ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jazāʾirī, Migration, and the Rule of Law: ‘A Reply to Certain Persons of Distinction’

Abstract

This article will deal with a text authored by Abd al-Qādir alJazā’irī during the later years of his rule in what is now Western Algeria.1 Ostensibly a justification for some of his major policies through recourse to Mālikite (and to a lesser extent Shāfiī) juridical traditions, this text is a suggestive of understanding Abd al-Qādir’s religious politics. As well as presenting legal precedents, it illustrates several of Abd al-Qādir’s views on the primacy of divine law, its relationship with Sufism, and its place in the history of IslamoChristian contact and conflict in the Western Mediterranean. It is hoped that this article will contribute to the general understanding of Abd al-Qādir by elucidating his moral and ideological perspectives from a textual basis. This article will also inform the question, implicit in many historical discussions, of whether Abd al-Qādir’s rule in Algeria an instance of rule of law or rule by law. The Arabic text is reproduced as a chapter of Muḥammad Bāsha bin Abd al-Qādir al-Jazā’irī’s Tuḥfat al-zā’ir fī tārīkh al-Jazā’ir