POPULAR AND FORMAL ISLAM, AND SUPRA-LOCAL RELATIONS
The highlands of northwestern Tunisia, 1800-1970
Wim van Binsbergen
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POPULAR AND FORMAL ISLAM, AND SUPRA-LOCAL RELATIONS The highlands of northwestern Tunisia, 1800-1970 Wim van Binsbergen |
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1. Introduction[1]
In recent years anthropologists have
paid considerable attention to North African popular religion and
to local saints as one of its main aspects. North African
religious studies are in a transitory state in that
anthropologists only recently have come to explore a field of
enquiry which hitherto had been mainly worked by historians and
Arabists.[2] Coupled to the fact that, with such
pioneers as Westermarck[3], Montagne, Evans-Pritchard, Peters and
Bergue, the anthropology of North Africa made a comparatively
late start in general (as compared with e.g. sub-Saharan Africa,
or Oceania), this goes some way to explain why anthropological
studies of North African region have tried to do rather too much.
Instead of presenting a thorough descriptive analysis of
specifically religious institutions, they tend to formulate
highly abstract interpretative models which attempt to bring to
bear an only cursorily-described religious system upon such
topics as the variability and versatility of Islam[4] , theories of segmentation[5], the state[6], society as a whole[7], folk illness[8], or the old controversy of the
utilitarian versus the logical nature of religious symbols[9]. Perhaps this state of affairs also
reflects the allegedly world-wide tendency that
‘anthropologists studying religion have been more interested
in religious models than in religious behaviour.[10]
In particular, some of the principal aspects of North African
rural religion have hardly been discussed in anthropological
writing so far: the worship of that cAtegory of land shrines that
are not or only dimly associated with personal, historical
saints; ecstatic cults of affliction, and in general the actual
functioning of religion, as religion, within the social process
at the village level.
However, various researchers did carry out fieldwork on these
subjects and before long publications can be expected which fill
in this gap. Meanwhile, it seems opportune to pursue, in the
present paper, what is perhaps the most significant and mature
line of enquiry within the already available studies: the
relation between two major versions of Islam, one formal, the
other popular, which have prevailed in North Africa over the
centuries. It is on this subject that the recent Moroccan studies
have made their most valuable contributions.[11]
It is, then, the aim of this article to discuss, with a view on
supra-local relations and incorporation processes, religious
structure and change elsewhere in North Africa: in the highlands
of Khumiriya, North-Western Tunisia.
Apart from small Jewish and Christian minorities, the whole of
North Africa is nominally Islamic. Dominating in city life is the
Qur’an. It imposes obligatory prayer (both at home and at
the mosque), fast, alms, and the pilgrimage to Mecca, and is,
moreover, associated with food prohibitions, certain general
festivals, and an elaborate system of theology (commemorating the
Prophet‘s life-history) and law. In the rural communities;
however, a popular, less formal and less strict version of Islam
dominates; emphasizing saint worship (with great saintly
festivals featuring in the agricultural calendar and eclipsing
the general Islamic ones), ecstatic cults centring on affliction,
and religious brotherhoods. These popular aspects are by no means
absent in the cities; but whereas in the cities they exist only
in the shadow of, and are incessantly challenged by, the urban
formal version which makes a claim of constituting orthodoxy, in
the rural areas the popular version makes up the
local religion par excellence.
The outlines of the religious history
of North Africa are well-known[12] Ever since the Arab conquest in the
seventh century, a recurrent theme has been the attempt to
effectively spread the formal version of Islam from the urban
centres into the rural areas.
This paper explores the interplay between local popular Islam and
the repeated introduction of formal Islam in Khumiriya, against
the background of its social and political structure and the
radical changes the latter underwent in the colonial and
post-colonial era. Having had no access to archival material on
the area, my data derive from three sources mainly: participant
observation, a systematic survey of present-day religious
activities, and oral-historical research going back to about
1800.
My argument will suggest that, even if more detailed descriptive
local information on North African rural religion is badly
needed, the dynamics underlying the relation between the two
versions of Islam in this part of the world should be interpreted
primarily by reference to supra-local political and economic
incorporation processes, i.e. to ultimately non-religious factor.
This position clearly owes much to Gellner’s work - even
though in the past I have criticized Gellner for reducing the
specifically religious aspects of the North African saints to a
marginal phenomenon.[13]
2. The Structure of pre-colonial
Khumiri Society in the Nineteenth Century
In pre-colonial, nineteenth century
Khumiriya[14] the economic and political basic unit
was the homestead, a cluster of tents, which usually had the
following composition: a middle-aged man; one or more married
sons; one or more sons-in-law; and the wives and children of
these men. Often the homestead also included one or a few
unmarried clients: stranger herdsmen who in many cAses were to
marry their patrons‘ daughters. The homesteads were thinly
scattered over the land. The density of population was about 12
per km2, less than 20% of the present one. Limited pressure on
the land made possible a fluid pattern of semi-annual
transhumance and short-distance migration geared to a
near-subsistence economy revolving around animal husbandry and
the cultivation of food-crops on forest clearings.
In this society honour and individual independence were central
values, which cAme to the fore in great and often violent
conflicts both within the homestead and between homesteads.
Homesteads were involved in competition over women, animals,
honour, and sometimes land. the homestead was far from stable. In
the course of years it would dissolve: part of its membership
remaining in the same territory while the other part would
migrate to elsewhere (usually within a radius of 10 km).
The differences in wealth, authority and honour between the heads
of the homesteads were limited, and fluctuating. Pre-colonial
Khumiriya belonged to that type of society where an acephalous,
segmentary social organization tends to develop.[15] Accordingly, the limited data on the
recruitment of partners in economic co-operation, conflict and
religious activities in these old days suggest a segmentary
pattern: social mobilization followed a tree-like structure of
units at a series of levels, with units at one level being
mutually exclusive but all nested within wider units at a higher
level.
The classic anthropological segmentation model, which such
authors as Favret and Gellner have applied to North Africa,
hinged on unilineal descent.[16] More in line with Peters‘
penetrating criticism of this approach.[17], segmentation in Khumiriya was (and
is) more a matter of geographical propinquity than of unilineal
descent.[18] the homesteads were part of wider
territorial segments (hamlets, villages, values, tribes), each
associated with a particular, contiguous part of the land.
Threshing-floors, springs, men‘s assembly-grounds (raquba),
shrines and cemeteries functioned as visible attributes of
distinct segments on each segmentary level. Each homestead would
have its own threshing-floor but would combine with others in the
use of a spring; the hamlet thus formed would combine with other
adjacent hamlets in the use of the same man‘s
assembly-ground; and on yet higher segmentary levels (valley,
clan, tribe), villages thus formed would combine in their use of
the same shrine and cemetery. the visible attributes indicative
of a unit‘s segmentary level would be distributed and
redistributed in accordance with the numerical size and power of
the segments involved, and alterations therein. A group might
expand from homestead level (having only its own threshing-floor
to boast) to hamlet or village level (monopolizing a local spring
and creating its own assembly ground) - or dwindle along the same
scale. Threshing-floors, springs and men‘s assembly-grounds
were however more than helpful markers in the
anthropologist‘s segmentary tree-diagram. Their serving as
such is based on the fact that they were, pragmatically, the foci
and vital economic and social processes: food production and the
water supply focused on threshing-floor and spring, whereas the
men‘s assembly-ground was the major arena for the on-going
social and local political process. Apparently, the structure of
segmentation directly sprang from the Dynamics of daily life.
