3 Hedging Bets in a Time of Troubles: Algeria, 1830–1849
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.