.

4. Dale F. Eickelman, Moroccan Islam, Tradition and Society in a Pilgrimage Center (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976), 19-33.

5. A number of scholars have attempted to define the concept of (or rather a cluster of concepts associated with) baraka; Edward Westermarck's Ritual and Belief in Morocco , 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1926), remains

the classic study; see also Raymond Jamous, Honneur et baraka: Les structures sociales traditionnelles dans le Rif (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). Piety, or taqwa , is a social construct with political implications since the collective recognition of an individual piety's conferred moral ascendancy over the community.

6. Mohamed Kerrou "Le temps maraboutique," IBLA 54, 167 (1991): 63-72.

7. Louis Gardet, "Karama," EI , 2d ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978), 4: 615-16 (quote on 615); and John O. Voll, "Two Biographies of Ahmad ibn Idris al-Fasi," IJAHS 6 (1973): 633-46.

8. Gardet, "Karama," 615-16; and Muhammad b. al-Hajj Muhammad, "Kitab al-rawd al-basim fi tarjama al-imam sidi Muhammad ibn Abi al-Qasim," A 80 3165, al-Khizana al-'Amma, Rabat, Morocco, 23.

9. Donal B. Cruise O'Brien and Christian Coulon, eds., Charisma and Brotherhood in African Islam (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).

10. Anonymous, "Étude sur le Sahara," 1839, AMG, H 227; and Gapelin, "Rapport," 1844, AMG, Algérie, H 235. Henri Brunschvig, La Berbérie orientale sous les Hafsides des origines à la fin du XVe siècle , 2 vols. (Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1940-1947), 1: 245.

11. Jocelyne Dakhlia, L'oubli de la cité: La mémoire collective à l'épreuve du lignage dans le Jérid tunisien (Paris: Éditions la Découverte, 1990), 95-96.

12. Danielle Provansal, "Le phénomène maraboutique au Maghreb," Genève-Afrique 14, 1 (1975): 59-77; and Taoufik Bachrouch, Le saint et le prince en Tunisie: Les elites tunisiennes du pouvoir et de la devotion, contribution à l'étude des groupes sociaux dominants (1782-1881) (Tunis: Publications de l'Université de Tunis, 1989).

13. Stephen Wilson, ed., Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore, and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 27-28.

14. Wim M. J. van Binsbergen, "The Cult of Saints in North-Western Tunisia: An Analysis of Contemporary Pilgramage [ sic ] Structures," in Islamic Dilemmas: Reformers, Nationalists, and Industrialization, the Southern Shore of the Mediterranean , Ernest Gellner, ed. (New York: Mouton, 1985), 199-239.

Studies of female participation in saint veneration or of women saints in Islam are much less extensive than the literature devoted to women's religiosity in Christianity; for examples, see Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell, Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991); and Lynda L. Coon, Katherine J. Haldane, and Elisabeth W. Sommer, That Gentle Strength: Historical Perspectives on Women in Christianity (Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1990). Recently works on female religiosity in contemporary Islamic societies have appeared, among them, Nancy Tapper's " Ziyaret : Gender, Movement, and

Exchange in a Turkish Community," Muslim Travellers: Pilgrimage, Migration, and the Religious Imagination , Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori, eds. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), 236-55. The past experience of women has hardly been studied at all.

15. Wilson, Saints , 14. In addition to those of humble station, cult centers attracted supplicants from the ranks of the ulama or sufi shaykhs; Abu al-Qasim Sa'adallah, Tarikh al-Jaza'ir al-thaqafi , 2d ed. (Algiers: SNED, 1981), 1: 510.

16. Allan Christelow, Muslim Law Courts and the French Colonial State in Algeria (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 31; and AGGA, 10 H 72 and 10 H 18.

17. AGGA, 10 H 18 (census of 1844).

18. AGT, H, armoire 8, carton 81 bis, dossier 987 [Awamir, masha'ikh wa muqaddamin 'ala al-zawaya].

19. Mohamed-Hédi Cherif, Pouvoir et société dans la Tunisie de Husayn bin 'Ali (1705-1740) , 2 vols. (Tunis: Publications de l'Université de Tunis, 1984-1986).

20. Lucette Valensi, Fellahs tunisiens: L'économie rurale et la vie des campagnes aux 18e et 19e siècles (Paris: Moutonk, 1977); and Fanny Colonna, "Présence des ordres mystiques dans l'Aurès aux XIXe et XXe sièles: Contribution à une histoire sociale des forces religieuses en Algérie," in Les ordres mystiques dans l'Islam: Cheminements et situation actuelle , Alexandre Popovic and Gilles Veinstein, eds. (Paris: Éditions de l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1986), 249.

21. Victor Turner, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974). Turner's work was inspired in large measure by Arnold Van Gennep's earlier ethnological studies of Kabyle society in colonial Algeria.

22. Alex Wiengrod, "Saints and Shrines, Politics and Culture: A Morocco-Israel Comparison," Muslim Travellers , 217-35.

23. AGT, armoire 14, carton 142, dossier 516, contains numerous letters of official protest from European consuls in Tunis addressed to the Tunisian rulers between 1831 and 1880. These frequently had to do with the fact that Tunisians, who had fallen into debt to European creditors, sought financial asylum in the zawaya's sacred space. The beys did not always feel compelled to observe the tradition of sacred asylum when the government's authority was at stake. In a letter dated 1831, the French consul, de Lesseps, noted that the bey had ordered the door of one zawiya near Tunis closed "so that those seeking refuge would be deprived of food, thus forcing the guilty party to be delivered to justice."

24. Ernest Gellner, Saints of the Atlas (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969); and F. Benet's "Explosive Markets: The Berber Highlands," in Trade and Market in the Early Empire , ed. K. Polanyi (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1957), 188-217.

25. Ahmad ibn Abi al-Diyaf, Ithaf ahl al-zaman bi-akhbar muluk Tunis wa 'ahd al-aman (Tunis: al-Dar al-Tunisiyya lil-Nashr, 1963-1966), 7-8: 142.

26. Dj. Sari, "Nafta," EI , 2d ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992), 7: 890-91.

27. Roy P. Mottahedeh, Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 135-48.

28. Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, The Tijaniyya: A Sufi Order in the Modern World (London: Oxford University Press, 1965); Ahmad al-Dajjani, al-haraka al-Sanusiyya (Beirut: Dar Lubnan, 1967), and Abdulmola El-Horeir, "Social and Economic Transformations in the Libyan Hinterland during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century: The Role of Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1981).

29. Documentation for the Rahmaniyya and its founder is not as abundant as for the Tijaniyya or Sanusiyya; in part this is the product of the immense destruction wrought by the colonial conquest of the Kabylia and other areas in Algeria where the Rahmaniyya was dominant. There exists a corpus of unpublished letters or epistles (for the most part undated) by the founder-saint, Sidi Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Rahman al-Azhari, and his students, "Majmu' min risa'il al-shaykh 'Abd al-Rahman al-Zawawi al-Jaza'iri shaykh al-tariqa al-Rahmaniyya," MS. K 956, al-Khizana al-'Amma, Rabat, Morocco.

30. Muhammad al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif al-khalaf bi rijal al-salaf , reprint of 1907 ed. (Tunis: al-Maktaba al-'Atiqa, 1982), 457-74; Sa'adallah's Tarikh 1: 514-16; E. Bannerth, "La Khalwatiyya en Égypte, quelques aspects de la vie d'une confrérie," Institut Dominicain d'Études Orientales du Caire 8 (1964): 1-74; and Fred de Jong, "Khalwatiyya," El , 2d ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978), 4: 991-93.

31. Julia Clancy-Smith, "The Saharan Rahmaniyya: Popular Protest and Desert Society in Southeastern Algerian and the Tunisian Jarid, c. 1750-1881" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1988).

32. Georges Yver, "Kustantina," EI , 2d ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986), 5: 530-32.

33. André Raymond, "Les caractéristiques d'une ville arabe 'moyenne' au XVIIIe siècle: Le cas de Constantine," ROMM 44, 2 (1987): 134-47.

34. Anonymous, report, 1838, AMG, H 226; A. Dournon, trans., "Kitab Tarikh Qosantina," RA 57 (1913): 265-305; Adrien Berbrugger, Algérie, historique, pittoresque, et monumentale (Paris: J. Delahaye, 1843); André Nouschi, Enquête sur le niveau de vie des populations rerales constantinoises de la conquête jusqu'en 1919 (Paris: PUF, 1961), and "Constantine à la vielle de la conquête française," CT 3, 11 (1955): 371-87.

35. Muhammad al-Zubiri, al-Tijara al-Kharajiyya lil-sharq al-Jaza'iri (Algiers, 1972); and James M. Malarkey, "The Colonial Encounter in French

Algeria: A Study of the Development of Power Asymmetry and Symbolic Violence in the City of Constantine" (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1980). The province's population is estimated at 1.2 million by Xavier Yacono, "Peut-on évaluer la population de l'Algérie vers 1830?" RA 98, 3-4 (1954): 277-307; other estimates run as high as 3 million.

36. Raymond, "Les caractéristiques," 143-45, notes that the Banu al-Fakkun allied themselves quite early with the pro-Ottoman faction and were responsible for the definitive occupation of Constantine by the Turks in 1647. The family was handsomely rewarded, eventually controlling the offices of shaykh al-Islam, amir rakb al-muslimin (leader of the Hijazi pilgrimage), and imam and Khatibkhatib of the Great Mosque; these included substantial material benefits. Thus, the great religious families traditionally favored accommodation with central governments.

37. Sharif, saint, sufi, and 'alim not only overlapped but also could be combined within the same individual; treating these sociospiritual attributes as distinct typologies of holy persons (as colonial writers tended to do) is inaccurate. The shurafa' were found all over the Maghrib and ranged in social circumstance from the most illustrious urban ulama to those of unpretentious rank and manner of living. One example of the latter was a small tribe found in the Zab Qibli; named the Shurafa', its members were sedentary peasants, pastoral nomads, and merchant-landlords. Because of the recognition (that is, by both the central government and the local community) of their descent from the Prophet's clan, this kinship group did not pay taxes to the Turkish state as long as they remained in the Sahara. AMG, Algérie, H 227.

38. Anonymous, report, 1838, AMG, H 226.

39. Berbrugger, Algérie ; and Nouschi, Enquête and "Constantine"; al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif , 457-474; and Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Rahman, al-Rahmaniyya , trans. by Antoine Giacobetti as Livre de la Rah'maniya and Le livre des dons de Dieu--Glose de la Rah'maniya (Algiers: Maison Carrée, 1946). Al-Rahmaniyya comprises some 1,400 lines of verse and has been retained in the original Arabic version. The accompanying commentary by Bash Tarzi exists only in French translation, however. The manuscript from which Giacobetti worked in the 1940s was printed in Tunis by the Imprimerie Officielle Tunisienne in 1889 through the auspices of Sidi Muhammad b. Abi al-Qasim, the Rahmaniyya shaykh of al-Hamil.

40. Al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif , 460; anonymous, "Notes sur les ordres religieux dans le cercle de Constantine," 15 January 1850, AGGA, 16 H 2; Octave Depont and Xavier Coppolani, Les confréries religieuses musulmanes (Algiers: Jourdan, 1897); and Auguste Cherbonneau, "Sur le catéchisme des rahmaniens," JA 20 (December 1852): 515-18.

41. Mustafa Bash Tarzi wrote a didactic treatise in verse on the Rahmaniyya entitled al-Minha al-rubbaniyya fi bayan al-manzuma al-rah-

maniyya (Cairo: Dar al-Hajar, 1287/1870); the only extant copy of this work is apparently in the library of al-Azhar; I have not been able to consult this work.

42. Anonymous, report, 1838, AMG, H 226; Ernest Vaysettes, Histoire de Constantine sous les beys depuis l'invasion Turque jusqu'à l'occupation française (Constantine, 1869); and Ernest Mercier, Histoire de Constantine (Constantine, 1903).

43. It is uncertain whether the shaykhs administering the Saharan Rahmaniyya zawaya remitted a part of their offerings cum revenues--or any revenues at all--to the tariqa's centers in the city of Constantine or in the Kabylia. The Bash Tarzi clan did not apparently exert direct administrative control--as opposed to moral influence--over the Saharan zawaya. What is certain is that Rahmaniyya notables in the Ziban and elsewhere corresponded with sufi peers in Constantine and that religious figures from the pre-Sahara resided at the order's zawaya when visiting the city. Joseph-Adrien Seroka, "Historique de Biskra," 1855, AGGA, 10 H 76.

44. Mohamed Brahim Salhi, "Étude d'une confrérie religieuse Algèrienne: La Rahmaniya à la fin du XIXe siècle et dans la première moitié du XXe siècle" (Ph.D. diss., Paris, Sorbonne, 1979).

45. In the Kabylia, the Rahmaniyya encountered bitter opposition from the powerful saints of the Chellata zawiya near Akbou in the Jurjura whose religious clients were enjoined from becoming Rahmaniyya members. Here the nascent sufi order threatened to draw clients away from a local saintly clan, which would have compromised its prestige, sociospiritual authority, and material resources, all measured by popular followings. The clan's antipathy for their Rahmaniyya competitors endured into the nineteenth century and may explain the pro-French stance of the saints of Chellata from the 1840s on. Nil-Joseph Robin, Insurrection de la Grande Kabylie en 1871 (Paris: Lavauzelle, 1901), 544-58; and Charles-André Julien, La conquête et les débuts de la colonisation, (1827-1871) , vol. 1 of Histoire de l'Algérie contemporaine , 2d ed. (Paris: PUF, 1979), 481-97.

46. Salhi, "Étude," 54, 60.

47. Anonymous, 1865, ARGT, carton 415.

48. AGT, D-84-3 and D-119.

49. Sa'adallah, Tarikh 1: 514-16.

50. Dureau de la Malle, Province de Constantine, recueil de renseignements pour l'expédition ou l'établissement des français dans cette partie de l'Afrique septentrionale (Pairs: Gide, 1837), 142-43.

51. Auguste Cour, "Constantine en 1802 d'après une chanson populaire du Cheikh Belqasem Er-Rahmouni El-Haddad," RA 60 (1919): 224-60; Sa'adallah, Tarikh 1: 516, and 2: 247-330; and Jean Déjeux, La poésie algérienne de 1830 à nos jours (approches socio-historiques) , 2d ed. (Paris: Publisud, 1982). The veneration of Muslim saints and sufis through the

vehicle of ballads and other popular musical forms was widespread in the Maghrib; however, the musical traditions of sufi orders and saints have received little scholarly attention thus far. Lura Jafran Jones's, "The 'Isawiya of Tunisia and Their Music" (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1977), is one of few such studies.

52. David Robinson, The Holy War of Umar Tal: The Western Sudan in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 95; and Muhammad al-Hajj, "The Thirteenth Century in Muslim Eschatology: Mahdist Expectations in the Sokoto Caliphate," Research Bulletin of the University of Ibadan 3, 2 (1967): 100-115.

53. Bradford G. Martin, Muslim Brotherhoods in Nineteenth-Century Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).

54. Al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif , 482-86; Muhammad ibn 'Ashur, Tarajim al-a'lam (Tunis: Maison Tunisienne de l'Édition, 1970), 187-93; Depont and Coppolani, Confréries , 395; and Louis Rinn, Marabouts et khouan: Étude sur l'Islam en Algérie (Algiers: Jourdan, 1884), 459. Rinn confuses Muhammad b. 'Azzuz with his son Mustafa.

55. La Croix, report, 1844, AMG, Algérie, H 227; and M 1317.

56. Anonymous, "Étude sur le Sahara," 1839, AMG, H 227; and Gapelin, "Rapport," 1844, AMG, Algérie, H 235.

57. AMG, Algérie, H 227, H 230, and M 1317.

58. Statistics gathered by the French occupation forces in southern Tunisia in 1885 estimated that in Nafta there were some 108 religious establishments--mosques, madrasas, zawaya, qubbas, and small shrines--for a population of 8,800, or one religious establishment for every 80 people; this count apparently does not include the numerous saints' shrines without qubbas that were scattered throughout the oasis's gardens; de Fleurac, "Étude," 1885, AMG, Tunisie, 36 H 29, no. 8.

59. AMG, Algérie, H227, H230, and M1317. As was the case elsewhere, al-Burj's population was divided into factions--some eight different groups organized according to kinship. In 1839, the total male population was estimated at roughly 430 individuals; of these 50 belonged to the 'Azzuz clan. In addition to engaging in date-palm cultivation and textile production, the inhabitants raised barley, owned livestock (cared for by allied pastoralists), and traded in the Ziban's markets. Finally, the surplus male population of al-Burj migrated to Algiers to work as boatmen in the city's port which created ties of a potentially political nature with the northern littoral.

60. On Muhammad b. 'Azzuz, see al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif ; al-Hajj Muhammad, Kitab ; Berque, L'intèrieur , 421; and Marthe and Edmond Gouvian, Kitab aayane al-marhariba (Algiers: Imprimerie Orientale, 1920), 147.

61. Why these religious clans were attracted to the Ziban and Jarid is a question worth raising. One factor may have been the oases' location along one of the principal hajj routes from Morocco to the Mashriq. Another was that these oases have always straddled the limits between

central government control, inevitably based in the north, and desert autonomy. Finally, there may have been "push" factors in that Moroccan sultans periodically exiled politically active holy men to Ottoman-held lands, as in 1668 during the assault upon the rebellious Moroccan zawiya of al-Dila; Jacques Berque in Ulemas, fondateurs, insurgés du Maghreb (Paris: Sindbad, 1982).

62. AGGA, 16 H 3, 10 H 72; and AMG, Algérie, H 230.

63. Al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif , 482.

64. Ibid.

65. Ibid.; Gouvian, Kitab , 147-48.

63. Al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif , 482.

64. Ibid.

65. Ibid.; Gouvian, Kitab , 147-48.

63. Al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif , 482.

64. Ibid.

65. Ibid.; Gouvian, Kitab , 147-48.

66. Depont and Coppolani, Confréries , 395-411; and Gouvian, Kitab , 147-65.

67. Ibrahim b. Muhammad al-Sasi al-'Awamir, al-Suruf fi tarikh al-Sahra' wa suf (Algiers: SNED, 1977); Jean Pigoreau, "Les confréries religieuses musulmanes dans l'annexe d'El Oued," CHEAM, vol. 107, no. 2, 503, 4-10; and anonymous, 22 April 1908, ARGT, carton 989.

68. Al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif , 482-83.

69. The murid-shaykh relationship within the Rahmaniyya order is discussed at length by the founder in verses 623-38 of al-Rahmaniyya 245-66.

70. Al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif , 482-83.

71. La Croix, report, 1844, AMG, Algérie H 227 and M 1317.

72. Gouvian, Kitab , 147; al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif ; and AGT, D-97-2. Jean Despois, Le Djebel Amour (Paris: PUF, 1957), 96-97, observed that local pilgrimages to the tombs of Rahmaniyya notables, like Sidi Muhammad 'Azzuz of al-Burj in Algeria, continued in the pre-Sahara into the interwar period.

73. Here the Rahmaniyya founder's doctrines regarding membership or affiliation with the order appear to have directly influenced popular recruitment, especially compared with their sufi competitors, the Tijaniyya, which were much more exclusive in recruitment; Abun-Nasr, Tijaniyya .

74. See Dakhlia, L'oubli , 110, for the participation of the pastoral peoples in the sufi orders; also al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif , and al-Diyaf, Ithaf 7-8: 142-43.

75. Al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif , 483.

76. Information on Sidi 'Ali b. 'Umar's clan is relatively more abundant for the colonial period than for other Rahmaniyya notables. This is due, in large part, to their accommodating posture toward the French regime and accessibility to Europeans, which generated documentation. Shaykh 'Ali b. 'Uthman of Tulqa worked with Louis Rinn in researching Marabouts et khouan: Étude sur l'Islam en Algérie , in his preface, Rinn notes Sidi 'Ali's assistance. Data--of a certain nature--exist for religious leaders engaging in militant resistance; rebellions were inevitably followed by painstaking

investigations, such as those subsequent to the 1871 Muqrani-Rahmaniyya uprising. Conversely, the activities of those sufi-saintly families who assumed a political stance of retreat or avoidance protest are the most difficult to document, for example, Sidi 'Abd al-Hafiz of Khanqa Sidi Naji.

77. AMG, Algérie, H 227, H 230, H 235, and M 1317.

78. Jean Lethielleux, Ouargla, cité saharienne: Des origines au début du XXe siècle (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1983), 148, 154, 240; and Eugène Fromentin, Un été dans le Sahara (Paris: Éditions le Sycomore, 1981). Fromentin visited the Ziban and Tulqa in April of 1848; he subsequently exhibited several paintings of the oasis in the 1850 Salon in Paris.

79. According to Brunschvig in La Berbérie 1: 296, Tulqa (Talaga) dates back to antiquity; al-Bakri in the eleventh century noted that the oasis was composed of three cities, each surrounded by ramparts to protect Tulqa's inhabitants during interminable disputes between tribal groups, struggling to control the Ziban.

80. Michael Brett, ''Arabs, Berbers, and Holy Men in Southern Ifriqiya, 650-750 / 1250-1350," CT 29, 117-18 (1981): 533-59.

81. Ibid.; and Brunschvig, La Berbérie 2: 334-35.

80. Michael Brett, ''Arabs, Berbers, and Holy Men in Southern Ifriqiya, 650-750 / 1250-1350," CT 29, 117-18 (1981): 533-59.

81. Ibid.; and Brunschvig, La Berbérie 2: 334-35.

82. Brett, "Arabs, Berbers, and Holy Men," 549-51.

83. AMG, Algérie, H 230; and Brunschvig, La Berbérie 2: 335.

84. Sidi 'Ali b. 'Umar's genealogy, noted by Gouvian, Kitab , 148, indicates that the family claimed membership in the Moroccan Hasanid ashraf tracing descent from Idris b. 'Abd Allah, a direct descendant of the Prophet through his son-in-law 'Ali, and the founder of the Idrisid dynasty of Fez. In Morocco, the Idrisis traditionally furnished leading holy men and scholars who not infrequently assumed political roles.

85. Information on 'Ali b. 'Umar's clan is found in the following published sources: al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif ; Salhi, "Etude"; Gouvian, Kitab ; Depont and Coppolani, Confréries ; and in unpublished archival sources found in AMG, Algérie, H 230; AGGA, 10 H 72 and 16 H 3; and in AGT, D series.

86. AMG, Algérie, H 227, H 230, H 235, and M 1317.

87. Ibid.

86. AMG, Algérie, H 227, H 230, H 235, and M 1317.

87. Ibid.

88. Al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif , 460; Gouvian, Kitab , 149. The term qutb originally referred to the head of a hidden hierarchy of awliya'; it later was applied to sufis who had attained an advanced degree of mystical perfection. Sidi 'Ali b. 'Umar's clan later appropriated the paramount miracle attributed to the founder of the Rahmaniyya tariqa, whose saintly remains were miraculously reduplicated so that two tomb-shrines resulted in 1793-1794. In the early twentieth century, Tulqa's Rahmaniyya shaykhs attributed to one of their pious family members, Sidi 'Ali b. Ahmad b. 'Uthman, the coveted sobriquet of "Abu Qabrayn" ("the man with two tombs"); Gouvian, Kitab , 150.

89. Gouvian, Kitab ; and anonymous, "Notice historique de la zawiya de Khangat Sidi Naji," 1895, AGGA, 16 H 10. At the end of the nineteenth

century, René Basset was permitted to partially catalogue the holdings of some Rahmaniyya and Tijaniyya libraries whose contents reveal the reformed sufi emphasis upon the law and orthodoxy; René Basset, "Les manuscripts arabes de la zaouyah d'el Hamel," Giornale della Societa Asiatica Italiana (Firenze) 10 (1896-1897): 43-97; and idem, "Les manuscripts arabes des bibliothèques et des zaouias de Ain Mahdi, Temacin, et de Ourgla," Bulletin de Correspondance Africaine (Algiers) 3 (1885): 211-65 and 465-92.

90. Al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif , 482-83; anonymous, "Etude sur les oasis du Ziban," n.d. (c. 1844 or 1845), AMG, Algérie, H 230; "Carnet de notes," 1885, AGGA, 10 H 72; and anonymous, "Notice sur Si Ali ben Otmane," December 1898, AGGA, 16 H 3.

