Problems in the Interpretation of the History of the Maghrib in the Light of some Recent Publications

Abstract

Caught between schools of sociogy, historians of North Africa over the past twenty years have concetrated on the first century of European colonization, 1830–1930. The previous thousand years of the Muslim period remain enigmatic, their interpretation still heavily dependent upon the work of Ibn Khhaldūn. In conclusion to his volume of the 1952 edition of Ch.-A. Julien's Histoire de l'Afrique du Nord, R. Ie Tourneau characterized this ‘medieval’ period as one of political failure. With particular reference to Morocco, Gellner and more recently Abun-Nasr have, in their various ways, sought to explain an absence of effective government in terms of Ibn Khhaldūn's cyclical theory of the rise and fall of dynasties, taking the traditional Moroccan distinction between a Bilād al Makhzan and a Bilād al-Sība to represent the antithesis between the civilized and the primitive on which that theory rests. Islam is seen as a positive influence on behalf of central government. Neither scheme is satisfactory, perhaps because like Ibn Khhaldūn they are both too concerned with the central power. Taking North Africa as a whole, it seems better to begin with a division of authority in the pre-colonial period into the secular and the religious, the first represented by tribes and local lordships (as well as cities) and by the central government itself, the second by the men of religion, ‘ulamā’ and murābiṭūn. From a position protected by reverence and sustained by endowments, the latter operated as consultants rather than commanders, with the proviso that it was always open to the man of religion to use his prestige and wealth to step across into the realm of secular power. Progress from there to the top, on the other hand, was exceptional. The control of the central government was a great prize, and for that reason the system normally restricted competition by reserving it to the members of an exclusive group, whether a royal family as in Morocco and Tunisia or a regiment of soldiers as in Algiers. The overthrow of that ruling group was difficult, achieved in any given instance only after years of preparation. It is hard to infer a general rule. Islam was employed to justify the claimant as occasion offered, the justification(s) advanced becoming in the event an historical myth on behalf of the successful candidate and – his dawla, his dynasty or state. Any residual Islamic content inherent in the throne as distinct from its occupant can scarcely be isolated as an independent factor. In practice it may have amounted to little more than acceptance of government, whether Muslim or Christian, as a necessary evil.