Studies in the History and Society of the Maghrib – serie

In this book, Pascal Buresi and Hicham El Aallaoui edit, translate, and study an Arabic manuscript of the Royal Library of Rabat, containing 77 appointments of provincial officials. The Almohad Caliphs were the first Berbers to unite the whole Maghrib and the Iberian Peninsula under an imperial ideology elaborated at the end of the 12th C.E. by the most famous scholars, such as Averroes.This peripheral Islamic dynasty produced a pragmatic documentation that provides exceptional information about the administrative, political, ideological, and religious organisation of the largest medieval European-African Empire. Buresi and El Aallaoui convincingly stress the importance of the literature of the Chancellery in renewing the history of power and authority in medieval Islamic lands.

Au Maroc, les mythes fondateurs des cultes et rituels de guérison illustrent de manière probante les processus d’élaboration des significations et des dynamiques du pouvoir dans le passé proche et leurs articulations actuelles. Des dynamiques qui se déploient en termes généalogiques, initiatiques et en des capacités socialement reconnues de susciter une communication avec le monde surnaturel. L’analyse centrée sur la confrontation entre saints et rois permet, par ailleurs, d’élargir à la dimension nationale, et au-delà, le rapport, hiérarchique, de conflit et d’articulation entre charisme personnel et charisme sharifien. Le mythe et ses expressions rituelles ouvrent, ainsi, les possibilités du renouvellement sociopolitique par les marges, voire même, dans l’actualité, sous couleur d’une révolution à l’horizon d’un millénarisme du califat.In Morocco, the founding myths of healing cults and rituals illustrate conclusively the elaboration of the symbolism and dynamics of power, both in local and national contexts. These dynamics unfold specifically in terms of genealogical representations and mystical initiations, as well as in socially-recognized capacities to communicate with the supernatural. The analysis centered on the confrontation of saints and kings permits the expansion, to the national level and beyond, of the hierarchical tensions between personal charisma and sharifian charisma. Thus, the myth and its ritual expressions open up possibilities for socio-political renewal by the margins, or even more a renewal, taking place presently, in the form of a revolutionary millenarianism.

Law and the Islamization of Morocco under the Almoravids. The Fatwās of Ibn Rushd al-Jadd to the Far Maghrib investigates the development of legal institutions in the Far Maghrib during its unification with al-Andalus under the Almoravids (434-530/1042-1147). A major contribution to our understanding of the twelfth-century Maghrib and the foundational role played by the Almoravids, it posits that political unification occurred alongside urban transformation and argues that legal institutions developed in response to the social needs of the growing urban spaces as well as to the administrative needs of the state. Such social needs included the regulation of market exchange, the settlement of commercial disputes, and the privatization and individualization of property.

La langue berbère au Maghreb médiéval constitue un nouvel apport aux études historiques et linguistiques dans la mesure où de nombreux matériaux sur la langue berbère font l’objet d’une monographie spécifique. Plusieurs faits de langue sont reliés par une trame précise et ils sont réunis afin de mettre en relief les indices textuels puisés dans diverses sources écrites en arabe et en berbère. Dans les quatre parties du livre, il est tour à tour question des apports de la documentation narrative, de la littérature hagiographique et des textes ibadites ainsi que de l’importance des contacts entre le berbère et les langues africaines à travers la littérature narrative et l’épigraphie islamique. Ce livre a été conçu comme un essai documentaire mais également afin d’attirer l’attention des chercheurs sur la présence relativement bien documentée de la langue berbère dans les textes produits en milieu arabo-musulman du Moyen Âge à l’époque moderne.La langue berbère au Maghreb médiéval is a new contribution to the historical and linguistic studies in that many materials on the Berber language are the subject of a specific monograph. Several facts of language are connected by an accurate frame and are gathered to highlight textual clues collected from various sources written in Arabic and Berber. The four parts of the book treat contributions of narrative documentation, hagiographical literature and Ibadi texts and the importance of contacts between Berber and African languages through the narrative literature and Islamic epigraphy. This book was conceived as a documentary essay, but also to attract the attention of researchers on the relatively well-documented presence of the Berber language in the texts produced in Arab-Muslim environment from the Middle Ages to Modern era.

