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MALIK BENNABI'S LIFE AND THEORY OF CIVILIZATION

by
Fawzia Muhammad Bariun

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
(Near Eastern Studies)
in The University of Michigan
1988

Doctoral Committee:
Professor
Professor
Professor
Professor

Trevor LeGassick, Chairman

Ali Mazrui
Raji Rammuny
James Stewart-Robinson

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MICROFILMED DISSERTATIONS

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Extensive copying of the dissertation or publication of material in excess of
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the Graduate School. Proper credit must be given to the author if any
material from the dissertation is used in subsequent written or published
work.

Fawzia Muhammad Bariun

All Rights Reserved

1988

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to express my profound gratitude to my adviser,
Professor Trevor LeGassick, for his valuable criticism and
scholarly advice.

My thanks are due for his incisive

comments which enabled me to elucidate dark spots in this

study and to make certain arguments more convincing.

have also benefited from his encouragement throughout the

years.
My thanks also go to a teacher and friend, Professor
Raji Rammuny.

He gave much time and effort to reading,

evaluating and commenting on different points in my study.

His moral support and friendship have encouraged me.
I warmly thank Professor James Stewart Robinson, who
assisted me even before becoming a member of my dissertation committee by gathering important information for me.
His advice and personal example have showed me what it is
to be a scholar.
I want very much to thank Professor Ali Mazrui who
agreed to be an outside member of my committee.
showed

He has

interest in the subject and generously offered

support and advice.

This study is particularly indebted to an Algerian
scholar and friend for whose extensive help and support I

-ii-

am thankful.

Dr. Abulqacim Sa'dallah has read the draft

and commented meaningfully on various historical arguments.

His efforts to provide me with articles concerning the
study were indispensable.
My thanks are also extended to Rashld Ben-Isa Muhammad
Mcirlsh, Dr. Ammar al-Talbi, and Elizabeth LeGassick.
I would e s p e c i a l l y l i k e t o express my g r e a t e s t
t o my h u s b a n d ,
ability,
greatly

his

Dr.

Mahmoud T a r s i n .

encouragement,

motivated

me.

His b e l i e f

and h i s e n d l e s s

Our e x c h a n g e

of

help

views

thanks
in my
have
about

Bennabi's ideas has enriched the s t u d y .

I am also thankful to my sons Anas, Aiman, Ahmad, Asad
and Amjad for their understanding, patience, and support.
Finally, always, I extend my thanks to my family in
Libya for their support and prayer, and especially to my
sister Samya.
And may God accept this work.

- iii-

TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ii

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER
I.

A HISTORICAL BACKGROUND:
FRENCH

ALGERIA UNDER THE

14

The European Settlers and the

Natives' Education
The Muslim Reaction to French
Education
The Colonial Policy and the Muslim
Algerians
II.

THE AWAKENING OF ALGERIA IN THE EARLY

TWENTIETH CENTURY
Influence of Tunisia
Influence of Egypt
_
Influence of c Abdu and al-Manar
National Press
Development of the Political
Movement
The Association of the Algerian
Ulama
THE LIFE OF MALIK BENNABI: 1905-1973
Childhood
Youth
Life in France
Life and Intellectual Activities
in Egypt
Return to Algeria

- iv-

24
29

42

The
The
The
The
The

III.

20

. . . .

46
49
53
56
61
67
87
89
93
98
112
121

IV.

HISTORY AND SOCIOLOGY IN BENNABI'S

THOUGHT
The Influence of Ibn Khaldoun
Religion as a Major Factor in
Civilization
Society as an Organism
The 'Rural' and the 'Urban'
Individual
Bennabi and Toynbee

V.

BENNABI'S THEORY OF CIVILIZATION

Bennabi's Views of al-Afghani
and cAbdu
Bennabi's Evaluation of Modernism
The Causes of the Failure
Bennabi's Definition of Civilization
Historical Premises
Man, The Major Factor of
Civilization
Directing Culture
The Cultural Project
Soil and Time

137
139
145
148
154
157
177
179
188
192
198
201
202
205
209
213

APPENDIX

225

BIBLIOGRAPHY

262

-v-

INTRODUCTION
In the Muslim world, possibly more so than anywhere
else, the need for change has been advocated from diverse
standpoints.

This is because the Muslims have been con-

fronted with unusually serious and intransigent economic,

social and political problems.

The greatest appeared to

have an intellectual and moral basis.

Particularly in the Muslim Arab countries, the number
of solutions under discussion grows continually.

The major

feature of these discussions is that each one offered

suggests yet another, equally attractive solution but with
contrasting characteristics.

There are incessant debates,

for example, about Arabism versus Islam, nationalism

(qawmlya) versus patriotism

(watanlya),

authenticity

(asala)

(hadatha),

religion

versus

and religon

versus

versus

modernity

"I' '

science,

shura
2

'

versus democracy,

secularism.
Since the days of al-Afghani, and especially within
the last two decades, the Muslim intellectuals who have
argued about goals and the means for change belonged to one
of three general groups that could be categorized
conservative, moderate and modern.
life of Malik Bennabi

as

This study examines the

(1905-1973), a moderate Algerian

thinker, and his work, specifically his theory of civiliza-1-

-2tion.

"Civilization" was the principal theme in all of

Bennabi's books.

His Les conditions de la renaissance (it

was translated into Arabic and entitled Shurut al-Nahda)

presented the basic outline of his theory of civilization,
which he enriched and elaborated in his subsequent publica3
tions until shortly before his death in 1973.
This study
systematically discusses Bennabi's views as presented in
his various books, and throws light on his life and the
society he analyzed.

In addition, some of his ideas will

be compared to those of Ibn Khaldoun and Toynbee.

Bennabi was educated in the West and, from his early
twenties, he strove to explore and understand Western
civilization.

His Western education, however, did not

diminish his deep love for his own history and culture;
throughout his life,

he continued

to investigate and

acquire knowledge about them.

Bennabi was considered an indigene both in France and
at home, in Algeria.

Here he lived in the antithetical

world of East-West, Africa-Europe, and Islam-Christianity.

Bennabi strongly identified with his culture and history.
Although he might have suffered from what some scholars
call "cultural schizophrenia,"

Bennabi was sustained and

inspired by a strong belief in his culture and history.

The basic intellectual antithesis of Islam and Christianity was resolved in Bennabi's mind.

He rejected a

Western assumption that the very foundation of Islam was

-3being challenged.

He believed

that the decadence of

Muslims should be attributed not to Islam, but rather to

its historical application by its people.

He substan-

tiated his argument in his publications by referring to the

fact that Islam had encouraged reason and- inquiry, and had
enabled its people to create a great civilization.
Bennabi accepted the fact that Muslims were being
challenged from within and without.

Comparing the advanced

state of the West to the condition of his people, Bennabi

realized that the essence of the problem was civilization.
The fact that his country had fallen under French occupation more than a century before enhanced his understanding
of the problem.

Despite the Algerian awakening in the

early twentieth century,

independence

was not

Bennabi believed that political

the answer

"colonizability" remained.

if

the condition of

This issue required empirical

survey and critical analysis.

History and sociology were

the two major disciplines which Bennabi used in searching

for an answer.
In developing a perspective of his own, Bennabi was
mainly

influenced by Ibn Khaldoun and Toynbee.

He

developed a theory of three stages which was similar to Ibn

Khaldoun's Theory of the Three Generations.

However,

Bennabi demonstrated his ability to successfully use and

benefit from modern science.

His theory of civilization

stated that man plus soil plus time equals civilization.

Bennabi studied the Muslim awakening, the nahda, since

-4the time of al-Afghani.

He saw it as a response to Western

colonization and the hegemony of Western culture.

However,

Bennabi believed that this awakening was not successful

because

its leaders had failed

response to the West.

to create an adequate

Bennabi believed that a lack of

systematic thinking was responsible for the absence of an

objective plan for the renaissance.

The consequence was

that the leaders and their disciples were not precise about
their goals and strategies.

The reformers, nevertheless,

believed that an effective response should be grounded in a

reconstruction of the scholastic theory of Islam.

In

contrast, the modernizers believed in using ideas, systems,

and goods customarily found in the West.
Bennabi believed

that both the reformers and the

modernists overlooked two basic facts.

The first was that

Muslims had not abandoned their faith, but had failed to

exercise its social function.

In addition, the reformers

did not realize that reconstruction of theology would not

affect the collective body of society in its historical
7

movement.

The second was that c i v i l i z a t i o n could not be

created simply by importing modern ideas and systems of

another c i v i l i z a t i o n .

Bennabi strongly believed that the

Muslims' i n s u f f i c i e n c y
rather in c r e a t i v i t y .

was not in m a t e r i a l goods,

but

The wealth of a people, he asserted,

is measured not by their products, but by their original

ideas.

-5.
Bennabi's perspective of a social movement as an
historical phenomenon was based in his notion of the
existence and interaction of three major "realms":

the

Realm of Things, the Realm of Ideas, and the Realm of

Figures.

When figures use ideas they create things. A

fourth, ancillary realm he called the cultural network.

This term referred to certain cultural institutions activating and organizing Muslim intellectual and cultural
9
activities.
He believed that ideas in a society are
strongly dependent on the cultural network.
Bennabi viewed a society's social and cultural effectiveness as the basic factor in implementing values through
attitudes.

Culture was the major field that Bennabi

examined. He concluded that man was the principal agent of

development and civilization.

At the same time, man is

directed in life by his culture, value system and attitude.

In investigating this assumption, Bennabi deduced that
civilization could be initiated by modifying a society's
living conditions.

Thus, cultural regeneration in the

Muslim world was possible and should be undertaken.

How-

ever, if the historical challenge was to be met, then

Muslims must be clear about their goals as well as their
strategies.
Comparing the Muslim's nahda to the renaissance of the
Japanese, Bennabi determined that the latters' success in
achieving an advanced position in the world was due to
their precision in defining their goals and choosing the

-6most scientific ways to reach them.

The Japanese were

students of Western civilization, while the Muslims put

themselves in the position of consumer.

That is, the

Muslims were buying merchandise, while the Japanese were

constructing their civilization according to their own
specifications.

Although

they

imported

some Western

products, the Japanese carefully considered their real

needs.
After the Miji Restoration, the Japanese examined the
possibility of economic modernization without cultural
Westernization.

They decided to adopt Western technique

and preserve Japanese spirit.

The Turks, who later examined the same idea, reached a
different conclusion. Kemal Ataturk thought that people can
only modernize through Westernization.

Although Ataturk's

goal was to bombard his deteiorated

society,

Bennabi

maintained, his bomb's effect was imcomplete because he did

12
not examine the other conditions of renaissance.
The major criticism

that Bennabi had against the

European powers was their involvement in colonization and

cultural disrespect.

Bennabi felt neither inferior nor

superior to the West.

He accepted the reality that both

the Muslim and the Third World countries need Western

technology and science.

Furthermore, Bennabi did not

reject the idea that Muslims might have to seek the help of
Western personnel such as teachers, engineers, pharmacists

-7and physicians.

He did believe, however, that such help

would be temporary.
Bennabi

thus

used

his Western-learned

skills of

sociological analysis to examine Muslim culture.

He cited

a major misconception that had contributed to its decay:

Muslims wrongly concluded that since they possessed what
their theology called a complete religion (din) or way of
life, they believed that their society also was perfect and
complete.

This mistaken attitude led to the refusal to

confront serious issues and the avoidance of all selfcriticism.

Bennabi

emphasized

that any cultural reconstruction

should be based on ethical principles, aesthetic sense,

practical logic and technique.

Through his investigation

of these major elements he was searching for the fundamental psycho-cultural conditions that might mobilize his
society.
Bennabi

produced

a considerable

number

of

books

touching upon a wide range of subjects, all of which

related to his central theme of civilization.
he discussed

The fields

from Quranic interpretation

to
political speculation,16 while his subjects dealt with
17
18
19
20
culture,
economics,
ideology,
philosophy,
Orien21
22
talism,

ranged

and imperialism.

Bennabi's ideas about a society's development and

civilization reveal him to have been an original thinker on
the subject of modern Arabic Islamic thought.

His approach

-8-

to the problems of his society was systematic and logical.

As a Western-educated

engineer,

he was trained

in a

scientific orientation that affected his writing style.

His words were precise;

his attention was focused on

meaning rather than form.

This was one benefit from his

use of the French language.

However, Bennabi's meanings

are not easily grasped by the Arabic reader.

his concepts in a new terminology.

He expressed

Terms like

'post

Almohads man' (insan ma ba c da al-Muwahhidin), 'outside

civilization man' (al-insan kharij al-hadara),

'coloniz-

ability' (al-qabillya lil-isticmar) , 'realm of ideas'

( alam al-afkar),

'realm of figures'

(calam al-ashkhas)

were all original with Bennabi and new to his readers.

Selections of writing

in both Arabic

and French

are

presented in the appendix.

As a person, Bennabi was sensitive and easily provoked.

It may be inferred, then, that his philosophical

insights were more effective when read than when heard; in

public gatherings he was said to have been temperamental
23
and emotional.

This characteristic may explain why his

disciples were few and why their efforts to communicate and

elaborate his ideas have been limited.
about him appeared

Few early studies

in Arabic, and most of these lack

analytic depth; they are merely effuse in praise and

admiration for him. 2 4 A new generation in the Arab and
Islamic world has, however, developed a serious interest in

-9Bennabi's social and philosophical ideas.

In the last

several years, Arab university graduates have paid greater

attention than hithertofore

to Bennabi's

intellectual

contribution and several more articulate studies have

25
therefore appeared.
Bennabi's approach to the issue of civilization was
multidimensional because of his consciousness that culture
itself is a complex phenomenon.

His views were distin-

guished by his study of Arab history and the evolution of

his Islamic culture.

He believed

that Muslims could

achieve progress only through a regeneration of their own

inherited culture.
The Intergovernmental Conference on the Institutional,
Administrative and Financial Aspects of Cultural Policies
held in Venice in 1970 confirmed that "development is not
development unless it is total; ... cultural development is
26
part and parcel of total development."
UNESCO had to
modify its strategies of its First Development Decade,
which was based purely on economic growth.

The experts

declared that "development was increasingly perceived as a

whole in which cultural factors could not be separated, and
in which they jointly made a contribution to progress."
Such findings substantiate the views of Bennabi.
Similarly, the Mexico City Declaration on Cultural
Policies of 1982 concluded that "man is the origin and goal
of development."27 Bennabi's theory was also founded on
the idea that man is the principal element of civilization.

-10-

The emphasis on integration between man and his culture,

and

their

role

in change

and

development

in social,

political and economic affairs was also propagated by

Bennabi decades before international organizations reached
such a conclusion.
He himself thought them so significant that he made
efforts to communicate them to certain Arab and Muslim
heads of state.

It is clear that the governments and

intellectuals of the Middle East concerned with the broad

development of their societies could still benefit from the
insights Bennabi gained through his studies and to which he
gave expression in his writings.

-11-

Footnotes to Introduction
Shura, derived from the verb shawara (consult, ask
for advice), is an Islamic political concept which is sometimes referred to as "Islamic democracy."
2
Especially in Egypt, possibly before Sadat's assassination, various Islamic groups, publications, and organizations were actively participating in the social and
cultural spheres.
Reviewing the Egyptian newspapers and
magazines, one can realize that the argument about the
solution has been intensified by different economic and
political circumstances. The tendency towards democracy in
Egypt contributed to the flow of ideas.
Bennabi published his first book Le phnomene
Coranique in 1946, but his theory of civilization was
developed two years later. One year before he died Bennabi
published al-Muslim f1 cAlam al-Iqtisad; after his death,
Risalat al-Muslim fi al-Thuluth a'l-A'khir min al-Qarn alishrin appeared.
4
Ali Mazrui, Political Values and the Educated Class
in Africa, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1978,
p. 27.
5Bennabi, Fikrat al-Afriqiya
cala Dawi
al-Asiyawiya
Mo'tamar Bandong, Dar al-Fikr, Damascus, 1981, p. 224.
6
c
Bennabi, Inta] al-Mustashriqin wa Atharuhu ala alFikr al-Islami al-Had!the, Cairo, J971, p. 32.
7
cBennabi, Wijhat al alam al-Islami, Cairo, 1959, p.
177.

8B e n n a b i ,

M i l a
d Mujtama c - S h a b a k a t a l - c A l
a q a- t
I j t i m a l y a , Dar a l - F i k r , Damascus, 1985, p . 3 4 .
g
Bennabi, Wijhat, p . 95.
c

al-

10
c
Bennabi, Milad Mujtama , p. 35.
Bennabi, Hadith fi al-Bina' al-Jadid, Beirut, n.d.,

-12p. 185.
12
Bennabi, Shurut al-Nahda, Dar al-Fikr f Damascus,
1979, p. 123.
13

"

Ibid., p. 130.

Bennabi, Wijhat, p. 93.

15
c See al-Zahira al-Qur aniya.
T

IS

See F i k r a t a l - A f r i q i y a
Commonwealth Islami.

al-Asiawiya ,

and F i k r a t

17
c
See Mushkilat al-Thaqafa, Milad Mujtama , and
Hadlth fi al-Bina' al-Jadid.*
See al-Muslim fi cAlam al-Iqtisad.
19

See Risalat al-Muslim _f_i al-Thuluth al-Akir min alQarn al-cIshrin, and Afag Jaza'iriya.
See Shurut al-Nahda, Ta'ammulat, and Mushkilat alAfkar fi al- Alam al-Islami.
21See Intaj
- al-Mustashriqin
- wa Atharuhu cala al-Fikr
.
al-Islami al-Had!the.
22

-c

See Fi Mahab al-Ma raka and al-Sira al-Fikri fi alBilad al-Musta mara.
23
c Abdul-Latif Ibada, Safahat Mushriqa min Fikr Malik
Bennabi, Dar al-Shihab, Algeria, 1984, p. 23.
24
The studies included in the bibliography of this
study are excluded.
25
To name a few, in Egypt Ali Qurayshi wrote his
master's thesis on Bennabi's views on education. In Libya
Muhammad al-Jafayri wrote his master's thesis on Bennabi's
views of the problems of civilization. In Algeria, Muhammad
Mcirish, Hammuda Scidi, and Amina Tcheco wrote papers on
different aspects of Bennabi's thought.
26
Intergovernmental Conference on the Institutional,
Administrative, and Financial Aspects of Cultural Policies,
Venice, 1970 (final report), UNESCO Press, Paris, p. 5.

-1327
Cited in European Culture and World Development, p.
56.
28
See Cultural DevelopmentSome Regional Experiences,
The UNESCO Press, France, 1981, p. 81.

CHAPTER I
A HISTORICAL BACKGROUND:

ALGERIA UNDER THE FRENCH

After three centuries of Ottoman domination, Algeria

became a French colony
claimed

their

in 1830.

expedition

Although

the French

sought only

to liberate the

Algerians from their Turkish tyrants,

they in fact had

other political, economic, and imperialistic motives.

The presence and control imposed by an invading nonMuslim, non-Arab force greatly disrupted the traditional,
slow-paced, agricultural life of the country.

The Algerian

reaction to the invasion was a persistent and widespread

resistance.

The strength and perseverence of the Algerian

struggle against the occupation derived

from

their

religious concept of nationalism.

With the exception of occasional periods of reconciliation, Algerian

resistance

to the French

occupation

continued from 1830 until the Algerians won their independence in 1962. Movements led by al-AmircAbdul Qadir (18071883) and Muhammad al-Mugrani

(7-1871) were among the

uprisings that occurred during these years.

French influence on Algerian society extended to the
social, cultural, educational, political, and religious

-14-

-15-

spheres.

In this context, an examination of the French-

Algerian relationships in various activities of the colony

will help define the intellectual and social background in
which the personality and reputation of Malik Bennabi
developed.
Despite her pretenses of temporary purposes in her
occupation and the enduring resistance of the Algerians,
France expressed its determination to exert her authority
permanently over northwest Africa by the outright annexation of Algeria in 1834.

This annexation essentially

eliminated Algeria's traditional systems of government and

administration and undermined the linguistic, cultural, and
religious integrity of her people.

The educational system

was a primary target for the French because of its potential for mobilizing society in a particular direction.
Before

1830,

primary
2

flourished in Algeria.

and

secondary

education

In January of 1834, General Valze,

presenting the conclusions of the Commission d'Afrigue,

noticed that "practically all Arabs [Algerians] know how to
3
read and write. There are two schools in each village."
Although Algeria never had highly reputed religious schools
such as al-Zaytuna in Tunis, al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, or alAzhar in Cairo, the country had many educational centers of
less significance. There were, for example, three thousand
_
4
kuttabs in different parts of Algeria.
In 1833, there were in the capital of Algiers 2920

-16houses, 148 public fountains, and 48 schools for boys and

girls."

At the time of the conquest, "Constantine was

renowned for both material and intellectual activities,

with 35 mosques, 7 madrasas (only in Cairo and Fez were
there more), and 90 Qura'nic schools teaching some 1350
boys.

The teachers were of high repute."

The studies in

madrasas of Constantine included grammar, rhetoric, logic,

7
metaphysics, theology, law and astronomy.
Tlemcen, which
was a great commercial city, was also an intellectual
g
center with its 50 Qura'nic schools and 2 madrasas.
Secondary education was offered also in middle schools
g
located in mosques and zawiyas.

These schools had many

manuscripts/ but the French conquest destroyed them as many

bivouac fires had been lighted with these manuscripts.

few, however, remained and were preserved in the library of

Algiers.
Learning and teaching concepts were derived from the
belief that God respects the people "who know," and gives
air

(reward) both to those who offer and to those who

receive the knowledge.

Education was made possible without

cost because individuals commonly bequeathed

their money

and properties to the Waqf (religious endowment) for public

educational development as well as other purposes.

During

the first phase of occupation, France did not interfere

with the Qur'anic schools.

Later, however, the institution

was weakened when the French administration garnished the

religious revenue to build up a colonial public domain.

-17-

French colonialism in Algeria was characterized by

cultural disrespect,

segregation, and religious intoler-

ance.

The French destroyed several mosques and converted

others into churches, hospitals, or museums.12 Many of the
Kuttabs and schools located

in the mosques were

also

destroyed.
The French government's concerted effort to eliminate
the Arabic language, a campaign that lasted for more than a
century, exemplifies the colonist mentality.

The policy of

assimilation outlined in the Decree of 1834 proclaimed

French the official language of Algeria and Arabic was
phased out of official use.

William Marcais concluded an

alarming report on bilingualism in North Africa in May 1930

by stating
culture. 13

that Arabic

is an

instrument

of medieval

The French argued that "there is a spoken

language which is not written, and a written language which

is not spoken," and concluded that "neither dialect Arabic,
which has only the value of a patois, nor grammatical
Arabic which is a dead language, nor modern Arabic which is
a foreign language, constitute a compulsory subject of
primary education." 14
Consequently, Arabic was considered a foreign language
until 1947.

Arabic studies were optional in the school

16
system and scheduled after regular school hours.
In some
government schools, dialectical Arabic was taught for two
hours a week as an optional foreign language.17 A proposal

-18to consider Arabic as a "second national language was

18
prepared later, but remained a dead issue."
The administration established three madrasas in the
1850s, not out of respect for the culture, but to satisfy
their administrative needs.

Arabic was taught in these

official madrasas only to suit a colonial objective:

to

create a class of interpreters, gadis, and other functionaries to serve the government.

In 1951, the three madrasas

in Tlemcan, Constantine, and Algiers were converted into

Lycees Franco Musulmans, where fifteen hundred Muslim
students underwent rigorous training in both French and
19
Arabic.

To control the dissemination of Arabic educa-

tion, the administration required that proper certification

of Arabic teaching mudariis (teacher) be administered only
through these official madrasas.

The alleged physical and

ethnic superiority of the French over the Algerians was

promoted through the deliberate desecration of the Arabic
language and humiliation of its speakers.

The French used

to call the Arabs figuiers (fig trees), ratons (little

rats) , and bicots, a name translated into English as "a
vulgar term of prejudice and contempt." 20 Many French
writings contained discriminating
full of humiliation and hate.
second generation pied noir

views and descriptions

As was put by one of the

(Frenchman born in Algeria):

"It was what every European in Algeria thinks, without

exception:

the Arabs are filthy breed and our mistake has

been to treat them as human beings.

They are good for

-19-

nothing, the minute you trust them they rob you, they are
opposed to any form of social progress, and the education
?1
we give them only makes us ridiculous.""'

Consequently,

Arabic teachers appointed by the French administration were

subject to arbitrary examination and inspection by the
22
schools' directors.
Teachers of Arabic, therefore,
deteriorated in number and quality as the people continued
to flee the country.
One might assume that having undermined the educational system of Algeria, the French would replace it with
a modern French educational system to further their mission
civilisatrice.

Indeed, a French saying stated that "when

the Portuguese colonized, they built churches; when the

British colonized, they built trading stations; when the
French colonized, they built schools."23 This development
did not unfold, however, in Algeria.
In the 1840s, when Algeria was officially incorporated
into the political body of metropolitan France, responsibility for education was divided between two ministries.
The Ministry of Public Instruction took charge of education
for the Europeans, and the Ministry of War oversaw education for the natives.

In this frame, it was clear that

army officers "were not necessarily good pedagogues, and

what the Algerians wished fornamely proficiency in Arabic
and Muslim self-awarenesswere not to be found in the new
schools." 24 Because the French regarded education as a

-20means to implement political power, they avoided prolonged

debate over whether education should be a mass effort or an
elite project.

Although at first there was a special

concern with the notable families, French schooling in

Algeria was aimed toward the population in general. 25
Algerian historians, however, do not adopt this observation; and they accuse the French of not being serious in
offering education to the masses.

Mostafa Lacheraf,, for

example, believes that education in Algeria was limited,

during the first three decades or more of occupation, to
2(5
the children of the notables.
He quoted one of the
highest French functionaries, Eugene Formestroux, who wrote
in 1880, "We have neglected the natives' education, until
it deteriorated to a level far lower than that existed
before the conquest." 27

The European Settlers and the Natives' Education

It would be useful to examine the characteristics of
the colon population to achieve comprehension of their
interaction with the indigenous society.

One of the main

issues in this interaction would be education, since the

idea behind the occupation, as the French claimed, was
introducing civilization to the native society.
The people who were called colons came, in general,
from the least privileged strata of society.
even "sent through from state orphanages.

Some were

In the early

21years of his rule, Napoleon III used Algeria as a convenient place to send political opponents and leftist
revolutionaries joined a motley collection of juvenile
delinquents,

prison offenders and refugees from France's

28
eastern part."
As another historian -described them:
"They are the scum of the seaports of France, Spain, Italy
and Greece; men who have forgotten home, and who speak a
jargon of all languages of Europe." 29 Along with the
influx of the settlers, came mote contingents from Malta,

Cyprus and other Mediterranean societies.

Ry the outbreak

of World War I only one in five European Algerians was of

French descent.

All were French according to the law,

however, as ever since 1829 full rights of French citizenship had been granted at birth to children of non-French
settlers.30
While the Algerians suffered disintegration resulting
from the occupation, the colons were united by a sense of
distinctiveness, and ambition to acquire large estates and
to establish their own new world.
Bourdieu:

As described by Pierre

"the two societies were placed in a relation

superior to inferior, and separated by institutions or by

spontaneous self defense. . . . The European society, a
minority exercising the right of a majority in the social,
economic and political spheres, is attempting

through

racist ideology, to transform these privileges into laws,

in other words, with the dominant continuing to dominate,
31
and the dominated continuing to be dominated."

-22-

To gain total control over the country, the colons

committed themselves to the idea of assimilation.
definition of assimilation,

Their

however,

was exceedingly
narrow, it was for them not for the Algerians. 32 The

colons, therefore, campaigned against the military administration of Algeria from the start.

Their deputies in Paris

demanded, on every possible occasion, the normal civil

system to be found in France.

Alexandre Clapier of the

Bouches du-Rohne, who was a landowner in Algeria, spoke in

the National Assembly against the Algerian deputies and
revealed their implicit contradiction.

He said:

The situation in Algeria is very simple. There

is a double antagonism between the colons and the
military establishment, and between the colons
and the Arabs. When the colon wants to denounce
the military, what does he say? "you oppress the
Arabs, who are an appealing race- and an ally of
civilization." And when the colon turns against
the Arabs he tells them, "You are a despicable
race without good faith or respect for law, and
you must be controlled,
oppressed and forbidden
to merge with us. 3 3
In this context, the colons who strongly feared that
any improvement or reform to the status quo of the majority, might possibly threaten their fortunes, stood firmly
against the education of the natives.

Yet, if they had to

execute the laws of France, they would always recommend to

educate as few people as possible,

and

to keep that
34
education far from objectivity or self-sufficiency.
In

most cases they developed

for practical and

a demand

technical training, as if, Ageron noticed, a golden age

-23would open for Algeria if those little Muslim boys could be

turned into blacksmiths and carpenters. 35 On the other
hand/

they openly

adopted

the theory

inferior and an uneducable race.

that Arabs

are

The same theory that was

summed up in Renan's pronouncement "on this kind of iron

circle that surrounded the true believer's head, making him
absolutely close to science, incapable of learning anything
36
or being open to new ideas."
Although metropolitan efforts attempted to institute
some educational reforms, these efforts often came late, or
offered too little.

As an example of these efforts, the

"new laws ordered compulsory primary education (1881, 1884)

and made school attendance obligatory for all boys within a
3 kilometer radius of an established public school
(1917)." 37 We see that some of these efforts came as late
as half a century of colonization.

In addition to that,

schools were not built in sufficient number, and reform

legislation remained a dead issue.38 Moreover, the colon's
firm attitude against educating the natives became a source
of increasing conflict between France and her colony.

The

question of who should pay for the schools for Muslims soon
after became a problem.

Obviously, the colonial mentality

would argue that paving roads, spreading electricity and

extending material modernization had greater priority than
educating the natives. 3 9 In fact they argued that the
diversion of funds for Muslims meant the financial ruin of
the colons;

"European parents would have to keep their

-24-

children at home, while the commune funds were used to

build places for the little wretches of the mountains."
They actually meant to oppose both the communal school
intended

mainly

for European children, but

sometimes

admitting Muslim children as well, and the schools planned

especially for Muslims, but not excluding others.41 As a
result, French educational efforts, as Harik concluded,
"tended to be carried out where they were easiest more
often than where they would have been most useful.

Rather

than in the towns and cities where Muslims were in daily

contact with Europeans and would have been more receptive
to education, schools were too often started in outlying
areas where there was neither European resistance nor
Muslim interest."

The Muslim Reaction to French Education

It is clearly important to examine the reaction of the
Muslim Algerians to French schooling.

Needless to say, the

interaction between the Europeans and the natives took a

form of cultural confrontation.

As a result, the Muslim

reaction to the early French schools was almost a complete

boycott.

Their common fear was that French schools,

directly or indirectly, would affect their children's

faith.

At the same time, many people feared that their

children might be educated in the French schools and then

be sent to France as slaves.

These fears might have been

-25-

created by Ministerial notes, suggesting "the possibility

of keeping the students [boys of upper class families] as
hostages while they were being educated" 43 in Paris. As a
result,

fathers withdrew their boys from the existing

schools in Algeria, "and in its eight years of existence

the Paris school taught eleven very expensive and unhappy
boys." 44
To confuse the Muslim population toward the education
law of 1883, the colon press circulated

reports that
schooling would be obligatory for boys and girls.45 These
reports aroused the anger of the Muslim population as they
traditionally regarded girls as needing protection and
seclusion and that they should not be exposed to Christian
46
education and lifestyle.
It must be remembered too that as a result of the laws
pertaining to land property, the fundamental structure of
the economy and of the traditional society had greatly
deteriorated.

The Senatus Consulte

of 1863 aimed to

disorganize the tribes to facilitate the policy of pacification.

As the natives were pushed

from the fertile

coastal regions, the economic standard of the family was

affected, and children were needed at home.

The hardships

of making a living made schools a luxury irrelevant to most

peasants.

Moreover, natives who enrolled in French schools

generally found employment as shoemakers, smiths, or

49
-i
barbers.
These examples contributed to the popular

-26attitude of boycotting the French schools, whose main

objective, the natives believed, was to convert their sons
to Christianity.

The idea of conversion was strongly

suggested by the private religious institutions which

consisted of more than one-third of the total number of
schools in the Algiers Department during the 1870s and
1880s.50
The issue of education was, in fact, affected by
various factors:
political.

cultural, demographic, economic, and

The colons who were, borrowing Bourdieu's

words, "an empire within an empire" aimed to exercise full

authority over the colony of Algeria, and to stand against
the natives trying to gain equality.

Because they had a

remarkably effective Algerian lobby in Paris, they were

capable of exerting great pressure on parliament and the
ministers.
Education, in the cultural perspective of both the
natives and the colons was a policy of the French colonial
administration that embodied the slogan "L'Algerie c'est la
France."

However, to the colons, educating the natives

would only create potential troublemakers who would resist

the French presence.52 In the view of the natives,
association

in schools with Christians would corrupt

individuals as well as the society, especially since

colonization had contributed to the deterioration of their
traditional schools.

-27-

Demographically,

after

holding

nearly

stable

at

approximately 3 million for centuries, the native population rose

in the fifty years after

1870 to nearly 5
million, a growth of more than 60 percent.52 As a result,
this population, once spread out evenly across the country,
began to congregate in cities like Algiers and Oran.53 The
tribal dislocation caused by the Senatus Consulte and the
economic difficulties caused by various factors resulted in
an internal migration.

While city Muslims doubled in

number, those living in the farming areas tripled between

1920 and 1950. 54
As against half a million European settlers, we should
examine the education efforts carried out by the so-called
civilizing mission.

Striking differences are seen from the

following figures on amounts of French francs spent on the

education of colons and natives: 55
Year

Colon Education

Native Education

1902

5,081,823

1,389,274

1903

5,558,978

1,179,165

1904

5,732,003

1,299,424

1905

7,847,368

1,314,234

1906

8,189,749

1,385,064

1907

8,955,390

1,549,464

1908

9,923,369

1,617,639

Consequently, even as late as 1957, although all colon

children attended school, only 19 percent of the native

-28school age population did so.56

Even though after World

War I, Algerians had changed their attitude toward French

schooling and demanded that their children be given places
in the classrooms,57 French education had reached very few.
Therefore, it is not surprising that in 1954, 94 percent of
Algerian males, and 98 percent of the females were
illiterate in French.58 Further, breaking down the school
age population against the numbers attending schools shows
that in 1954 no more than one Muslim boy in five, and one
Muslim girl in sixteen attended school.59 In 1953, when
the Muslim population was about 8.5 million, and France had
ruled

for more than a century,

these statistics were

given for the professional employment of the country's

muslim populations
Doctors

99

Surgeons

Dentists

17

Pharmacists

44

Lawyers

161

Notaries and Other Law Careers

193

Professors (secondary schools and higher)

185

Engineers (mostly textile manufacture)

27

Architects

Higher Posts in Administration

As Alf Heggoy pointed

background,

and during

out,

"it was against this

this period

in which Algerian

-29opposition to French rule grew and became more powerful,

that colonial officials faced the language issue."

The Colonial Policy and the Muslim Algerians

On the political side, France adopted in Algeria a
strategy of divide and conquer.

Colons and natives were

separated along social, economic, and political lines.

On

the other hand, the native inhabitants were socially and

ethnically categorized into three distinct groups:
Berbers, and Jews.

Arabs,

The French strategy of divide and

conquer was more generous toward the Jews.

The CrSmieux

decree-law of October 1870 gave the Algerian Jews full

62
French citizenship.

This privilege enabled them to vote

with citizens of European origin in local Algerian elections, and for the Algerian seats in the French parliament.
This development, no doubt, had an impact on strengthening
Islamic sentiment among the Muslims, and led to suspicion
that a Jewish-Christian alliance against the Muslims was in
effect.
As early as 1881, a discriminatory Code de 1'Indigene
was put into effect to circumscribe Muslims* lives with
repressive and insulting fiscal and juridical stipulations.
The code was directed at those who committed offenses such
as not participating when called upon to fight a forest
fire or a plague of grasshoppers, meeting in groups without
permission (even in social gatherings), delaying in the

-30payment

of

t&xes,

or

speaking

out

against

Special courts known as tribunaux repressifs

France.
(repressive

tribunal) and Courts Criminelles (criminal courts) were

established in 1902 for hearing the more serious accusations.
The natives were required to pay special taxes called
impots arabes.

They were subjected not only to the same

taxes as were the Europeans, but they also had to pay head
taxes, harvest taxes and herd taxes.

There was also a

series of compulsory labor obligations

(corves) such as

fire watches in forests, grasshopper drives, official

transport, and public service taxes (prestations).
Although the Code de 1'indige and its annex were
applied to all Muslims, the French allied themselves with
the Berbers.

To combat the cohesion of the native society,

colonial policy

in Algeria,

and beyond

that in North

Africa, adopted a theory that integrated with their policy

of divide and conquer.

Claiming that the Berbers were of

Christian European origin, and that they had come to the

66
area with the Romans,
the French never lost hope of
converting the Berbers back to their "original religion".
The conversion movement of Mgr Lavegirie in 1863-1870 ' is
evidence of the concurrent activities of Christian missionaries during this period.
ities, the French

By facilitating such activ-

administration furthered their campaign

against the Arabic language and culture; they exploited the

linguistic differences between Berbers and Arabs to foster

-31-

a social, political, and psychological distance between the

two.

In addition, they encouraged the Berbers to follow

their

tribal

customs

and

abandon

the

Islamic

law

(Sharicah).
the

Whenever the French established schools among

68
Berbers, the curriculum was completely in French.

In sum, "French authority tried at times, ultimately in

vain, to set Berber against Arab, favoring the former." 69
Nevertheless,

it is generally

agreed

that the Berber

characteristics of pride, stubborness, and tribal unity as

well as their adherance to Islam, largely enabled them to
resist the foreign penetration.
The third group with whom the French tried to ally
themselves was the Muslim Sufi orders or religious fraternities, who had great social, political, and military
influence on the Algerian people.

