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Fragment(s) of the Past: Archives, Conflicts, and Civic Rights in Algiers, 1830–1870
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 June 2021
Abstract
The first thirty years of the French conquest of Algeria witnessed the large-scale destruction of Algiers’s cultural heritage. Researching the processes by which this came about leads us to consider the conditions of production of two sources that refer to the period before the conquest: Les édifices religieux de l’ancien Alger (The Religious Edifices of Old Algiers), by Albert Devoulx, and the “Ottoman collection” of archives initially established by the same figure. This dual archaeology, based on the reconstitution of Devoulx’s activities during his lifetime, reveals a virulent struggle over civic rights and particularly over the appropriation of endowments established by the city’s religious institutions. The sources considered here were part and parcel of this struggle. By paying attention to the claims they set out and the interactions between them, it becomes possible to retrace the disappearance of the mosques of Algiers and to appreciate the true nature of these sources.
- Type
- Temporalities of the Colonial Moment
- Information
- Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales - English Edition , Volume 72 , Issue 4 , December 2017 , pp. 641 - 670
- Copyright
- © Éditions EHESS 2021
Footnotes
This article was translated from the French by Rosalind Holmes Duffy and edited by Robin Emlein, Chloe Morgan, and Stephen Sawyer.
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I would like to thank Sami Bargaoui, Simona Cerutti, Jocelyne Dakhlia, Brigitte Marino, Alain Messaoudi, James McDougall, and Michel Naepels, as well as the coordinators of this thematic dossier, for their comments on earlier versions of this text.
References
1 Albert Devoulx, Les édifices religieux de l’ancien Alger (Algiers: Typographie Bastide, 1870), 3.
2 Daniel Rivet, Le Maghreb à l’épreuve de la colonisation (Paris: Hachette, 2002), 101 sq.; Charles-Robert Ageron, Les Algériens musulmans et la France, 1871 – 1919 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1968); Sylvie Thénault, “1881 – 1918 : l’ʻapogéeʼ de l’Algérie française et les débuts de l’Algérie algérienne,” in Histoire de l’Algérie à la période coloniale, 1830 – 1962, ed. Abderrahmane Bouchène etal. (Paris: La Découverte, 2014), 159 – 84.
3 François Dumasy, “Propriété foncière, libéralisme économique et gouvernement colonial : Alger, 1830 – 1840,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 63, no. 2 (2016): 40 – 61.
4 François Dumasy, “À qui appartient Alger ? Normes d’appartenance et conflits d’appropriation à Alger au début de la présence française (1830 – 1833),” in Appartenance locale et propriété au nord et au sud de la Méditerranée, ed. Sami Bargaoui, Simona Cerutti, and Isabelle Grangaud (Aix-en-Provence: Irenam, 2015), 89 – 121, https://doi.org/10.4000/books.iremam.3454; Isabelle Grangaud, “Prouver par l’écriture : Propriétaires algérois, conquérants français et historiens ottomanistes,” Genèses. Sciences sociales et histoire 74, no. 1 (2009): 25 – 45; James McDougall, “A World No Longer Shared: Losing the Droit de Cité in Nineteenth-Century Algiers,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 60, no. 1/2 (2017): 18 – 49.
5 Nicholas B. Dirks, “Colonial Histories and Native Informants: Biography of an Archive,” in Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia, ed. Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 79 – 313; Ann Laura Stoler, “‘In Cold Bloodʼ: Hierarchies of Credibility and the Politics of Colonial Narratives,” Representations 37 (1992): 151 – 89.
6 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Romain Bertrand, L’histoire à parts égales. Récits d’une rencontre Orient-Occident (xvi e – xvii e siècles) (Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 2011).
7 Devoulx, Les édifices religieux de l’ancien Alger.
8 See, for instance, Samia Chergui, Les mosquées d’Alger. Construire, gérer et conserver, xvi e – xix e siècles (Paris: Presses de l’université Paris-Sorbonne, 2011); Nabila Chérif-Seffadj, Les bains d’Alger durant la période ottomane, xvi e – xix e siècles (Paris: Presses de l’université Paris-Sorbonne, 2008); Sakina Missoum, Alger à l’époque ottomane. La médina et la maison traditionnelle (Aix-en-Provence: Édisud, 2003).
