Dialectical Anthropology, 11:1 (1986) 93-118
9 1986 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht - Printed in the Netherlands
Case Study
CULTURAL ECOLOGICAL THEORY AND THE FORMATION OF THE IBADITE
DESERT CONFEDERACY
Mahfoud Bennoune*
Before the introduction of the cultural area
concept by Mason in his study of numerous
configurations of North American cultures,
the geographical or environmental
determinism approach had been prevalent
elsewhere for a long time. In fact, an Arab
geographer, al-Masudi, describing the
northwestern Europeans in the tenth century
wrote that:
The peoples o f the North are those for w h o m the sun is
distant from the zenith ... cold and d a m p prevail in those
regions, and snow and ice follow one another in endless
succession. The warm h u m o u r is lacking a m o n g them; their
bodies are large, their natures gross, their manners harsh,
their understanding dull and their tongues heavy ... their
religious beliefs lack solidity ... those o f them who are
farthest to the north are the most subject to stupidity,
grossness and brutishness. [1]
In resorting to the postulation of a rigid
theory that ascertains a total environmental
determinism, al-Masudi implied in the above
quoted passage, and in numerous other
writings, that civilization as a way of life
cannot possibly emerge, evolve and flourish
both in the tropical zones and the northern
colder regions, such as Scandinavia, which he
described above. He went as far to suggest
that even the biological make-up of people is
predetermined by geographic factors.
However, al-Masudi's geo-biological
determinism was strongly rejected by Ibn
Khaldun. Indeed, with his outstanding
versatile mind that produced insightful critical
and original thought, Ibn Khaldun dismissed
* Dr. M a h f o u d Bennoune, Department o f Anthropology,
University of Algiers.
93
al-Masudi's implacable environmental
determinism as an erroneous, unproven
hypothesis.
Al-Masudi undertook to investigate the reason for the
levity, excitability and emotionalism in Negroes, and
attempted to explain it. However, he did no better than to
report, on the authority of Galen and ... al-Kindi, that the
reason is a weakness of their brains which results in a
weakness in their intellect. This is an inconclusive and
unproven statement. God guides whomever He wants to
guide [2].
Instead, Ibn Khaldun offered an ecological,
material, and cultural explanation. That is,
given the technology used at any one time,
economic surpluses that sustain civilized life
could not be derived from the colder and
tropical zones.
Nevertheless, this ancient doctrine of
environmental determinism has persistently
survived under various forms in the social and
biological sciences. Thus, following the views
expressed by al-Masudi and others, Bodin
(1580), in his work on climatic and geographic
conditions, divided the earth into three zones:
temperate, frigid, and torrid.
Whoever considers the nature o f the planets will find, ...
that this position accords with the three regions I have
named, giving the most distant planet, that is Saturn, to the
southern region, Jupiter to the middle one, and Mars to the
northern ... [3].
Here appears the old magical and astrological
belief that the stars, planets and various other
heavenly bodies influence the climatic zones
of the earth's surface. However, Bodin was
cautious enough to try to demonstrate also
" h o w largely food, laws and customs have the
94
power to change nature" [4]. Buffon, as a
naturalist, appeared to grasp the role played,
at least, by human labor in the transformation
of the physical landscape. He wrote that:
by his intelligence the animals have been tamed, subjugated,
broken in, and reduced to perpetual obedience. By his
labour marshes have been drained, rivers embanked and
provided with locks, forests cleared, moorlands cultivated
... The entire face of the earth bears today the imprint of
man's power which, although subordinate to that of nature,
has often done more [5].
Though Buffon's man is a doer, the
technology that articulates him with the
environment is not mentioned. One of the
most influential theorists of geographical
determinism was the French Enlightenment
philosopher and sociologist, Montesquieu. In
fact, when he attempted to explain the causal
factors underlying the various Greek socio-
political regimes, he stated bluntly that "the
sterility of the soil in Attica established a
popular government and the fertility of
Lacedaem, an aristocratic one" [6].
However, in the beginning of the 19th
century, Hegel dismissed environmental
determinism as a whimsical explanatory
concept. He exclaimed dogmatically, "where
the Greeks once lived the Turks now live; and
that is an end to the matter" [7]. But, this did
not eradicate the persistence of environmental
determinist explanations from the social and
biological sciences. In the twentieth century
this doctrine has been championed by Semple
[8], who popularized Ratzel's anthropo-
geography in the English-speaking countries.
Besides advancing notions such as the
monotony of a desert environment inspires a
monotheistic religion, she stated that
in every problem of history there are two main factors,
variously stated as heredity and environment, man and his
geographic conditions, the internal forces of race and the
external forces of habitat [9].
Semple concluded her section on the Stability
of Geographic Factors in History, by
emphasizing that
the geographic element in the long history of human
development has been operating strongly and operating
persistently ... It is a stable force. It never sleeps. This
natural environment, this physical basis of history, is for all
intents and purposes immutable in comparison with the
other factor in the problem - shifting, plastic, progressive,
retrogressive man [10].
In this work, Semple combined both racial
and environmental determinism, disguised by
a flowery romantic style. In stating her
doctrine, however, she resorted to subjective
personification and glorification of nature,
whose immutable solidity is contrasted with
ephemeral human life. This may be an
esthetically satisfying lyric style, but it
conveyed and expressed bad science.
The second proponent of environmental
deterministic doctrine in the twentieth century
is Huntington; he suggested climatic changes
which occurred in the Near East and southern
Europe resulted in the shiftings of civilization
in those parts of the world. Indeed,
Huntington set himself the task of analyzing
"the role of biological inheritance and
physical environment in influencing the course
of history" [11]. He came to the conclusion in
his book, entitled Mainsprings of Civilization
- Heredity, Geography, Climate, that climatic
conditions determine human "social
attitudes" [12]. He stated that
temperature, rainfall, and other climatic conditions have as
much effect upon social conditions as upon the human body
... To take a simple illustration, a hot climate, especially if
it is humid, makes people feel disinclined to work. This
encourages the more clever people to get a living with as
little physical exertion as possible. Their example fosters the
growth of a social system in which hard work is regarded as
plebian. Disinclination toward extra effort also leads to the
neglect of medical care and sanitation, thus permitting
disease to play havoc, and still further reducing human
vigor. By encouraging one type of social organization and
discouraging another, climate has great influence upon the
development of civilization [13].