La pratique du droit musulman est généralement considérée comme un phénomène urbain. À partir d’une analyse de recueils de fatwas inédits et d’autres manuscrits arabes provenant des oasis du Grand Touat (Sud algérien), Droit musulman et société au Sahara prémoderne remet en question cette vision des choses. L’ouvrage explore la diffusion d’institutions juridiques islamiques dans la région entre le XVIIe et le XIXe siècles, ainsi que l’interaction entre communautés villageoises et juristes musulmans. Pour sonder ce processus, Ismail Warscheid adopte une approche dialectique : il reconstitue les modalités de l’application de la charia par les cadis et muftis locaux et s’interroge sur les usages que les populations oasiennes font des tribunaux islamiques, de l’écriture notariale et de la consultation juridique.Pre-modern Islamic legal practice is most often considered an essentially urban phenomenon. Relying on unedited fatwa collections and other Arabic manuscripts from the oasis of Tuwāt in southern Algeria, Droit musulman et société au Sahara prémoderne challenges this vision. The book explores the spread of Islamic legal institutions in the region between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries, and the interaction between village communities and Muslim jurists. Ismail Warscheid investigates this process from a dialectical perspective: how were sharʿī norms applied by local qadis and muftis, and how did local populations made use of court litigation, notarial certification, and legal consultation?

In spite of its privileged place on the African continent, in the Muslim world and in the Middle East and North Africa region, Algeria remains poorly known, and the works relating to contemporary Algerian society published outside of Algeria are rare. This book seeks to contribute to our understanding of Algerian society today, through its relationships to property and to law. Beyond this, the objective is to propose, in a comparative perspective proper to anthropology, new theoretical and methodological perspectives by which to apprehend the anthropology of law in a Muslim context. Algeria, as a post-colonial and post-Socialist State, whose population is overwhelmingly Muslim, proves to be a particularly interesting case to study. Contributors are: Hichem Amichi, Emilie Barraud, Ammar Belhimer, Yazid Ben Hounet, Nejm Benessaiah, Sami Bouarfa, Tarik Dahou, Baudouin Dupret, Marcel Kuper, Judith Scheele, Alice Wilson.

This book documents and interprets the trajectory of ethnographic museums in Tunisia from the colonial to the post-revolutionary period, demonstrating changes and continuities in role, setting and architecture across shifting ideological landscapes. The display of everyday culture in museums is generally looked down upon as being kitsch and old-fashioned. This research shows that, in Tunisia, ethnographic museums have been highly significant sites in the definition of social identities. They have worked as sites that diffuse social, economic and political tensions through a vast array of means, such as the exhibition itself, architecture, activities, tourism, and consumerism. The book excavates the evolution of paradigms in which Tunisian popular identity has been expressed through the ethnographic museum, from the modernist notion of 'indigenous authenticity' under colonial time, to efforts at developing a Tunisian ethnography after Independence, and more recent conceptions of cultural diversity since the revolution. Based on a combination of archival research in Tunisia and in France, participant observation and interviews with past and present protagonists in the Tunisian museum field, this research brings to light new material on an understudied area.

Depuis l’avènement du règne de Mohammed VI en 1999, le Maroc déploie une nouvelle politique étrangère continentale. Le Royaume ambitionne d’être reconnu comme une puissance africaine émergente dans son identité comme dans son espace de projection. Afin de satisfaire ces ambitions, l’appareil diplomatique se développe et se modernise, tandis qu’une identité de rôle singulière émerge autour de la notion de « juste milieu ». Cette étude présente, sur le plan empirique, les conditions de l’élaboration et de la conduite de cette politique africaine, et analyse, sur le plan théorique, l’évolution de l’identité de rôle marocaine à l'échelle internationale. Since the advent of the reign of Mohammed VI in 1999, Morocco has deployed a new continental foreign policy. The Kingdom aspires to be recognized as an emerging African power in its identity as well as in its space of projection. In order to meet these ambitions, the diplomatic apparatus is developing and modernizing, while a singular role identity is emerging around the notion of the "golden mean". This study presents, on an empirical level, the conditions of the elaboration and conduct of this African policy, and analyzes, on a theoretical level, the evolution of the Moroccan role identity in the international system.

This book discusses hagiographical sources from Morocco taking in consideration the often-overlooked oral tradition. Orality, as is shown in this study, completes and enriches the vision of hagiography that written sources traditionally has offered. The most relevant example in this book is the high presence of female saints in oral narratives that were not included in any other written sources. Recovering oral tradition to study hagiography as well as the role of female saints in Morocco has been one of the main areas of focus in this study as well as problematizing the dependence and dialogue between written and oral culture and can help to understand the diffusion and presence of similar phenomena in other areas of Morocco.

This book sheds light on the final process of slavery in Morocco, unraveling the contemporary roots of servility and stereotypes about blackness in the Arab world. Unlike other generalist analyses, this research focuses on the practice of servitude through a case study in the city of Tetouan. Until well into the twentieth century, bought women arrived in the city to join the domestic labor market, also becoming signs of social distinction. This historical ethnography is paradigmatic in reconstructing the relations between masters and domestics of slave origin, putting names and faces to subaltern people to rescue them from oblivion.