9 Born in Marseille in 1826, he arrived in Algiers before the age of five.
10 Devoulx published a number of such works, beginning with Tachrifat, recueil de notes historiques sur l’administration de l’ancienne régence d’Alger (Algiers: impr. du Gouvernement, 1852) and including Le raïs Hamidou, notice biographique sur le plus célèbre corsaire algérien du xiii e siècle de l’hégire, d’après des documents authentiques et pour la plupart inédits (Algiers: A. Jourdan, 1859); Ahad Aman ou règlement politique et militaire (1860); La marine de la régence d’Alger (Algiers: impr. de Bastide, 1869); Le livre des signaux de la flotte de l’ancienne régence d’Alger (Algiers, 1868); Notices sur les corporations religieuses d’Alger (Algiers: impr. de Bastide, 1862); and finally Le registre des prises maritimes. Document authentique et inédit concernant le partage des captures amenées par les corsaires algériens (Algiers: A. Jourdan, 1872). These texts were supplemented by the compilation Archives du consulat général de France à Alger. Recueil de documents inédits concernant, soit les relations politiques de la France, soit les rapports commerciaux de Marseille avec l’ancienne régence d’Alger (Algiers: Bastide, 1865).
11 Saddek Benkada, “Archéologie et entreprise coloniale. L’armée et les premiers travaux de topographie historique en Algérie (1830 – 1880),” in Savoirs historiques au Maghreb. Constructions et usages, ed. Sami Bargaoui and Hassan Remaoun (Oran: Éd. du Crasc, 2006), 225 – 35.
12 Alain Messaoudi, Les arabisants et la France coloniale. Savants, conseillers, médiateurs (1780 – 1930) (Lyon: Ens Éditions, 2015): “Devoulx, Joseph Marie Albert (Marseille, 1826 – Alger, 1876),” online appendices, https://doi.org/10.4000/books.enseditions.3730.
13 This work was partially published a few years ago: Albert Devoulx, El-Djazaïr, histoire d’une cité d’Icosium à Alger, ed. Bedredine Belkadi and Mustapha Benhamouche (Algiers: Enag Éditions, 2003).
14 Chronicles of this kind from the modern era were well known at the time, due to a large movement to discover and publish an array of texts concerning the Maghreb space.
15 Devoulx, Les édifices religieux de l’ancien Alger, 165.
16 Ibid., 99.
17 Diego de Haëdo, Topographie et histoire générale d’Alger [1612], trans. Dr. Monnereau and Adrien Berbrugger, with a preface by Jocelyne Dakhlia (Saint-Denis: Éd. Bouchène, 1998). The translation first appeared in several parts in the journal Revue africaine in 1870 and 1871.
18 Devoulx, Les édifices religieux de l’ancien Alger, 100 sq. and 143 sq.
19 Ibid., 3 – 12. This shows that local languages did not make much of a distinction between “khutbah mosques” (which have a minaret and are allowed to give sermons on Fridays) and the others, which were much more numerous; that the chapels, also called kobba or “marabouts,” attached to a saint’s tomb (and sometimes also to a small cemetery) were sometimes referred to as zawiyas if there was also “a mosque or several other dependencies”; that there was a distinction between rural zawiyas (a chapel with a douar around it) and urban zawiyas, “which offer shelter to foreigners, students, and the poor, as well as lessons,” although “some of them provide neither schooling nor shelter.”
20 Anne-Marie Planel, Du comptoir à la colonie. Histoire de la communauté française en Tunisie, 1814 – 1883 (Paris/Tunis: Riveneuve Éditions/Irmc, 2015), 716 – 17. This section owes a great debt to Alain Messaoudi, who generously allowed me to use the results of his own archival research on the Devoulx family.
21 Gérard-Roger Busson de Janssens, “Contribution à l’étude des habous publics algériens” (PhD diss., Université d’Alger, 1950), 44.