However, on the highest segmentary levels of valley, clan, and
tribe, segmentary attributes were used (shrine, cemetery) that
had no pragmatic function in everyday life.
Although the homesteads had by no means a purely agnatic
composition, and although the basic pattern of social
organization was based on locality rather than descent, yet a
powerful agnatic ideology existed which still provides a
dominant cultural idiom in Khumiri society. this ideology implies
that effective positive relationships should be ideally
formulated as relationships between (close)agnates. If
interacting people are actually not agnatic Ally related, or not
related at all, fictive agnatic ties have to be created through
genealogical manipulation.
Therefore, persons who had been living in one another‘s
proximity for some decades, would be affiliated to the same
mythical ancestor (apical ancestor of a clan named after him)
irrespective of objective, historical, genealogical links. On the
other hand persons who shared, historically, the same matrilineal
ancestors would cease to be considered close agnates and would
even no longer be reckoned to the same clan, if because of
migration following the fission of homesteads they had not been
living in one another‘s proximity for several decades.
Thus if genealogical manipulation could ever be carried to the
end, the result would e that clans and territorial segments would
coincide. Proximity, economic and political co-operation, and
intra-local marriages, would provide local integration of
interaction, and thus in turn would be supported by the notion of
common matrilineal descent. However, because of continuous
migration, genealogical manipulation was always in a state of
flux. Very recent immigrants would not yet be fully integrated in
the locally dominant clan: hence temporarily certain
‘brother‘ segments, as accepted to belong to this
dominant clan in their territory of origin; thus clan-affiliation
temporarily provided identification between homesteads that were
several kilometres apart: a condition cutting across territorial
segmentation.
By having a powerful homestead, by establishing dyadic exchange
relations with members of other homesteads, and by co-ordinating
activities (fighting, conflict settlement, marriage negotiations)
involving a wide social field, some heads of homesteads, and by
co-ordinating activities (fighting, conflict settlement, marriage
negotiations) involving a wide social fields, some heads of
homesteads built up a position of great authority as elder (kabir,
shaykh). Elders formed councils on several segmentary
levels. Conflict regulation was their main task. However, in the
most important, violent conflicts they would often belong to one
of the parties, and then one had to resort to religious
specialists (vide infra). In addition there
existed, formally, an administrative structure of a higher order.
In pre-colonial nineteenth-century Tunisia, each tribe had a qaid,
appointed by the Bey of Tunis, and in charge of jurisdiction and
taxes. In these days, Khumiriya nominally had its qaids
as well, but their power in conflict regulation was extremely
limited and Khumiris violently resisted paying taxes.[19]
3. Aspects of popular religion in
the pre-colonial era[20]
Pre-colonial Khumiri society showed a
continuous oscillation between territorial integration, and
migration. As attributes of segments, shrines (and the cemeteries
which surrounded the major shrines) played a very important role
in this process.
Immigrants could settle in basically two ways. Either they
arrived as clients of dominant, earlier inhabitants; in that case
they had to orientate themselves (for sacrifices, pilgrimages,
burials, oaths, and festivals) towards the shrines and cemeteries
of their new patrons. Or they settled independent of earlier
groups, on a territory which because of purchase, exchange, gift
or violent conquest, on the moment of immigration was not
occupied by a dominant other group. Then the immigrants would
create a new shrine, often as a branch of the shrine of their
original segment; - in the latter case the new shrine would be
erected upon relics brought from there, and be given the same
name. Initially, immigrants of either type would keep visiting
the great saintly festivals of their segments of origin but
before long these historical links would lapse; then immigrants
and locals would jointly orientate themselves almost exclusively
towards their (old or new) local shrines. the regular patter of
territorial segmentation was restored - until further migrations
demanded a new adaptive redistribution of shrines over segments.
In this way shrines formed the major visible beacons in the
process of migration and territorial segmentation; the more so,
as they were the only permanent buildings amidst the movable
tents. At the same time they formed the beacons in the
competition between segments. the invisible saint who, through
his shrine, was associated with a certain segment, was supposed
to give this segment his exclusive, and mighty help. Mass saintly
festivals (where hundreds of visitors brought the ingredients for
a collective meal, to be prepared, distributed and eaten in front
of the shrine) provided a segment with an opportunity to show its
wealth, strength, and allies. The visitors held a safe-conduct
backed up by supernatural sanctions; therefore the festivals
could be the only mass activity in this society otherwise so
dominated by violence and divisiveness. Yet old disputes between
segments tended to revive precisely on festivals. Because all
higher-level segments endeavoured to embellish their shrine, to
heighten the splendour of its festival, and to have that shrine
accepted by more and more neighbouring segments as their focus of
common ritual (thus making that shrine the attribute of an ever
wider segment, on an ever higher segmentary level), the
ecological competition between segments was, in many ways,
duplicated by competition between local shrines. The history of
shrines is, to a great extent, the history of their segments.
There was a close connexion between the worship of local shrines
and the marriage pattern. Saintly festivals were
marriage-markets. Moreover, women who had married outside their
own village (as many as fifty per cent, or more, of all married
women), were obliged to regularly visit the shrine of their
village of origin. This norm was enforced by serious sanctions,
both supernatural ones, from the saint (disease, disaster), and
more concrete ones from the wife‘s kin: scorn, and the
imposition of fines in the form of domestic animals that were to
be sacrifices for the saint and whose meat was then to be
distributed over the households of the village. Thus pilgrimage
enabled to woman to maintain relations with her original segment
(which she could hardly visit in any other context except
pilgrimage), making her less dependent on her in-laws, and
keeping alive her and her children‘s claim on the estate in
her original village.
In pre-colonial, nineteenth-century Khumiriya the worship of
local saints was therefore a major factor in local integration.
It allowed both for a manifestation of balanced opposition
between brother-segments at various levels, and for the
overcoming of this opposition on higher levels: directly by means
of collective ritual and common identification with the higher
level shrines, indirectly by its connection with the marriage
pattern. Moreover the Khumiri religion in many respects
reflected, reinforced and justified dominant notions and values
in Khumiri society: the natural world, human life, human
interaction, kinship, authority, etc.
Finally local integration was very much promoted by the political
role of the guardians of the few major
Khumiri shrines (minor shrines lacking such guardians).