Even the nature of religion, for Huntington, is
determined by the physical environment.
Without getting involved in a critical
discussion concerning his learned
considerations purporting to the interaction

between genetic, climatic and environmental
factors, Huntington's view of a cultural
system appears utterly superficial. As for the
overall theory of sociocultural causation, it is
based on the illusory assumption that men of
genius are the prime movers of cultural and
societal evolution. This "big man theory"
masked behind his scientific jargon, led him to
overlook the dialectical nature of
sociocultural dynamics. Thus, his attempt to
extricate the determinist factors underlying
social and cultural causation failed because it
remained tinged with basic theoretical
premises of environmental determinism.
It was such erroneous theoretical
assumptions that led Febvre, one of the most
outstanding human geographers and
historians in modern times, to examine the
historical and magical roots of this doctrine.
He dedicated a whole book, entitled simply A
Geographical Introduction to History, to it
[14]. Febvre wrote of the environmental
determinists:
Let them by all means make the "powers of the soil" and
the "forces of the climate" act on the "genius o f peoples"
and the "history of nations" as their fancy dictates. But
they may adventure alone. Their work seems to us sterile -
if not dangerous. They have taken the problem o f
environment ready set from an old-time tradition. They
have not tried to rejuvenate its settings they stick to that
geographical influence, at both powerful and obscure,
multiform and complex, which is exerted, they tell us, both
on man physical and moral and on man social and political
- on the colour o f his skin, the shape of his body, the
strength of his organism, his psychic qualities and defects,
his judicial, economic and religious institutions - even the
production of his mind, the creations o f art and genius.
They state it as a fact. But they do not prove it [15].
Thus such grandiose and omnipotent theories,
which indulge in explaining all sociocultural
causations by the geographic factor, failed to
explain anything at all. This then induced
Febvre to refute strongly the environmental
deterministic doctrine and instead he tried to
elaborate, define and elucidate the scientific
study of human interaction with geographical
settings. This discipline is called in France
" H u m a n Geography."
95
There was gradually established a real science of the
relations o f man with nature - his present relations, and his
relations in the past ... it has been established to study the
relations between man and his environment "[16].
Two years later, in 1926, Wallis, an American
anthropologist, wrote:
those who support the thesis that the geographical
environment is responsible for culture show nothing more
than culture must subsist in the environment, and that given
the culture and the environment, a correlation between the
two can be made [17].
Having examined the general historical
background of environmental and
geographical determinism, let us turn now to
analyze briefly the work of a few
anthropologists who have endeavored to
extricate the "correlation" between humans
and their physical and cultural environments.
Mason's formulation of cultural area was
further elaborated by Kroeber in the United
States. He introduced Ratzel's general
concept, known as the Oikumene (the
inhabited), an idea which connotes various
clusters of cultures scattered over diverse
environments. In so doing, Kroeber was
drawn to reformulate the geographical
distribution of cultural complexes (areas). He
endeavored to make detailed comparative
cross-cultural studies in order to demonstrate
the similarities and differences of numerous
cultural traits. But, as Wolf pointed out, "his
ultimate ordering of cultural forms ... was
always in terms of style, not in terms of
cultural components organized to solve the
on-going life problems of people." [18] Thus
Kroeber and the geographical area school
failed to grasp the significance of cultural
ecology.
Cultural ecology as a resourceful research
strategy was devised by Steward, who defined
it in the following terms:
Cultural ecology is the study o f the processes by which a
society adapts to its environment. Its principal problem is to
determine whether these adaptations initiate internal social
transformation or evolutionary change ... Its method
requires examination o f the interaction o f societies and
96
social institutions with one another and with the natural
environment ... It distinguishes different kinds o f
sociocultural systems and institutions, recognized both
cooperation and competition as processes of interaction,
a n d it postulates that environmental adaptations depend on
the technology, needs, and structure o f the society and on
the nature o f the environment. It includes analyses o f
adaptations to the social environenmnt . . . . [19].
In other words, culture is conceived as an
adaptive mechanism devised to articulate
people with their social and physical
environment. The significance of Steward's
definition of cultural ecology refuted both
cultural and environmental determinism. As
Wolf explained it:
It differs from either environmental determinism, which
strives to explain culture in terms of its environment or
cultural determinism, which explains the adaptation to the
environment purely as a result of culture, by making the
question of how a particular technology is used in a
particular environment an open one. Social organization
appears no longer as a category like material culture or
ideology, but as a complex process by which groups of
people within societies relate themselves to each other in the
setting of available resources [20].
Nevertheless, when Steward explained how
the ecological "interaction areas" or "social
fields" were interrelated, he postulated
erroneously that cultures are made up of
integrated cores, ecologically determined by
random diffusion from adjacent areas, and a
peripheral boundary which he refers to as
merely "the rest of culture," not too involved
in the processes of cultural adaptation.
Steward explained the concepts of core and
periphery thus:
Cultural core - the constellation of features which are most
closely related to subsistence activities and economic
arrangements. The core includes such social, political and
religious patterns as empirically determined to be closely
connected with these arrangements. Innumerable other
features m a y have great potential variability because they
are less strongly tied to the core. These latter, or secondary
features, are determined to a greater extent by purely
culturalrhistorical factors - by r a n d o m innovations or by
diffusion and they give the appearance o f outward
distinctiveness to cultures with similar cores [21].