22 Alphonse Devoulx, “Voyage à l’amphithéâtre d’El-Djem en Tunisie (janvier 1830),” Revue africaine 18 (1874): 241 – 61, here p. 260.
23 Aix-en-Provence, Archives nationales d’Outre-Mer (National archives of France’s overseas territories, hereafter “ANOM”), carton F80-1670A, “Commissions du Gouvernement, procès-verbaux.” Monsieur le baron Denniée, president, minutes July 17, 1830. This text uses different spellings: Sidi Mustapha Chaou and Mohamed Kubtan.
24 This search monopolized the Domain administration’s correspondence during the first years of conquest: ANOM, carton F80-1057, “Correspondances 1831 – 1832.”
25 Messaoudi, Les arabisants et la France coloniale, 148.
26 The tensions between the prestigious body of professional interpreters and those working in the field are explored in Messaoudi, Les arabisants et la France coloniale, 143 – 49; Messaoudi, “Renseigner, enseigner. Les interprètes militaires et la constitution d’un premier corpus savant ʻalgérienʼ (1830 – 1870),” Revue d’histoire du xix e siècle 41 (2010): 97 – 112. See also Laurent-Charles Féraud, Les interprètes de l’armée d’Afrique (archives du corps) suivi d’une notice sur les interprètes civils et judiciaires (Algiers: A. Jourdan, 1876), which sets out to defend the prestige of the professional community to which the author belonged.
27 Tachrifat, published under the name of Albert Devoulx in 1852, seems to have been the work of his father: Gaëtan Delphin, “Histoire des Pachas d’Alger de 1515 à 1745. Extrait d’une chronique indigène,” Journal asiatique, 11th ser., 19 (1922): 161 – 233, here p. 180. It was strategically dedicated to the governor-general.
28 On Devoulx’s training, see Messaoudi, Les arabisants et la France coloniale, entry “Besnier”; ANOM, carton F17-7677, “Rapport d’Artaud, inspecteur général des études, au Ministre de la Guerre, président du conseil, sur l’enseignement de la langue arabe aux Français et de la langue française aux Indigènes en Algérie, Alger, 30 nov. 1842,” cited in Messaoudi, Les arabisants et la France coloniale, entry “Alphonse Devoulx.”
29 Delphin, “Histoire des Pachas,” 183; Messaoudi, Les arabisants et la France coloniale, entry “Albert Devoulx”; Devoulx, Tachrifat, 5.
30 Delphin, “Histoire des Pachas,” 174.
31 The ḥabūs were inalienable endowments organized for the benefit of cultural institutions, hospitals, and charities, or for public services like urban water supply systems, bridge construction, barracks, roads, and walls. Before a donor made an endowment to the charitable institution of his choice, he could specify the beneficiaries of usufruct rights to the properties placed in the ḥabūs trust.
32 The evolution of this institution can be pieced together using documents relating to other periods of reorganization during the Domain administration: ANOM, carton F80-991, “Enregistrement domaines : organisation, 1833 – 1848.”
33 David S. Powers, “Orientalism, Colonialism, and Legal History: The Attack on Muslim Family Endowments in Algeria and India,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 31, no. 3 (1989): 535 – 71; Jean-Philippe Bras, “L’imperfection de la propriété indigène, lieu commun de la doctrine juridique coloniale en Afrique du Nord,” in Bargaoui, Cerutti, and Grangaud, Appartenance locale et propriété, https://doi.org/10.4000/books.iremam.3441.
