Abstract
Scheele’s study focuses on Muslims in southern Algeria and northern Mali. People in this part of the Islamic world underpin notions of difference and value with respect to social status through the writing, recitation, and display of geographically expansive tawârîkh (histories). Such notions and practices however have recently been challenged by the establishment of modern nation-states in the area. Scheele’s paper charts the ways in which state policies have gone to reshape traditional understandings of personal worth and to impede the use of ‘histories’ in the pursuit of cross-border connections.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
This is not to claim that Islam is inherently hierarchical: on the contrary, it has often been seen as fundamentally egalitarian, within or beyond the state (see for instance Lindholm 1996). Rather, it allows for both tendencies, as it provides a language to express universality adapted to local preoccupations (see also Messick 1988). As seen below, the notional egalitarianism promoted by regional nation-states from the 1960s onwards hence brought with it its own reading of the Islamic revelation, one that as ‘true’ (and as locally recognisable) as older versions.
- 3.
This paper is based on 16 months of fieldwork in southern Algeria and northern Mali in 2006–2008, archival research in France, Algeria and Mali, and local manuscript sources. Research was financed by a Junior Research Fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford, and a British Academy Small Research grant (no. SG-47632). The paper was written up while holding a post-doctoral fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford.
- 4.
After taking the city of Algiers in 1830, the French army extended their conquest gradually along the coast, and south to the city of Laghouat, gateway to the Sahara, in 1852. They entered the Sahara proper with the annexation of Ghardaia in 1882. The Touat, the area we are mainly concerned with here, was not taken until 1901. Meanwhile, the French navy had started to push north from the Niger bend, reaching Timbuktu in 1893.
- 5.
- 6.
See for instance the Note on the Tidikelt district, by Simon, 21/05/1900, and Census of the Tidikelt, 12/09/1901, both kept at the French Centre d’archives d’outre-mer (CAOM) in Aix-en-Provence, box 22 H50; Annual Reports of the Tidikelt, Census of 1906, CAOM 23 H102; Population Census of the Touat, 1911–1950, 23 H91; Census of the Touat in 1933, CAOM 10 H86.
- 7.
All signs taken to be important, as ‘God will always find ways of making his chosen ones known to man’. Local manuscripts stress especially the ‘fragrance’ by which shurafā’ can be recognised, even if they themselves are ignorant of their identity; dreams play a similarly important role (see e.g. Muzīl al-Khafā, manuscript communicated to me by the Bakraoui family in Tamantit). Again, much of this is about public recognition, or as Dakhlia (1988: 754) put it: sharifian genealogies can only provide an ‘increase in legitimacy’, not legitimacy in itself (see also Touati 1992: 20).
- 8.
Manuscript no. 2407/97 of the de Gironcourt Collection, held at the Institut de France in Paris. Shaykh Bāy was a Kunta scholar settled among the Tuareg Ifoghas in the zāwiya Téléya near Kidal. His influence extended throughout what is today northeast Mali, northwest Niger, and southern Algeria, especially the Hoggar mountains (see Marty 1920: 119–37, de Gironcourt 1920: 147–9, and the collection of documents kept in the Malian National Archives in Bamako (ANM), Fonds anciens, box 1D305).
- 9.
This of course does not mean that Islam ‘invented’ the genealogical genre, and the universalising and relationist vision of the world it expresses: in most areas, genealogical reasoning seems to have predated Islamicisation. In the contemporary Central Sahara, however, they are inextricably interwoven.
- 10.
For more detail on the wider intellectual context in which Muhammad Mahmūd was operating, and the importance of racial and genealogical distinctions within it, see Hall (2011).
- 11.
This does not mean that such kinds of history were unknown in Timbuktu at the time, or had never been produced there: witness the Ta’rīkh al-Sūdān and the Ta’rīkh al-Fattāsh, of whose prestige Muhammad Mahmūd was certainly aware. Inspiration might also have come from the French historical and ethnographic notes, with which Muhammad Mahmūd was familiar enough to help produce some of them, see for instance his reports on southern Algeria kept in the French military archives in Vincennes (SHAT), box 1 H4754/3, and his close collaboration, in the 1950s, with the French administrator Marcel Cardaire (see Lecocq 2010: 52–8). Moreover, he clearly took at least some of the information compiled in his Kitāb al-turjamān from Paul Marty’s (1920) extensive treatise on the region.
- 12.
The copy consulted is held at the Centre de documentation et de recherches Ahmed Baba (CEDRAB) in Timbuktu, MS no. 762.
- 13.