The 1845 uprising

instigated by the religious groups convinced the French of

the need to understand and control the influence of the
religious institutions on the Algerian resistance.

They

therefore made attempts to penetrate, divide, and control

these orders with their own agents, in effect to pacify the
70
antagonistic feeling that had arisen.
The Zawivas, centers of popular mysticism, were also
quasi-secret organizations with many functions.

During the

early period of colonization, they played a significant

role in cultural and military resistance.

In order to

deprive these organizations of their influence and to break

-32the tribal tie identified by Ibn Khaldoun as the locus of

political power, France made agreements with some of them.
As a result of the deterioration of Islamic studies
and education in general, religious beliefs and practices
lost their purity and originality.

The colonial prevention

of Arabic publications entering Algeria contributed also to

the situation.

Ignorant people, especially of the desert

and country districts, were deluded by popular religious

practices based on superstition and magic acts. 71 The
elite of the Maraboutism in general ultimately tended to
help the French, consciously or unconsciously, to gain a
free hand in Algeria.72
As the French enjoyed ever more absolute authority in
Algeria, the indigenous Muslims retreated to live in near
isolation from the European settlers.

After the failure of

all armed attempts against the conqueror, their resistance

took the nonviolent form of self-segregation.

They pre-

served the Muslim culture within the clannish network,

taught their children the language of the Qura'n at home or
in the zawiyas, or turned

to the Arab East for emigration

or education.
The socio-economic situation of the Algerians also
deteriorated under colonization as a result of the dismem73
berment and confiscation of the collectively owned land.
The European settlers employed but exploited the Algerians
working on their farms, as the hundreds of thousands of
uprooted peasants constituted a cheap labor class.

Outside

-33-

the agriculture field, only 800,000 (with 4 million independents) found permanent jobs in the modern economy.
While new birth reached more than 200,000 every year, the
number of new jobs created annually was only 20,000. 7 5
Hunger was the grimmest reality in Algeria through most of
76
the colonization period.
Meat was generally eaten about
once a month, while the average income was estimated at $50
annually, barely enough to buy seeds and tools for the
77
coming year.
The dwellings of the countryside Algerians remained
the traditional tents, gourbis (huts), or primitive brick
houses

long

after

modern housing developments became

available to French settlers.78 The worst type of dwelling

was what was called the bidon villes (tin-can towns) which
surrounded every population center in Algeria.

In Algiers

alone, just before the liberation war of 1954, there were

79
ten bidon villes with nearly 150,000 inhabitants.
The deterioration of the socio-economic condition of
the Algerians contributed to a worsening health condition.
In seeking to gather information about health and medicine
in Algeria, statistics are not a great help.

They do not

indicate whether those who benefited from the public health

service were Europeans or natives.80 Although the French
administration did provide hospitals, health centers and
doctors,

it was only between 1930-1935 that auxiliary

hospitals were built to render medical service for the

-34natives.

Epidemic diseases spread among the Algerians

due to poor hygiene conditions and malnutrition.

Aure*s

malarie, typhus and typhoid, as well as cholera and plague,

forced

the French

to spray

DDT and

use

antibiotic

medicines.

The elimination of these epidemics did greatly

lower the mortality rate in Algiers and Oran. 8 2 But in

other cities, the medical staff that served 7.5 million

Muslims numbered less than 2,000. 83
The situation of the natives in colonized Algeria was,
then entirely contradictory of the mission civilisatrice
claimed by France.

In sum, as described by Joseph Kraft:

After a century of "progress," the social condition of the Algerian Muslims was the condition of
a ravaged people. A quarter were locked within
the confines of primitive economy.
Another
quarter were displaced persons, landless, homeless, jobless; hollow men of rural slums and the
cruel cities:
civilization's waste.
The rest
had entered the modern economy, but on the
worst of terms, and at the lowest level.^4

-35-

Footnotes to Chapter I
Nevill Barbour (ed.), A Survey of North West Africa
(The Maghrib), Oxford University Press, 1962, p. 43.
2
Alf Andrew Heggoy, "Arab Education in Colonial
Algeria," Journal of African Studies, VII, n2, Summer 1975,
p. 149.
3
Barbour, p. 239.
4
- _
Ahmad Tawfiq al-Madani, Hadhihi Hiya al-Jazai'r,
Maktabat al-Nahdah, Cairo (n.d.), p. 139.
5
John Jeynell Morell, Algeria, The Topography and
History, Political, Social and Natural of French Algeria,
London, Nathaniel Cooke, Milford House, Strand, 1845, p.
92.
Elsa M. Harik, "The Civilization Mission of France in
Algeria, The Schooling of a Native Population," in The
Politics of Education in Colonial Algeria and Kenya, Ohio
State Center for International Studies, Africa Program,
Athens, Ohio, 1984, p. 27.
7
For more details on the curriculum of each subject,
see Morell, p. 387.
g
Pierre Bourdieu, The Algerians, trans. Alan C. M.
Ross, Beacon Press, Boston, 1962, p. 60.
9 Zawiya is a center of various activities (religious,
social, educational, economic, and political), operated by
the religious Brotherhood. It is a community organization
which resisted the detachment from tradition and Islam.
10
Morell, p. 386.
Alf Heggoy and Paul J. Zingg, "French Education in
Revolutionary North Africa," International Journal of the
Middle East, July 1976, p. 572.
12
Barbour, p. 43; al-Madani, p. 140; Edmond Steven,

-36North African Power, Van Rees Press, New York, 1955, p.

181.
About converting mosques into churches, banning of
pilgrimage, attempts to deprive the Algerians of their
religious status, see Magali Morsy, North Africa 1800-1900,
A Survey from the Nile Valley to the Atlantic, Longman,
N.Y., 1984, pp. 159-165.
13
Jacques Berque, French North Africa: The Maghrib
Between Two World Wars, Jean Stewart, trans., N.Y., 1967,
p. 359.
14
Barbour p. 239.
15
Heggoy and Zingg, "French Education," p. 574.
Jacques Correct, L1 en.seignment de la langue Arabe en
Alqerie, unpublished memories quoted in ibid.
17

Ibid., p. 574.

18
Barbour, p. 239.
19
Al-Madani, p. 144. Barbour gives a figure of 430
students, but he does not indicate if the number is for
each madrasa, or if it is the total of the three.
20
Jules Roy, The War in Algeria, trans. Richaud
Howard, Grove Press, New York, 1961, p. 15. See also
Joseph Kraft, The Struggle for Algeria, Doubleday & Co.,
New York, 1961, p. 37.
21
Roy, p. 27.
22
Heggoy, "Arab Education," p. 150.
23
William Bryant and Orde Brown, Africans Learned to
Be French, London, 1937, p. 50.
23
Julien, L'Afrique Du Nord en March, Paris, 1952, pp.
36-37.
24
25

Morcy, p. 161.

Harik, p. 4.
26
See Mostafa Lacheraf, L'Algerie: Nation et SociStS,
Francois Maspero, Paris, 1965, p. 314. See also the Arabic

-37-

t r a n s l a t i o nc: a l - J a z a ' i r al-Ummah wal-Mujtama c ,

Hanafi ben- Isa, Algeria, 1983, p. 414.
27

trans.

Ibid.

28
Edward Behr, The Algerian Problem, Greenwood Press,
Westport, Connecticut, 1961, p. 28.
29

Morell, p. 349.
30
Harik, p. 22.
31
Bourdieu, p. 133.
32
Vincent Confer, France and AlgeriaThe Problem of
Civil and Political Reform, 1870-1920, Syracuse Press,
1966, p. 31.
33
Ibid., p. 33.
34
Harik, p. 35.
35
Ch. Robert Ageron, Les Alqriens Muslumans et la
France (1871-1919), Presses Universitaires de France, 1968,
V 1, p. 536.
Ibid., p. 535.
37
Alf Andrew and Paul Zingg, "French Education in
Revolutionary North Africa," International Journal of the
Middle East Studies, July 1976, p. 373.
38
Ibid.
39
Yet, the natives were paying, in addition to the
regular tax, special taxes called impots Arabes. It was
estimated that Muslims paid 45 percent of all taxes in
1909, including 70 percent of the direct taxes. Also, they
generally contributed one-third of the revenues in the
general Algerian budget, and one-half of the municipal
budgets. See Vincent Confer, France and Algeria; The
Problem of Civil and Political Reform 1870-1920, Syracuse
University Press, 1966, p. 22.
Ageron, Les Algeriens, p. 536.
Harik, p. 8.

-38-

42

Ibid., p. 9-10.

43
44

Ibid., p. 30.
Ibid.

45
Ageron, Les AlgSriens, p. 337. The decree refers to
"les enfants europeens et indigenes"; this should be
understood as referring to boys, but not excluding girls.
46
Nevertheless, the French did not overlook the
education of girls in Algeria. In fact, they intended to
penetrate the family through this approach. Consequently,
as early as 1863, a school for Muslim girls was established
in Algiers. The teacher who visited the Muslim families to
convince the mothers to send their daughters to her taught
sewing, embroidary, French and math. Mrs.. Luce, who
believed that communicating with Muslim women is the best
way to introduce the society to French civilization, was
able to gather thirty to forty students. See Mrs. G.
Albert Rogers, Winter in Algeria (1863-4), London, Sampson
Low, Son, and Marston, Ludgate Hill, 1865, p. 189-199.
Bourdieu, p. 120.
48
An agrarian policy which tended to transform jointly
owned land into private property.
It facilitated the
concentration of the most fertile lands in the Europeans'
hands through the sale by auction to a single purchaser of
lands held in common. It contributed to the disintegration
of the social structure, and disrupted the economic
balance.
Finally, it led to the creation of a "rural
proleteriat, a mass of dispossessed, uprooted individuals,
fit only to provide a reserve for cheap labor." See ibid.,
p. 121 and Confer, p. 5.
49
*Harik, p. 31.
50

Ibid.

51

Ibid., p. 26.

52
A. Heggoy, "They Write in French not in Arabic,"
Indian Social Studies Quarterly, Autumn 1977, p. 99.
53
Morell, p. 18; for the proportion of the population,

-39and the percentage of nomads, semi-nomads and sedentary

people, see Bourdieu, p. 67n.
54

Morell, p. 20.

55
L'Afrique Francaise, January 1908, p. 23.
56
David Gordon, North Africa's French Legacy, Harvard
University, 1962, p. 99.
57
Heggoy, "They Write in French," p. 99; Bourdieu, p.
160.
58
Richard and Joan Brace, Ordeal in Algeria, D. Van
Dostrand Company, New York, 1960, p. 23. See also Barbour,
p. 238.
59
Brace, ibid.
"Probleme Algerien," Etudes Sociales Nord Africains,
Cahier Nord AFricaine, Paris, July-August 1953, p. 9.
Cited in Harika.
Heggoy, "Arab Education," p. 159.
62
Ageron, Les Algeriens, p. 14; Confer, p. 7; Morsy,
p. 285.
63
Abulqacim Sa'dalla, The Rise of the Algerian
Nationalism, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota,
1969, p. 54. The same dissertation was published in Arabic
under the title al-Haraka al-Watanya al-Jazairiya, Dar alAdad (Beirut), 1969. It has also been translated into
French by Fawzy Hemiry under the title La Montee du
Nationalism En Algerie, Algier, 1983. Confer, p. 24.
64
Ch.
Robert Ageron,
Hi.sto.ir.e de I_!_AlgJ[r_.ie
Contemporaine, Presse U n i v e r s i t a i r e s de France, 1964, p .
68.
fa K

Confer, p. 22; Sa'dallah (English), p. 85, (Arabic)

p. 102.
66
Ageron, Histoire, p. 66.
67
I b i d . , Monseigneur L a v i g e r i e was a r c h b i s h o p of
A l g i e r s in 1867. He believed t h a t conversion t o C h r i s t i a n -

-40ity was the only way the Muslims could be elevated from
"barbarism."
He created Les Peres Blancs (The White
Fathers) and Les Soeurs Blanches (The White Sisters). See
Furlong Ch. Wilington, "The White Fathers of North Africa,"
Scribers Magazine, Feb. 1907, pp. 104-105. See also Magali
Morsy, North Africa 1800-1900, pp. 162-165. On the Cardinal's efforts in French occupied North Africa, see
William Sharp, "Cardinal Lavigerie's Work in North Africa,
The Atlantic Monthly, August 1894, pp. 4-9.
68
The language of the Berbers may be considered to be
a dead language, in a sense that it is not a written
language and has no alphabet. In its spoken form, it has
given enormous ground to Arabic, morphologically and
syntactially as well as geographically (I. William Zartman
(ed.), Man, State and Society in Contemporary Maghrib,
Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 6 ) . Its use is
limited to the inhabitants of the mountains who are being
infiltrated by modern communications and media. Before
that, the Islamization of the Berbers led automatically to
their Arabization (see ibid.). Consequently, Arabic, the
language of the Qur'an, would be the language Berbers would
tend to learn.
69

Harik, p. 35.

See Morsy, p. 161. About the chief religious orders

in Algeria, see Algeria, Geographical Handbook Series,
University Press, Oxford, 1943, V 1, p. 223.
' For more details on Maraboutism from a sociological
point of view, see Pierre Bourdeau, The Algerians, pp. 113118.
72
Sa'dallah, p. 57 (English), and p. 78 (Arabic).
73
General Bugeaud, who was a governor of Algeria, once
said:
"Whenever the water supply is good and the land
fertile, here we must place colonists without worrying
about previous owners. We must distribute the land in full
title to the colonist." See Richard and Joan Brace, Ordeal
in Algeria, Canada, 1960, p. 17.
74
Morell, p. 21. This number includes a few hundred
of wealthy landowners and other professionals.

-4175

Ibid.

76
According to the calculation of the Institute de
Conjuncture, the Muslim Algerian can only merely subsist on
1,250 calories per day instead of 2,400 calories necessary
for light work, or 4,500 indispensable for heavy work. See
Barbour, p. 236.
77
Morell, p. 21.
78
Algeria, Geographical Handbook, p. 220.
79

Kraft, p. 23.

80
Barbour, p. 233.
81
Algeria, vol. 2, p. 25.
82
Barbour, p. 237.
83
Ibid. According to Germaine Tillon in her book
L'algerie en 1957, certain districts in Aurs, up to 1954,
never had been visited by any doctor or nurse. Sanitary
jeeps of medical service required tracks to climb during
the war, and urgent cases were removed by helicopter.
Cited in Ibid.
84
Kraft, p. 24.

CHAPTER II
THE AWAKENING OF ALGERIA IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

It is obvious that the confrontation between the

culture of the natives and that of the colonizers made
itself felt with greater force in Algeria than in Tunisia
or Morocco.

This resulted from the radical transformation

in the government
particular.

and administration of Algeria in

The confrontation was based on the general

ideology of the colonization, but it also resulted from the

individual spirit of the settlers of Algeria.

As the gap

separating the two societies became wider, in the social,

psychological and economic domains, the natives turned
inward to the "self" for strength.

This explains, despite

more than a century of occupation, their adherence to

certain traditions, conducts, beliefs, and values; it was
stimulated by refusal of Western civilization that was
identified with the colonial order.

It came from a desire

to defend their besieged identity and assume an active role

in their own social life.
Despite the disintegration of Algerian society, and
the consequences of the colonial policy, the natives went
through attempts at reconstruction.

-42-

As they had resisted

-43-

cultural disformation, they had always identified themselves with other Muslims and Islamic civilization.
beginning

of the twentieth

century

witnessed

The

certain

changes, mainly intellectual, that fermented through the

decades and integrated with local, Islamic, and international elements.
One of the most significant local elements was the
popular literature which, in fact, had always depicted the
joys and griefs of the people.

It has always played a

significant role in the history of the Middle East and

North Africa in preserving national identity and reviving
mass

sentiment.

Because

formal literature

in Arabic

suffered from the deterioration of education, and lack of

exposure to print and other media, the Algerians sought
refuge in the popular literature.
another,

From one generation to

"the national culture was maintained

in the

proverbs, folk songs and in all the oral literature that

continued to reflect the life and the struggle of the
2
people."
Particularly

(panegyrist)
played a significant literary role for the country,3 in
preserving
expression.

in Algeria,

popular

literature

the maddah

as a means of creative

His function has been described as follows:

"In public markets, at social occasions in Moorish cafes,

the personality of the maddah was telling myths and fairy

tales appealing to sentiment, recalling ghazawat (military

-44exploits) , changing defeat into victory, and assuring his

audience of God's will to send a savior someday, somehow."
His psychological role was very positive for the people
whose Algerian personality was being subverted and who were
therefore determined to remain 'different' as a symbol of
lost liberty.
Another important local element in the social awakening and cultural revival in Algeria at the turn of the
century was the emergence of a new educated elite with a
national identity.

It was during this period that free,

private Arabic educational centers began to appear.

meantime,

In the

attitudes toward French education had changed,

and the Algerians began to educate their children in both

Arabic and French.
subordinated

However, Arabic studies were sometimes

to French

teaching methods.

as a result

of the different

Bennabi, for example, was sent to both

Qur'anic and French schools.

When he did not excel in

Arabic, his family terminated his Arabic schooling.

Never-

theless, the generation preceding Bennabi succeeded for the

most part in combining Arabic and French.

Algerians, who

were sent to the few French schools available to them, were

always "vaccinated" with basic Arabic and Islamic education.

Many members of this educated elite received their

higher education

in Tunisia, to which they left as

emigrants or students.
The Algerian emigre's were, in fact, one of the most
effective factors in their country's renaissance at the

-45-

turn of the century.

As the people fled the country after

the conquest of 1830, and various wars with the French, and
the Conscription Law of 1911, tens of thousands of
Algerians sought refuge in Tunisia, Libya, Morroco, Egypt,
7
Syria, Turkey and elsewhere.
They generally migrated in
p

large families, sometimes in actual tribal groups,

that

constituted a large number of bourgeois and notable urbans.

They lived in the cultural centers that suited them as a
cohesive group.

They actually viewed themselves as a

national community and refused to be considered as Otto9

mans.

Especially in Damascus, the Algerians were recog-

nized, respected, and looked upon as heroes of patriotism.

Al-Amir cAbdul Qadir, who gained the support and respect of
the Ottomans, and the .recognition of the French, lived in
Damascus, and greatly contributed to the self-awareness of
the North Africans in general and the Algerians in
particular.
These emigres did not live in isolation in their new
home.

On the contrary, they were involved in a variety of

social, economic, and intellectual activities.

At the same

time, they preserved their relations with relatives and

friends at home through correspondence, as well as through
pilgrimages and commercial trips of other Algerians to the
East.

The educated class was highly concerned with

maintaining their relationship with home, not only by

writing to relatives and friends, but also by sending

-46shipments of Arabic books and publications.

It is fully understandable, then, that the Algerians
followed the news and activities of the emigres, and thus
contemplated the role they played in the other societies. 12
The discrimination of the French combined

with

their

technical and scientific advancement probably contributed

to the self-awareness of the Algerians who seemed to be
willing to play a role in. their own society.
It was during the first two decades of this century
that a number of graduates from several Arab educational
centers began to return to Algeria.

Many of those had

received their higher education in Tunisiae

The socio-

cultural interaction between Tunisia and Algeria might have

reached its peak at the beginning of the century to form
one of the most important factors in the awakening of the
Algerian nation.

The Influence of Tunisia

Before the arrival of the French, there was in Tunisia
a reformist intelligentsia led by Khair ad-Din al-Tunisi
(1810-1889).

His reorganization of the al-Zaytuna mosque-

university and his establishement of Sadiqiya College in

1875 gave Tunisia the privilege of having an elite with
both Islamic and modern European educational backgrounds.
As a result of his encouragement, special attention was
given

to other

cultural

developments

such

as public

-47-libraries and printing equipment. 13

Therefore, by 1901

there were in Tunisia 150 modern schools for boys and

girls.
As a French protectorate, Tunisia enjoyed a relatively
free atmosphere that allowed her to become an intellectual
and educational resource to her North African neighbors,
especially Algeria.

The official French colonial policy

was to allow Tunisians to evolve within the framework of

their own civilization.14 In contrast to Algeria, Tunisia
hosted and nurtured educational, intellectual, and literary
movements.15 Between 1888 and 1909, there were forty-five
different publications in Tunisia; the printshops, therefore, increased.

Muhammed

Abdu, the eminent Egyptian

reformer, visited Tunisia twice (1884-85 and 1903), and

established strong ties with Tunisian intellectuals who
were active members of the al urwa al-wuthqa
band) society.

As a result of the superior

(the firm
Tunisian

intellectual environment, many Algerian families sent their

children

to Tunisia

for school,

while other

families

emigrated there, and many others were exiled after the 1871
uprising.
Most of the Algerians who lived in Tunisia "witnessed
her renaissance, her various contemporary schools of modern
educational methods, her various literary and political
associations, and her free and inflammatory press with its
campaign against colonization." 17 Bennabi recalls in his
memoirs that in the early 20' s he and his friends used to

-48-

read the Tunisian newspaper al

Asr al-Jadid which reached

Tibissa, his hometown.

He compared the old al-Zahra, which

was more concerned with local issues and alcAsr al-Jadid,

which covered a variety of issues that concerned the Muslim
world.
Tunisia also was the bridge between the Near East and
the rest of the Maghrib, and anti-French propaganda entered
Algeria through the Tunisian and Arab press.

Despite

French censorship of intellectual activities in Algeria,

books were smuggled into the country from the East primarily through Tunisia. 18 For Algerians who studied in
Zaytuna and elsewhere, "Tunisia was Egypt, for all the
Egyptian books and newspapers she received; the components
of a literary, political, and scientific atmosphere that
19
existed nowhere in the Maghrib, except in green Tunisia."
The Tunisians showed their concern towards Algeria as
part of North Africa and the Arab Muslim world.
1920s, for example,

In the

Uthman al-Ka ak wrote his book

al- c Am lil-Jaza'ir (The General History of

Algeria). 20 The book was probably read in Algeria and
al-Tarlkh

might have inspired some of the educated elite.

Many of

the Algerians who resided in Tunisia probably attended the

various intellectual activities held in Suq al-Kutubiyah
Library (currently the
(Publishers Market) and al-cAttarin

National Library), organized by the active societies of the

time. 21 They must have had the privilege of reading the

-49numerous Arab and Tunisian newspapers, journals and books.

It was during this period that the Algerian emigres were
most vigorous

in attacking

France

in their speeches,

writings and discussions; such freedom of expression had

never been available to them at home.

In sum, the Tunisian

contribution to the Algerian awakening at the turn of the

century was effected through educational, political, and
intellectual channels, notably the print media.
Like the Zaytuna mosque-university in Tunisia, other
educational centers in the Arab world contributed to the
Algerian awakening despite their distance.
Morocco, al-Azhar in Egypt, and other

Al-Qarawiyin in

religious centers in

the Hijaz trained many Algerian intellectuals like al22

Taiyeb al-'Uqbi (1880, 1960),
al-Bashir al-Ibrahimi
(1889-1965) , 2 3 and al-'Arabi Tbissi (1985-1957) . 2 4

The Influence of Egypt

Like Tunisia, Egypt also had significant impact on
educated Algerians who viewed it as the heart of the Arab
world.

At the turn of the century Egypt was the focus of a

great cultural development.

Egypt

reduced

Algeria's

isolation from the eastern Arab world by providing Algeria

with magazines, books, and newspapers such as a1-Asad alls lami (The Islamic Lion), published in Cairo in 1908 by
25
the Libyan nationalist Sulaiman al-Baruni (1870-1940).
The newspaper featured Pan-Islamic articles and revolu-

-50tionary socio-political views.

Al-Baruni was probably

concerned with and aware of the situation of the Algerian

society under the French, and his paper must have discussed
26
some issues of importance to the Algerians.
al-Fath, the
- 27 also had a large
newspaper of Muhib al-Din al-Khatib

group of readers who greatly admired his courage and

forcefulness. 2 8 The Egyptian anti-British nationalist
Mustafa Kamil (1872-1908) and his influential newspaper alLiwa were very popular among Algerian Arabic readers who
envisioned Kamil as a heroic spokesman of their own views
as well as those of Egyptians.

Besides al-Liwa, the

Algerians followed the activities of Kamil's National Party

in Egypt and were greatly interested in his speeches and
writings

which

were

ultimately

published

in

seven

Writers like Farid Wajdi and cAbdul Aziz Jawish

volumes.

gained great admiration among the Algerians of Arabic

education.
In Mzab, in the south of Algeria, al-Shaikh Ibrahim
Baiyud

(d. 1973), an influential Algerian intellectual

strove to maintain contact with Egypt.

Baiyud used to

receive a wide variety of newspapers and magazines from

Egypt/ including al-Shucla, Misr al-Fata, al-Jihad,
al-Risala, al-Muqtataff and al-Hilal.

This enabled his

disciples to read and discuss the prevailing issues in the

Egyptian press and directed them to relate themselves to
ideas of Pan-Islamism.

Referring to his personal exper-

ience as an educated Algerian, Dabbouz states that "before

-51-

the Second World War, we were in al-hayat institution, deep

in the desert, reading from newspapers, magazines, and
valuable books of Egypt, that many of 'the descendants of
the Nile' in the university do not read..

We knew of the

Egyptian writers, scholars, poets, and political leaders

what many of the Egyptian university students did not
know."30
All these factors combined to strengthen the resources
for Arab-Islamic education for a growing
Algerians.

number of

Personal and collective initiatives to preserve

the cultural identity of the society became more evident.

For example,

some reformers

in al-Qrara,

in southern

Algeria, rented a building and established a reading center

where Arabic books, papers, and magazines were publicly
available. 31 Several Arabic books are known to have
greatly influenced Algerian intellectuals of this period.
The themes discussed, and questions raised were of obvious
relevance to their concerns.

The two books of the Syrian

al-Kawakibi (1849-1902), Umm al-Qura (The Mother of Cities,

Mecca) and Taba'ic al-Istibdad (The Nature of Oppression),
Nahdat al-Umma wa-Hayatuha (The Renaissance and Life of
Nations) of Tantawi Jawhari (1870-1940), Limadha Taakhara

al-Muslimun wa-Taqaddama Khairuhum

^ _ .

(Why Did Muslims Fall

Behind While Other People Advanced), and Hadir al

Alam al-

Islami (The Present State of the Islamic World) of Shakib

3
2
Arslan (1869-1946),
and the books of Mustafa al-Ghalayini

-52(1874-1940) 33 were important to the elite of the growing

reform movement.

Bennabi himself came across Umm al-Qura

at an early age and read it with a group of friends; he was

fascinated with its rich imagery. 34
The influence of Egypt on the educational and cultural
development of different Arab states is obvious.

Particu-

larly in Algeria, it revealed itself at the beginning of

the awakening in various activities, and a separate study
would be required to trace this effect.

Nevertheless,

certain of these activities such as the development of the

national press, literature, and the influence of

Abdu must

be touched upon here as examples of Egypt's influence.

Receiving

different

papers,

journals,

and

other

35
publications from Egypt,

the Algerians had the oppor-

tunity to visualize journals as an art and industry.

They

undoubtedly benefited from the developed maqal, or feature

article, initiated by al-Liwa and other papers.
ideas

of

socio-political

reform

that reached

The
Algeria

through the Egyptian and Arab press had probably inspired

their own reform movement.

Moreover, the literary-cultural

Egyptian press was of great importance in the development

of the Algerian literary awakening.
The Arabic educated Algerians were greatly concerned
with

the activities of the various Egyptian

schools of the twenties and thirties.

literary

Both al-Diwan and

al-Ihya' group were known in the intellectual milieu of

Algeria, which enthusiastically

followed the literary

-53-

battle between Taha Husain and al-Rafici.

The poets of the

era generally read, memorized, and imitated the poetry of

- _
- 37
Shawqi, Hafiz Ibrahim, al-Barudi and others.
The Influence of cAbdu and al-Manar
In North Africa, particularly in Tunisia, the influence of Muhammad Abdu was significant.

His most impor-

tant visit to Tunisia was at the end of the last century

(1884-5);

he stayed

forty days during

which he held

organizational meetings with the Tunisian members of alc

38
Urwa al-Wuthqa.
His Islamic framework appealed to the
reformers of the Zaytuna, to whom the Young Tunisians and,
later, the Destour Party were linked. 39
In 1903 cAbdu paid a three-day visit to Algeria, where
he was welcomed and accompanied by cAbdul Hamid ben-Smaya,
40
one of the early reformers in Algeria.
The importance of
this visit was exaggerated by many.

Bennabi suggests that

this exaggeration resulted from ignoring the local elements

in Algerian reformism.

The movement, Bennabi believed", was

only a link in a chain. 41 cAbdu's influence on Algeria was
indisputable, but it was not caused by or limited to one
short visit.

The question one might address here is

whether or not the cUlama would have taken the lead in the
reform movement if

Abdu had not visited Algeria.

In fact, Algeria had sown the seeds of reform long

before

Abdu's visit.

The traditionalists advocated the

-54-

Salafiya line of thinking that was gaining such currency in

the Arab East.

Important factors supported and developed

this trend in Algeria.

In North Africa, unlike in the Arab East, where the
Christians were substantial in numbers, Islam is the only
religion.

The native inhabitants were either Arabs, the

majority, or Berbers, both being Muslims, while the small

Jewish population was largely separate.

In the French

historical and ethnographic literature, Algerians were more

often referred to as Les Musulmanes Alge'riens, whereas
Morrocans and Tunisians received reference without religious designation.

Consequently, throughout the period of

colonization, almost every revolt against the French has

religious distinctions.

Some studies even suggest that

Pan-Islamism was born in Algeria in 1830, and not in the

Middle East in the late nineteenth century. 42
The inspiration of c Abdu and the Arab East reform
movement reached Algeria through various channels.

One of

the most effective was the journal of al-Manar, edited by a

very

eminent

reformer,

Rashid

Rida

(1865-1935).

In

Tunisia, where the Algerian emigres were numerous, al Manar

gained great popularity, each single issue passing to many
43
.
readers.

Dabbouz mentioned that in Algeria al-Mana_r

attained similar popularity and was viewed as "the grand

mouthpiece of Islam."

In many issues, al-Manar displayed

its concern and awareness with the problems and awakening

-55of Tunisia and Algeria.

Abdu suggested to Rida that al-

Manar exercise a policy of amiability toward France, so

Abdu and al-Manar would not be prohibited from entering
. .
45
Tunisia and Algeria.
Abdu's ideas spread in Algeria mainly through his
book Risalat al-Tawhld, which was a primary reference to
the 'Ulama and the teachers in the different educational
centers, along with his methodology of Quar'anic interpreT
46
tation (Tafsir).

The book was later translated into

French and became available to the French

Algerians.

educated

Bennabi, personally, came across the transla-

tion in a bookstore and mentioned that the book helped to

focus and to direct his thinking. 47 cAbdu gained wider
popularity

among

the proponents

of Arabic

education.

Dabbouz points out that "the influence of cAbdu in Egypt

was confined among the upper class, while in Algeria, even
the public was influenced by him.

. . . His name was to be

mentioned in the single khutba, and the single lecture very

often. Therefore, even the public knew about him and his
48
c
- trend of reform."
In the thirties, Abdul-Hamid Benbadis
c
used to copy Abdu's views from al-Manar in his magazine
al-Shihbab. 49 Similar acts were done by other newspapers
such

as

al-Maghrib, and al-Faruq.

The
c
50
considered Abdu as its religious monitor.

latter

even

-56-

The National Press

The emergence of the national press at the turn of the
century was a major factor in the Algerian renaissance, as
several studies in French, Arabic, and English have suggested. 51 These writers have shown the importance of the
Algerian national press in the evolution of the political,
social, and intellectual fabric of the country at the turn
of

tha century,

and particularly

after World

War

I.
Previously, the press had been a monopoly of the colons. 52
With the engendering of a new national consciousness, the
emergence of a new bilingual elite, and the impact of
various socio-political ideas discussed in publications
from the Arab East and North Africa, Algerian intellectuals
felt the need for an indigenous Algerian press.
The Arabic press carried important cultural messages
and fostered a new self-esteem among the people.

It was

more than a means of the rehabilitation and revival of a

53
language worthy of intellectual promotion.
This phenomenon led to a renewed appreciation for the classical
language and for literary and historical writings. 54
Dabbouz mentions a number of the early newspapers such
as Kawkab Ifriqya of Mahmoud Kahhul in 1907, the shortlived al-Jaza'ir of cUmar Rasim in 1908,, and a 1-Fa rug of
c
55
Umar bin Qaddur in 1913.
Although these papers did not
live long enough to contribute to the renaissance, they

-57paved the road for other newspapers.

Merad states that the

Algerian press before the war lacked unity in its Arabic

and French composition, and was burdened by political,
eg

doctrinal and social diversity.

He therefore concludes

that the Algerian Muslim press had its origins after the
first decade of the twentieth century.
The Algerian press, especially the Arabic, suffered
from numerous problems such as the high illiteracy rate,
the view of Arabic as a foreign language, the insufficiency
of the printing houses, and official censorship.
newspapers were compelled

to discontinue

Many

publication,

especially in the first two decades for these reasons. Dhul

Figar, for example, was printed personally by

'Umar Rasim

in his own hand writing and contained his own illustrations. 57 After one year, the paper was suspended by the
administration, and Rasim was arrested, arraigned before a
military court, and sentenced to hard labor.
Despite the strict censorship of the press and the
suspension of many newspapers, the Algerian press was
determined to survive and to become a major force in the
country's political and intellectual development.

One of

the most influential newspapers in this regard was the

bilingual French-Arabic al-Iqdam.

Edited by al-Amlr Khalid

(1875-1936), the grandson of the national hero al-Amir

c

Abdul-Qadir,

it promoted

the anti-colonialist political

movements after the First World War.

The newspaper gained

much of its reputation by reflecting the personality and

-58-

attitudes of al-Amir Khalid.

Born in Damascus and educated

both in Syria and France, al-Amir Khalid maintained strong

psychological and nationalist ties with Algeria.

As a

militant, he played a considerable role in the development

of the Algerian national movement.

In May 1919, he and

four others went to Paris during the Peace Conference which

was attended by American President Woodrow Wilson,
promulgated

the idea of self determination.

who

Al-Amir

Khalid's purpose was to draw the president's attention to

the Algerian problem in order to put pressure on the French
58
government.

Eennabi

regularly in his youth.

admired
59

al-Amir

and

read

al-Iqdam

In the twenties, other newspapers published in various

parts

of Algeria

current.

helped

form

national

intellectual

This press generally sought to represent Algerian

opinion, to analyze the dilemma of the society, and to

voice

the complaints

Newspapers

were,

and

demands of Algerian Muslims.

therefore,

frequently

suppressed

by

the

colonial authorities, but their dedicated editors promptly

established new ones with the same purpose.
and 1938 al-Shaikh Abul Yaqzan

Between 1926

(7-1973) published eight

newspapers,

Islam and the right of

60
Algeria and al-Maghrib to develop their own identity.
Particularly

all of which defended

influential newspapers were issued

in the

thirties by the reformist movement of Jam c iyat al- c Ulama'

al-Muslimin al-Jazairiyin

(the Association of the Algerian

-59Muslim c Ulama).

Between the two wars, the Arabic press

fostered the developing national and intellectual aspirations of the Arabic educated elite and contributed greatly
to the Algerian renaissance.
Another sign of cultural development of this period
was the publication of history books written in Arabic by
Algerians.

This activity, while it served mainly to remind

the Algerians of the contributions their ancestors had made

to civilization, it might also be considered a reaction to
French cultural imperialism which viewed Algerian history
as an ancillary of French history.

In 1907, Abul Qasim al-

Hafnawi, an Algerian teacher, journalist, and historian,

published a biographical encyclopedia entitled Ta rif alKhalaf bi-Rijal as-Salaf

(Informing the Successors about

62

the Men of their Ancestors).

This book demonstrated that

modern Algeria in fact had a national history that could be

viewed with pride and nostalgia.

Before this book, a

historical documentation written by al-Amir Muhammed bin

Abdul Qadir, entitled Tuhfat al-Za'ir fi Tarlkh al-Jaza1ir
wal-Amir

*Abdul Qadir

(The Gem of the Visitor

in the

History of Algeria and the Amir c Abdul Qadir), was pub63

lished in Alexandria in 1903.
It is clear that this book
was read with great interest in Algeria* where a widespread
renaissance became indisputable by 1914. 64
A number of cultural and social organizations came
into existence at the beginning of the century to give
expression to the growing consciousness of the Algerian

-60Arab community.

These organizations "served as schools,

lobbies, social centers (sports, assistance, scouts), and

political group headquarters."

One of the more prom-

inent, al-Tawfiqiya was founded in 1908 and had two hundred

members three years later.

Two other centers were the

Circle of Salih Bey in Constantine, and the Rashidiya

Association in Algiers.

A variety of lectures and

seminars were held by these organizations in order to

stimulate public awareness of the need
(Taqaddum) and rights (huquq).

for progress

Other associations which

reflected the motivation towards establishing a dynamic

cultural and social life were Nadi al-Taqaddum, Nadi alIttihad, Nadi al-Shabab al-Jaza'iri, and Widadiyat alcUlum
al-Jadida.
In addition to the above, Nadi al-Taraqqi was one of
the historical bases for the Algerian renaissance of the
twentieth century.

Managed by Ahmad Tawfiq al-Madani

(1899-1983), the journalist, poet, historian, and former

member of the Tunisian Destour Party, this center contributed greatly to the Islamic-Arabic revival of
67
Algeria.
During his visit to Algeria from France in the
summer of 1930, Malik Bennabi noticed that the center's
68
sign was the only one in Arabic in the capital.

-61-

The Development of the Political Movement

The intellectual awakening of the early twentieth
century led to a heightened national and political awareness.

A French educated minority formed a party entitled

les Jeunes Algeriens (the Young Algerians); they wanted to

remain part of France and considered assimilation to be
vital to Algeria.