Guardians succeeded one another according to a patrilateral
adelphic system: upon a guardians‘ death, his successor
would be either his younger brother or, if he was the last of his
generation, his eldest brother‘s son, etc. Guardians and
their close kin distinguished themselves from the other Khumiris
by avoiding violence and by leading what was locally considered a
pious life. They would publicly observe one or several of the
rules of conduct stipulated by the formal Islamic variant:
perform the daily prayer, read the Qur‘an, refrain from
forbidden food and drink. Often these guardians were members of
religious orders. The donations they received (especially on the
saintly festivals they organized) were partly paid over to their
superiors elsewhere. But even so guardianship formed a source of
wealth, notably because of land that (as a donation to the
invisible saint) was inalienably linked to the shrine. Because of
their pacifism and their attachment to a fixed spot (the shrine),
the guardians were more or less outsiders to the segmentary
system. they were economically independent, and most effectively
invulnerable because of their close association with invisible
but powerful saints. therefore, the guardians were in a position
to act as ultimate mediators between segments in case of
important and violent conflicts that could not be resolved by the
elders. Because of the guardians‘ indispensibility for
conflict regulation, secular groups could not allow the former to
be harassed by other secular groups; by the same token, the
guardians‘ shrines were sanctuaries for refugees (especially
in case of blood feud).[21]
Many Khumiri shrines bear personal name, and are associated with
personal, historical saints, about whom lively stories are told.
so the history of these shrines may reflect, as we have seen, the
history of the segments, but there are also individualizing,
personal aspects involved. At least part of these shrines
originated in the tomb of an historical holy man: one of the
thousands of Islamic ‘missionary‘ agents who, mainly
originating from Mauritania and Morocco, and as members of
various religious orders, have flooded rural North Africa since
the twelfth century.[22]
In addition to a tomb, these holy men often left off-spring. Many
names of clans in Khumiriya indicate a saintly founder: Ulad
al Hajj, (‘sons of the Pilgrim"), Ulad
ben Sayid (‘Sons of the Lord, i.e. Saint‘)
etc. However, apart from a small guardian lineage, these name
obviously soon lost their religious overtones; far from being
pacifists, most bearers of these clan names fully participated in
their violent segmentary society.
Several authors of maghribine religion[23] have pointed out the ironical lot of
these pious agents: gone out to replace local popular religion by
their own version of formal Islam, they ended up with their tombs
(transformed into local shrines) constituting the very
corner-stones of local popular religion.
These holy men form an interesting case within the context of
supra-regional integration. The formal Islam they represented had
universalist tendencies beyond strictly local social structure,
saints and shrines. The fact that the names of Khumiri
clan-founders so often have religious specialist was a major
entry for strangers who wanted to settle in this region. This was
only possible if the Khumiris, despite their pursuit of a popular
variant, regarded themselves as Muslims, identified with
co-religionists elsewhere in the Muslim world, and welcomes
Islamic specialists. however, this measure of universalism in the
religious sphere was not accompanied by any supra-regional
identification in other spheres, notably in politics. Oral data
indicate that political identification hardly reached any further
than the several tribal confederacies to be found in the Khumiri
highlands. the agents of the central government (tax collectors)
were violently kept out. Moreover, although universalism provided
an entry for the pious agents, their teachings (to judge from the
sate of Khumiri religion at the beginning of the colonial period)
failed to bring about radial and permanent changes in the
popular-religious notions and activities of the majority of the
Khumiris. On the contrary, these formal-Islamic elements were
neatly encapsulated and neutralized as the isolated status
attributes of a very small minority of local religious
specialists; who promptly were regarded as saints (i.e.
inimitable); who had their functions not at the physical
boundaries between Khumiriya and a wider structure[24] but within the Khumiri segmentary
organization (although, of course, they were straddling the
cognitive, cultural boundary between Khumiri society and the
outside world); and finally, whose initial links with
supra-regional organizations (religious brotherhoods) must soon
have become irrelevant, leaving barely recognizable traces in the
memories and oral traditions of present-day Khumiris. Khumiriya
was politically and economically isolated; Khumiri popular
religion was closely connected with, and contributed very much
to, Khumiri social organization; within this context there was
little to promote and reinforce formal Islam on a larger scale.
Probably, during the last few centuries Khumiriya never entirely
lacked a handful of people who were able to read the Qur‘an,
and who observed a limited number of formal Islamic rules and
prohibitions. However, the impact of these formal Islamic
elements was very slight. Thus, for instance, until very recently
Khumiriya never had its own real mosque; the larger local shrines
were called mosque but were by no means places of collective
weekly worship.
Whilst the pious agents did represent more formal and
book-orientated versions of Islam than were prevailing in the
Khumiri countryside, yet the versions they pursued (the notions
and rituals of their own orders, emphasizing sainthood, ecstatic
music and dance) were in many respects closer to Khumiri popular
Islam than to the Islamic versions propounded by the urban
theologians of their time. Forms of ecstatic ritual are said to
have a history of many centuries in Khumiriya, possible as a
local elaboration on what the pious agents brought.[25] Nonetheless, the holy men formed a
recurrent reinforcement of formal Islam in the Khumiri mountains.
Because of them, Khumiri religion could develop in ever renewed
contact with Islam elsewhere in North Africa.
4. The colonial Phase: Chief, Shrine
and Brotherhood
although the French conquest of Tunisia
(1881) was dictated by much wider political and economic
considerations, it began as a punitive expedition against the
Khumiris.[26] Thus a long period ended in which in
Khumiriya the influence of a central government had been minimal.
The French stationed a garrison at the highest point of
Khumiriya: the beginning of the town of cAin Draham. In 1889 they
appointed local officials; they gave them the traditional title
of shaykh (chief) and allotted to each of
them an area (chiefdom) of several adjoining valleys. From cAin
Draham, Khumiriya was brought under effective colonial control
within a quarter of a century.
With the greater detail of historical data available on this
period, our analysis will now centre on only a part of Khumiriya,
the chiefdom cAtatfa.
Around 1800 a group of immigrants, and offshoot of a clan called
cArfawiya after their apical ancestor cArfa, had arrived in this
area and had since grown into a local numerical majority in two
adjoining valleys. Of old, these immigrants appear to have been
associated with the Shabbiya brotherhood.[27] In one of the valleys, these cArfawiya
founded (about 1850) the shrine of Sidi Mhammad, upon the tomb of
a holy man from their midst. One of the cArfawiya families took
to the guardianship of this shrine, which very rapidly became one
of the most important shrines in Khumiriya. Some decades
afterwards, in the course of short-distance migration, a branch
of this shrine was erected a kilometre to the south.
About 1870 members of another line of descent within the cArfawiya
clan, living in the other valley, founded there a lodge (zawya)
of the Qadiriya order, after contacts with this order in Al Kaf.[28] Many people in the cArfawiya and
other clans joined the lodge as members (fuqra). In the first
decades the lodge was rather effectively organized: in most of
the villages it had representatives who annually collected
donations, to be taken to Al Kaf by the founder-prior (muqaddim)
of the lodge, and his assistants (shaush).
Betides their religious expansion, the economic expansion of the
cArfawiya (who where renowned for their large herds of cAttle)
became so great a threat to the inhabitants of two other
adjoining valleys (mainly associated with the clans of Zaghaydiya
and of Ulad al Hajj), that, about 1870, the latter allied to
fight the cArfawiya. this alliance, headed by the Zaghaydi Yunis
ben cAbu’l Qasim was to be the origin of the tribe of cAtatfa.
The cArfawiya were weakened by the effects of an earth-quake,
which also destroyed their lodge. Moreover their pacifist
relatives, the guardians of Sidi Mhammad, exhorted them to end
hostilities: dramatically the guardians cArried the saint‘s
sacred flags to the battlefield to determinate what was to be
decisive battle. The cArfawiya then joined the alliance; their
lodge was rebuilt a few kilometres to the east, on Zaghaydi land.
Soon the tribal name passed on to the chiefdom established by the
French.