91. AMG, Algérie, H 227, H 230, and H 235.

92. Émile Masqueray, "Le Djebel Cherchar," RA 20 (1878): 208-12 (quote on 210). Masqueray devoted much of his life and research to the history of the Awras and its inhabitants; his magnum opus was Formation des cités chez les populations sédentaires de l'Algérie (Paris: Leroux, 1886).

Fanny Colonna has done the most significant recent work on the religious sociology of the Awras: "Saints furieux et saints studieux ou, dans l'Aurès, comment la religion vient aux tribus," AESC 35 (1980): 642-62; idem, "The Transformation of a Saintly Lineage in the Northwest Aurès Mountains (Algeria): Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries," in Islam, Politics, and Social Movements , Edmund Burke III and Ira M. Lapidus, eds. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), 81-96; and idem, "Présence des ordres mystiques dans l'Aurès aux XIXe et XXe sièrie," in Les ordres mystiques dans l'Islam: Cheminements et situation actuelle , Alexandre Popovic and Gilles Veinstein, eds. (Paris: Éditions de l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1986), 245-65.

93. Masqueray, "Djebel," 208-12; Raoul de Lartigue, Monographie de l'Aurès (Constantine: Marle-Audrino, 1904), 370-74; and Gouvian, Kitab , 158-65. The oasis of Sidi 'Uqba is located in the Zab Sharqi (or eastern wing of the Ziban) immediately south of the Jabal Cherchar. One of the most important pilgrimage sites in the Maghrib, the oasis boasts the tomb of the great Arab-Muslim conqueror 'Uqba b. Nafi', who founded the holy city of al-Qayrawan in Tunisia in 670 and later led an expedition in the Biskra region; he was killed and buried there in c. 682. His tomb-mosque, still revered today, is the oldest monument in existence from this period in the Maghrib.

94. Gouvian, Kitab , 158-60; anonymous, "Notice historique de la zawiya de Khangat Sidi Naji," 25 May 1895, AGGA, 16 H 10; also AGGA, 1 H 9 and 10 H 72.

95. AGGA, 10 H 72 and 16 H 2; and AMG, Algérie, H 230 bis.

96. AGGA, 10 H 72 and 16 H 2; and AMG, Algérie, H 230 bis; and Rinn, Marabouts . Here the hostility of colonial officers toward the Catholic church in France played a significant part in their interpretation of Islam in North Africa; Julia Clancy-Smith, "In the Eye of the Beholder: Sufi and Saint in North Africa and the Colonial Production of Knowledge, 1830-1900," Africana Journal 15 (1990): 220-57.

97. Al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif , 482; Gouvian, Kitab , 160; de Lartigue, Monographie , 373-74; and Masqueray, "Djebel," 208-12.

98. AGGA, 10 H 72 and 16 H 10; report, 1883, AGT-D-172-3; Gouvian, Kitab , 164; and de Lartigue, Monographie , 209.

99. Al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif , 483, lists some of the disciples of Shaykh Muhammad b. 'Azzuz yet omits Sidi Sadiq.

100. AGGA, 1 H 15, 10 H 43, and 16 H 2; also Depont and Coppolani, Confréries , 410-11. On the revolts centered in Sidi Masmudi and later in Timermacin (or Tibermacine), see Peter von Sivers, "The Realm of Justice: Apocalyptic Revolts in Algeria (1849-1879)," Humaniora Islamica 1 (1973): 47-60.

101. Al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif , 576-77, devotes a short notice to Shaykh al-Mukhtar al-Jallali which says little of his life but rather lists his virtues and concludes with an elegy composed in Sidi al-Mukhtar's honor by Muhammad al-Makki b. 'Azzuz, one of Mustafa's four sons.

102. Gouvian, Kitab , 153-57.

103. AGGA, 10 H 72, 16 H 8, and 16 H 73.

104. Sa'id Ghrab, "al-Tariqa al-Rahmaniyya--ta'rif mujaz," IBLA 54, 167 (1991): 95-108.

105. For Algeria, Sa'adallah, Tarikh , vol. 1; and Pierre Boyer, "Contribution à l'étude de la politique religieuse des Turcs dans la Régence d'Alger," ROMM 1, 1 (1966): 11-49; for Tunisia, Mohamed-Hédi Cherif, "Hommes de religion et pouvoir dans la Tunisie de l'époque moderne," AESC 35 (1980): 580-97.

Unlike Morocco and Tunisia, where the reigning sultans and beys confirmed the heads of the turuq and members of the ashraf by conferring letters of recognition and tax-free status, the bey of the Constantine does not appear to have issued such letters for the notables considered here.

106. Al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif , 459, recounts how Sidi Muhammad repeatedly refused the pasha's offer of gold dinars in return for instructing the ruler's family in Khalwatiyya sufi doctrines. Finally the saint went to the roof of the palace and flung the gold pieces from on high, after reciting verses from the Quran. With this, the pasha begged forgiveness; after accepting the dey's apology, Sidi Muhammad departed from the city. The obvious moral lesson is that residing among the powerful and wealthy for the purposes of spiritual edification is a worthy endeavor; accepting remuneration is not. The implicit political message is that the holy person might disobey a sovereign.

107. Anonymous, letter, 18 May 1856, AGGA, 25 H 16; and de Fleurac, "Étude," 1885, AMG, Tunisie, 36 H 29, no. 8.

108. Al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif , 483.

109. Anonymous, report, 1898, AGGA, 16 H 3; Gouvian, Kitab , 149-51; and Henri Garrot, Histoire générale de l'Algérie (Algiers: Crescenzo, 1910), 944-45.

110. "Notice sur Si Ali ben Otmane," AGGA, 16 H 3; "Memoire sur les oasis des Zibans," AGGA, 10 H 72; AMG, Algérie, H 230 bis and H 131; and de Lartigue, Monographie , 370-71.

111. Joseph-Adrien Seroka, "Le sud Constantinois de 1830 à 1855," RA 56 (1912): 400-401.

112. John Voll, Islam: Continuity and Change in the Modern World (Boulder: Westview Press, 1982), 52; also idem, "Hadith Scholars and Tariqahs: An Ulama Group in the Eighteenth-Century Haramayn and Their Impact in the Islamic World," JAAS 15, 3-4 (1980): 264-73.

113. Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori, eds., "Social Theory in the Study of Muslim Societies," Muslim Travellers , 3-25.

1. Alf A. Heggoy, The French Conquest of Algiers, 1830: An Algerian Oral Tradition (Athens: Center for International Studies, Ohio University, 1986), 6-7.

2. Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, A History of the Maghrib in the Islamic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Lucette Valensi, Le Maghreb avant la prise d'Alger (Paris: Flammarion, 1969); Abdeljelil Temimi, Le beylik de Constantine et hadj Ahmed Bey (1830-1837) , vol. 1 (Tunis: Publications de la Revue d'Histoire Maghrébine, 1978); and Charles-André Julien, La conquête et les débuts de la colonisation (1827-1871) , vol. 1 of Histoire de l'Algérie contemporaine , 2d ed. (Paris: PUF, 1979), 1-20.

3. Pierre Boyer, "Introduction à une historire intérieure de la régence d'Alger," RH 235, 2 (1966): 297-316.

4. The history of the Ottoman period still awaits its historian. On Algeria under the Turks, see Mouloud Gaid, L'Algérie sous les Turcs (Algiers: SNED, 1974); Pierre Boyer, La vie quotidienne à Alger à la veille de l'intervention française (Paris: Hachette, 1963); dated but useful is Henri-Delmas de Grammont's, Histoire d'Alger sous la domination turque, 1515-1830 (Paris: Leroux, 1887). The best recent study of the evolution of the state in Algeria is John Ruedy's Modern Algeria: The Origins and Development of a Nation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992).

5. Abu Al-Qasim Sa'adallah, Tarikh al-Jaza'ir al-thaqafi , 2d ed. (Algiers: SNED, 1981), 1: 524-26; Roger Le Tourneau, "Darkawa," EI , 2d ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1965), 2: 160; Adrien Delpech, "Resumé historique sur

le soulèvement des Dark'aoua de la provinced d'Oran," RA 18 (1874): 38-58; and Mehdi Bouabdelli, "Documents inédits sur la révolte des Derqawa en Oranie," in Les Arabes par leurs archives (XVIe-XXe siècles) , Jacques Berque and Dominique Chevallier, eds. (Paris: CNRS, 1976), 93-100.

6. L. Charles Féraud, "Les cherifs kabyles de 1804 à 1809 dans la province de Constantine," RA 13 (1868): 211-24; and Dominique Luciani, "Les Ouled-Athia de l'oued Zhour," RA 33 (1889): 294-311.

7. Michael Adas in his "Bandits, Monks, and Pretender Kings: Patterns of Peasant Resistance and Protest in Colonial Burma, 1826-1941," in Power and Protest in the Countryside: Studies of Rural Unrest in Asia, Europe, and Latin America , Robert P. Weller and Scott E. Guggenheim, eds. (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1982), 75-105, argues along lines similar to mine regarding the continuities between the precolonial and colonial eras in institutions, traditions, and economic arrangements.

8. Peter von Sivers, "Les plaisirs du collectionneur: Capitalisme fiscal et chefs indigènes en Algérie (1840-1860)," AESC 33, 3-4 (1980): 679-99; quote 680-81.

9. Joseph-Adrien Seroka, "Historique de Biskra," 1855, AGGA, 10 H 76.

10. I. Urbain, Tableau des etablissements français en Algérie (Paris, 1844), 401.

11. Jean Lethielleux, Ouargla, cité saharienne: Des origines au début du XXe siècle (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1983); and L. Charles Feraud, "Notes historiques sur la province de Constantine: Les Ben-Djellab, sultans de Touggourt," RA 23-31 (1879-1887).

12. Muslim b. 'Abd al-Qadir al-Wahrani, Tarikh bayat wahran al-muta'akhkhir , new ed. (Algiers: SNED, 1974); Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, The Tijaniyya: A Sufi Order in the Modern World (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), 59-62; and Ernest Mercier, Historire de Constantine (Constantine: Marle, 1903), 272-82. After the death of the order's founder, Ahmad al-Tijani, in 1815, the Tijaniyya, like Rahmaniyya, followed a pattern of alternating succession for the honor of head shaykh. Two main Tijaniyya centers existed in Algeria during the nineteenth century; one was located in the founder's birth place at 'Ain Madi in western Algeria; the other was situated in the eastern Algerian Sahara in Tamalhat, a suburb of Tammasin near the larger rival oasis of Tuqqurt.

13. Seroka, "Historique de Biskra," 1855, AGGA, 10 H 76.

14. Anonymous, report, 1844, AGGA, 1 KK 470.

15. Ibid.; Seroka, "Historique de Biskra," 1855, AGGA, 10 H 76; Feraud, "Les Ben-Djellab," 26: 376-86; and Peter von Sivers, "Insurrection and Accommodation: Indigenous Leadership in Eastern Algeria, 1840-1900," IJMES 6, 3 (1975): 259-75. The struggles lasted into the twentieth century; only in 1938 were the two families reconciled. The quote is from Seroka.

14. Anonymous, report, 1844, AGGA, 1 KK 470.

15. Ibid.; Seroka, "Historique de Biskra," 1855, AGGA, 10 H 76; Feraud, "Les Ben-Djellab," 26: 376-86; and Peter von Sivers, "Insurrection and Accommodation: Indigenous Leadership in Eastern Algeria, 1840-1900," IJMES 6, 3 (1975): 259-75. The struggles lasted into the twentieth century; only in 1938 were the two families reconciled. The quote is from Seroka.

16. Lieutenant Prax, "Mémoire sur les oasis du Souf," 4 November 1847, AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 10; and AGGA, 10 H 18.

17. Al-Hajj Ahmad Bey, "Mémoires d'Ahmed Bey," Marcel Emerit, trans., RA 93 (1949): 65-125.

18. It is useful to compare the political situation in the eastern pre-Sahara of Turkish Algeria with the Tunisian pre-Sahara in the same period. In Husaynid Tunisia, a relatively more centralized state apparatus did not permit the existence of either Saharan princes, such as the Banu Jallab of Tuqqurt, or of great warrior families, like the Bu 'Ukkaz. However, in places like the Jarid, political struggles were also expressed by the binary saff mechanism, and the state had to work through local clans of notables; on relations between the Jarid and Tunis, see Abdelhamid Henia, Le Grid, ses rapports avec le beylik de Tunis, 1676-1840 (Tunis: Publications de l'Université de Tunis, 1980).

19. Ann Thomson, Barbary and Enlightenment: European Attitudes towards the Maghreb in the Eighteenth Century (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987).

20. M. E. Chamberlain, Decolonization: The Fall of the European Empires (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 3.

21. C. M. Andrew and A. S. Kanya-Forstner, "Centre and Periphery in the Making of the Second French Colonial Empire, 1815-1920," Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 16, 3 (1988): 9-34.

22. Philip D. Curtin, Death by Migration: Europe's Encounter with the Tropical World in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 28-30; the casualty rate among French soldiers in Algeria was so high that it became a public issue in France.

23. Michael Adas, "From Avoidance to Confrontation: Peasant Protest in Precolonial and Colonial Southeast Asia," CSSH 23, (1981): 217-47; and idem," 'Moral Economy' or 'Contest State'?: Elite Demands and the Origins of Peasant Protest in Southeast Asia," JSH 13, 4 (Summer 1980): 521-46.

24. Popular lamentations were given public voice by the maddah --more so than by the urban literati or ulama, who, according to Jean Déjeux in La poésie algérienne de 1830 à nos jours , 2d ed. (Paris: Publisud, 1982), 20, remained silent about the conquest since "they did not wish to record the humiliations and affronts suffered at the hands of the infidels." The maddahs, on the other hand, were minstrels who sang in markets and gathering places; their ballads transmitted public consensus and collective historical memory to future generations.

According to Julien, Historie , 60-61, the conquest of the capital was portrayed in the following manner: "the queen of all cities has fallen in the hands of the Christians with their degraded religion because the Muslims were unable to defend her." Collective aspirations centered upon a "ruler who would have pity upon the capital [and who] would return to the country as a king to administer Algiers according to Islamic law."

25. Charles Richard in Étude sur l'insurrection du Dahra (1845-1846) (Algiers: Besancenez, 1846), 104, wrote that "the Arabs believe that we will be chased out . . . like the Spanish were." General Bourmont's 1830 proclamation (in both Arabic and French) to the capital's inhabitants in Adrien Berbrugger, "La première proclamation addressée par les français aux algériens, 1830," RA (1862) 6: 147-56, stated: "I assure you that no one among us desires to harm either your possessions or your families."

On France's uncertainty over the fate of Algeria during the first decade of conquest, see Alf A. Heggoy, "Looking Back: The Military and Colonial Policies in French Algeria," MW 73 (1983): 57-66.

26. The literature, colonial and recent, devoted to 'Abd al-Qadir is staggering; for a partial listing of the colonial production, see Robert Playfair's A Bibliography of Algeria from the Expedition of Charles Vin 1541 to 1887 (London: Murray, 1892) and Bibliographie militaire des ouvrages français ou traduit en français et des articles des principales revues françaises relatifs à l'Algérie, Tunisie, et au Maroc de 1830 à 1926 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1930-1935) 2: 300-306. The most recent English study is Raphael Danziger's Abd al-Qadir and the Algerians: Resistance to the French and Internal Consolidation (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1977). The best Arabic source remains Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri, Tuhfa alza'ir fi tarikh al-Jaza'ir wa al-amir 'Abd al-Qadir , Mamduh Haqi, ed. (Beirut, 1964).

27. Louis de Baudicour, La guerre et le gouvernement de l'Algérie (Paris: Sagnier et Bray, 1853), 508.

28. The amir's subtle, calculated blend of accommodation with opposition undermines "resistance" theory's binary approach to political movements, pigeonholing political actors into either resistors/opponents or collaborators. 'Abd al-Qadir's movement resembles West African jihads; see David Robinson, The Holy War of Umar Tal: The Western Sudan in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).

29. André Raymond, "Caractéristiques d'une ville arabe 'moyenne' au XVIIIe siècle: Le cas de Constantine," ROMM 44, 2 (1987): 134-47.

30. Emile Herbillon, Insurrection survenue dans le sud de la province de Constantine en 1849. Relation du siège de Zaatcha (Paris: Librarie Militaire, 1863), 6.

31. Seroka, "Historique de Biskra," 1855, AGGA, 10 H 76; and idem, "Le sud Constantinois de 1830 à 1855," RA 56 (1912): 386-88.

32. La Croix, report of 1844, AMG, Algérie, M 1317, H 227, and H 230 bis; Robert Capot-Rey, Le Sahara français (Paris: PUF, 1953), 236.

33. Seroka, "Historique de Biskra," 1855, AGGA, 10 H 76; and idem, "Le sud," 388.

34. Herbillon, Relation , 27; and Charles Bocher, "Le siège de Zaatcha, souvenirs de l'expédition dans les Ziban en 1849," RDM 10 (1851): 70-100.

35. Seroka, an officer of Batna's Bureau Arabe, set forth this policy of close political surveillance of local notables during the Sharif of Warqala's revolt in 1855; this policy would remain in force among military officials until the early twentieth century; Seroka, "Historique de Biskra," 1855, AGGA, 10 H 76.

36. Seroka, "Le sud," 391-408.

37. James M. Malarkey, "The Colonial Encounter in French Algeria: A Study in the Development of Power Asymmetry and Symbolic Violence in the City of Constantine" (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1980). On 'Abd al-Qadir's complicated relationships with religious and tribal leaders in the Constantine, see al-Jaza'iri, Tuhfa , 300; Seroka, "Le sud," 391-408; and Leon Roches, 1839-1840, "Biographie d'Abdel Kader," AMG, Algérie, H 235.

38. Raymond, "Caractéristiques," 134-47; and Temimi, Le beylik , 220-22.

39. Even after the catastrophes of 1837, Constantine continued to function as an important center of Islamic learning with an active, if much more circumscribed, role in the province's cultural life. Two decades later, a British traveler, Joseph William Blakesley, visited one of the great madrasas there. He observed that the professors lecturing on the Quran still attracted students from all over the Maghrib and even the Mashriq, although the city's religious establishments had not been treated kindly by the colonial administration; Joseph William Blakesley, Four Months in Algeria (Cambridge, 1859), 1-36.

40. Various Algerian officials, including Ahmad Bey, continued to correspond with the Porte after the 1830 invasion, submitting reports to the sultan on French activities; see the documents contained in Temimi, Le beylik , 220-88. Equally significant, Constantine's populace wrote to the Ottoman sultan, Mahmud II, detailing the disasters suffered by the country and begging for assistance. As Temimi (220) points out, this was the first time that a petition had been directly addressed to an Ottoman ruler.

41. Al-Jaza'iri, Tuhfa , 300.

42. Ibid., 306; and Seroka, "Le sud," 400-402. In his introduction to his translation of Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Rahman's al-Rahmaniyya [ Livre de la Rah'maniya ] (Maison-Carrée, 1946), 3, Antoine Giacobetti noted that 'Abd al-Qadir joined the Rahmaniyya "in the hope of enrolling the Kabyles in his cause."

41. Al-Jaza'iri, Tuhfa , 300.

42. Ibid., 306; and Seroka, "Le sud," 400-402. In his introduction to his translation of Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Rahman's al-Rahmaniyya [ Livre de la Rah'maniya ] (Maison-Carrée, 1946), 3, Antoine Giacobetti noted that 'Abd al-Qadir joined the Rahmaniyya "in the hope of enrolling the Kabyles in his cause."

43. 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri, Tuhfa , 306; Seroka, "Le sud," 400-402 and 422-23; and AGGA, 1 H 8.

44. Allan Christelow, Muslim Law Courts and the French Colonial State in Algeria (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 46-54.

45. Seroka, "Historique de Biskra," 1855, AGGA, 10 H 76; and idem, "Le sud," 409-14. On Gen. Thomas Robert Bugeaud (1784-1849) and his

writings, see Par l'epée et par la charrue, écrits et discours de Bugeaud , introduction and notes by Gen. Paul Azan (Paris: PUF, 1948); an exercise in colonial hagiography and apologia, the work offers insights into the man who decreed total occupation and relentlessly promoted settler colonialism in Algeria.

46. Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Rahman, al-Rahmaniyya , 267.

47. Seroka, "Le sud," 402-4.

48. Ibid; and anonymous, report, 1840, AGGA, F 80 1673.

47. Seroka, "Le sud," 402-4.

48. Ibid; and anonymous, report, 1840, AGGA, F 80 1673.

49. Anonymous, report, 1840, AGGA, F 80 1673; and Seroka, "Le sud," 402-4.

50. AMG, Algérie, H 230 bis; and Seroka, "Historique de Biskra," 1855, AGGA, 10 H 76.

51. AMG, Algérie, H 230 bis; and Seroka, "Le sud," 422-23.

52. AMG, Algérie, H 230 bis; Warnier's letter dated 1 August 1849, AGGA, 16 H 2; and Seroka, "Le sud," 422-23.

53. La Croix, report, 1844, AMG, Algérie, M 1317.

54. Anonymous, report, 1844, AGGA, 1 KK 470; and Seroka, "Le sud," 428-34. In reorganizing the Ziban, the French commander created a new post--that of qa'id, who was subordinate to the shaykh al-'arab but resided permanently in Biskra; a qadi was also named for the entire region. For each oasis, local qadis and heads of village councils were appointed to offset the shaykh al-'arab's power, whose authority was thereby diminished. The French-imposed administrative curbs on the shaykh's traditional political clout made the Banu Ghana less than faithful allies; this explains their ambiguous behavior during Bu Ziyan's revolt.

55. Anonymous, report, 1844, AGGA, 1 KK 470. Since the French-appointed khalifa in the Majana resided permanently in his administrative bailiwick, he was constantly aware of the "political state of mind" of those under him; this was critical for the isolated French troops and officers scattered about in garrisons. In the pre-Sahara, the shaykh al-'arab normally moved with the tribes and was frequently absent from Biskra. This meant that the small French military presence there relied wholly upon the good-will of the settled oasis population. As the 1844 report observed after the massacre: "The Biskris had no need for France's protection to market their products, a need of the greatest significance for the nomads; the political sympathies of Biskra's sedentary population are with the Amir 'Abd al-Qadir."

56. E. Pellissier de Reynaud to French consul, Tunis, 7 April 1846, ARGT, carton 416.

57. Claude Martins, Tableau physique du Sahara oriental (Paris: J. Claye, 1864), 21.

58. Bureau Arabe, Biskra, AGGA, 1 KK 5 and 1 KK 13; and Kenneth J. Perkins, Qaids, Captains, and Colons: French Military Administration in the Colonial Maghrib, 1844-1934 (New York: Africana, 1981).

59. Von Sivers, "Insurrection," 259-75; and idem, "Les plaisirs," 679-99.

60. Warnier, letter, 1 August 1849, AGGA, 16 H 2.

61. La Croix, report, 1844, AMG, Algérie, M 1317; "Renseignements, Biskra," 1844, AGGA, 10 H 18; and Seroka, "Le sud," 431.

62. "Renseignements, Biskra," 1844, AGGA, 10 H 18.

63. Bureau Arabe, Biskra, 29 September 1846, AGGA, 1 KK 5.

64. Ahmed Nadir, "Les ordres religieux et la conquête française (1830-1851)," RASJEP 9, 4 (1972): 819-72; and Marthe and Edmond Gouvian, Kitab aayane al-marhariba (Algiers: Imprimerie Orientale, 1920), 147.

65. Emile Masqueray, "Le Djebel Cherchar," RA 20 (1878): 210-11.

66. Abun-Nasr, The Tijaniyya , 72-73; Edouard de Neveu, Les khouans: Ordres religieux chez les musulmans de l'Algérie (Paris: A. Guyot, 1846), 140-41. The struggles between the Tijaniyya of western Algeria and the Turkish regime earlier in the century may have convinced some sufi shaykhs that French rule was less pernicious than that of fellow Muslims. How the Tijani leader's advice was received by those seeking counsel in 1844 is less certain.

67. Anonymous, report, 1846, AGGA, 1 KK 470.

68. Seroka, "Le sud," 432. In al-Aghwat, for example, Ahmad b. Salim, the local leader and head of a prestigious saintly clan, opened direct negotiations with General Marey-Monge in 1844 to explore French aims in the Sahara and determine whether those aims were consonant with his own political objectives; Roger Le Tourneau, "Occupation de Laghouat par les français (1844-1852)" in Études maghrébines: Mélanges Charles-André Julien (Paris: PUF, 1964), 111-36.