To put it differently, he thought that there are
primary features or components of a culture
that constitute a cultural and ecological core
which are ,integrated into the sociocultural
features or components which are diffused,
shaped haphazardly by the complex
interactions of cultures. Steward seems to
imply that only certain aspects of culture are
ecologically determined. As a result, he ended
up by introducing an apparent determinism,
which he rejected in formulating his energy
system, that resembles the Wittfogelian
hydraulic-ecological determinism. In so
doing, Steward underestimated, on the one
hand, the effects of external interrelationships
of cultures, and on the other, he overlooked
the basic fact that the functional
interrelatedness of all social elements and their
cultural components are integrated into the
whole sociocultural system. Nevertheless,
Steward's great merit and most important
contribution to cultural anthropology lay in
the fact that he stimulated ecological research
and thus set in motion the study of cultural
ecology, not as a theory, but as a research
strategy and method in cultural anthropology.
As Sahlins observed more accurately and
with great insight, people have complex
dialectical relationships with their ecological
settings and their physical environment from
which they derive their sources of livelihood.
By transforming nature, they usher in
processes that change and transform
sociocultural values, and vice-versa. "It is the
environment that is passive, an inert
configuration of possibilities and limits to
development, the deciding forces of which lie
in culture itself and in the history of culture."
He added that, "there is an idea of
reciprocity, of a dialogue between cultures
and their environments ... cultures are human
adaptations. Culture, as a design for society's
continuity, stipulates its environment," and
he concludes,
a culture is shaped by these, its own commitments: it molds
itself to significant external conditions to maximize the life

chances. There is an interchange between culture and
environment, perhaps continuous dialectic interchange, if in
adapting the culture transforms its landscape and so must
respond anew to changes that it had set in motion [22].
However, despite Sahlin's refined
reformulation of culture's articulation with
the environment, in terms of culture/nature
dialectics, the new ecological theory has
remained flawed by the underlying
assumption of Whitean mechanical cultural
determinism. Indeed, Leslie White's insistence
upon a mechanical cultural determinism is
neither congruent with the empirical data nor
with the perceptibly observed sociocultural
reality. Thus, he asserted that:
Apart from theories of environmental determinism which
considered merely the relationship between habitat and
culture, all types of interpretation prior to the emergence o f
anthropology as a science, thought of m a n and culture
together; no one considered culture apart from its h u m a n
carriers. With the advance o f science, however, came a
recognition of culture as a distinct class of events, as a
distinct order of phenomena. It was seen that culture is not
merely a reflex response to habitat nor a simple and direct
manifestation of ' h u m a n nature.' It came to be realized that
culture is a continuum, a stream of events, that flows freely
down through time from one generation to another and
laterally from one race or habitat to another. One came
eventually to understand that the determinants of culture lie
within the stream of culture itself; that a language, custom,
belief, tool or ceremony, is the product of antecedent and
concomitant cultural elements a n d processes. In short, it
was discovered that culture m a y be considered, from the
standpoint of scientific analysis and interpretation, as a
thing sui generis, as a class o f events and processes that
behaves in terms of its own principles a n d laws and which
consequently can be explained only in terms of its own
elements and processes. Culture m a y thus be considered as
a self-contained, self-determined process [23].
In this view human populations are
considered as "helpless pawns" of culture.
Such a mechanical interpretation of the
cultural process that overlooks social praxis is
inadequate scientifically because it does not
account for the obvious fact that human
beings not only act collectively to shape and
reshape their destinies, but also transform,
alter and modify their biosocial environments.
One proponent of this cultural determinism
97
went so far as to remove crucial decisions
from
the individual by arguing that systems, once set in motion,
are self-regulating to the point where they do not even
necessarily allow rejection or acceptance o f new traits by a
culture ... Culture is about as powerless to divert these
systems as the individual is to change his culture [24].
However, contrary to this assertion, human
groups, who are, after all, made up of
individuals organized socially and politically
into groups, communities and societies, and
economically into productive units of varying
size, can act together, make decisions
collectively, and mold and change their
existential and environmental surroundings.
In other words, an anthropological theory of
the essence and substance of sociocultural
reality and its inherent dialectical process of
causation which does not take into account its
tri-dimensional universe, brought about, kept
in motion and maintained in constant
function by the interplay of humans, culture
and nature, can explicate accurately neither
diachronic-historical changes nor structural
transformations and modifications. The
paradigm of both cultural determinists and
the new ecological theorists overlooks the
respective roles of the consciousness of
humans, the tool makers: culture, that
artificially made, extrasomatic "adaptive
mechanism"; and nature, the sum of
geographical possibilities and limits, from
which humans harness energy resources that
allow them to survive and perpetuate their
kind.
Indeed, vulgar materialism, mechanical
cultural determinism, and economism are all
based upon simplistic concepts which consider
sociocultural forms as "mere epiphenomena
of technologies and environments, either by
direct causation or by some economic
rationality which makes institutions the
product of social organizations" [25]. The
neo-functionalism propounded by the
theorists of cultural ecology, which is a
derivative of cultural determinism, is
98
embedded in the functionalist-empiricist
ideology underlying the theoretical
assumptions of Euroamerican social science.
[This] new functionalism is fundamentally the same as the
old functionalism except that the field o f application has
changed, the interest now being to show the rationality o f
institutions with respect to their environments rather than to
borrow elements in the society. But the concept o f function,
borrowed from physiology, remains unchanged, and it leads
the "new ecology" ... into a double impotency:
a) In its more modest form, it dissolves into pure
description. The function o f the stomach is to digest food;
the function o f ritual pig slaughter is to regulate pig
populations - i.e., the function of x is to do what it does.
The word here is totally superfluous and adds no
information unless we assume some metaphysical notion o f
purpose implied in the following.
b) By extension to the teleological meaning " f u n c t i o n "
becomes "adaptive function." Here we are still dealing with
our first definition, "the function of x is to do what it
does," but now the "what it does" is not an observed
datum, and we are left with what is basically a description
o f imaginary relations, where the function is assumed rather
than demonstrated [26].
In a dialectical theoretical perspective
nothing is static, including the biophysical
environment itself, which changes as a result
of both inherent natural processes and human
intervention. As for the sociocultural
environment of the cultural ecologists, since it
reflects or represents real social processes of
actual societies, which exist in time and space,
it is constantly changing. As Edmund Leach
put it, "the demographic, ecological,
economic and external political siiuation does
not build up into a fixed environment, but
into a constantly changing environment.