34 Isabelle Grangaud, “Dépossession et disqualification des droits de propriété. Le droit colonial au service des spoliations à Alger dans les années 1830,” in Bouchène etal., Histoire de l’Algérie à la période coloniale, 70 – 76; Grangaud, “Prouver par l’écriture”; Grangaud, “Affrontarsi in archivo. Tra storia ottomana e storia coloniale (Algeri 1830),” Quaderni storici 43, no. 129 (3) (2008): 621 – 52. On the requalification of property, see Didier Guignard, “Le sénatus-consulte de 1843 : la dislocation programmée de la société rurale algérienne,” in Bouchène etal., Histoire de l’Algérie à la période coloniale, 76 – 81; Guignard, “Les inventeurs de la tradition ʻmelkʼ et ʻarchʼ en Algérie,” in Les acteurs des transformations foncières autour de la Méditerranée au xix e siècle, ed. Vanessa Guéno and Didier Guignard (Paris/Aix-en-Provence: Karthala/Mmsh/Irenam, 2013), 49 – 93.
35 Tal Shuval, “Poor Quarter/Rich Quarter: Distribution of Wealth in the Arab Cities of the Ottoman Empire: The Case of Eighteenth Century Algiers,” Turcica 32 (2000): 169 – 96, here p. 177: “the private ownership of houses in Algiers in the eighteenth century [was] the exception rather than the rule, for most Algerians lived in rented waqf houses”; Miriam Hoexter, Endowments, Rulers, and Community: Waqf al-Ḥaramayn in Ottoman Algiers (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 43 – 48.
36 The most complete account of these stages is the unpublished but extensively cited work by the lawyer Busson de Janssens, “Contribution à l’étude des habous publics algériens”; John Ruedy, Land Policy in Colonial Algeria: The Origins of the Rural Public Domain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967); Rachid Ouahres, “Le forum et l’informe. Projet et régulation publique à Alger (1830 – 1860)” (PhD diss., Université Paris VIII, 2006); Maaoudia Saidouni and Nacereddine Saidouni, “Il ʻwaqfʼ in Algeria e l’amministrazione francese: il caso della fondazione degli ʻHaramaynʼ (Algeri 1830 – 1873),” Quaderni storici 44, no. 132 (3) (2009): 687 – 726; Charles-Louis Pinson de Ménerville, Dictionnaire de la législation algérienne. Code annoté et manuel raisonné des lois, ordonnances, décrets, décisions et arrêtés publiés au Bulletin officiel des actes du gouvernement, vol. 1, 1830 – 1860 (Algiers/Paris: Bastide/Cosse et Marchal, 1866); Alfred Franque, Lois de l’Algérie, du 5 juillet 1830 (occupation d’Alger) au 1er janvier 1841 (Algiers: Dubos et Marest, 1844).
37 Decree of September 7, 1830, issued by General Clauzel, article 1. See Busson de Janssens, “Contribution à l’étude des habous publics algériens,” 48; Franque, Lois de l’Algérie, 7; ANOM, carton F80-1670A, analytical table of the decrees of the government of Algiers, article 49.
38 Devoulx, Notes sur les corporations religieuses d’Alger, 13; for a presentation of the valuation of the ḥabūs properties of “Mecca and Medina” at the moment of the conquest, estimated at “more than half, maybe even three quarters or four fifths of all the waqf properties in and around Algiers,” see Saidouni and Saidouni, “Il ʻwaqfʼ in Algeria e l’amministrazione francese”; Hoexter, Endowments, Rulers, and Community, 43 sq.
39 Busson de Janssens, “Contribution à l’étude des habous publics algériens,” 73.
40 Ibid., 85.
41 Ibid., 88.
42 Devoulx, Les édifices religieux de l’ancien Alger, 13.
43 For a minute analysis of this process through a comparative reading of early colonial scholarship on “Islamic law” in French Algeria and British India—showing local variations as well as their larger influence—see Powers, “Orientalism, Colonialism, and Legal History.”
44 For a comparable process in a different region, see Norbert Oberauer, “ʻFantastic Charities’: The Transformation of ‘Waqf’ Practice in Colonial Zanzibar,” Islamic Law and Society 15, no. 3 (2008): 315 – 70.
45 Cited in Busson de Janssens, “Contribution à l’étude des habous publics algériens,” 66.
46 Ibid., 59, citing a report of the 1833 investigative committee drawn up on January 12, 1834: “Rapport sur la fondation de La Mecque et Médine et autres établissements pieux.”