After violent rivalry a Zaghaydi, brother of Yunis, finally was
appointed chief by the French. He held this post until 1916, when
he was succeeded by matrilineal kinsman (FBSS), also a Zaghaydi,
but living in the valley of Sidi Mhammad (where the
Zaghaydi meanwhile had come to be represented by a few
homesteads). This second colonial chief was succeeded by his son
(1939-57), so that for over forty years the cAtatfa chief lived
in immediate proximity of the shrine of Sidi Mhammad.
Until the beginning of this century the chief‘s power was
still very limited. There were two main reasons for this. The
French, his overlords, still did not yet control the region
completely; moreover conflict regulation (formally the major task
of the colonial chief, besides tax collection and the enforcement
of other laws) was actually still in the hands of the wealthy
guardians of Sidi Mhammad, who enjoyed a great religious
authority. Moreover the chief was opposed by the lodge, whose
prior and assistants had considerable economic power and, more
important, great religious authority (not just among the lodge
members, but among all those who consulted them for divination
and healing: virtually all families in the wide environment). The
closer relationship between guardians and the prior (both by
common clan-affiliation, and by common association with the
Qadiriya order) contributed to the initially weak position of the
chief.
Gradually however the cAtatfa chief gained terrain on this
religion-political complex.
He succeeded in building up a considerable economic power. Chiefs
were not paid (until 1924), but were entitled to a share of the
taxes they collected. Thus they rapidly acquired wealth. On the
other hand, as elsewhere in the colonial world, the economic
situation of the majority of the population deteriorated. The
government began to exploit the cork-forests, restricted the
making of new clearings and stimulated the establishment of a few
expatriate-owned farms. Thus the agricultural area available for
Khumiris diminished greatly and a stop was put to the segmentary
dynamics. Tents gave way to huts and finally to stone houses; the
villages were consolidated upon their present places. Land
scarcity, erosion, rapid population growth (only to a limited
extend encountered by migration out of the region), and a
plague-plague (about 1930), increased the economic discrepancy
between the chiefs and the great majority of the people. Besides
the chiefs, only a small minority were able to profit from the
rapid rise of cAin Draham as a regional centre and tourist
resort. finally in the second quarter of this century the chiefs
used their wealth and power in order to deprive a number of their
fellow-villagers of their land rights. His increasing economic
power made the chief enter into direct patronage relationships
with many other heads of household.
The chief endeavoured to build his actual power (based on the
colonial government and on his own wealth) into authority, by
legitimizing this power in terms of dominant Khumiri norms and
values: notably by the pursuit of the status of elder (kabir)
as defined within Khumiri culture. By means of a worthy style of
living, dyadic exchange relationships with many people,
strategically chosen marriage ties, and conspicuous hospitality,
the chief manipulated a local cultural idiom so as to enhance his
power and to diminish local resentment of his person and
position. It was in his defined-defined position of elder, no
less than as an (externally defined) government official, that
the chief gradually acquired the monopoly of conflict regulation.
Along the same lines the chief tried to extend his authority into
the religious sphere, where he sought to break the power of the
religion-political complex of the cArfawiya, while remaining
within the context of local notions of authority. These notions
resolved on the interrelation between secular honour (ihtiram)
and sacred grace (baraka): an elder should
coordinate the interaction in his social field, including
interaction with the sacred (collective ritual); and he should
have optimal relationships not only with human beings, but also
with non-human agents: saints.[29] this is precisely what the chiefs
tried to achieve.
Laws from the very beginning of the colonial era shows that in
his struggle the chief was backed, to some extent, by
measurements taken by the colonial government. Shrines were no
longer acknowledged as juridical sanctuaries (1884), and land
that had always been associated with shrines and orders, was
declared alienable.[30] We need further research on the impact
of these general measures in the remote Khumiri highlands.
Undoubtedly, however, these laws deprived the position of
guardian of a supra-local official backing (which, on the
contrary, did constitute the chief‘s main power base).
Guardianship became much less powerful and rewarding, and as a
consequence, less attractive.
About 1920 the succession of guardians of the shrine of Sidi
Mhammad underwent a radical change. From that time onward the
local men‘s assembly has chosen the guardian among the close
bilateral kindred of previous guardians. Whereas in the earlier
patrilateral-adelphic system succession was entirely determined,
the new system offered much more choice - while the chief
influenced the final choice, and ratified the appointment. Thus
in the years 1920-70 seven guardians succeeded one another who,
through (mainly matrilateral) consanguinity with previous office
holders, had acceptable (though not patrilateral-adelphic) claims
to guardianship, but who, on the other hand, were very closely
linked to the Zaghaydi clan and even (1940-70) were fully
dependent clients of the chiefs.
In this way the chief acquired indirect but effective control
over the most important shrine of his chiefdom. In the 1920s the
chief personally took over the organization and co-ordination of
the local saintly festival. In 1930 the created a new cemetery
around the original shrine of Sidi Mhammad. The family of
original cArfawiya guardians who until the beginning of this
century locally dominated a number, wealth and power, fell into
decay: by now all its male members have left the surroundings of
Sidi Mhammad.
That saintly arbitration was a dying institution is well
demonstrated by the fact that Khumiri oral history records no
living saints after the 1910s. Unlike Morocco, in Khumiriya the
saint today is always a dead saint.
With regard to the lodge we see the same striving for indirect
chiefly control. Whereas until the beginning of this century the
lodge-members living around Sidi Mhammad all belonged to the
family of cArfawiya guardians, in the later decades nearly all
local lodge-members belonged to the closed kindred of the chief.
Locally, the latter-day lodge-members predominantly belong to
recently immigrated families, bound to the chief by ties of
patronage, and enjoying little prestige. This situation is
exceptional as compared with other villages in the research area.
Throughout the area nearly 20 per cent of the heads of households
are lodge-members, and this number is sufficiently large to make
a quantitative analysis possible. such analysis[31] demonstrates that in other
villages lodge-members do not differ from non-lodge-members, as
to wealth, prestige, and the period of local residence of their
matrilineal descent line. Unmistakably the lodge-members around
Sidi Mhammad, whose social status is much lower than that of
lodge-members elsewhere, are the chief‘s pawns in his
encroachment into local religion.
But while the chief‘s control over shrine-guardianship has
implications for the entire chiefdom, the chief‘s indirect
control over lodge-members has however been limited to just one
village. In the course of about half a century the regional
organization of the lodge has become increasingly loose. I
suspect that his was partly due to the impact of the colonial
government, which through the local chiefs may have tried to
weaken such rival, local foci of power as the lodges represented
vis-à-vis the central power. In addition, built-in structural
tendencies within the local social field seem to have torn apart
the lodge‘s regional organization in Khumiriya. the
religious brotherhood creates interaction and mutual
identification between lodge-members irrespective of their
segmentary distance in every day life. this is however contrary
to the working of a segmentary system; and with segmentation
forming the main structural principle in Khumiri society, it
looks as if the cross-cutting regional lodge organization was
gradually broken up by the localizing segmentary tendencies. In a
nutshell this would be the same process as which on a larger
scale, made for the proliferation of local lodges, shrines and
saints throughout North Africa: as they became effectively
incorporated in a local segment, religiously-based
supra-localities *check this passage* (linking local offshoots to
their remote parent establishments) became impedimental to these
offshoots‘ integration in the local segments ; as these
offshoots‘ survival would depend on local functioning, the
supra-localities *check this passage* would become irrelevant,
and wither away. Territorial segmentation appears to be conducive
to local autonomy of religious foci (office-bearers, shrines),
and inimical to religious supra-local organization such as the
dispersed membership of the lodge represented.[32]
At any rate, because of this looser organization, control over
lodge-membership in one village does not give the chief any real
power over the prior and his assistants, who live in other
valleys than the chief‘s. The chief has not been able to
destroy the great authority of these religious specialists, and
conflict between chief and lodge has endured until today.