However, when their delegation requested

a political representation of non-French Algerians in 1912,

their proposal was rejected on the grounds that Muslims
were not yet prepared to vote.69 While the Young Algerians
welcomed the Conscription Law of 1911, the exodus from
Tlemcen of 800 residents 70 showed the mass rejection of
mandatory military service.

This subject was the center of

a strong debate in the French press of that period.

The interaction between the French and the natives on
the social, economic, and political levels in Algeria and
France invited the natives to compare the theoretical and
practical aspects of certain ideas.

They concluded that

principles like freedom and equality preached by the French

had no application in colonial Algeria.

Among Algerians,

the debate was not only between Islamization and Franchification, but it was also between what revolutionary France
said and what it did.

Some 173,000 Muslims were conscripted into the French army during World War I.71 As a
result of the need to reconstruct France after the war, a

-62growing number of Algerian workers were encouraged to cross

the sea and offer their services.

Some, in fact, had gone

earlier than that to replace the French workers who joined

the war.

Also, many of the Algerians who had gone to fight

for France stayed there also as workers after the war

ended.

There, the workers were exposed to new social and

political concepts which provided a basis of comparison

between their adverse conditions at home and the life of
French citizens.
New political trends contributed

to various social,

intellectual, and political changes in the French colony.

The emergence of political parties in Algeria was preceded
by the division that gave rise to the traditional group and
the modern elite.
72
al-Majawi,

The traditionalists led by Ben-Smaya,

- 73

and Ben-Mawhub

and others, normally promoted

the Islamization and Arabization of Algeria.

Ben Mawhub

was one of Bennabi's teachers of his intermediate schooling

in Constantine during the twenties.

He partially con-

tributed his involvement in the Algerian movement of reform

to Ben Mawhub's

ideas.

They

rejected

the policy of

assimilation, the arbitrary laws against the natives, and

especially conscription.
The modern

elite,

characterized

by their

French

education, had entirely different attitudes; they accepted

assimilation as an offer of equality in education and
political rights.

Their demands appeared to most Algerians

as treasonous but to them it was revolutionary.

For "had

-63-

the settlers accepted it, they would have been gradually

absorbed

into a Muslim-French Algeria as a religious

minority." 74 One of the leaders of this group was Belqacem
ben al-Tuhami, the first Algerian physician and the publisher of al-Tagaddum newspaper of the twenties.
Both philosophies, the traditional and the modern,
were vital forces in the birth of the Algerian political
parties.

One of the most influential parties of this

period was L'fitoile nord-Africaine (the North African Star)

founded in Paris in 1926. 75 The Algerian workers in
France, particularly in the industrial suburbs of Paris,
established their party under the patronage of the French
Communist Party.

One of the founders of this proletariat-

nationalist movement was Messali Haj (1898-1977,) who was

later called the "Father of Algerian Nationalism."
The son of a poor shoemaker, young Messali had little
education.

He fought in the First World War in the French

army, and returned to Algeria in 1921 where he was unable

to find work.

Returning to France, he,took courses at the

School of Oriental Languages in Paris and attended the

76
University of Bordeaux.
He married a French woman who
was a member of the French Communist Party and he also
became a member. 77 Like many other Algerian workers,
Messali had had an extremely difficult life and identified
himself with the struggling French working class.

His

intention in leading the North African Star was "to defend

-64the material, moral, and social interests of North African

Muslims" and "to educate the members of the association." 78
The association was dissolved by the French government in
1929 for advocating the independence of Algeria.

But the

growing membership continued to work underground.

Although

Messali was imprisoned for trying to reconstruct his party,

he succeeded in 1937 at reorganizing it in France under the
name Le Parti du Peuple Algerien (The Party of the Algerian
People).
Messali's personality attracted a large number of the
Algerian workers and students who lived in Paris during the
thirties.

Among

the Algerian students who had brief

contact with Messali was Malik

Bennabi,

As a young

nationalist, Bennabi cooperated with Messali for a certain

period.

Several decades later, he wrote in his memoires

that he was against the type of political leadership

represented by Messali.79 This despite the view of others
that Messali gave his party "its character as an essentially revolutionary, proletarian nationalist, but also an
Islamic movement." 80
Arguably, however, it is an exaggeration to categorize
Messali' s movement at that time as Islamic.

It was only

later, in the mid-thirties, that there was a significant

transformation

in Messali's national perspective from

militant socialism to militant Islam 81 which came as a
result of Shakib Arslan's influence on him.
prevailing role model

Arslan was a

in the development of North African

-65-

nationalism and inspired most of the national leaders of

82

this region.

Messali was greatly influenced by Arslan

after they met in Geneva where Arslan launched his attack

against western colonialism.
He used his mouthpiece, La
83
Nation Arabe to preach pan-Arabism.
Also appearing

in the political arena during the

thirties was an elite group who had represented Algerian

Muslims in local elected bodies.

In 1927, this group

formed the Federation of Elected Muslims.

(highly civilized),

These evolues

as they were called, believed in

complete assimilation with France, and a total embracing of

French culture except in matters of personal family status.
This group led by a French educated medical doctor Bendjelloul had among its members Farhat 'Abbas who fought as an
officer in World War I and became a pharmacist in 1930.
'Abbas was a good example of a westernized Algerian
intellectual who believed in France and supported assimilation.

He had stated in one of his articles that "there is

nothing left in this country but the way of assimilation,

of the fusion of the native element in French society." 84
He rejected the idea of an Algerian nation in an article
published in 1936 entitled, "France That's Myself."
this article, Abbas said:
If I had discovered the Algerian Nation, I would
be a nationalist, and I could not blush from it
as from a crime. Men who have died for the
patriotic idea are daily honored and respected.
My life is not worth more than theirs. However,
I would not die for the Algerian Fatherland,

In

-66because this Fatherland does not exist. I have

interrogated the living and the dead; I have
visited the cemeteries; no one has spoken to me
of it. . . . We are the children of the new
world, the creation of the French mind and French
energy.85
This article incited many Muslim Algerians inside and
outside the country.

In France, Malik Bennabi and a group

of friends were greatly disturbed by 'Abbas's language and

86

attitude.
Algerian

In Constantine, Benbadis, the chairman of the

'Ulama Association, published an article in his

own Arabic newspaper al-Shihab, where he said:

We also have searched in history and in the
present and we have ascertained that an Algerian
Muslim nation existed and still exists . . . and
it is not France, cannot be France, and no longer
wishes to be France.87
Later, Farhat 'Abbas greatly altered his ideas and
attitudes since his

ideas gained

respect from the French.

no understanding

or

His political experience allowed

him to grow politically and intellectually.

Consequently,

in 1938, he formed L'Union Populaire Alggrien (The Algerian

Popular Party) and began to emphasize "attachment" rather
than assimilation. 88 Ultimately, 'Abbas came to believe in
the liberation of the "Algerian Nation" from France; in the
1950s he joined the Algerian Revolution and headed the
Algerian government in exile.
The interaction of ideas between the elite of French
education who believed in assimilation, and the political
organizations that adopted a different approach, such as
that of Messali, led to the crystalization of another

-67group.

Although this group, al-cUlama, had been active on

different scales since the late nineteenth century, for the

contemporaries, different factors combined to necessitate
the creation of an organized body.
c
c

Jam iyat al- Ulama al-Muslimin al-Jaza'iriyin (The

Association of the Algerian 'Ulama) was created to organize
Algerian reform.
c

the

Ulama

As a group of Arab and Islamic educators,

derived

their

movement

from Near

reformism, and particularly the Salafiya.

Eastern

The intellectual

environment during their youth gave them intense exposure

c
89
to the ideas of al-Afghani and

Abdu.

Because of the

significant impact of the association on the generation

that liberated Algeria in general, and on Malik Bennabi in
particular,

its philosophy, activities, and achievements

should be examined.
The Association of the Algerian Ulama
There is no doubt that the 'Ulama association was
inspired mainly by the Salafiya, 9 0 and particularly by
'Abdu and his disciples. The association of the Algerian
c

Ulama was officially founded in May 1931, by a group of

reformers who came from various regions of the country.
They elected cAbdul Hamid Benbadis (1889-1940) as president
at the Association's first meeting which was held at the
_ ,
91
Nadi al-Taraqi (Development Club) in Algiers.
c
Abdul Hamid Benbadis was born into an aristocratic

-68family from Constantine, which "almost alone in Algeria had

92
preserved their local standing since the Middle Ages."
His ancestors went back to the founder of the Sanhaji state
c
- 93
in the eleventh century, al-Mu iz Benbadis al-Sanhaji.
In the nineteenth century, Napoleon III personally recognized the prestigious family and bestowed the Legion of
Honor upon the aging al-Makki Benbadis.

Abdul Hamid's

father was a man of influence during French colonization

and helped his son to attain certain goals through teaching
and publishing newspapers.95 Abdul-Hamid graduated from
the local traditional school, and studied under the eminent
Shaikh Hamadan Wanisi before moving to the Zaytuna, where
he studied from 1908 to 1912.
Sometime before World War I Benbadis decided to travel
to the Arab East.

He performed the pilgrimage and met with

his beloved teacher Wanisi in Medina.

Wanisi asked

Benbadis not to assume any official job and to confine his

96
- efforts to teaching and preaching,
would follow all his life.
Shaikh Bakhit (1854-1935)

a request Benbadis

In Cairo, Benbadis met with

who granted him the ijaza.

In Constantine, Benbadis began teaching in the Green

Mosque; soon thereafter, however, he had to leave the
mosque and begin teaching at his family mosque of Sidi
Qammush. 99 In 1917, he introduced secondary education in
the mosque of Sidi Fath Allah where, a year later, the
French language was included in the curriculum.

That was

the first time French was taught outside of the government-

-69u
i
100
supervisedJ schools.

The traditional education in Constantine's mosques was

confined to adults, while children attended kuttabs.
Benbadis was the first to direct his educational program to
both generations inside the mosques of his hometown.
Benbadis believed in equal educational opportunity and in
1918, the first Muslim school for girls was established
there as a result of his effort.

Later, he founded the

Association for Education and Learning (Jam iyat at-Tarbiya

wa al-Ta c lim) to channel funds to his schools.

Before

that, the wealthy Mustafa Benbadis had assisted in financing his son's educational projects. 102
Because of individual and collective efforts, Arabic
education expanded in Algeria, and schools were established
in places like al-Aghwat,

a town and oasis south of

Algiers, Oran, and at Saint-Denis-du Sig in the heart of

the settlers* zone. 103 By the end of 1931, there were
104
about twenty Arabic schools in Algeria.

This develop-

ment accelerated the founding of the association of the

Algerian

Ulama, whose organization was based upon educa-

tional as well as social, cultural, and religious reform.

The movement grew and proliferated, so that by 1935
the number of schools had tripled; by 1938 there were some
105
150 cultural clubs or organizations.
Arabic language
and Islamic studies flourished during the twenties and
thirties and even more dramatically after the Second. World

-70War.

The French administration which trusted and respected

Benbadis's father, overlooked his educational activities.

However, when the schools came under the direction and
influence of the c Ulama association, the French became
apprehensive.
Despite the efforts made by Algerian reformers to
avoid politics, the French decided to put the schools under
close surveillance as early as 1933.

They did not consider

that these schools had educational value; on the contrary,

they put them

in the category of fanatical political

activities, citing the slogans used by teachers in school

10 6
chants and at rallies.
Seeing their control threatened
by these schools, the French intervened to curtail their
activities.
that,

They closed a number of schools on the grounds

as a whole,

they

constituted "inconvenient,
unhealthy, or dangerous establishments." 107
Nevertheless, the development of Algerian nationalism
helped the reformers continue their cultural and educational mission.

By the outbreak of war in 1954, their

108
schools totaled 110, and the students 20,000.
It has
been estimated that 150,000 students graduated from these
schools by the time of that war.109 The association built
their schools, some of which cost as much as 20 million
francs, through contributions.

These schools varied in

quality, as the cUlama challenged both the French and the

traditional schools.

While the pupils of the Qura'nic

schools had only simple mats to sit on and wooden board to

-71-

write on, those in the

Ulama schools had tables and

chairs, as well as handbooks.

Benbadis devoted his life to the goals of educational,
as well as social and cultural, reform.

As an individual

and as president of the Association of the Algerian 'Ulama,

"Benbadis belonged to that category of learned men, who,
applying the ideas of 'Abdu to the Maghrib,"

incor-

porated local features into Algerian Islamic reform.

The

cultural and historical consequences of a full century of

western occupation had led Benbadis to agree with the
soundness of the fundamentals of Salafiya and reform
movements in the Arab East; yet he used his own approach
concerning local issues.

This fact agrees with Bennabi's

assumption that local elements of the Algerian reform

movement are dominant, despite the interaction between the
reform of the Arab East and that of Algeria.
Benbadis had to confront a variety of challenges
inside Algeria. First, he tried to correct the decay of his
own society.

This was his greatest concern and to it he

devoted his attempts at regeneration and reconstruction.

Later, he launched an attack on the Marabouts, criticizing
them vigorously.

In 1932, as a reaction to the organiza-

tional solidarity of the cUlama, the Marabouts, allied with

other

Ulama, established a competing association called

the Association of Sunnite

Ulama.

The conflict between

the Marabouts and the cUlama was encouraged and supervised

-72by the French.

As Jacques Berque points out, the adminis-

tration "made use of the former against the latter, banned

freedom of oratory in the mosques, opposed education,
encouraged rival associations, strangled the opposition
press as far as possible, and set the police machinery in
motion." 11*?
This situation gave the reform movement its multisided
character.

As Carl Brown explains:

North Africa faced a double problem.

"Islamic reformism in
First, it had to win

the 'interior battle' to capture the confidence of the

Muslim community and rally that community into an effective
force.

Only then, could it turn to the 'exterior battle1

of winning freedom from the intensive non-Muslim forceWestern imperialism." 113

The means pursued by Benbadis and his followers within
this framework

were many.

In 1925, even before his

involvement in the association, Benbadis published his

first weekly newspaper al-Muntaqid

(The Critic) in 1925.

The press was thus Benbadis*s other means to fulfill his

ambition in regenerating Algerian society.

Choosing the

title of al-Muntaqid (The Critic), he intended to give the

Marabouts a clear message by challenging their slcgan
c
114
" Itaqid wala tantaqid" (believe, do not criticize).
In
the same year, Benbadis established his printing place alc

Matba a al-Jazairiya al-Islamiya.

When

the

French

authorities

suspended

Benbadis'

newspaper, he promptly issued his long-lived review al-

-73
115
Shihab (The Meteor).
The publication was issued
initially as a weekly, but became a monthly in February
116

1929.

Although al-Shihab belonged to and represented

Benbadis personal views, his followers contributed by

writing and propagating reformist ideas.
c

Association of Algerian

Ulama established

In 1933, the
its own press

consisting of al-Sunna, al-Sharlca, and al-Sirat.

In

1935, the association began publishing the journal alBasa'ir

(The Insights) which lasted until shortly before

the Second World War, resumed in 1947, and continued until

April 1956. 118
In the framework of reform, Benbadis led the Association of Algerian c Ulama through various tasks of social
criticism, educational plans, patriotic leadership, and
119
intellectual and political improvement.
Although the Ulama, in general, recognized the French
presence as a political fact, they emphasized the independence of Algerian identity and worked hard to prove it. 120
Despite their claim that their association was never a
political party,

the

Ulama

authority on different levels.

had

to deal with

French

Yet on all occasions they

stressed the fact that Algeria was not France, and that
Algerians were first and foremost Arab-Muslims.
The participation of the association in the Islamic
Conference of 1936 was primarily to serve reformist goals.
Various Algerian political parties gathered to compose

-74their demands and carry them to the new French government

formed by the Popular Front.

The c Ulama's demands were

confined to achieving recognition of Arabic as a second

official language,

freeing Islam from official interfer-

ence, assuring that the Arabic press became as free from

controls as was the French, and giving greater liberty to
Arabic and Islamic education.121
At this conference, the cUlama had to negotiate with
and accommodate all political parties, whatever attitudes
they represented.

It has been remarked that, "It was

perhaps unfortunate that the cUlama participated with the

assimilationists." 122 Malik Bennabi, who was morally
committed to the Algerian Reformist Movement, was greatly
disappointed with the c Ulama tactic in this regard, and
further criticized the physical participation of the 'Ulama
in the delegation

. 123
Paris.
Looking

sent by

the

Islamic Conference

to

to the organizational development of the

association, one has to be conscious of Bennabi's criticism

of the

Ulama and their movement.

In fact one can argue

that Benbadls and his association greatly benefited from

this experience and consequently took a more decisive stand
against France.
Benbadls,

who died

in early April 1940, and the

Association of the Algerian

role

in the Algerian

Ulama played a significant

renaissance.

Benbadls and

his

association influenced the political movement that led to

-75-

the Algerian-French conflict, which resulted in Algerian

independence in 1962.

In sum, Benbadis, his followers, and

their association were

instrumental

in succeeding

in

reviving Algerian identity which survived one hundred and

thirty-two years of French occupation.
In the midst of these developments, Malik Bennabi was
born and grew up.

While he was a teenager, he lived and

studied in Constantine, the headquarters of Benbadis and

his movement.

This movement was basically the school of

thought to which Bennabi related until 1936.

The Algerian self-awareness, and the socio-political
renaisance of twentieth century Algeria, were the major
elements that shaped Bennabi's personality.

While living

in a colonized country, and studying in colonial schools,

he was keenly aware of his distinctive identity as an
Algerian Arab-Muslim.
cultural and

Maintaining this identity was a

intellectual process

that Bennabi

throughout his life, a& we will examine.

lived

-76-

Footnotes to Chapter II
Bourdieu, p. 155.
2
Ahmed T. Ibrahimi, De la Decolonization, a la Revolution Culturelle, Algier, 1979, p. 14.
3 .
Pierre Boyer, La Vie Quotidiene a Algier a ,1a veille
de 1'intervention Francaise, Hachette, 1963, p. 204; Also
Bourdieu, p. 94.
4 c
Sa dallah, English p. 64, Arabic, p. 85.
5
Burque, p. 358.
Muhammad Dabbouz, Nahdat al-Jaza'ir wa Thawratuha alMubaraka, al Maktba'a al-'Arabiya (Algeria), 1971, V II, p.
6.
7
It is estimated that in 1910 there were 17,500
Algerians in Syria and Palestine, and 1000 in Medina. The
figure of those who crossed to neighboring Tripoli was
8,000. For more details see Morcy, pp. 295-296.
8

Examples of this collective emigration is al-Amir

Abdul Qadir who arrived in Damascus in 1855 with some 85
members of his family. Before that, Ahmed bin Salam, one
of tha Amir Khalifas arrived in the seme city in 1847 with
442 of his followers.
9

Morcy, p. 295.

10

Sa c dallah, p. 148.

Dabbouz, p. 37.
12
Examples of the Algerians who played significant
roles outside of Algeria are the following: Muhammad binAli Sanusi (1787-1860), the founder of the Sanusi movement
in Libya. Six of al-Amir cAbdul Qadir's sons occupied high
offices in the Ottoman Empire.
Tahir al-Jaza'iri (18521920) who greatly influenced Muhib "al-Din al-Khatib, helped
in establishing al-Khalidiyali Library in Damsacus and

-77expanding education in Syria. Abdul Aziz al-Tha'alibi, the

founder of al-Doustur Party in Tunisia was of Algerian
parents. Ahmad Tawfiq al-Madani was politically active in
Tunisia. Al-Shaikh Ibrahim Tfaiysh lived in Cairo where he
published al-Minhaj paper. Al-Shaikh Tahir al-cUqbi lived
in Mecca and was the editor of al-Qibiah newspaper of alSharif Husain, and many others.
13

Morcy, p . 194.

14
Leon C a r l B r o w n ,
T*ini_si_aj_
The P o l i . t i c s o f
M o d e r n i z a t i o n , P r a e g e r , New York, 1964, p . 1 2 .
15
For a full treatment of the movements, see Muhammad
al-Fadil Ben-'Ashour, al-Haraka al-Fikriya wal-Adabiya
fi Tunis, al-Dar at-Tunisya (Tunis), 1972.
16
See ibid., p. 87.
17

Dabbouz, V II, p. 14.

18 c
Sa <3alla, p. 119 (English), p. 137 (Arabic).
19
Dabbouz, V II, p. 17.
20
Ben-cAshour, p. 153.
21
Dabbouz, p. 17.
22
al-Taiyeb al-cUqbi (1880-1960).
23
Bashir al-Ibrahimi, an eminent reformer of modern
Algeria.
Born in Constantine, he studied in Algeria,
E
9ypt Mecca and Medina. In 1917 he moved to Damascus,
where he taught in the Umayyad mosque. After the Second
World War he returned to Algeria, and associated with
Benbadis in establishing and developing the Association of
Algerian
Ulama.
He became a vice president of the
association, and the president after Benbadis's death. As
a writer and man of letters, he wrote many articles and
essays, many of which were in linguistics. He was elected
as a member in the Arabic Academy in both Cairo and
Damascus.
24
c
Al- Arabi Tbissi, born in Tbissa and studied in alZaytuna in Tunis and al-Azhar in Egypt. He was one of the
reformers who worked in the framework of the Association of

-78Algerian Ulama of which he was the secretary general.

Later, he became a director of Benbabis Institution in
which he supervised a generation of disciples.
In 1957,
during the war, Tbissi was kidnapped by a French terrorist
group from his home and has not been seen since.
25
A Libyan nationalist leader in the Italian war.
Born in the Berber community of Jabal Naffusa, he became an
important official in the Ottoman Era and was given a title
of Basha. He composed poetry and established a paper. For
his life see Abul Qasim al-Baruni, Hayat Sulaiman Basha alBaruni, Cairo, 1948. For his struggle see Za'ima alBaruni, Safahat Khalida min al-Jihad, Matbacat al-Istiqlal,
Cairo, 1964.*
26

As a member of the Berber community, al-Baruni had

strong relations with the reformers of southern Algeria.
He was educated in Mzab under the supervision of al-Shaikh
Tfaiyesh (1818-1914) and had a regular correspondence with
a number of Algerian friends and colleagues, especially alShaikh abul-Yaqzan.
27
Muhib al-Din al-Khatib (1885-1969), of Syrian origin,
was the secretary of the Arab Paris Conference of 1913. He
was the editor of Sharif Husayn's official newspaper alQibla. After the First World War he advocated Islamic
fundamentalism. He served as Secretary of the Association
of Muslim Youth in Egypt, where he published his paper alFath.
.

28
Al-Khatib sympathized with the intellectual movement
in Algeria. He published, at his own expense, a book
entitled al-Islam fi Hapa ila Diaya wa al-Tabshlr by
Muhammad al-Zahiri, Matba at al-Ittihad, Damascus, 1933.
29
c
The collection entitled Mustafa Kamil fI Arba a wa
Thalathina Rabican, published by his brother Ali Fahmi
Kamil, Matba at al-Liwa, Cairo, 1908. Two volumes out of
the nine were entitled al-Mas'ala ash-Sharqiya, written by
Mustafa Kamil himself.

30
Dabbouz, p. 32.
31
Ibid., p. 59.
32 cHadir al- Alam al-Islami was originally a translation of" Lothrop Stodard's The New World of Islam; it was

-79translated by Ajaj Nuwayhid, and accompanied by a commentary by Arslan. Since the commentaries are lengthier than
the translation, the work became Arslan's own.
33
Most of al-Ghalayini's books were grammatical and
literary. The most compatible_to the Algerian^trend of
reform would be his book al-Islam Ruh al-Madaniyah aw alIslarr, wa Cromer; first published in Beirut in 1908 and then
in Cairo in 1926.
34
Bennabi, Mudhakkarat, p. 149-150.
35
It is estimated that by 1938 there were in Egypt
nearly two hundred newspapers, magazines, and periodicals.
Most of these did not reach Algeria, and the few that did
were not received on a regular basis.
36
The newspapers which emerged in Egypt in the late
nineteenth century became the vehicles for editorial,
essay, article, and short story writing. Although sociopolitical issues seemed to appeal more to the Algerians,
literary works had great interest.
37
c See Muhammad Nasir, Awamil al-Muhafaza fi al-Adab
al-Jaza'iri al-Hadith, Al-Thaqafa, April-May" 1978, p. 5370.
38
For more details on 'Abdu's visit to Tunisia see
Ben-cAshour, pp. 59-60. About 'Abdu's influence in Algeria
see Ali Merad, L'enseignment Politique de Muhammad Abdu
aux Algeriens," in Orient, 4 trim, 1963, pp. 75-123.
39c
Abd-Allah T a h i r ,
al-Haraka al-Wataniyya
atT u n i s i y y a , Maktabat a l - J a m a h i r , 1*967, p . 3 2 .
40c
Abdul Halim Ben-Smaya (1866-1933) was a teacher in
the Franco Arab schools. He taught mainly al-Ghazali's
c
c
philosophy and Abdu's ideas.
Abdu was his guest during
his visit to Algeria in 1903.
41
3ennabi, Madhakkarat, p. 104.
42
c
Dr. Abulqacim Sa dallah in his The Rise of the
Algerian Nationalism objects to the concept that PanIslamism was originated in the Middle East. He views the
occupation of Algeria in 1830 as "the first East-West
confrontation of its kind in the modern history.
The

-80Algerians, thus, were "the first to call for Muslim

solidarity, for reform of Islam benefiting from the European experience." see p. 112-117 (English) and pp. 129-133
(Arabic).
43
Ben-Ashour, p. 79.
44
Dabbouz, p. 29.
45
Ben-Ashour, p. 75.
46
Dabbouz indicates that his teacher in al-Hayat
institution, al-Shaikh Baiyud taught them using Risalat alTawhld as a textbook. His approach in explaining the
Qur 'an was the same as cAbdu's. He often told them that
his goal in that matter was Abdu's: "creating minds that
could taste the eloquence of the Qur'an." See Dabbouz, p.
30.
47
Bennabi, Mudhakkarat, p. 107.
48
Dabbouz, p. 39.
49
Rashid al-Dhauwadi, Ruwad al-Islah, Dar al-Maghrib
al-Arabi, Tunis, 1973, p. 113.
Ibid.
There are important works on the subject, such as
51

Merad, "La Formation de la Presse Musulmane in Algerie"

(1919-1939), IBLA, 1st trimester, 1964, pp. 9-21.
52

Sa c dalla, p. 136.

53
All Merad, "La Formation de la presse Musulmane in
Algerie," IBLA, 1964, p. 23.
54
^Ibid.
55
Philippe de Terrazi stated that Qaddur was one of the
most talented writers in the Algerian press. See his book
Tarikh as-Sahafah al-CArabiya, V III, 1914, p. 240.
Merad, La Formation, p. 18.

-8157
Dabbouz, p. 8.
CO

Ali Merad, Le Reformism Musulman en Algerie de 19251940, Paris, 1967, p. 39.

59
Bennabi, Mudhakkarat Shahid al-Qarn, Cairo, 1969, V
II, p.
.
*
The eight newspapers of Abul-Yaqzan were: Wadi Mzab
- Mzabb-al-Maghrib - al-Nur - al-Bustan - al-Nibras - alUmmah - and al-Furqan. For Abul-Yaqzan's proliferation of
the press, see Dabbouz, pp. 9-10, and ABdul-Malik Murtad,
Nidal al-Sahafa al-Arabiyya fi al-Jaza'ir Qabla al-Thawrali,
al-Thaqafa,*June-July 1977, p. 67.
61
c
The Ulama Association issued five publications: alSunnah issued in 1933 and suspended after three months, alShari ah lived only forty-one days, al-Sirat al-Sawi (19331934), al-Basa'ir (the first) (1935-1939), and al-Basa'ir
(the second) "(1947-1956).
*
62
The place of publication is unknown.
The book was a reference to Raphael Danziger, 'Abd
al-Qadir and the Algerians, New York, 1977.
64

Sa c dallah, p. 140 (English), p. 159 (Arabic).

65

Ibid., p. 141 (English), p. 159 (Arabic).

66
Ibid., p. 143 (English, p. 161 (Arabic).
67
For more about the association and the activities of
Ahmed Tawfiq al-Madani, an eminent member of the Provincial
Algerian government of the fifties, see his literary and
historical work Hayat Kifah.
It is important to mention
that other sources contracfict al-Madani's claims. They
confirm that the administration of Nadi al-Taraqqi was
managed by a committee of wealthy people, and al-Shaikh al
Uqbi was the main active member in the organization.
68
Bennabi, Mudakkarat, VII, p. 82.
69
V. Confer, France and Algeria, Syracuse University
Press, 1966, p. 72.

-8270
Joan Gillespie, Algeria Rebellion and Revolution,
Praeger, New York, 1962, p. 23; Julien, p. 104; Ageron,
Histoire, p. 72. For more details about the exodus of
Tlemcen see Ch. Robert Ageron, "L'Emigration des Musulmans
Algeriens et l'Exode de Tlemcen (1830-1911) , Annales
Economies, Societes, Civilizations, 22 (1967), pp. 10471066.
71
Abun-Nasr, A History of the Maghrib, Cambridge
Press, 1971, p. 317.
72
A1-Shaikh cAbdul-Qadir al-Majawi (1848-1919) was a
pioneer of Algerian reform. Born in Tlemcen, he studied in
the schools of Tetwan and Fez (al-Qarawiyin). Returning to
Algeria he taught in al-Tha alibiya school, where other
future reformers like al-Wanisi, and Ben-Mawhub became his
students. He was educated in Arabic and French and taught
in Algeirs and Constantine. For more details see Dabbouz
Nahdat al-Jaza'ir, vol. I, pp. 82-104.
73
Maulud Ben-Mawhub (1863-1930) born and studied in
Constantine. A friend and student of al-Majawi who after
was transferred to Algeria left Ben-Mawhub in his place in
Constantine teaching and preaching. He became the Mufti of
the city and a teacher of philosophy and Islamic studies in
the Franco Arab schools.
74
Abun-Nasr, p. 317.
75
Julien, p. 117. Other references indicate that the
party was founded in 1924, but the majority adopted the
1926 date. The confusion might have come from the fact
that the real founder of the party was al-Amir Khalid in
1924, after he was sent into exile. In 1926 Messali became
the secretary general of the party and has been the leader
until the Algerian independence.
76
Gillespie, p. 40.
77
W. Quandt, Revolution and Political Leadership,
M.I.T. Press, 1969, p. 38.
78
Julien, p. 117, Gillespie, p. 40.
79
See Bennabi, Mudhakkarat, vol. II, pp. 66-73.
80
Gerard Mansell, Tragedy in Algeria, p. 41.

-8381
William Cleveland, Islam Against the West, Shaklb
Arslan and the Campaign for Islamic Nationalism, University
of Texas Press, 1985, p. 90.
82
Julien, p. 22.
83
About Arslan's activities in the Arab East and North
Africa, see Cleveland above, and Muhammad Shafiq Shaiya,
Shakib ArslanMuqaddimat al-Fikr al-Siyasi, Beirut, 1983.
84
Cited in Gillespie, p. 48.
85
Translated in ibid. See the French original in
J u l i e n , pp. 110-111.
86
Will be mentioned again in the next c h a p t e r .
C
Ammar T a l i b i ,
B e n b a d i s Atharuhu wa Hayatuh,
A l g e r i a , 1966, V I I , p . 306, and t r a n s l a t e d in Gordon, p .
44.
88
Lorna Hahn, North Africa from Nationalism to Nationhood, Public Affairs Press, 1960, p. 140.
89
Eminent members of the association received their
education abroad.
Benbldis, for example, studied in
Zaytuna, al-Ibrahimi studied n Medina and lived in
Damascus, where he taught in the Omayed Mosque. Al Mili
also studied in Zaytuna, al-'Uqbi in Hijaz, al Madani, al'Id, and al-'Amudi all received their education in Zaytuna.
90
Sa^lajfi^a was a f u n d a m e n t a l i s t
s c h o o l which
p r o p a g a t e d t h e i d e a of going back t o t h e s a l a f
(the
a n c e s t o r s ) who applie d Islam in i t s p u r i s t form. Ideas and
a c t i v i t i e s of r e f o r m e r s such a s Muhammad Abdul-Wahhab,
Muhammad c Abdu, Muhammad Rashid R i d a , and B e n b a d i s a r e
d e s c r i b e d as the S a l a f l y a movement.
91
Al-Madani, Hayat Kifah, vol. II, pp. 1-9; for more
details on the association see also Mudhakkarat al-Shaikh
Muhammad Khair al-Din, Matbacat Dahlab, Algeria, 1985, vol.
I, pp. 103-122.
92
Hourani, p. 367.
93
-Mahmud Qasim, Al-Imam 'Abdul-Hamid Benbadis, al-

-84Za im al-Ruhi li Harb at-Tahrir al-Jaza'iriya, Dar alMa'arif (n.d.), p 15.

94
A l l Merad,
Ibn-Badis,
Commentateur du C o r a n ,
L i b r a i r i e O r i e n t a l i s t (Paul Guethner), 1971, p . 24.
95
- T
His father Mustafa Benbadis was a member of the
highest council of Algeria, and a member of the Labour
Council of Constantine.
Merad, jLe Reformism, p. 82; Qasim, p. 16; see also
Fahmi Sa'd Harakat 'Abdul-Hamid Benbadis, Beirut, 1983, p.
50.
97
Shaikh Muhammad Bakhit studied and taught in alAzhar, had a connection with al-Afghani, and was against
Abdu's reform approach. He was the Mufti of Egypt from
1914 until 1921.
98

In t r a d i t i o n a l I s l a m i c e d u c a t i o n , I j a z a means a
c e r t i f i c a t e of a c q u i r i n g a h i g h l e v e l of r e l i g i o u s
knowledge, given by an Alim t o a s t u d e n t .
99
-Benbadis was expelled from the Green Mosque by alShaikh ben-Mauhub, the Mufti of the city, who resented the
special permission Benbadis obtained to study in Zaytuna.
His father considered that as a personal insult. He
traveled to Algiers to secure special permission for his
son to teach in the family mosque. See Andre Dirlik, cAbd
al-Hamid ibn-Badis (188 9-1940):
Ideologist of Islamic
Reformism and Leader of Algerian Nationalism, Ph.D. dissertation, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University,
1971, p. 165.
100

Ibid.
T a l i b i , al-ftthar,

102

v o l . I , p . 114.

D i r l i k , p . 165.
103
John Demis, "The F r ee School Phenomenon," The
I n t e r n a t i o n a l J o u r n a l of Middle East S t u d i e s , n 5, 1974, p .
441.
104
Merad, Le Reformism, p. 91.
105-,

rtc-,

Berque, p. 361.

-85106
The main slogan of the association written by
Benbadis himself says, "Islam is our religion, Arabic is
our language, and Algeria is our fatherland." Among the
various chants of the school children was the Hymn of Youth
written by the leading poet Muhammad al-'Id.
107
Merad, Le Reformism, pp. 339-340.
108
Demis, p. 445.
109
Al-Madani, Hadhihi Hiya, p. 145.
110

Heggoy, "Arab Education," p. 155.

Berque, p . 228.

112

I b i d . , p . 76.

113
Leon C a r l Brown, "The I s l a m i c R e f o r m i s t Movement i n
N o r t h A f r i c a , " J o u r n a l of Modern A f r i c a n S t u d i e s , March
1947, p. .
114
- Muhammad al-Mili, Benbadis wa-'Urubat al-Jaza'ir,
Beirut, 1973, p. 12.
U S

Benbadis ordered al-Shihab suspended in late 1939,

a short time before his death. Al-Shihab played a significant role in the social and intellectual history of Algeria
during the thirties. Benbadis maintained the review as his
personal mouthpiece.
In 1937 when the French planned to
celebrate the centennial of their occupation of Constantine, the leading members of the association rejected
Benbadis suggestion of publishing a call to the public to
boycott the festival in the press of the association.
Benbadis, therefore, published the call in al-Shihab and
assumed responsibility.
116c
Ammar Talibi, Athar, p. 85.
117
Merad, Le Reformisme, p. 149.
118
Talibi, pp. 87-88.
119
For more details of the social and intellectual
achievements of Benbadis, see Andre Dirlik above and
Talibi, al-Athar.

-86-

In most of the association's literature, the

Ulama, at least during the 1920's and 30*s, did not

develop the concept of an independent Algeria. Generally,
it recognized French colonization and perceived Algeria as
a satellite country. However, the association devoted much
effort to propagate the idea of an Algerian-Arab-Muslim
society with a culture and heritage different from that of
the French.
c

121
See the complete script of the demands of the
Islamic Conference in Abulqacim Sa'dallah: al-Haraka alWatanya al-Jaza'iriya 1930-1945, V III, Jami a al-Duwal
al-uArabiya, 1977, pp. 277-278.
122
Clement Henry Moore, North Africa, Little Brown and
Company, Boston, p. 82.
See Chapter III, pp. 104-105.

CHAPTER III
THE LIFE OF MALIK BENNABI:

1905-1973

Drawing a biographical sketch of Malik Bennabi is

difficult

because what we know of his life rests on very

few and unverified sources.

The main source of information

is the writer's autobiography, Mudhakkarat Shahid al-Qarn

(Memoirs of the Century's Witness).

This autobiography is

presented to the reader in a dramatic manner, with Bennabi

claiming in the introduction that an unnamed person put the
text of the memoirs by his feet while he was praying in one
of Constantine's mosques.

Bennabi uses the literary

technique of telling his story through an Algerian alter

ego named as-Siddiq and is thereby able "to address the
2
reader from behind a veil."
But it is transparent that as-Siddiq's autobiography
is in fact that of Bennabi himself.

The place and date of

birth given in the memoirs, for instance, correspond with

those of Bennabi.
the truthful)

At home, he was called as-Siddiq (i.e.

3
instead of Malik.
In addition, other

personal circumstances noted

in the book such as his

education, his first marriage, and his relationship with

al-Islah of Benbadis, as well as his activities in France,

-87-

-88all agree with biographical details in Bennabi*s other

books and in works written about him.
For Bennabi to disguise his identity makes sense for
at least two reasons.