The title of the Ta’rīkh al-Sūdān is perhaps best translated as the ‘History of the Blacks’ rather than as the ‘History of the Sudan’, as is now common; this conceptual shift from an emphasis on people to an emphasis on place is reflected in northern Mali by parallel political developments closely connected to French colonial ambitions, see e.g. Grémont (2005).
- 14.
Some of the names used by Muhammad Mahmūd are still recognisable as contemporary ‘ethnic’ categories, such as the Bambara. Others are now used as family names or diamou, encompassed within larger ‘ethnic groups’, such as the Wangara, who today define themselves as shurafā’, although the term probably initially meant ‘Muslim trader’: see Lovejoy (1978), Saad (1983), and Lydon (2009: 63–5). Other terms seem utterly obscure to me and others whom I asked. It is obvious, however, that the terms used by Muhammad Mahmūd to refer to ‘tribes’ (qabā’il) today refer to a whole variety of levels on which and ways in which people can be distinguished from each other.
- 15.
- 16.
This insistence is partly rhetorical: the manuscript can be consulted quite easily at the CEDRAB, as Bruce Hall clearly did (see Hall 2011).
- 17.
- 18.
- 19.
In the Algerian south, the struggle for independence (1954–1962) was largely one of equipment and transport facilities, rather than one of guerrilla fighting; and those families who controlled most resources then were able to convert these into political prestige that in many cases lasts until today.
- 20.
- 21.
- 22.
On the successive droughts, see Comité d’Information Sahel (1975), Ag Foni (1979), Ag Baye and Bellil (1986), Ag Ahar (1990) and Giuffrida (2005a, b). On subsequent political and military upheavals in northern Mali, see Maiga (1997), Ag Youssouf and Poulton (1998) and Grémont et al. (2004). For the rather scant literature on northern Malian migrants in Algeria, see Bellil and Badi (1993, 1996) and Badi (2007, 2012).
- 23.
Bani w-Iskut translates as ‘build and shut up’. Very little has been published on Bani w-Iskut, but see Bisson (2004: 129–32).
- 24.
For debates over the legitimacy of such practices in Mali itself, see Soares (2005a).
- 25.
In northern Mali, nationalism has had much less impact than in southern Algeria, and many northerners, especially those who would see themselves as ‘white’ feel excluded from the Malian nation-state and have indeed repeatedly rebelled against it (see e.g. Lecocq 2010).
- 26.
Most Arabs in the Tilemsi in the north-east used to be classified as ‘clients’ of the Kunta, while independent tribes are either descendents of famous Mauritanian or Algerian saints and scholars or claim sharifian descent.
- 27.
- 28.
Such redefinitions are plausible because of the high degree of intermarriage in the area. Bilateral descent is also generally drawn on to explain such ‘slippages’: folk wisdom has it that, even if the non-Arab mother of a child is of exemplary morality, one or two generations later, the ‘blood’ will show: ‘it’s magic, sihr’ as women say with a knowing smile, pointing to the veins in their forearms.
- 29.
For a more detailed description of trans-border trade and the moral quandaries it leads to, see Scheele (2009).
- 30.
- 31.
- 32.
For discussions of this, see, for instance, Keenan (2005) and Lecocq and Schrijver (2007). Notions of a more tolerant ‘black’ Islam that would be fundamentally opposed to its ‘fanatical Arab’ counterpart go back to colonial times (Brenner 2000), but have proven to be extraordinarily resilient until today.
- 33.
This ‘attachment’ has also allowed local Islamict groups to establish a fragile alliance with Tuareg rebels in the area, and, with their help, to take over the three major cities of northern Mali in spring 2012.
References
Ag Ahar, E. 1990. L’initiation d’un ashamur. Revue des Mondes Musulmans et de la Méditerranée 57: 141–152.
Ag Baye, Cheikh, and Rachid Bellil. 1986. Une société touarègue en crise: les Kel Adrar du Mali. Awal 2: 49–84.
Ag Foni, Eghless. 1979. L’impact socio-économique de la sécheresse dans le cercle de Kidal. Bremen: BORDA.
Ag Youssouf, Ibrahim, and Robin Poulton. 1998. A peace of Timbuktu. Democratic governance, development and African peacemaking. New York: United Nations.
Amselle, Jean-Loup. 1990. Logiques métisses: anthropologie de l’identité en Afrique et ailleurs. Paris: Payot.
Badi, Dida. 2007. Le rôle des communautés sahéliennes dans l’économie locale d’une ville saharienne: Tamanrasset (Sahara algérien). In Les nouveaux urbains dans l’espace Sahara-Sahel: Un cosmopolitisme par le bas, ed. Elisabeth Boesen and Laurence Marfaing, 259–278. Paris: Karthala.