5. Enhancement of Formal Islam
The French conquest of Khumiriya
initiated an enhancement of formal Islam in this area.
In the beginning of this century, some Qur‘an teachers
settled in Khumiriya from abroad (Morocco; Kabylia). Half a
century later most formal Islamic knowledge of most villagers
(distinct notions about god, the Qur‘an and afterlife;
chants about the Prophet; myths about the major North African
saints) cAn still be traced to these teachers. In principle their
action was a continuation of that of the pious agents in
pre-colonial Khumiriya. In the new situation, however, formal
Islam appears to have a novel effect. It creates a permanent
alternative perspective that directly threatens Khumiri popular
religion. ‘Are the Khumiris true Muslims?‘ cAn the
local saint really take revenge, cAn he help in times of illness
and distress?‘ ‘Are sacrifices of animals and other
food really pleasing to god?‘ Is the lodge-member‘s
ecstasy a mystic union with god, His Prophet and his saints, or
is it a diabolical cult, or even merely a kind of sport, or a
conjuring trick?‘ Is the worship of shrines other than the
few most important ones acceptable?‘ Are cArd-playing,
drinking and eating wild pig perhaps most more serious sins than
the general Khumiri indulgence in these activities
suggests?‘ These are some of the questions which few Khumiri
supporters of formal Islam now raise concerning the local version
of popular Islam.
Undoubtedly, through the centuries, the recurrent confrontation
with pious agents temporarily raised similar questions. But,
obviously, the ensuing doubt then gave way again to the notion of
essential continuity between formal Islam and the Khumiri popular
version. The then greatest threat to this notion of continuity -
the pious agents themselves - would be dispelled by making the
latter into the cornerstones of the local social structure and
popular religion.
In the colonial age, on the contrary, an enduring notion of
discontinuity was to emerge. Certain Khumiris were confronted, in
cAin Draham and elsewhere, with formally-Islamic urban Tunisians,
and with the French authorities who, in religious matters, based
their policies largely on what they considered to be formal
Islam. Adopting formal-Islamic elements was attractive, or
sometimes even necessary, for those Khumiris who had vested
interests outside the Khumiri villages, and who, in this cApacity,
occupied the strategic positions in the relation between the
rural villages and wider structures: Khumiri chiefs, their
assistants and close relatives, traders (in cAin Draham), the
(very few) pupils of primary and secondary schools, and
professional soldiers after their retirement. These cAtegories
were to form an incipient Khumiri elite of relatively powerful
and wealthy people. In addition to western clothing and housing,
literacy, the French language and smoking of cigarettes, formal
Islamic elements became the status attributes of this elite. As
such, these elements were also adopted by a few social and
economic climbers among the villagers who, as yet, lacked the
important supra-regional contacts but for whom the elite formed a
reference group.[33]
Already in the 1930s Demeerseman[34] noted the emergence of this new
formal-Islamic perspective. The decline of mass saintly
festivals, which set in by that time, is partly explained by the
economic decline of the majority of the population, and by
government prohibitions; but addition the growing impact of
formal Islam forms a major factor. What was historically the
ritual climax of these festivals, the collective meal, has
disappeared completely after the period 1935-50. Some visible
manifestations of the same process occurred already much earlier.
In the beginning of this century the few most important Khumiri
shrines (including Sidi Mhammad), until then simply huts
constructed of rough stones and arboreal material, were
transformed into white stone buildings roofed by a dome (qubba).
The later type of shrine is found throughout the Islamic world,
and is far more acceptable to formal Islam. Significantly,
Khumiris at that time lacked the required skills and had their
early qubbas built by Europeans.
Apart from this reshaping of already existing shrines, from about
1925 onward no entirely new shrines were created any more. Thus
the relatively young village of Hamraya has no man-made shrines.
From the same recent period we have the first and only reports of
Khumiri shrines being demolished. One very important shrine,
although not a qubba (yet), was destroyed by
an expatriate settler about 1920: he built his farm upon it. In
the 1940s, another shrine, small and forgotten, was discovered
and destroyed by a pious Khumiri, a retired professional soldier,
who was making a new clearing.
6. Formal and Popular Islam Today
Economic decline befell Khumiriya
during the colonial era, and largely as a result of the colonial
situation. The decline continued during the first decade after
independence (1956), and necessitated unemployment relief work to
be organized. The government created a large re-afforestation
project; however much this project may contribute to the future
of the region, its direct effect has been that the agricultural
area available for private peasants became still more limited,
and the goat husbandry was prohibited. Misery and distress are
paramount, and the general attitude vis-à-vis the government,
the national party, and national goals is negative. Rudebeck
remarked ‘that the rural proletarians of Tunisia still do
not appear to be integrated into the political system[35], if this is read to mean that the
peasants have no active part in, nor
motivation towards, shaping the economic and political processes
which affect them so dramatically, the remark certainly applies
to Khumiriya; (of course, the powerless peasants have little
choice to be integrated in the political system as passive
objects of policy). The Khumiri situation closely resembles the
one Duvigneau described for the village of Shebika, some 120
kilometres south of Khumiriya.[36]
Meanwhile the growth of local elite has continued. They developed
their own style of living, with the status attributes already
mentioned, and including the tendency of elite members to
associate, for daily interaction and marriage, preferably with
one another. they acquired influential positions after
independence, not only as chiefs and their assistants, but also
in local party organization and the relief work organization.
Formal Islamic elements continued to increase in importance.
Formal Islam not only provides status attributes, but also forms
a channel of upward social mobility in the non-religious sphere.
It renders socio-economic climbers in the village acceptable
associates, though not equals, of the elite. Moreover there are
several recent cAses of Qur‘an teachers (both in the
villages and in the new mosque ofcAin Draham) who, through the
prestige and the network of relations built up as religious
specialists, acquired prominent posts in local government or in
the relief work organization - promptly to resign as religious
specialists.
The pull of status advancement is also strongly felt among
religious specialists in the popular variant. These too now tend
to give up their religious offices without hesitation as soon as
they get a change to build up (often on the basis of their
religious specialism, in combination with other skills, network
relations, inheritance, etc.) some wealth and power in the
non-religious sphere. this process involves only a few persons,
because opportunities are scarce, and because numerically
specialists only form a minority. However, several of
today‘s richest and most powerful villagers are former
lodge-members, who left this religious specialism to their less
fortunate fellow-villagers. Moreover some musicians, specialized
on the instruments for ecstatic sessions (where they are not
supposed to make money) have changed to the instruments for
festive music, which earns them an occasional but considerable
income on festivals, weddings and circumcision ceremonies.[37] Already a quarter of a century ago,
even a guardian of the shrine of Sidi Mhammad resigned from
guardianship to pursue festive music as a remunerative part-time
specialism.