Every real society is a process in time" [27].
In sum, there is a kind of dialectical process
of interaction and feedback between human
beings, their sociocultural systems, and the
biophysical environment. Due to such
constant interplay between humans, culture
and nature, change continuously occurs in all
these three dialectically and dynamically
interconnected phenomena or components.
As Yehudi Cohen expressed it succinctly,
culture is
man's most important instrument o f adaptation - that is, as
an extension of his physiology and as an artificial
instrument for maintaining a viable relationship with
human habitats. Culture is part o f man, and man could
have no existence without it. Man creates it, uses it, and is
affected by it. Culture has largely replaced the mechanisms
o f natural selection and genetic mutation as the instrument
by which life is maintained in the milieus that man seeks to
exploit. Moreover, culture changes; and with every change
in a group's culture, the people in the group undergo
modifications in their psychological makeups
[consciousness] and social relations in order to make use of
the new form of culture [28].
Humanity, as a sum total of social praxis,
has, in order to survive and propagate the
species, responded throughout history to
cultural and environmental changes by
devising new adjustive social mechanisms.
Since sociocultural life is based upon and
derived from a material basis, around which it
primarily rotates, social struggle and conflict
have played a decisive role in the shaping of
human cultures and societies. This
socioeconomic strife, which is the distinctive
feature of human communities and social
formations, is generated and maintained by a
differential access to resources and wealth.
The lust to control and harness such resources
results in intra- and intersocietal struggles
which are prone to usher in far-reaching
changes and modifications both in the
material infrastructure and in the ideological
superstructures. The diachronic analysis of
the formation of the Ibadite desert
confederacy illustrates the dynamic and
dialectical interplay not only between human
beings, their culture and society and the
physical landscape upon which they were
forced by historical circumstances and their
own ideological exigencies, but also by intra-
and intersocietal conflict and struggle.
THE FORMATION OF THE MOZABITE
DESSERT CONFEDERACY
The formation of the Mozabite desert
confederacy must be reconsidered here in the

light of modern sociocultural and ecological
theory. The historical development of the
contemporary five cities that form the
confederation of Mzab, situated on artifical
oases in the Algerian desert about 400 miles
south of Algiers, was constituted by a
medieval Ibadite Moslem sect. Although the
origin of the hiving off from the Moslem
Umma was justified by an ideological conflict
with orthodox Islam, the underlying causes
that induced the original Kharijite faction to
fission off appears now to be undoubtedly
generated by specific sociopolitical and
economic grievances. The causes that induced
the political conflict arose from the unequal
distribution of wealth, prestige, and power
which led to coercion and struggle.
Those with the privileged interests wish to maintain them;
those without wish to share them. The main spheres of
conflict are between the sub-groups of the privileged and
between the privileged and the masses. The political elite
usually endeavors to unite whenever their interests are
challenged by the masses.
Those without wealth and power have three courses open
to them. They may seek to enter the political elite; they may
seek to overthrow it, challenging the ideology on which it
rests; they may weakly submit with little resistance. The first
course will be resorted to where political office is open to all
members of the society and a high degree of mobility into
the elite is possible. In a society with a closed ruling class the
second is the only active course for the masses. Social
mobility and class conflict are the expressions of these two
methods of achieving political power [29].
Most scholars who have studied these
"puritans of the desert" have overemphasized
the religious doctrine of the Ibadites,
considering it doubly as a monocausal factor
which brought the confederacy into existence
from ex nihilo, and as the ideological unifying
force that maintained the social cohesion of
these sectarians intact for so many centuries.
However, I shall argue that this religious
factor alone, which is a mere reflection of the
underlying sociopolitical and economic
causes, cannot explain adequately the origin,
development, and evolution of this desert
confederacy. Therefore, in order to elucidate
the special socio-economic integrative
99
mechanisms of such an apparently isolated
society, organized by the Beni-Mzab on the
rocky hills of Sheibka, I must analyze the
overall diachronic adjustments, which
resulted in the successful synchronic
adaptation of these Mozabites to their social
and biophysical environments. In fact, the
history of the present day Ibadites goes back
to the political movement of the Kharijites
which originated in the Arab orient during the
battle of Siffin (Safar, 37 = July, 657) in
which the forces of Muawiya were opposed by
those of Ali.
The socio-political origins of the Ibadites
are rooted in the early history of Islam. In
fact, when the Caliph Umar II was murdered
by a Persian slave in 644, a council of six
distinguished companions of the Prophet was
called upon to choose a new Caliph among
themselves. The choice narrowed down to Ali,
the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law; and to
Uthman from the clan of Umaiya, the
aristocratic Quarayshi family which came,
before its conversion, to the forefront of the
opposition to Mohammad and Islam in
Meusa. Uthman was also married to one of
the Prophet's daughters. Finally the four
other members of the council gave their votes
to Uthman because of the cogent influence
exerted by his Quarayshi family. Ali's
supporters "denounced the 'conspiracy' to
withhold allegiance from the Prophet's own
family" [30].
Soon history proved the partisans of Ali
right. Once in the office of the caliphate,
Uthman distributed all the major posts to the
Umawis in exchange for their support.
Henceforth, the Quarayshi lineage became
openly involved in corrupt dealings. As for the
newly elected Caliph,
he lived more luxuriously than his predecessors and he
allowed his family and the chief companions to become
owners of vast private properties in the conquered lands. At
the same time, he antagonized many of the companions.
Discontent grew in the camp cities, where it was felt that all
spoils and revenues of the conquests should be divided
equally among the community. Ali was known to share this
view [31].
100
As a consequence of this corruption, the
masses rose during Uthman's eleventh year as
Caliph to demand his abdication. Moreover,
he rejected this popular request even when the
caliphal palace was under siege. The
insurgents responded by killing him. After this
event, a delegation of the successful rebels
headed by two companions, Talha and
Zubayr went to see Ali to convince him to
accept his candidacy to the office of caliphate.