69. Bureau Arabe, Biskra, September 1846, AGGA, 13 KK 5. French colonial interference in market exchanges and the distribution of wheat, particularly the interdiction upon the export of grains from Biskra, negatively affected the Suf and Tuqqurt regions.

70. AGGA, 10 H 18 and 10 H 76; and Prax, "Mémoire," 1847, AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 10.

71. Anonymous, report, 1844, AGGA, 1 KK 470: "prior to 1844, no attempt was made to impose administrative order [upon the Ziban]. French-named qa'ids collected taxes in a completely arbitrary manner; the quantity collected varied considerably. Tribal markets were neither uniformly governed nor taxed. The administration of justice was completely disorderly."

72. Correspondence, Bureau Arabe, Biskra, September 1846, AGGA, 13 KK 5; in 1845 tax exemptions were accorded to some religious notables for not opposing the French regime; the next year this policy was abruptly changed. The inconsistency and arbitrary nature of the exemptions were as much a source of grievance as the measures themselves.

73. AGGA, 10 H 76; and AMG, Algérie, H 131 and M 1317. Charles Bocher in "Le siège de Zaatcha," 76, dismissed taxation as a primary cause

of the revolt as does Seroka, ''Le sud," 505. Herbillon in his 1850 report, AMG, Algérie, H 131, and in Relation , 12, concedes that the new taxes were a bit "exaggerated" and that subjecting religious notables to taxation for the first time was unwise. Yet Herbillon, who commanded the French forces during the 1849 siege, maintained that insurrection was already in the "minds and hearts of the Ziban's inhabitants." This interpretation naturally exonerates French military authorities. Peter von Sivers in "The Realm of Justice: Apocalyptic Revolts in Algeria (1849-1879)," Humaniora Islamica 1 (1973): 47-60, argues that while excessive taxation may have been a contributing factor, economic grievances alone do not suffice to explain why the movement assumed the form of a mahdist rebellion instead of a classic tax revolt.

74. Anonymous, "Historique de 1849," AGGA, 10 H 18.

75. Anonymous, report, 1844, AGGA, 1 KK 470.

76. Eugène Daumas, Le Sahara Algérien (Paris: Langlois et Leclercq, 1845), 108. Much of the information for economic changes in this region and this period is found only in archival sources in AMG, AGGA, AMAE, and ARGT.

77. AGGA, 10 H 76; La Croix, report, 1844, AMG, Algérie, M 1317; Herbillon, Relation , 5; and Bocher, "Le siège," 76.

78. Marcel Emerit, L'Algérie à l'epoque d'Abd el-Kader (Paris: Larose, 1951), 199-200, views the 1844 seizure of the hubus properties as instrumental in pushing local religious leaders toward collective militant protest.

79. Correspondence, Bureau Arabe, Biskra, 1847, AGGA, 13 KK 5; and John Ruedy, Land Policy in Colonial Algeria: The Origins of the Rural Public Domain (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967).

80. L. Carl Brown, The Tunisia of Ahmad Bey, 1837-1855 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 321-25.

81. Julien, Histoire 1: 347-49.

82. Von Sivers, "The Realm," 51.

83. AMG, Algérie, H 227 and M 1317. Ahmad Bey, "Mémoires," 87-88, describes in vivid terms the devastation wrought by the cholera epidemic-- al-rih al-asfar --as the disease was known; the bey stated that in the city of Constantine alone seven hundred persons died in a single day.

84. Carette, report, 1839, AMG, Algérie, H 227; also M 1317.

85. Inconsistent colonial policies toward indigenous desert elites were mainly due to confusion over the nature of Saharan alignments and politics. French military officers more often than not acted without authorization from superiors when dealing with notables, also creating contradictory policies. Prior to 'Abd al-Qadir's surrender, the army frequently lacked adequate soliders or supplies. Seroka sarcastically remarked in "Le sud,"

425, that "two battalions would have better served the interest of maintaining political order in the pre-Sahara than the mass of letters sent by the commanding general in Constantine exhorting desert peoples to obedience."

86. Bureau Arabe, Biskra, 29 September 1848, AGGA, 1 KK 5.

87. Both 'Abd al-Qadir and Ahmad Bey had surrendered with the understanding that they would be allowed to go into exile in Muslim states. In both cases, French colonial authorities failed to keep their promises; the amir was held in confinement in the Chateau d'Amboise until 1852, when he was permitted to go to Damascus. Ahmad Bey fared less well; he died in prison of poisoning in 1850 and was buried at the zawiya of Sidi 'Abd al-Rahman in Algiers.

88. James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistance in Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), 193-98, argues that when the peasantry experience a sudden and similarly felt exploitation which threatens the very basis of the rural subsistence ethic and agrarian moral economy then collective action becomes an option, particularly in geographically peripheral regions characterized by an "unpromising ecology."

89. General Herbillon to governor-general, Algiers, November 1849, AMG, Algérie, H 131.

90. Scott, Moral Economy , 193-95.

91. Timothy Weiskel emphasized the importance of political uncertainty and what he terms a "pervasive sense of the unpredictable" in French Colonial Rule and the Baule People: Resistance and Collaboration, 1889-1911 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980).

92. Bureau Arabe, Biskra, 1844 report, AGGA, 1 KK 470.

93. Von Sivers, "Insurrection," and "The Realm."

94. Bradford G. Martin, Muslim Brotherhoods in Nineteenth-Century Africa (London: Cambridge University Press, 1976); and Muhammad A. al-Hajj, "The Thirteenth Century in Muslim Eschatology: Mahdist Expectations in the Sokoto Caliphate," Research Bulletin , Center of Arabic Documentation, Ibadan University (Nigeria) 3, 2 (1967): 100-115.

95. W. Madelung, "al-Mahdi," EI , 2d ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986), 5: 1230-38.

96. The last recorded mahdist movement in Morocco was led by M'bark ibn al-Husayn al-Tuzunini between 1914 and 1919; the last such uprising recorded for Tunisia occurred in 1906 in the region of Tala.

Studies of the mahdi, mahdism, and the Islamic apocalypse are: James Darmesteter, Le mahdi depuis les origines de l'Islam jusqu'à nos jours (Paris: Le Roux, 1885); D. S. Margoliouth, "On Mahdis and Mahdism," Proceedings of the British Academy 7 (1915-1916): 213-33; S. M. Hasan, al-Mahdiya fi al-Islam mundhu al-usul hatta al-yawm (Cairo, 1953); Abdulaziz Sachedina, Islamic Messianism, the Idea of the Mahdi in

Twelver Shi'ism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1980); Thomas Hodgkin, "Mahdism, Messianism, and Marxism in the African setting," in Religion and Rural Revolt , Janos M. Bak and Gerhard Benecke, eds. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984); and Michael Adas, Prophets of Rebellion: Millenarian Protest Movements against the European Colonial Order (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979). The literature on apocalyptic movements in Christianity is too extensive to be cited here; two classic works on this topic remain Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages , revised and enlarged ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970); and Sylvia Thrupp, ed., Millennial Dreams in Action (The Hague: Mouton, 1962).

97. Popular lore regarding the mahdi, including the oral traditions of Sidi al-Aghwati, were recorded from native informants by the French military officer Richard in Étude , 86-98.

98. Théodore Pein, Lettres familières sur l'Algérie, un petit royaume arabe (Algiers: Jourdan, 1893), 51-52, says that a local holy man visited him while he was serving as an officer in Bu Sa'ada between 1850 and 1859. The saint, who bore the same name as the eighteenth-century holy man, offered to instruct Pein about the predictions contained in Sidi al-Aghwati's book; this indicates that a century later these prophecies were still read and talked about. On manuscript prophecy and issues of oral tradition in Algerian historiography, see Allan Christelow's "Oral, Manuscript, and Printed Expressions of Historical Consciousness in Colonial Algeria," Africana Journal 15 (1990): 258-75.

1. Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History , 2d ed., Franz Rosenthal, trans. and ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 2: 156.

2. Ibid. 2: 164. Peter von Sivers's "The Realm of Justice: Apocalyptic Revolts in Algeria (1849-1879)," Humaniora Islamica 1 (1973): 47-60, is the only recent study of the Za'atsha rebellion. On the mahdi as a socioreligious type in North African history, see Michael Brett, "Mufti, Murabit, Marabout, and Mahdi: Four Types in the Islamic History of North Africa," ROMM 29, 1 (1980): 5-16; and Mercedes Garcia-Arenal, ''La conjunction du sufisme et sharifisme au Maroc: Le mahdi comme sauveur," ROMM 55-56 (1990-1991): 233-56.

1. Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History , 2d ed., Franz Rosenthal, trans. and ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 2: 156.

2. Ibid. 2: 164. Peter von Sivers's "The Realm of Justice: Apocalyptic Revolts in Algeria (1849-1879)," Humaniora Islamica 1 (1973): 47-60, is the only recent study of the Za'atsha rebellion. On the mahdi as a socioreligious type in North African history, see Michael Brett, "Mufti, Murabit, Marabout, and Mahdi: Four Types in the Islamic History of North Africa," ROMM 29, 1 (1980): 5-16; and Mercedes Garcia-Arenal, ''La conjunction du sufisme et sharifisme au Maroc: Le mahdi comme sauveur," ROMM 55-56 (1990-1991): 233-56.

3. Eugen Weber, "Comment la Politique Vint aux Paysans: A Second Look at Peasant Politicization," AHR 87, 2 (1982): 357-89 (quote on 357).

4. Emile Herbillon, Insurrection survenue dans le sud de la province de Constantine en 1849. Relation du siège de Zaatcha (Paris: Librarie Militaire, 1863), 26.

5. Charles-André Julien, La conquête et les débuts de la colonisation (1827-1871) , vol. 1 of Histoire de l'Algérie contemporaine , 2d ed. (Paris: PUF, 1979), 1: 201.

6. Charles-Robert Ageron, Modern Algeria: A History from 1830 to the Present , Michael Brett, trans. (London: Hurst and Co., 1991), 20.

7. Anonymous, report, 1847, AGGA, 1 KK 470. The participation in Bu Ma'za's movement of these two oases and the Awlad Na'il reveals how ecologically based relationships between pastoralists and agrarian communities influenced political behavior. The Awlad Na'il traditionally used these particular oases as storage places; the ties of patronage between the oases' inhabitants and fellow tribal combatants provided a framework for political cooperation. As important, most belonged to the same saff, the Banu Ghana.

8. Ibid.; and Charles Richard, Étude sur l'insurrection du Dahra (1845-1846) (Algiers: Besancenez, 1846); and Joseph-Adrien Seroka, "Le sud Constantinois de 1830 à 1855," RA 56 (1912): 442-44.

7. Anonymous, report, 1847, AGGA, 1 KK 470. The participation in Bu Ma'za's movement of these two oases and the Awlad Na'il reveals how ecologically based relationships between pastoralists and agrarian communities influenced political behavior. The Awlad Na'il traditionally used these particular oases as storage places; the ties of patronage between the oases' inhabitants and fellow tribal combatants provided a framework for political cooperation. As important, most belonged to the same saff, the Banu Ghana.

8. Ibid.; and Charles Richard, Étude sur l'insurrection du Dahra (1845-1846) (Algiers: Besancenez, 1846); and Joseph-Adrien Seroka, "Le sud Constantinois de 1830 à 1855," RA 56 (1912): 442-44.

9. Pierre Bourdieu, "The Sentiment of Honour in Kabyle Society," in Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society , J. G. Peristiany, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 201-2, characterized tribal warfare as a set of rituals in which the aim was to avenge honor; "one did not seek to kill or crush one's opponent." Firearms were a last resort and the struggle was not necessarily to the death. Thus the function and operation of warfare in traditional North African society could differ substantially from the European context.

10. Richard, Étude ; and Seroka, "Le sud," 442-44. Bu Ma'za's fate after his capture by the French resembled that of the Amir 'Abd al-Qadir. The ex-mahdi was imprisoned in Paris, where he became, as was true of the amir, an exotic object of curiosity on the part of the French. Finally, Emperor Louis Napoleon pardoned him; he was allowed to settle in the Ottoman Empire, where he was admitted to the Ottoman army as a colonel.

11. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), xv.

12. Von Sivers, "The Realm," 47-60, notes that millenarian movements tended to occur when alternative forms of militant protest had failed or were deemed inferior to the mahdi's self-proclaimed mission.

13. In anonymous, report, 1844, AGGA, 1 KK 470, an officer with the Bureau Arabe in Biskra observed that the administration of justice was completely in abeyance throughout the Ziban. This continued to be the case until the 1849 revolt. "The administration of justice was disorderly; qadis were appointed without official character, and the means to enforce their sentences were lacking. The qadis were no longer consulted in judicial matters by the tribes of the countryside and the majlis , or superior tribunal, no longer functioned either. Fines and punishments were inflicted upon the tribes without order or reason."

14. Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1978); and idem, The Contentious French (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1986).

15. Julien, Histoire , 342-47.

16. La Croix, report, 1844, AMG, Algérie, M 1317; Adrien Berbrugger, Algérie, historique, pittoresque, et monumentale (Paris: Delahaye, 1843) 3: 19-20; and Allan Christelow, Muslim Law Courts and the Frnech Colonial State in Algeria (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 87. The barranis had traditionally supplied information; under the Turkish regime, the Mzabis, due to constant comings and goings between the Sahara and the Mediterranean, were the main source of news for the central government in Algiers. Julien, Historie , 13.

17. Thiriet, report, 1938, AGGA, 10 H 88 (7).

18. Estimates of the exact numbers of barranis in the precolonial and early colonial periods are impressionistic. In the 1870s, when statistics become more reliable, it was estimated that nearly half of the adult male population of the small oasis-village of al-Burj had at one time or another worked in Algiers or Constantine. AMG, Algérie, H 230, "Étude sur les oasis du Ziban" (n.d., c. 1876); M 1317 (1847); and H 227 (1839).

19. Carette, a Saint-Simonian army officer and later prefect of the Constantine, was a pioneer in colonial studies devoted to the Sahara, then believed to contain vast, unexplored riches. In 1839 Carette began to gather meticulous data on the desert from native informants who were Algerian or Tunisian merchants.

In 1844 Carette's study was published as "Recherches sur la géographie et le commerce de l'Algérie méridionale" in a multivolume compilation, Exploration scientifique de l'Algérie , vol. 1 (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1844), patterned after its Napoleonic precursor, Description de l'Égypte . While the interests of the French military naturally tended toward political and strategic concerns, commerce was regarded as a necessary adjunct to domination of the pastoral-nomadic and oasis peoples. Even though Carette, who published a number of studies, never visited many of the regions about which he wrote, his work was remarkably accurate due to his research methods. Two manuscripts by Carette are contained in AMG, Algérie, H 227 and H 229.

20. Anonymous, 14 March 1852, dispatch no. 58, AGGA, 10 H 9.

21. The Biskris or Saharan barranis were the North African version of the Auvergnats in France. By this period, some had a limited understanding of the French language; the professions monopolized by the Biskris in Algiers and elsewhere--messengers, porters, and water carriers--made them especially well placed to both gather and disseminate rumors and information.

22. Anonymous, "Historique de 1849," AGGA, 10 H 18. Evidence that the barranis were colporteurs of politically subversive rumors is also

found in Herbillon, Relation , 8-10; Bocher, "Le siège de Zaatcha: Souvenirs de l'expédition dans les Zibans en 1849," RDM 10 (1851): 70-100; and Seroka, "Le sud," 501-5. The fact that taxation was integrated into the rumor mills suggests that fiscal disorder played a role in focusing economic grievances prior to the Bu Ziyan uprising.

23. The National Assembly in Paris allocated considerable sums of money in 1848 for settling French families in Algeria; this act was followed by the arrival of large numbers of colons the next year, much to the distress of the indigenous population, who correctly foresaw the loss of their lands to the settlers.

24. Ahmad ibn Abi al-Diyaf, Ithaf ahl al-zaman bi-akhbar muluk Tunis wa 'ahd al-aman , annotated by Ahmed Abdesselem (Tunis: Publications de l'Université de Tunis, 1971), 121; and Leon Carl Brown, The Tunisia of Ahmad Bey, 1837-1855 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 325.

25. Anonymous, report, 1844, AGGA, 1 KK 470.

26. Anonymous, "Historique de 1848," AGGA, 10 H 18; and Herbillon, Relation , 8-9. In August 1846, E. Pellissier de Reynaud reported to the French consul de Lagau in Tunis in AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 10, that he had recently made a trip to southern Tunisia. Along the borders with Tripolitania were Tunisian tribes, many of whom had "never before laid eyes upon a European." Nevertheless, the tribespeople accurately reported to Pellissier de Reynaud events then occurring in the Constantine. Later he was able to ascertain the exactitude of what the tribes had told him through European newspapers. As in previous centuries, trade routes and traders functioned as a news wire service in the nineteenth century, and information regarding political changes in Algeria had been transported into southwestern Tunisia by merchants from the Constantine. The significant change is, however, the expansion of the information circuits in North Africa to include Europe and the Europeans. This global distribution of news was a product of imperialism, colonialism, and the Eurocentric world market system which made news an politically indispensable commodity of exchange.

27. As Jack Goody notes in The Interface between the Written and the Oral (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), there exists a constant dialectic between the domains of the written and oral; North Africa had an ancient tradition of writing and written knowledge, whether devoted to the realms of the sacred or profane. Unfortunately, Goody does not address the issue of rumors and spontaneous news; see also Allan Christe-low, "Oral, Manuscript, and Printed Expressions of Historical Consciousness in Colonial Algeria," Africana Journal 15 (1990): 258-75.

28. My conclusions regarding the significance of rumors in North Africa are confirmed by similar observations made by Anand A. Yang in

"A Conversation of Rumors: The Language of Popular Mentalites in Late Nineteenth-Century Colonial India," JSH 20 (1987): 485-505.

29. Anonymous, "Historique de 1848," AGGA, 10 H 18.

30. Richard, Étude , 105.

31. Augustin Cour, "Constantine en 1802 d'aprés un chanson du Cheikh Belgasem Er-Rahmouni El-Haddad," RA 60 (1919): 224-40; and Jean Déjeux, La poésie algérienne de 1830 à nos jours (approches socio-historiques) (Paris: Éditions Publisud, 1982). The belief in the mahdi's arrival remained in force in the Maghrib among both ordinary people and elites until the early twentieth century; the Kabyle scholar, al-Zawawi, still believed that the mahdi's appearance was possible at the turn of the century; Pessah Shinar, "A Controversial Exponent of the Algerian Salafiyya: The Kabyle 'Alim, Imam and Sharif Abu Ya'la Sa'id b. Muhammad al-Zawawi," in Studies in Islamic History and Civilization in Honour of Professor David Ayalon , Moshe Sharon, ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986), 267-90.

Scott, Weapons , 22-27, points out that malicious tales, anecdotes, slander, and gossip about those wielding power were part of the arsenal of the weak in what he calls a "cold war" of class antagonisms.

32. Lloyd Cabot Briggs, The Tribes of the Sahara (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 101.

33. During tax-collection forays into the Sahara, the Turkish regime employed paid spies to locate tribes for taxation purposes; Walsin Esterhazy, De la domination turque dans l'ancienne Régence d'Alger (Paris: Gosselin, 1840), 251-52.

34. Gapelin, report, 1844, AMG, Algérie, H235, contains information on spies in the caravan trade; also Arnold van Gennep, En Algérie (Paris: Mercure, 1914): 105-7.

35. Jean Mattei, Sfax, to French consul-general, Tunis, 1856, ARGT, carton 414.

36. Anonymous, AGGA, 1 H 9; Eugène Perret, Récits algériens (Paris: Bloud et Barral, 1887) 2: 6; and Elisée Reclus, L'Afrique septentrionale , vol. 11 of Nouvelle Géographie Universelle (Paris: Hachette, 1886), 639; Mabruk b. 'Azzuz's instructions are found in AGT, 1850, 206-91-21.

37. Examples of these rumors are found in prefect of the Constantine to governor-general, Algiers, June 1852, AGGA, 1 H 9; the monthly and bimonthly reports of the Bureaux Arabes in the AGGA, 1 H sous-série, are particularly valuable sources of information on what Muslim Algerians were talking about; these contain numerous references to rumors regarding the Ottoman sultan, the mahdi, and the Tunisian bey, all of whom were regarded as potential saviors. In addition, the Public Record Office (Kew) and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Paris, Quai d'Orsay) contain consular reports from nineteenth-century Tunisia which also mention

rumors and the rumor mill; for example, AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 7 (1943); and PRO, Tunisia, FO 102/10 (1841).

38. In a letter of 25 October 1846, a Bureau Arabe officer in Biskra reported to Algiers that a reconnaissance cavalry had arrested a Tunisian courier carrying a packet of letters from the Bey of Tunis to Hajj Ahmad Bey of the Constantine, then in hiding in eastern Algeria. According to the military officer who read the seized missives, they "contained the worst lies but these letters find much credence among the Arabs and the Kabyles. The arrested courier, named Muhammad b. 'Uthman, rendered a packet of 20 letters. His father is a servant of the bey in Tunis and for four years now his father has been in the [Tunisian] bey's household service."

39. Mustafa b. 'Azzuz to the Tijaniyya (?) shaykh of Gummar and Tammasin, November 1851, AGT, carton 206, dossier 91, armoire 21.

40. Yang, "A Conversation," 485. Perhaps the first social historian to study the relation between rumors and political action was Georges Lefebvre, The Great Fear of 1789: Rural Panic in Revolutionary France , J. White, trans. (New York: Vintage, 1973); see also Niels Kastfelt, "Rumours of Maitatsine: A Note on Political Culture in Northern Nigeria," African Affairs, Journal of the Royal African Society 88, 350 (1989): 83-90.

41. Ted W. Margadant, French Peasants in Revolt: The Insurrection of 1851 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 256-57, observed that "false rumors stimulated widespread popular participation in the revolt."

42. Anonymous, "Historique de Biskra," 1849, AGGA, 10 H 18; there were other outbreaks of insubordination toward French authorities in 1849 which are subtle indicators of the political climate. One such example is from the Awras region; an ordinary woman, who was also a female member of the Rahmaniyya tariqa, threatened French military officers in Batna; reported in AGGA, 16 H 2 (1849).

43. The traditions held that the mahdi would be a descendant of 'Ali and Fatima through their son, Husayn. One popular mahdist tradition recorded later in the century but representative of earlier such lore claimed that "a sharif will appear before you; he will be from the line of Husayn, son of 'Ali and Fatima. He will be recognized by the following signs: he will have white teeth, his banner will be green, his age 35 years; he will create a majlis composed of 40 faqihs." Octave Depont and Xavier Coppolani, Les confréries religieuses musulmanes (Algiers: Jourdan, 1897), 259. Whether Bu Ziyan attempted to fabricate a sharifian genealogy for himself prior to or during the construction of his mahdist persona is uncertain.

44. A similar pattern in recruitment is seen in Western Europe in the middle ages. Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages , rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), observed that former clerics, drawn from

the lower ranks of the clergy, were often self-proclaimed messiahs or prophets.

45. Georges Yver, "La conquête et la colonisation de l'Algérie," in Histoire et historiens de l'Algérie , Stéphane Gsell, ed. (Paris: Alcan, 1931), 277.

46. Maj. G. B. Laurie, The French Conquest of Algeria (London: Hugh Rees, 1909), 197, claims that Bu Ziyan had been a water carrier in Algiers; von Sivers in "The Realm," 50-51, also states that the leader of the Za'atsha uprising was of humble origins--as were most other mahdist figures in Algeria.

47. Perret, Récits 2:7-8.

48. Seroka, "Le sud," 507.

49. Audrey Wipper, Rural Rebels: A Study of Two Protest Movements in Kenya (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977); J. R. Goody, "Reform, Renewal and Resistance: A Mahdi in Northern Ghana," in African Perspectives , C. Allen and R. W. Johnson, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 143-56; and Michael Adas, Prophets of Rebellion: Millenarian Protest Movements against the European Colonial Order (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979).

