Michael Brett

Anglo-Saxon Attitudes: The Algerian War of Independence in Retrospect

The English-language literature on Algeria generated by the Algerian war of independence and continuing down to the present forms an intellectual as well as linguistic tradition apart from the much more voluminous literature in French. Despite the involvement of French and North African writers who have published in English, it is largely the creation of outsiders looking at the country from British and North American points of view, according to current fashions. The war of independence remains central to its concerns as the great transformer of a colonial into a national society, however that transformation is to be understood. The qualified approval of the nationalist cause by Alistair Horne contrasts sharply with Elie Kedouries denunciation. Most judgements have been based on the outcome, the political, social and economic performance of the regime, considered as good or bad. Since the death of Boumedienne in 1978, they have tended to be unfavourable. Their largely secular analyses, however, have been called in question since 1988 by the rise of political Islam, which has called for a reappraisal of the whole subject of the war and its consequences. Such a reappraisal is still in the future. Meanwhile Ernest Gellner, in dispute with Edward Said over the question of Orientalism, has raised the matter of the role of Islam in the history of Algeria to a high level of generalization, at which the war itself may, paradoxically, return to the forefront of international scholarly concern.

The Religion of the Other: Essays in Honour of Mohamed Talbi

address the relationship between the triumph of European time and the formation of a Turkish state. The fact that the Ottomans accepted standardised time while not disavowing other temporalities in their governance was neither part of an atavistic commitment to tradition nor part of an Orientalist tendency toward bureaucratic bloating and increasing unmanageability. Rather than adopting a negative view of Ottoman history, this volume points out that the diversity of times existing and thriving in the Ottoman Empire was an extension of the diversity of times that operated at the individual level. Koç’s essay on Saʿdullah Effendi illustrates the fact that diverse, seemingly incommensurable, worldviews could be adhered to by a single individual. In this case, a Muslim’s commitment to piety did not preclude his acceptance of the prophetic powers of astrology. Kreiser’s essay on clock towers points out how a town’s single tower served as a marker of multiple temporalities by announcing Muslim and Christian prayer times as well as the start and end of, and breaks in, the workday. These and other essays all point to an Ottoman ease with, and even adeptness at, managing social diversity. The essays in section three demonstrate the rise of standardised time within the Ottoman Empire but also how its rise was conditioned by its usefulness to the Ottoman administration. Wishnitzer’s essay on the place of standardised time in late Ottoman military reform is an illustrative example. The essays in section four deal with the Turkish Republic as the site of tensions and contradictions due to the displacement of other temporalities as standardised, European time came to dominate the functioning of daily life under the nation-state. The general set of ideas about time and temporalities in the Ottoman Empire that the essays in this volume take up and promote is compelling. The disparate topics covered mean that virtually any specialist in Ottoman Studies or the history of the Middle East will find something of interest and possibly even of conceptual and analytical inspiration in this volume.

The First Ethiopians. The Image of Africa and Africans in the Early Mediterranean World

By Malvern Van Wyk Smith. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2009. xiv+528 pp. ISBN 978 1 86814 499 0.

Great Britain and Southern Morocco in the Nineteenth Century

In the latter part of the nineteenth century, British policy was directed towards the protection of Moroccos political integrity and toward maintaining a system of global free trade and freedom of the seas. The policy was only ended as a result of the Entente Cordiale in 1904. With respect to southern Morocco and the Western Sahara region, British merchants, such as Donald Mackenzie, were able to breach the monopoly on trade established by the Sultanate although, in the end, the Sultanate was able to reestablish its claim to sovereignty. This, however, proved to be the precursor to a far more effective Spanish and French occupation which presaged the complete colonial subjugation of the region.

The Mīm, the ՙAyn, and the making of Ismāՙīlism

The ՙAlbāiyya are the followers of al-ՙAlbā՚ b. Dhira՚ al-Dawsī, who set ՙAlī above the Prophet, saying that Muḥammad had been sent by ՙAlī, whom he called a divine being. … Some believe in the divinity of both ՙAlī and Muḣammad, but still think ՙAlī superior; these are called the ՙAyniyya. Others who think them both divine put Muḣammad first; these are called the Mīmiyya. Yet others believe in the divinity of all five Companions of the Cloak, Muḣammad, ՙAlī, Fāṭima, Ḥasan and Ḥusayn, as equally imbued with the spirit of God.