First/ although he had the oppor-

tunity to read and appreciate Western biographies and

autobiographies, in the Arab World, writing an auto4
biography tends to be considered an arrogant exercise.
Eminent Arab figures are seldom honored during their
lifetimes; their lives and contributions acquire importance
only after their deaths.

Yusuf as-SibacI wrote in the

introduction of his novel Ard al-Nifaq (Land of Hypocrisy),

"I strongly fear that people will only honor me after my
death.

We are a people who love the dead, and do not see

the merits of the living until they settle in the secret

depth of the earth."

Second, Bennabi was reluctant to

draw attention to himself, since he valued ideas more than

the individuals behind them.

And so he wrote his memoirs

from behind a veil.

In writing his autobiography, Bennabi depended heavily
on his memory, through which he tried to discover and
reevaluate the events and personalities that had shaped his
life.

His style includes the literary techniques of

allusion, stream of consciousness, and flashback.

As a

result, one finds a great difference between his autobiography and that of his countryman Ahmad T. al-Madani.
In his memoir, Hayat Kifah, (Life of Struggle), al-Madani

-89used the historian's tools of providing evidence/ documents, references, and pictures.

He relied on facts to

support his views and interpretations, and kept records of

his activities and his involvements in public affairs.
Both his personal life and his contribution to the history
of Algeria are more documented and verified than those of
Bennabi, whose style is emotional, and whose judgment is
personal and, sometimes, controversial.

Although Bennabi's

memoirs can be counted

that depict

among

works

many

features of the social, economic, and historical changes

occurring in Algeria during his lifetime, many of his views
lack an objective historical framework and thus remain
tendentious.

Yet, due to the scarcity of other historical

documentation our information about Bennabi's life depends

heavily on his memoirs.
Childhood
Malik Bennabi was born on the first day of November in
7
1905 in Constantine, Algeria.
He was the only son in a
family of modest means, and enjoyed the attention of three
sisters.

His childhood was typical of that of his genera-

tion except for the fact that he was adopted by his great
uncle and his wife, who lived in Constantine.

After the

uncle died and the wife became financially needy, she took
Q

him back to his parents in Tibissa.

Bennabi provides no

rationale for his adoption, which was very uncommon for a

middle class family who had only four children and only one

-90son.
While Bennabi describes in some detail his relationship with his mother and his grandmother he provides too
little information about his father that might help us to
attribute any particular influence on him.

However, he

does represent his father as an educated man, who graduated

from a secondary-local institution called al-Madrasa al9
Rasmiya, where he was taught in both Arabic and French.
He was a respected man who worked
children.

hard

to raise his

He strongly encouraged Malik to study in France,

and sponsored him there for many years.

Malik was very attached to his grandmother, Hajja
Zulaikha, who lived a full century and was a beloved
narrator to her grandchildren,

including Bennabi, who

considered the spontaneous gatherings to listen to her

fables "a teaching circle."

In the cultural environment

of the Middle East in general, and North Africa in particular, the fable played a major educational role. Especially during the time when the extended family was the social
norm, the older generation taught its social values, ideas,
and beliefs to the new generation through fables.

The role

of female members of the family in general, and grandmothers in particular, was to shape the cultural background
of

the younger

generation.

In his memoirs,

Bennabi

stressed the influence of his grandmother in the development of his personality when he wrote that his "consciousness was formed particularly in this school."

-91-

At a relatively early age, Bennabi was told about his

great grandmother, who emigrated among the masses that left
the country shortly after the French occupation of Algeria.
He knew also that his grandfather was involved in the 1908
emigration, moving to Tripoli, Libya, while his father
preferred

to stay behind.

Bennabi's father moved

Tibissa to join his wife's family.

to

There, he could not

find work and the family lived in poverty.

His mother,
therefore, was compelled to work as a seamstress.12 She
continued to send her son to the town's Quranic school,
though on one occasion she could not afford the fees and
she was forced to give her own wooden bed in lieu of a
month's payment for his tuition.13 Like the rest of his
generation, Bennabi also attended a French school, where he
experienced the Western methodology of teaching.

When he

showed little success in his Quranic studies, his family

limited him to the French school.

Nevertheless, Bennabi

maintained a strong attachment to his own Algerian Muslim

society.

He enjoyed attending the circle of the local

professional storyteller, the Qassas, to hear the stories

about heroes like 'All Ibn Abi-Talib, and probably Abu Zayd
al-Hilali.

He also became fascinated with the gymnastic

games of Awlad ben-cIsa, a Sufi group who became famous for

their strange acts,

and particularly enjoyed the perfor14

mances of magicians who played skillfully with snakes.
When the First World War began, Bennabi was nine years

-92old and unable to fully comprehend the event.

But like his

fellow countrymen, he and his family suffered somewhat from

its consequences.

As a result of the economic deteriora-

tion which affected Algerian families, Bennabi was taken to

Constantine to attend school and live once again with his
great

uncle's wife.

During

this period,

he had

the

opportunity to communicate with his grandfather,

who had

returned from Tripoli after the Italian invasion.

Despite

his status as a member of the upper class,

Bennabi's

grandfather frequently complained, in the presence of his

grandson, about the country's economic collapse.

Bennabi

recalls his grandfather's distress at the appearance of a

new rich class, and his shock at his son's abandonment of
the traditional clothing.

Bennabi later came to the

conclusion that in Algeria, "the economic structure started

to change

the cultural

structure

and

all aspects of

life." 15
During this period of his life it seems that Bennabi
was given too free rein by his great uncle's wife; eventually she was obliged to send him back to Tibissa when she
was unable to control him.

The period in Constantine

interrupted his educational progress, and he had to return

to the grade to which he had been assigned in Tibissa.
Bennabi believed that his elementary school record was
affected by racial discrimination.

Despite his high scores

on the final examination and on tests all year long, he did

not receive the highest grade in his class.

This honor was

-93-

given to a French colleague instead.

To Bennabi, this

perceived injustice embodied the discrimination practiced

by the French at different levels.

Bennabi therefore felt

a need to challenge the Western bias intellectually and

became determined to continue his education and prove his
ability.

Youth
In 1921 he was transferred to the Medrasa of Constantine (later Lyce1 Franco Musulman) , where he entered a new
world of different social and intellectual characteristics.
Since this medrasa was established mainly to build up a
class of bureaucrats, Bennabi was entering the world of the
governing administrative class of his country.

The teach-

ing in this school was provided in both French and Arabic.

Bennabi particularly enjoyed Monsieur Martin's class in
French language and literature.

This teacher succeeded in

implanting in Bennabi a love of reading and a taste for

17
18
eloquence.
Besides the novels of Jules Verne,
Pierre
19
20
Loti,
and Claude Farrere,
he read two major books that
deeply influenced his intellectual inquiry. The first was
a French translation of John Dewey's How We Think,21 and
the second was L'Histoire sociale de l'humanite1 of Courtellemont.

Dewey's book led Bennabi to a new appreciation

of American intellectual efforts.

In this school, Bennabi

had the opportunity to be among the students of al-Shaik

-94-

Maulud Ben-Mawhub who was a former mufti of Constantine,

and an authority on religious and legal matters.

While an

early reformer of Algeria, Ben-Mawhub was also an advocate

22
for "progress, modern science, and European ideas."
During this period Bennabi joined the teaching circle
of the Great Mosque of Constantine to learn Arabic from
Shaikh 'Abdul-Majid, who greatly influenced him in developing a critical approach to reality.

His teaching included

comments concerning the negative role of the sufi order and

23
the abusive colonial authority in the country.
Through his renewed exposure to Arabic, Bennabi found
himself attracted to the Arabic classical poetry of the
Jahiliyya, Umayyad, and 'Abbasid periods.

It was also an

enjoyable experience for him to become acquainted with

modern poetry, especially that of the al-Mahjar School
(American emigres), from which he read poets like Jibran
(1883-1931) and Abu-Madi

(1883-1957).

In addition, he

became acquainted with the poetry of Hafiz Ibrahim (18721932), and that of al-Rusafi (1875-1945).

Among Arabic

prose writers, Bennabi most enjoyed and admired alManfaluti (1872-1924).24

As Bennabi's facility

in Arabic

improved, he was

encouraged to read important books that furthered his

intellectual development and his attitudes about Islam and
Islamic issues.

Works he refers to are La Faillite morale

- 25 and
de la politique occidentale en Orient by Ahmad Riza,

-95Umm al-Qura by al-Kawakibi (1849-1902).

The latter excited

Bennabi greatly, as did a French book by Isabelle Eberhardt

called L'ambre Chaude de l'Islam. 26 Another important book
that contributed to Bennabi's intellectual growth was
Risalat at-Tawhld by Muhammad cAbdu.

He read this in its

French translation by Mustafa 'Abdul-Raziq and a French

orientalist.27
During the early years of his character development,
Bennabi's national and religious views had been emotional
and romantic.

Gradually he demonstrated signs of intellec-

tual growth and personal maturity.

He steadily became

aware of the social and cultural changes occurring in both

Tibissa and Constantine.

When a group of

Ulama who had

studied in the Arab East returned to Tibissa, Bennabi

sensed a new burst of ideas in that town. 2 8 It became
clear that the mosque had a renewed role as the center of
people's concern and attracted a large number of people who
ordinarily would have sat in cafes.29 At the same time,
the number of Europeans living and working in the town had
increased

and

the Western

style of

life was

rapidly

changing the traditional morals and manners in Tibissa.

In

the mosque, Shaikh Sulaiman played a significant role in

drawing the community's attention to many negative aspects
of their life.
In Constantine, Bennabi participated in the social and
cultural activities of his generation.

The coffee house of

Ben-Yamina, where he used to meet his friends, was the

-96headquarters of a cultural circle initiated by a group of

school students and some of Benbadls' disciples.

The

discussion of different issues was "the historical, if not

the official introduction to what became afterward the
reformist and the nationalist movements."30 When the
activities of Ben-Badis started to expand, Bennabi could
not identify with any trend but that of al-Islah.31 In
general, Bennabi found more access to social and cultural
activities in Constantine than in Tibissa.

The activities

of Benbadls which started to crystallize in Constantine

during the twenties, renewed the city's character as a
cultural center.
Throughout his schooling, the press was one of the
major means through which Bennabi became informed about the
political and social events of his environment. One of the
most distinguished newspapers of that time was al-Igdam.
Edited by the Algerian nationalist al-Amlr Khalid, it was a
paper which provided Bennabi and his generation with a
strong patriotic sentiment and pride.

Bennabi regularly

read French newspapers such as L'Etendard, La Dgpeche de

Constantine, Nouvelles Litteraires, La Lutte-Sociale of
Victor Spielmann, and the communist L 'humanite*.3 2 In
Arabic, newspapers like al-Shihab of Benbadls, Sada alSahra of al-cUqbi, and the Tunisian newspaper al- Asr alJadid were the most influential of the era.

Bennabi began

reading these papers during his late teens, and they

-97continued to keep him informed during his twenties and

thirties.
Bennabi's keen interest in public affairs heightened
his awareness of the transformation of his traditional
society into a more modern one, the result of the First
World War and the effect of a foreign occupation.

His

memoirs, Mudhakkarat Shahid al-Qarn, are a literary historical

portrayal

of various

aspects

economic, and political changes.

of

the

social,

The fragmentation of

Algerian society was the result of many complicated factors, several of which were experienced by Bennabi personally. He witnessed, for example, the collapse of the old
. .
33
privileged class and the emergence of a new one.

He

attributed a great deal of the social fragmentation to an

outrageous hike

in the usurious

charged to Algerian Muslims.

interest rate of 60%

The practice of changing

interest actually led to the transfer of many Algerian

properties and lands "to the hand of the colonists." 34
In 1925, when Bennabi finished high school, he was
already twenty years old and still confused about his
future.

He had no career plans, but was ambitious and

eager to explore the world outside Algeria, which until

then he had known only through books.

He went to France

and worked at a number of jobs, the last of which was with

a beer company called Nicolas unloading empty bottles.35
He soon returned to Algeria, exhausted by his adventures
and disgusted with the French companies1 exploitation of

-98-

Algerian workers.
Back in Algeria, Bennabi had to face the fact that as
an Algerian he was not allowed to work in the bureaucracy
36
before reaching the age of twenty-two.

He wrote applica-

tions to various French companies in the African continent,

from which he never received replies.

Through friends,

Bennabi eventually got a job as an assistant to the court

members who traveled to look into the cases of the bedouins
living around Tibissa.

Before long he became an official

member of the Court of Aflo in Oran.

When he started his

work there in 1927, Bennabi attempted to advocate the ideas

of reform spread in Constantine and Tibissa.

For example,

he tried to explain to the farmers the importance of

planting the largest possible area of their lands to avoid
any French sanction.37 Bennabi claimed to be the first to
carry with him the initial issue of Benbadis' magazine, al
38
Shihab, to Aflo.
But his work in Aflo and elsewhere was
neither intellectually nor psychologically fulfilling.

Life in France
In 1930, shortly before the French celebrated the
centennial of the occupation of Algeria, Bennabi decided to
go to France to continue his education.

His family,

despite its modest means, offered him reasonable financial

aid to achieve his goal.

In Paris, he decided to join

L'gcole des Langages Orientales (the School of Oriental

-99-

Languages) , for which he took the Arabic department's

language test.

Although he maintained that the test was

not difficult for him, he failed.

When he was advised by

the institution's director not to retake the examination,

Bennabi realized "that joining the Institution does not
subject an Algerian Muslim to an intellectual measure, but
to a political one." 39
After failing to join the School of Oriental Languages, Bennabi enrolled in the School of Engineering,
which completely changed his academic direction, as he
became fascinated with the study of science.

Bennabi

viewed science as a key to the successful progress of

Western civilization and was curious about the power it
might give to his life and that of his people.

As he

became wholeheartedly engaged in studying science, he was

motivated

by the backwardness of Muslim society,

and
40
inspired by the idea of "being [its] despatched savior."
Another event that strongly influenced Bennabi was his

decision, shortly after his arrival in Paris, to join the

Chapter of the Parisian Christian Youth in order to qualify
for the cheap meals offered to members only.

Applying for

membership in this Christian association presented Bennabi

with "a first moral test,"
religion.

requiring him to indicate his

Being a Muslim in a Christian organization

allowed him to be in a situation where "his spiritual

formation was integrated, and his conscience was opened to

-100the questions that occupied his life."42

In the atmosphere

of this organization, Bennabi felt "spiritually nourished."

His exposure to new ways of thinking "revealed

sides of his Muslim spirit that he had never felt be44

fore,"
shaped his ability at social analysis, and
implanted in his mind the seed of his philosophy.
As an Algerian and a student, Bennabi became intimately acquainted with the Parisian Latin Quarter.

In fact, he

became immersed there in the problems of Algeria and the

Muslim world which were constantly discussed among the
North Africans who frequented the area.
opportunity to enthusiastically
Wahhabism, 46 and Maghrib unity;

Bennabi took the

- 45
"propagate Islah,
.

namely,

banners
covering a single meaning, and that was Islam." 47 The

Wahhabi movement in particular greatly

the

influenced

his

thinking, no doubt because of its attack on sufism and

Marabutism.

It appears that Bennabi was a Wahhabi in his

youth, and became an Islahi later when he came to view that

movement as an Algerian form of Wahhabism. 48 There is no
indication whether Bennabi developed an objective picture
of the movement, but he was more emotionally attached to it
than he was to the Algerian Islah.

Moreover, Bennabi was

profoundly convinced that Wahhabism was to be the savior of

the Muslim World then in decline. 49
On the grounds of his religious and political views,
Bennabi became involved in the various activities of the
Maghrib Student Association in Paris.

According to his

-101-

memoirs, his nationalistic zeal caused him difficulties in

France

and

at- home.

After

his first lecture to the

association in 1931, entitled "Why We Are Muslims," he was

questioned by the French police about his stay in France
and about his financial resources.50 Bennabi claimed that
his lecture and other activities were the reason behind his
father's difficulties at work at that time.
It was Bennabi's determination

to remain free of

French influence that made him decide to ignore the request

of Professor Louis Massignon, 51 the country's leading
orientalist and scholar, to meet with him on one occasion.
Bennabi viewed the French professor as a colonialist whose
work as a government counselor for Islamic affairs lacked
objectivity. 52 Ironically, Bennabi was later compelled to
make an appointment to meet with the scholar to ask him to
intervene on behalf of his father, who had been arbitrarily
53
transferred from his job.
Despite Bennabi's feeling that he was under close
observation by the French and in continuous conflict with
the colonists, he continued his participation in the North
African Student Association in the Latin Quarter.

In fact,

he accelerated his activities while vigilantly following

the social and political developments in his homeland. He
c

was particularly interested in the movement of al- Ulama

headed

by Benbadls

activities.

and

its educational

Bennabi grew more interested

and

cultural

in philosophy,

-102sociology, and history than the subjects he was formally

studying in the School of Engineering. 54
In 1931, Bennabi married a French lady whose maiden
name and background were not mentioned in his memoirs.

For

her, however, he expresses much respect and appreciation

and her influence on his intellectual development was
apparently profound.

Though the information about his wife

is sparce, Bennabi mentioned that she embraced Islam and

adopted the Muslim name Khadija.

It seems that she was an

intelligent, educated lady, who encouraged her husband to

acquire education and fulfill his intellectual ambitions.
She greatly helped him to manage his modest financial
resources, and gave him comfort at home.

As a French

woman, Khadija was able to explain the values of French

civilization.

She helped him to understand the spirit of

the social and cultural aspects of life in France.

Bennabi

and Khadija had no children, which motivated his family's

attempt to persuade him to marry again.

Bennabi was

apparently faithful to his wife; yet we find that he left

her in France in the fifties, when he went to Egypt to live
there as a political refugee.
compelled

It seems that Bennabi was

to leave France after being imprisoned;

and

because his wife was suffering from a severe rhumatoid

arthritis, he had to leave her in France.55 He continued
corresponding with her, and provided her with financial
eg

support when he secured his political asylum in Egypt.

She died in the early seventies, and Bennabi was informed

-103-

by telegram.
Another important influence on Bennabi at this time
was his friend Hammuda ben-Issa i, an apprently brilliant
philosophy

student.

The philosophical

and

political

discussions between Bennabi and his friend Hammuda crystallized

Bennabi's

phenomenon.

views

of civilization

as a social

Bennabi greatly admired ben-Issa c i to the

extent of calling him "my teacher."

While still in France, Bennabi met and briefly cooperated with the Algerian nationalist Massali Haj, the
founder of the leading political party, the North African
Star.

But after

his contacts with Massali,

Bennabi

rejected his policy "of seeking leadership at the expense

of the national cause."

He viewed Massali as extremely

sentimental and lacking objectivity; and so he dissociated

himself from his party.

Bennabi later wrote that "if

Massali had not interfered

[in the national movement],

Algeria would not face many of the problems from which she
CO

suffered after independence."

During this period, Bennabi extended his range of
knowledge and concern beyond his country and North Africa
to the Arab and Muslim world at large.

His acquaintance

with the ideas of Shakeeb Arslan, for example, began in his

early youth when he followed Arslan's newspaper La Nation
Arabe, which was issued from Geneva. 59 The idea of PanArabism that Arslan advocated in the thirties reached the

-104Arab students in Paris, including Bennabi.

SO
Farid Zain ad-Din,

It was through

a Syrian law student, that the Arab

students became aware of Arslan's idea of establishing the

Association of Arab Unity.

Zain ad-Din, who played a major

role in this effort, later became Vice Minister of Foreign

Affairs in the United Arab Republic in the sixties.
In Paris, Bennabi joined a group of Arab students in
establishing a secret association, in which they represented their countries.

In his memoirs Bennabi stated that

the students who represented Morocco in the association

61
62
meetings were Muhammad al-Fasi,
Belafreige,
and another
student called Touris; Tunisia was represented by Ben 63
Milad

and others; and Algeria was represented by Bennabi

himself.

He viewed the association as a precursor to the

Arab League.
In the rich environment of the Latin Quarter and
through his acquaintance with the North African students,
Bennabi had the opportunity to interact with a number of
individuals of varying intellectual and political atti
6^
tudes.

He knew, for instance, Habib Bourghiba,

the

president of Tunisia from 1953 to 1987, and Salah bencc

Yousif

and Hadi Nouera,

en

both of whom held positions in

the al-Destour party and in the Tunisian government.

From

Morocco, he knew Muhammad al-Fasi, and from Egypt, Shaikh

Abd-al-Rahman T a j , who later became president of alAzhar. 68
During the thirties, while Bennabi was living in

-105-

France and spending his summers in his homeland, he had

direct

contact

Algerians.
Tibissa.

with

some

intellectual

and

religious

He attended lectures by Shaikh al-Ibrahim! in

He also enjoyed a good friendship with Shaikh

al Uqbi, whom Bennabi considered more entitled to the

c

70
leadership

of

the Algerian

Ulama

than Ben-Badis.

Bennabi mentions no acquaintance with Farhat 'Abbas, who

represented pro-French attitudes and favored assimilation.
Bennabi

said he had nothing

in common with

Abbas,

especially after the publication of the latter's article "I

Am France," in which

he glorified

Algeria's separate identity.

France

and

Bennabi, in reaction, wrote a

severely critical article in French attacking

ideas.

denied

The article, considered

Abbas's

by Bennabi's wife "a

revelation from heaven,71 was sent to the al-Difa

of Amin al- c AmudI, but was never published.

newspaper
Bennabi

later learned from al-cAmudi himself that the decision not

to publish the article was made in order to protect
c
71
Abbas's political future.
Bennabi's attitude toward Benbadis as a leader of the
association of Jam iyat al Ulama was somewhat emotional.
Although Bennabi had sympathized with the ideas and activities of Benbadis from an early age, he became estranged
from the reformist's philosophy and strategies in 1936.
This separation resulted from Benbadis' trip to Paris as a
member of the Algerian delegation, which consisted of the

-106Ulama and politicians elected in the Islamic Conference to

represent the Algerian people.

Bennabi condemned the

visit, and went in person to the delegation's hotel to

argue with Benbadis, al-cUqbi, and al-Ibrahimi about their
lodging in an expensive hotel and their purpose in negoHe accused the cUlama of being
inferior to the political leaders of the thirties,72 since

tiating with the French.

they had joined the secular politicians in their traveling

to Paris.

He expected the movement to have elevated itself

over "the mud of policy and the campaigns of election." 73
Bennabi came to the conclusion that the

Ulama, lacking in

methodological thinking, had lost sight of the original

goal of the movement. 74 The idealistic and independent
Bennabi never officially joined the Jamciyat al-cUlama or
any political party inside or outside Algeria.
Bennabi achieved his intellectual maturity during the
thirties.

He was distracted from his schooling by the

ideas of Nietzche and the discoveries of Einstein, as well

as by Andre Gide's ideas in his literary work The Terrestrial Nourishment. 75 Besides his fondness for reading in
French, Bennabi made attempts at writing poetry in the same
76
language.
As an educated person, he was excited by
certain contemporary discoveries.

He was aware, for

example, of the first experiments with television broadcasting, and of the scientific experiments of the French
engineer George Claude, who used the sea's heat to produce
energy. 77 This scientific attempt was particularly inter-

-107-

esting to Bennabi, who asked, "if they used the sea's heat,
78
why do we not use the desert's heat?"
Bennabi's awareness of his role as a Muslim individual
with national and social obligations inspired his imagination in a variety of different directions.

He hoped to be,

with his friend Hammuda ben-Issa c i, "the inheritors" of

Jam c iyat al- c Ulama because of their qualifications and
ability "to enter the political arena and maintain their
objectives of religious and social reform." 79 Growing
increasingly dissatisfied

in France, and

increasingly

influenced by Wahhabism, he fostered a dream of emigrating

to Ta'if in al-Hijaz, close by Mecca.

This dream was

always combined in Bennabi's mind with the ambition to

establish a new project, such as converting into fertilizer
the remains of the sheep sacrificed during the pilgrimage
at Mina near Mecca.80 He enrolled in evening classes in
applied chemistry and gave more time to scientific subjects.

His dream about the fertilizing project, and his

intention to emigrate to Ta'if, led him to apply for a visa

to visit Arabia via Egypt.

To his disappointment, an

Egyptian diplomat refused the application, denying Bennabi

access to the only means by which to reach his destination,
the Suez Canal.

Consequently, he sought entry into Afghan-

istan and Albania but ultimately was compelled to stay in

France in order to finish his last year of college.
Bennabi became increasingly critical of the political

-108activities occurring in his homeland.

When the conference

of al-Mu'tamar al-Jaza'irl a1-Islam! (The Islamic Algerian

Conference) was held in Algiers in 1936, he viewed the
occasion "as a victory achieved by the Algerian people over
81
themselves and over their colonists."
The goal of the
conference was to unite the different groups, religious and
secular, working in the national cause. It was the
c

Ulama's first step in direct political dealing with the

French.

The participation of the cUlama in the delegation

that traveled

to Paris to negotiate directly with the

French was a shock to Bennabi.

Because of his high

expectations for the reformers, he failed to comprehend

their strategy or understand their political goal.

Their

participation in the league caused Bennabi such disappointment and frustration that he lost interest in school study,
writing, al-Mu'tamar, and even Islamic reform in general. 82
In 1938, wanting

a complete

change of pace,

Bennabi

obtained work as a teacher for the Algerian workers in

Marseilles.

He enjoyed teaching his illiterate countrymen,

but was soon forbidden to teach by the authorities, who

83
claimed he was not qualified for the work.
Bennabi returned

to Tibissa where he delivered a

number of lectures in the Cultural Circle (al-Nadi). 84 He
cooperated with Shaikh al-cArabi al-Tbissy in translating a
book

entitled

published.

as-Sira,

a project

they

failed

to see

During this time, Bennabi also wrote an article

in French opposing Fascism and translated it into Arabic,

-109-

but neither version was published.

Bennabi was so depressed he lost "every hope, except
86
that for a world war to break out and change everything."
After about two unproductive years in his homeland, Bennabi
left the country.

He tells us in his memoirs, on September

22, 1939, that as the shores were disappearing on the

horizon, he spoke to his country from the stern of the
ship:
Oh undutiful land; you feed the foreigners and
leave your children to hunger.
I will never
return to you if you do not become free.87
The autobiography of Malik Bennabi ends at this point,
while the important and more productive periods of his
mature life were yet to begin.

His activities after

leaving Algeria shortly before the Second World War are

still unexplained, although it has come to my attention
that Bennabi wrote a third volume of his memoirs, with the
recommendation that his daughters publish it when they
89
became mature enough to carry out this responsibility.
I
also discovered that Bennabi wrote a will which he asked to
be opened when his youngest daughter had become twenty-one
., 89
years old.
Despite

the inaccessibility

of

these

potentially

illuminating sources, information concerning the unexplored

periods of Berinabi's life can be collected from his friends
and family members.

Other sources of information available

are the covers of his books, introductions to books written

-110either by him or by qthers, and articles written about him.

Unfortunately,

the literature available about Bennabi in

Arabic is mostly descriptive and written more from an

admiring perspective than an analytical or critical one.
It was just after the Second World War that Bennabi
started to record his thoughts in books.

He published the

valuable document La Ph6nomene Quranic in 1946; his only

novel, Labbaik, in 1947; Les Conditions de la Renaissance
in 1948; and Le Vocation de 1'Islam in 1954.

In these

books, Bennabi tried to state some theoretical rules for

reviving the movement of Islah. 90 The reaction of the

intellectuals in his homeland to this attempt was negative

and discouraging,

probably because of Bennabi's campaign

against sufism, the cUlama, and the nationalists.

In reviewing Les Conditions de la Renaissance, the
newspaper of Jamciyat al-cUlama' accused Bennabi, according
to his own statement, of copying from a famous Parisian
newspaper which was the organ of the colonists. The review
91
classified the book as "harmful to the people's cause."
Another newspaper belonging to "one of the nationalist
parties" wrote a two-part article entitled "A Mistaken Step
and Insanity." 92 The Algerian Communist party paper also
published an article about the same book and reached the
conclusion that what Bennabi had written "deserves the
93
.
colonists' satisfaction."

Bennabi visited Algeria in

1948 and delivered a lecture in Arabic to introduce his

book, Les Conditions de Civilisation, in Benbadis Institu-

-111-

tion in Constantine.
to the educated

Shortly later, he lectured in French

elite on the same subject.

In both

lectures, Bennabi explained in detail his equation of

civilization using the blackboard to indicate the major
conditions necessary to establish a civilization in any
given society. 94
Bennabi lived in France with his wife continuously
from 1939 until 1956, and wrote his first four books during
this time.
II,

This period, preceding and following World War

was very significant

in the history of Europe in

general and France in particular.

The material in hand by

and about Malik Bennabi does not help to explain his

intellectual development, nor his response to the political
movements and ideas dominating Europe at that time. Nevertheless, it is likely that Bennabi was greatly affected by
the social and economic unrest that resulted
military and political defeat of France.

from the

He probably faced

considerable financial difficulties during that period, but

there are no documents to prove that.

In 1951 Bennabi

moved from Paris to a little town called Dorron, only 120

kilometers away. 95 During his residency in France, we have
no information about who his friends were, or how he
managed financially.

However, investigation has disclosed

that Bennabi became imprisoned in the fifties, shortly

before he went to Egypt.96 Nevertheless, it is unknown if
his imprisonment was because of his activities supporting

-112the Algerian revolution of 1954 or for another reason.

Other views suggest that Bennabi was discriminated against
by some Republican ministers of the French cabinet. 97
Therefore, he might have been seen as a monarchist and
become imprisoned for this reason.

Bennabi's attitude

towards Nazism and Fascism, the two dominant philosophies

and policies of the period, was also unknown.

Neverthe-

less, he might not have been completely sympathetic to

official France during its crisis, as it always exemplified
the colonial power that kept his country from being the
nation it wanted to be.

Life and Intellectual Activities in Egypt

In 1956, two years after the beginning of the Algerian
war, Bennabi managed to emigrate to Egypt.

The reason

behind his selection of Egypt is undocumented; however, it

may be related to the fact that Egypt was one of the first
Arabic countries to denounce the French occupation of
Algeria.

Moreover, Nasser and his government had openly

supported the Algerian rebellion since its first stage, and

Egypt,

therefore,

nationalists.

became

the refuge of the Algerian

Moreover, Ahmed Ben Bella and his friends

were operating

from Cairo as leaders of the National

Liberation Front.
Bennabi's decision to emigrate to Egypt was clearly
motivated by a desire to be in a milieu which sympathized

-113with the national cause of his country.

In a letter he

wrote to "the leaders of the revolution," he confessed that

he had come to Egypt to be as close as possible to his
98
country.
He suggested in his letter that he work "as a
military nurse in the war front to write the revolution's
history from within," and to write from there to the French
prime minister to explain "the reason that put an Algerian
99
writer in the battle."
A more logical decision might have been to go directly
to Algeria and participate in the battle.

However, Bennabi

was fifty-two years of age at the time and might have

believed that he could be more influential working from
Cairo.
In terms of his current political ideas, Bennabi was
opposed
Algeria.

to the establishment

of political parties in

He was critical of their activities every time he

spoke or wrote about the issue.

He was also convinced that

parties "were responsible for the suspension of the revolution until after the Second World War."

It seems that

Bennabi and the Algerian political leaders had a mutual

misunderstanding.

The leaders might have felt skeptical

about the suggestion voiced in Bennabi's letter, especially

because he had never been an active member of any political
party or of Jamciyat al-cUlama'.

Furthermore, Bennabi had

strong views about the leaders of the revolution;

consistently
Bennabi

viewed

strongly

Farhat

believed

Abbas
that

the

he

as treacherous.
real hero

of

the

-114-

Algerian

war was Ben-Bil id who was executed

by

the
colonists themselves for his revolutionary activities. 102
It is likely that while he called the leaders treacherous
and spies, they viewed him as capricious.103 Consequently,

he received no response to his letter, and he became

increasingly doubtful about their objectivity.
In Egypt, Bennabi continued to devote himself to
writing.

S.O.S. Algeri, an attempt to draw public atten-

tion to what Bennabi considered the shortcomings of the

Algerian revolution,

may have been written in reaction

to the frustration he suffered from neglect by the revolution's leaders.

The book was written in French and was

translated into Arabic in 1957 with the title al-Najdah

lil-Jazair.
Having been grantod political asylum in Egypt, Bennabi
was appointed as a counselor for the Islamic Conference by
Anwar Sadat, who was then the Secretary of the Conference.

In 1956, the Egyptian Minister of Information

published Bennabi's book L'Afro Asiatisme in French.

An

Arabic translation of the same book appeared soon after,

with an introduction written by Sadat.

This translation

introduced Bennabi to the Egyptian intellectual community

and to Arab readers.

As a member of the Muslim Brethren,

Abdul-Sabur Shahln, the translator, felt that Bennabi's

books and ideas were a great compensation in the Egyptian

intellectual milieu, after Nasser had banned the Brethren's

-115books

and

publications.

Through

the

translation

of

Bennabi's books, especially al-Zahira al Qur'aniya (The

Qur'anic Phenomenon),
Vocation

of

Islam),

and Wijhat al-cAlim al-Islami

Shahln

was able

to help

(The

spread

Bennabi's new Islamic views, since he was a patron of the

107
regime.
However, public response to Bennabi's ideas
varied inside and outside Egypt.
In Cairo, while the Arabic translation of Les Conditions de civilisation was in press, a collection of alAfghani and cAbdu's writing appeared under the title of alc
108
Urwat al-Wuthqa.
The publisher's introduction referred
to a book called Mustaqbal al-Islam 10 9 but described
Bennabi as "a French writer, who lived in North Africa,
where he intermixed and loved, embraced Islam and suffered
for the sake of its defense."

This false information

about Bennabi was in reference to a publication of an

Arabic translation of his book
published without his permission.

(Vocation de 1' Islam)

It omitted the brief

biography given in the French original.

This might have

caused the confusion introduced in al- c Urwat al-Wuthqa

about Bennabi.

But Bennabi did not consider the mistake

innocent or unintentional.

Instead, he was convinced that

the misinformation was deliberate, aimed at damaging his

reputation in Egypt.

As usual, Bennabi suspected that the

colonists were behind this.

He claimed that "the ideas

which [he] had come to the East to spread fell into the
observatory net . . . and the movement of these ideas

-116-

became an object of certain supervision."

Despite that/ Bennabi did not hesitate to announce his
views on Muslim affairs, regardless of the reaction they
provoked.

This caused somewhat harsh disagreements between

112
him and the Muslim Brethren leader Sayed Qutb.

The
happened

intellectual
when Qutb

breach

between

announced

the two writers

that he had a new book

entitled Towards a Civilized Islamic Society.

probably

expected

the book

to concur

Bennabi

with his own

methodology, and to emphasize the same facts.

Yet/ Qutb

decided to omit the word "civilized," and the book appeared

with the title Towards an Islamic Society.
Bennabi did not welcome this change. On the contrary,
he considered it "a distortion to the real problem." 113 He
understood the title as a claim that Muslims are already
civilized,
resulting

and that,
from

to him, was

a status

of

"fruitless

[blind]

praise
loyalty." 114
He

strongly criticized the incompatibility on the psychological and intellectual levels, between being a faithful
Muslim and a critic of the status quo of the Muslims.
Sayed Qutb responded to Bennabi by referring to him as
*

"a w r i t e r

in F r e n c h . "

In h i s book, M a c I l i m f i

al-Tariq

(Landmarks on t h e Road), Qutb defended h i s d e c i s i o n to omit

the word " c i v i l i z e d "

from h i s b o o k 's t i t l e on the grounds

t h a t he was aiming t o avoid w o r d i n e s s .

Muslim s o c i e t y i s t h e c i v i l i z e d

society."

For him,

"the

Qutb a l s o

-117confronted Bennabi publicly during an intellectual seminar

to disagree with him about Bennabi's view that religion,
any religion,

is the catalyst of civilization.

Qutb

expressed his belief that only Islam is able to produce a

116
civilization.
The differences between Qutb and Bennabi seem objective and honest.

However, the objections of Ghazi al-Tawba

to Bennabi's views appear more personal than objective.

al Fikr al-Island

al-Mucasir-Dirasah wa-Taqwim,

presented Bennabi and Muhammed

In

al-Tawba

Abdu as examples of what he

classified as members of the reformist school.

He strongly

reproached Bennabi for his optimism about the Afro-Asian

bloc which consisted of different and unharmonious races,
religions, and cultures.

Weighing the advantages and

disadvantages of the Afro-Asian

cooperative

effort

according

to religious criteria rather than political

criteria,

al-Tawba disagreed

various issues.

with Bennabi's views on

He castigated Bennabi's acceptance of

socialism in independent Algeria.

The most provocative

issue to al-Tawba was Bennabi's view of and connection with

the Egyptian governmental authorities, from which al-Tawba,
as a Muslim brother was barred.

He criticized Bennabi's

description of the Egyptian revolution as "the beginning of

the construction of the Muslim World" 117 and quoted him on
other occasions as having favored Nasser and his revolution.

Al-Tawba went so far as to claim that Bennabi had

written only in French and had known no Arabic until he

-118-

came to Egypt in 1956 to publish L'Afro Asiatisme.

He

was also convinced that Bennabi became known to the Arab

World only through Egyptian broadcasting and only because
he was allowed to be close to the authorities. 119
Al-Tawba's disagreement with Bennabi, then, derived
mainly from the latter's attitude toward Nasser and his
regime.

In fact, Bennabi had been warmly welcomed to Cairo

by the government.

He was offered political asylum, a

respectable job, and an excellent salary. 121 His book

L'Afro Asiatisme was published in its original French and

in Arabic translation by the government.

Perhaps because

of his warm reception, he dedicated the Arabic translation

to Gamal c Abdel-Nasser.
book,

And later he dedicated another

Taammulat fil-Mujtamac al-cArabi,

Husain,

a member

of

the

to Kamal ad Din
121
Revolutionary Command.