50. Perret, Récits 2: 8.

51. Anonymous, "Historique de 1849," AGGA, 10 H 18; and Seroka, "Le sud," 505.

52. Gilbert Delanoue, Moralistes et politiques musulmans dans l'Égypte du XIXe siècle (1798-1882) (Cairo: Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale du Caire, 1982) 1: 221-27, discusses the importance of dreams and visions--not only in sufi circles but also among the learned and popular classes as well. Dreams had several functions: some permitted communication with pious persons long deceased; others provided insights and enlightenment into the correct course of action to follow; while others warned of future dangers or brought physical or spiritual healing. Moreover, the founder of the Rahmaniyya, Sidi 'Abd al-Rahman, himself, had been assured of the rightness of his "way" in the course of seven dreams in which the Prophet appeared to him.

53. Bocher, "Le siège," 78.

54. Anonymous, "Historique de Biskra," 1849, AGGA, 10 H 18.

55. Kenelm Burridge, "Millennialisms and the Recreation of History," in Religion, Rebellion, and Revolution: An Interdisciplinary and Cross-Cultural Collection of Essays , Bruce Lincoln, ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1985), 219-35, argues that millennial movements signal the suspension of ordinary time.

56. Herbillon, Relation , 12-19, 40.

57. Anonymous, "Historique de 1849," AGGA, 10 H 18.

58. Ibid.; anonymous, report, 1844, AGGA, 1 KK 470; and von Sivers, "The Realm," 51.

57. Anonymous, "Historique de 1849," AGGA, 10 H 18.

58. Ibid.; anonymous, report, 1844, AGGA, 1 KK 470; and von Sivers, "The Realm," 51.

59. Herbillon, Relation , 15-19; and Perret, Récits , 2: 9-10.

60. Herbillon, Relation , 15-19; Perret, Récits , 2: 9-10; and Seroka, "Le sud," 505-6.

61. Anonymous, "Historique de 1849," AGGA, 10 H 18; Anonymous, "Journal de marche de la colonne de Zaatcha," 1849, AGGA, 10 H 76; Herbillon, Relation , 95; and Théodore Pein, Lettres familières sur l'Algérie, un petit royaume arabe , 2d ed. (Algiers: Jourdan, 1893), xxi.

62. L. Charles Féraud, Histoire des villes de la province de Constantine (Constantine: Arnolet, 1869), 356.

63. Ibid., 356-60.

62. L. Charles Féraud, Histoire des villes de la province de Constantine (Constantine: Arnolet, 1869), 356.

63. Ibid., 356-60.

64. Anonymous, 26 September 1846, correspondence, Bureau Arabe of Biskra, AGGA, 13 KK 5. In addition to importing gunpowder, mainly from Tunisia via the Jarid, the Ziban traditionally manufactured gunpowder, supplying it to the pastoral-nomadic and mountain populations. The oases of Sidi Khalid and Awlad Jallal were particularly active in the production of gunpowder, one of whose ingredients--saltpeter--was found in abundance in the desert; sulfur had to be imported clandestinely from Nafta.

65. "Journal de marche de la colonne de Zaatcha, 1849," AGGA, 10 H 76; Bocher, "Le siège," 80-81; and Perret, Récits 2: 8. Perret noted that the Sharif Jamina had persuaded his Kabyle followers that the walls of el-Arrouch would collapse magically due to the mahdi's divinely conferred powers.

66. "Journal de marche de la colonne de Zaatcha," 1849, AGGA, 10 H 76; and Perret, Récits 2: 8.

67. Jocelyne Dakhlia, L'oubli de la cité: La mémoire collective à l'épreuve du lignage dans le Jérid tunisien (Paris: Éditions la Découverte, 1990).

68. Von Sivers, "The Realm."

69. AGGA, 16 H 3 and 10 H 72; AMG, Algérie, H 230 bis; and Seroka, "Le sud," 375-446, 500-565.

70. AGGA, 10 H 76 and 10 H 18; Herbillon, Relation , 89; and Colonel Noëllat, L'Algérie en 1882 (Paris: Librarie Militaire, 1882), who notes, 99, that the Shaykh 'Ali b. 'Uthman attempted to broker a peace during the siege, obviously without success. It is possible that Sidi 'Ali was playing a double game--extending his good offices to France while offering behind the scenes encouragement to the rebels.

71. AGGA, 1 H 9, 10 H 18, and 1 H 132; AMG, Algérie, H 131; AGT, D-172-3; Herbillon, Relation , 35, 39; and Seroka, "Le sud," 508-9.

72. AGGA, 10 H 18 and 10 H 76; Herbillon, Relation , 95.

73. AMG, Algérie, H 131 and H 230 bis.

74. AMG, Algérie, H 131 and H 230 bis; Herbillon, Relation , 194; Seroka, "Le sud," 513; and Perret, Récits 2: 13.

75. AGGA, 10 H 18; Seroka, "Le sud," 509-10; and Herbillon, Relation , 43-47. The oasis of Sariana, a small hamlet some twenty kilometers

to the east of Biskra, was situated near a strategic pass, the Wadi Biraz, leading from the southern Awras into the Sahara.

76. Anonymous, report, 22 January 1850, AGGA, 10 H 18; AGGA, dispatch no. 26, 1 H 7; and AGGA, 10 H 56; AMG, Algérie, H 131; and Seroka, "Le sud," 513.

77. Herbillon, Relation , 43.

78. A biographical notice devoted to General Herbillon is found in Raymond Peyronnet, Livre d'or des affaires indigènes, 1830-1930 (Algiers: Soubiron, 1930) 2: 142-44.

79. Anonymous, report, 1853, AMG, Algérie, M 1317; and Perret, Récits 2: 14-21. The cholera outbreak among colonial troops was part of a pandemic which may have begun as early as 1847 in the Hijaz, although its exact origins are still unknown; see Nancy E. Gallager, Medicine and Power in Tunisia, 1780-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 44-49; and Philip D. Curtin, Death by Migration: Europe's Encounter with the Tropical World in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 72, where he notes that the third pandemic of 1849-1850 "attacked all of Algeria and Tunisia" and was as mortal for the Europeans as for the indigenous populations.

80. AGGA, 10 H 76; Saint Arnaud, "Histoire des Oulad Nail," RA 17 (1873): 379-80; Perret, Récits 2: 20-21; and Seroka, "Le sud," 515-17.

81. Daniel R. Headrick, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).

82. AMG, Algérie, H 131; Herbillon, Relation , 89; Perret, Récits 2: 21-22; and Bocher, "Le siège," 87-92.

83. Bocher, "Le siège," 22-28; and AMG, Algérie, H 131. Julien, Histoire 1: 320, cites some of the horrors visited upon Za'atsha's inhabitants by the soldiers--rapes, murders of children and women, etc.

84. AGGA, 10 H 76; and AMG, Algérie, H 131. One example is a study of oasis warfare completed by Lt. C. Cholleton in 1853 and entitled "Plan et projet d'attaque de l'oasis de Sidi Oqba," found in AMG, Algérie, 1317.

85. Julien, Histoire , 384-85, notes that General Herbillon's scorched earth policy and inability to control his troops drew criticism from some French officials; Herbillon's account of the siege-- Insurrection --was intended in part to exonerate himself. While I have used this work as one source of information, I relied on only those parts that could be corroborated with other documentation.

86. This is clearly seen in the report written by General Marey-Monge in 1849 entitled "Au sujet des sectes religieux en Algérie," found in AGGA, 1 EE 17; see Julia Clancy-Smith, "In the Eye of the Beholder: Sufi and Saint in North Africa and the Colonial Production of Knowledge, 1830-1900," Africana Journal 15 (1990): 220-57.

87. AMG, Algérie, H 131; anonymous, "Mémoire de 1855," AGGA, 10 H 76; Thomas Reade, British consul, Tunis, 17 August 1850, PRO, Tunisia, FO 102/38; the quote is from Perret, Récits 2: 21.

88. One example of passive resistance occurred in 1851 in Guelma, where the Rahmaniyya shaykh, 'Ali b. Mahjub, advised the tariqa's members to cease working for the infidels as laborers on agricultural estates; AGGA, 16 H 1.

89. Charles-Robert Ageron, "L'émigration des musulmans algériens et l'éxode de Tlemcen (1830-1911)," AESC 22, 2 (1967): 1047-66.

90. Governor-general, Algiers, to the minister of foreign affairs, Paris, December 1849, AMG, Algérie, H 131.

91. Colonel Bissuel, "Histoire de Biskra," 1856-1879, AGGA, 10 H 43. The letter written by Muhammad al-Sadiq b. al-Hajj of Masmudi to Rahmaniyya followers in Batna on the eve of the 1858 uprising contains clues regarding how the Za'atsha participants viewed their struggle in 1849. Sidi Muhammad stated that "the Christian (Rumi) acts against our religion, our prayers, our zakkat, and our pilgrimage. He demands that we follow his religion; this we were not ordered to do neither by God nor by His Prophet. If the Christian only demanded of us the corvée, taxes, and requisitions, there would be nothing to say; but our religion, which is the most important thing, must not be abandoned." AGGA, 1 H 15.

92. Shaykh 'Abd al-Hafiz's official pardon is found in 22 January 1850, AGGA, 10 H 18; see also 1850, dispatch no. 26, AGGA, 1 H 7; AGGA, 10 H 56; and AMG, Algérie, H 131.

93. Emile Masqueray, "Le Djebel Cherchar," RA 22 (1878): 210-11.

94. Charles de Galland, Exursions à Bou-Saada et M'Sila (Paris: Ollendorff, 1899), 32-33; and Pein, Lettres , xxi-xxiii.

95. Anonymous, "Historique du cercle de Biskra, 1853," AGGA, 10 H 18; anonymous, "Résumé de la situation du cercle de Biskra, 1853," 1 H 10; and Herbillon, Relation , 195. The Kabyle rebel Bu Dali was also believed to have miraculously survived death; several rebellious leaders after him claimed to be the still-living hero; L. Charles Féraud, "Les chérifs kabyles de 1804 à 1809 dans la province de Constantine," RA 13 (1868): 211-24.

The American traveler and writer, Frederick Arthur Bridgman, Winters in Algeria (New York: Harper, 1890), noted that the memory of Za'atsha remained vivid among the Ziban's inhabitants even thirty years later.

96. AMG, Algérie, H 131 and H 230 bis; whether Bu Ziyan himself was literate is open to question.

97. L. Charles Féraud in "Notes historiques sur la province de Constantine: Les Ben-Djellab, sultans de Touggourt," RA 29 (1885): 398-423; and 'Abd Allah Rakibi, al-Shi'ir al-dini al-Jaza'iri al-hadith (Algiers: SNED, 1981), 378.

98. Déjeux, Poésie , 9-18; Mervyn Hiskett, The Development of Islam in West Africa (London: Longman, 1984), points out that the mahdi was a popular folk hero in Africa south of the Sahara and was often made the protagonist of village tales and stories.

99. Marcelin Beaussier, Dictionnaire pratique arabe-française , 2d ed., Mohamed Ben Cheneb, ed. (Algiers: Jules Carbonel, 1931), 924; compare his definition with that of N. Boratav, ''Maddah," EI , 2d ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1984), 5: 951-53.

100. Steven C. Caton, "Power, Persuasion, and Language: A Critique of the Segmentary Model in the Middle East," IJMES 19 (1987): 77-102.

101. Gabriel de Margon, Insurrection dans la province de Constantine de 1870 à 1880 (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1883).

102. Augustin Cour, "La poésie populaire politique au temps de l'emir Abdelqader," RA 59 (1919): 458-84.

103. Anonymous, "Historique de 1853," AGGA, 10 H 18; L. Charles Féraud, "Ferdjioua et Zouar'a, notes historiques sur la province de Constantine," RA 22 (1878): 345, mentions not only that the maddahs extolled the virtues of local political autonomy but also that poets were viewed by ordinary people as endowed with the ability to foresee the future.

On poetry in sub-Saharan Africa as a vehicle for expressions of political discontents, see Leroy Vail and Landeg White, "Forms of Resistance: Songs and Perceptions of Power in Colonial Mozambique," AHR 88, 4 (1983): 883-919.

104. Féraud, "Les Ben-Djellab," 29: 410-13.

105. A local maddah, describing Bu Baghla's revolt in the Jurjura mountains between 1849 and 1856, employed similar imagery: "I will speak of the Christian; when he embarks upon a campaign, [his soldiers] are more numerous than the locusts when they swarm over our fields"; Déjeux, Poésie , 29.

106. Féraud, "Les Ben-Djellab," 29: 416-20; a similar appeal for assistance from Muslim rulers is found in the verses inspired by the fall of Constantine in 1837; the poet called upon the bey of Tunis, the sultan of Fez, the Egyptian "bey" (Muhammad 'Ali Pasha), the sultan of Istanbul, and the bey of Tripoli for succor; Déjeux, Poésie , 25-26.

107. Féraud, "Les Ben-Djellab," 29: 410-20.

108. L. Veuillot, Les français en Algérie en 1841 (Tours: Mane, 1845), also recorded ballads sung by popular poets during the 1830 French invasion and the 1837 siege of Constantine appealing to reigning Muslim rulers for assistance in delivering the country from the infidels.

109. Gen. Ahmad Zarruq to the Khaznadar, Tunis, 1849, letter no. 6, AGT, 20-227-1.

110. AMG, Algérie, H 131 and H 230 bis; Féraud, "Les Ben-Djellab," 29: 398, 423, claimed the Ottomans in Tripoli were implicated in the

Za'atsha revolt. This claim should not be dismissed entirely since there appears to have been support from the governor of Tripolitania for the Sharif of Warqala's movement in 1851. Nevertheless, it seems unlikely that top Ottoman officials in Istanbul could have taken much interest in Bu Ziyan's rebellion given the more pressing matters in the period demanding attention--political turbulence in Egypt, Palestine, and the Danubian principalities. On the other hand, the Porte never officially recognized the French occupation of Algeria and Tunisia. According to Julien, Histoire , 1, as late as the early twentieth century, maps of the Ottoman Empire displayed in the offices of high court dignitaries in Istanbul still showed the North African provinces as Ottoman domains.

111. The Times (London), Saturday, 17 November 1849 and Wednesday, 21 November 1849, are among numerous articles devoted to Za'atsha.

112. Anonymous, "Mémoire de Biskra," 1855, AGGA, 10 H 76; also AGGA, 10 H 18; Herbillon, Relation , 194; and Seroka, "Le sud," 518-19.

113. Anonymous, "Historique de 1853," AGGA, 10 H 18.

114. Yvonne Turin, Affrontements culturels dans l'Algérie coloniale: Écoles, médecines, religion, 1830-1880 (Paris: Maspéro, 1971), 315, notes that in the oasis of Sidi 'Uqba alone 385 out of 1,500 people died of cholera in one month.

115. Anonymous, "Historique de 1853," AGGA, 10 H 18; the officer also noted the following about the moral and political climate: "as for details of a purely administrative nature, the situation in the Ziban is satisfactory; orders are easily carried out; but we can entertain no illusions [about the natives]; we have not made the least conquest as regards Muslim fanaticism."

116. Governor-general, Cavaignac, to minister of war, Paris, 23 November 1849, AMG, Algérie, H 131; new administrative policies for Biskra, Tuqqurt, and Warqala are outlined in AGGA, 8 H 4, 8 H 5, and 8 H 6.

117. André Martel, Les confins saharo-tripolitains de la Tunisie (1881-1911) , 2 vols. (Paris: PUF, 1965); and Abdurrahman Cayci, Buyuk Sahra'da Türk-Fransiz Rekabeti (1858-1911) (Erzurum: Publications of the Atatürk University, 1970).

1. Governor-general of Algeria to minister of foreign affairs, Paris, December 1849, AMG, Algérie, H 131.

2. Muhammad Masud, "The Obligation to Migrate: The Doctrine of Hijra in Islamic Law," in Muslim Travellers: Pilgrimage, Migration, and the Religious Imagination , Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori, eds. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), 29-49; and Humphrey J. Fisher, "Liminality, Hijra , and the City," in Rural and

Urban Islam in West Africa , Nehemia Levtzion and Humphrey Fisher, eds. (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1987), 147-71.

3. In West Africa, the hijra-jihad complex ultimately created the matrix for state formation based upon new social classes; see David Robinson, The Holy War of Umar Tal: The Western Sudan in the MidNineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985); and Bradford G. Martin, Muslim Brotherhoods in Nineteenth-Century Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).

4. In 1852 the governor-general of Algeria, Jacques Randon, reported that hundreds of Algerian Muslim families from the Constantine were leaving for Tunis; Randon, Algiers, February 1852, AGGA, 1 H 9. See also Fanny Colonna, "The Transformation of a Saintly Lineage in the Northwest Aurès Mountains (Algeria): Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries," in Islam, Politics, and Social Movements , Edmund Burke III and Ira M. Lapidus, eds. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), 81-96. Colonna studied the career of a local religious notable from the Awras, Si Lhachemi, who spent the years 1845 to 1870 in the Jarid, which attracted "many Algerian students of the religious sciences" (87).

5. AGT, D-97-3. Louis Rinn, Marabouts et khouan: Étude sur l'Islam en Algérie (Algiers: Jourdan, 1884), 459, incorrectly asserted that Muhammad b. 'Azzuz emigrated from Biskra to the Jarid in 1844 when in fact he had died in 1819 of the plague. This error is repeated by several other authors.

6. Abdelhamid Henia, Le Grid, ses rapports avec le beylik de Tunis, 1676-1840 , (Tunis: Publications de l'Université de Tunis, 1980), 132 and 153-54, discusses a lineage named 'Azzuz in Nafta which monopolized the post of local tribal shaykh in the eighteenth century. It is uncertain whether there were any kinship ties between the 'Azzuz of the Jarid and those from al-Burj in the Ziban; none of the sources thus far consulted mention any such ties.

7. The issue of hijra became politically charged in Algeria after 1830 with 'Abd al-Qadir's jihad; the amir wrote a treatise on the duty of removal from French-held lands. It is contained in the biography of the amir by his eldest son, Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri, Tuhfa al-za'ir fi ta'rikh al-Jaza'ir wa al-amir 'Abd al-Qadir , Mamduh Haqqi, ed., 2d ed. (Beirut, 1964).

8. Hasan b. 'Azzuz's capture by the French army in 1841 was facilitated by the powerful al-Muqrani family of secular warrior notables based in the Majana; the Muqrani had first thrown in their lot with 'Abd al-Qadir. Subsequently seeing the political and military advantage shifting to the French, they concluded an agreement with colonial authorities. 'Azzuz was at first exiled to Sainte-Marguerite in France and finally interned in Bône, where he died in 1843.

9. Even after 1881, the Jarid retained a measure of autonomy not found in northern Tunisia. Lieutenant de Fleurac, "Étude sur le Djérid Tunisien," September 1885, AMG, Tunisie, 36 H 29, no. 8, described the region as "a center for the exchange of ideas in the middle of the Sahara where people can without danger trade news and information." See also F. Gendre, "De Gabès à Nefta (le Nefzaoua et le Djerid),'' R.T. 15 (1908): 381-421, 499-520.

10. Daniel Nordman, "La notion de frontière en Afrique du Nord: Mythes et réalités, 1830-1912" (doctoral diss., Montpellier University, France, 1975), 187, noted a purification ritual practiced by Algerian emigrant tribes. Once they had reached the Tunisian Dar al-Islam, a religious ceremony was held to cleanse the tribesmen of the polluting influence of the infidels.

11. Arnold H. Green, The Tunisian Ulama, 1873-1915: Social Structure and Response to Ideological Currents (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978); Muhammad Ibn 'Ashur, Tarajim al-a'lam (Tunis: Maison Tunisienne de l'Édition, 1970), 187-93; and Muhammad 'Ali Dabbuz, Nahda al-Jaza'ir al-haditha wa thawratuha al-mubaraka (Algiers: Imprimerie Cooperative, 1965), 144-47.

12. On the Jarid, see Henia's Le Grid ; Moncef Rouissi, "Une oasis du sud Tunisien: Le Jarid, essai d'histoire sociale," 2 vols. (doctoral diss., École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 1973); and 'Umar al-Shabbi, Wahat al-Jarid wa hayat sukkanha (Brussels, 1979).

13. Lucette Valensi, Fellahs tunisiens: L'économie rurale et la vie des compagnes aux 18e et 19e siècles (Paris: Mouton, 1977), 17, estimates the population of Tuzar and Nafta at eight thousand each in 1860; only Tunis, al-Qayrawan, Sfax, and Sousse had larger populations.

14. Muhammad ibn Salama, "al-'Iqd al-munaddad fi akhbar almushir al-basha Ahmad," Ms. 18618, folio 82, Bibliothèque Nationale de Tunis.

15. Salama, ibid., noted that the finished textiles produced in the Jarid were eagerly sought by the upper classes of Egypt and Istanbul.

14. Muhammad ibn Salama, "al-'Iqd al-munaddad fi akhbar almushir al-basha Ahmad," Ms. 18618, folio 82, Bibliothèque Nationale de Tunis.

15. Salama, ibid., noted that the finished textiles produced in the Jarid were eagerly sought by the upper classes of Egypt and Istanbul.

16. Valensi, Fellahs , 170-71.

17. Le Comte d'Escayrac, Le désert et le Soudan (Paris, 1853), 4-11; Ernest Carette, "Recherches sur la géographie et le commerce de l'Algérie méridionale," ESA (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1844) 2: 208; and de Fleurac, report, 1885, AMG, Tunisie, 36 H 29, no. 8.

18. Edmond Pellissier de Reynaud, Déscription de la régence de Tunis , vol. 16 of ESA (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1853); and Charles Tissot, May 1857, AMAE, mém./doc., vol. 8, no. 32.

19. Carette, "L'Algérie méridionale," 202-5.

20. Donald C. Holsinger, "Trade Routes of the Algerian Sahara in the Nineteenth Century," ROMM 30 (1980): 57-70; and idem, "Migration, Commerce, and Community: The Mizabis in Nineteenth-Century Alge-

ria" (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1979). There is no recent work on nineteenth-century trade between Algeria and Tunisia; information can be found in Carette's reports in AMG, Algérie, H 227 and H 229; E. Pellissier de Reynaud, Description ; and Charles Tissot, May 1857, AMAE, mém./doc., vol. 8, no. 32, among numerous archival sources.

21. AMG, Algérie, M 1317 and H 229; and Ernest Carette, Études des routes suivis par les Arabes dans la partie méridionale de l'Algérie et de la Régence de Tunis , vol. 1 of ESA (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1842).

22. Ducouret, "Rapport général sur la régence de Tunis, l'Ouad Sus, et l'Oued Rir par Hadji Abd el-Hamid Bey en mission en Afrique," 1850, AN, F 17 2957 [2]; A. Goguyer, "Gabès, port du Touat, de l'arrière-terre algérienne et du Soudan," RT 2 (1895): 112-23; and Marcel Emerit, "Les liaisons terrestres entre le Soudan et l'Afrique du Nord au XVIIIe et au début du XIXe siècle," TIRS 11 (1954): 29-47.

23. André Martel, Les confins saharo-tripolitains de la Tunisie (1881-1911) , 2 vols. (Paris: PUF, 1965).

24. Henri Duveyrier, Sahara algérien et tunisien: Journal de route (Paris: Challamel, 1905); and idem, "Excursions dans le Djérid ou pays de dattes," RAC 2 (1860): 542-59.

25. Anonymous, report, January 1854, AGGA, 1 H 8.

26. M. Prax, "Commerce de l'Algérie avec La Mecque et le Soudan," ROAC 5 (1849): 1-32; H. T. Norris, trans. and ed., The Pilgrimage of Ahmad (Warminster, England: Aris and Phillips, 1977); and Abdeljelil Temimi, Les affinités culturelles entre la Tunisie, la Libye, et le Centre et l'Ouest de l'Afrique à l'époque moderne (Tunis: Publications de la Revue d'Histoire Maghrébine, 1981).

27. Ministère de la Guerre, État-Major Général, Service Historique, Notice descriptive et itinéraires de la Tunisie, région du sud, 1884-1885 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1885), 72. In 1881 an incident occurred in Tuzar that provoked an uproar in colonial circles in Tunisia and proved that the Jarid was far from resigned to French rule. The imam of the oasis's principal mosque publicly offered prayers in the name of the Ottoman sultan, 'Abd al-Hamid, during an audaciously seditious khutba (sermon) for the Friday service. This resulted in the imam's immediate dismissal but his khutba probably echoed collective, popular sentiments in favor of Ottoman rule; 23 October 1891, AMAE, Tunisie, n.s., vol. 128.