Nevertheless, after the election of Ali as
Caliph, a faction under the conservative
leadership of Talha, Zubayr, and Aisha, the
Prophet's widow, denounced his election as
illegal, and even accused him of complicity in
the assassination of Uthman. This conflict
promptly resulted in a civil war between Ali's
followers and the three dissidents and their
partisans. During the war, Ali made the new
camp town of Kufa his capital; from there his
followers launched a series of swift attacks
which routed the dissident troops. At this
crucial moment the astute Governor of Syria,
Muawiya, a cousin of Uthman, decided to
punish the assassins. This well-calculated
decision of Muawiya triggered an internal war
of succession between two opposing factions.
After a series of inconclusive military
campaigns and skirmishes between the
warring parties, Muawiya, a skillful diplomat
and able manipulator made, during the
aforementioned battle of Siffin, a proposal
for an immediate truce and the establishment
of a committee of arbitration. The chosen
referees would settle the conflict in
pronouncing a judgement "according to the
Koran" concerning the rightful successor to
the caliphate. Ali and a large number of his
supporters accepted this proposal, either
because they were trying to end the deadly
conflict or because the members of the Kura
(Koran readers) faction who had previously
conducted an implacable political campaign
against Uthman culminating in his murder,
expected that this Koranic judgement would
be in their favor and therefore justify their
past struggle against the corruption of Beni
Umaiya. However, their acceptance provoked
consternation among some warriors,
representing mainly the Tamin tribe. This new
faction emphatically denounced the setting up
of a tribunal above the divine word and
proclaimed that "judgement belongs to God
alone (La Hukma ilia li Allahi. Their decision
was paradoxically based on the Koran which
states that " I f one party rebels against the
other, fight against that which rebels."
After having stated their staunch opposition
to the arbitration between Ali and Muawiya,
the future champions of Kharijism withdrew
to the village of Harura situated near Kufa in
Iraq and elected Abd Allah b. Wahb, a
member of this faction who came from a
humble social background as their Imam.
These first insurgents called themselves al-
Haruriya. The Haruriya faction formed the
core of an increasingly dynamic movement
that played, from then on, a determinant role
in the political history of Islam both in the
Maghreb and in the Mashreq. Unfortunately
for Ali and his party the committee of the two
referees decided in favor of Muawiya and his
supporters on Ramadan, 37 (February 658).
As a consequence, countless partisans of Ali,
including the indomitable members of the
Kura faction, "went out" (kharaja) secretly
from Kufa to join the al-Haruriya camp under
the leadership of Ibn Wahb. Thenceforth all
members of the al-Haruriya movement were
referred to by the orthodox Moslems as the
Kharijites, that is, those who went out of the
community of the faithful. As for the
Kharijites, they referred to themselves as the
" S h u r a t " (the vendors), i.e., those who have
sold their souls for the cause of God, which
implies political equality and social justice for
all the true followers of the Prophet.
As soon as the Kharijites joined the al-
Haruriya faction, whose members had already
established their operational headquarters in
the Djurkha country situated on the left bank
of the Tigris, a strategic location which put
them in control of all the exit routes from
Fars, their political demands were announced:

nullification of Ali's legitimacy to the office
of the caliphate, denunciation of Uthman's
past corruption and justification of his
execution, and proclamation of their strong
opposition to the mounting danger of Beni
Umaiya. The subsequent events molded and
crystallized the Kharijite dialectics of the unity
of theory and practice. Their political theory
and religious dogma emerged from the social
contradictions of their time; they were
conceptualized, elaborated, and immediately
translated into concrete political action that
aimed primarily at the abolition of
exploitation and the institutionalization of a
"Kingdom of God upon the Earth," where
social justice, equality and fraternity could be
maintained among all true followers of the
Prophet without distinction of birth and
standing.
The political movement founded by the
Kharijites formed the earliest dissident sect of
Islam. Its followers continually arose in armed
resistance against the prerogative conferring
upon the Quarayshi to appoint a Caliph from
amongst their number, which allowed them to
monopolize the economic plunder derived
from the taxation of the newly conquered
countries [32]. Paradoxically, it was Ali who
crushed in blood the first partisans of
Kharijism. He attacked them by surprise on
Safar, 9 (July 28, 658) in their camp and
inflicted a terrible defeat on them in which Ibn
Wahb and a large number of his companions
were slain. But Ali achieved only a pyrrhic
victory over the Kharijites whose resistance
was prolonged in a long series of uprisings,
specifically in 39 (669) and 40 (670). Finally,
Ali himself perished by the dagger of the
Khariji militant, abd al-Rahman. The death of
Ali consecrated the rise to hegemony of the
clan of Beni Umayia under the energetic
leadership of Muawiya, who established the
first hereditary dynasty in the history of
Islam.
However, the struggle waged by the
Kharijites was not suppressed even by
Muawiya, whose twenty years of reign 40-60
101
(660-680) were marked by several risings that
broke out both in Kufa and Basra,
strongholds of Kharijism. Soon the Kharijites
realized that the only alternative lay in the
organization of a protracted guerilla war.
Thus, they withdrew to the marshy country of
the Batniht on the left bank of the Tigris,
where they organized themselves militarily
according to revolutionary warfare tactics that
allowed them to carry out surprise attacks and
ambushes. This hit-and-run strategy proved
itself successful because when the military
pressures of the imperial army increased too
much, the Kharijite partisans could gain
swiftly the mountains of the Iranian plateaus.
This warfare rendered the life of the Umayad
governors miserable, right down to the end of
this dynasty's reign.
However, this protracted revolutionary
warfare carried out by the Kharijites from the
hinterland and various fringes of the Umayad
empire brought about the division of their
movement. In fact, by the death of Yazid, the
Khawarij became divided into three distinct
factions: Azarika, Sufriyia, and Ibadyia. Only
the latter is of concern here because of its
spread and maintenance in North Africa.