Badi, Dida. 2012. Cultural interaction and the artisanal economy in Tamanrasset. In Saharan frontiers: Space and mobility in Northwest Africa, ed. James McDougall and Judith Scheele, 200–214. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Batran, A. 2001. The Qadiriyya brotherhood in West Africa and the Western Sahara: The life and times of Shaykh Mukhtar al-Kunti, 1729–1811. Rabat: Institut des études africaines.
Bazin, Jean. 1985. A chacun son Bambara. In Au cœur de l’ethnie: ethnies, tribalisme et état en Afrique, ed. Jean-Loup Amselle and Elikia M’Bokolo, 87–127. Paris: La Découverte.
Bellil, Rachid, and Dida Badi. 1993. Évolution de la relation entre Kel Ahaggar et Kel Adagh. In La politique dans l’histoire touarègue, ed. Hélène Claudot-Hawad, 95–110. Aix-en-Provence: IREMAM.
Bellil, Rachid, and Dida Badi. 1996. Les migrations actuelles des Touaregs du Mali vers le Sud de l’Algérie. Études et documents berbères 13: 79–98.
Bendjelid, Abed, et al. 1999. Mutations sociales et adaptation d’une paysannerie ksourienne du Touât: Ouled Hadj Mamoun (wilaya d’Adrar, Algérie). Insaniyat 7: 39–52.
Bisson, Jean. 2004. Mythes et réalités d’un désert convoité: le Sahara. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Boëtsch, Gilles, and Jean-Noël Ferrié. 1993. L’impossible objet de la raciologie. Prologue à une anthropologie physique du nord de l’Afrique. Cahiers d’Études Africaines 23(129): 5–18.
Boilley, Pierre. 1993. L’organisation commune des régions sahariennes (OCRS): une tentative avortée. In Nomades et commandants: administration et sociétés nomades dans l’ancienne A.O.F., ed. Edmond Bernus et al., 215–240. Paris: Karthala.
Bonte, Pierre. 1989. L’ordre de la tradition. Évolution des hiérarchies dans la société maure contemporaine. Revue des Mondes Musulmans et de la Méditerranée 54: 118–128.
Bonte, Pierre. 1998. Esclaves ou cousins. Évolution du statut servile dans la société mauritanienne. In Terrains et engagements de Claude Meillassoux, ed. Bernard Schlemmer, 157–182. Paris: Karthala.
Botte, Roger. 1999. Riimaybe, Harâtîn, Iklan: les damnés de la terre, le développement et la démocratie. In Horizons nomades en Afrique sahélienne. Société, développement et démocratie, ed. André Bourgeot, 55–78. Paris: Karthala.
Bouwman, Dinie. 2005. Throwing stones at the moon: The role of Arabic in contemporary Mali. PhD thesis, University of Leiden.
Brenner, Louis. 2000. Controlling knowledge. London: Hurst and Company.
Brhane, Meskerem. 1997. Narratives of the past, politics of the present: Identity, subordination and the haratines of Mauritania. PhD thesis, University of Chicago.
Capot-Rey, Robert, and W. Damade. 1962. Irrigation et structure agraire à Tamentit. Travaux de l’institut des recherches sahariennes 21: 99–119.
Carette, Antoine-Ernest-Hippolyte. 1848. Études sur la Kabilie proprement dite. Paris: Imprimerie nationale.
Casajus, Dominique. 1990. Islam et noblesse chez les Touaregs. L’Homme 115: 7–30.
Chaventré, André. 1983. Évolution anthropo-biologique d’une population touarègue. Les Kel Kummer et leurs apparentés. Paris: PUF.
Claudot-Hawad, Hélène. 2000. Captif étranger, esclave enfant, affranchi cousin. La mobilité statutaire chez les Touaregs. In Groupes serviles au Sahara, ed. Mariella Villasante-de Beauvais, 237–268. Paris: Editions du CNRS.
Clauzel, Jean. 1962. Les hiérarchies sociales en pays touareg. Travaux de l’institut des recherches sahariennes 31: 120–175.
Coblentz, Alex. 1967. Écologie et anthropologie des nomades sahariens. Thèse de doctorat d’état es sciences naturelles, Faculté des Sciences de Paris.
Comité d’Information Sahel. 1975. Qui se nourrit de la famine en Afrique? Paris: Maspéro.
Daumas, Eugène. 1864. Mœurs et coutumes de l’Algérie: Tell, Kabylie, Sahara. Paris: Hachette.