28. Sir Grenville Temple, Excursions in the Mediterranean, Algiers and Tunis , 2 vols. (London: Saunders and Otley, 1835), 2: 181-82.

29. A. Marcescheau, "Voyage de Marcescheau dans le sud de la régence de Tunis en 1826," RT 8 (1901): 149-55.

30. Valensi, Fellahs , 353. A Moroccan pilgrim passed through the Jarid while performing the hajj in 1710. He was horrified by the system of taxation, which he considered not only in violation of Quranic principles but also unjust by reason of the heaviness of state fiscal impositions; Adrien

Berbrugger, "Voyages dans le sud de l'Algérie," vol. 9 of ESA (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1846): 245-46.

31. Mohamed-Hédi Cherif, Pouvoir et société dans la Tunisie de H'usayn bin 'Ali (1705-1740) , 2 vols. (Tunis: Publications de l'Université de Tunis, 1984-1986); idem, "Documents relatifs à des tribus tunisiennes des débuts du XVIIIe siècle," ROMM 33 (1982): 67-95; and anonymous, "Notes sur les tribus de la régence," RT 9 (1902): 185-94.

32. When present in the south, the bey al-mahalla acted as a sort of magistrate, hearing complaints from local notables and ordinary people; J. Clark Kennedy, Algeria and Tunisia (London: Henry Colburn, 1846) 2: 20. In addition, the qa'ids' correspondence, Dar al-Bey, Tunis, from Ahmad Bey's reign until the eve of the protectorate contain numerous letters laying forth grievances against local officials; for examples, the letters signed by the "ahl Tuzar," 1846, carton 20, dossier 227, armoire 1, no. 49, and by the "ahl Nafta," 1855-1856, carton 20, dossier 227, armoire 1, no. 122.

33. Jocelyne Dakhlia, L'oubli de la cité: La mémoire collective à l'épreuve du lignage dans le Jérid tunisien (Paris: Éditions la Découverte, 1990), points out that the great family of the Awlad al-Hadif served as Tuzar's shaykhs and qadis from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries; their power was so immense in the prereform era that the bey himself dared not enter the city when they were absent.

34. Ibrahim ibn 'Un, Tuzar, to the Khaznadar, Tunis, 2 Safar 1260 AH (1844-1845), AGT, carton 20, dossier 227, armoire 1, no. 13.

35. AGT, 206-91-21.

36. Dakhlia, L'oubli .

37. Ibid.; AGT, D series; and de Fleurac, "Étude," 1885, AMG, Tunisie, 36 H 29, no. 8.

36. Dakhlia, L'oubli .

37. Ibid.; AGT, D series; and de Fleurac, "Étude," 1885, AMG, Tunisie, 36 H 29, no. 8.

38. Dakhlia, L'oubli ; and Rinn, Marabouts .

39. Green, Tunisian Ulama , 62, points out that sufism in Tunisia was largely spared from attacks by the reformed ulama until the 1920s.

40. Anonymous, report, 1933, AGT D-97-3; and Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, The Tijaniyya: A Sufi Order in the Modern World (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), 83-85.

41. Edouard de Neveu, Les khouans: Ordres religieux chez les musulmans de l'Algérie (Paris: Guyot, 1845), 107; and Abun-Nasr, Tijaniyya , 85.

42. De Fleurac, "Étude," 1885, AMG, Tunisie, 36 H 29, no. 8. Dakhlia, L'oubli , 192, provides statistics for Tunisia's Quranic schools in 1913; the Jarid had by far the greatest concentration of schools in the south--116 as opposed to 107 in the A'radh, 32 in Gafsa, and 35 for the Nafzawa.

43. Rinn, Marabouts , 120-21; and AGT, D-97-3 and D-182-2.

44. De Fleurac, "Étude," 1885, AMG, Tunisie, 36 H 29, no. 8; and AGT, D-97-3 and D-182-2.

45. Dakhlia, L'oubli , 219-20.

46. Ibid., 121.

45. Dakhlia, L'oubli , 219-20.

46. Ibid., 121.

47. Cherif, Pouvoir et société , and Taoufik Bachrouch, Le saint et le prince en Tunisie: Les élites tunisiennes du pouvoir et de la dévotion., contribution à l'étude des groupes sociaux dominants (1782-1881) (Tunis: Publications de l'Université de Tunis I, 1989).

48. The use of local saints' shrines and sufi zawaya as places of political and fiscal refuge is repeatedly mentioned in beylical and European archival sources; for examples, E. Pellissier de Reynaud to de Lagau, 10 August 1846, AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 10, and in AGT, dossier 516, carton 142, armoire 14, which contains protests of European consuls to the beys concerning the right of asylum in religious establishments. Asylum was frequently manipulated by some Tunisians who fallen in debt to European moneylenders.

49. Mustafa b. 'Azzuz had four sons--al-Makki, al-Hafnawi, Muhammad, and al-Azhari--and eight or nine daughters. On the family, see Ibn 'Ashur, Tarajim ; AGT, D-172-3; ARGT, cartons 989 and 1218; and Green, Tunisian Ulama . Al-Makki b. 'Azzuz (died 1916) was the mufti of Nafta and muqaddam of the Rahmaniyya zawiya there; he later married the daughter of Mustafa Bu Kharis, a middling religious family from Tunis. Sometime before 1900, al-Makki emigrated to Istanbul, going to Medina in 1912.

50. April 1885, AMG, Tunisie, carton 28 bis, no. 53. For comparative statistics on sufi membership in Tunisia, see Bachrouch, Le saint , 193-208; a colonial census of 1933 showed the Rahmaniyya as having some fifty zawaya with one of the largest sufi followings in the country.

51. Fred de Jong, "Khalwatiyya," EI , 2d ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978), 4: 991-93. Octave Depont and Xavier Coppolani, Les confréries religieuses musulmanes (Algiers: Jourdan, 1897), 398, mention Rahmaniyya members of the 'Azzuziyya in Medina.

52. AGT, D-97-3 and D-182-2.

53. Duveyrier, Sahara algérien , 41-42.

54. Ibid. Saintly protection was not, however, limited to the Muslim faithful. After the establishment of colonial control over the Sahara's northern rim after 1850, some of the region's sufi orders, notably the Tijaniyya, supplied French explorers with guides and letters of safe conduct. This may have facilitated European advances into the desert; Abun-Nasr, Tijaniyya , 73-77.

53. Duveyrier, Sahara algérien , 41-42.

54. Ibid. Saintly protection was not, however, limited to the Muslim faithful. After the establishment of colonial control over the Sahara's northern rim after 1850, some of the region's sufi orders, notably the Tijaniyya, supplied French explorers with guides and letters of safe conduct. This may have facilitated European advances into the desert; Abun-Nasr, Tijaniyya , 73-77.

55. Duveyrier, Sahara algérien , 41-42.

56. Jean Mattei to Duchesne de Bellecourt, 5 February 1865, ARGT, carton 415; AGT, D-97-3 and D-182-2; Lieutenant Becheval, 1887, "Etude sur le Nefzaoua," AMG, Tunisie, carton 30 bis, no. 18; and Charles Monchicourt, La région du Haut Tell en Tunisie (Paris: Colin, 1913), 314-18.

57. Jean Mattei to Duchesne de Bellecourt, 5 February 1865, ARGT, carton 415.

58. Henia, Le Grid , 37-39.

59. AGT, dossier 987, carton 81 bis, armoire 8, nos. 18, 67, and 131; for example, 'Ali Bey's 1882 decree characterizes the 'Azzuz's zawiya as one whose "dignity and sacredness are such that its resources should not be wasted nor its revenues decreased nor its assets liquidated."

60. Muhammad al-Sadiq Bey to Mustafa ibn 'Azzuz, 1859-1860, AGT, dossier 987, carton 81 bis, armoire 8, no. 67.

61. James Richardson, "An Account of the Present State of Tunis," 1845, PRO/FO 102/29.

62. Ahmad ibn Abi al-Diyaf, Ithaf ahl al-zaman bi-akhbar muluk Tunis wa 'ahd al-aman (Tunis: al-Dar al-Tunisiyya lil-Nashr, 1963-1966), 8: 143.

63. Ibid., 222.

62. Ahmad ibn Abi al-Diyaf, Ithaf ahl al-zaman bi-akhbar muluk Tunis wa 'ahd al-aman (Tunis: al-Dar al-Tunisiyya lil-Nashr, 1963-1966), 8: 143.

63. Ibid., 222.

64. AGT, D-112-10.

65. Jean Mattei, Sfax, to Duchesne de Bellecourt, 5 February 1865, ARGT, carton 415.

66. Rinn, Marabouts , 458.

67. Léon Roches, Tunis, to governor-general, Algiers, 18 May 1856, AGGA, 25 H 16.

68. Abundant archival documentation for the issue of Algerian refugees exists, for example, Prax, report, 1847, AN, Tunisie, F 80 1697; and in ARGT. Georges Marty, "Les algériens à Tunis," IBLA 11, 43-44 (1948): 301-34; idem, "A Tunis: Éléments allogènes et activités professionnelles, djerbiens, gabesiens, gens du sud, et autres tunisiens," IBLA 11, 42 (1948): 159-87; and Pierre Bardin's Algériens et tunisiens dans l'Empire Ottoman de 1848 à 1914 (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1979). For Morocco, Charles-Robert Ageron, "L'émigration des musulmans algériens et l'éxode de Tlemcen (1830-1911)," AESC 22, 2 (1967): 1047-66.

69. Bureau Arabe, Biskra, report, 1849, AGGA, 16 H 2, dossier 1.

70. Decrees, 14 March 1852, AGGA, 1 H 9, no. 58; and AGGA, 8 H.

71. Anonymous, "Notice sur Si Ali Ben Otmane," AGGA, 16 H 3, dossier 2; and Marthe and Edmond Gouvian, Kitab aayane al-marhariba (Algiers: Imprimerie Orientale, 1920), 148-51.

72. Anonymous, "Histoire de la zawiya de Khanqat Sidi Naji," 1895, AGGA, 16 H 10; and AGT, D-172-3. Raoul de Lartigue, Monographie de l'Aurès (Constantine: Marle, 1904), 373.

73. E. Pellissier de Reynaud, Sousse, to French consul, Tunis, 7 April 1846, ARGT, carton 416.

74. Ministry of War, Paris, 22 April 1847, AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 10; Prax, report, 4 November 1847, AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 10.

75. Bissuel, "Histoire de Biskra," AGGA, 10 H 43; and Jean Mattei to Léon Roches, 1855, AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 15.

76. Martel, Les confins 1: 144; Louis Rinn, Histoire de l'insurrection de 1871 en Algérie (Algiers: Jourdan, 1891); and AGT, D-172-3.

77. Bissuel, "Histoire de Biskra," 1861, AGGA, 10 H 43.

78. AGT, carton 141, dossier 512, armoire 14.

79. ARGT, carton 423.

80. 8 July 1851, PRO, Tunisia, FO 102/40; and 14 March 1851, AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 12; the outbreak of cholera in the Jarid may also have added to the inhabitants' woes.

81. AGT, carton 20, dossier 227, armoire 1, doc. no. 21.

82. For example, anonymous, report, 17 August 1858, AGGA, 1 H 15. French consular correspondence for al-Kaf, ARGT, carton 423, contains abundant documentation on cross-border manipulations.

83. AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 12 (1851); and PRO, Tunisia, FO 102/40 (1851).

84. AGT, carton 20, dossier 227, armoire 1, nos. 64-69.

85. Ibid.; 8 July 1851, PRO, Tunisia, FO 102/40; and 30 March 1851, ARGT, carton 414.

84. AGT, carton 20, dossier 227, armoire 1, nos. 64-69.

85. Ibid.; 8 July 1851, PRO, Tunisia, FO 102/40; and 30 March 1851, ARGT, carton 414.

86. 8 July 1851, PRO, Tunisia, FO 102/40.

87. Augustin Espina, Gabis, to French consul, Tunis, March 1851, ARGT, carton 414.

88. French consul, Tunis to Ahmad Bey, November 1851, AGT, 206-91-21.

89. Ibid.

88. French consul, Tunis to Ahmad Bey, November 1851, AGT, 206-91-21.

89. Ibid.

90. Al-Diyaf, Ithaf 8: 142.

91. Leon Carl Brown, The Tunisia of Ahmad Bey 1837-1855 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974); Jean Ganiage, Les origines du protectorat français en Tunisie (1861-1881) (Paris: PUF, 1959); and Khelifa Chater, Dépendance et mutations précoloniales: La régence de Tunis de 1815 à 1857 (Tunis: Publications de l'Université de Tunis, 1984).

92. Growing British strategic interest in Tunisia, influenced by Great Britain's acquisition of Malta and France's occupation of Algeria, is reflected in the diplomatic correspondence, particularly after 1855, when Richard Wood was appointed as British consul to Tunis; see PRO, Tunisia, FO 102, vols. 1-90 (1838-1871). Arthur Marsden, British Diplomacy and Tunis, 1875-1902 (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1971).

93. James Richardson, "An Account of the Present State of Tunis," 1845, PRO/FO 102/29.

94. Ducouret, "Rapport," 1850, AN, F 17 2957 [2]; and Robert Mantran, "Une relation inédite d'un voyage en Tunisie au milieu du 19e siècle," CT 3, 11 (1951): 474-80; and Marcel Emerit, "Un collaborateur d'Alexandre Dumas: Ducouret Abd al-Hamid," CT 4, 14 (1956): 243-47.

95. Charles Tissot, "Rapport sur une expédition dans le sud de la régence de Tunis, adressé au chargé d'affaires de France," October 1857, AMAE, Tunisie, mém./doc., vol. 8, no. 28.

96. Ibid.

97. Ibid.

95. Charles Tissot, "Rapport sur une expédition dans le sud de la régence de Tunis, adressé au chargé d'affaires de France," October 1857, AMAE, Tunisie, mém./doc., vol. 8, no. 28.

96. Ibid.

97. Ibid.

95. Charles Tissot, "Rapport sur une expédition dans le sud de la régence de Tunis, adressé au chargé d'affaires de France," October 1857, AMAE, Tunisie, mém./doc., vol. 8, no. 28.

96. Ibid.

97. Ibid.

98. Duveyrier, Sahara algérien , 49; Duveyrier's laudatory evaluation of the Rahmaniyya shaykh contrasts with his later vilification of the Sanusiyya and other sufi orders. This may perhaps be explained by the fact that the meeting with 'Azzuz occurred during Duveyrier's first excursions into the Sahara before the colonial canon regarding the sufi menace had taken shape--a canon that the explorer himself helped to create in subsequent writings.

99. Daniel R. Headrick, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981). During his state trip to France in 1846, Ahmad Bey visited shipyards, arsenals, and factories as recorded in al-Diyaf, Ithaf . Presumably rural religious figures, such as 'Azzuz, were aware of the technological bases of European power through the reports of Tunisians accompanying the bey on his voyage to Europe or in the course of their own travels to the mashriq and to the Hijaz.

100. Anonymous, "Frontières de Tunisie, 1844-58," AGGA, F 80 956; anonymous, "Confins de la Tunisie et du sud algérien," and "Contraband terrestre et maritime," AGGA, F 80 1695-97.

101. 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri, Tuhfa , 313-15; AGGA, F 80 1426; and Georges Yver, "Abd el-Kader et le maroc en 1838," RA 60 (1919): 93-111. Abdulmola S. El-Horeir mentions Sanusiyya involvement in the arms traffic in "Social and Economic Transformations in the Libyan Hinterland during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century: The Role of Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1981).

102. Commanding general, province of Algiers, to minister of war, Paris, 8 June 1841, AGGA, F 80 1426. The Tunisian ruler was also accused of sending munitions to Ahmad Bey of the Constantine in a British report dated 10 December 1839, PRO, Tunisia, FO 102/5.

103. Even in today's Tunisia, contraband is a flourishing concern in the south, where daring entrepreneurs make an "honest" living smuggling illicit goods such as whiskey, sugar, or coffee between Libya, southern Tunisia, and Algeria. This information was kindly furnished to me by Monsieur Belqacem al-Chabbi during the course of interviews in 1982-1983.

104. Research on the cultural meanings ascribed to firearms in sub-Saharan Africa reveals similar associations; Gavin White, ed., "Introduction," JAH 12, 2 (1971): 173-254; and Gerald M. Berg, "The Sacred Musket: Tactics, Technology, and Power in Eighteenth-Century Madagascar," CSSH 27, 2 (1985): 261-79.

105. For example, the mahdist leader Bu Baghla claimed invulnerability during the Kabyle uprising of 1850-1854; Nil-Jospeh Robin, "Histoire du Chérif Bou Bar'la," RA 24-28 (1880-84). Both Bu Ziyan, and the last Tunisian Mahdi of Tala in 1906, convinced supporters that they were

immune to firepower as did numerous Moroccan mahdis. Corneille Trumelet, L'Algérie légendaire en pélérinage çà et là aux tombeaux des principaux thaumaturges de l'Islam (Tell et Sahara) (Algiers: Jourdan, 1892); Adolphe Hanoteau and A. Letourneux, La kabylie et les coutumes kabyles , 2 vols. (Paris: Challamel, 1872-1873), 1: 467-68.

106. Abun-Nasr, Tijaniyya , 60.

107. C. Pinon, "Le Mzab," CHEAM 3, 8 (1937), 3, stated that "the mosque in the Mzabi cities is at once a storage place, an arms depot, and a fortress." De Neveu, Les khouan , 153 and 177, reports that Darqawi centers contained arms depots. The Sanusiyya arsenals are repeatedly mentioned in various diplomatic sources, among them, AGGA, 1 I 95 (1874) and 16 H 38 (1906). Information on Algerian hajjis is contained in AGGA, F 80 1426 (1850).

108. L. S. Stavrianos, A Global History , 3d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1983), 320.

109. The documents in AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vols. 5-66 (1841-1881), ARGT, cartons 414-423, and AGT, H series, cartons 205, 206, and 208, contain numerous references to the borders. Taoufik Bachrouch, "Pouvoir et souverainété territoriale: La question de la frontière tuniso-algérienne sous Ahmed Bey," in Actes du Premier Congrès d'Histoire et de la Civilisation du Maghreb , 2 vols. (Tunis: Université de Tunis, 1979), 2: 195-208; and Denis Camisoli, "La frontière algéro-tunisienne (1844-1851)," Revue Historique de l'Armée 11 (1955): 72.

110. Lieutenant Prax, 1847, AGGA, F 80 1697.

111. AGT, carton 94, dossier 116, armoire 9.

112. Ross E. Dunn, "Bu Himara's European Connexion: The Commercial Relations of a Moroccan Warlord," JAH 21, 2 (1980): 235-53.

113. Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).

114. Maj. G. B. Laurie, The French Conquest of Algeria (London: Hugh Rees, 1901), 162, observed that when the French army disarmed the tribes, hundreds of muskets would be delivered at a single time. Headrick, Tools , 91, claims that the Algerians had "guns as good as the Europeans." This needs to be qualified since diplomatic and military correspondence from the period indicates that obtaining parts or the right ammunition for imported weaponry posed enormous problems for North Africans; for example, Mattei to Béclard, 24 June 1854, ARGT, carton 423.

115. 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri, Tuhfa ; and Dr. Warnier, "Biographie d'Abdel Kader," n.d., AMG, Algérie, H 235.

116. AGGA, F 80 442 (1847); A. Sainte-Marie, "Aspects du colportage à partir de la Kabylie du Djurdjura à l'époque contemporaine," in Commerce de gros, commerce de détail dans les pays méditerranéens (XVI-XIXe siècles) (Nice: Université de Nice, 1976), 104-6, noted that some

Kabyles traveled about repairing arms; others distributed or bartered arms, swords, and gunpowder, which had traditionally been produced in their mountains. Much of the sulfur, lead, and gunflints were imported clandestinely from Tunisia prior to 1881. For the Mzab, see Eugène Daumas, Le Sahara Algérien (Paris: Langlois et Leclercq, 1845), 61-70; one of the reasons the colonial regime moved against the Mzabi cities in 1882 was to stop the traffic in arms and gunpowder.

117. M. Subtil's two reports dated 1844, AMG, Algérie, H 229, no. 7, and E. Pellissier de Reynaud's account of 1846, AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 10, both mention that the caravan trade was declining due to increased customs duties levied by the Tunisian state and the ban on slavery. Henri Duveyrier, La Tunisie (Paris: Hachette, 1881), 24, observed that the traffic in humans in southern Tunisia and other parts of the Maghrib continued, despite the prohibition, although on a much reduced scale. In commanding general, Oran, to governor-general, Algiers, 2 August 1856, AGGA, 1 H 27, it was noted that traders dealing in contraband armaments in the Oran also trafficked in black slaves.

118. F. Robert Hunter, "Observations on the Comparative Political Evolution of Tunisia and Egypt under Ahmad Bey and Muhammad Ali," RHM 13 (1986): 43-48; much of the material in this section was kindly furnished by F. Robert Hunter from a work currently in progress.

119. Martel, Les confins ; and Actes du 1er Séminaire sur l'Histoire du Mouvement National: Réactions à l'occupation française de la Tunisie en 1881 (Tunis: Publications Scientifiques Tunisiennes, 1983).

120. Subtil, 1844, AMG, Algérie, H 229, no. 7; E. Pellissier de Reynaud, 1846, AMAE, c.p., vol. 10; and Francois Arnoulet, "Les relations de commerce entre la France et la Tunisie de 1815 à 1896" (doctoral diss., Université de Lille, 1968).

121. Henia, Le Grid .

122. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); and idem, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).

123. A 3 percent ad valorem duty was levied upon French and British goods imported into Tunisian seaports; other nations paid higher duties, which were regulated by treaty; Franco-Algerian products imported overland into the beylik also paid a 3 percent ad valorem duty; Ganiage, Les origines ; and Chater, Dépendance .

124. Bureau Arabe, report, 12 April 1853, AGGA, 1 H 10; and E. Pellissier de Reynaud to minister of foreign affairs, 2 September 1843, AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 7.

125. J. B. Vilar, "Le commerce espagnol avec l'Algérie au début de la période coloniale," RHM 2 (1978): 286-92.

126. French representatives in Tunisia naturally opposed any unregulated commerce since they regarded the traffic in contraband munitions as a grave threat to Algeria. The political correspondence in AMAE, Tunisie, vols. 8-59 (1840-1881), contains endless complaints regarding the arms trade and the illegal activities of the Maltese. Smuggling prompted the French government to name consular agents to Gabis, Jirba, al-Kaf, and the Jarid (ARGT, cartons 400, 414-423). The imposition of the protectorate did not end arms smuggling, as indicated by the reports in AGT, E-547-3; for example, chef du bureau des affaires indigènes, Matmata, to the resident general, Tunis, 22 July 1920, details the arms trade between southern Tunisia and the Italian province of Tripoli.

Britain's position toward the contraband trade was more equivocal since many of the items were of British manufacture. Moreover, through the Maltese, British representatives to the Bardo could counter France's influence in Tunisia. While British officials regarded the unruly Maltese, who were often a nuisance, with barely concealed disdain, they did very little to discourage their activities. With Richard Wood's arrival in Tunis in 1855, pledges were made to the bey and the French to rein in the lawless Maltese but without much effect; Richard Wood to Muhammad Bey, 14 November 1856, AGT, carton 227, dossier 411, no. 59.

127. Jean Ganiage, "Les européens en Tunisie au milieu du XIXe siècle (1840-1870)," CT 3, 11 (1955): 388-421; and Ganiage, Les origines , 41.

128. 2 February 1852, PRO, Tunisia, FO 102/43, for Sousse; 24 June 1858, PRO, Tunisia, FO 102/56, for Mahdiyya; 4 July 1849, AGT, carton 26, dossier 89, mentions smuggling in Tabarka; and for the Tunis region, reports dated 1841-1843, AGGA, F 80 1426.

129. Donald Quataert, Social Disintegration and Popular Resistance in the Ottoman Empire, 1881-1908: Reactions to European Economic Penetration (New York: New York University Press, 1983).

130. French consular agent, al-Kaf, to French consul, Tunis, 1873, ARGT, carton 423; and anonymous, report, 1887, AGGA, 16 H 2, dossier 4.