Bennabi's real motivation in leaving his beloved French

wife in France and moving to Egypt is still unknown.

The

reason might be a combination of his desire to be close to

his country while it was undergoing a military revolution
against the French and his intention to publish his book
about the Bandoeung Conference.

After the public attention

that Nasser had received at that conference, the Afro-Asian

bloc had become the focus of political, economic, and
cultural

activities

encouraged

in Cairo.

That

Bennabi to present himself

fact might

have

as an Algerian

nationalist and as a writer with a message to deliver.

-119It was obvious that Bennabi believed the Egyptian

revolution to be the correct step towards the development
of the Egyptian people.

During the fifties and even the

sixties, Nasser embodied a new political movement towards

Arab unity, representing the upheaval of Arabism, and
reviving Arab pride and self-esteem.

While the regime's

repressive policies caused the Egytian people to suffer,

Nasser and his ideas were inspiring to Arabs of different
generations and educational levels.

As an Arab, Bennabi

responded positively to the idea of Arab unity represented

by Nasser and his regime.

Despite his strong Islamic

tendency, Bennabi did not sympathize with the Egyptian

Muslim Brethren who faced a crisis with Nasser during the
fifties; this lack of sympathy was explicitly attacked by
some of the Muslim Brethren such as al-Tawba.

However, for

Bennabi to express any positive sentiment towards the

Brethren would have been unsafe and unwise, since he was
under the regime's protection.

He would no doubt have been

asked to leave the country if he took any stand with the

Ikhwan.

Al-Haj Amin al Husayni'--the Grand Mufti of

Jerusalem from 1921 to 1937, for example, had faced the

same situation.

Because al-Husayni, as a religious leader,

was intimately connected with the Muslim Brethren, he was

asked to leave Egypt in 1959.

For Bennabi, the timing

of his arrival in Cairo was perhaps unfortunate.

In the

same year, 1956, Nasser assumed the presidency, and had

already retaliated in response to the alleged unsuccessful

-120-

assassination attempt by the Brethren in October of

123
1954.
Bennabi had a good relationship with Shaikh Ahmad
Hasan al-Baquri, who was expelled from the Muslim Brethren

when he accepted a position as a minister in Nasser's

government.

Bennabi resembled al-Baquri in that both men

embraced a seeming dichotomy:

a strong Islamic sentiment

and, at the same time, an attraction to Nasser and his

political approach.
Mahmoud
influenced

Shakir was another personality who might have

Bennabi's attitudes

Egyptian Ikhwan.

and

views

towards

the

Despite his being an aggressive Islamic

writer, Shakir hated the Ikhwan and their movement.

He

frequently criticized them in the presence of both Bennabi

and al-Baquri,

and that might have lessened Bennabi's

opportunity to investigate the movement and its objectives. 125

Considering all the circumstances in Bennabi's life,
it is obvious that he was searching for security.

His lack

of feeling secure could have been attributed to his loyalty

126
to the Egyptian authority.
In Egypt Bennabi continued his intellectual activities, advocating his views on a variety of issues.

During

the sixties, he held a weekly meeting at his residence in

Cairo, where a number of educated Arabsmostly students
gathered to discuss various issues.

This seminar was, in

fact, a cultural circle, from which many Arab figures

-121benefited by exchanging views and exploring the different

ideas Bennabi introduced.

The broad subject discussed was

the phenomenon of civilization, which was the frame of the

ideas he was dedicated

to communicating.

Many

Arab

students who came to Cairo to study took the opportunity to

meet at Bennabi's seminar to discuss current socio-cultural
issues.

However, his gathering was under surveillance, and

his influence in Egyptian society at large was limited.127
While living in Cairo, Bennabi remained committed to
his country achieving independence.

However, he was not

politically active, and the nature of his relationship with

the members of the Provisional Government of the Algerian
Republic who were strongly supported by Egypt is not clear.
Bennabi had been welcomed to Egypt as a thinker rather than
a politician, and he was probably satisfied to restrict
himself to propagating his ideas about civilization and
social reform.

Return to Algeria
When Algeria won its freedom in 1962, Bennabi was not
eager to return immediately to his homeland.

Instead, he

married an Algerian lady who came to him in Cairo, where

they lived for one more year. 12 8 When he went back to
Algeria in 1963, Bennabi resumed writing and lecturing in
French, then the dominant language.

He wrote in local

newspapers such as La Revolution Africane and al-Mujahid,

-122and translated most of these writings into Arabic.

collection of these articles was published after Bennabi's

death by his friend and attorney, Omar Masqawi, with the
title Baina-Arrashadi wat-Tih (Between Clear direction and
Aimless Wandering).

In Algeria, Bennabi concentrated on

analyzing various issues concerning the ideological vacuum

left after independence was won.

He gave three major

lectures during 1964, collected in a book entitled Discours

sur la culture, 1'ideologie, et la civilization and translated into Arabic under the title A fag Jazairia (Algerian
Horizons).

In these lectures, Bennabi explored the new

role of Algeria as an independent state.

He was probably

motivated by his belief that a sociology for the postindependence

planning. 129

period

should

be established

to help in

Back in Algeria, Bennabi was appointed Director of

High Studies in the Ministry of National Education (Wazarat
al-Ta lim

al-Qawmi)

and

was

relatively

close

to the

Algerian leadership who called upon him several times for

130
consultation.
However, in 1967 he was expelled from his
position

for

unknown

reasons.

This

occurred

during

Boumedian's era, despite the fact that his coup against

Ben-Bella had been positively supported by Bennabi. Nevertheless, Bennabi continued to write.

And in order to

spread his ideas among the young Algerian generation he

opened up his residence again as a meeting place for an
intellectual exchange of ideas. 131

-123-

Officially, Bennabi was not allowed to travel out of

the country, and though his meetings continued, they were
probably monitored.

He wrote to the authorities asking

permission to perform the pilgrimage and was allowed to fly

to Arabia with his wife and children for that purpose in
1971. 132 Bennabi traveled for about seven months, in
Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, and Tunisia.

He met with

friends and students, possibly anticipating that this would

be his last trip outside Algeria.

In Lebanon he registered

a legal document in the Court of Tripoli in which he gave

his friend Omar Masqawi total authority over his books in
the event of his death.

In his last days, Bennabi felt

uncomfortable, rejected, and isolated.

It is said that at

a reception held by King Faisal during the Haj to the

Muslim notables, Bennabi spoke about the lack of freedom in
Algeria.

It is known also that Bennabi had met several

times with Mucammar al-Qaddafi of Libya.

It seems there-

fore possible that the Algerian authorities might have had

reports about Bennabi criticizing the Algerian regime to
him.

In any case suggestions have been made that Bennabi

133
was harrassed, questioned, and also beaten.
He died at
his home in Algiers in October 1973, and was officially
mourned in Algeria and Libya.
Bennabi's yet unpublished works include the following:
the third volume of his memoirs Mudhakkarat shahid al-Qarn;
Majalis Dimashq

(Damascus Meetings),

a collection of

-124-

lectures he gave in the Syrian capital; and Majalis Tafkir

(Thinking Meetings), notes from the seminars held at his
residence after 1967.134

-125-

Footnotes for Chapter III

Malik Bennabi, Mudhakkarat Shahid al-Qarn, see the
introduction to each volume, al-Tif1 and al-Talib, Dar alfikr, Beirut, 1969 and 1970, pp. '5-7.
2
Ibid., p. 7.
3
A fact known to his Libyan friend Dr. Muhammad alFineish.
4
However, a number of Arab writers have published
their autobiographies, memoirs, or diaries both before and
after Bennabi. Muhammad Husayn Hakyal (1888-1956), for
example, wrote Mudhakkarati fi-Siyasa al-Misriyl in two
volumes, Cairo (1951 and 1953).
Muhammad Na'quib (-1985)
wrote Kalimat li-Tarikh, Dar al-Kitab an-Namudhajy, Cairo,
1975, and shortly before his death, he published Kuntu
Racisan Li-Misr, al-Maktab al Misri al-Hadith, Cairo, 1984.
Abdullatif al-Baghdadi and Anwar Sadat were among Arab
politicians who wrote their autobiographies. Among the men
of literature, Taha Husayn (1889-1973) wrote a1-Ayyam in
which he employed an alter ego to reveal his life story.
5 -cYusuf as-Siba l, Ard an-Nifaq, Maktabat al-Khanji,
Cairo, 1949, p. 6.
Hayat Kifah was published by al-Sharika al-Wataniya
lil-Nashr wa al-Tawzic, Algeria, in three volumes.
7c
Ammar Talibi, "Malik Bennabi wal-Hadara," alThagafa, year *III, volume 18, January 1974", p. 10.
8

Bennabi, Mudhakkarat, Vol. I, al-Tifl, trans. Morwon

Qanawati, Dar al-Fikr, Beirut, 1969, p. 16.
9
Ibid., p. 25.
10

Ibid., p. 16.
Ibid., p. 11.

Ibid., p. 17.

-126-

13

Ibid.
Ibid., p. 32

15

Ibid., p. 44.
Ibid., pp. 59-60.

17

Ibid., p. 71.

18
Jules Verne (1828-1905) was an author of innumerable
adventure stories which combined a vivid imagination with a
gift for popularizing science.
19 .
Pierre Loti (1850-1923) was a French novelist who
wrote masterpieces of travel literature.
Many of his
novels were idealized romances of sentimental adventure
framed in a langorously tropical or oriental setting. He
wrote his famous novel Az^y_ad( , set mainly in
Constantinople, in 1879. He had a friendship with the
Egyptian politician Mustafa Kamil; he also visited and
wrote about the Middle East.
20
Claude Farrere, a French movelist known for his
literary style.
21
John Dewey (1859-1952) was an American philosopher
and educator. He was one of the leaders of the pragmatism
movement.
He had a distinguished teaching career at
several universities, specifically Columbia University from
1904 until his retirement in 1930.
22
Sa c dallah, p. 156.
23
Bennabi, Mudhakkarat, V. I, p. 70.
Bennabi, Madhakkarat, V. I, p. 110.
25
Ahmad Riza (1859-1930) was a well known figure of
the Young Turks.' Born in Istanbul, and educated partly in
Paris, where he fell under the influence of Pierre
LaFayette, a disciple of Auguste Comte, the father of
Positivism.
Riza was politically and intellectually
active.
He published the Mesveret journal in Paris,
through which he attacked Sultan Abdul-Hamid and his
regime. Through diplomatic channels, the Sultan tried to

-127suppress the journal and its director.

However, in 1 9 0 3,
Riza returned to Constantinople after the restoration of
the C o n s t i t u t i o n of 1 8 7 6 by A b d u l - H a m i d , and b e c a m e the
P r e s i d e n t of the new T u r k i s h C h a m b e r of D e p u t i e s .
In
addition to his book La Faillit M o r a l e , Riza wrote LaCrise
de l'Orient, Ses Crises et Ses R e m e d e s , P a r i s , 1910, and
Tolerance Musulmane, P a r i s , 1911.
26
Isabelle Eberhardt (1877-1904) was of Russian origin
and b o r n in G e n e v a .
S h e l e a r n e d a n u m b e r of l a n g u a g e s
including A r a b i c .
She embraced Islam, married an Algerian,
and lived in the Sahara.
She wrote many articles for the
French Algerian newspaper L'Akhbar.
The book mentioned by
B e n n a b i , D a n s L ' a m b e r c h a u d e de 1 ' I s l a m , w a s w r i t t e n by
Isabelle Eberhardt and Victor Barrucand, P a r i s , Fasquelle,
1905.
27
r*
Mustafa
Abdul-Raziq
( 1 8 8 6 - 1 9 4 7 ) w a s an o l d e r
brother of Shaikh Ali Abdul-Raziq.
He translated c A b d u ' s
w o r k u n d e r the t i t l e R i s a l a t a t - T a w h i d , Expose* de la
religion Musulmane, with Bernard Michel, P a r i s , Libraire
Orientalist, 1925.
Abdul-Raziq was himself a student of
c
Abdu.
He s t u d i e d l a t e r in P a r i s and L y o n .
In 1 9 3 8 he
b e c a m e a M i n i s t e r of a l - A w q a f , and in 1 9 4 5 he b e c a m e
President of al-Azhar.
28

B e n n a b i , Mudhakkarat, V. I, p . 1 3 4 .
Bennabi might
c
mean mainly the return of al-Shaikh a l - A r b i al-Tibissi to
his home town and his activities as a teacher, writer and
c
Alim.

I b i d . , P - 136.
30

I b i d . , P 146.

31

I b i d . , P . 122.

32

I b i d . , PP

200-201.

33
" i b i d . , P- 1 9 4 .
34

35

I b i d . , P- 197.

274.
I b i d . , P36
p. 284.
Ibid.
J

-12837

Ibid., p. 327.

38

Ibid.

39

Bennabi, Mudhakkarat Shahid al-Qarn, V. II,

at Talib, trans, by Malik Bennabi, Dar al-Fikr, Beirut,
197(3, p. 27.
40
Ibid., p. 32.
Ibid., p. 30.
42...,
Ibid., p. 20.
43

Ibid., p. 35.

44TIbid*,
. , p. 36.
45
means i :orm or reformism.
It is simply an
attempt Islah
to restore Islamic values in modern Muslim society.
The Qur an and Hadith have many references to Islah as a
positive means to regenerate the religion. Muslim thinkers
generally agree that this can best be achieved by going
back to Islam as it was practiced by those known as the
pious forefathers', as-Salaf as-Salih.

46

Wahhabism or al-Wahhabiyya i s an Islamic movement

and community founded by Muhammad Ibn- c Abdul-Wahhab (17031792) .
He was a Muslih (reformer) whose main aim was to
p u r i f y Islam from ' a l l i n n o v a t i o n s , b i d a c , which had
i n f i l t r a t e d i n t o the r e l i g i o n during the t h i r d century of
Islam.
He and h i s followers s t r o n g l y attacked sufism and
t h e c u l t of s a i n t w o r s h i p , and t h e y c o n s i d e r e d a l l such
a c t s as s h i r k ( p o l y t h e i s m ) .
This a t t i t u d e was of g r e a t
s i g n i f i c a n c e t o B e n n a b i p e r s o n a l l y and t o A l g e r i a n
reformism.
47
Bennabi, Mudhakkarat, V. I I , p . 43.
48
Ibid.
49
* I b i d . , p . 150.
50

I b i d . , pp. 58-59.

51
Luis Massignon (1883-1962), a French o r i e n t a l i s t who
was a member of al-Majma c a l - c I l m i a l - c A r a b i in both Cairo

-129and Damascus. He taught in the Egyptian University during

1913 in Arabic the subject of Tarikh al-Mustalahat alFalsafiyya (The History of Philosophical Terminology). He
studied sufism, and wrote extensively about the subject.
He wrote particularly about the eminent Sufi al-Hallaj and
translated his poetry into French.
52
Jacques Berque confirms that Massignon was often
consulted by the Commission for Muslim Affairs of Paris.
See The Maghrib Between the Two Wars, p. 79.
53
Bennabi, Mudhakkarat, V. II, p. 61. Bennabi did not
address his request as the visit was interrupted by another
Algerian.
54
Ibid., p.
55
- - Abdul-Sabur Shahin, in an interview on 6 and 7
September 1987.
56
Ibid.
Rashid bin- c Isa, in a taped interview with the
present writer in August 1982.
CO

Bennabi, Mudhakkarat, p. 54.

59

Ibid., p. 68.

60

Farid Zain ad-Din (1907-) is a Syrian diplomat. He

graduated from the American University in Beirut and did
his graduate studies in Vienna, Bonn, and Paris. After he
had his Doctorate of Law, he held a number of official and
diplomatic positions.
In 1957 he became the Syrian
Ambassador to the U.S. He wrote National Movements of
Liberty and Unity in 19th Century Europe (in Arabic) in
1933, and Le Regime du Controle des Mandats Internationaux,
Paris, 1933.
61
Muhammad al-Fasi (1908-) is a Moroccan writer and
statesman, a professor, and a corresponding member of the
Academy of Arabic Language of Cairo. He was graduated from
the Sorbonne, and he later obtained the Diploma of Oriental
Studies from Paris. In his homeland he founded the French
language magazine, Le Moroc. During the period mentioned
by Bennabi, al-Fasi was an active founding member of the
Association of Muslim North African Students.
He became

-130one of Arslan's closest associates during the same period.

Later, al Fasi became a founding member of the al-Istiqlal
party during the national movement of Morocco. He wrote
several historical and literary works.
62
Bennabi probably meant Ahmad Belafreige (1908-),. a
Moroccan politician who studied at the universities of
Paris and Cairo. Like his colleague al-Fasi, he was one of
Arslan's associates.
He was active during the North
African movement against France; exiled by the French and
returned to Morocco in 1955. He acted as a secretary of
al-Istiqlal party, and later held official positions as a
minister, and then as a personal representative to King alHasan of Morocco.
63
Ahmed Ben-Milad is a Tunisian physician who studied
in France.
As a nationalist he participated in the
Tunisian political struggle against the French protectorate. He published a brochure entitled Cinquante ans de
preponderance francaise en Tunisia, Paris, 1930.
64

Bennabi, Mudhakkarat, V. II, p. 74.

al-Habib Bourghiba (1903-), President of Tunisia
since its independence from France in 1956 up to his ouster
in late 1987, studied in Sadiqi's elementary school annex,
then at Sadiqi College and the Lycee Caront.
In 1924 he
went to Paris to study law and political science.
Bourghiba was a member of the Destour party led by Abdul
Aziz al-Tha c alibi since 1922. In Paris Bourghiba had
contacts with the French left. In Tunisia, he contributed
to national newspapers written in French before he founded
his own newspaper L'Action Tunisien. In 1934 his circle of
university graduates became the nucleus of the Neo-Destour
Party. About his life and struggle, see the second and
third chapter of Clement Henry Moore, Tunisia Since
Independence;
The Dynamics of One Party Government,
University of California Press, 1965.
66
Saleh Ben-Yousif (1910-1961), Tunisian politician,
graduated from France and became a chief aide to Bourghiba
in the mid-thirties. He was the General Secretary of the
Neo-Destour Party until 1955. When Bourghiba signed the
Franco-Tunisian Conventions, a compromise that granted
Tunisia home rule but not independence, Ben Yousif voiced
his opposition.
He gave a Friday prayer speech and
publicly condemned the conventions. He advocated fighting,

-131not compromise, and was expelled from the partythe

following day. Sensing danger, he fled to Libya and then
to Cairo. There, he was more exposed to the Pan-Arabism
tendency. In Cairo, Ben Yousif collaborated with the Arab
Maghrib Liberation Community headed by the eminent Moroccan
Abdul-Karim al-Khattabi, and with the Algerian FLN. He
was assassinated in Yrankfurt in August 1961.
67
Hadi Nouera (1911-), Tunisian politician, who, like
Ben-Yousif, graduated from Paris and became a close aide to
Bourghiba. He held a Bachelor of Law and a diploma from
the Institute of Higher Social and Political Studies in
Paris.
As an active member of the Neo-Destour Party, he
became a member of its National Counsil and later a General
Secretary.
He assumed several political positions in
independent Tunisia; the last was that of Prime Minister
from 1970 to 1979.
68
c
cIbrahim al-Ba thi, Shakhsiyyat Islamiyya Mu asira,
vol. II, Dar al-Shacb, 1963, p. 222.
69
Bennabi, Mudhakkarat, Vol. II, p. 230. However,
Bennabi confessed that his views were based on biased cultural attitudes that preferred the poor over the rich, and
the country dwellers over city residents. An interview
with Ali ben-Ujate, one of Bennabi's friends conducted for
me by al-'Arabi M'irish in April 1987, ben-Ujate said that
Mustafa ben Issa'i was behind Bennabi's change of views.
70
I b i d . , p . 223.
71

I b i d . , p . 230.

72
B e n n a b i , S h u r u t a l - N a h d a , Dar a l - F i k r ,
1979, p . 29.
73
I b i d . , p . 30.
74
Ibid.

Damascus,

75
B e n n a b i , Mudhakkarat, V o l . I I , p . 108 and 1 1 5 .
76

I b i d . , p. 141.

77
78

I b i d . , p . 116.
Ibid.

-132-

79

Ibid., pp. 147-148.

80

Ibid., p. 139.

81

Ibid., p. 228.

82

Ibid., p. 234.

83

Ibid., p. 293.

84
Ibid., p. 302. Bennabi did not specify the name of
the culture circle, and referred only to it as al-Nadi. He
gave neither the title of his lectures nor the subjects he
lectured about.
85

Ibid., pp. 310-311.

86

Ibid., p. 302.

R7

Ibid., p. 314.
88
n

A letter to me from his friend Ammar Talibi dated

October 1984.
89
Learned during a personal phone conversation with
Iman Bennabi, Malik's daughter, in August 1985. Iman who
is married to a Syrian, lives in California and studies
there. She informed me that her youngest sister would be
twenty-one in August of 1986. In December of the same
year, I called her back and learned that the will had not
yet been opened because the family could not all be in
Algeria to hear the reading of the will. She thinks they
may reunite during the summer of 1988.
90
Al-cArabi Mecrish, "Malik Bennabi wa al-Ittijah alWatani," unpublished paper, partial requirement for M.A.
degree in history, presented to the University of Algeria
in 1982, p. 36.
91
- c
Bennabi,
a 1 - S i_r_a _ a l - F i . k r _ i . f^ a l - B i l a d al^_
M u s t a c m a r a h , Dar a l - F i k r , Damascus, 1979, p . 3 8 .
92
J
^Ibid.
93
Ibid.

-133

94
Ali Ujate, the interview.
95
Ibid.
Shahin, the interview.
97
Ujate, the interview.
98
Bennabi:
F_i Mahab

c
al-Ma rakah,

Haktabat

al-

Mutanabi', Cairo, 1972, pp. 80-81.

"ibid.
Bennabi, Mudhakkarat, vol. II, p. 86.
Shahin, the interview.
102

Ibid.

103

Ibid.
104
c
Personally taped interview with Rashid ben- Isah in
August 1982.
105

al-Ba c thi, vol. II, p. 227.

LOG
According to A. Shahin, the book was published in
the series of Ikhtarna lak (We Chose for You).
107 - Shahin, the interview.
al-cUrwat al-Wuthqa wa al-Thawra al-Tahririyah alKubra, published by Dar al-^rab, Cairo, second edition,
1958.
109
This was the first Arabic translation of Bennabi's
book Vocation de L'Islam, translated by Sha ban Barakat.
Bennabi, al-Siri.c al-Fikri, p. 52. See also alUrwat al-Wuthqa, p. *3.
Bennabi, Ibid., p. 55.
112
Sayed Qutb (1906-1966) was an Egyptian writer,
poet, critic,* and Islamic thinker.
Through his
intellectual development he concentrated on Islamic issues.
He was also an active member of the Egyptian Ikhwan.

-134Implicated in the crisis of 1954, he was a prisoner for ten

years. During this period he wrote most of his books which
were published outside Egypt, chiefly in Beirut. In 1964,
he was set free after the personal mediation of the Iraqi
President Abdul-Salam cArif with Nasser himself. In 1965
Qutb published his book Ma alim fi al-Tarlq, after which he
was arrested and received a death sentence. He was hanged
on September 29, 1966, and buried in an unmarked grave by
the Egyptian government. Qutb and his ideas inspired the
Islamic movement by becoming a symbol of martyrdom in the
mind of devoted Muslims.
113

Bennabi:
F i k r a t al-Afriqiyyah al-Asiyawiyah fi
Daw1 Mo'tamar Bandong, Dar al-Fikr, Damascus, 1981, p. 246.
Ibid.

115
rJ
Sayed Qutb: Ma^alim fi al-Tarig, al-Ittihad alIslami, Kuwait,* 1*979, p. 106.
116
A conversation with the Jordanian Muslim Brethren

member, and a Jordanian Parliament member Yousif al cAzim,

in 27 December 1982. See also Mahdi Fadlu Allah, Ma c a
Sayed Qutb fi Kikrihi al-Sayasi wa al-Dini, Muassasat al
Risalah", 'Beirut, 1979, p. 104, n. 2.
117 c
Ghazi al-Tawba, al-Fikr al-Islami al-Mu asirDirasah wa-Taqwim, Dar al Qalam, Beirut, 1977, p. 70.

"^^~~~~

118
Ibid, p. 55. Other sources say that Bennabi had
known Arabic before his coming to Egypt. Nevertheless, his
Arabic was not as fluent as his French. Therefore, he
could not write in Arabic until very late in his lifetime.
Bennabi learned more Arabic in Egypt. For example, he
wrote al-Sira c al Fikri fi al-Bilad al-Mustcmarah directly
in Arabic "in 1969. In 1970 he translated the second volume
of his memoires into Arabic.
119
Ibid.
120
According to Shahin, Bennabi was being paid by the
Ministry of Waqf a stipend of seventy Egyptian pounds per
month.
121
Kamal al-Din Husain is one of the free officers of
the Egyptian coup of 1952 and a member of the Revolutionary
Command Council. He was considered to be from the Muslim

-135B r e t h r e n wing of t h e o f f i c e r s .
He was a M i n i s t e r
Education and as was e l e c t e d to Parliament .

of

122
Majid Khadduri: Arab Contemporar ies: The Role of
Personalities in Politics. John Hopkins University Press,
Baltimore and London, 1973, p. 83.
123
Naguib was removed from the presidency in November
1954 and Nasser continued to be the Prime Minister and
President of the Revolutionary Command Council until
January 1956 when the new constitution was put to
referendum. In June of the same year Nasser was 'elected'
as president.
Shahin, the interview.
125
However, Bennabi had mentioned the movement in his
book Wijhat al-cAlam al-Islami in a positive way. Although
he did not specify the Ikhwan by name, he did refer to its
dynamic fundamental principle of fraternity.
126
Shahin, the interview.
127-,.,
Ibid.
128
The reason behind Bennabi's stay in Cairo after his
country's independence is still unknown.
Al-Ba thi
mentioned that Bennabi had a conflict with Ben-Bella, and
therefore he did not go back to Algeria in his era.
However, he returned after the Hawwary bu-Medien coup. See
al-Bacthi, Shakhsiyat Islamiyah Mucasirah, Vol. II, p. 191.
129
Bennabi: Bayna al-Rashad wa al-Tih, Dar al-Fikr,
Damascus, 1978, p. 35.
An interview with his wife by phone in August of
1985.
131
A taped interview with Bennabi's friend Rashid benc
Isa in August of 1982. The address of that activity was 5
Franklin Roosevelt Street, Algiers. See al-Ba thi, p. 227.
132
The interview with his wife.
133 .
Ujait, the interview.
Muhammad al-Jafayri, Malik Bennabi wa-Mushkilat al-

-136Hadarah, a Master's thesis presented to the Faculty of

Education, Fateh University, Libya, 1981, p. 30.

CHAPTER IV
HISTORY AND SOCIOLOGY IN BENNABIs' THOUGHT

History, as a social phenomenon, held a significant

place in the thought of Malik Bennabi.

During the 1930s,

as he matured intellectually, his attention turned from

electrical engineering to the study of history, sociology,
and philosophy.

It is evident that Bennabi benefited

greatly from living and studying in France, an environment

of lively intellectuality and the seat of an advanced
civilization.
original

and

There he read many works in French, both

translated

from other

languages.

These

readings also expanded his own knowledge of his Arab and

Muslim legacy.
It may surely be assumed that Bennabi read the works
of a number of Western historical and social thinkers.
Nevertheless, in his writings, Bennabi rarely referred to
his sources in presenting his views on civilization, the
major theme on which his thinking concentrated.

Bennabi

was clearly not disciplined in his writings and frequently

neglected to cite documented sources and references.
free thinker, he seems to have believed

-137-

that his own

-138-

philosophical and sociological

insights and

observations

liberated him from pedantic obligations.

It is difficult, therefore, to single out any truly
formative

intellectuals or tendencies that

Bennabi's ideas.

influenced

However, by surveying the names of Muslim

and Western thinkers whom he did cite in his books, one can
construct a list of those with whom he agreed or disputed.
3
The Muslim thinkers would include Ibn Khaldoun, al4 c
5
- 6
7
Afghani,
Abdu, Muhammad Iqbal, Ahmad Riza, as well as
others to whom brief mention is given. Western thinkers
8
9
10
11
would include Hegel, Marx, , Spengler,
Toynbee,
12
13
14
Ogbern,

Lenton,

and Guizot.

It is interesting that

Bennabi mentioned very few French thinkers in his books.

As an Algerian, he was strongly offended by the attitude of
superiority generally expressed by French writers towards
those they ruled.

Perhaps it was this implicit rejection

of the French that encouraged him to expand his knowledge

beyond the realm of their thought.

Considing his education

and socialization Bennabi must have been affected

various

French

influences.

philosophical,

However,

social

and

examining his views on

by

literary
Islamic

civilization, it would be very difficult to pinpoint this

influence.
On the other hand it is clear that Bennabi was chiefly
influenced by two major thinkers who preceded him in the

-139study of Islamic and world civilization, Ibn Khaldoun and

Arnold Toynbee.

The Influence of Ibn Khaldoun

Ibn Khaldoun, the 14th century Arab North African
polymath, is best known for his Muqaddima (The Introduction
of History, or the Prolegomena).

In this encyclopedic

work, Ibn Khaldoun subjected human society to a distinctive

sociological and anthropological scrutiny, giving to this
activity his term cIlm al->cUmran, "the study of civilization."

To Ibn Khaldoun,

studying

and

interpreting

history was essential to explaining the development of

human society

in time and space.

adopted this view.

Bennabi

implicitly

Like Ibn Khaldoun, he was concerned

with studying the phenomenon of civilization "not as a

chain of incidents, the story of which history relates to
us" but as a "phenomenon the analysis of which may lead us
16
to its canon."
Some studies have suggested that Bennabi was the most
distinctive Arab thinker since Ibn Khaldoun to speculate on
17
the phenomenon of civilization.

There is a clear resem-

blance between the views expressed on social development by

Bennabi and those of Ibn Khaldoun.

However, Malik Bennabi

was not only a careful student of Ibn Khaldoun, but also an

intelligent beneficiary of more recent advancements in the
modern social sciences.

While it is evident that Bennabi

-140had read the Mugaddima and was influenced and motivated by

some of its suggestive ideas, his own importance in the
modern history of Muslim thought develops from his contemplative philosophical views of civilization, which go
beyond those of Ibn Khaldoun.
In his books, and particularly in Shurut al-Nahda,
Bennabi emphasized the notion that every civilization had
to pass through three stages: birth (Milad) , peak (awj_)
.18
and decline (uful)
He thus expressed, like Ibn
Khaldoun, a belief in a cyclical process in civilization.
Indeed, Bennabi acknowledged that

Ibn Khaldoun originated

the concept of such cycles in his theory of The Three

Generations. 19 Bennabi suggested, however, that Ibn
Khaldoun was limited by the terminology and thought process
of his time to an unnecessarily restricted view of this
process and to its application only at the level of the
state (al-dawla).

Bennabi viewed Ibn Khaldoun's work as

merely a theory about the evolution of the state, and he

himself

felt

the concept

could

be

appropriately
profitably extended to encompass civilization. 20

and

Taha Husain had earlier made a similar criticism of

Ibn

Khaldoun's

conclusions.

Husain,

moreover,

had

asserted that it would be an exaggeration to consider Ibn

Khaldoun's work as the beginning of what we today call
sociology. 21 However, a recent study refutes this
criticism levelled by both Husain and Bennabi.

Discussing

Ibn Khaldoun's exploration of fann al-Tarikh, it concludes

-141-

that, for all his close and detailed reference to the

state, Ibn Khaldoun intended his observations to apply also
to the more complex phenomenon of civilization. 22
Like Ibn Khaldoun, then, Bennabi attempted in general
to interpret Islamic history in light of the cyclical
theory.

However, he did not adopt Ibn Khaldoun's idea that

the cohesion of the bedouin tribe (casabiya) leads to the

establishment of a state and a sedentary way of life
(istigrar) that will produce luxury (taraf) and result
ultimately in decay (inhiyar).

Instead, Bennabi elaborated

on Khaldounian thought and developed his own three-stage

schematization, as follows:
1. The Spiritual Stage;

When the human being is in

his natural stage (fitra), Bennabi theorizes, he is guided

mainly by his natural instincts.

Yet, when a spiritual

idea or religion appears, it subjugates and suppresses his

instincts to a "conditional process."23 This does not mean
that the instincts will be terminated but rather that they
will be disciplined into a relationship functional to the
24
religion.
The individual, in this situation, is partially liberated from the natural state while his spiritual
potency controls his life.
Applying this theoretical view to Islamic history,
Bennabi considers the spiritual period to have started from
the point when the message by the prophet Muhammad (P.B.H.)
was received, and to have ended with the battle of

-142Siffin.
and

During this period, the society's frame of mind

attitude

toward

life

became

spiritual.

Bennabi

referred to several historical events in support of his

26
theory.
To him "only the spirit gives humanity the
opportunity to rise and progress, to form civilization.
When the spirit is lost, the civilization falls, for who
loses his ability to ascend, could not help but plunge due
to gravitation." 27
2. The Rational Stage;

As the society continues to

practice its religious principles and integrate its internal bonds, the religion will spread globally.

To Bennabi,

"Islamic civilization departed, as a driving force, from

the depth of souls, to spread horizontally on earth, from
28
the Atlantic shore to the Chinese borders."
At this point, newly created needs and challenges
stimulate a society's capacity and creativity.

As science

and art flourish, reason becomes the controlling force, and

society ascends toward the peak of its cycle of civilization.

However, reason, according to Bennabi, would not be

able to discipline the instincts as effectively as the

spirit did in the first stage.

Instinct, therefore, starts

gradually to gain freedom, and society's influence over the

individual decreases. 29
Bennabi also tries to apply this stage to the history
of Islamic civilization.

To him,

the Umayyad

period

embodied the rational stage to which humanity is indebted

for discovering the percentage system and the experimental

-143-

method in medicine.
3. The Instinctive Stage;
weakness and corruption.

This period is marked by

Such corruption is inevitable

because of the instinct release.

According to Bennabi,

reason will have lost its social function.

Society will

then enter the "darkness of history," as the cycle of

civilization ends.
Bennabi did not indicate a specific period of Islamic
history that exemplified this stage.

However, within the

historical schema, he obviously meant the period of moral

and political collapse of the Islamic states shortly before
the attack of the Mongols and the Turks.

A diagram Bennabi

provided to explain his theory (Fig. 1) showed that he

considered the 14th century, the period coincident with the
life of Ibn Khaldoun, as the turning point to decadence.
In addition, Bennabi regarded the era of al-Muwahhidin as
the last phase of Islamic civilization and believed that

c
~
msan ma ba da al-Muwahhidin (post-almohads man) is placed
outside civilization, i.e., kharij al-hadara. 31
This period

theoretically

resembles the stage of

fitra, the period prior to the appearance of religion or

spiritual ideas.

However, to Bennabi, it was different in

the sense that rajul al-fitra is more receptive to new

ideas.

His primitive nature includes morals and orienta-

tions that are lost or corrupted in the mind of al-ra jul

kharij al-hadara.

-144-

Year 3 8 H. (Siffin)

FIG. 1

Time of Ibn Khaldoun

BENNABI'S CYCLE OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION

-145-

Religion as a Major Factor in Civilization

Ibn Khaldoun and Bennabi placed great value on the
role of religion in founding a civilization, or as it was
called by the ancient scholar "a powerful empire."32 Ibn
Khaldoun

felt religion served merely

to pacify

the

(casabiya) or to
motivate warriors to conquer additional territories. 33
aggression caused by tribal cohesion

Religious fervor was the way to efface competitiveness and

envy among the members of the group, Ibn Khaldoun believed.
To him, religion was essential to the formation of a state.
Because Bennabi approached religion from a contemporary socio-historical perspective, he examined the subject
differently.

To Bennabi, religion was a prerequisite to

the rise of any civilization.

It was the "compound" that

gave man, time, and soil the spark to start a cycle of

civilization. 34
Bennabi analogized that, similarly,
although water is chemically made of oxygen and hydrogen,
these elements would not make water without the addition of
a certain compound.
The notion of religion as a fundamental instrument in
the civilizing process was propounded seriously by Bennabi.
He considered the principles of current Western civilization to be based on Christian ethics and mores.

Despite

the fact that Christianity developed long before Islam, he

pointed out that Islamic civilization flourished earlier

-146than did that of the Christians.

Civilization, Bennabi

concluded, is born twice, "first when the religious idea is

born, and second when the idea becomes recorded in souls,
and is entered into the events of history." 35 Suggesting
that Islamic civilization

had

"both births" at once,

Bennabi explained this phenomenon by reference to "the

36
emptiness that Islam found in the virgin souls of Arabs."
Christianity,

in contrast, appeared in a milieu in which

several different religions and cultures, those of the

Hebrews, Romans and Greeks, flourished.
concluded,

This, Bennabi

prevented Christianity from playing a seminal

role in the development of civilization until it reached

the Germanic tribes of North Europe. 37
It is interesting that in this framework, Bennabi
considered what he calls 'communist civilization' as a
"problem" of the Christian civilization.

He argued that

"the books of Engels and Marx did not reveal the authentic
genesis of the communist phenomenon;

in doing so they

externally detached it from the cycle of the Christian

38
civilization."
Without further detailed explanation,
Bennabi asserted that it was Christianity that provided the
fertile soil from which Marxism drew its vitality.
It is evident that Bennabi reached this far-reaching
conclusion

with

surprising

ease

and

without

a well-

developed argument to support his view of religion as

civilization's "compound."

However, other philosophers

have reached a similar conclusion from their more detailed

-147-

critical examinations of history and of Marxist theory.

According to Nicholas Berdyaev,39 "Marxism-Communism
is extraordinarily dynamic and active, because it bears the
traits of a religion.