The present situation is confusingly ambivalent in various
respects. Due to the spread of literacy (partly through private,
small Qur‘an schools in the villages), nowadays many
villages under thirty years of age are able to read the
Qur‘an: at burials, memorial rites, circumcision and wedding
ceremonies and at the general Islamic festivals. The readers
derive prestige from their awe-inspiring ability. Yet for
illiterates the classical Arabic text remains practically
incomprehensible when recited. And the teachings of the Book by
no means eclipse the popular Khumiri version of Islam. People who
resigned from their specialisms in the sphere of popular religion
take pains to deny or to excuse this fact. The elite (and those
who aspire to belong to it) emphasize formal Islam as a status
attribute. But at the same time they keep participating in the
popular variant: they still feel best at home in the latter
sphere, and in their view the responsibility, envy and conflicts
connected with their exalted position necessitate optimal
relations with the powerful and legitimacy-providing local
saints. The popular, saintly religion instrumentally provides the
local elite with the opportunity to show its political and
economic power and to build up authority: by means of impressive
animal sacrifices; by organizing the construction of a few qubba;
by trying to acquire official permission for a saintly festival
(which in view of prevailing official attitudes is no mean task);
and by actually organising such a festival. Moreover some members
of the elite make a substantial profit by trading at the great
saintly festivals.
North African religious festivals have a redistributive aspect
which may be relevant in this context. The sacrifice of a
domestic animal dedicated to a local saint is a major element in
the popular religion. The meat cAnnot be sold but has to be
shared out among local people and passers-by. In a small-scale
society where domestic animals are relatively abundant, where
differences in wealth are moderate and where reciprocity
dominates social life, such ritual redistribution may serve to
convert dispensable wealth into honour at low extra costs. In
contemporary Khumiriya however cAttle and sheep have become
scarce and mainly concentrated in the hands of the elite. Wealth
differences are great. The elite cAnnot expect reciprocity from
the village poor. Nowadays the elite lets the increase of wealth
prevail over the increase of honour.[38] In this context animal sacrifices have
grown too costly for the elite. Since deep involvement in the
popular sphere implies animal sacrifices for those who cAn afford
it, the elite is induced to shun this sphere and instead to
pursue the formal variant: animals killed on the Prophet‘s
festivals are not supposed to be distributed gratis.
Thus the elite continually oscillates between indulgence in and
rejection of the popular variant.
In most local contexts both Khumiri elite and non-elite tacitly
presuppose essential continuity between formal Islam and local
popular Islam. Notions out of both variants are intermingled
without differentiation, and one ignores such considerable
theological problems as have been mentioned in the beginning of
section 5. This implicit assumption of continuity could be
interpreted as an unconscious attempt, on the part of the
Khumiris, to escape the cognitive dissonance between on the one
hand formal Islam as a local ideal reinforced from outside and on
the other popular Islam as a fondly cherished local practice. But
beyond this, the participants‘ assumption of continuity
primarily bears out the central historical fact that for
centuries the two variants have been at dialectical interplay
within Khumiriya. Both are part and parcel of Khumiri society,
and if anything cAlls for a sociological explanation, it is not
the tolerance between them in most situations, but the intolerant
polarization in some.
The painful situations in which this convention of continuity is
explicitly rejected, contain valuable hints as to the fundamental
political and economic processes underlying the tension between
formal and popular versions of Islam in contemporary Khumiri
society. One situation in which the popular variant finds itself
explicitly rejected is when district authorities (typically
non-Khrumirs) occasionally refuse permission for a popular
collective ritual.
Since independence the Tunisian government, in its quest for
modernization[39], has opposed popular Islam. Permission
for saintly festivals were refused, even, outside Khumiriya, a
number of shrines have been demolished by the authorities.
Certain elements in the ritual of the religious orders were
prohibited, and the orders were severely criticised.[40] In Khumiriya, timing and scope of the
annual saintly festivals are now strictly controlled by district
headquarters, whereas the ecstatic ritual is officially forbidden
(especially the most spectacular elements of it: manipulation of
fire and knifes during trance).
Rejection of the popular variant also occurs when Khumiri members
of the ritual elite refuse to participate in customary popular
activities such as the ecstatic dance, the worship of minor
shrines, or the consumption of wild pig. Formal Islam provides
them with a standard argument against these activities; they are
cAlled: haram, i.e. prohibited by Islamic
law, hence polluted, taboo. In the village, such rejective
behaviour is often triggered by the presence, as a third party,
of townsmen: people who are considered representatives of the
ideal, formal version of Islam, and who (in this, and in most
secular respects) from the reference group par
excellence for the rural elite. The ostentatious
rejection of local religious forms by elite-members who happen to
be present, creates strong negative feelings in their non-elite
fellow-villagers. The latter regard it as a manifestation of
assumed superiority, and in addition feel threatened in their
assumption that their popular religion represents true Islam. The
elite‘s rejection destroys the assumption of formal/popular
continuity, and forces the underlying cognitive dissonance into
full consciousness.
Confusion and embarrassment are the peasants‘ dominant
responses to this confrontation. But on the other hand, the
formal variant of Islam, and its local exponents, cAn be heard to
be explicitly rejected by Khumiri peasants when discussing, with
scorn and resentment, the alleged machinations of local
authorities and elite both within and outside the sphere of the
religion. Under modern conditions, the pursuit of popular
collective ritual (particularly the ecstatic sessions and the
saintly festivals, even if in a greatly reduced form) is not just
a continuation of custom; rather it takes on unmistakable aspects
of an awakening local consciousness in terms of ethnicity and
class. As my informants put it: ‘Whatever "they"
may say or do, this is what we, people of the mountains, have
always done and will continue to do.
Whereas many Third-World scenes now show a decline of historical
forms of local religion, the Khumiri response is rather that of a
revival.
Despite the economic decline, recent years have seen a trend to
reshape existing shrines into qubbas - an
expensive and labour-consuming task in which whole villages
co-operate. Each family is prepared to pay its share for the
festival permission. When an official permission was sure to be
refused, ecstatic sessions were held clandestinely. In the new
generation, though now largely exposed to primary-school
education and long-term military draft outside Khumiriya, many
new lodge-members are being recruited. It is not only the
elderly, but also young people and children who emphasize their
relationship with the local saint, and spontaneously visit his
shrine. With territorial segmentation still the major
social-structural feature, saints worship continues to provide
the shrines and cemeteries to mark the segments at various
levels.
Thus it would appear as if, recently, the popular and the formal
aspects of Islam in Khumiriya are becoming polarized in a way
which is rather at variance with their local intertwinement over
past centuries. The explanation seems to lie mainly in colonial
and post-colonial processes of political and economic
incorporation. The colonial situation had dislocated the loci of
decisive political and economic power to far outside Khumiriya
and had reduced the average Khumiri to the status of
unemployed-relief worker or frustrated would-be labour migrant.