131. Espina, Gabis, to de Beauval, Tunis, 23 June 1864, ARGT, carton 417; and Botmiliau to minister of foreign affairs, Paris, 28 October 1867, AMAE, c.p., vol. 29: "the tribes rarely use money to pay for foreign goods, the exception being arms." Also May 1834, AGGA, F 80 1426; January 1844, AMAE, Tunisie, c.c., vol. 54, and April 1853, vol. 56.

132. Ganiage, Les origines , 57-58; and Department of State, Despatch Book, vol. 7, January 1858-1864, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

133. Perry to Secretary of State Seward, 21 April 1864, Department of State, Despatch Book, vol. 7, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

134. 22 September 1842, PRO, Tunisia, FO 102/15.

135. British vice-consul, Sfax, to London, June 1845, PRO, Tunisia, FO 102/24; Tissot, ''Rapport"; Carette, "Recherches"; and Daumas, Le Sahara , 196-300.

136. AMAE, Tunisie, c.c., vols. 55-60 (1848-1877); ACCM, Algérie, MQ 52; and Claude Bataillon, Le Souf, étude de géographie humaine (Algiers: Université d'Alger, 1955).

137. AMAE, Maroc, c.p. and c.c., n.s., vols. 168-179 (1905-1916).

138. ARGT, cartons 414-42; and anonymous, report, October 1851, AGGA, F 80 956.

139. AGT, "Correspondance au sujet de la contrebande en tabac," 1850-1881, carton 96, dossier 141, armoire 10; AMAE, Tunisie, c.c., vol. 54 (October 1843); and "Rapport sur l'Oued Souf et ses relations commerciales," 1856, AGGA, 22 H 26.

140. ARGT, carton 423; AMAE, Tunisie, c.c., vol. 56 (1854); and "Histoire de Biskra," AGGA, 10 H 43.

141. Richard Wood to London, 10 September 1863, PRO, Tunisia, FO 102/68; AMAE, Malte, c.c., vols. 21-23 (1843-68); and report, 24 August 1852, AGGA, F 80 1426. E. Fallot, "Malte et ses rapports économiques avec la Tunisie," RT 3 (1896): 17-38; and Lucette Valensi, "Les relations commerciales entre la régence de Tunis et Malte au XVIIIe siècle," CT 11, 43, 3 (1963): 71-83.

142. AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 7 (1843); ARGT, carton 423 (1866-1874); AGT, carton 207, dossier 102, no. 101 (1870); Richard Wood, Tunis, 10 September 1863, PRO, Tunisia, FO 102/68; and Botmiliau to Paris, 25 August 1868, AMAE, Tunisie, c.c., vol. 59.

143. "Rapport sur l'Oued Souf," 1856, AGGA, 22 H 26. Another branch of the contraband trade that became important in the 1860s was the route linking Sousse with al-Kaf; from al-Kaf, situated on the frontiers, large quantities of rifles and gunpowder were distributed to Tunisian and Algerian tribes as well as to Suq Ahras, Guelma, and Constantine. In 1868, ARGT, carton 417, the French consul in Sousse noted that Mzabi merchants had come to the port to purchase from Maltese suppliers contraband gunpowder intended for transport back to Algeria.

144. Report, 16 October 1851, AGGA, 1 H 8, no. 146; and 20 January 1852, AGGA, F 80 1426, no. 589.

145. E. Pellissier de Reynaud to minister of foreign affairs, Paris, 2 September 1843, AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 7; and anonymous, report, 12 April 1853, AGGA, 1 H 10.

146. ARGT, cartons 415 and 423; AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 14 (1853); and Tissot, report, 1853, AMAE, Tunisie, mém./doc., vol. 8, no. 28; the imposition of the French protectorate did not end the contraband arms trade, Lieutenant Becheval, report, 1887, AMG, Tunisie, 36 H 30, no. 18 bis.

147. Tissot, report, 1853, AMAE, Tunisie, mém./doc., vol. 8, no. 28. Abun-Nasr, Tijaniyya , 68-71, notes that by 1844 the Tijaniyya leaders of 'Ain Madi had publicly recognized the French colonial regime.

148. AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 14 (1853); and Tissot, report, 1853, AMAE, Tunisie, mém./doc., vol. 8, no. 28. Seizures of contraband munitions are constantly reported in the Bureaux Arabes documents; for example, the report of 23 December 1852, AGGA, 1 H 9, no. 373, stated that colonial military officials confiscated fifty-five kilograms in the market of Sidi 'Uqba on a single day.

149. Warnier, 1856, AGGA, 22 H 26. Even after the imposition of indirect French rule over the Suf in December 1854, the contraband trade continued, although with more circumspection. When Duveyrier visited the Suf in 1860, he noted the following items for sale in al-Awad: Maltese cotton goods (in the early 1860s, Malta experienced a boom in its local cotton industry due to the American Civil War), handkerchiefs of Indian cotton, finished silk textiles, raw silk, fine calico, gunflints, and rifles. The textiles all carried the stamps of various Anglo-Indian or English manufacturers; other items were marked by British commercial houses; Duveyrier, Journal , 15-17.

150. ARGT, cartons 415 and 423; report, 12 April 1853, AGGA, 1 H 15; and Béclard to minister of foreign affairs, Paris, October 1854, AMAE, Tunisie, c.c., vol. 56. The village of Tala developed around the nucleus of the Rahmaniyya zawiya; AGT, série A, dossier 28, carton 72; and A. Winkler, "Notice sur Thala," RT 3 (1896): 523-27.

1. Lieutenant Marguerite, Bureau Arabe, Miliana to Beauchamp, 11 July 1851, AGGA, 1 H 7; also 1 H 8. Marguerite's observations were based on reports furnished by indigenous spies, who alerted colonial authorities about three Algerians with information about seditious political and religious activities. Arrested and later interrogated, the three men agreed to exchange information for clemency. The long testimony of al-Hajj Muhammad ibn Ibrahim revealed the existence of an informal association of religious leaders, mainly sufi shaykhs from all parts of Algeria. Called the "association of the forty sharifs" by the colonial regime, knowledge of the group's existence sparked a sufi scare in French circles.

If al-Hajj Muhammad b. Ibrahim's testimony is credible, it seems that by 1848 prominent sufi notables from the Tayyibiyya, Qadiriyya, Darqawa, Awlad Sidi al-Shaykh, and the Rahmaniyya orders had joined forces to achieve several goals. One was to maintain a system of sustained communication to monitor events in Algeria and particularly the activities

of the colonial regime. Another was to foment rebellion in communities throughout the colony.

During his lengthy interrogation, al-Hajj Muhammad b. Ibrahim claimed that the sufi association had decided to "exchange news and information regarding the French, their situation, and their intentions." It was part of a larger plan to drive the infidels from North Africa; when the time was right, the sufi shaykhs would declare a general jihad. As a prelude to large-scale revolt, local dissidents, often with mahdist pretensions, were to be encouraged to provoke disturbances in the countryside and ordinary folk persuaded to support chiliastic rebels. When the French army was sufficiently distracted by numerous, simultaneous uprisings, the sufi leaders would give the signal for massive rebellion. In his statement, the informant named Mustafa b. 'Azzuz, who had been residing in the Tunisian Jarid for nearly a decade, as representing the Rahmaniyya order along with his brothers, Muhammad and Mabruk. See also, Ahmed Nadir, "Les ordres religieux et la conquête française (1830-1851)," RASJEP 9, 4 (1972): 819-72.

2. Madeleine Rouvillois-Brigol, Le pays de Ouargla (Sahara Algérien): Variations et organisation d'un espace rural en milieu désertique (Paris: Publications du Département de Géographie de l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1975); Jean Lethielleux, Ouargla, cité saharienne des origines au début du XXe siècle (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1983); Georges Rolland, L'Oued Rir et la colonisation française au Sahara (Paris, 1887); Georges Yver, "Tuqqurt," EI (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1934) 4: 250-51; and L. Charles Féraud, "Notes historiques sur la province de Constantine: Les Ben-Djellab, sultans de Touggourt," in RA 23-31 (1879-1887).

I arrived at these population estimates by using demographic data from AMG, Algérie, H 230 bis and M 1317; Féraud, "Ben-Djellab," 23 (1879): 59; and Henri Jus, Les oasis de l'Oued Rir' en 1856 et 1879 (Constantine: Marle, 1879), 8.

3. Théodore Pein, Lettres familières sur L'Algérie, un petit royaume arabe , 2d ed. (Algiers: Jourdan, 1893), 6-7.

4. Féraud, "Ben-Djellab," 23 (1879): 49-60.

5. Ibid.; Eugène Cherbonneau, Précis historique de la dynastie des Benou-Djellab, princes de Touggourt (Paris, 1851); and AMG, Algérie, M 1317.

4. Féraud, "Ben-Djellab," 23 (1879): 49-60.

5. Ibid.; Eugène Cherbonneau, Précis historique de la dynastie des Benou-Djellab, princes de Touggourt (Paris, 1851); and AMG, Algérie, M 1317.

6. Cherbonneau, Précis ; and Lethielleux, Ouargla , 180.

7. Yver, "Tuggurt," 251.

8. E. Pellissier de Reynaud, Annales algériennes , 2d ed. (Paris: Librarie Militaire, 1854), 1: 325, noted that while the Banu Jallab's official title under the Turks was "shaykh" of Tuqqurt, Saharan peoples referred to them as "sultan" out of deference for their power.

9. Rouvillois-Brigol, Ouargla , 27; and Féraud, "Ben-Djellab," 23 (1879): 217.

10. AMG, Algérie, M 1317; Vincent Largeau, Le pays de Rirha, Ouargla et Ghadames (Paris: Hachette, 1879); and idem, Le Sahara Algérien (Paris: Hachette, 1881); also Pein, Lettres , 43-45.

11. AMG, Algérie, M 1317; Rouvillois-Brigol, Ouargla , 25-31; and Lethielleux, Ouargla , 185-200.

12. AMG, Algérie M 1317; Eugène Daumas, Le Sahara Algérien (Paris: Langlois et Leclercq, 1845), 137; and Elisée Reclus, L'Afrique septentrionale , vol. 11 of Nouvelle géographie universelle: La terre et les hommes (Paris: Hachette, 1886), 561-65.

13. AMG, Algérie, H 235; and de la Porte, Tunis, to minister of foreign affairs, Paris, "Notice sur les relations commerciales que Tougourt entretient avec Tunis," 8 April 1845, AMAE, Tunisie, c.c., vol. 54; and Daumas, Sahara , 137.

14. L. Charles Féraud, Kitab el-Adouani ou le Sahara de Constantine et de Tunis (Constantine: Arnoulet, 1868), 185-86; and Pein, Lettres , 7-9.

15. AMG, Algérie, M 1317.

16. Pellissier de Reynaud, Annales 1: 325, noted that the sultan of Tuqqurt even sent forces to battle the bey of the Constantine in 1833, but the bey's use of artillery brought defeat. The humiliation suffered by the Banu Jallab caused them to contact the French military concerning an alliance. In exchange for overthrowing Ahmad Bey and rendering tribute to France, 'Ali b. Jallab requested that the French nominate him as the bey of the Constantine.

17. Lieutenant Prax, "L'Algérie méridionale ou Sahara Algérien, Tougourt, le Souf," in ROAC 4 (1848): 129-204; and E. Watbled, "Cirta-Constantine," RA 14 (1870): 208.

18. AMG, Algérie, M 1317.

19. Joseph-Adrien Seroka, "Le sud Constantinois de 1830 à 1855," RA 56 (1912): 415, 500-503.

20. Ibid., 521-24; and "Historique de 1851," AGGA, 10 H 18.

19. Joseph-Adrien Seroka, "Le sud Constantinois de 1830 à 1855," RA 56 (1912): 415, 500-503.

20. Ibid., 521-24; and "Historique de 1851," AGGA, 10 H 18.

21. Cherbonneau, Précis ; and Prax, "L'Algérie mériodinale."

22. Anonymous, May 1850, AMG, Algérie, 1 H 133; and Seroka, "Le sud," 524-28.

23. Rouvillois-Brigol, Ouargla , 1-5; Féraud, Kitab el-Adouani , 202-7; and Reclus, L'Afrique , 607.

24. Rouvillois-Brigol, Ouargla , 27-32.

25. "Considerations politiques sur les sédentaires et nomades d'Ouargla," n.d., AGGA, 10 H 52; and Colonel Noix, Algérie et Tunisie , vol. 6 of Géographie militaire , 2d ed. (Paris: Librarie Militaire, 1890), 152-55.

26. C. W. Newbury, "North African and Western Sudan Trade in the Nineteenth Century: A Re-Evaluation," JAH 7 , 2 (1966): 233-46; and Jean-Louis Miège, "La Libye et le commerce transsaharien au XIXe siècle," ROMM 19 (1975): 135-68.

27. "Considerations politiques sur les sédentaires et nomades d'Ouargla," n.d., AGGA, 10 H 52; Ismael Bouderhab, "Relation d'un voyage à R'at en août 1858," AGGA, F 80 1677; and Rouvillois-Brigol, Ouargla , 27-32.

28. Lethielleux, Ouargla , 223-48; and Alain Romey, Les Sa'id 'Atba de N'Goussa (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1983), 55-69.

29. Le Capitaine Bou Said, Lalla Mouina (Paris: Librarie Militaire, 1886), 91-96.

30. Georges Yver, "Wargla," EI (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1934) 4: 1123-24; and idem, "Notes pour servir à l'historique de Ouargla," RA 64 (1923): 381-442.

31. Féraud, "Ben-Djellab," 25 (1881): 121-26.

32. Pein, Lettres , 215.

33. Sidi al-Aghwati's prophecies and those of other saints were recorded from oral traditions by Charles Richard, Étude sur l'insurrection du Dahra (1845-1846) (Algiers: Besancenez, 1846). Sidi al-Aghwati's written and oral prophecies were passed around in the nineteenth century. Pein, Lettres , 51-52, mentions a local holy man residing in Bu Sa'ada, where Pein was the commanding officer from 1850 until 1859. The holy man read the predictions of Sidi al-Aghwati to Pein and, in the French officer's words, "explained to me" the meaning of the defunct saint's words. This reveals the extraordinary power over words which holy persons wielded in North Africa; the uncertainties unleashed by the French conquest would have increased the social demand for those who could foretell the future and thus bring assurance to communities gripped by anxieties regarding what lay ahead.

Jean Mattei also noted that Sidi al-Aghwati's predictions were passed around by word of mouth in the cities of southern Tunisia in 1854; Mattei to Béclard, 24 June 1854, ARGT, carton 423. This indicates that Tunisia participated in the information and rumor circuits centered in Algeria.

34. Clifford Geertz, "Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power," in Culture and Its Creators: Essays in Honor of Edward Shils , Joseph-Ben David and Terry N. Clark, eds. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 150-71. Michael Adas, Prophets of Rebellion: Millenarian Protest Movements against the European Colonial Order (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 92-93, observed that the prophetic figure "molded millennial tendencies into a persuasive ideology."

35. Corneille Trumelet, Les français dans le désert: Journal historique, militaire, et descriptif d'une expédition aux limites du Sahara Algérien (Paris: Challamel, 1885), 43.

36. Annie Rey, "Mohammed b. 'Abdallah, ou le combat du chérif de Ouargla," in Les Africains , Charles-André Julien, ed. (Paris: Éditions Jeune Afrique, 1978), 12: 201, states that his name was either Ibrahim Ibn Abi

Faris or Ibrahim Ibn 'Abd Allah; Seroka, "Le sud," 530, claims that his name was Ahmad b. Husayn.

37. Seroka, "Le sud," 530. Emile Dermenghem's Le culte des saints dans l'Islam maghrébin (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), 71-86, contains a description of Sidi Abu Madiyan's shrine and the devotional practices associated with it. Peter von Sivers in "The Realm of Justice: Apocalyptic Revolts in Algeria (1849-1879)," Humaniora Islamica 1 (1973): 47-60, discusses the social construction of the messianic personality.

38. Rey, "Mohammed b. 'Abdallah," 201-3; Seroka, "Le sud," 530-31; and Trumelet, Français , 44-52.

39. On the Sanusiyya and its founder, see Ahmad S. al-Dajani's al-Haraka al-Sanusiyya (Beirut: Dar Lubnan, 1967); Bradford G. Martin, Muslim Brotherhoods in Nineteenth-Century Africa (London: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 99-124; and Abdulmola S. El-Horeir, "Social and Economic Transformations in the Libyan Hinterland during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century: The Role of Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1981).

40. E. Mangin, "Notes sur l'histoire de Laghouat," RA 39 (1895): 148-54.

41. Charles-André Julien, Histoire de l'Algérie contemporaine , 2d ed. (Paris: PUF, 1979), 1: 391-92. Martin, Brotherhoods , 109, states that Muhammad b. 'Ali al-Sanusi left Cyrenaica in eastern Tripolitania for Mecca in 1846, remaining there until 1853.

42. Dajani, al-Haraka , 295-96, contains the letter from the sharif to the governor, Sidi al-Hajj Musa Agha, dated 8 April 1851. In Muhammad b. 'Abd Allah's letter, he mentions receiving another missive from the mudir, which suggests that they were in correspondence.

43. Féraud, "Ben-Djellab," 25: 124-26; also anonymous, "Notice sur le Chérif Snoussi," 1856, AMG, Algérie, H 229; and ''Historique du cercle de Biskra," 1851, AGGA, 10 H 18.

44. Rey, "Mohammad b. 'Abdallah," 208; and Trumelet, Français , 55-60.

45. Trumelet, Français , 57.

46. Ibid.; and Rey, "Mohammad b. 'Abdallah," 208.

45. Trumelet, Français , 57.

46. Ibid.; and Rey, "Mohammad b. 'Abdallah," 208.

47. Anonymous, "Ordres religieux, Ouargla," AGGA, 10 H 52; "Renseignements politiques, état des confréries," 1895, AGGA, 16 H 8.

48. AMG, Algérie, M 1317; and Féraud, "Ben-Djellab," 23: 54-55.

49. Lethielleux, Ouargla , 223-48.

50. Commandant of Oran to governor-general, Algiers, 10 January 1852, AGGA, 1 H 8; and Trumelet, Français , 60-61.

51. Rey, "Mohammad b. 'Abdallah," 207-8; and Trumelet, Français , 57-59.

52. Commandant of Oran to governor-general, Algiers, 10 January 1852, AGGA, 1 H 8; and Trumelet, Français , 60-61. For the Awlad Sidi

al-Shaykh's history and for the sharif's relationship with Sidi Hamza, see Peter von Sivers, "Alms and Arms: The Combative Saintliness of the Awlad Sidi Shaykh in the Algerian Sahara, Sixteenth-Nineteenth Centuries," MR 8, 5-6 (1983): 113-23.

53. Rey, "Mohammed b. 'Abdallah," 214-15. The new construction's architecture and spatial placement were symbolic of the political essence of the sharif's movement; it signaled a break with the past and the sharif's disassociation from the ancient quarrels dividing Warqala, quarrels which were not permitted within the palace confines.

54. Trumelet, Français , 61-62; and Dajani, al-Haraka , 295-96. In his letter to the mudir of Ghadamis, the sharif attributed his victory over the infidels to the baraka that he obtained directly from Sidi Muhammad b.'Ali al-Sanusi.

55. Dajani, al-Haraka , 295-96; and Mangin, "Notes," 148-54.

56. Dajani, al-Haraka , 295-96; and Mangin, "Notes," 148-54.

57. Pein, Lettres , 217-18.

58. Gianni Albergoni, "Variations italiennes sur un thème français: La Sanusiya," in Connaissances du Maghreb: Sciences Sociales et Colonisation (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1984), 111-34. Nevertheless, El-Horeir, "Transformations," 114, asserts that French suspicions of Sanusiyya and Ottoman involvement in Algerian politics should be given credence.

59. AMG, Algérie, 1 H 136; "Historique du cercle de Biskra," 1851, AGGA, 10 H 18; and Trumelet, Français , 63-64.

60. AMG, Algérie, 1 H 136; "Historique du cercle de Biskra," 1851, AGGA, 10 H 18; and general of Constantine to governor-general, Algiers, 22 January 1853, AGGA, 1 H 10.

61. Seroka, "Le sud," 532-33; Mattei to Béclard, Tunis, 24 June 1854, ARGT, carton 423; and AMG, Algérie, 1 H 133.

62. Franco-Tunisian negotiations over the borders were under way in 1850-1851, Watha'iq [Tunis] 15 (1991), 50-81.

63. Mattei to Béclard, Tunis, 24 June 1854, ARGT, carton 423; AMG, Algérie, 1 H 133 and 1 H 136; "Historique du cercle de Biskra," 1851, AGGA, 10 H 18; and general of Constantine to governor-general, Algiers, 22 January 1853, AGGA, 1 H 10.

64. Anonymous, "Apparition d'un chérif à Ouargla," 1851, AGGA, 1 H 8; Trumelet, Français , 64-66; and Seroka, "Le sud," 532-35.

65. Report, 22 August 1853, AGGA, 1 H 10; Seroka, "Le sud," 538; and Féraud, "Ben-Djellab," 25 (1881): 134-35.

66. Féraud, "Ben-Djellab," 25 (1881): 135, 198-201; Seroka, "Le sud," 533-35; Trumelet, Français , 65.

67. Trumelet, Français , 67-68; and Bael Hadj Merghoub, Le développement politique en Algérie: Étude des populations de la région du Mzab (Paris: Colin, 1972).

68. Seroka, "Le sud," 538, 541; report, 2 May 1852, AGGA, 1 H 9; 17 May 1853, AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 13, no. 42; and Féraud, "Ben-Djellab," 26 (1882): 109-11.

69. 2 May 1852, AGGA, 1 H 9; 17 May 1853, AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 13, no. 42; Seroka, "Le sud," 538, 541; and Féraud, "Ben-Djellab," 26: 109-11.

70. 17 May 1853, AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 13, no. 42; AGGA, 10 H 18; and Pein, Lettres , 225. The Banu Jallab traditionally maintained diplomatic relations with Tunisian rulers, as seen for example by the letter from 'Abd al-Rahman b. 'Umar b. Jallab to Ahmad Bey in 1841 in which the new sultan of Tuqqurt notified the bey of his accession to Tuqqurt's throne and expressed the desire to "confirm the existence of good relations." "Makatib Awlad ibn Jallab, Bay Tuqqurt," AGT, H series, dossier 930, carton 78, armoire 7.

71. Bureau Arabe, Biskra, to governor-general, Algiers, 11 May 1852, AGGA, 1 H 9; report, 26 October 1852, AMG, Algérie, 1 H 134; and Seroka, "Le sud," 540-44.

72. Bureau Arabe, Biskra, to governor-general, Algiers, 11 May 1852, AGGA, 1 H 9; report, 26 October 1852, AMG, Algérie, 1 H 134; and Seroka, "Le sud," 540-44.

73. Ali Merad, "Laghouat," EI , 2d ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986), 5: 595-97; R. Zannettacci, "Laghouat," CHEAM (1937) 9, no. 210; and Odette Petit, "Laghouat: Essai d'histoire sociale" (doctoral diss., École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 1967).

74. Pein, Lettres , 393.

75. Eugène Fromentin, Un été dans le Sahara , new edition introduced and annotated by Anne-Marie Christine (Paris: Le Sycomore, 1981), 124-36; and Roger Le Tourneau, "L'occupation de Laghouat par les français (1844-1852)," in Études maghrébines: Mélanges Charles-André Julien (Paris: PUF, 1964), 111-36. Merad, "Laghouat," 596, cites the folk rituals. From 1927 on, the oasis became one of the principal centers of the Islamic Reform Movement under Shaykh 'Abd al-Hamid b. Badis's leadership.

76. Eugène Graulle, Insurrection de Bou-Amama (Paris: Lavauzelle, 1905); Peter von Sivers, "Secular Anxieties and Religious Righteousness: The Origins of the Insurrection of 1881 in the Nomadic and Sedentary Communities of the Algerian Southwest," Peuples Méditerranéens 18 (1982): 145-62; and Ross E. Dunn, "Bu Himara's European Connexion: The Commercial Relations of a Moroccan Warlord," JAH 21, 2 (1980): 235-53; and idem, "The Bu Himara Rebellion in Northeast Morocco: Phase I," MES 17, 1 (1981): 31-48.

