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.