Neither scientific theory, nor

political practice would play this role."40 In his book
The Realm of God and the Realm of Caesar, Berdyaev highlighted various similarities between Christianity as a
religion and Communism as an ideology.

The Swiss poet and

historian Gonzague de Reynold, who wrote an eightvolume

work entitled La Formation de 1'Europe, saw in Russia the
41
"off-shoot" of Orthodox Christian civilization.
Arnold
Toynbee regarded Communism as "another of our latter-day
religions,"

and believed that it was only "a leaf taken

from the book of Christianity--a

, 42
misread.

leaf torn out and

These opinions strongly support Bennabi's assumption

that Marxism must be viewed as an outgrowth of Christian
civilization.

This view, then, implicitly conformed with

the spiritual dimension of ideology, which Bennabi regarded

as a requirement

for

its historical effectiveness.

According to both Bennabi and Ibn Khaldoun, the rise and

fall of societies have been due primarily to changes in
beliefs and ideas.

-148-

Society as an Organism
The concept of society as an organism was propounded
by Ibn Khaldoun long before the development and widespread
adoption by the social sciences of the theory of evolution.
In one chapter of the Mugaddima, Ibn Khaldoun stated that
"dynasties have a natural life span like individuals."
Several times he compared the organizational form of human
society to that of animal societies; he viewed primitive
societal organization as similar to that of wild animals,
while civilized

people, he thought, created

societal

organizations comparable to those of domestic animals.

He

believed that the law of causality governs all historical

processes

and

organic

evolution.

All

beings

were

subjected, according to Ibn Khaldoun, to the same law of

birth, growth and decay.

Human societies, consequently,

like the human individual had a certain lifespan.

born

(yuladun),

(yamutun).

All are

live (yaclshun) and finally die

In his Theory of the Three Generations, Ibn

Khaldoun elaborated on "the natural age" of the state as

being comparable to that of all life.
Bennabi, like Ibn Khaldoun, saw growth and maturation
as similar processes for societies and individuals.

He

drew evidence from various scientific theories, particularly psychological, to develop his trilateral classification
for society and man.

Influenced,

then, by both

Ibn

-149Khaldoun and his understanding of the findings of the

scientific impact on the social sciences, Bennabi developed
his Theory of the Three Ages.
Individuals and society, he concluded,

develop or

mature through three stages or, as he calls them, "ages."

These ages are cyclical; that is each stage leads to the
other according to the law of growth.

Individuals and

society go through a "Things" Age, a "Figures" Age, and

44
lastly an "Ideas" Age.
1. The Things Age:
The newborn human, Bennabi argued, does not have a
clear picture of the outside world.

Things, figures and

ideas that interact around him are therefore incomprehensible to him.

His world consists simply of his mother's

breast, or bottle, his own hands and fingers, and the light
above his crib.

He lives completely inside a "Realm of

Things," as Bennabi calls it.

People around him are

unrecognized, and even his mother's face is not distinguished until later.

At this stage, the child tries to

discover the world around him through his mouth.

2. The Figures Age;
The child first starts to communicate with the persons
around him by recognizing and relating to his mother, and
later to the other members of the family.

At this stage,

according to Bennabi, the child starts to develop social

and emotional relationships with others.

He builds his

"Realm of Figures" by initiating and responding to the

-150-

actions of others.

His mental development and his social

behavior are being shaped according to the social norms and

values of those with whom he has contact.
3. The Ideas Age;
In the Ideas Age, the child gradually becomes able to
appreciate abstract concepts.
believed,

At this stage, Bennabi

the child builds his "Realm of Ideas," and

develops the ability to make cultural and

ideological

distinctions.
Bennabi felt that ideas play a major role in modifying
an individual's behavior and appearance.

When he was

teaching Algerian workers in Marseilles in 1938, he had the

opportunity to observe the impact of learning on them.
During his nine months of teaching, Bennabi noticed changes
in the appearance of the workers: their "wild" looks became
more human.45 He also noticed that their tendency to leave
their mouths open diminished.

From

this observation

Bennabi reached the interesting conclusion that receiving

an idea makes the temporal muscles work as a spiral spring,
so that the mouth closes and facial appearance changes. 46
According to his theory of the Three Ages, Bennabi
believed that all three realms coexist throughout the span
of human life.

One realm, however, might dominate to a

certain extent, depending "on the kind of individual and

47
pattern of society he lived in."
For Freud, the individual personality was composed of

-151three realms:

the id, the ego and the superego.

The id

was the primitive instinct with which the child is born.

Although the id remained in the personality, it eventually
was overlaid

by

the ego and

the

superego.

The

ego

functioned as the rational self and as the mediator between

the demands of the id and the restrictions of society.

The

superego was the conscience which provided the self with

judgment, and with punishment if it acted poorly. 48
Society, in Freudian theories of psychoanalysis, has a
relatively minor influence over the more basic and powerful
instincts.

Bennabi, however, viewed society and culture as

the most influential factor in human development.

Society, in Bennabi's opinion, goes through the same
three ages as the individual.

In the context of socieites,

however, these stages are so interpenetrated

that the

passage from one stage to the other is less clear than in

the case of an individual.49 In applying his theories to
history, Bennabi classified human societies into three
categories depending on their level of development.
1. The Pre-Civilized Society (mujtamac qabla al-hadara)
The pre-civilized

society was basically a primitive

society which had an immature view of things, figures and

ideas.

This, Bennabi argued, was the nature of pre-Islamic

society (al-jahillyya) and its tribal structure.

Applying

his Theory of the Three Ages, Bennabi therefore placed this

society at the level of the Age of Things.

At that stage,

he maintained, society was limited and primitive.

Its

-152-

people constructed their faith around lifeless "things"

(idols) and limited their realm of figures to the tribe and
its leaders.

Their realm of ideas incorporated a number of

social values, such as the tribal pride and generosity

exemplified in their vainglorious poetry.
2. The Civilized Society (al-mujtamac al-mutahaddir)
A society of this kind starts to interact effectively
with history because of the appearance of an "idea."
Within Islamic history, Islam was the new idea.

When

bedouin society absorbed Islam, it "declared the birth of a

new cultural realm that subjugated 'things' to serve
50
'ideas.'"
In this society, the Realm of Figures was
constructed according to a unique pattern of brotherhood
between the emigre1 believers (al-Muhajirun) and the natives
51
of Medina (al-Ansar).
At this point Bennabi failed to elaborate on this
stage, as parallel to the Figures Age in human development.
He did explain that in the pre-Islamic society the Real of
Figures was limited to the individual's head of tribe and
old generation.
the limitation

This situation might have resulted from

of their

Realm of Ideas.

When

Islam

appeared, therefore, the Realm of Ideas developed, and

social relationships between the different tribes evolved
in accordance with the new ethics and values. Both alMuhajirun and al-Ansar contributed to the improvement of
the Realm of Figures, which appeared to be more functional

-153and creative.
The religious idea that pushed society towards such a
cycle of development proliferated various social, political
and economic jurisdictions and pressures.

Islam, for

Bennabi, was what organized the biological energy of preIslamic society and made it responsive to the demands of
history. 52 Islam was the 'compound' of civilization that
both generated and unleashed the intellect in order to
construct a Realm of Ideas through the Realm of Figures. 53
3. The Post-Civilized Society (Mujtamac bacda al-Hadara)
This type of society,

in which civilization

has

suffered a retrogression, results from the petrification of

ideas.

In Bennabi's view this process explained

the

regression of Muslim society since its Golden Age.

The

Realm of Figures has lost its original structure and

degenerated to a system based on sufis and imposters and
cthe primacy

of

the

"leader"

55

(al-Za im) .

In post-

civilized society, the Realm of Things is no longer as

simple and essential
tendency

as it had been.

The

principal

in the Muslim world during this stage is the

control and subjugation of people's lives to a "thingness,"

a materialism.
accumulation

Bennabi thus agreed with Ibn Khaldoun that

(takdis) of material things and satisfaction

of the desire for luxury result in complete demoralization

of the soul.

-154-

The 'Rural' and the 'Urban' Individual

Ibn Khaldoun

sta.ted

in his Muqaddima

that rural

communities were morally stronger than urban communities.

In his work's fourth chapter, he asserted that "bedouins
are closer to goodness than urban dwellers."55 Bedouins
were characterized

by courage,

morality and religion.

intrepidity,

freedom,

The city was said to embody the

final stage in the life of the state, and of its civilization.

Town dwellers were prone to dishonesty; they did not

experience unity and solidarity,

and because of their

eg

sedentary life they became addicted to luxury and ease.

These ideas are evident in Bennabi's description of
the structure of Algeria.

He believed that classes did not

exist in colonized Algeria, and that there were only two

social categories, the urban and the rural.

The Algerian

city dweller, in Bennabi's view, "was one with limited

aspirations.

The factors that had caused the decline of

the successive civilizations on his land since Carthage had

likewise corrupted his mind.

Carrying the spirit of defeat

in his heart, the urban Algerian lives his own life at the
end of the life-cycle of the city. Consequently, he is
always ' mid-way,' 'mid-idea' and 'mid-progress.'"57
This
type of man, Bennabi maintains, "does not know how to reach
a goal."

Unlike the natural man (Rajul al-Fitra), he lacks

"a starting point in history," and also an "ending point,"

-155b o t h of which a r e p o s s e s s e d by t h e
al-Hadara).

The c i t y man,

"civilized

man"

(Rajul

i n B e n n a b i ' s v i e w s , was

"suspended p o i n t " in development,

t i o n . 58

h i s t o r y and

the

civiliza-

Bennabi was clearly influenced by Ibn Khaldoun's views

on the bedouins and the city dwellers.
further

details about

Although he gave no

the orientations

and values of

Algerian town dwellers, he did describe them as "nomads

without cattle, and farmers without land or plow." 59 They
nevertheless may be seen to have exemplified his view that
'the man of nature' (Rajul al-Fitra) was more capable of
becoming civilized than the man, like the city dwellers,
who came "out of civilization" (al-Rajul al-Kharij min alHadara) .
It is interesting that Bennabi developed a distinctive
point of view concerning the individual and the society
that have completed their cycle of civilization and moved
"outside" it.

Comparing post- and pre-civilization man,

Bennabi concluded that despite external similarities, they

were, in fact, different.

In his opinion, "The post-

civilized man is not only 'outside' civilization, like the

pre-civilized,

but he is also unable to accomplish a

civilizing work

(oeuvre civilisatrice)."

Bennabi, like

Ibn Khaldoun, believed that bedouins were more capable and

ready to evolve into a cycle of civilization, because of
their natural ability (fitra) and moral values.
Bennabi gave no further examples from history or

-156-

explanations relating to these views, but he did compare

the post-civilized man to the water that comes from a
storage tank after it has been used for energy production.
Before it enters the storage tank, the water resembles the
pre-civilized man.
useful work.

Both have pent up energy to perform a

After the water has been used for this work,

it loses its ability to perform the same task.

This water,

to Bennabi, was similar to the post-civilized man who is

61
unable to re-enter the mainstream of civilization.
Bennabi considered the era of the Alraohads of North
Africa to have coincided with the beginning of the decline
of

the Islamic civilization,

and

he calls the post-

civilized man Insan ma bacda al-Muwahhidin, "post Almohad

man."

Extrapolating from his general observation about

post-civilized man, the Muslims of his day were simply

incapable of producing another civilization.

Bennabi

insisted that this situation would remain unless a total

change occurred in the spirit of Muslims.

Such a change,

which would focus mainly on the Realm of Ideas, was the

only way to restore the individual's ability to create
civilization.

Bennabi's assumption of the possibility of

such redemption contradicts the view of Ibn Khaldoun, who

believed that the collapse of a civilization was inescapable once it had reached its peak and was characterized by
luxury.

-157-

Bennabi and Toynbee

Arnold Toynbee was an eminent British scholar who
surveyed history to discover trends and laws of civilizational organization.

His exhaustive work A Study of

History was a comparative

civilizations/

which

study not of states but of

for him were

the real units of

history.
Like Bennabi, Toynbee was an avid student of Ibn
Khaldoun. In the tenth volume of his study, Toynbee offered
Ibn Khaldoun his "Acknowledgments and Thanks" for giving
him "a vision of a study of history bursting the bounds of
62
This World and breaking through into an Other World."
He
went even further when declaring that the Muqaddima "is
undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever yet
been created by any mind in any time or place."63 Toynbee
therefore agreed with Bennabi in designating Ibn Khaldoun
as the last man in the history of Islamic civilization to
have accomplished such an intellectual task.
The role of religion in the civilizational process is
a fundamental concern for all three thinkers.

For Toynbee,

religion took "the central place in [his] picture of the

universe." 64 The question of the point at which religion
is able to exercise its influential role in the development
of civilization, however, is one on which Toynbee and
Bennabi differed.

-158For Bennabi, religious ideology is the "compound" of

civilization, since it stimulates the spirit to elevate
society above the status quo.

Religion, for Bennabi, was a

prerequisite for all civilizations, an element assimilated

by society before any civilizational cycle could begin.
For Toynbee, however, creativity in religion was likely to
65
accompany the decay of the civilization.

In his role as

an historian, Toynbee saw no need to hypothesize the laws

by which a civilization might be constructed as an historical phenomenon.

However, in surveying history retrospec-

tively, Toynbee concluded that the great religions had

arisen from declining civilizations, and he expressed his
apprehension about the current crisis in Western civilization.
Toynbee echoed Spengler in what he called "second
66
religiousness,"
and predicted that "the West would be
67
converted to a new religion coming from the East."
Both
Bennabi and Toynbee were men of religious faith, and they
clearly agreed that curing a civilization of an internal
illness, or initiating a new civilizational cycle, required
68
a return to religion.
Both thinkers believed that Christian civilization
originated centuries after the arrival of Christianity as a
religion.

Bennabi viewed current Western civilization as

basically Christian.

Above all, he agreed with Toynbee on

viewing

communism as a distorted version of the same

civilization. 69 However, as an academic historian, Toynbee
appeared to be most interested in a detailed examination of

-159-

the distinctions between various civilizations.

Toynbee divided Christian civilization into three
fragments: the Western, the Eastern Orthodox, and the
70
Russian Orthodox.
Some other historians evidently do not
agree with this division. 71 Toynbee applied the same
methodology to his examination of Islamic civilization.
This he divided into two branches: Turko-Persian from
southeast Asia to India, and Arabic from Morocco to
72
Indonesia.
The linguistic division within Islamic
civilization, as well as the geo-theological divisions
within the Christian civilization,
Bennabi's thought.

are not evident in

His approach was more socio-cultural,

and he considered culture the prime instrument in any

civilization.
Although Bennabi and Toynbee represented speculative
views of civilization, there is a very fundamental difference between them.

It is obvious that Toynbee was a

scholar of history who devoted his time and effort to

"finish a monument . . . and build a work that is a pyramid
of piled learning." 74 Throughout that voluminous work,
Toynbee posed philosophical questions and offered speculative explanations.

However, his purpose was not to explore

civilization's laws in order to suggest ways for a given

society to plan its reentry into a cycle of civilization.
In contrast, Bennabi did seem to view this as his selfimposed intellectual task in most, if not all, of his

-160books.

Bennabi was clearly not an historian; he was,

rather, a social thinker whose interest in history was

generally limited to investigation of the causes of decline
and decadence in civilization.

Being an Algerian Muslim,

he was a member of a colonized "uncivilized" society; he

viewed it as his responsibility as an individual and as an
intellectual to discover why his culture and nation had
declined and how to restore them.
In his study of the malaise besetting his society,
Bennabi departed from a main assumption, which was that
"every people's problem, in its essence, is one of civilization."

His concern was primarily to ponder the nature

of civilization.

He presented a number of definitions, all

of which were similar in meaning even if variant in form. 75
Toynbee,

in contrast, never gave a consistent, clear

76
definition of civilization.
And although he had little
hope for the future of Western civilization,77 Toynbee did
give limited suggestions on how to prolong its life span.
However, unlike both Ibn Khaldoun and Spengler, Toynbee did
not accept the assumption that the breakdown of civilization was due to an inevitable organic failure.

He and

Bennabi, despite their adoption of the Khaldounian pattern

of birth, growth, and decay, believed that decline was
caused mainly by faulty but curable elements within a
civilization.

Bennabi's concern was therefore chiefly to

explore the possibilities of reviving a civilization and

enabling it to initiate a new cycle of growth.

While he

-161-

seemed convinced by the Hegelian theory of eternal con78

flict,
Bennabi asserted that although this theory might
be applicable to a biological sphere, its relevance was
limited within the social field.

This assertion stemmed

from his conviction that social development was subjected

to psycho-temporal factors. 79 He believed it possible,
therefore,

to modify

the modes of living

planning of those in society.

Supporting

and

future

his views,

Bennabi repeatedly quoted the Qur'anic phrase: "Verily, God

will never change the condition of a people until they
80
change it themselves."
This particular Qur'anic saying depicted two concepts
fundamental to Bennabi's thought.

The first was his belief

that metaphysical elements played a part in change on all

levels:

individual,

societal,

and

historical.

This

explained his assumption that "behind the close reasons of

81
historical events, there are far-reaching ones."
The
second concept was the possibility of reconstructing a
civilization

through

internal regeneration by mobilizing

its human and material assets.

In Bennabi's view this

could be achieved only by harnessing and directing the

power of the three major elements, man, soil, and time.
Toynbee's theory of "challenge and response" was one
to which

Bennabi

responded

with particular

interest.

According to Toynbee, the rise and fall of civilization

resulted from the success or failure of its response to a

-162specific challenge.

Consistently successful responses

resulted from the assumption, as Toynbee put it, that "the

greater the challenge, the greater the stimulus."82 This
challenge, however, must be neither too difficult nor too
easy.
Bennabi found this concept convincing and attractive
and interpreted it in light of the faith of Islam.

Islam,

Bennabi explained, had put the Muslim conscience between

two terminal points: promise (wacd) and threat (wacld).

To

Bennabi that meant that Muslims exist in circumstances

which enable them to respond well to challenges that are
essentially spiritual.

The promise

(wa c d),

Bennabi

asserted, is the minimum level, one that does not stimulate

an effective effort.

This minimum, he maintained, is

exemplified in the following verse from the Qur'an: "Never

give up hope of God's soothing mercy,

truly,

no one

despairs of God's soothing mercy except those who have no

faith." 84 The threat, on the other hand, is the maximum
level of challenge, which makes the effort impossible,
because the severity of the threat outweighs the individual's spiritual capacity.

This maximum he saw exempli-

fied in the following Qur'anic verse:

"Did they then feel

secure against the Plan of God; but no one can feel secure
from the Plan of God except tho.se doomed to ruin." 85
Applying Toynbee's theory of challenge and response to
these verses from the Qur'an demonstrates Bennabi's dedication to the discovery of practical inspiration from within

-163-

the culture and faith of his people.

It is from this

standpoint that Bennabi drew his explanation of history as

a social phenomenon.

Religion, the fundamental cultural

framework, had clearly played a great role in the historical development of his people.
Bennabi agreed that the changes in history could be
interpreted in various ways.

While Toynbee stressed the

effect of the natural environment, and Marx gave preponderant importance to economic factors, still other explanations might exist, Bennabi pointed out.

He argued that

historical change should be attributed to the total of all

the psychological effects which resulted from spiritual
impact.

He summed up his views by stating that "history

making is accomplished according to the outcome of three

social influences:

the Realms of Figures, Ideas, and

Things."86
Volume IV of Toynbee's Study was devoted mainly to the
analysis of the causes of the breakdown of civilization.
Before the breakdown, Toynbee asserted.- society was run by
a "creative minority," but eventually this minority ceased
87
to create and became merely a "dominant minority."
The
decline phase consisted of three subphases: breakdown,
integration, and dissolution.

The time that separates the

breakdown and dissolution might extend for centuries, even

millenia.

The principal cause for this breakdown cannot be

ascribed to outside forces.

For Toynbee, "civilizations

-164perish through suicide, but not by murder."

Bennabi's
internal

theory of the course of civilization's

breakdown

Toynbee's.

88

generally

coincided

with

that

of

He believed that the Western invasion of the

Muslim world, and the Third World in general in the 19th

and 20th centuries was not essentially an attack from the
outside but rather was due to a factor that Bennabi called
"colonizability."

That is, "the psychological aspect

precedes and directs the social aspect."89 The problem was
essentially

in the mind.

The "colonizability" of the

Muslim world was a major factor in its domination by the

colonials, both before colonization and after political
independence.

It was very

important, therefore,

for

society to purify its cultural heritage, and to steer

itself away from negative attitudes, concentrating on the
very real question of development.
Speculating further on the current situation in the
Islamic world, Bennabi studied a number of issues, though
he never questioned
civilization,
success.

the ability

of

Islam

to produce

since it had done so once with evident

Bennabi did explore the question of why modern

Muslims were staying 'outside civilization.'

Similarly, he

pondered why it was that Islam had not assumed a proper

role as a "compound of civilization."
how Muslims could

He also discussed

utilize their spiritual power as a

driving force towards civilization and what the circumstances and tools were that constituted a prerequisite for

-165-

such a takeoff.

His attempt at answering such questions

resulted in his creating what might be called a theory of

civilization.
Bennabi was distinguished among Arab thinkers for his
use of a functional approach to interpret the role which
religion could play in social change.

In this regard he

went beyond the observations of both Ibn Khaldoun and

Toynbee.

Bennabi did not look to Islam as a metaphysical

creed, but rather as a major part in a complex social

system.

This part, Bennabi believed, was not only essen-

tial to provide equilibrium for Muslims but also to give

them inspiration and motivation.
Bennabi was convinced from his study of history that
religion and culture have always developed and interacted
in dynamic ways.

He also believed

that the

serious

problems facing contemporary Muslims resulted from the fact

that Islam had lost its social function among the masses.
Since Islam as a religion served as the major element in
the cultural structure, Bennabi devoted considerable effort
to the examination of ideas and the attitudes that shaped
Muslim life.
From his study and contemplation he concluded that the
problem of culture was central to all aspects of Muslim
life.

In his book, Mushkilat al-Thaqafa (The Problem of

Culture), he followed a variety of sociological and psychological approaches to conclude that purifying and regener-

-166ating the culture of Muslims was essential.

clear

Despite the

influence of Western thought on his own ideas,

Bennabi's approach to culture was governed and sustained by

Islamic values and perspectives.
Through Mushkilat al-Thaqafa,

which integrated well

with the ideas of his Mushkilat al-Afkar fi alcAlam alls land (The Problems of Ideas in the MQslim World), Bennabi
diagnosed effectively the negative aspects of his society's
Realm of Ideas.

His central concern was that Muslims were

at a crossroad of history and they needed to reenter into a

cycle of rebirth of their civilization.

They should,

therefore, form an effective society that could adopt,

modify and add to the prevailing civilization.

His theory

of civilization was the core of his thought, and one that

colored many of the conclusions he reached in the broad
range of his writings.

-167-

Footnotes to Chapter IV
Bennabi, Mudhakkarat, V. II, p. 54.
2
Bennabi, as was mentioned in the third chapter, had
read Risalat al-Tawhid of Abdu in its French translation
of Mustafa Abdul-Raziq. Also in French, he read about
Muslim philosophers like al-Ghazali, al-Farabi, and Ibn
Rushd. He probably read the Mugaddima of Ibn Khaldoun in
the same language. He was informed about Islamic civilization in detail through La faillite morale de la politique
occidental en Orient by Ahmad Riza, (Mudhakkarat, V I , p.
107) . He also read Le Babisme et L'Islam by Abdul Rahman
Taj. See al-Zahira al-Quraniya, p. 209, 243, 245 (notes).
It is important to mention that Bennabi must have read
Keredine's book, Reformes nessaires aux Etats Musulmans and
benefited from it.
3
Ibn Khaldoun (1332-1406) was a North African scholar
of history, a judge, and a political figure of his time.
Born in Tunisia, he died in Egypt. Ibn Khaldoun devoted
himself to writing and teaching, and fulfilling political
and diplomatic positions. He was a dedicated historian and
a pioneer in seeking to elaborate the philosophy of
history. He is widely considered to be the founder of
c
c
sociology, the discipline which he called Ilm al- Umran.
4
Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838-1897) was a political
activist who called for a regeneration of Islam which would
enable the Muslim world to face the Western powers. A
powerful orator, he was expelled at various stages of his
life from Afghanistan, Egypt, and Iran.
He died in
retirement and under house arrest in Istanbul. He was a
forceful, eloquent, and charismatic advocate of PanIslamism. With the help of his disciple Muhammad Abdu, he
published from Paris al- Urwa al-Wuthqa, a political,
philosophical news sheet in Arabic of which 18 issues
appeared.
His influence in the Pan-Arab and Pan-Islamic
movements remains strong.
5

Muhammad
Abdu (1849-1905) was one of the most
prominent followers of al-Afghani. Graduated from alAzhar, and having taught in Par al- Ulum, Abdu wrote in

-168al-Ahram and later edited a1-Waga i al-Misriya. Following

the political agitation and British military intervention
in Egypt of 1882, Abdu was arraigned among the leaders of
Urabi's party. He was sentenced to exile and went to
Syria, and then Beirut where he lived for three and onehalf years. He joined al Afghani in Paris and together
they published al cUrwa al-Wuthqa. In 1888 Abdu returned
to Egypt after mediation by Lord Cromer and others. He was
later appointed a Qadi, and then a Consultative Member of
the Court of Appeal. In 1895, he was appointed a member in
the Administrative Committee for the Azhar, ultimately
appointed Chief Judge of Egypt.
Abdu concerned himself
with reforming the educational Islamic institutions,
particularly al-Azhar. He more concerned with the importance of reforming people through education than through
political establishment. In this respect, the left his
mark upon Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia. ' He is
credited with creating a working synthesis between Islamic
and Western legal concepts and is viewed as a modernizing
reformist.
6

Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) was a prominent Indian

Muslim po'et and philosopher. He obtained a Master's degree
in philosophy in 1899, and studied law at the same time.
In 1905, he went to Europe for higher studies in both
Britain and Germany.
In Britain, he joined Cambridge
University where he came in contact with the philosopher
Dr. McTaggart and the orientalists Nicholson and Browne.
He obtained his Doctorate degree from the University of
Munich on The Development of Metaphysics in Persia. He was
an active member of the All-Indian Muslim League. Writing
many books and poetry collections, he called for the
reconstruction of Islamic thought. Iqbal was influenced by
al-Afghani's ideas and was an advocate of pan-Islamism. He
nevertheless advocated the creation of a separate nation of
Indian Muslims.
7
Ahmad Riza, see Chapter III, note 25.
G e o r g e W i l h e l m H e g e l ( 1 7 7 0 - 1 8 3 1 ) was a German
philosopher who based h i s concept of e x i s t e n c e on the idea
of d i a l e c t i c a l movement.
He believed t h a t every movement
o r i g i n a t e s in t h e s i s , and p r o g r e s s e s towards a n t i - t h e s i s ,
and t h e n s y n t h e s i s i n t o a new t h e s i s i n c o n t i n u a l
evolution.
His system of philosophy i s commonly known as
Hegelianism, and h i s p a t t e r n involves "beingnon-being-becoming."
He g r e a t l y i n f l u e n c e d t h e development of

-169nationalism and Marxism.

9
Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a German social thinker who
was greatly influenced by Hegelianism.
He studied
economics in Berlin, Paris, and Rome, and received his
doctorate in 1841. In 1848 he issued, with Friedrich
Engels, the Communist Manifesto.
Later, in 1867, he
published Das Kapital, the 'bible' of the Communist
parties. Marx believed that human society was evolving
toward a more perfect state caused by a complex series of
conflicts. He believed that the law of opposites was the
fundamental law of the universe, and that every social
process contains conflict and contradiction.
Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), a German historian and
political philosopher.
He wrote various books examining
history and civilization.
In his Morphology of World
History, he concluded that because definite laws of growth
determine the history of cultures, history is predictable.
He became famous mainly for his book Decline of the West,
in which he predicted that Western civilization had reached
its final destiny and must die.
Arnold Toynbee (1889-1979), a British historian who
is best known for his monumental A Study of History. He
served as a scholar and professor of history at Cambridge
University. In this work, Toynbee viewed history as an
open process in which civilization continued to grow while
it responded creatively to successive challenges, but
'broke down' when it failed to respond successfully. His
formula of "Challenge and Response" summarizes the movement
in human society.
12
William Ogbern, an American social scientist, who
obtained his Ph.D. in 1912, and who taught at the University of Chicago.
He was well known for his numerous
articles and papers. His book Social Change, published in
the 1920s, was an extensive examination of cultural evolution and change. Biology and psychology were extremely
influential disciplines on his sociological studies. He
developed a theory called "cultural lag."
13
Ralph Lenton (1893-1953), an American anthropologist
who is best known for his popular text book The Study of
Man (1936), considered the most inclusive introduction to
anthropology published two years after his death. Lenton's
second important book was The Tree of Cultures in which he

-170studied different patterns of culture.

14
Francois Pierre Guizot (1787-1874) was a distinguished French writer, historian, and politician. Early in
life, he was primarily a man of letters. Educated in
Geneva, he returned to Paris in 1805. He wrote important
literary works such as his Dictionaire des Synonymesf and
his Vies des Poetes Francais. Besides his memoirs, Guizot
wrote several historical and political works, of which the
most important was The History of Civilization in Europe.
In 1839, he was appointed ambassador to Britain, and in
1840 he became the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Being very
influential in both intellectual and political spheres,
Guizot became the head of the French cabinet. He was
driven to exile in England by the revolution of 1848, but
returned home in 1851 to devote himself to literature and
history.

15c

Ilm a l - Umran could be t r a n s l a t e d l i t e r a l l y as

s c i e n c e of development or s c i e n c e of s o c i e t y .
Ibn
Khaldoun's concept is that the basic causes of h i s t o r i c a l
events are to be sought in the social s t r u c t u r e .
Bennabi, Shurut, p. 71.
17
cc
Fahmi Jad an, Us us al-Taqaddum Inda Mufakkiri alls lam fi al-cAlam al- Arab! al-Hadith, al-Mu'assasa alArabiya lil Dirasat, Beirut, 1979, p. 401.
18Bennabi^ Shurut,

p.. 66.
19
The theory states that the ages of the state are
completed in three generations. The first generation
retains their nomadic savagery as well as their solidarity.
The second tends to live a sedentary life, to practice
power, and to enjoy life. They later lose their aggressiveness and the desire to conquer. The third generation
has completely forgotten the nomadic, rough life style.
Having lost their love of power, they have become accustomed to being ruled. Because they enjoy the easy life,
luxury corrupts them and the structure of their society
breaks down.
20
Bennabi, Shurut, p. 62.
21 - Taha Husain, La philosophie social d'Ibn Khaldoun
(Falsafat Ibn Khaldun al-Ijtima ya) , trans. Muhammad '"Abd

-171Allah c Inan, Maktabat al-Ictimad, Egypt, 1925, p. 63.

See Malham Q u r b a n ,
N a z a r l y a t j a l - Ma r_ i_f_a
Muqaddalimat Ibn Khaldoun, al-Muas'sasa a l - J a m i ^ i y a l i l D i r a s a t , B e i r u t , 1985, p . 85.

23
"Conditional p r o c e s s " might r e f e r t o the notion of
punishment and r e w a r d .
The t h r e e Abrahamic r e l i g i o n s ,
namely,Judaism, C h r i s t i a n i t y , and Islam, agree t h a t if the
i n d i v i d u a l adapts h i s i n s t i n c t s according to the i n s t r u c t i o n s of h i s r e l i g i o n , he w i l l be rewarded in t h e a f t e r life.
24
"Functional relation" between religion and instinct,
as I understand it, means the right function of each
instinct as indicated by the religion. According to Islam,
for example, the individual should follow his instincts
only to preserve his kind and life (by food, marriage,
defense, etc.).
25
Siffin is the name of a place on the east bank of
the Euphrates. The place was made famous by the battle
fought there in the 37th year of the Hijra (657 A.D.). The
conflict was between Ali, the prophet's cousin and son-inlaw, and Mucawia, b. abi-Sufyan, Arab governor of Damascus.
In the first phase of the battle, Mu awia's role was that
of the avenger of cUthman, the third caliph who had been
assassinated by a supporter of All's claim to the caliphate. Through a political strategy of arbitration
(tahklm), Ali was ultimately deposed from the functions as
fourth caliph, and Mu awia was proclaimed caliph in his
place.
26
Bennabi presented two major examples of the
influence of the spirit on the conscience. The first was
the woman who came to the prophet Muhammad to confess that
she had become pregnant from adultery, and asked to be
punished according to Islam. The prophet asked her to wait
until she gave birth. When she did, she came back asking
to receive her punishment.
For the second time, the
prophet asked her to feed the baby until he was two years
old. When she came for the third time, the prophet and
Muslim community felt obliged to stone her to death. The
second example was that of Bilal ibn-Rabah, the Abyssinian
slave who believed in the faith of Muhammmad. Because of
that, he was persecuted by the prophet's enemies. However,
he remained steadfast in his faith, responding to his

-172persecuters by repeating the phase "Ahad, ahad," which

meant "God is One," an article of the faith of islam.
27Bennabi, Vocation de l1 Islam (Wijuhat al-c-Alam alIslami), cAbdul Sabur Shahin, Dar al-fikr, Damascus, 1959,
p. 30.
28
Shurut, p. 53.
29

Ibid., p. 69.

30
Bennabi, Wijhat, p. 28.
31
This assumption is repeatedly made by Bennabi
particularly in Shurut, Wijhat, and Mushkilat al Afkar.
32
Charles Issawi translated Ibn Khaldoun's expression
'al-Dawla al- ammatu al-istila' al-cazimatu al-mulk' into
the "powerful empire." See his book,* An Arab Philosopher
of History, Butler and Tanner Ltd., London, 1950, p. 131.
33
c
Ibn Khaldoun, Al-Muqaddima, Mu'assasat al-A zami
lil-Matbucat, n.d., p. 157-158.
34
Bennabi, Shurut, p. 45.
35
36

Ibid. p. 55.

Ibid.
37
Bennabi supported this point by reference to Herman
Keyserling (1880-1946), who mentioned in his A Spectral
Analysis of Europe, that high spirits and morals appeared
in the Christian world with the German tribes. Guizot also
discussed this historical phenomenon. See his book The
History of Civilization in Europe, trans. William Hazlitt,
A. L. Burt Publisher, N.Y., 1899, p. 48-52.
38

Bennabi, Shurut al-Nahda, p. 54.

39 .
Nicholas Berdyaev (Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev)
(1874-1948), a Russian philosopher who believed in Marxism
in his youth. Later he became critical of Marx, first of
his idealistic standpoint, and then of his religious
standpoint.
In 1920, he was appointed a professor of
philosophy at the University of Moscow. Two years later he
was expelled, and went first to Berlin, and then to France.

-173In Paris, he established the Free Academy of the Moral

Science. On the topic of Christianity and Communism, see
also Berdyaev's book The Origin of Communism, trans. R. M.
French and G. Bles, London, 1948.
40
Berdyaev, The Realm of Spirit and the Realm of
Caesar, trans. Donald A. Lowrie, London, 1952, p. 136.
41
Oscar H a l i c k i ,
"The P r o s p e c t
of
Western
C i v i l i z a t i o n , " i n The I n t e n t of ToynbeeA C o m p a r a t i v e
A p p r a i s a l , Loyola U n i v e r s i t y , C h i c a g o , 1 9 6 1 , p . 206.
42
Arnold Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, Oxford
University Press, New York, 1955, p. 235.
43
Cited in Saleh Faghirzadeh, Sociology of Sociology,
The Saroush Press, Tehran, 1982, p. 128.
44
c- Bennabi, Mushkilat al-Afkar fil Alam al-Islami,
45
Bennabi points to his experience in Marseilles where
he taught Algerian workers, se'e Chapter III.
46
Bennabi, Mushkilat al-Afkar, p. 32.
47
Ibid., p. 35.
48
See Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id, London, 1961.
49
Bennabi, Mushkilat al-Afkar, p. 39.
50
Bennabi, Shurut, p. 45.
51
Means literally the 'helpers.' The title given the
believers of Medina who received and supported the prophet
and his followers after they emigrated from Mecca. The
prophet established a bond of brotherhood between the
individual Muhajirin and Ansar.
52
Bennabi, Mushkilat al-Afkar, p. 62.
53
Bennabi, Shurut, p. 46.
54
Ibid.
55
Ibn Khaldoun, Al-Muqaddima, p. 123.

-17456

IbicU, PBennab;i,

58

Ibid.

59

Ibid.

Shurut

Ibid., P 70.
61

Ibid., P 71.

c 2

A r n o l d T o y n b e e , A Study_ of H.is_tor.y_,
U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s , London, 1954, V X, p . 236.

Oxford

63
Cited in Sociology of Sociology, p. 173.
c 4

Toynbee, "What I Am Trying to Do," in Toynbee and

History--Critical Essays and Reviews, edited by M. F.
Ashley Montague, Porter Sargent Publisher, Boston, 1956, p.
6.
6K

Edward Rochie Hardy, "The V a l i d i t y of Toynbee*s

Universal Church," in The I n t e n t of Toynbee, p . 159.
66
Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, New York,
n.d., p. 310.
67
It is interesting that Bennabi had a similar prediction concerning the Muslim world. He anticipated that the
center of this world would shift from the Mediterranean
shores to Asia. He thought that Islam in its earlier
geographical area had remained either royal under the
authority of the Bashas and their masters, or beduin under
the authority of the arabized Berber Amir. Bennabi predicts that Pakistan and Indonesia will be more conducive to
revival of Islam because of their ability to utilize the
spirituality of the Orient of which they are part. Both
Bennabi and Toynbee give express respect for Buddhism and
Hinduism. See Wijhat al-cAlim al-Islami, p. 208-213.
68
About Toynbee's view of religion as the salvation of
civilization, see Hans Kohn, "Faith and Vision" in Toynbee
and History, p. 354. Bennabi's view will be discussed
throughout the dissertation.
69
D3
See p. 145.