77. Trumelet, Français , 67-79.

78. Report, 22 September 1853, AGGA, 1 H 10; and Seroka, "Le sud," 545-49.

79. Pein, Lettres , 215.

80. Trumelet, Français , chapter 5; and Rey, "Mohammad b. 'Abdallah," 208-20. Shaykh Hamza was probably playing a double game with his colonial mentors; he was rewarded for the capture of Warqala with a khalifalik stretching from Geryville to Djelfa.

81. Report, 26 October 1854, AGGA, 1 H 11.

82. Féraud, "Ben-Djellab," 26 (1882): 113-16; report, 23 January 1855, AGGA, 1 H 12; "Historique de 1854," AGGA, 10 H 18; and Seroka, "Le sud," 549-62.

83. "Historique de 1854," AGGA, 10 H 18; Féraud, "Ben-Djellab," 26 (1882): 113-16; and Seroka, "Le sud," 549-62.

84. Report, 23 January 1855, AGGA, 1 H 12.

85. Report, 23 January 1855, AGGA, 1 H 12; and Féraud, "Ben-Djellab," 26 (1882): 113-16.

86. Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, The Tijaniyya: A Sufi Order in the Modern World (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), 71-74; and the biographical notice devoted to 'Ali al-Tammasini in Muhammad al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif al-khalaf bi rijal al-salaf , 2d ed. (Tunis: al-Maktaba al-'Atiqa, 1982), 282-86.

87. "Historique du cercle de Biskra," 1851, AGGA, 10 H 18; and Seroka, "Le sud," 533-36.

88. AGGA, 1 H 8, 10 H 18, and 10 H 72; AGT, D-97-3; and Tissot, report, 1853, AMAE, Tunisie, mém./doc., vol. 8, no. 29.

89. Rey, "Mohammad b. 'Abdallah," 212.

90. AGGA, 25 H 16 (2), 1 H 8, and 10 H 18; and Abun-Nasr, Tijaniyya , 68-74.

91. Abun-Nasr, Tijaniyya , 85-88; and Bice Slama, L'insurrection de 1864 en Tunisie (Tunis: Maison Tunisienne de l'Édition, 1967).

92. AGGA, 16 H 2, 1 H 15, and 10 H 43; AMG, Algérie, 1 H 135. The 1858 revolt of Sidi Masmudi is discussed by von Sivers, "The Realm."

93. AGGA, 10 H 72 and 16 H 8; Marthe and Edmond Gouvian, Kitab aayane al-marhariba (Algiers: Imprimerie Orientale, 1920), 153-57; and Seroka, "Le sud," 524.

94. AGGA, 10 H 72, 16 H 2, and 16 H 3; Gouvian, Kitab , 148-53. Yvonne Turin's findings in Affrontements culturels dans l'Algérie coloniale: Écoles, médecines, religion, 1830-1880 (Paris: Maspéro, 1971), 128-35, support my contention that the practice of Islam as locally lived moved into the pre-Sahara away from areas in proximity to settler colonization. Sufi centers, like Tulqa and al-Hamil, which had eschewed involvement in rebellious activities, were able to provide religious and educational services not available to Algerian Muslims in the northern Tell regions or in regions where revolts had occurred.

95. AGGA, 10 H 72 and 16 H 2; AGT, D-97-3 and D-172-3; Seroka, "Le Sud," 548; and Gouvian, Kitab , 158-64.

96. AGGA, 16 H 8; AGT, D-97-3; and letter, 15 November 1851, AGT, carton 206, dossier 91, armoire 21.

97. Report, 21 February 1852, AGGA, 1 H 9, no. 47.

98. Report, 23 January 1855, AGGA, 1 H 12.

99. Mattei to Béclard, 21 April 1853, AMAE, Tunisie, c.c., vol. 56; and Mattei to Béclard, 22 January 1854, ARGT, carton 423.

100. Ibrahim b. Muhammad al-Sasi al-'Awamir, al-suruf fi tarikh al-Sahra' wa Suf (Tunis: al-Dar al-Tunisiyya l'il-Nashr, 1977); and Claude Bataillon, Le Souf: Étude de géographie humaine (Algiers: Université d'Alger, 1955).

101. "Étude sur le Sahara", 1839, AMG, Algérie, H 227; Warnier, "Rapport sur l'Oued Souf et ses relations commerciales," c. 1856, AGGA, 22 H 26; and Féraud, "Ben-Djellab," 26 (1882): 46-47.

102. Lieutenant Baudot, 1876, "A travers le Souf," AMG, Algérie, M 1317; also H 229.

103. AMG, Algérie, M 1317; "Considerations sur le commerce et l'industrie des tissus de laine du Sahara," 1857, AGGA, 1 H 14; and report, 1856, AGGA, 22 H 26.

104. Captain Warnier, Bureau Arabe, Biskra, 1856, AGGA, 22 H 26.

105. AGGA, 10 H 18 and 1 H 10; AMG, Algérie, 1 H 134 and 1 H 135.

106. AGGA, 10 H 18 and 1 H 10; AMG, Algérie, 1 H 134 and 1 H 135.

107. "Historique de 1854," AGGA, 10 H 18; Féraud, "Ben-Djellab," 26: 113-16; and Seroka, "Le sud," 549-62.

108. AGGA, 1 H 11 and 1 H 8; and Rey, "Mohammed b. 'Abdallah," 214.

109. Tissot, 1853, AMAE, Tunisie, mém./doc., vol. 8, no. 28; Mattei to Roches, 5 June 1855, AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 15; and Mattei to Béclard, 20 January 1854, ARGT, carton 423.

110. Jean Mattei, Sfax, to French consul, Tunis, 1856, ARGT, carton 414.

111. Mattei to Béclard, 24 June 1854, ARGT, carton 423.

112. Ibid.

111. Mattei to Béclard, 24 June 1854, ARGT, carton 423.

112. Ibid.

113. Augustin Espina, Gabis, to French consul, Tunis, 30 March 1851, ARGT, carton 414.

114. Report, "Apparition d'un chérif," October 1851, AGGA, 1 H 8; and report, June 1850, AMG, Algérie, 1 H 133.

115. November 1851, AGT, carton 206, dossier 91, armoire 21.

116. In Lalla-Mouina , 202-10, Bou-Said, a French spy and flawless speaker of Algerian Arabic, transcribed the words of a popular ballad recited in an Arab cafe in Tigdit (near Mustaghanam) in honor of the mahdi. As

the military officer observed, the ballad "to which the most incredulous are not indifferent describes the aspirations of the Arab people. The music augmented the effect of the song upon the audience. We give the song in its original version to show that the Arabes have in no way been disarmed":

Beaten, pursued, the infidels will escape in their ships; and after besieging their cities, they will be taken by storm . . . . The reign of God will commence, because the whole earth adores Him and the end of the world is near; listen people, listen to the song of the last day; when the sun will fold upon itself; when the stars fall from the sky; when the mountains move; when the female camels and their offspring will be neglected; when the wild beasts will be mixed together; when the seas will boil; when the souls will be rejoined to their bodies.

Pessah Shinar, in his "A Controversial Exponent of the Algerian Salafiyya: The Kabyle 'Alim, Imam and Sharif Abu Ya'la Sa'id B. Muhammad Al-Zawawi," in Studies in Islamic History and Civilization in Honour of Professor David Ayalon , Moshe Sharon, ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986), 267-90, noted that until late in the nineteenth century, the Berber scholar, Abu Ya'la, and many others viewed the mahdi as the only one capable of ridding Algeria of European rule.

117. Governor-general of Algeria to French consul general, Tunis, 6 November 1851, AGT, carton 206, dossier 91, armoire 21.

118. Report, December 1851, AGGA, 1 H 8, no. 239; and Mattei to French consul, Tunis, 1851, ARGT, carton 415.

119. Sliman b. Jallab to Muhammad Bey, Tunis, AGT, H series, dossier 930, carton 78, armoire 7, no. 10.

120. Mattei to Béclard, 24 June 1854, ARGT, carton 423.

121. Tissot, 1853, AMAE, Tunisie, mém./doc., vol. 8, no. 28; Mattei to Roches, 9 June 1855, AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 15; and ARGT, carton 423.

122. Tissot, 1853, AMAE, Tunisie, mém./doc., vol. 8, no. 28; Mattei to Roches, 9 June 1855, AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 15; and ARGT, carton 423.

123. Mattei to Roches, 9 June 1855, AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 15; and ARGT, carton 423.

124. Sliman b. Jallab to Muhammad Bey, Tunis, c. June 1855, AGT, H series, dossier 930, carton 78, armoire 7, no. 10; and Mattei to Roches, 9 June 1855, AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 15.

125. "Histoire de Biskra," AGGA, 10 H 43 and 1 H 8; and Mattei to Roches, 28 August 1855, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 15.

126. Mattei to Roches, 9 June 1855, AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 15; AGGA, 1 H 13; and AGT, 227-20-1.

127. Bissuel, "Histoire de Biskra," AGGA, 10 H 43.

128. Béclard, Tunis, to minister of foreign affairs, Paris, 28 February 1854, AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 14.

129. Mattei to Béclard, 23 January 1854, ARGT, carton 423; and AGGA, 1 H 12 and 1 H 13.

130. Mattei to Béclard, 23 January 1854, ARGT, carton 423; and AGGA, 1 H 12 and 1 H 13.

131. Bissuel, "Histoire de Biskra," AGGA, 10 H 43.

132. AGGA, 1 H 12 and 10 H 43; the numerous letters from Sliman and his descendants to Muhammad Bey and Muhammad al-Sadiq Bey attest to the growing financial embarrassment suffered by the émigrés in the Tunisian capital; AGT, H series, dossier 930, carton 78, armoire 7.

133. Rey, "Mohammed b. 'Abdallah," 220-21; Féraud, "Ben-Djellab," 30: 430-33; and Eugène Perret, Récits algériennes (Paris: Bloud et Barral, 1886-1887) 2: 84-85.

134. 5 July 1865, ARGT, carton 415; Rouvillois-Brigol, Ouargla , 32; and Louis Rinn, Histoire de l'insurrection de 1871 en Algérie (Algiers: Jourdan, 1891).

135. AGT, carton 207, dossier 97, armoire 21, number 40; and AGGA, 10 H 43.

136. Governor-general of Algeria to resident-general of Tunisia, 1 August 1930, AGT, D-172-3.

1. Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Rahman, Majmu' min risa'il al-shaykh 'Abd al-Rahman al-Zawawi al-Jaza'iri shaykh al-tariqa al-Rahmaniyya , MS. K 956, al-Khizana al-'Amma, Rabat, Morocco.

2. According to Arnold H. Green, The Tunisian Ulama, 1873-1915: Social Structure and Response to Ideological Currents (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978), 223, one of Mustaf b. 'Azzuz's four sons, al-Makki, left Tunisia for Istanbul sometime prior to 1900. In 1912 he arrived in the Hijaz to teach at the Islamic university in Medina. There he also established an association, Jam'iya al-shurafa' or "The Society of the Descendants of the Prophet," one of whose objectives was to wage a moral campaign against the French in North Africa. Thus, one of Mustafa b. 'Azzuz's sons carried on his father's tradition of combining emigration and avoidance protest with political activism.

3. Charles-Robert Ageron, Les algériens musulmans et la France (1871-1919) (Paris: PUF, 1968) 2: 1079-92; and Ageron, "L'émigration des musulmans algériens et l'éxode de Tlemcen (1830-1911)," AESC 22, 2 (1967): 1047-66. The international dangers posed to France by emigration is reflected in voluminous dossiers in AGGA, 9 H 99-101 (1846-1911). Colonial authorities in the Maghrib were particularly alarmed by anti-

French propaganda disseminated by North African emigrants in the Levant, where France was attempting to portray its rule as beneficent.

4. Jacques Berque, L'intèrieur du Maghreb, XVe-XIXe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1978), 419.

5. David C. Gordon, Women of Algeria: An Essay on Change (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), 47.

6. General Collet Meygret to governor-general of Algeria, 22 October 1897, AGGA, 16 H 61, quoting Captain Crochard, Affaires Indigènes, Bu Sa'ada.

7. As late as 1891, Bu Sa'ada had a military garrison of five hundred men and a resident European civilian population of only twelve individuals. Youssef Nacib, Cultures oasiennes: Essai d'histoire sociale de l'oasis de Bou-Saada (Paris: Publisud, 1986).

8. Allan Cristelow, "Intellectual History in a Culture under Siege: Algerian Thought in the Last Half of the Nineteenth Century," MES 18 (1982): 387-99; and Fanny Colonna, "Cultural Resistance and Religious Legitimacy in Colonial Algeria," ES 3 (1974): 233-63.

Gustave Guillaumet, Tableaux (Paris: Librarie Plon, 1891), 119, noted the moral importance of a space free from the colonial presence: "The people [of al-Hamil] are content to avoid the detested [Europeans] and only see the faces of their conquerors at rare intervals. The inhabitants evaluate the moeurs of their conquerors through stories told in the evenings, legends that inspire in the young a distrust of the Christians and in the old, a nostalgia for happier times."

9. Captain Fournier, "Notice sur l'ordre des Rahmanya" (hereafter "Notice"), 28 June 1895, AGGA, 16 H 8.

10. According to René Basset, "Les manuscripts arabes de la zaouyah d'el Hamel," Giornale della Societa Asiatica Italiana 10 (1896-1897), 43, General Meygret asked that the library's holdings be inventoried at Basset's request. The list of manuscripts and books reveals that published materials were being acquired from the Egyptian Press at Bulaq, probably through North African pilgrims visiting the Mashriq. Thus, the hajj continued to be one channel for private library acquisitions by the Maghrib's great families; indeed, one mark of notable status was possession of these libraries. The fact that French requests for information about al-Hamil's collection were granted is indicative of Shaykh Muhammad's amiable relations with the colonial regime.

11. Information on al-Hamil and its shaykh is found in Muhammad al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif al-khalaf bi rijal al-salaf , 2d ed. (Tunis: al-Maktaba al-'Atiqa, 1982), 345-52; Muhammad b. al-Hajj Muhammad, Kitab al-zahr al-basim fi tarjama shaykh shuyukh al-tariqa. This work was apparently privately printed in Tunis circa 1904, although the only copy I have come across is located in Rabat, al-Khizana al-'Amma, MS. A 80 3165.; Muhammad 'Ali Dabbuz, Nahda al-Jaza'ir al-haditha wa thawratuha al-

mubaraka (Algiers: Imprimerie Cooperative, 1965), 52-75; and Ahmed Nadir, "La fortune d'un ordre religieux algérien vers la fin du XIX siècle," Le Mouvement Social 89 (1974): 59-84. In addition, extensive documentation is found in archival form, for example, in the newly opened soussérie 2 U ("Fonds de la Préfecture, Département d'Alger, Culte Musulman"). Finally, the holdings of the zawiya itself constitute a rich, yet still unexploited source of documentation.

12. Guillaumet, Tableaux , 126; among the many notables buried in al-Hamil's graveyards was one of 'Abd al-Qadir's sons, al-Hashimi; Nacib, Cultures , 241.

13. Nacib, Cultures , 239.

14. Al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif , 348.

15. Ibid.

14. Al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif , 348.

15. Ibid.

16. Al-Hajj Muhammad, Kitab , 7-8; and Marthe and Edmond Gouvian, Kitab aayane el-marhariba (Algiers: Imprimerie Orientale, 1920), 202.

17. Al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif , 348, gives A.H. 1265 (1847-1848) as the year when Sidi Muhammad began his public ministry in al-Hamil.

18. Al-Hajj Muhammad, Kitab , 23.

19. Charles de Galland, Excursions à Bou-Saada et M'Sila (Paris: Ollendorff, 1899), 32-33.

20. Nacib, Cultures , 240, notes that 'Abd al-Qadir maintained a correspondence with Shaykh Muhammad in the last years of the jihad; in letters to the shaykh of al-Hamil, the amir outlined his "ideas and plans," in an attempt to garner support from Sidi Muhammad. Moreover, 'Abd al-Qadir even sent a large shipment of arms to al-Hamil just before his final defeat, perhaps to safeguard them at the zawiya.

21. On Shaykh al-Mukhtar, see al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif , 576-77; and chapters 2, 4, and 5 above.

22. Al-Hajj Muhammad, Kitab , 7-8; and Gouvian, Kitab , 202.

23. Fournier, "Notice," 1895, AGGA, 16 H 8.

24. Ibid.; and governor-general to commanding general, 27 February 1907, AGGA, 2 U 22. Berque, L'intèrieur , 421, states that he was initiated in the Rahmaniyya order by Sidi 'Ali b. 'Umar of Tulqa. The disagreement over succession at Awlad Jallal appears to have been smoothed over since Sidi al-Mukhtar's two sons were educated by Shaykh Muhammad himself at the al-Hamil zawiya.

23. Fournier, "Notice," 1895, AGGA, 16 H 8.

24. Ibid.; and governor-general to commanding general, 27 February 1907, AGGA, 2 U 22. Berque, L'intèrieur , 421, states that he was initiated in the Rahmaniyya order by Sidi 'Ali b. 'Umar of Tulqa. The disagreement over succession at Awlad Jallal appears to have been smoothed over since Sidi al-Mukhtar's two sons were educated by Shaykh Muhammad himself at the al-Hamil zawiya.

25. Peter von Sivers, "The Realm of Justice: Apocalyptic Revolts in Algeria (1849-1879)," Humaniora Islamica 1 (1973): 47-60.

26. Insurrection followed inevitably by repression meant that the social demand for education and religious services was increasingly concentrated upon fewer Islamic establishments, particularly the pre-Sahara's zawaya, the least adversely affected by the elaboration of the colonial order due to location. After the 1852 insurrection near Guelma, for example,

educational activities at the Rahmaniyya center there ceased since the teaching staff fled to Tunis. Yvonne Turin, Affrontements culturels dans l'Algérie coloniale: Écoles, médecines, religion, 1830-1880 (Paris: Maspéro, 1971), 134-35.

27. Fournier, "Notice," AGGA, 1895, 16 H 8.

28. According to Guillaumet, Tableaux , 125, Sidi Muhammad's moral clout was potent enough, and the popular fear of saintly retribution strong enough, to discourage highway bandits.

29. Major Monto to commanding general, 28 December 1904, AGGA, 2 U 22.

30. Ageron, Algériens 2: 861-71, characterizes the sociétés de prévoyance as "instruments of administrative intervention" in Muslim Algerian life. The simpler, but socially useful, financial services provided by the al-Hamil zawiya were completely outside of official bureaucratic control and fully in the hands of the local community, another expression of autonomy.

31. Gouvian, Kitab , 205; and Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, The Tijaniyya: A Sufi Order in the Modern World (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), 77-78.

32. Fournier, "Notice," 1895, AGGA, 16 H 8; also 2 U 20, 21, and 22. Guillaumet, Tableaux , 119-26, observed the relationship between popularly recognized piety and material prosperity. The shaykh of al-Hamil was "as venerated as the Tijanis in their zawiya of Ain Madhi, [and he] has acquired for himself the reputation in this region of a sage; his followers boast of his knowledge as much as they honor his piety. People travel great distances to come and consult him; from all over offerings pour in, . . . the natives make detours on their journeys to stop here, . . . one gives the best of his wheat; another the fattest of his lambs; another the best part of his date harvest. . . . gifts in nature, gifts in money. . . . Even the 'arsh lands (tribal communal properties) are made available to the marabout as temporary tenure or rights of enjoyment."

33. John Ruedy, Land Policy in Colonial Algeria: The Origins of the Rural Public Domain (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967).

34. Insurrection de 1871: Mémoire d'un accusé, Si Aziz Ben Mohammed Amzian ben Cheikh el Hadded, à ses juges et à ses défenseurs (Constantine: Imprimerie Marle, 1873); Louis Rinn, Histoire de l'insurrection de 1871 en Algérie (Algiers: Jourdan, 1891); Yahya Bu 'Aziz, Thawrat 1871 (dawr 'a'ilatay al-Muqrani wa-l-Haddad) (Algiers: SNED, 1978); and Pierpaola C. d'Escamard, L'insurrezione del 1871 in Cabilia e la confraternita Rahmaniyya (Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1977).

35. Fournier, "Notice," 1895, AGGA, 16 H 8; and Gouvian, Kitab , 203.

36. Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Rahman, al-Rahmaniyya , Antoine Giacobetti, trans. (Algiers: Maison-Carrée, 1946), 485.

37. Al-Hajj Muhammad, Kitab , 105-06; Berque in L'intèrieur , 422-23, first called attention to the significance of Sidi Muhammad's critique of maraboutism as then practiced in Algeria.

38. Nacib, Cultures , 246-47.

39. Rachid Bencheneb, ''Le mouvement intellectuel et littéraire algérien à la fin du XIXe et au début du XXe siècle," Revue Française d'Histoire d'Outre-Mer 70, 258-59 (1983): 11-24; and Saadeddine Bencheneb, "Quelques historiens arabes modernes de l'Algérie," RA 100, 449 (1956): 475-99.

40. Abu al-Qasim Sa'adallah, La montée du nationalisme algérien (1900-1930) , 2d ed., trans. from the English by Nevine Fawzy-Hemiry (Algiers: Entreprise Nationale du Livre, 1985), 106-7.

41. I have relied upon the 1982 reprint edition published in Tunis by al-Maktaba al-'Atiqa in a single volume; Shaykh Muhammad's biography is found on 345-52.

42. The newspaper, first created in 1847, was bilingual from its inception; its editorial staff was largely composed of members of Algeria's tiny Francophone Muslim elite; Sa'adallah, La montée , 101.

43. Allan Christelow, Muslim Law Courts and the French Colonial State in Algeria (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 251-52.

44. Ibid.

43. Allan Christelow, Muslim Law Courts and the French Colonial State in Algeria (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 251-52.

44. Ibid.

45. Nadir, "La fortune," 59-84.

46. Guillaumet, Tableaux , 188-90.

47. Ageron, Les algériens 1: 33, note 3.

48. Conversely, the saint carefully paid official calls to authorities in Bu Sa'ada and Algiers when traveling outside al-Hamil to visit his followers. His willingness to maintain contacts with the conquerors in their political space might be read as a shrewd attempt to keep colonial officialdom out of the sacred space of al-Hamil.

49. Guillaumet, Tableaux , 120-21.

50. Ibid.

49. Guillaumet, Tableaux , 120-21.

50. Ibid.

51. Gouvian, Kitab , 205.

52. There are numerous accounts in the colonial archives of religious figures whose moral authority in their communities was compromised by an overly friendly relationship with French officials. One such account concerned a Rahmaniyya muqaddam in northern Algeria whose three-year tenure (c. 1906-1909) in some minor office earned him little else than the opprobrium of his followers. Seeking to right the wrong, the muqaddam resigned from his post, performed the hajj to Mecca as an atonement, and, returning to his village, was able to recapture some of his lost socioreligious prestige as well as his popular support; anonymous, "Dossiers de renseignements," 1916, AGGA, 2 U 20.

53. Nacib, Cultures , 240, 261.

54. The photograph is inserted between pages 406 and 407 of Octave Depont and Xavier Coppolani's Les confréries religieuses musulmanes (Algiers: Jourdan, 1897); unfortunately no photographic credits nor dates are provided.

55. Fournier, "Notice," 1895, AGGA, 16 H 8.

56. The colonial archives in Aix-en-Provence (AGGA) and in Tunis (AGT) contain numerous written requests from religious notables, families, and others seeking permission to travel outside of their respective communities; in many cases, French authorities denied such requests.

57. Mathieu, commissioner in charge of security, Maison Carrée, 23-24 April 1896, AGGA, 16 H 61.

58. Cecily Mackworth, The Destiny of Isabelle Eberhardt (London: Quartet Books, 1977), 157.

59. Fournier, "Notice," 1895, AGGA, 16 H 8.

60. Ibid.,; and Nacib, Cultures , 240.

59. Fournier, "Notice," 1895, AGGA, 16 H 8.

60. Ibid.,; and Nacib, Cultures , 240.

61. Fournier, "Notice," 1895, AGGA, 16 H 8.

62. General de Mazieux to the commanding general, 10 October 1899, AGGA, 2 U 22.

63. Fournier, "Notice," 1895, AGGA, 16 H 8.

64. Ibid.; and Gouvian, Kitab , 148-51.

63. Fournier, "Notice," 1895, AGGA, 16 H 8.

64. Ibid.; and Gouvian, Kitab , 148-51.

65. Fournier, "Notice," 1895, AGGA, 16 H 8.

66. Monot to commanding general, 29 November 1904, AGGA, 2 U 22; and governor-general to commanding general, 20 October 1896, AGGA, 2 U 22; also AGGA, 16 H 8 (1895) and 16 H 8 (1897).

