1807 - 1883
Algerian leader who resisted initial French colonialism.
Abd al-Qadir (also spelled Abd el-Kader, Abdul Qader) was born in Guetna Oued al-Hammam, near Mascara, Western Algeria. His father, Muhyi al-Din, was spiritual head of the Qadiriyya order of Islam; his education was guided by Qadi Ahmad ibn Tahir of Azrou and Sidi Ahmad ibn Khoja of Oran. He pursued religious studies while traveling with his father within the Ottoman Empire, in Syria and Iraq and at al-Azhar in Egypt.
As the leader of Algerian tribal resistance to French colonialism between 1833 and 1847, Abd alQadir earned a reputation far beyond Algeria. It was only partly for military leadership, since his skill in founding alliances between hinterland tribes, especially in the western province of Oran and, for a time, as far east as Constantine, presented a political feat of no small consequence.
Abd al-Qadir's father had carried out several raids against the French in the Oran region in spring of 1832. The French had become enraged by the corsairs, pirates, and slave trade of the Barbary coast and wanted to end the taking and selling of Christian sailors from Mediterranean shipping. By this date two figures, neither Algerian, had played roles in reacting to the French presence in the former beylicate of Oran. The only serious previous attempt to defend Oran came between November 1830 and April 1832, when Ali ibn Sulayman of Morocco intervened unsuccessfully in Algeria. Meanwhile, between February and August 1831, a token Tunisian force had come and gone from Oran following an agreement between the bey of Tunis and the French government. According to its terms, the French promised to recognize ill-defined Tunisian responsibility to govern the Algerian west in their name.
By 1833, it was clear that the unorganized Algerian forces under Abd al-Qadir's father could do little more than harass the French in Oran. The decision was made to recognize Abd al-Qadir's leadership, both of the Qadiriyya order and of provincial tribal resistance. This decision proved fateful, since Abd al-Qadir clearly viewed his mission in terms that went beyond mere military leadership. An early sign of this was his insistence that his followers swear allegiance according to the bayʿa (the pledge) to the caliphs who succeeded the prophet Muhammad. A good portion of Abd alQadir's military and political career - beyond his relations with the French - involved attempts to impose legitimizing symbols of rule on neighboring tribes. Such struggles to command allegiance in Islamic as well as tribal terms were complicated by the fact that some key local tribes were traditionally makhzanis (mercenaries), which meant they were willing to receive pay from secular executive authorities. Before 1830, such tribes would have been in the service of the Algerian beys; after 1830, the French tried to recruit makhzanis to their service, thus creating a dilemma in them between Islamic and opportunistic loyalties.
In February 1834, soon after the French opened formal diplomatic contact with the Algerian resistance forces, two treaties, one containing essential French conditions, the second with additional Algerian conditions, were signed between France and Abd al-Qadir. These provided for mutual recognition of two different types of polities in the west: three French enclaves on the coast and Abd alQadir's emirate with its capital at Mascara. Thus he was recognized as dey of Mascara.
During this brief truce, Abd al-Qadir may have benefited from French help to defeat Mustafa ibn Ismaʿil, his primary rival for political and religious ascendancy over the western tribes. Another rival, Shaykh al-Ghumari, was also captured and hanged. Had Franco-Algerian peace continued, Abd alQadir might have succeeded in extending his unprecedented tax levy (the muʿuwna) to more and more subordinates of his emirate. As it was, hostilities resumed in 1835 (after the Ottomans had sent a new governor to Tripoli), and the French were repeatedly defeated by Abd al-Qadir. In 1837, the French signed the Treaty of Tafna, with Marshal Thomas-Robert Bugeaud de la Piconnerie granting most of the Algerian hinterland to Abd al-Qadir.
Perhaps the Tafna treaty was meant to keep Abd al-Qadir from objecting to French advances against the eastern beylicate of Constantine - which fell only four months after the Tafna accords. Once it fell, however, the French were never able to make deals with Abd al-Qadir again.
From late 1837 to 1847, intermittent hostilities with forces under Abd al-Qadir brought clashes as far east as Constantine and as far west as Morocco. It was only after Marshal Bugeaud led a large French expeditionary force into Algeria that systematic subjugation
of the interior began. At this point Abd al-Qadir's crossings into Morocco involved refuge rather than tactics; and the major battle of Isly in 1844 dissuaded the Moroccans from offering him refuge again. Although the Algerians tried to reverse the inevitable tide, his fate became as insecure in Morocco as it was in Algeria. After his decision to surrender in December 1847, Abd al-Qadir was promised exile but was sent as a prisoner to France. He was released in 1852 by Napoléon III and finally granted his requested exile in Syria. He died in Damascus in 1883. Some eighty-five years later and six years after Algeria's independence, Abd al-Qadir's remains were reinterred in his native land in 1968.
His contribution to the history of North Africa may be viewed from several perspectives. Within the closest political and cultural context, his leadership reflected intertribal dynamics in what was eventually to become the entity of Algeria. His efforts to unify disparate tribes included a certain number of institutional innovations, suggesting rudiments of governmental responsibility that surpassed anything that had preceded this key period. Among these, formal executive appointments, regular decision-making councils, and taxation figured most prominently. One cannot escape the fact, however, that hinterland submission to Abd al-Qadir's ascendancy, both military and political, often came only after successful imposition of his will by force.
By contrast, those who emphasize the nationalist implications of Algerian resistance to French colonialism would interpret Abd al-Qadir in ways that reflect more on the twentieth-century context of mass political movements than the highly fragmented setting of nineteenth-century Algeria. For the nationalist school, he represents a first stage in a process that became a model for the Algerian National Liberation Front at the end of the colonial era.
The third point of view combines speculation on what actual mid-nineteenth-century appraisals of Abd al-Qadir's leadership were with twentieth-century reflections on the living heritage of the past. This view would emphasize Islamic religious and cultural values embodied - then and thereafter - in resistance to foreign domination in any form. Seen from this perspective, a culturewide hero model like Abd al-Qadir represents a heritage that can be chronologically continuous and spatially all-encompassing. His actions not only had the effect of legitimizing his call to carry out a general jihad (holy war) against the French in the name of Islam but also gave him the assumed responsibility of overseeing the welfare of the entire umma (community of believers) in a responsible way that had not been effectively present in Algeria for centuries.
Bibliography
Danziger, Raphael. Abd el Qadir and the Algerians: Resistance to the French and Internal Consolidation. New York: Homes & Meier, 1977.
Ruedy, John. Modern Algeria: The Origins and Development of a Nation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.
— BYRON CANNON