-17570
Toynbee called the present shape of Western civilization the 'post-Christian,' or 'ex-Christian' civilization. He admitted, however, that this civilization could
not make an absolute break with its past.
Moreover,
Toynbee asserted that modern secular civilization was still
Christian in essence. See his book Christianity Among the
Religions of the World, New York, 1957, p. 46.
71
See Christover Dawson, "Civilization and History,"
in Toynbee and History, p. 132-133.
72
Arnold Toynbee, An Historian's Approach to Religion,
Oxford University Press, New York, 1956, p. 149.
73
Sir Ernest Barker, "Dr. Toynbee's Study of History
A Review," in Toynbee and History, p. 89.
74
Bennabi, Shurut, p. 19.
75
Bennabi's predictions on the future of civilization
will be discussed in detail throughout the next chapter.
See Mathew A. Fitzsimmons, "Toynbee's History and
Character of the United States," p. 146, and William
McNeil, "Some Basic Assumptions of Toynbee's Study of
History," p. 35, both in The Intent of Toynbee.
77
H. Michell, "Herr Spengler and Dr. Toynbee," in
Toynbee and History, p. 86.
78
Eternal conflict means that a phase of any
historical development tends to be confronted and replaced
by its opposite. This opposite, in turn, tends to be
replaced by a phase that is a resolution of the two
opposing phases. These phases of a dialectical development
are called thesis, antithesis and synthesis.
79
c- Bennabi, Wijhat al- Alam al-Islami, p. 27.
80
S . XIII, 11.
81
c- Bennabi, Wijhat al- Alam al-Islami, p. 25.
82
Tcynbee, A Study of History, VII, p. 260.
83
c
Bennabi, Milad Mujtama , p. 21.

-176-

*S. XII, 87.

85

S . VII, 99.

86

f
Bennabi, Milad Mujtama , p. 23.
87
Toynbee, A Study of History, IV, p. 6.

88
P i t i r i n A. S o r o k i n ,
"Toynbee*s
H i s t o r y , " in Toynbee and H i s t o r y , p . 175.

Philosophy

of

89

Bennabi, Mushkilat al-Afkar, p. 212.

CHAPTER V
BENNABI'S THEORY OF CIVILIZATION

Bennabi was raised in circumstances that appeared to

confirm the military, scientific, and political superiority
of the West.

Throughout his life and education in Algeria,

he perceived himself to be, and probably suffered from

being an indigene.

When Bennabi surveyed the Arab and

Muslim world during his twenties, he certainly realized

that it was mostly under Western imperialism.

However, he

was able to seek substitution for self-esteem in the Islah

movement flourishing in his country through the Association
of the Algerian cUlama.
Bennabi became extremely disappointed by the 'Ulama's
alliance with the secular politicians who were generally
oriented to the westernization of Algeria.

He could not

consider Benbadis's cooperation with the political parties

in the Algerian Islamic Conference as an effective tactic
in dealing with the issue of colonization.

On the con-

trary, he accused the 'Ulama of ignorance and lack of

methodological thinking, and he condemned their seeking a
solution from without the Algerian soul.

-177-

-178-

This attitude explains the resentment and frustration

Bennabi felt towards the leaders of the Algerian reform
movement.

These emotions seem to have raised many impor-

tant questions in Bennabi's mind.

The chief recurring

theme of inquiry he raised throughout his books was why

Muslims were unable to reenter a new cycle of civilization
despite their best attempts to regenerate their society.
Attempting to develop an objective
Bennabi applied a scientific approach.
was trained

to utilize various

investigation,

As .an .engJLnfier, he

scientific

avenues of

research, such as observation, hypothesis, development, and

analysis.

Analyzing an issue, Bennabi believed, helps one

to understand its different parts and to reconstruct it

differently in order to reach a specific goal.
To Bennabi therefore, it was evident that he needed to
analyze clearly attempts at renaissance developed during
the modern history of the Muslim world.

In doing so,

Bennabi's purpose was to define the causes for

their

failure which, from his perspective, seemed or indeed had

proved to be certain.
argued,

In order to know a disease, he

it must be carefully diagnosed,

since merely
2

talking about it vaguely would not bring its cure.

Reviewing

the various movements and ideas in the

modern history of Muslims was, then,

essential to Bennabi,

not only to realize what was at fault, but also to develop

his own perception for regeneration.

From his study of the

-179different stages of Islamic revivalism, Bennabi divided

them into two major developments,

the tribal and the

religious.
In his view, the awakening of the contemporary Muslim
world had started as a response to Western colonialism.
This had taken heroic and legendary form in the activities
of Prince c Abdul Qadir of Algeria, a noble knight-like
figure supported by tribes and clans who loved horses and
gunpowder.

Later Prince

Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi of

Morocco had played a similar role; his power had stemmed

from a tribal allegiance formed out of both Arabs and
Berbers.

But to Bennabi, it was obvious that these earlier

movements, for all their power and bravery, had failed

because they had not stirred the whole Muslim community.
In Bennabi's view, the true awakening of community had
begun with the voice of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani who had
3
announced Islam, not the tribe, as his starting point.

Bennabi's Views of al-Afghani and cAbdu

It appeared to Bennabi that the seeds of Islamic
revival had in fact been planted in the East with the
4
mutiny of the Muslim sepoys in India in 1857.
Knowledge
of that uprising inspired al-Afghani and motivated him to
5
convey to the conscience of the Muslims their predicament.
From his early life in Iran, work in Afghanistan and travel
to India, he had witnessed the spiritual and material

-180bankruptcy of the contemporary Muslim world.

Moreover,

al-Afghani was extremely disappointed and provoked by the

7
8
establishment of Alegrah college

by Sayyid Ahmad Khan,

an

initiative al-Afghani considered as a betrayal of Islam and

Muslims.
Sayyid Khan drew sharp denunciation from al-Afghani,
9
mainly because of his 'naturalism,'
and his adopting
English as the language of education.
the Refutation of the Materialists

Al-Afghani's tract,
(1883) was directed

primarily against the neicheriya of Khan and his group.

Besides attacking Khan's Western approach to modernization,
al-Afghani sharply criticized his political motives.

He

went so far as to accuse Khan of sowing division between

Hindus and Muslims in order to strengthen the foreign hand
over India.
Al-Afghani's attitude towards the British occupation
of India similarly came under criticism from Bennabi.

Al-

Afghani once said that if all the Indians would spit at

12
once, they would sink the British Islands.
Bennabi
commented critically that this attitude was a sign of the
nahda leader's deviation towards "thingness" 13
Nevertheless, to Bennabi, Al-Afghani "was the initiator of the reform, its pioneer and its legendary hero,"
even though, "he was not personally a reformer in the full
sense of the word." 14 Because of the man's hot temper,
Bennabi explained,

he could not be the dispassionate

intellectual who closely examined

the problems of his

-181-

society and arrived at solutions.

Al-Afghani was, in

Bennabi's view, rather a mujahid whose cultural ability was

more of an oratorical and persuasive type which had an
inspirational impact on the masses.15 He was also a man of
nature, raju1 fitra, one of that type whom Bennabi considered as more prepared to involve in the process of
civilization than one who is 'outside' of civilization.

In

addition, al-Afghani, in Bennabi's opinion, had been a man

of a unique culture who had created in the Islamic world a
model for what could be called a 'man of culture and
science.' 16 It was al-Afghani as this model that had so
strongly motivated the young intellectuals of Istanbul,
Cairo and Tehran, among whom the leaders of Islamic reform
had been formed.17
It is on this basis

that Bennabi disagreed

with

Professor Gibb's opinion that al-Afghani was not of a great

18

mental capacity.

Bennabi maintained

that al-Afghani's

great virtue was in having been "the first to take the risk
of talking about the social function of the prophets in the
fallen world of post-Almohades."

If he was not the leader

and philosopher of modern reform, Bennabi said, he was

undoubtedly its pioneer who had conveyed his vision everywhere he went.

His activities clearly had a great impact

on Muslim society, more in psychology and morale than in

politics. 19
Bennabi believed, then, that al-Afghani had left a

-182legacy of ideas.
taste

They had been valuable in restoring a

for Islamic values with which

domination of Western culture.

to encounter

the

But that legacy had failed

to address properly the causes of the 'colonizability' of

the Muslim world. 20 This had resulted, according to
Bennabi, from the fact that al-Afghani's ideas had not
developed from a sound methodological plan, and because his
policies had
. ,_.c. 21
scientific.

not

been

sufficiently

objective

and

The reform movement in general, Bennabi maintained,

was properly now to be concerned with providing the Muslims
with self-defending, self-justifying means, instead of
22
mobilizing the society's basic qualifications.
The
writings of Arslan, al-Kawakibi and Ahmad Riza had been,
moreover, merely apologetic and defensive, but not constructive.23 The major problem of the Islah, in Bennabi*s
opinion, was that the movement lacked methodologic and
scientific thinking.

Its intellectuals frequently crit-

icized the external enemies, but ignored the internal

factors of disintegration.

Consequently, their efforts

were directed towards treating various political issues

instead of examining a specific historical situation. 24
In Bennabi's view, al-Afghani, as a politician, had
maintained

that the Muslim condition would improve by

reforming the system of regulations and laws.

Instead of

closely studying the internal factors that caused the

problem, al-Afghani struggled to destroy or reorganize the

-183-

political systems in the Muslim world.

al-Afghani seemed

therefore to Bennabi to have been more a tribal man and to

have acted spontaneously, without intent to change or
reform the post-Almohades individual. 25 This was why,
Bennabi thought, al-Afghani had failed to advance the
reform movement further.
Because of this, Bennabi believed that Muhammad cAbdu
had had to deal with the problem differently.

As an

Azharist from Egypt, a country which was historically known

for its social orientation, Bennabi pointed out,
adopted a social approach.

Abdu had

Abdu knew that to reform the

Muslim world, one should start with the soul in compliance

with the Qura'n, which stated that in order for God to
change the situation of a people, they must change from
within.

Alim, Bennabi explained, cAbdu answered the

As an

question of how the soul could be changed by referring to

the scholastic methodology of cIlm al-Kalam.

For Bennabi,
this approach could influence the Muslim only in the scope
of doctrine,

aqida.

He disagreed with

Abdu on the

grounds that his approach would fail to generate any remedy

to the deplorable social, moral, and intellectual condition
of Muslims.

According to Bennabi, even the post-Almohades

26

individual never abandoned his doctrinal system.

How-

ever, Bennabi did not examine the question of how much this
doctrine conformed with the real Islam.

Unlike c Abdu, he

was not a religious scholar inclined or qualified to direct

-184his activities and writings toward the reformulation of

Islamic doctrine.
For Bennabi, the real problem was not in "how to teach
the Muslim his faith," but rather in "how to restore the
effectiveness and the social impact of that -faith."

In

other words, Bennabi argued, "the problem was not how to

prove God's existence to the Muslim, but rather how to make
him sense that His existence fills up his soul as a source
of energy." 27 Bennabi thought that dogmatic scholasticism
encouraged argumentation, "which is the most harmful thing
to the being of the Ummah." 28 It is easy to see that this
argument

replaced

the

"theological problem."

"psychological
29

problem"

with a

This result would not help to

encounter the urgent issue of religion's social function.

The notion of the social function of religion was
repeatedly mentioned in Bennabi's views about civilization.
Because of his belief that religion constitutes the 'compound' of civilizational processes, Bennabi was more aware
of the 'spirit' of religion than with its forms and
rituals. 30 For him, the social function of Islam could
best be restored by teaching the Qur'an so as to reveal to
the Muslim's conscience the Qur'anic fact as if instantly
declared from Heaven.31 But how and by what means could
this mental and spiritual ignition be achieved?

Bennabi

gave no suggestions.
Despite

his

disagreement

with

Abdu's

approach,

Bennabi viewed the revival of scholastic philosophy as the

-185-

first intellectual response of the awakening Muslim world.

According to him, Risalat al-Tawhld was the first intellectual work since the Mugaddima of Ibn Khaldoun.32 cAbdu and
his school influenced al-Azhar, which represented the major
moral and literary center of the Muslim world, and which,
because

of

Abdu's efforts,

had come to admit the

possibility of development and change.38 Bennabi credited
Abdu with the revival of al-Azhar and with balancing the
purified Islamic education with the new ideas of Western
Bennabi looked to cAbdu as a thinker in a world
that was not accustomed to contemplate its problems. 34

culture.

The second generation after al-Afghani and CAbdu was

"capable of carrying the banner of argument."
students and disciples eventually dominated
debates at the beginning of the century.

Abdu's

the literary
However, the

disputants, Bennabi believed, lacked prescience and depth

as "they were not looking for facts, but for proofs."
Therefore, "they did not try to listen to each other, and
each of them would drown his colleague in a flood of
words." 35
Bennabi viewed the leaders of reform as men who had
more interest in theories than practice, more in words than
in actions.

They had, in his opinion, failed to cure

themselves of the negative characteristics of the postAlmohades.

Their fault was, basically, that they never

looked inward to investigate the real causes of their

-186community's backwardness.
In dealing with the malaise of society, Bennabi continued,

the reformers had spent decades treating

symptoms instead of the sickness.

the

Typically, a politician

like al-Afghani looked to the problem from a political

standpoint, while a theologian like cAbdu looked to it from
36
a doctrinal standpoint.
The Muslim world, without
knowing precisely its disease, had entered the pharmacy of
Western civilization

seeking a remedy.

Yet for what

illness, Bennabi asked, and by which drug?

Although searching for healing indicated a sign of
civilization precursor

(badirat hadara), the Muslims "had

taken a pill for ignorance, a drug for poverty, and a

medicine for colonization.
here,

They, therefore, built a school

demanded

independence there, and established a

factory in a third place."37 The result, however, was far

from curing or establishing civilization.

Bennabi was

fascinated

by Japan,

which

had

been

transformed from the medieval to the modern world in only

fifty years. 3 8 Although Muslims and Japanese alike had
tried to learn from Western civilization, the Japanese
alone had refused to borrow the 'destructive ideas' of the
39
West and remained faithful to their culture and history.
Comparing

the Muslims' Nahda

and

the

Japanese
37
renaissance, both of which started in the same decade,
Bennabi bitterly noticed the divergence in approach and
result.

In fact, Bennabi was not the first Arab intellec-

-187tual to invite his community to contemplate the success of

the Japanese.

Al-Afghani might have been the first to

expiain to his audience the experience of Japan as an

Oriental country.

He summed up his observation in stating

that the Japanese had reached their high level by believing

that there is "no power with ignorance and no weakness with
knowledge."
Shakib Arslan, like al-Afghani, held the Japanese
model as evidence of the possibility of selectively borrowing scientific and technical means from Western civilization.

In his book, Limadha Ta'akkhara al-Muslimun wa-

Taqaddama Ghayruhum (Why Are the Muslims Backward while

Others Are Advanced), Arslan repeatedly mentioned Japan and
praised its wisdom in determining what it should borrow
from the West and what it should not.
The failure of al-Afghani, Arslan and other Islamic
reforms to lead the society to the same results reaped by
Japan was to be attributed, according to Bennabi, to their
system of thinking.

The principal problem of Muslim

society was that it did not embark upon its renaissance

with a plan that took into account all its elements of
disparity

and disagreement.

Muslim

intellectuals were

not an apparatus for criticism and analysis, but acted from

a defensive position to prove the value of Islam.

A full

century after its attempts at rebirth, Muslim society had

not acquired the virtue of effectiveness and had lost a
great deal of time and effort. 42

-188-

Bennabi's Evaluation of Modernism

It was relevant to Bennabi in his attempt to speculate
upon the renaissance movement
examine

the

modernism

tendency

rather

in the Muslim world

of modernism.

than Westernism

Speaking

signifies

to

about

Bennabi's

adherence to the idea of civilization, and his rejection,

even theoretically,

of the idea of Westernization.

Acquiring civilization never meant to him a blind imitation

of the Western model.
To him, the Islah movement should be essentially an
attempt to break away from the characteristics of the postAlmohads, while 'modernism' was to him an approach to
create a junction with the West.

The latter trend in

Muslim thought, however, had developed basically during the

Western occupation

"while the society

had

lost

its

balance," and therefore "the trend took its elements from

the 'colonial school.'"
The Europeans had not come to the East as modernizers,
Bennabi stated, but rather as colonizers.

On the other

hand, the Muslim who departed to Europe went only in order

to obtain a university degree or to satisfy a superficial
curiosity.

He went, Bennabi believed, to study a language

or to learn a profession, not to discover a culture.

It was easy for Bennabi to see how Western society and
intellectual tradition rarely came into focus for the

-189Muslim.

Yet this attitude in his view was not merely a

result of the negligence of the Muslim; the colonizer had

also contributed to the problem.

Western imperialism,

Bennabi believed, never intended to extend the elements of

European culture, but rather to export its own material
"discards."
The accumulation of material goods embodied the major
phase of modernism and the concept of quantity rather than
quality prevailed

in the society's culture.

Bennabi

recalled seeing in Algeria in 1925 big European cars parked

in front of bedouin tents, with doors left open so that
chickens would lay their eggs in them.
Bennabi admitted that the modernism advocated by some
Western educated Muslims did bear some fruit in Muslim
society.

However, their efforts had resulted in more

external and

superficial models of development.

The

modernizer, in his view, was content with merely putting a

new garment over the old form.

Their contribution to the

tendency of superficiality in society resulted from their

views of Western civilization.

These views,

Bennabi

believed, were subjected to psychological restraints that

upheld the 'post-Almohades' society.-

Muslims who communi-

cated with the West examined its civilization from two

extreme viewpoints.

Their opinions about Western civiliza-

tion, therefore, were extreme:

they viewed it as holy and

pure, or lawless and corrupt.

Muslim students with theology degrees, who journeyed

-190-

to Europe to learn modern science,

Bennabi

observed,

covered their eyes and prevented themselves from contemplating European civilization.

Any student "who came from

a society that sold its antiquity to American tourists

could not comprehend the European's attachment to ancient
things, which connect the past with the future.

He would

not observe how a child learns the significance of life

when he pets a cat or plants a flower.

His interest would

not be aroused by the hard working farmer who stands at one

end of his plowed land to check his work, interacting with
the soil; such interaction makes civilizations."
In Bennabi's view, the devout Muslim student did not
live the life of Europe, about which he had read, but which
he had not tasted.

Even inside a European school, such a

44
student could not learn that 'realistic effectiveness'
that distinguishes the Christian from the Muslim.
To spread modernization, Muslims borrowed many things,
even tastes and needs, which caused proliferation and
confusion in social ideas and approaches.

The Muslims

amassed modern products of Western civilization but ignored

the fact that creating

a civilization

does

not

mean

"accumulation," but rather "engineering and construction."

The modernizers, Bennabi believed, wanted the Muslims to be
'imitator customers' of a civilization that opens its
stores more than its schools.
In its global context, the idea of modernization,

-191because

of

socio-historical

factors,

took

approach in most of the Third World countries.

similar

Moderniza-

tion then, "subscribed to a naive understanding of development, namely, that it was no more than a remake of the
historical growth of Western capitalism.

This approach

completely ignored the historical dimension of developfc ..45

ment.
In Bennabi's vieww, proper development could well be
inspired and encouraged by the proper borrowing from the
West.

For him, civilization could not be created

isolation from other human experiences.

in

Christian civili-

zation, after all, had benefited from Islamic civilization,

which itself had been nourished

from interaction with

cultures such as those of the Greeks and Indians.46 The
question that was probably unresolved

even to Bennabi

himself was what exactly the Muslims needed to borrow.

The major mistake of the modernizers, in Bennabi's
opinion, was that they failed to distinguish between the
real necessities

(al-darurat al-haqiqiya) and the forged

necessities (al-muzayyafa).47 This confusion had generated
moral chaos and behavior disorders, as the Muslim conscience was torn between the desire to overcome social and
political backwardness and the determination to save a
valuable moral legacy. 48
Bennabi criticized the modernizers for lacking goals
and means, as well as a sustaining theory.

Their main

concern, he considered, was merely to save the Muslim world

-192-

from its political disorder and foreign domination.

This

political approach, Bennabi stated, was itself borrowed

from the European system and did not focus on the real
problem of the individual Muslim.
Hisham Sharabi,

in his study The Arab Intellectuals

and the West, agreed with Bennabi in viewing the outlook of

the Arab Muslim intellectuals as strictly political 49 . Yet
despite its political tendency, modernization was not
altogether

sterile

for

Bennabi.

He

recognized

that

Algerian intellectuals who had been in contact with the

West did become more effective from a social perspective.
They needed to adopt an approach, other than that of the
electrical process, to relate themselves to their com.. 50
munity.
Bennabi did credit the movement of modernization with
"crystallizing the collective conscience, something the
Muslims had needed since Siffin.

The discussions based on

the stream of ideas that the movement had brought from the
West had contributed to an examination of the traditional
51
measures [of the Muslim society]."

The Causes of the Failure

No objective thinker can avoid critical evaluation of
his society's goals,

strategy and achievements.

For

Bennabi, such critical analysis was clearly dictated by the

nature of his intellectual task as an active participant in

-193-

his society's regeneration.

His objective,

then, in

reviewing the various earlier attempts to achieve this, was

to identify the causes of their failure.

Success in this

task required of him a logical hypothesis, a systematic way

of analysis, and above all, the courage to present his
conclusions.
Bennabi classified the modern history of Muslims into
three stages:

the first had been characterized by long

centuries of sleep,

the second by an awakening and a

regaining consciousness, and the third by chaos and oscillation.

The first stage had embodied what he defined as

the 'maternal' phase, while the second and third represented the 'pre-social' and 'social' phases. 51
The causes of the confusion and controversy of the
present time could be found, he decided, in the nineteenth
century Western challenge referred to by Bennabi as having
resulted in a response of shock (sadma) .

He also saw an

earlier cause in the split that occurred in the Muslim

community at Siffin, after which, he maintained,

the

struggle between the 'Qura'nic spirit' and the 'character52

istics of ignorance' (jahiliya) had been launched.
Bennabi concluded that the failure of both attempts at
regeneration derived from the fact that both the early
reformers and modernizers had been the social products of
an environment and culture that was static.

Despite the

many differences between them in approach, philosophy and

-194educational background, both movements had been governed by

similar social and historical restraints.
marized

Bennabi sum-

the major causes of their failure

following: 53
1.

The imprecision over goals:

into the

All their attempts

and speculations had been, in Bennabi's view, partial and

incomplete.

The movement leaders had never designated

civilization as the target.

Consequently, they had fallen

into errors and wasted their time and means.

2. Their failure to clarify the nature of the social
problems

and

to recognise

that

the

spiritual and moral than material.

issues were more

A rebirth

in the

culture, therefore, would be the only effective tool for

achieving the required improvements in the psychology and
the behavior of the community.
3. Imprecision in defining ways and means.
process of changing the stagnant society,

In the

both reformers

and modernizers, in Bennabi's opinion, had failed to define

their starting point.

They had tried to achieve vague

goals by merely importing Western goods, hoping thereby to

awaken the society.

This equation had indicated a lack of

insight into the nature of the stages necessary for the

development that Muslims needed.
Having investigated and examined the socio-historical
weaknesses

and

strengths characterized

by both

these

attempts at creating a renaissance, Bennabi proposed an

alternative.

And to give clarity and distinction to his

-195-

suggestions, he developed an original philosophical and

sociological terminology.
Unlike other Arab thinkers and writers, Bennabi did
not use expressions such as al-taraqqi (advancement), altaqaddum

(development) or al-nahda

(renaissance).

He

consciously and carefully selected the term hadara (civilization) to indicate his broad historical concept of the
social phenomenon of human life.
subtitled Mushkilat al-Hadara

All his books were

(Problems of Civilization),

including his autobiography and al-Zahira al-Qura'niya (The

Qura'nic Phenomenon) in which he discussed issues con54
cernmg Qura'nic interpretation.
The approach of taking civilization as a criterion
derived from Bennabi's belief that "the problem of any
people is that of its civilization." 55
It was this
exclusive insight that led him to study various civilizations and to focus on the rise and fall of the Islamic
civilization.

He devoted his attention most specifically

to examining the deteriorated situation of the society

which "had been discovered by Europe in the nineteenth
century."

This step was essential

in developing

his

formula of change.
Change, Bennabi believed, has to start inside the soul
of the individual, fard, to transform him into a person,
shakhs.

This transformation allows him to change that

primary distinction which relates him to the human race and

-196so encourages those social inclinations that connect him to

the society.

For Bennabi, people who constitute the

'Realm of Figures' are the major tools in the process of

social change and, obviously, in civilization.

Comparing

the value of the 'Realm of Things* with that of the 'Realm

of Ideas,' Bennabi values the latter over the former.

In

his view, it had historically been proven that when a

society had a good balance of ideas, things could easily be
created. 57 On the other hand, accumulating the products of
one civilization could not construct a civilization for
another society; this is a truism proven historically in
all the Third World countries in the last century.
Analyzing the major elements of civilization, Bennabi
determined that it contained three principal elements:
insan, man, turab soil (raw material), and waqt, time.

His

choice of the term turab instead of madda substance was

carefully made by Bennabi.

This focus was on the social

meaning of soil in the form of land, which implies ownership and provides social guarantees and security,
al-damanat al-ijtima iyya.

He also intended to include in

the term the idea of the technical utilization of land and

58
of its natural resources.
Moreover, Bennabi intentionally avoided the use of the term substance (madda), because
in ethics it stands opposed to the spirit, in science it is
59
contrasted with energy, and in philosophy with idealism.
From an Islamic standpoint the term turab (soil) could
be interpreted as the earth, where man was placed and asked

-197-

to live and act like God's viceguard.

The term relates not

only to nature and natural resources, but also to love of

country.
His equation of civilization stated that:
Man + Soil + Time

Civilization

It is, moreover, essential to understand that Rennabi

considered religion or ideology as the 'compound* of these
three elements.

It alone could

'compound' the social

values that it represented into a collective idea.

"But

when faith becomes a dull belief with no reflection, when

it becomes an individual tendency, its historical message
will end on earth.

This faith will be incapable of driving

a civilization because it will become a faith of monks, who

cut their bonds with life and abandon their duties and
responsibilities, like those who have sought refuge in
60
Marabout's cells ever since the time of Ibn Khaldoun."
This conclusion has direct relevance to the case of
the Muslim community that has a large and growing population, a vast area of land, and probably unlimited time.
The problem of establishing a full integration of these
factors, Bennabi saw, was complex in the extreme.

The

major factor on which he concentrated, however, was clear

namely

that Islam had

lost

its social

mobilizing agent in Muslim civilization.

function as a

-198-

Bennabi's Definition of Civilization

Bennabi's training as an engineer led him to a concern
with defining his concepts, generally through analysis and
synthesis.

Out of that approach, he declared:

"Civiliza-

tion is the sum of those moral and material means that

enable a society to provide each of its members with all
61
the social services needed for him to progress."
According to this definition, civilization is not
merely a matter of economic progress.
product of dynamic, concrete elements.
elements is the moral.

It is rather the
The first of these

In the absence of a moral system

representing society's cultural roots, it is impossible to

consider the interests of future generations.
Although Bennabi gave equal importance to the material
and the non-material aspects of civilization,
frequently misunderstood.

he was

For example, in a recent paper,

Ali al-Qurayshi interpreted Bennabi's definition of civilization as a purely materialistic concept, closer to modern
62
ization (madaniya) than to civilization.
Bennabi's use of the term "social securities"
(al-damanat al-Ijtimaciya) may have caused
misinterpretation.

al-Qurayshi's

Explained in the language of economics,

al-Qurayshi incorporated Bennabi's term into the concept of

equal distribution of the national income, understanding it
63
apparently as relevant to the concept of basic needs.
As

-199a UNESCO document has declared:

"There is no limit to the

growth and complexity of man's need." 64
But not all human needs are material;

such non-

material realities as aspirations, cultural interests, and

spiritual demands must be recognized as human necessities.
Bennabi pointed out that not only all forms of security but
even the respect of the individual is as important as
hospitals, schools, and jobs.

His fundamental "compound"

of civilization is a religion or ideology, which includes

every detail of a cultural and ethical system.
Moreover, Bennabi considered civilization "as a result
of a living, dynamic idea, which mobilized a pre-civilized
society to enter history and constructed a system of ideas
on its archetypes.

So the individual society developed an

authentic cultural expression, which in turn controls all

the characteristics that distinguish that society from
66
other cultures and civilizations."
The "idea" with which Bennabi begins this statement
confirms the importance to his theory of non-material
factors in civilization.

His books forcefully presented

the debate between the values of "things" and "ideas."

He

had noticed that the dilemma of the underdeveloped countries was not their lack of things, but their poverty of
ideas.

Hence, "in its simple definition, civilization is

not a pile of different kinds of objects.

Rather it is a

harmonious whole of things and ideas in their various

relationships, uses, peculiar means, and circumscribed

-200-

places."0'
Bennabi believed that people and environments give
each civilization

its distinctive traits.

civilizational cycle

"has its particular

Thus every

psycho-temporal

conditions, which are of the society; therefore it is a

68
civilization with these conditions."
It is obvious for
Bennabi that "it is civilization that gives birth to its
69
products."
But, he adds, "these products can never
create a civilization." 70 It would be truly impossible,
quantitatively and qualitatively, to purchase the products
of one civilization in order to construct another.
maintained,

because

"civilization

cannot

Bennabi

sell us its

spirit, ideas, intimate wealth, tastes, or that accumulation of untouchable notions and meanings."71 The mistake
of Muslims, and probably of the Third World, he thought,
was that after achieving political independence, they at
once created a 'thingness civilization' (hadara shayiyya)
based on accumulation (takdis).

In fact, the importing of

material objects is an activity that results primarily from

the inability to create and produce.
Ali Shari cati 72 agreed with Bennabi"s conviction that
Muslims had had no theoretical understanding of how to form
a society.

He argued

that they merely

"put together

different parts and elements to build a modern but formless

73
society, with no aim or goal."
Both Bennabi and
Shari ati held that civilization was not a surplus that

-201developed countries could sell or give as charity to the

poor and underdeveloped.

Rather, they said, it is forces

of that self-reliance that provide "society's capacity to

74
carry out a certain function or task,"

Historical Premises
Bennabi maintained that for any society to succeed in
achieving its spatial and temporal goals, it was necessary
that it perceive its place in history.

It was then vital

that Muslims define their place in the cycle of history in

order to understand their position in the world and move in
the right direction.

They urgently needed to realize that

as Muslims they did not live in 1948 (the date of publication of Les Conditions de la Renaissance) but
Islamic

year

1367.75

Establishing

problems

in the

in their

historical context would be a great help in resolving them,

especially as Bennabi noted, Muslims usually fail to put
76
their problems in a logical and conceptual framework.
He
noted that: "The great mistake of our leaders was that they
did not calculate this socio-historical fact." 77
Bennabi

held

that

all current

issues

concerning

Muslims had developed in an historical sequence that had

culminated

in their culture.

It is not mere chance,

Bennabi explained, that snake charmers existed in both

Marrakich and Samarkand.

This phenomenon meant to Bennabi

that the common element in what was called the "Algerian

-202problem" or "Javanese problem" was in fact an Islamic

problem.

Moreover, this Islamic problem reached back

historically to an early period, since "the far end of the

separation occurred in Siffin, replacing the democratic
78
caliphate government with tribal authority."
Bennabi repeatedly emphasized that every society's
problems were linked to shared experiences and events in
space and time in culture as a whole.

"Social problems,"
therefore, always "have historical characteristics." 79
Bennabi's insistence on the necessity that Muslims define
their positions according to their own historical cycle
manifested his keen and original understanding.

Jadcan has

remarked that this notion weakened the Western theory of

change within the Muslim world and replaced it with one
80
that was distinctively Islamic.

Man, The Major Factor of Civilization

In Bennabi's theory, man occupied a central position.
He was "the primary society device . . .: if he moved,
society and history moved, but if he paused, society and
81
history paused."
Thus the challenge faced by Muslims was
to create men who could use soil, time, and their own
creativity to reach their goal in history. 82
In Bennabi's thought, man has two identities.
first,

fixed and unaffected by history,

The

is that of a
natural creature honored by his creator. 8 3 The second

-203identity, changeable and influenced by history and social

84
circumstances, is that of a social entity.
In the first
case Bennabi referred to the anatomical and physiological
characteristics that determine his external shape.
second represented

The

the mental and psychological features

shaped by his social heritage and historical experiences.

It was this latter, socio-historical, structure of man
to which Bennabi gave the greater importance.

Throughout

history man has interacted with time and space not as a

natural creature but as a social personality.

Previous

experiences and fixed habits have formed his attitude

towards life.85 Bennabi emphasized that the deterioration
of Muslims in the modern world had resulted from the sociohistorical disintegration of people, not of faith.
Bennabi's view of the dialectic relationship between man
and

civilization

lay behind

that position.

Man,

he

asserted, was that complex being who constructs civilization.

But man is also a product of civilization, a result

of both its material and non-material aspects.

The dynamic relationship between the individual and
progress or civilization led Bennabi to raise two fundamental questions.

First, through what faculties can man

affect his society and determine its position in the world?

Second, how can these faculties be directed to achieve the
goal of civilization.
In response to the first question, Bennabi maintained
that man affects his society through three attributes:

-204-

intellect, labor and money.

By directing these three

interrelated areas, he concluded, one may create a human87

centered development.
Bennabi focused on two aspects of this concept of
directing

(tawjih).

The first was the avoidance of con-

flict between efforts in the society of different powers

seeking the same goal. 8 8 In the Muslim world,the
Renaissance era was full of episodes demonstrating a clear
failure to define goals and means.
confusion of two types of elites.
their way while

journeying

The result was the

The first of these lost

to the West searching

for

solution to local problems, to discover and assimilate

appropriate avenues to civilization.

The second type

remained in servility to the glorious past, faithful to the

80
status quo and unable to go beyond or create new ways.
The second aspect of directing (tawjih) considered by
Bennabi was that of planning, centrally important in the
90
modern world.
Planning, Bennabi believed, would positively affect the socio-psychological situation of both man
and society through the pre-definition of goals. It would
also allow scientific correlation of problems, an important
process

that might
thought. 91

be hindered

by certain habits of

Bennabi held that it was through culture that the

three faculties of man (intellect, labor, and money) could
be directed.

He considered culture to be the primary

-205-

i n f l u e n c e on man a s a s o c i a l p e r s o n a l i t y , and on s o c i e t y as
a collective
c u l t u r e . 92

body.

Both man and s o c i e t y w e r e man-made

Directing Culture
Bennabi's concern with definition extended to the term
culture,93 "the sum of ethical characteristics and social
values attained by the individual since his birth, his
primary resources within the environment where he forms his
94
habits and personality."
Again, "culture is the atmosphere that includes external elements such as measures,
tunes, and motions and internal elements such as tastes,
customs and traditions." 9 5 Society's culture was, in
Bennabi's view,

the frame of reference

for ideas and

behavior that would unify both the Caliph and the bedouin
in Muslim society, and the physician and the shepherd in
British society. 95
Because culture belongs not to a
certain class, but to the whole society, it "interferes in
the affairs of the individual and of the society.
It
97
affects the problems of leadership and of the masses."
Bennabi's Islamic perspective forbade him to restrict
culture to purely human issues (humanism) or societal
issues (socialism). 98 According to the Islamic concept of
social justice, the individual should act for the good of
society

and society should act for the good of the

99
individual.
Bennabi believed that his concept of culture

-206was based on a similarly Islamic understanding of the

relationship between society and the individual.
Differentiating

between culture

(thaqafa) and know-

ledge (ma c rifa), Bennabi stated that culture is not a

theory in learning (ta lim), but a theory in education
(tarbiya).

It has to do, then, with behavior

(suluk)

rather than with knowledge and information (tacllm).

He

concluded that Muslims needed to liquidate and purify their

culture

as

a fundamental

step

toward

progress

to

civilization:
As long as the society has not purified the
heritage of the past six centuries of failure, as
long as it has not renewed man according to the
teaching of Islam and the new scientific methods,
its search for the balance required for a new
synthesis of history will be in vain.103Authenticity was an important cultural element emphasized by Bennabi.

He saw culture as the symbolic founda-

tion through which members of a society interpret the world

and establish relations with reality and with one another.
A culture, then, is characterized by its own distinctive
view of life and specific historical evolution.

Therefore

a society cannot import its culture from another society.

It must be created

in a specific historical time and

place. 102
The need

for adaptation

to the modern world has

intensified the Arab world's concern with the central place

of its Islamic heritage and its need for cultural authenticity.

In both conservative and progressive countries,

-207element has to connect them and activate them once they are
integrated.

In his theory, this moral factor controlled

the structure of the "Realm of Figures," without which the

two "Realms of Ideas and Things" could not function.115
Within the "Realm of Things," the moral principle functioned. For example, Bennabi wrote, the radio set includes
a number of scientific principles.

The instrument was the

result of social relations driven primarily by Christian

values.

These values had linked the various fathers of the

radio, the German scientist Hertz, the Russian Poppof, the

French Branly, the Italian Marconi, and the American
Fleming.116
A similar situation is possible, said Bennabi, in
Muslim society, where Islam is a powerful force that could
create a specific civilization.

But which Islam?

The

answer for Bennabi was the Islam that drives minds and
energies, the Islam that arises from social Islam.117 The
social function of religion was always for Bennabi a
requirement for development.
As civilizational activities

involve creativity,

aesthetic orientation was also important for the creation

of culture.

Bennabi considered ideas meaningful pictures,

constructed by the aesthetic interaction among colors,

voices, smells, motions, and forms.118 While the moral
principle directs society's goals and means, the aesthetic
factor defines their forms.119
Muslim society in its current decay has lost its

-208-

evaluating the Muslim culture's stock of ideas can enable

Muslims to emerge from social decline.
Generally, Bennabi maintained, two types of ideas
exist, one that will change people and the other that will
106
change objects.
Further, in the Muslim culture two sets
of ideas exist.