For those who, as members of the local administration and the
rural elite, act as intermediaries between this outside power and
the powerless peasants, Islam has become an aggressive status
attribute which when brought to bear upon face-to-face
interaction between elite and peasantry, enables the former to
demonstrate their derived power and to emphasize their relative
independence vis-à-vis local, popular custom - at the same time
confusing and provoking the peasants. For the peasants the
embarrassment and resentment instilled by the elite‘s
religious challenge is just one aspect of their general position
of powerlessness. Under the present circumstances, they lack the
economic and political power, the analytical understanding of
their predicament, and the secular organization, to effectively
adopt other symbols (let alone actions) for the expression of
discontent; therefore entrenchment in the popular religion has
become the main (though not the only) expression of their
predicament. The theoretical problem of why and through what
mechanism, here as elsewhere, a society‘s political and
economic transformation had to find a predominantly religious
expression, is something beyond the scope of the present paper.[41]
The tensions of the situation pervade all aspects of contemporary
Khumiri religion. However, in certain cAtegories of people these
tensions are particularly acute and give rise to profound social
and psycho-somatic crises; this is the cAse with resigned or
still active specialists in the popular variant; members of the
elite; and the close kinsmen of these people. This involved try
to resolve these crises, not through political action based on
macroscopic analysis of economic and political incorporation, but
in terms of exceptionally severe conflicts with local saints in
the idiom of ecstatic cults of affliction.
7. Conclusion
In this paper I have attempted to show
how in the religion of Khumiriya (an area not a-typical for much
of rural North Africa) the coexistence of a popular and a formal
version of Islam, and the various forms this coexistence has
taken over time,cAn be profitably (though by no means
exhaustively) analysed in terms of supra-local political and
economic relations. In the centuries when Khumiriya was a
segmentary society with very limited political and economic
relations with the outside world, the perception of this outside
world as sharing in essentially the same religion, provided for
contacts with pious strangers performing (in addition to economic
function which I have not the data to discuss systematically)
crucial political functions within Khumiri society. The fact that
these pious strangers could be assimilated locally without
substantially affecting local political and economic power
structures, allowed for the religious variant these strangers
represented (i.e. formal Islam) to be organically accommodated,
serving the local needs for outsider arbitration. In his studies
of the Moroccan High-Atlas, Gellner has demonstrated how there
the saints mediate both between segments within the local rural
society, and between that society and the outside world: coastal
Morocco, the colonial government, the colonial government, the
world of Islam. The present study applies a similar view to a
different part of North Africa.
Colonialism (and the perpetuation, after Independence, of the
structures it had created) dramatically upset the pattern of
supra-local relations surrounding Khumiriya. The focus of
effective political and economic power shifted from local
communities to modern bureaucratic organizations outside Khumiri
rural society. Among the local agents (administration, elite) of
the new power structures, the emphasis on formal-Islamic elements
precipitated a polarization between formal and popular Islam in
the area. In the present situation the historical intertwinement
between the two variants of Islam has largely become eclipsed,
and (as a starting point for a more secular peasant movement?)
popular Islam has developed into a major symbol of growing
peasant consciousness. Meanwhile one wonders what effects an
improvement of the local economic and political situation will
have on
the relations between the two versions
of Islam in the area.[42]
[1] Data
were collected during fieldwork in 1968 and 1970. The
ethnographic present refers to the late 1960s. I am indebted to
the following persons and institutions: the University of
Amsterdam, which provided a research grant and under whose
auspices D.G. Jongmans established the Khumiriya project within
which I carried out the fieldwork; the Centre des Arts et
Traditions Populaires, Tunis, which co-ordinated the project
locally; D.G. Jongmans, who generously shared his profound
knowledge of the region and who guided the project throughout;
Hasnawi b. Tahar, for excellent research assistance; H.E. van
Rijn, my wife for sharing my prolonged interest in Khumiriya, and
for guidance in the quantitative analysis upon which the present
argument is partly based; J.F. Boissevain, M.L. Creyghton, E.
Gellner, A.M. Hartong, A.Huitzing, H.J. Simons, K.W. van der
Veen, P.C.W. van Dijk and J.M. Van der Klei, for helping
discussions on parts of the argument; and finally O. Mwelwa, A.
Schijf and M. Zwart for typing various versions of the
manuscript. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at a
seminar of Zambia and at the Universities; Social Science
Conference. Nairobi, both in December, 1971.
[2] Cf. E.C.
Hagopian, The Status and Role of the Marabout in Pre-Protectorate
Morocco, in: Ethnology, 3, 1964, p. 42-52.
[3] Westermarck,
E., Marriage Ceremonies in Morocco, London,
1914; idem, Ritual and Belief in Morocco,
I.& II, London, 1926; Montagne, R., Les Berbères
et le Makhzen dans le sud du Maroc, Paris, 1930; idem,
La vie sociale et la vie politique des Berbères,
Paris, 1931; Evans-Pritchard, E.E., The Sanusi of
CyrenaicA, Oxford, 1949; Peters, E.L., ‘The
Sociology of the Bedouin of Cyrenaica, D. Phil thesis, Oxford
University, 1951; Berque, J., Structures sociales du
Haut Atlas, Paris, 1955
[4] Geertz,
C., Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco
and Indonesia, ChicAgo & London, 1968.
[5] E.
Gellner, Saints of the Atlas, London, 1969;
Van Binsbergen, W.M.J. Religie en Samenleving: Een studie over
het Bergland van Noord-West Tunesië, Drs. Soc. Sc. thesis,
University of Amsterdam, 1971, idem,
‘Verwantschap en Territorialiteit in de Sociale Structuur vn
het Berland van Noord-West Tunesiè, Drs. Soc. Sc. thesis,
University of Amsterdam, 1970; a combined English version of
these studies is currently being prepared.
[6] Gellner,
o.c.
[7] Mason,
J.P., ‘Saharan Saints: Sacred Symbols or Empty Forms?’,
in: Ethnology, 13, 1974, p. 390-405.
[8] Creyghton,
M.L., ‘Folk Illness in een Tunesisch Dorp’, Drs. Soc.
Sc. thesis, University of Amsterdam 1969; Crapanzano, V.,
The Hamadsha: A Study in Moroccan Ethno-psychiatry,
Berkeley, 1974.
[9] Van
Binsbergen, Religie, o.c.
[10]Köbben, A.J.F., ‘Opportunism in Religious Behaviour,
in: Van Beek, W.E.A., & Scherer, J.H., eds., Explorations
in the Anthropology of Religion, The Hague, 1975, p.
46-54; the quote is on p. 50.
[11]Gellner, op. cit.; idem, ‘Sanctity,
Puritanism, Secularism and Nationalism in North Africa’, Archives
de Sociologie in a Pilgrimage Center, Austing &
London, 1976.
[12] Bel. A., La
religion musulmane en Berbérie, Esquisse d’histoire et de
sociologie religieuses. I, Paris, 1938: Draque, G., Esquisse
d’histoire religieuse du Maroc: Confréries et Zaouîas,
Paris, n.d. (1951); Trimingham, J.S., A History of
Islam in West Africa, London, 1962, p. 16f.
[13] Van Binsbergen, W.M.J.
‘Saints of the Atlas: Ernest Gellner", in: cAhiers
des Arts et Traditions populaires, 4, 1971, p. 203-11.
[14]Hartong, A.M., ‘De Geschiedenis van het Sjeikaat Atatfa
op Basis van de Orale Traditié, Drs. Soc. Sc. thesis, cAtholic
University of Nijmegen, 1968; Souyris-Rolland, M., ‘Histoire
traditionelle de la Kroumirie’, in: IBLA, 12, 1949, p.