Although the Kharijite movement attracted
a large number of the Arab masses,
specifically Yemenis and Radrumawtis, it
appealed much more to the non-Arab ethnic
groups or Mawali. Originally the term Mawali
meant in Arabic "kinfolk," then
"protection" in the Koran; after the
establishment of the caliphate outside Arabia
it signified the clients of the Arab Moslems.
These Mawali were attracted by the egalitarian
political doctrine of the Kharijites which
proclaimed unambiguously the principle of
equality of all the ethnic groups who
embraced the Islamic faith. In fact, though
the islamized populations incorporated into
the caliphate were given by virtue of their
conversion full citizenship rights, the
institutionalization of patronage, which
forced the Mawali to seek the sponsorship of
Arabian tribesmen, was strongly resented.
102
This practice of clientship entailed the legal
notion of inherent differential power
relationships between the Arab and the non-
Arab populations of the expanding empire.
Therefore, the spread and popularity of the
sociopolitical philosophy propounded by the
Kharijites was due to the existing objective
conditions prevalent within the rising multi-
ethnic empire. This philosophy was of course
based on a fundamental interpretation of the
Koran, which was made in the light of their
immediate theoretical requisites of the
ongoing political and military struggle. The
militancy and determination of this movement
brought its followers to the forefront of the
successive revolts put up by the oppressed
masses against the increasing, arbitrary rule of
the Arab ruling classes. Thus, from the outset,
Kharijism as a doctrine emerged from popular
social strife, enriched by the daily historical
experiences of the active members of a
political movement which elaborated it in the
heat of subsequent battles and in the function
of its objectives.
The influence of the ideas of the Kharijites
on the Moslem intellectuals of the time was
pervasive. According to the Ronarts,
a considerable number of revolutionary poets, orators, and
men of law, [were] inspired by the pious zeal extolled by the
Kharijite ideal as a means of combatting the laxity of morals
and the irreligious spirit which dominated the court and the
leading society of the towns, and this Kharijite literature has
produced works of lasting value [33].
To illustrate the fervent and colorful life of
individual Kharijites and their arduous
struggles, it would be appropriate to quote
two poems. The first was written by an
unknown prisoner and the second by Qatari b.
al-Fujaa, one of the most intrepid Kharijite
leaders, "who routed army after army sent
against him by Hajjaj; he sang almost as well
as he fought" [34].
'Tis time, O ye Sellers, for one who hath sold himself
To God, that he should arise and saddle amain.
Fools! in the land of miscreants will ye abide,
To be hunted down, every man of you, and to be slain?
O would that I were among you, armed in mail,
On the back of my stout-ribbed galloping war-horse again!
And would that I were among you, fighting your foes,
That me, first of all, they might give Death's beaker to
drain[
It grieves me sore that ye are startled and chased
Like beasts, while 1 cannot draw on the wretches profane
My sword, nor see them scattered by noble knights
Who never yield an inch of the ground they gain,
But where the struggle is hottest, with keen blades hew
Their strenuous way and deem 'twere base to refrain,
Ay, it grieves me sore that ye are oppressed and wronged,
While I must drag in anguish a captive's chain.
I say to my soul dismayed -
Courage! Thou canst not achieve,
With praying, an hour of life
Beyond the appointed term.
Then courage on death's dark field,
Courage! Impossible 'tis
To life forever and aye.
Life is no hero's robe
Of honour: the dastard vile
Also doffs it at last.
THE SPREAD OF AL IBADYA TO THE
MAGHREB
The Ibadite doctrine, which originated in
the Mashreq, was introduced to the Maghreb
around the middle of the eighth century by
some followers of Abd Allah b. Ibad, who
escaped persecution from the Middle East.
This Ibadite moderate and well-politicized
faction branched off from the main Kharijite
movement during the period of its protracted
guerrilla war that was organized against the
rulers of the Umawyad dynasty. The first
successful revolt of the Ibadites occurred in
the closing years of the reign of Marwan II
under the leadership of Abd Allah b. Yahya
Talib al-Hakk and Abu Hamza (129 = 747).
When the population of Hadramut embraced
their cause, the Ibadites were able to free
Sna'a, from which Abd Allah and Abu
Hamza launched two swift expeditions that
resulted in the total liberation of both Mecca
and Medina from the sway of the imperial
army.
Once in Medina, Abu Hamza made his
historic Kutba (sermon), which revealed to us

the views of the Ibadites concerning the
history of Islam since the death of the
prophet.
I counsel you ... to put to death the injustice the tyrants
have brought to life, and to revivify the just laws they have
let die ... we call you to the Book of God and the Sunna of
his prophet, and to equal sharing, and to justice for the
subject peoples.
He then denounced the degeneration of the
imperial aristocracy into "slaves of greed and
allies of affliction." And Abu Hamza
concluded,
The Moslems entrusted Abu Bakr with the matters of the
lower world, since God's messenger had entrusted him with
the matter of his religion. He fought the people of apostasy,
and acted in accord with the Book and the Sunna, and he
passed his way; God have mercy on him!
Then ruled 'Umar ibn aI-Khattab, God's mercy on him,
and he went in the way of his friend and acted in accord
with the Book and the Sunna. He collected the tribute and
distributed the shares and ... gave eighty lashes for drinking
wine, and passed his way. God have mercy on him!
Then came 'Uthman ibn 'Affan. For six years he walked
in the path of his two friends, but he was less than they. And
in his last six years he rendered to no avail what he had done
in the first six, and then he passed his way.
Then 'Ali ibn Abi Talib ruled, and he did not attain the
goal in truth, and no beacon was given him for guidance,
and he passed his way.
Then ruled Mu'awiya son of Abu Sufyan, accursed of
God's messenger, and son of one accursed. He made
farmers of God's servants and possessions of God's
property, and a briarpatch of God's religion, so curse him
with God's curse!
Then came Yazid the son of Mu'awiya-Yazid of the wine,
Yazid of the apes and the hunting panthers! Yazid of the
lustful belly and the effeminate arse - and God and His
angels curse him!