47 ANOM, carton F80-1082, “Rapports généraux sur le Bey il mal et les corporations musulmanes,” 1837. The chaoux (shawūsh) were ushers.
48 Devoulx, Les édifices religieux de l’ancien Alger, 15.
49 ANOM, carton F80-1082, “Rapport sur l’administration des corporations adressé à Monsieur l’Intendant civil,” September 19, 1835.
50 This institution, in many cases, functioned as an implicit reference model, when in fact it was a rather exceptional example in the urban economy of Ottoman Algiers.
51 ANOM, carton F80-1082, “Rapports généraux sur le Bey il mal et les corporations musulmanes,” 1837.
52 Devoulx, Les édifices religieux de l’ancien Alger, 9.
53 Literally “the right ways.” This institution combined the ḥabūs of six mosques and two zawiyas, all attached to the Hanafi school of law. Zakia Zahra, “D’Istanbul à Alger : la fondation de waqf des Subūl al-Khayrāt et ses mosquées hanéfites à l’époque ottomane (du début du xviiie siècle à la colonisation française)” (PhD diss., Université d’Aix-Marseille, 2012).
54 Busson de Janssens, “Contribution à l’étude des habous publics algériens,” 86.
55 Ibid., 87.
56 Devoulx, Les édifices religieux de l’ancien Alger, 8.
57 McDougall, “A World No Longer Shared”; Jocelyne Dakhlia, “1830, une rencontre ?” in Bouchène etal., Histoire de l’Algérie à la période coloniale, 142 – 48.
58 See Charles-André Julien, Histoire de l’Algérie contemporaine. La conquête et les débuts de la colonisation (1827 – 1871) (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1964), 74. As well as a book, Hamdan Khodja produced a number of reports addressed to the minister of war: Khodja, Le miroir. Aperçu historique et statistique sur la Régence d’Alger (1833; repr. Paris: Sindbad, 1985); Vincennes, Service historique de la défense (Ministry of Defense archives, hereafter “SHD”), 1H20, “Mémoire de Hamdan Khodja à l’adresse du Ministre de la guerre.”
59 ANOM, archives of the former Regency of Algiers, reel 1Z.21, 1 – 55.
60 Fewer than half of the mosques in the city figure in this documentation. Furthermore, only the rural buildings, the market gardens of “Mecca and Medina,” and those of the Great Mosque were accounted for.
61 Upon the request, he informs us, of the Maliki qadi (qādī), the shaykh al-Imām, al-Sayyid Muṣṭafā bin al-Sayyid Muḥammad. A third undated document that likely came from the same individual concerns the state of the ḥabūs revenues of one of the mosques, the jāmi’ Khadār Bāshā. We do not know whether it was drawn up before or after its occupation in 1831, but this detail would suggest the latter.
62 Isabelle Grangaud, “Le titre de Sayyid ou Sī dans la documentation constantinoise d’époque moderne : un marqueur identitaire en évolution,” Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée 127 (2010): 59 – 75.
63 Although these people are largely unknown today, the importance of the positions, alliances, and commercial undertakings of the families for whom we have documentation corroborate these social positions. Fatiha Loualich, La famille à Alger, xvii e – xviii e siècles. Parenté, alliances et patrimoine (Saint-Denis: Éd. Bouchène, 2016).
64 For example, Devoulx, Les édifices religieux de l’ancien Alger, 34 sq.
65 Ibid., 16; Hoexter, Endowments, Rulers, and Community, 22 – 23. On the interpretation of sovereign control, already defended in a report by a Domain agent in 1837, see ANOM, carton F80-1082, “Rapports généraux sur le Bey il mal et les corporations musulmanes,” 1837: “About a century ago, following the frequent disputes that arose between the heads of religious corporations and the holders of entailed buildings, the sovereign authority conceived of a project to gather in a single volume all the donations of property made to various pious establishments that either already existed or would be created later, it being rightly felt that in order to put a stop to the often unfair claims of the oukils to the buildings that had been entailed but not definitively acquired by the corporations that they represented, and to put a stop to the bad faith of the holders, it had become necessary to ensure the authenticity of these fee tail arrangements. As a consequence, all of the properties used by pious establishments at that time were inscribed in a register named Oukfia, and the act of donation bore the signature of two Ulama as well as the seals of the Qadi and the reigning Pasha. This book, or rather this collection of donated titles, was deposited at the Great Mosque and confided to the care of the Maliki mufti.”