Dakhlia, Jocelyne. 1988. Dans la mouvance du prince: la symbolique du pouvoir itinérant au Maghreb. Annales ESC 43(3): 705–733.
de Gironcourt, Georges. 1920. Missions de Gironcourt en Afrique occidentale 1908–1909 et 1911–1912. Documents scientifiques. Paris: Société de Géographie.
Dresch, Paul. 2009. Les mots et les choses: l’identité tribale en Arabie. Études rurales 184: 185–202.
Dumont, Louis. 1967. Homo hierarchicus: essai sur le système des castes. Paris: Gallimard.
Gautier, Emile. 1927. L’islamisation de l’Afrique du Nord: les siècles obscurs du Maghreb. Paris: Payot.
Génevière, Jean. 1950. Les Kountas et leurs activités commerciales. Bulletin de l’IFAN B.12: 1111–1127.
Giuffrida, Alessandra. 2005a. Clerics, rebels and refugees: Mobility strategies and networks among the Kel Antessar. The Journal of North African Studies 10(3–4): 529–543.
Giuffrida, Alessandra. 2005b. Métamorphose des relations de dépendance chez les Kel Antessar au cercle de Goundam. Cahiers d’Études Africaines 179–80: 805–829.
Granier, Jean-Claude. 1980. Rente foncière et régulation économique dans le Gourara algérien. Revue Tiers-Monde 83: 649–664.
Grémont, Charles. 2005. Comment les Touaregs ont perdu le fleuve. Éclairage sur les pratiques et les représentations foncières dans le cercle de Gao (Mali), XIXe–XXe siècles. In Patrimoines naturels au Sud. Territoires, identités et stratégies locales, ed. Marie-Christine Cormier-Salem et al., 237–290. Paris: IRD.
Grémont, Charles, André Marty, Rhissa ag Moussa, and Younoussa Hamara Touré. 2004. Les liens sociaux au Nord-Mali. Entre fleuve et dunes. Paris: Karthala.
Guillermou, Yves. 1993. Survie et ordre social au Sahara. Les oasis du Touat-Gourara-Tidikelt en Algérie. Cahiers des Sciences Humaines 29(1): 121–138.
Gutelius, David. 2007. Islam in northern Mali and the war on terror. Journal of Contemporary African Studies 25(1): 59–76.
Hadj Ali, S. 1992. Algérie: le premier séminaire national des zaouias. Maghreb, Machreq, Monde Arabe 135: 53–62.
Hall, Bruce. 2005. The question of ‘race’ in the pre-colonial southern Sahara. The Journal of North African Studies 10(3–4): 339–368.
Hall, Bruce. 2011. A history of race in Muslim West Africa, 1600–1960. Cambridge: University Press.
Ho, Engseng. 2006. The graves of Tarim. Genealogy and mobility across the Indian Ocean. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hūtiya, Muhammad Sālih. 2007. Tuwāt wa Azawād. Algiers: Dār al-kitāb al-‘arabī.
Janson, Marloes. 2005. Roaming about for God’s sake: The upsurge of the Tabligh Jama‘at in the Gambia. Journal of Religion in Africa 35(4): 450–481.
Kaba, Lansiné. 1974. The Wahhabiyya. Islamic reform and politics in French West Africa. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Kavas, Ahmet. 2003. L’enseignement islamique en Afrique francophone: les médersas de la République du Mali. Istanbul: IRCICA.
Keenan, Jeremy. 2005. Waging war on terror: The implications of America’s ‘new imperialism’ for Saharan peoples. The Journal of North African Studies 10(3–4): 619–647.
Lambek, Michael. 1990. Certain knowledge, contestable authority: Power and practice on the Islamic periphery. American Ethnologist 17(1): 23–40.
Launay, Robert. 1992. Beyond the stream: Islam and society in a West African town. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lecocq, Baz. 2010. Disputed desert: Decolonisation, competing nationalisms and Tuareg rebellions in Mali. Leiden: Brill.
Lecocq, Baz, and Paul Schrijver. 2007. The war on terror in a haze of dust: Potholes and pitfalls on the Saharan front. Journal of Contemporary African Studies 25(1): 141–166.
Leservoisier, Olivier. 1994. La question foncière en Mauritanie. Terres et pouvoirs dans la région du Gorgol. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Lindholm, Charles. 1996. The Islamic Middle East: A historical anthropology. Oxford: Blackwell.
Lovejoy, Paul. 1978. The role of the Wangara in the economic transformation of the central Sudan in the 15th and 16th centuries. The Journal of African History 19: 173–193.
Lovejoy, Paul. 1983. Transformations in slavery. Cambridge: University Press.
Lydon, Ghislaine. 2009. On trans-Saharan trails. Islamic law, trade networks, and cross-cultural exchange in nineteenth-century western Africa. Cambridge: University Press.