There came Yazid ibn 'Abd al-Malik, a libertine in
religion and unmanly in behavior, in whom was never
perceived right guidance. God has said about the wealth of
orphans: " I f you perceive in them right guidance, deliver
them their property" (4:6), and the matter of Muhammad's
Community was more than any property! He would eat
forbidden food, and drink wine, and wear a robe worth a
thousand dinars, through which you could see his flesh so
that the veil of modesty was rent; an unpardonable dis-robe.
And Hababa the singing-girl on his right, and Salama the
singing-girl on his left, both singing - if you had taken drink
away from him, he would have rent his garments! And he
would turn to one of them and say, "Shall I fly? Shall I
103
fly?" And, he flew. To God's damnation, and the burning
Fire, and a painful torment!
The sons of Umayya are a party of error, and their
strength is the strength of tyrants. They take conjecture for
their guide, and judge as they please, and put men to death
in anger, and govern by mediation, and take the law out of
context, and distribute the public moneys to those not
entitled to them - for God has revealed those who are
entitled, and they are eight classes of men, for He says:
"The freewill offerings are for the poor and the needy,
those who work to collect them, those whose hearts are to
be reconciled, and slaves and debtors, and those in the 'Way
of God,' and travellers" (9:60). They make themselves the
ninth, and take it all! Such are those who rule by what God
has not sent down [35].
In 130 ( = 748), however, Marwan sent Abd
al-Malik Ibn Atiya against the Ibadites. The
partisans of Abu Hamza were put to flight in
the battle of Wadi al-Kura and withdrew to
Mecca. The army of Abd al-Malik pursued
them there and after a vigorous battle Ibadites
resistance was finally broken when their two
energetic leaders fell.
Moreover, a second insurrection was
organized again in 134 ( = 751) in Oman under
the leadership of al-Julanda. But, since this
second major rebellion lacked a well thought
out political and military strategy, it was easily
put down by the Abbasid General Khazim b.
Khuzaima. In the meantime the Ibadite
movement spread to the Maghreb where its
egalitarian political philosophy found a
favorable terrain. As Williams put it, "it was
North Africa which became the Scotland of
these Puritans of Islam. Here the warlike
Berbers proved willing to accept Islam, but
not the dominance or the taxation of the Arab
Caliphs" [36].
Thus, despite the overwhelming victory
achieved by the Abbasid imperial army over
the followers of Ibn Ibad, their movement
remains to this very day predominant in
Oman. From there it was extended to
Zanzibar. These various Ibadite communities
have managed, despite great odds against
them, to survive and protect their political and
religious independence. Throughout their
history, they maintained close contact with
104
one another. The intellectual leadership
appears to be assumed by the Mozabite desert
confederation because of certain particular
historical features.
When the Ibadites were more or less
crushed in the Mashreq by the Abbasid
imperial army, they proclaimed the "state of
secrecy" and some of them migrated to the
Maghreb, under the leadership of the Persian,
Ibn Rustem, in search of a favorable land for
the establishment of a "Kingdom of God on
Earth," whele Ibadite ideals of social justice,
human brotherhood, and political equality
would prevail. Upon arriving in North Africa,
followers of the Ibadi doctrine found this to
be favorable terrain for the application of
their "libertarian" principles. These
principles were quite appealing to some
marginal Berber groups who had a long
tradition of tribal and village "anarchic
democracy," known as jama'a government.
Charles Julien noted that
the Islamized Berbers had grounded their opposition to the
increasing taxation and bureaucratic rule of the Arab
caliphs on Islam, which permitted them to present their
social demands under the form of a religious ideal.
Kharijism became, in the Maghreb, a sort of an episode of
class struggle. Nowhere else are the ascetic and egalitarian
sentiments, which are inseparable from the hatred of the
conquerors, so deeply rooted among the masses [37].
From the swift military and political success
of the Ibadites in the eastern Maghreb, it
appears that Kharijism had preceded the
arrival of the Middle Eastern followers of Ibn
Ibad. In fact, from the foco of Maghreb
Kharijites, which was set up in Jebel Nefussa,
the Ibadite partisans led by Abu al-Khattab
launched their attack that resulted in the
seizure of Kairawan, the imperial provincial
capital of North Africa. Ibn Rustem was
elected Governor. Kairawan remained under
the control of the Ibadites for four years until
141 (= 761) when Mohammad b. al-Ashath
was sent at the head of a strong imperial army
from Cairo to recapture it [38]. After the fall
of this city, the Ibadites withdrew. From there
they trekked for about 700 miles, on their way
towards central Algeria, until they finally
arrived at a secure location, situated at 300
feet, by a pass leading from the highlands of
the Tell Atlas down to the fertile agricultural
coastal plains. This site was a former Roman
camp. In this secure mountain, the newly
adhered and the Ibadite pilgrims erected the
city of Taheret or Tiaret in 761 A.D. which
became the capital of the peculiar theocratic
republic that lasted, according to the Ibn
Khaldun, a century and a half.
THE SOCIOPOLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS
DOCTRINE OF THE NORTH AFRICAN
IBADITES
The sociopolitical and religious doctrine
that governed the theocratic republic of Tiaret
can be summarized as follows:
1) From the fundamental belief that
asserted the equality of all Moslems regardless
of birth and social standing, the Ibadites base
their principle of an elective imamate or
caliphate;
2) Since all Moslems are equal, luxurious
living and ostentation are condemned;
3) Therefore, no man who is not duly
elected can command;
4) Any believer who is just, virtuous and
pious and who acquires the necessary
knowledge and experience can officiate as
Imam, or sheikh al-Islam, or caliph, "even if
he is an Abyssinian slave";
5) The people have the right and obligation
to proclaim illegitimate and ipso facto depose
any caliph or imam, who has gone off the
right path;
6) This entails the religious corollary that
absolutely rejects the principle of justification
by faith without ceaseless works; from this
principle results the strictness of Ibadite
ethical code which requires purity of
conscience as a prerequisite condition for the
validation of acts of worship and religous
piety;
7) God pardons only venial sins; grievous

sins cannot be forgiven unless they are blotted
out by repentance;
8) Recompenses and punishments in the
afterlife are both everlasting, because hell and
paradise are eternal;
9) Work is as significant as piety and faith;
earthly conduct in this world predetermines
one's position in the other;
10) All believers have the duty and moral
obligation to denounce injustice and reprove
the evil doers as far as they are able;
11) All members of the community are
strictly required to foster and acknowledge
their solidarity which they express by word
and action, but the individual who violates its
laws loses citizenship rights and therefore is
treated as a public enemy until the act of
repentance is performed;
12) Finally, since the Koran is the word of
God created by Him, and the Sunna is the
political tradition of the Prophet and his close
companions, Abu Bakr and Omar, the Koran
and the Sunna are the basic frame of reference
of the laws and rules governing al-Umma al-
Islamya; this fact requires the thorough study
of the Holy book, the Hadith, and the
numerous Ibadite Itifaqat (platforms or
constitutions).