127-65; Demeerseman, A., ‘Le culte des Walis en
Kroumirie’, in: IBLA, 27, 1964, p. 119-63; Ling, D.L., Tunisia:
from Protectorate to Republic, Bloomington &
London, 1967; Van Binsbergen, Religie, Verwantschap, op. cit.
[15] Cf. Fortes, M., 7
Evans-Pritchard, E.e., Introduction, in: idem, African
Political Systems, London, 1940; Middleton, J., & Tait, D.,
eds, Tribes without rulers in African Segmentary Systems,
London, 1958.
[16] Favret, J., ‘La
segmentarité au Maghreb, in: L’Homme, 6,1966, p. 105-111:
Gellner, Saints, op. cit.
[17] Peters, E.L., Some
Structural Aspects of the Feud among the cAmel-herding Beduins of
Cyrenaica, in: Africa, 37, 1967, p. 261-82.
[18] Van Binsbergen, Religie,
Verwantschap, op. cit.
[19] Souyris-Rolland, op. cit.
[20] In the present paper I am
concerned with the social structural, as analyticAlly distinct
from the cultural, dimention of Khrumir religion. my research has
however entailed both aspects and attempted to combine them. this
had led me to an analysis of such dominant themes as honour (ihtiram),
grace (baraka), sainthood, and man-saint
relaitonships, against fthe general cultural and
social-structural background. I am fully aware of the great
importance of these aspects for an understanding of Khrumir
society and religion, yet in the present argument will only
cursorily deal with them.
[21] Cf. Gellner, Saints,
o.c.
[22] This is not to suggest
that foreign origin was a necessary condition for posthumous
sainthood. Throughout North Africa, locals have been known to
become considered as saints after their deaths. However, in
Khrumiria pious legend has invariably associated such local
saints not only with wonder-working and an exemplary social life,
but also with elements derived from the formal, outsider version
of Islam: reading of the Qur’an, regular praying, pilgrimage
to meccA, the white burnouse, the observance of food prohibitions
etc. However local and ‘popular’ the saint may have
been while alive, once he becomes cAnonized locally he is
conceived mainly in the trappings of a pious stranger.
[23] Gellner, Saints,
o.c. Geerts, o.c.
[24] By contrast, in the
Moroccan Atlas, living saints and the saintly tombs they
administer straddle the boundaries between major local groups,
their territories, and between major ecological zones; Gellner, Saints,
o.c.
[25] The ecstatic element in
North African religious ordrs is said to derive from three
sources: early Islam in the Middle East (cf. Molé, M. ‘La
Danse extatique en Islam’, in: Les Dances
Sacrées, Anthologie, sources Orientales, Paris, 1963,
p. 145-280); ecstatic cults derived from sub-saharan Africa (cf.
Brunel, R., Essai sur la Confrérie religieuse des
Aissaoua au Maroc, Paris, 1926; Trimingham, J.S., Islam
in the Sudan, London, 1965); and autochtonic ecstatic
cults dating back to Antiquity (cf. Bertholon, L. & Chantre,
E., Recherches anthropologiques dans la Berbérie
orientale, I, Lyon, 1913). In addition to
anthropological studies, much more historical research is needed
on this point, such research could greatly benefit from the
recent theoretical, methodologicAl and factual advances made in
the field of pre-colonial religious history of sub-saharan
Africa, e.g. Ranger, T.O., & Kimambo, I., eds., The
Historical Study of AfricAl Religion, London, 1972.
[26] Ling, o.c. p. 22f;
Abun-Nasr, J.M., A History of the Maghrib,
2nd ed., London, 1975, p. 278f.
[27] Originally they belonged
to the Drid tribe. cf. souyris-Rolland, o.c., p. 135; Bel, o.c.,
p. 378f; Hartong, o.c., p. 36; Miedema, A.W.F., Verslag
Leeronderzoek Tunesiè 1965, typescript, University of Amsterdam,
Anthropologisch-Sociologisch Centrum, 1967, p. 19; Cuisenier, J.,
‘Endogamie et exogamie dans le marriage arabe’, in: L’Homme,
2, 1962, p. 80-105; Van Binsbergen, Verwantschap, o.c., p. 93f.
[28] Al-Kaf is a town about 100
km south of Khrumiria. The Qadiriya order was founded in the 12th
century by Sidi Abd al-Qadir al-Djilani, in Baghdad; since the
order has grown to be one of the most important and widespread
orders of entire Islam; cf. margoliouth, D.S., Qadiriya, in:
Gibb, H.A.R., & Kramers, J.H., eds., Shorter
Encyclopaedia of islam, Leiden, 1974, p. 202-5, and
references cited there.
[29] Van Binsbergen, Religie,
Saints, o.c.; cf. note 20.
[30] These laws were enacted in
1889; cf. Ling, o.c. p. 59.
[31] Van Binsbergen, Religie,
p. 208f, 295f.
[32] For Central_AfricAn
developments reminiscent of this same process, and for a more
general discussion of the regional dynamics involved, cf. Van
Binsbergen, W.M.J., ‘Explorations into the History
and Sociology of Territorial Cults in Zambia’, in:
Schoffeleers, J.M., ed., Guardians of the Land: Essays on
Central-African Territorial Cu7lts, Gwelo, 19790, idem,
‘Regional and Non-regional Cults of Affliction in Western
Zambia’, in: Werbner, R.P., ed. Regional Cults,
A.S.A. Monographs 16, London, 1977, p. 141-175; also cf. Werbner,
R.P., Introduction’, in: idem, Regional Cultus,
op. cit, p. ix-xxvii.
[33] Jongmans, D.g.,
‘Meziaa en Horma: Samenhang tussen Dienstbetoon, Eer en
Welstand in een Veranderde Samenleving’ in: Kroniek
van Afrika, 3, 1968, p. 1-34; Van Binsbergen,
Verwantschap, o.c. p. 75f.
[34] As recApitulated in his
1964 article, o.c.
[35] Rudebeck, L., Party and
People: A Study of Political Change in Tunisia,
2nd ed., London, 1969, p. 265.
[36] Duvigneau, J., Chebika,
Paris, 1968.
[37] Standard musicAl
instruments for ecstatic sessions are the kusba
(flute) and the bendir (tympanon, a large
tambourine without bells); typical festive instruments are the tabbala,
a large and high drum played with sticks, and the zukkra, a kind
of hoboe; cf. Van Binsbergen, W.M.J., ‘Muziek en Dans in het
Atlasgebergte’, in: Muziek en Volkenkunde,
nos. 109-10 and 111-2, 1971.
[38] Jongmans, op. cit.; idem
‘Politicts on the Village level’, in: Mitchell, J.C.,
& Boissevain, J.F., eds., Network Analysis; Studies
in Human Interaction, The hague/Paris, 1973, p.
167-217.
[39] MicAud, C.A., ‘Social
and Economic Change’ in: idem, Tunisia, The
Politics of Modernization, London, 1964, p. 144.
[40] Speight, R.M.,
‘Tunisia Sufism;, in: Moslem World, 56,
1966, p. 58.
[41] Cf. Van Binsbergen,
W.M.J., Religious Change in Zambia,
London/Boston 1981, esp. chapter 1.
[42] This article was prepared
for publicAtion in the course of my current employment with the
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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