67. Fournier, "Notice," 1895, AGGA, 16 H 8.

68. Fournier, "Notice," 1895, AGGA, 16 H 8; and governor-general to commanding general, 20 October 1896, AGGA, 2 U 22.

69. E. Graulle, Insurrection de Bou-Amama (avril 1881) (Paris: H. Charles-Lavauzelle, 1905); and Peter von Sivers, "Secular Anxieties and Religious Righteousness: The Origins of the Insurrection of 1881 in the Nomadic and Sedentary Communities of the Algerian Southwest," Peuples Méditerranéens 18 (1982): 145-62.

70. Muhammad b. Abi al-Qasim to Captain Crochard, 10 March 1897, AGGA, 16 H 61; as Nacib, Cultures , 255, observes, the language used by the shaykh strongly suggests he was under duress when designating his nephew to succeed him.

71. Women, whether European or indigenous, are notably absent from the enormous literature both colonial and recent on nineteenth-century Algeria. Aside from a few brief references in the literature to extraordinary females--holy, learned women like Zaynab or heroines such as Lalla Fatima, who led the 1854 Kabyle resistance--the history of women in colonial North Africa or in earlier periods constitutes a virtually blank page. There are two recent contributions to the historical literature on women in nineteenth-century Africa: Dalenda Largueche and Abdelhamid Largueche,

Marginales en terre d'Islam (Tunis: Cérès Productions, 1992), which examines, among a number of significant topics, the legends surrounding a female saint, Lalla Manoubia; and Jean Boyd's study of a female religious leader from the Sokoto Caliphate, The Caliph's Sister, Nana Asma'u, 1793-1865: Teacher, Poet, and Islamic Leader (London: Frank Cass, 1989).

72. Ann Thomson, Barbary and Enlightenment: European Attitudes towards the Maghreb in the Eighteenth Century (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987); and Marnia Lazreg, "The Reproduction of Colonial Ideology: The Case of the Kabyle Berbers," Arab Studies Quarterly 5, 4 (1983): 380-95.

73. Hubertine Auclert, Les femmes arabes en Algérie (Paris: Éditions Littéraires, 1900), 3.

74. Al-Hafnawi, Ta'rif , 352. Dabbuz in Nahda does not mention Zaynab, although her father and cousin are discussed at length. The lack of information on Zaynab is no mere coincidence. Zaynab's cousin and rival may have had his revenge by excising her from the written record since he composed the history of al-Hamil, Kitab .

75. Nacib, Cultures , 254, states that she was about forty years old at the time that Isabelle Eberhardt visited her in 1902, which would mean that her date of birth was closer to 1860; if we accept the later date, Zaynab may have been born while the shaykh was in the Ziban at the Rahmaniyya zawiya of the Awlad Jallal. Most French colonial officers from the period, however, estimated that she was about fifty years old at the time of her death in 1904.

76. Commanding general, "Rapport," 1897, AGGA, 16 H 8.

77. Mackworth, The Destiny , 157.

78. Guillaumet, Tableaux , 121. Seclusion should not, however, be equated necessarily with powerlessness or social marginalization. In 1903-1904, Isabelle Eberhardt resided in the zawiya of Kanadsa, located in the southwestern confines between Morocco and Algeria. There she observed that while the women of the zawiya formed "a little world apart," that world had its own hierarchy which was endowed with certain kinds of power. Moreover, the mother of the zawiya's head shaykh, Sidi Brahim (Ibrahim), "was entirely in charge of its internal administration: expenses, monetary funds, pious offerings. One never sees her but one feels everywhere her power, feared and venerated by all, this old Muslim queen-mother lives here almost cloistered and but rarely leaves (the zawiya), heavily veiled, to visit her spouses' tombs." Isabelle Eberhardt, Écrits sur le sable , vol. 1 of Oeuvres complètes , annotated and introduced by Marie-Odile Delacour and Jean-René Huleu, preface by Edmonde Charles-Roux (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1988), 248.

79. Al-Hajj Muhammad, Kitab , 60; and Fournier, "Notice," 1895, AGGA, 16 H 8.

80. Helen C. Gordon, A Woman in the Sahara (New York: Stokes, 1914), 77.

81. Major Crochard to commanding general, 20 July 1897, AGGA, 2 U 22, says the following: "Those who see her, because she does not fear to show herself, recognize in [Zaynab] the physical traits of her father."

82. Guillaumet, Tableaux , 121.

83. The hubus document, dated 31 August 1877, is found in AGGA, 16 H 61, appended to the report dated 3 September 1897.

84. Zaynab to commander of Bu Sa'ada, 29 September 1899, AGGA, 16 H 61.

85. Gouvian, Kitab , 205.

86. Depont and Coppolani, Les confréries , note 1, 409-10.

87. Ibid.

86. Depont and Coppolani, Les confréries , note 1, 409-10.

87. Ibid.

88. Commanding general, "Rapport," 1897, AGGA, 16 H 8.

89. General Collet Meygret to governor-general, 22 October 1897, AGGA, 16 H 61.

90. General de Mazieux to commanding general, 10 October 1899, AGGA, 2 U 22.

91. Commanding general, "Rapport," 1897, AGGA 16 H 8.

92. Ibid.; and numerous dossiers contained in AGGA, 2 U 22.

91. Commanding general, "Rapport," 1897, AGGA 16 H 8.

92. Ibid.; and numerous dossiers contained in AGGA, 2 U 22.

93. Commanding general, "Rapport," 1897, AGGA, 16 H 8; and AGGA, 2 U 22.

94. Fournier, "Notice," 1895, AGGA, 16 H 8; Crochard to commanding general, 20 July 1897, AGGA, 2 U 22; and commanding general, appendix to the 1897 "Rapport," 1898, AGGA, 16 H 8. As mentioned above, Muhammad b. Abi al-Qasim had inherited his sufi master's baraka upon Sidi al-Mukhtar's death in 1862. With the passing of Sidi Muhammad in 1897, some argued that the spiritual succession and the baraka should return to the Rahmaniyya zawiya in Awlad Jallal. Indeed, one of Sidi al-Mukhtar's sons, Muhammad al-Saghir, had resided in al-Hamil for a long time. Other Rahmaniyya centers--as well as the Tijaniyya--often followed the practice of alternating succession between two prominent families and zawiyas. Rahmaniyya notables in the pre-Sahara invoked the precedent set by Shaykh Muhammad b. 'Azzuz, who at his death in 1819 passed over his own sons to designate Sidi 'Ali b. 'Umar of Tulqa as his spiritual successor.

95. Julia Clancy-Smith, "The House of Zainab: Female Authority and Saintly Succession in Colonial Algeria, 1850-1904," in Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender , Nikki R. Keddie and Beth Baron, eds. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 254-74.

96. Crochard to commandant, cercle of Bu Sa'ada, 20 July 1897, AGGA, 2 U 22.

97. The issue of moral-political "rapprochement" or "control" over Islam and indigenous educational institutions was of grave concern to colonial authorities at the century's end. This is illustrated by two works

published in the 1880s--Ernest Mercier's L'Algérie et les questions algériennes (Paris: Challamel, 1883) and Gustave Benoist's De l'instruction et de l'éducation des indigènes dans la province de Constantine (Paris: Hachette, 1886). Benoist, 3, laments the fact that the goals of "moral rapprochement" and "assimilation" between the "two races" had not been achieved even after half a century of French colonialism. The explanation for this singular failure lies in the works and educational activities of Muslim leaders, like Muhammad b. Abi al-Qasim, whose partial withdrawal into a neutral space permitted the semiautonomous zawaya schools to exist.

98. Commanding general, "Rapport," 1897, AGGA 16 H 8. The dispute was over the body of Sidi Ahmad al-Tijani, who had expired in Gummar, near Tammasin; Sidi Ahmad's brother and successor, Sidi Bashir, backed by the powerful Aurélie Picard, sought to exhume the corpse in the heat of summer and take it back to 'Ain Madi for burial, thereby assuring control over the popular pilgrimages connected with the dead saint.

99. Fournier, "Notice," 1895, AGGA, 16 H 8.

100. General de Mazieux to commanding general, 10 October 1899, AGGA, 2 U 22.

101. Commanding general, "Rapport," 1897, AGGA, 16 H 8.

102. Another element that placed colonial authorities in an awkward position was Zaynab's fragile health. According to local officers, she suffered from a "grave nervous condition" and from "chronic bronchitis." While the first disorder, "une maladie nerveuse," was frequently cited in European medical circles of the period as a typically female pyschosomatic complaint and is thus subject to skepticism, the second was probably due to tuberculosis, which grievously afflicted the Muslim population; Crochard to commander, cercle of Bu Sa'ada, 20 July 1897, AGGA, 2 U 22.

103. Ibid.

102. Another element that placed colonial authorities in an awkward position was Zaynab's fragile health. According to local officers, she suffered from a "grave nervous condition" and from "chronic bronchitis." While the first disorder, "une maladie nerveuse," was frequently cited in European medical circles of the period as a typically female pyschosomatic complaint and is thus subject to skepticism, the second was probably due to tuberculosis, which grievously afflicted the Muslim population; Crochard to commander, cercle of Bu Sa'ada, 20 July 1897, AGGA, 2 U 22.

103. Ibid.

104. Abun-Nasr, Tijaniyya , 88-89, and AGT, D-156-1, note that colonial efforts to control sufi orders in Tunisia were less successful when females members were concerned. Significantly, the protectorate was able to interfere more massively in the selection of male muqaddams than of female shaykhs of the Rahmaniyya or Tijaniyya brotherhoods. Between 1891, when the first colonial sufi investigation was launched, and 1917--some twenty-seven years--French officials were completely ignorant of the existence of female sufis. Finally in 1917, an investigation revealed that in the Tunis region alone, some eighteen women held authentic ijazas (certificates attesting to sufis' worthiness to initiate members in an order) as muqaddamat (female sufi circle leaders) of the Tijaniyya order.

105. Crochard to commanding general, 22 October 1897, AGGA, 16 H 61.

106. Ibid.

107. Ibid.

105. Crochard to commanding general, 22 October 1897, AGGA, 16 H 61.

106. Ibid.

107. Ibid.

105. Crochard to commanding general, 22 October 1897, AGGA, 16 H 61.

106. Ibid.

107. Ibid.

108. General Moutz to commanding general, 18 September 1897, AGGA, 2 U 22.

109. General Meygret to governor-general, 22 October 1897, AGGA, 16 H 61.

110. Allan Christelow, "Algerian Islam in a Time of Transition, c. 1890-c. 1930," MR 8, 5-6 (1983): 124-30.

111. General Meygret to governor-general, 22 October 1897, AGGA, 16 H 61.

112. Ageron, Les algériens 1: 478-527; and David Prochaska, Making Algeria French: Colonialism in Bône, 1870-1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 198-205.

113. General de Mazieux, 10 October 1899, AGGA, 2 U 22.

114. Gouvian, Kitab , 207; and "Dossiers de Renseignements," 29 April 1916, AGGA, 2 U 22.

115. Zaynab to commandant, cercle of Bu Sa'ada, 29 September 1899, AGGA, 16 H 61; and AGGA, 2 U 22.

116. Zaynab to commandant, cercle of Bu Sa'ada, 29 September 1899, AGGA, 16 H 61; and AGGA, 2 U 22.

117. Zaynab to commandant, cercle of Bu Sa'ada, 29 September 1899, AGGA, 16 H 61; and AGGA, 2 U 22.

118. Zaynab to commandant, cercle of Bu Sa'ada, 29 September 1899, AGGA, 16 H 61; and AGGA, 2 U 22.

119. Zaynab to commandant, cercle of Bu Sa'ada, 29 September 1899, AGGA, 16 H 61; and AGGA, 2 U 22.

120. Gouvian, Kitab , 205-6.

121. De Galland, Excursions , 73-74; the Frenchman also noted in the course of his personal interview with Zaynab in her residence that he had time to "examine her face; her eyes were particularly beautiful."

122. General de Mazieux, 10 October 1899, AGGA, 2 U 22.

123. Ibid. One of the many lacunae in our information about Zaynab's spiritual life and activities is the matter of her daily relationship with female members of the Rahmaniyya.

122. General de Mazieux, 10 October 1899, AGGA, 2 U 22.

123. Ibid. One of the many lacunae in our information about Zaynab's spiritual life and activities is the matter of her daily relationship with female members of the Rahmaniyya.

124. Captain Lehureaux, Bou-Saada, cité du bonheur , 70, cited by Nacib, Cultures , 255.

125. In her provocative study "Rethinking Colonial Categories: European Communities and the Boundaries of Rule," CSSH 31, 1 (1989): 134-61, Laura Ann Stoler examines the crucial role of European women in shaping colonial rule. The part that indigenous females played in determining colonial boundaries has, for the most part, not been considered. See also the collection of essays in Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel, eds., Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992).

126. A fuller account of Eberhardt, as well as references to the numerous works devoted to her life and writings, is found in Julia Clancy-

Smith, "The 'Passionate Nomad' Reconsidered: A European Woman in l'Algérie Française (Isabelle Eberhardt, 1877-1904)," in Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance , Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel, eds. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 61-78.

127. Prochaska, Making Algeria French .

128. Clancy-Smith, "'The Passionate Nomad'"; and Mackworth, The Destiny , 39; see also Jenny Sharpe, Allegories of Empire: The Figure of Woman in the Colonial Text (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).

129. Annette Kobak, Isabelle: The Life of Isabelle Eberhardt (New York: Knopf, 1989), 54.

130. Mackworth, The Destiny , 155.

131. Gordon, A Woman , 77. In the last years of the century, more and more Europeans came to al-Hamil. Charles de Galland visited al-Hamil in 1897, performing a sort of exoticist pilgrimage, and was immediately enchanted by Lalla Zaynab's appearance: "In her flowing robes of dazzling whiteness, the marabuta appeared before us. In the walls of this monastery, in nature's meditative calm, among her people, she filled the roles of a queen, a nun, a holy mystic, and a medieval Abbess." The Frenchman even dedicated his book to Zaynab, writing in the preface "To the marabuta, Lalla Zaynab, who welcomed us with so much kindness." De Galland, Excursions , 73. According to Pierre Eudel, D'Alger à 'Bou-Saada (Paris: Challamel, 1904), 114, Zaynab's hospitality toward Europeans was such that she even sent her own carriage from al-Hamil to Bu Sa'ada in order to transport foreign visitors to the zawiya in comfort. Of course this may have been part of a strategy to offset the hostility of the nearby office of the Affaires indigènes in Bu Sa'ada.

132. Eberhardt, 8 June 1902, Oeuvres complètes 1: 445.

133. 133. Jean Noël, Isabelle Eberhardt, l'aventureuse du Sahara (Algiers: Éditions Baconnier, 1961), 171.

134. Isabelle Eberhardt, Lettres et journaliers , Eglal Errera, ed. (Arles; Éditions Actes du Sud, 1987), 189.

135. Ibid., 189.

136. Ibid., 189.

137. Ibid., 189; and Mackworth, Destiny , 158.

134. Isabelle Eberhardt, Lettres et journaliers , Eglal Errera, ed. (Arles; Éditions Actes du Sud, 1987), 189.

135. Ibid., 189.

136. Ibid., 189.

137. Ibid., 189; and Mackworth, Destiny , 158.

134. Isabelle Eberhardt, Lettres et journaliers , Eglal Errera, ed. (Arles; Éditions Actes du Sud, 1987), 189.

135. Ibid., 189.

136. Ibid., 189.

137. Ibid., 189; and Mackworth, Destiny , 158.

134. Isabelle Eberhardt, Lettres et journaliers , Eglal Errera, ed. (Arles; Éditions Actes du Sud, 1987), 189.

135. Ibid., 189.

136. Ibid., 189.

137. Ibid., 189; and Mackworth, Destiny , 158.

138. Eberhardt, Lettres , 189.

139. Noël, Isabelle Eberhardt , 171.

140. Eberhardt, Oeuvres complètes 1: 124.

141. Eberhardt, Lettres , 203.

142. Kobak, Isabelle , 191.

143. Ross E. Dunn, Resistance in the Desert: Moroccan Responses to French Imperialism, 1881-1912 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), 204-26.

144. The French military doctor, Sylvestre, who completed the death certificate for Zaynab, described the cause of death as due to "pulmonary failure" and "cardiac arrest," resulting from a chest disease (probably tuberculosis); Monot to commanding general, 19 November 1904, AGGA, 2 U 22.

145. Gordon, A Woman , 78.

146. Abundant documentation regarding the legal and financial disputes unleashed by Zaynab's death is found in AGGA, 2 U 22.

147. Major Guillamat to commandant, cercle of Bu Sa'ada, 9 November 1910, AGGA, 2 U 22; and Julia Clancy-Smith, "The Shaykh and His Daughter: Coping in Colonial Algeria," in Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East , Edmund Burke III, ed. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 145-63.

148. Ageron, Les algériens 2: 1056-1138; and Sa'adallah, La montée .

149. Gordon, A Woman , 77.

150. Ibid., 76-78. Gordon also provides a physical description of the new shaykh: "He stood now, awaiting us, at the portals of the zawiya, his expression faintly amused, faintly curious, and perhaps a little hard. Wrapped in the folds of a coffee-colored burnous, the hood of which was drawn over his head, with large brown eastern eyes set wide apart in a somewhat fleshy face, he might well have passed for a rather coarse elderly woman, but for his immense nose, too heavy even for a big man. . . . Certainly it was in somewhat disdainful fashion he acknowledged, in our presence, the salutations of his humble followers, who stopped low to kiss the edge of his burnous."

151. Ibid., 78.

149. Gordon, A Woman , 77.

150. Ibid., 76-78. Gordon also provides a physical description of the new shaykh: "He stood now, awaiting us, at the portals of the zawiya, his expression faintly amused, faintly curious, and perhaps a little hard. Wrapped in the folds of a coffee-colored burnous, the hood of which was drawn over his head, with large brown eastern eyes set wide apart in a somewhat fleshy face, he might well have passed for a rather coarse elderly woman, but for his immense nose, too heavy even for a big man. . . . Certainly it was in somewhat disdainful fashion he acknowledged, in our presence, the salutations of his humble followers, who stopped low to kiss the edge of his burnous."

151. Ibid., 78.

149. Gordon, A Woman , 77.

150. Ibid., 76-78. Gordon also provides a physical description of the new shaykh: "He stood now, awaiting us, at the portals of the zawiya, his expression faintly amused, faintly curious, and perhaps a little hard. Wrapped in the folds of a coffee-colored burnous, the hood of which was drawn over his head, with large brown eastern eyes set wide apart in a somewhat fleshy face, he might well have passed for a rather coarse elderly woman, but for his immense nose, too heavy even for a big man. . . . Certainly it was in somewhat disdainful fashion he acknowledged, in our presence, the salutations of his humble followers, who stopped low to kiss the edge of his burnous."

151. Ibid., 78.

152. Nacib, Cultures , 258.

153. 'Ali Merad, Le reformisme musulman en Algérie de 1925 à 1940: Essai d'histoire religieuse et sociale (Paris: Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1967).

154. Ahmad Tawfiq al-Madani, Hayat kifah (mudhakkirat) , 2 vols. (Algiers: SNED, 1976-1977), 2: 93-96.

155. Nacib, Cultures , 240, note 5, 245-49, and 256. Emile Dermenghem, Le culte des saints dans l'Islam maghrébin (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), 187-88, observed a collective pilgrimage to the tomb-shrine of Sidi 'Abd al-Rahman in the suburb of Algiers as late as the eve of the Algerian revolution. Jean Despois, Le Djebel Amour (Paris: PUF, 1957), 96-97, mentions mass pilgrimages to Rahmaniyya shrines in the Sahara until well after the First World War.

156. In one sense, Shaykh Muhammad bears a resemblance to the West African sufi, Cerno Bokar, born a decade before the French conquest of Mali. As Louis Brenner, West African Sufi: The Religious Heritage and Spiritual Search of Cerno Bokar Saalif Taal (Berkeley and Los Angeles:

University of California Press, 1984), points out, 17, Cerno "acted almost as if the conquest had never occurred."

1. The behavior of Za'atsha's women during the two-month siege of the oasis is highly suggestive of the kinds of populist messianic beliefs informing collective action. The families of fallen warriors chose not to follow customary mourning practices observed for the deceased. Clothing themselves not in funeral apparel but rather in the festive attire normally reserved for village celebrations and sacred feasts, Za'atsha's women rejoiced for those who had succumbed in holy warfare. AGGA, 10 H 76; and AMG, Algérie, H 131. This seemingly insignificant detail can be read as a powerful index of deeply felt millenarian expectations.

2. Stéphane Gsell, Georges Marcais, and Georges Yver, Histoire de l'Algérie (Paris: Boivin, 1929), 237.

3. The Tunisian qa'ids' reports for the Jarid from the 1850s on bear testimony to worsening commercial and political conditions; for example, AGT, carton 20, dossiers 227 and 228; Ahmad Bey to French consul, Tunis, September 1852, AMAE, Tunisie, c.p., vol. 12; and anonymous, Biskra, August 1856, AGGA, 1 H 12.

4. For example, Pierre Boyer, "L'odyssée d'une tribu saharienne: Les djeramna (1881-1929)," ROMM 10 (1971): 27-54.

5. Peter von Sivers, "Alms and Arms: The Combative Saintliness of the Awlad Sidi Shaykh in the Algerian Sahara, Sixteenth-Nineteenth Centuries," MR 8, 5-6 (1983): 113-23; and Saïd Sayagh, La France et les frontières maroco-algériennes, 1873-1902 (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1986).

6. Alf Andrew Heggoy, "Look Back: The Military and Colonial Policies in French Algeria," MW 73 (1983): 57-66; and C. M. Andrew and A. S. Kanya-Forstner, "Centre and Periphery in the Making of the Second French Colonial Empire, 1815-1920," Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 16, 3 (1988): 9-34, demonstrate that French imperial expansion in North Africa and elsewhere was the product of local enterprises by individual military agents. What needs to be emphasized here, however, is the enormously important roles played by indigenous actors and agents, who frequently forced French authorities to play the game according to the rules of indigenous political culture.

7. My conclusions coincide with Vincent Cornell's regarding patterns of political behavior for most sufi and other religious notables in post-Marinid Morocco: "Overt political activity on the part of 'marabouts' (another partial misnomer for wali) appears to have been rare." "The Logic of Analogy and the Role of the Sufi Shaykh in Post-Marinid Morocco," IJMES 15 (1983): 67-93 (quote on 69).

8. Charles Tilly, "Routine Conflicts and Peasant Rebellions in Seventeenth-Century France," in Power and Protest in the Countryside: Studies of Rural Unrest in Asia, Europe, and Latin America, Robert P. Weller and Scott E. Guggenheim, eds. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1982), 13-41.

9. Dale F. Eickelman, Moroccan Islam: Tradition and Society in a Pilgrimage Center (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976), 222, pointed out the processes slowly undermining the nature of mediation by the Moroccan Sherqawa.

10. Marthe and Edmond Gouvian, Kitab aayane al-marhariba (Algiers: Imprimerie Orientale, 1920), 151.

11. My conclusions, based upon nearly a decade of research into rumors in colonial North Africa, are supported by James C. Scott's Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 144-48. Guha's work on the 1857 mutiny is analyzed by Jenny Sharpe, Allegories of Empire: The Figure of Woman in the Colonial Text (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 59.

12. Zaynab bint Shaykh Muhammad b. Abi al-Qasim, zawiya of al-Hamil, 7 September 1897, to the general in command of the subdivision of Medea, AGGA, 2 U 22.

13. 30 March 1851, ARGT, carton 414.

14. Steven C. Caton, "Power, Persuasion, and Language: A Critique of the Segmentary Model in the Middle East," IJMES 19 (1987): 77-102.

15. Gilbert Meynier, "Pouvoirs et résistance dans l'insurrection du Sud Constantinois (1916-1917)," Cahiers de la Méditerranée (1978): 211-20, notes the use of the double discourse as a means of bet hedging by indigenous French allies.