66 Devoulx, Les édifices religieux de l’ancien Alger, 200 sq.
67 ANOM, carton F80-1087, “Lettre du directeur des finances au gouvernement général, 11 mars 1847,” followed by a table showing establishments and the names of their oukils. Despite the fact that a number held their positions by virtue of their nomination by the colonial administration, in two cases we read that “the oukil died, his son has replaced him” (in this case, it was perhaps due to an administrative decision) or even “the oukil is dead, children inherit.”
68 As shown in Rudolph Peters, “Waqf,” Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 11:69, who makes a doctrinal argument: “the beneficiaries have the right to administer the wak˙f because they have the rights to the wak˙f property, either because they are regarded as the virtual owners of the wak˙f (Ḥanbalīs and the Imaāmī Shīʿa) or because they have the right to use and exploit (milk al-manfaʿa) the wak˙f property (Mālikīs).”
69 Albert Devoulx, Notices sur les corporations religieuses d’Alger accompagnés de documents authentiques et inédits (Algiers: Bastide, 1862), 1 sq.
70 Sami Bargaoui, “Le waqf. Redéfinitions des appartenances et inscriptions sociales,” in Bargaoui, Cerutti, and Grangaud, Appartenance locale et propriété, https://doi.org/10.4000/books.iremam.3488; Engin F. Isin, “Ottoman Waqfs as Acts of Citizenship,” in Held in Trust: Waqf in the Islamic World, ed. Pascale Ghazaleh (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2011), 253 – 79; Pascale Ghazaleh, Fortunes urbaines et stratégies sociales. Généalogies patrimoniales au Caire, 1780 – 1830, 2 vols. (Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 2010); Gabriel Baer, “The Waqf as a Prop for the Social System (Sixteenth – Twentieth Centuries),” Islamic Law and Society 4, no. 3 (1997): 264 – 97; Jean-Claude Garcin and Moustafa Anouar Taher, “Identité du dédicataire, appartenances et propriétés urbaines dans un waqf du xve siècle,” in Valeur et distance. Identités et sociétés en Égypte, ed. Christian Décobert (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose/Mmsh, 2000), 189 – 95. For a comparative perspective on this process of foundation between the north and south of the mediterranean, see Simona Cerutti and Isabelle Grangaud, eds., “Fuori mercato. Appartenenze locali e beni nel Mediterraneo,” special issue, Quaderni Storici 52, no. 154 (1) (2017).
71 More precisely, this involved the ’anā rent, an annual rent received for a perpetual rental.
72 ANOM, archives of the former Regency of Algiers, reel 1Z.21, undated.
73 ANOM, archives of the former Regency of Algiers, reel 1Z.21, undated.
74 The use of the term shūlḍāḍ, a transcription of the French word soldat, rather than the corresponding Arabic term (’askar), is itself a criticism.
75 The pataque was a money of account.
76 ANOM, archives of the former Regency of Algiers, reel 1Z.21, undated. The small amount remaining (1718 PC) was just enough to cover the material expenses and wages needed to keep the wākil office running.
77 ANOM, archives of the former Regency of Algiers, reel 1Z.21, undated.
78 ANOM, archives of the former Regency of Algiers, reel 1Z.21, undated. 1244 is the Hijri year corresponding to July 14, 1828‒July 3, 1829.
79 ANOM, carton 1MI.21 “Avis/‘alam” contains the bilingual draft of the notification, preserved among the Arabic archives of the Domain administration.
80 SHD, 1H20, “Mémoire de Hamdan Khodja à l’adresse du Ministre de la guerre,” and “analyse et commentaires sommaires,” June 1833.