Mahmood, Saba. 2001. Feminist theory, embodiment, and the docile agent: Some reflections on the Egyptian Islamic revival. Cultural Anthropology 6(2): 202–236.
Maiga, Mohamed. 1997. Le Mali: de la sécheresse à la rebellion nomade. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Marty, Paul. 1920. Études sur l’islam et les tribus du Soudan. Tome 1: Les Kountas de l’Est - Les Bérabich - Les Iguellad. Paris: Ernest Leroux.
Masqueray, Emile. 1886. Formation des cités chez les populations sédentaires de l’Algérie: Kabyles du Djurdjura, Chaouïa de l’Aourâs, Beni Mezâb. Paris: Ernest Leroux.
Masuzawa, Tomoko. 2005. The invention of world religions. Chicago: University Press.
McDougall, E.Ann. 1986. The economies of Islam in the Southern Sahara: The rise of the Kunta clan. Asian and African Studies 20: 45–60.
McDougall, James. 2006. History and the culture of nationalism in Algeria. Cambridge: University Press.
Meillassoux, Claude. 1986. Anthropologie de l’esclavage. Paris: PUF.
Merad, Ali. 1967. Le réformisme musulman en Algérie de 1925 à 1940. Paris: MSH.
Messick, Brinkley. 1988. Kissing hands and knees: Hegemony and hierarchy in shari‘a discourse. Law and Society Review 22(4): 637–659.
Montaudon, Général. 1883. La colonisation en Algérie. La Réforme Sociale 6: 71–99. and 138–148.
Powers, David. 2002. Law, society and culture in the Maghrib, 1300–1500. Cambridge: University Press.
Saad, Elias. 1983. Social history of Timbuktu: The role of Muslim scholars and notables 1400–1900. Cambridge: University Press.
Sanankoua, Bintou, and Louis Brenner. 1991. L’enseignement islamique au Mali. Bamako: Editions Jamana.
Scheele, Judith. 2007. Recycling baraka: Knowledge, politics and religion in contemporary Algeria. Comparative Studies in Society and History 49(2): 304–328.
Scheele, Judith. 2009. Tribus, États et fraude: la région frontalière algéro-malienne. Études Rurales 184: 79–94.
Scheele, Judith. 2010. Coming to terms with tradition: Manuscripts conservation in contemporary Algeria. In The trans-Saharan book trade: Arabic literacy, manuscript culture, and intellectual history in Islamic Africa, ed. Graziano Krätli and Ghislaine Lydon, 291–318. Leiden: Brill.
Schulz, Dorothea. 2006. Promises of (im)mediate salvation: Islam, broadcast media, and the remaking of religious experience in Mali. American Ethnologist 33(2): 210–229.
Schulz, Dorothea. 2007. Evoking moral community, fragmenting Muslim discourse. Sermon audiorecordings and the reconfiguration of public debate in Mali. Journal of Islamic Studies 26: 39–71.
Shryock, Andrew. 1997. Nationalism and the genealogical imagination. Oral history and textual authority in tribal Jordan. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Soares, Benjamin F. 2004. Islam and public piety in Mali. In Public Islam and the common good, ed. Armando Salvatore and Dale Eickelman, 205–226. Leiden: Brill.
Soares, Benjamin F. 2005a. Islam in Mali in the neoliberal era. African Affairs 105(418): 77–95.
Soares, Benjamin F. 2005b. Islam and the prayer economy. History and authority in a Muslim town. Edinburgh: University Press.
Touati, Houari. 1989. En relisant les nawâzil Mazouna, marabouts et chorfa au Maghreb central au XVe siècle. Studia Islamica 69: 70–94.
Touati, Houari. 1992. Prestige ancestral et système symbolique sharifien dans le Maghreb central du 17e siècle. Arabica 39: 1–24.
Trautmann, Thomas R. 1997. Aryans and British India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Villasante-de Beauvais, Mariella. 1991. Hiérarchies statutaires et conflits fonciers dans l’Assaba contemporain, Mauritanie. Revue des Mondes Musulmans et de la Méditerranée 59–60: 181–210.
Villasante-de Beauvais, Mariella (ed.). 2000. Groupes serviles au Sahara. Paris: IREMAM-CNRS.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Scheele, J. (2012). Shurafā’ as Cosmopolitans: Islam, Genealogy and Hierarchy in the Central Sahara. In: Marsden, M., Retsikas, K. (eds) Articulating Islam: Anthropological Approaches to Muslim Worlds. Muslims in Global Societies Series, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4267-3_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4267-3_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-4266-6
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-4267-3
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)