Bennabi called the first of these "natural

ideas" (al-afkar al-matbu c a) and the second

ideas" (al-afkar al-maudu c a).
first represented

"invented

In Bennabi's scheme the

the culture's "authenticity

original moral system.

and

its

By "natural ideas" he understood

ideas stemming from the early Islamic era.

"Invented ideas," on the other hand, were those that
apparently grew up after Siffin, during the flourishing of
Damascus, Baghdad, and Cairo.107 These ideas represented
ideas borrowed by the culture or imposed upon it, ideas
assimilated by the culture and integrated into it.

At one

time these invented ideas could have been "toxic ideas"

(afkar qatila), damaging because separated from their
.
intellectual and historical context.108 Once adopted into
the culture and part of the transmitted heritage of the
people, they were no longer toxic but were dead ideas
(afkar mayita). 109
In Bennabi's view, ideas could be sound and true but
not effective, or they could be effective and false.

His

example for the former was Islam, which he considered true

but with little positive effect on its people.

Some ideas

-209proved wrong by history, and had- a great influence on

people's mind.

As an example of the false yet effective

idea, Bennabi mentioned the legend that the earth was

supported by the horns of a bull.
This study of ideas in Muslim culture led Bennabi to
urge society to adopt self-reliance in undertaking the
responsibility
tion.

for self-criticism

and cultural purifica-

He emphasized the approach of duty (wajib), rather

than right (hag),

saying that individuals should perform

their duties before demanding their rights.111 Initiation,
112
he maintained, was the real measure of effectiveness."

The Cultural Project

His realization of the cultural dimension in development led Bennabi not only to highlight the negative aspects
of his culture but to suggest some modifications.

His goal

was precisely to present general guidelines for what might

be called a cultural project.

Constructing and regen-

erating a group of ideas and concepts was, he thought, an

effective way to mobilize society.

He emphasized four

fundamental elements of his project:

1.

Moral Constitution (al-dustur al-khuluqi)

2.

Aesthetic Sense (al-dhawq al-jamali)

Practical Logic (al-mantiq al-camali)

3.
4.

Technique (al-sina a)

Morals and ethics occupied a major place in Bennabi's

-21Ccultural project, not from a philosophical angle but from a

social one.113 Material and non-material elements do not
alone create culture, Bennabi maintained.

An ethical

element has to connect them and activate them once they are
integrated.114 In his theory, this moral factor controlled
the structure of the "Realm of Figures," without which the
115
two "Realms of Ideas and Things" could not function.
Within the "Realm of Things," the moral principle functioned.

For example, Bennabi wrote, the radio set includes

a number of scientific principles.

The instrument was the

result of social relations driven primarily by Christian

values.

These values had linked the various fathers of the

radio, the German scientist Hertz, the Russian Poppof, the

French Branly,
116
Fleming.

the Italian Marconi, and the American

A similar situation is possible, said Bennabi, in

Muslim society, where Islam is a powerful force that could
create a specific civilization.

But which Islam?

The

answer for Bennabi was the Islam that drives minds and
energies, the Islam that arises from social Islam. 117 The
social function of religion was always for Bennabi a
requirement for development.
As

civilizational

activities

involve

creativity,

aesthetic orientation was also important for the creation

of culture.

Bennabi considered ideas meaningful pictures,

constructed by the aesthetic interaction among colors,

voices, smells, motions, and forms. 118 While the moral

-211-

principle directs society's goals and means, the aesthetic

119
factor defines their forms.
Muslim society in its current decay has lost its
aesthetic sense, Bennabi believed.

As an analogy, he

recalled the young beggars who wear rags to evoke people's

sympathy.

Their condition, he argued, does not so much

prove poverty and economic disorder as it does negligence

and chaos in Muslim society.120 The rents in the child's
garment represent the holes in Islamic culture, as do the
blaring horns in the streets. 121 Reconstruction of the
cultural sphere would similarly restore aesthetic taste and
moral principles.

So too an aesthetic sense would create a

climate of achievement at work and positive habits in all

areas. 12 2
Bennabi summarized this scheme in an
equation:123
Moral principle + aesthetic sense

=
civilizational tendency

Bennabi argued that cultural regeneration was also

dependent upon the presence of a practical logic, the
attainment of all possible benefits from available sources.
This pragmatic concept was very carefully balanced by the
ethical principle and aesthetic taste.

Bennabi related his

concepts of effectiveness (fa iliya) closely to his view of

practical logic.

Both had to do with a psycho-intellectual

attitude towards life that involved creativity, initiation,

-212and qualification.

To him practical logic meant competence

in every

life.

area of

Bennabi

considered

it an

important factor in development, one that could affect the

individual's attitude towards his life.

Life, Bennabi

believed, could never be mistaken in creating problems,

because it follows the law of causality.

The individual is

the one who commits errors in understanding his problems

and coping with them. 125
Within

Muslim

society,

social problems had been

arranged in pre-established categories, Bennabi maintained,

and so were labelled illiteracy, poverty, and external
jog

occupation.

The

solutions

to

these

problems

were

e q u a l l y e a s i l y d e f i n e d a s knowledge or e d u c a t i o n , w e a l t h or
economic g r o w t h ,
placed

great

explained

the

and i n d e p e n d e n c e .

Consequently,

importance

on

teaching;

accumulation

of

information,

this

judged a poor a l t e r n a t i v e t o t h e p u r i f i c a t i o n
p e o p l e . 127

which

society
attitude
Bennabi

of i d e a s and

Practical logic meant for Bennabi creating the empirical mind (al- aql al- amali), which could through applied
(al-caql al-tatblqi) acquire skills- needed for
. ^~
.
development.128 It involved the human will, self-reliance,
and planning. In Bennabi's cultural project an extensive
science

modification of mind would result in the activation of

human consciousness in a modern sense.
The effort exerted by the practical mind in real life
was what Bennabi called technique.

He preferred this as

-213-

vocational training to the complicated technology that

might lead to industrialization.
Bennabi addressed his work to Muslim countries during
the first half century, a period when many had recently
obtained their independence.

Therefore, he had no need to

expand his concept of technique.

It was rather a plan for

basic technical training that his audience most needed at

that time, he believed.129
From another perspective, a technical preparation
would certainly have enhanced the other two human concerns,
labor and money.

Along with practical logic, technical

abilities would advance the planning and management of

work.

As more technicians and professionals contributed to

the society, plans for development would succeed, Bennabi

believed.130 Similarly, the national wealth would be able
to exercise its social function in accord with the planned
interests of society.131

Soil and Time

Bennabi e l a b o r a t e d
e l e m e n t s of h i s t h e o r y .

only b r i e f l y

he r e l i e d h e a v i l y on t h e

t o p r e p a r e and m o t i v a t e t h e

t o u t i l i z e time and s o i l

land,

the

individual

effectively.

For B e n n a b i , s o i l meant a l l raw m a t e r i a l .

included

secondary

Because he viewed humanity a s t h e

c e n t r a l agent in c i v i l i z a t i o n ,
b u i l d i n g of c u l t u r e

on t h e s e

main

source

of

man's

However,
food.

it
13 2

-214Agriculture, therefore, was the central area for the

utilization of natural resources.

Moreover, he noted that

in historical terms human civilization began with

agriculture.
Society, Bennabi maintained, gives soil its social
value.

Soil and land acquire their value from the static

or dynamic condition of people.

In his native village,

Bennabi had noticed the desert creeping towards the green

areas. 133 And he remarked that the people's attitude
towards that environmental problem was governed by their
culture.

Their lack of commitment, effectiveness, and

creativity had resulted in a dramatic drop in population.134 Any society, Bennabi stated, could overcome such
a problem by planting trees, a simple solution that would
solve a problem threatening not only the land but human
life itself in that area.135
Bennabi was also concerned to emphasize the social
value of time.

When humankind is awakened to civilization

and is equipped with a positive attitude, time will no

longer be considered something uncontrollable and meaningless.

Instead, it will be counted as "hours for work"

(sacat camal) rather than as "hours that pass" (sa at

tamurr).

Bennabi bitterly regretted that his people did

not understand the concept of time as something not

exclusively related to hours, minutes, and seconds. In his
view they had failed to grasp the central need of modern

-215society, one where production is based on planned time.134

Thus Bennabi suggested the establishment of an educational process to teach people the value of time.

Men,

women, and children should be compelled to allot half an

hour daily to perform community service. 135 Bennabi's
suggestion

inherently

modifications

that

included

would

create

cultural

and

practical

personal
logic

and

generate appropriate ethical attitudes.

According

to Bennabi's

theory,

the education

of

humankind to undergo personal rehabilitation that would

activate the cultural side of his personality would resolve
the need to use time wisely and effectively utilize natural
resources.

Moreover, the regeneration of cultural elements

by implementing effectiveness, systematic thinking, and

practical logic would contribute significantly to social
development.

His message, in sum, was that if Muslims and

the Third World are to make history and interact with

civilization as a social phenomenon, they must engage in a
fundamental reexamination of their culture.

-216-

F o o t n o t e s for Chapter V

Bennabi, Hadlth fl al-Bina' al-Jadld, al-Maktabat alAsriyya, Beirut", n.d., p. 71.

2
Bennabi, Shurut, p. 40.
3

Ibid., p. 20-21.
4
The mutiny of the sepoys (the Indian soldiers of the
East India Company) was a revolt against the British. It
started in 1857 among Indian Muslims and transferred to
other Indians in the army. As the revolt quickened, the
soldiers proclaimed their loyalty to the Mongol emperor.
The Hindus and the Muslims were extraordinarily cooperative, and they succeeded in capturing major cities such as
Delhi.
By the end of 1859, the British had totally
defeated the rebels and thereafter established their full
authority over India.
5Nikki
.
Keddie, an authoritative source on al-Afghani,
suggests that he probably lived in India during the mutiny
of 1857. He was then about seventeen or eighteen years of
age; later he became the champion of the Muslim struggle
against British imperialism.
See An Islamic Response to
ImperialismPolitical and Religious Writings of Jamal adDin 'al Afgani*, University of California Press, 1968, pp.
11-12.
Bennabi, Wijhat, p. 50.
7
An Islamic college founded in 1875; since 1920 it has
been named the Muslim University. The educational philosophy of this institution was to combine religious studies
with modern scientific subjects. The teaching language was
English, and Urdu was gradually abandoned.
8

Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-1898) was an Indian

nobleman who traced his lineage to both the prophet
Muhammad and to the Prime Minister of the Mongol Emperor
Akbar II. Early in life, he was employed by the East India
Company and was rapidly promoted to higher posts.
He
believed that Indian Muslims ought to try to get the best

-217they could under the British.

His loyalty to Britain
remained strong even during the most difficult circumstances of his countrymen. After the mutiny of 1857 he
wrote a pamphlet entitled The Cause of the Indian Revolt.
He later founded the Translation Society which was later
renamed the Scientific Society, the Alegrah College and the
Muslim Education Congress. In 1865 he went to England
where he was received as a distinguished guest, and he was
fascinated by European civilization. His works and ideas
were described by the 'Ulama and conservatives as heretical. See the critique of Abul-Hasan al-Nadawi, "Western
Civilization, Islam and Muslims" in Academy of Islamic
Research and Publication, Lucknow, 1969, pp. 64-65, cited
in Maryam Jamilah, Westernization Versus Muslims, Lahore,
1987, pp. 27-28.
g

The concept of 'conformity to nature' meant to Sayyid

Khan that everything has to be tested by reason. Although
he accepted the Qur'an as the "word of God," he rejected
Hadlth, f iqh and taqlid. He believed that faith had to be
fortified "by logic. Consequently 'miracles,* being an
unnatural phenomenon, were rejected. For more details
about Khan and his ideas, see G. F. Graham, Life and Works
of Sayed Ahmed Khan, London, 1909.
H. Gibb, Modern Trends in Islam, Libraire du Liban,
Beirut, 1975, p. 58. See also Nikki Keddie's book, part
II, and particularly, "The materialists in India," pp. 175180.
See Rafiq Zakaria, The Rise of Muslims in India,
Somaiya Publications, Bombay, 1970, p. 247.
12
It is said that al-Afghani addressed Indians in 1869
and said that if they had been hundreds of millions of
flies, they would have made hollows in the ears of the
British, or if turtles, they would have surrounded their
islands and sunk them. See Muhammad al-Makhzumi,
Khatirat Jamal al-Din al-Afghani al-Husayni, Beirut, 1931,
pp. 31-32.
The statement mentioned by Bennabi was not
documented in this source.
13
c
Bennabi, A fag Jaza1iriyya, Maktabat Ammar, Cairo,
1971, p. 45.
14
Bennabi, Wijhat, p. 53.

-21815

Ibid., p. 52.

16
Ibid., p. 53.
17
Ibid., p. 50.
18
xo
Bigg, ibid., p. 29.
19
Bennabi, Wijhat, pp. 50-52.
20
Bennabi, Afaq, pp. 45-46.
21
Bennabi, Wijhat, p. 52.
22
Bennabi, Afaq, p. 44.
23
Ibid., p. 46.
24
Bennabi, Wijhat, p. 49.
25

Ibid., pp. 52-53.

26

Ibid., p. 55.

27

Ibid.
Ibid., p. 61.

29

Ibid., p. 57.
30
Bennabi, Afaq, p. 169.

31
c
Bennabi, Milad Mujtama , p. 106.
32
Bennabi, Wijhat, p. 58.
33

Ibid.

34

Ibid., p. 60.

35

Ibid., p. 61.
36

Bennabi, Shurut, p. 41.

37
Ibid., pp. 41-42.
38

Bennabi, Afaq, p. 54.

-21939

B e n n a b i , M u s h k i l a t a l - A l : k a r , p . 204.
40
See al-Mukhzumi, Khatirat Jamal al-Diny p. 341.
41
Bennabi, Mushkilat al-Afkar, p. 48.
42
Ibid., pp. 98-99.
43
Most of Bennabi's views about the reform and
modernization movements are drawn from his book Wijhat
al Alam al-Island, see the chapter entitled al-Haraka alHaditha (The Modern Movement), pp. 67-80. Views from other
sources will be indicated.
44
Bennabi's concept of effectiveness referred to a
model of behavior that dominates the individual.
It
mobilizes the personality in various aspects. Theoretically it rationalizes human life and emphasizes the pragmatic
values of social effort. The effective individual is one
who has a positive attitude towards his own problems and
that of his society. He is characterized by his great
capacity of empathy, initiative, and participation.
45
c
c
Isma il Sabri Abdalla (and others), Images of the
Arab Future, trans. Maissa Talat, St. Martin's Press, N.Y.,
1983, p. 6.
46
Bennabi, Hadith fi al-Bina', pp. 134-135.
Bennabi, Mushkilat al-Afkar, p. 24.
48

Ibid., p. 25.
49
Hisham Sharabi, The Arab Intellectuals and the West:
The Formative Years 1875-1914, John Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1970, p. 89.
50
Bennabi observed that a small group of Algerian
physicians in Constantine had decided to designate a day to
offer free medical treatment to the poor. Bennabi referred
to the incident as an effective attitude towards one's ovm
community.
51
Bennabi, Fikrat Commonwealth Islami, Maktabat
c
Ammar, Cairo, p. 27.

-22052

Bennabif Wijhat, pp. 27-28.

53
See Bennabi, Hadith fi al-Bina', pp. 121-132.
54
The book was published in French first and entitled
Le Phgnomene Coranique, Essai d'une Thgorie sur le Coran,
Alger, 1946, and translated iato Arabic by ^Abdul-Sabur
Shahln, Dar al-Fikr, Cairo, n.d. (1958?).
55Bennabi, Shurut,
p. 19.
.
Bennabi, Wijhat, p. 43.
57
Bennabi mentioned the German experience as proof of
the value of ideas in reconstructing a nation. Germany
found herself in 1945 crushed by the war. There were
shortages of almost every material item. However, they
were able to exploit their own cultural balance to design a
plan to reconstruct their country and restore its place as
a leading and influential European nation, see Afaq, pp.
85-86.
Bennabi, Hadith fi al-Bina'., p. 100.
59
Bennabi, Shurut, pp. 44-45.
60
Bennabi, Wijhat, p. 32.
_

gi

Bennabi, Mushkilat al-Afkar, p. 50.

62

A l i a l - Q u r a y s h i , "Mafhum a l - H a d a r a b a y n a M a l i k
Bennabi wa Sayyid Q u t b , " a l - H i l a j , September 1986, p . 1 2 1 .
. .
*"~^~^~^^^~
63
In 1974 the United Nations adopted the concept of
basic needs from the Cocoyoc Declaration, which states that
humankind's basic needs are "food, shelter, clothing, and
health and education services."

64

N i k o l a i Lapin and Radovan R i c h t a ,

"Developed
S o c i a l i s m as a Real S o c i e t y C e n t e r e d on Human W e l f a r e , "
Different Theories and P r a c t i c e s of Development, UNESCO,
France, 1982, p . 178.
Bennabi, Afaq, pp. 38-39.
.

66

Bennabi, Mushkilat al-Afkar, p. 49.

-22167
Bennabi, Al-Afro-Asiyawiyya, p. 81.
go

Bennabi, Wijhat, p. 26.

Bennabi, Shurut, p. 42.
70
Bennabi, Afaq, p. 42.

71
Bennabi, Shurut, p. 43.
72
All Shariati, 1933-1977, was an Iranian intellectual
who greatly contributed to the rise of the Islamic movement
that overthrew the late Shah.
He studied first at the
Faculty of Letters in Mashhad, then at the University of
Paris, where he received his doctorate degree in social
science.
During his r e s i d e n c e in P a r i s , S h a r i a t i
sympathized strongly with the Algerian struggle for
liberation.
His lectures and statements published after
his death suggest that he was acquainted with Malik
Bennabi, especially through his books published in French.
73
All Shariati, Civilization and Modernization, Free
Islamic Literatures, Inc., Houston, 1974, p. 10.
74
Bennabi, Muskilat al-Afkar, p. 50.
75
Bennabi, Shurut, p. 48, Wijhat, p. 34.
76

Bennabi, Hadith, p. 45.

77
Bennabi, Shurut, p. 47.
78
Bennabi, Wijhat, p. 35.
79
Bennabi, Mushkilat al-Thaqafa, p. 36.
80_ ,cJad an, p. 18.
p1

Bennabi, Hadith, p. 50.

82

Bennabi, Shurut, p. 75.

83

The honor (takrim) of man is a purely Islamic

concept. According to Islamic doctrine, man was created of
two contradictory elements: mud and the spirit of God. In
addition to his two dimensional nature, man was given a
brain, his means of learning, thinking, and deciding.

-222Theref-ore, he attained superiority over all other creatures, including angels, and became God's vice-regent.
84

c
c
Bennabi, Ta'mulat fi al-Mujtama al- Arabi, Dar alFikr, Beirut, 1977, p. 180.
Bennabi, Hadith, p. 113.
86

Bennabi, Milad, p. 46.

87

Bennabi, Hurut, p. 77.

88

Ibid., p. 78.
Bennabi, Wijhat, p. 33.

90

Bennabi, Hadith, p. 110.

91

Ibid., p. 111.

92
This section contains a brief overview of Bennabi's
view of culture. His Mushkilat al-Thaqafa is an inclusive
work in which he examined theories of social scientists
such as Ougbern, Lenton, Marx, and Mao Tse Tung. References to Bennabi's concept of culture will be limited to
the general outlines relevant to his theory of civilization.
93
Direction (tawjih) meant to Bennabi "avoiding the
waste of time and effort." In modern terms the equivalent
would be planning. Bennabi was a believer in planning on
both the personal and the collective level. Planning, he
believed, could accelerate the developmental process and
provide clarity to the goal, means, and time limit.
94
Bennabi, Shurut, p. 83.
95
Bennabi, Hadith, p. 71.
96
Bennabi, Shurut, p. 82.
97
98

Ibid., pp. 85-86.

Ibid., p. 82.
99
Bennabi, Wijhat, p. 89.

-223Bennabi, Mushkilat al-Thaqafa, p. 74.

Bennabi, Shurut, p. 82.
102
Bennabi, Wijhat, p. 37.

C i t e d i n A s c a d a l - Samahr am, Mali.k B e n n a b i

Mufakkiran I s l a h i y a n , Dar al-Nafttis, B e i r u t , 1984, p . 210.
The w r i t e r r e f e r r e d t o Bennabi's book Afaq J a z a ' i r i y a in
i t s f i r s t e d i t i o n published in A l g e r i a , n . d .
The phrase
does not e x i s t in the second e d i t i o n published in Cairo in
1971.
104
Michael Hudson: Arab Politics; The Search for
Legitimacy, Yale University Press, New York, 1977), Chap.
2.
Bennabi, Mushkilat al-Thaqafa, p. 45.
.

10 6

Bennabi, Mushkilat al-Afkar, p. 72.

Ibid., p. 90.
108

Bennabi, Wijhat, p. 77.

109

c
See F_i Mahab al-Ma raka, "al Afkar al-Qatila wa alAfkar al-Mayyita," pp. 127-136.
110
See M u s h k i l a t a.l-Afkar_, "Sidq a l - A f k a r wa
c
I
Fa aliyatuha,"
pp. 135-155.
lllj

Eennabi, Wijhat, p. 161

112

Ibid., p. 79.

113
Bennabi, Hurut, p. 88.
114Eennabi, Hadlth, p. 71.
115.
'ibid., p. 72.
116

Bennabi, Shurut, pp. 89-90, and mushkilat alThaqafa, pp. 80-81.

117
Bennabi, Shurut, p. 90.
118

Ibid., p. 91.

-224-

119
Bennabi, Hadith, p. 74.

120
Although
Bennabi
represented
the
example
s y m p a t h e t i c a l l y , he was misunderstood; see al-Samahrani, p .
121
Bennabi,
Bennabi,
123
Bennabi,
Bennabi,

- Afag, p. 111.
Mushkilat al-Thagafa, p. 82.
Shurut, p. 101.
Afag, p. 114.

"IOC

See " A l - F a c i l ' i y a , " a l e c t u r e given by Bennabi in

B e i r u t in 1959 in H a d i t h , p p . 4 4 - 6 1 , r e p u b l i s h e d in
Ta c amulat, pp. 121-134.
Bennabi, Hadith, pp. 47-48.
127

Ibid., pp. 126-127.

128

Bennabi, Shurut, p. 95.

129
i y
^ Ibid., p. 97.
130
Ibid., p. 71.
131
Ibid., p. 113.
132
Bennabi stated that between 1939 and 1949, the
population of Tibissa dropped from 180,000 to 40,000.
Ibid., p. 134.
133
Ibid., p. 132.
134
Ibid., p. 140.
135
Ibid., p. 141.

APPENDIX

-225-

-226-

APPENDIX
SELECTIONS OF BENNABI'S WRITINGS

The f o l l o w i n g
original

are elected

and Arabic

for B e n n a b i ' s

translated

demonstrate his style and ideas.

publications

They are:

1. De La Civilization
2. Between the Dead and the Toxic Ideas
3. The Post-Almohades Man
4. The Orientalists

French
which

-227-

De la civilisation
A certains tournants de l'histoire, une societe
doit savoir avec quel bi'lan elle s'eagage dana la
nouvelle etape .
Ou en etions nous done a la veille du ler Novembre 1954 ?
Bien dea generations algeriennes sont nees dans
le brouillard qui enveloppe les societea que des
circonstances tragiques mettent en marge de l'histoire.
Dana le brouillard, il est difficile de ee frayer
une route. L'individu, lui-meme, finit par perdre
contact avec le groupe, avec sa communaute et
le reseau des liaisons sociales est ainsi aboli.
L'Algerien qui naissait dans ces conditions, n'etait rien qu'un individu : un etre exclu d'une
communaute mise en marge de l'histoire par la
colonisabilite (1) et atomisee par le colonialisme.
U) Pour Bennabi la colonisabilite est un phenomene
commun a tout le Tiers-Monde qui l'a connue dans une
certaine phase de son. histoire. Ce concept cree par lui
et employe pour la premiere fois dans les Conditions
de la renaissance > (Alger 1948), a d'abord choque puis
s'est impose peu a peu dans l'entendement general comme
une explication bistorique de l'etat de minority mentale
et de lethargie dans lequel ces peuples vecurent plusieurs
siecles durant avant qu'lls ne s'eveillent en pleine tragedie
coloniale.
,
Du reste, d'autres penseurs dans leur recherche des cau-

-228-

C'etait comme un individu survivant a une cspece diaparue, dans un cataclysme geologique.
Sa tragedie etait semblable a celle du dernier
mammouth de l'ere glaciaire errant dans les steppes gelees et incJeraentes ou il ne trouvait pas sa
nourriture.
Le peuple Algerien vivait dans un pays ou
1'avenir etait barre : l'individu y naissait avec le
pessimisme dans 1'ame, ne trouvant pas les motivations existentielles exaltantes qui permettent
a un homine de vivre ou de mourir pour quelque
chose.
Dans l'AIgerie precolonisee 1'homme se contenta de vegeter, et inventa pour se tromper sur ea
miserable condition, des aophismes en guise de
motivations.
Le maraboutisme se chargea de les lui fournir,
a bas ou a bon prix, l'aidant a oublier le passe
le present et 1'avenir.
Le colonialisme aggrava cette situation en faisant de 1'homme sa chose et du maraboutisme
un organe de transmission charge de transmettre
au peuple ses directives en les transformant a eon
intention en nouvelles motivations.
ses qui font qu'un peuple passe des plus hauts sommets
de son histoire aux ablmes les plus profonds, sont parvenus aux mimes conclusions.
Alnsi A. Toynbee a pu ecrire dans A study of History : < La cause de decadence ne doit pas se chercher
dans la perte de commande sur le milieu humain sous
forme d'empietement de forces itrangeres sur la vie d'une
Quelconque sociiti. Dans tous les cos, ce qu'un ennemi
du dehors a perpitri de plus grave fut d'apporter le coup
de grace A un suicide expirant >.
R. Grousset dans < Bllan de l'histoire > tient les memes
propos : < Aucune civilisation n'est ditruite du dehors sans
s'itre tout d'abord ruinee elle-m&me, aucun empire n'est
conquis da I'exterieur qu'it ne se soit prialablement sui.
cidrf .

-229-

C'est seulement apres la guerre mondiale que

le peuple algerien a emerge de la pre-bistoire
post-almobadienne dans, le monde du 20eme siecle.
Le mouvement islabiste et le niouvenicnt nationaliste virent le jour a ce moment-la.
La gangue post-almohadienne conmienc,a a s'effriter sous l'effort de cette double action morale et politique liberant la conscience algeriennc et la restituant a l'histoire.
La renaissance de 1'Algerie date de ce moincnt-la, avec une accentuation de la pres&ion colonialiste qui tendait a mainteuir, sous son controle, les energies reveillees.
La contradiction explosive qui a fait entrer
VAlgerie dans les temps modernes date de ce
conflit entre un peuple qui se remettait en marche et une administration etrangere qui voulait
entraver cette marche, en maintenant le brouillard du colonialisme et de la colonisabilite.
Le conflit devait fatalement aboutir a la revolution, a Taction armee d'un peuple decide a renverser ce qui barre son avenir, a emerger a tout
Et Montesquieu afflrme dans ses Considerations sur
les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur decadence : Ce n'est pas la fortune qui domine le monde.
On peut le demander aux Romains qui eurent une suite
aontinuelle dc prospiritis quand ils se gouvernerent sur
un certain plan et une suite non in)terrompue de revers
lorsqu'ils se conduisirent sur un autre... et si le hasard
d'une bataille, cest-d-dire une cause particuliere a ruine
un Etat, ii y avait une cause gevHrale qui jaisait que cet
Etat devait perir par une seule bataille. En un mot, I'aliure
principale eitrcine aec elle tous les accidents particuliers >.
II ne nous est pas possible de clter ici tous les grands
penseurs qui. depuis la plus haute antiquite et pas seulement sur l'axe de la pensee occidentale, ont donne, a peu
de chose pres la merne Interpretation du phenomene que
Bennabi a designe par le mot : Colonisabilite .

-230-

prix du moyen-age.
Cette action a decliire le brouillard qui Penveloppait sans le dissiper pourtant tout a fait.
II en restc sur la route, des paquets qui genent encore notre vision.
Les problemes legues par l'ere coloniale auxquels s'ajoutent ceux de l'independance exigent
cependant, toute la dlarte necessaire a leurs solutions.
C'est dans ces conditions que se pose a la generation preaente et a travers son entreprise revolutionnaire meme, une question capitale :
Qu'est-ce qu'une civilisation ?
Quand on pose cette question, on peut avoir
a 1'esprit diversea preoccupations, notamment celle de Panthropologue pour qui toute forme
<T organisation de la vie humaine , dans n'importe quelle societe, developpee on sous-developpee.
est une civilisation.
Cette acception du terme est trop large pour
l'objet que nous nous proposons, dans un pays
qui Tutte precisement contre les difficultes du
"ous-developpement.
Si la forme de vie qu'il a heritee de l'ere de
la colonisabilite et du colonialisme est une civilisation , la question posee est alors superfetatoire.
En face de nos problemes. cependant, elle demeure au moins vallable comme invitation a la
Voyons ce qu'll en dlt lui-meme dans Vocation de
l'lslam > : < II /out faire une distinction fondamentale
entre un pays sim-plement conquis et un pays colonise".
Dans Vun it y a une rynthise pri-existante de Vhomme,
du sot et du temps qui imptique un irudividu incolonisable.
Dans Vautre, toutes les conditions societies existantes tra.
duisent la colonisabiliti de I'individu, Dans ce dernier cos
une occupation itrangere devient fatalement colonisation.

-231-

recherche de leurs solutions. II nous faut done

restreindre davantage notre aujet, d'ailleurs moins
avec le souci de decouvrir et de X'evleler une nouvelle verite qu'avec celui de posseder un outil
de travail efficace, une methode qui mette davantage le but a portee de nos moyens reels.
Et pour preciser davantage 5 il s'agit du travail
d'un peuple qui a accompli sa revolution pour
mettre un occupant hors de sea frontieres et veut
tnettre au dedans un ordre public, une forme
de vie dans le.quels chaque Algerien puisse trouver toutes les motivations et toutes les garanties neccssaires a son existence.
A-t-il les moyens de realiser ce but anxbitieux ?
Voila la question qui nous determine a une
definition plus stride des termes dans lesquels
on a pose le probleme.
S"il ne s'agit pas de decouvrir de nouveMes verites anthropologiques, du moins doit-on essayer
de signaler, autant que possible, une voie d'acces au but propose, une issue aux difficultes presentes, en mettant a profit les directives d'une
politique qui a formule ses options, et les indications d'une sociologie qui tienne compte des
donnees particulieres de notre situation actuelle
011. comme on dit, de nos conditions, objectives.
Quell es sont ces conditions ?
La sociologie qui s'est consacree, depuis la fin
de la 2eme guerre mondiale, aux questions du
Rome n'avait pas colonise" mai3 conquis la Crece. L'Angleterre qui a colonisi 400 millions d'Hindous parce qu'ils
itaient colonisables, n'a pas colonise" I'lrlande, soumise mais
irredentlste. Par contre, le Yemen qui n'a jamais cessd
d'etre independant, n'en a tire aucun profit parce qu'il
etait colonisable^ e'est-a-dire inapte d tout effort social...,
le Yemen ne doit cela (son ind&pendance) qu'a un hasard
politique... pour cesser d'etre colonise", il faut cesser d'etre
colonisable . N.D.P.

-232-

tiera-monde a voulu designer par le terme eons*

developpement > l'ensemble de sea problemes.
U y a sans doute un certain avantage methodologique dans cette reduction a l'unite qui permet
de concentrer les moyens du raisonnement au
lieu de lea disperser, si toutefois cette reduction
n'opere pas, a notre insu une denaturation du
probleme et, par voie de consequence, de la
conclusion theorique qui doit se traduire en une
action sociale reelle sur des donnees concretes
susceptiWles de s'inscrire dans le programme et
l'orientation d'une politique realiste, consciente
de ses buts et de ses moyens.
Avec cette precaution et cette intention, il
est legitime d'aborder notre sujet sous Tangle
du sous-developpement ,ce terme n'etant pas entendu comme une explication ni un resultat
de ranalyse de nos problemes, mais comme une
simple expression qui les englobe.
Le terme lui-meme, se definit par opposition
a un autre qui designe le phenomene in\"terse :
le developpement.
Les deux phenomenea se traduiseat, on le sait,
en diagrammes economiques caracteriatiques de
la production et de la consommation : par exemple du papier, du charbon, de l'electricite ou
par les cbiffres correspondants aux revenus individuels annuels moyens, ce qui revient au meme.
On peut considerer ces chiffres pour l'annee
1955 qui sont a notre disposition (2).
Nous constatons qu*Jl s'etalent pour la dite
annee, de 1835 dollars pour les U.S.A., a 38
dollars pour le Liberia ou l'Indonesie.
(2) II importe peu que ces chiffres alent varle depuis
1955. Leur valeur Illustrative seule nous lnteresse. Far ailleurs. nous ne croyons pas que les rapports qu'ils traduisent se solent fondamentatement modifies. N.D.P.

-233-

Entre ces deux extremes tous les chiffres intermediaires des. autres pays, quel que soit leur
degre dc developpement.
Faisons alors une r e m a r q ue sur le revenu min i m u m ou optimum qu'on peut considerer comme suffisant aux besoins d'un pays exempt de
tous les indices du sous-developpement : le sousemploi, l'analphabetisme, la sous-alimentation,
etc...
Ce revenu que nous pouvons regarder oomme
le seuil du developpement, c'est celui du Japon.
U s'eleve a 200 dollars, Maintenant pour rendre
i.*es chiffres significatifs p o u r notre sujet, projetons-lcs sur la carte, comme les petits drapeaux
qui m a r q u e nt sur u n e carte d'Etat-Major les positions respectives des armees sur u n front.
Les chiffres projetes dessinent, bien entendu,
les zones respectives du developpement et du
sous-developpement. Or, u n e constatation s'impose : ces zones se delimitent sur la carte comme
deux aires continues, 1'une recouvrant a peu pres
tous les pays participants de la conference de
Bandoeng, c'est-a-dire approximativemcnt
l'hemisphere s.ud, l'autre aire, celle des pays developpes. embrassant a peu p r e s , tout Fhemisphere
nord ' 3 ) .
Cette constatation nous fait entrer de plain
pied dans notre sujet, car la localisation des fait.*
economiques est en meme temps une localisation
de tous les processus, qui les cxpliquent.
(3) I^a Conference < Nord-Sud > a reuni recemment !e->
pays developpes et ceux en vole de 1'etre autour du pre.
bleme de 1'lnstauration d'un nouvel ordre economique mondial. Us se sont rencontres en deux blocs, tels que les
concevait Bennabi il y a d&jk vlngt ans dans son analyse
des relations entre les dlfferents peuples du monde contemporain. N.D.P.

-234-

Le developpement ot le sous-developpement
s'expliqucnt, chacun dans son aire, par un ensemble de causes, qui doit etre soumis a l'analyse
historique.
La notion de champ d etude (4) degagee par
A. Toynbee dans le domaine historique s'etend
ici au domaine economique.
Si on pose la question : qu'est-ce que le developpement ? et elle interesse naturelilement
tout paya qui fait face aux problemes du eousdeveloppement, on ne fait done pas ceuvre de
dilettante. On la pose au contraire avec le souc.i de tirer une lecon d'une riche experience
vecue et vivante, dont les resultats sont sous
nos yeux dans les pays developpes, quitte a en
modifier les termes, s'il le faut, a condition toutefois d'en respecter la loi.
Pour les pays sous-developpes, cette experience
se presente essentiellement, sous l'espece de 1'industriailisation qui est devenue effectisvement,
Fob jet de toutes les aspirations et de toutes les
entreprises des pays afro-asiatiques.
Mais cette notion n'est pas univoque. On s'indusirialise comme en URSS ou Lenine donna
le signal avec son fameux slogan * Le communisme, c'est les Soviets plus Velectricite , qui
implique une base de depart ideologique.
On s'industrialise, aussi, comme le Japon, en
faisant simplement siennes les methodes et les
(4) Dans la pense de Toynbee, la notion de champ d'etude represente une society supra-natio.iale constituee de plusieurs communautes ethniques. geographiques et politiques.
un ensemble d'Etats-Nations appartenant a un mSme uni_
vers culturel. de telle maniere que l'histoire de l'un ne
peut rien signifier si elle n'est envisagee qu'a partir de
lui-mSme ; d'ou la n^cessite de la placer dans un cadre
plus large, plus significatif, celui de son aire culturelle, de son champ d'etude.

-235-

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

-262-

-263-

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Original Works by Malik Bennabi

Al-Zahira al Qur aniyya,
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Shurut al-Nahda, Dar al-Fikr, Damascus, 1979.

Wijhat al-cAlam al-Islami, trans. A. Shahin, Dar al-Fikr,
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Had!th f i al-Bina'
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al-Jadlad,

al-Maktaba

al- c Asriya,

Taammulat, Dar al-Fikr, Damascus, 1985.

Mudhakkarat Shahid al-Qarn, trans. Marwan Qanawati,
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1970.
Mushkilat al-Thaqafa, Dar al-Fikr, Damascus, 1984.
Fi Mahab al-Macraka, Dar al-Fikr, Damascus, 1981.
Milad Muitama', trans. A. Shahin, Dar al-Fikr, Damascus,
1985.
Al-Sira al-Fikri fi al-Bilad al-MustaCmara,
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Dar al-Fikr,

Bayna al-Ras'nad wa al-Tih, Dar al-Fikr, Damascus, 1978.

Al-Muslim fi c Alam al-Iqtisaad, Dar al-Fikr, Damascus,
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Risalat al-Muslim f i al-Thuluth al-Akhir
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Afaq Jazairiyya, Maktabat c Ammar, Cairo, 1971.
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