81 Busson de Janssens, “Contribution à l’étude des habous publics algériens,” 59, citing a report of the 1833 investigative committee drawn up on January 12, 1834: “Rapport sur la fondation de La Mecque et Médine et autres établissements pieux.”
82 ANOM, carton F80-1082, “Rapport sur l’administration des corporations adressé à Monsieur l’Intendant civil,” 1837.
83 ANOM, carton F80-1082, “Rapport sur l’administration des corporations adressé à Monsieur l’Intendant civil.” For recent approaches to charity in Islam, see Michael’D. Bonner, Mine Ener, and Amy Singer, eds., Poverty and Charity in Middle Eastern Contexts (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003).
84 Among the “Muslim poor” considered by the Charity Office, which took over the distribution of alms from the mosques, the category of veterans (and their widows and orphans) who fought with or on behalf of the French army was given special treatment.
85 Shuval, “Poor Quarter/Rich Quarter,” 77.
86 Devoulx, Les édifices religieux de l’ancien Alger, 70.
87 Ibid., 79.
88 Ibid., 130.
89 Ibid., 247.
90 ANOM, archives of the former Regency of Algiers, reel 1MI70, register 19, “Établissements religieux no. 1” (200 pp.) and register 20 “Établissements religieux no. 2” (24 pp.). In addition to mosques, zawiyas, tombs, and other structures, these records included the ḥabūs of fountains, or of “students” (ṭulba).
91 The construction of this spatial ordering, in particular the hawma (neighborhoods), is analyzed by Isabelle Grangaud, “Masking and Unmasking the Historic Quarters of Algiers: The Reassessment of an Archive,” in Walls of Algiers: Narratives of the City through Text and Image, ed. Zeynep Çelik, Julia Clancy-Smith, and Frances Terpak (Los Angeles/Washington: Getty Research Institute/University of Washington Press, 2009), 179 – 92; Isabelle Grangaud, “Hawma,” in L’aventure des mots de la ville à travers le temps, les langues et les sociétés, ed. Christian Topalov etal. (Paris: Robert Laffont, 2010), 573 – 76.
92 For instance, ANOM, archives of the former Regency of Algiers, reel 1MI70, undated, on the jāmi’ al-Blāt (establishment no. 5).
93 Albert Devoulx, “Les édifices religieux de l’ancien Alger,” Revue africaine 39 (1863): 164 – 92, here pp. 187 – 99.
94 A microfilm has been conserved in the ANOM. Fouad Soufi, “Les archives. Une problématique de patrimonialisation,” in “Patrimoine(s) en question,” special issue, Insaniyat 12 (2000): 129 – 48.
95 Simona Cerutti, “Microhistory: Social Relations Versus Cultural Models? Some Reflections on Stereotypes and Historical Practices,” in Between Sociology and History: Essays on Microhistory, Collective Action, and Nation-Building, ed. Anna-Maija Castrén, Markku Lonkila, and Matti Peltonen (Helsinki: SKS/Finnish Literature Society, 2004), 17 – 40; Angelo Torre, “‘Faire communauté.’ Confréries et localité dans une vallée du Piémont (xviie – xviiie siècle),” Annales HSS 62, no. 1 (2007): 101 – 35; Isabelle Grangaud, “Premessa,” in “Società post-coloniali : ritorno alle fonti,” special issue, Quaderni storici 43, no. 129 (3) (2008): 563 – 74; Filippo De Vivo, “Cœur de l’État, lieu de tension. Le tournant archivistique vu de Venise (xve – xviie siècle),” Annales HSS 68, no. 3 (2013): 699 – 728; Simona Cerutti and Isabelle Grangaud, “Sources and Contextualizations: Comparing Eighteenth-Century North African and Western European Institutions,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 59, no. 1 (2017): 5 – 33.
96 Bertrand, L’histoire à parts égales; Romain Bertrand, Le long remords de la conquête. Manille-Mexico-Madrid : l’affaire Diego de Ávila (1577 – 1580) (Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 2015).
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This is a translation of: Le passé mis en pièce(s): Archives, conflits et droits de cité à Alger, 1830-1870