The founder of the doctrine, Ibn Ibad, who
was persecuted, oppressed and finally
martyred, taught that there are four ways or
states in which pious Moslems could achieve
grace: 1) the state of defense in protecting
their political and religious independence; 2)
the state of devotion in its practice; 3) the state
of glory in its victory; and 4) the state of
clandestinity when it becomes impossible to
maintain it.
The position occupied by the Imam was
elective. Every successive Imam was both
checked and assisted by the public spirited
ulama (notables, learned men) who were
organized in a consultative, legislative body
that interpreted laws and reviewed
fundamental decisions taken by the executive
office of the state. Nevertheless, according to
Marcais,
105
The succession of imams was in theory regulated by the vote
of the Ibadi community. The imam regarded as the most
worthy, most honourable and best educated man, the
temporal and spiritual chief of the state, whose prestige
extended to the communities in the East, was in reality
under the control of the religious caste (clerks): Shurat,
Mashaikh, Talba, the guardians of the strict observance of
the laws of the sect [39].
Marcais failed, however, to distinguish the
functional separation of power between the
executive office of the Imamate and the
legislative-judiciary body represented by this
Shurat council made up of the distinguished
Ibadite scholars. It is inappropriate to
describe these learned Talba as a "religious
caste," because their status is achieved and
never ascribed to them because of their birth
or social standing. Their role is not only to
interpret these laws, but also to see to it that
they are equitably applied by the Imam.
The theocratic-democratic republic of the
Ibadites was proclaimed in Tahert in 160 (=
776), that is, about fifteen years after their
expulsion from Kairawan. The chronology of
the reigns of various Imams may be arranged
as follows:
1) Abd al-Rahman b. Rustem: 160-168
(776-784);
2) Abd al-Whhab b. Abd al-Rahman:
168-208 (784-823);
3) Abu Said al-Aflah: 208-258 (823-871);
4) Abu Bakr, deposed 258? (871);
5) Abu al-Yakzan Mohammad 7 - 281 (7 -
894);
6) Abu Hatim Yusuf, deposed, 281 - ? (894
- 7)
7) Yakub deposed ... 7;
8) Abu Hatim Yusuf reelected ... 7;
9) Yakub reelected, 294-296 (906-908).
The primary function of the Imam was to
conduct the general affairs of the state and to
administer the Ibadite commonwealth. He
interpreted and reinforced public laws and
maintained order and peace. For this purpose,
he appointed Qadis (judges) and police chiefs.
He supervised the functioning of the courts.
Every Friday and on other special occasions,
he officiates the religious service (Salat al-
106
Jama or Aid al Fitr and Aid Addtha). The
office of the Imamite received certain specific
taxes, (Zakat and Ashr), some of which were
distributed to the poor and the rest allocated
to special services and public works. However,
the power of the Imam was constantly
checked, their decisions reviewed and often
censured and vetoed by the council of the
clerks and various notables who represented
the interests of the majority of the population.
The social and economic life of the Ibadites
in Tahert is known to us only through a few
details in two chronicles. The first was written
by an orthodox Moslem, Ibn Saghir, who
lived in Tahert during the reign of the last
Imams. The second one was authored by an
Ibadite scholar from Ourgla, by the name of
Abu Zakariya, at the end of the XIth century
A.D. [40].
Since the capital city of this theocratic
republic was located in a strategic trading site
that served perfectly well as a commercial link
between the pastoralist sheep herders of the
steppes and the northern Algerian agricultural
communities of the coastal plains, the Ibadites
were bound to develop and foster very special
symbiotic relations between these two
complementary ecological zones. Even the
pure Saharan nomads from afar were drawn
to the flourishing markets of Tahert. They
brought their caravans there, loaded with
certain products to be exchanged with cereal
and other TeUian goods such as oil and dry
fruits. Upon their arrival in Tahert, the heads
of these trans-Saharan caravans were required
to go first to see the Ibadi urban notables in
order to make known their presence. Then,
they returned to their camps where they
remained until their departure. The political
stability, economic prosperity, and intellectual
development of the Ibadite capital became
very well known. Tahert attracted many other
brethren of the sect. They came from as far as
Iraq, Persia, Oman, Mefussa, and
Tripolitania to trade, study and learn from the
successful institutional experience of the
democratic-theocratic republic. A large
number of these visitors stayed there. Ibn
Saghir wrote that
there was not a single stranger who stopped in the city that
did not stay among them. Seduced by their economic
affluence, by the exemplary conduct of their Imam, by his
sense of justice vis-A-vis his people, and by the security
enjoyed by all for their persons and their property, he built
a house among their number and settled. Soon one did not
see a house in the city without heating the inhabitants
saying: this one belongs to a person from Koufa, this other
one to one from Kairawan; here is the mosque of the people
of Kairawan and their market; here is the mosque and the
market of the Basrians, that one belongs to the people of
Koufa [41].
Thus, Tahert became one of the busiest and
most cosmopolitan market centers in the
Islamic world of that time.
During the early period of the Ibadite
theocratic republic the economy was
organized along distributive lines. At the
moment of harvest, the Imamate appropriated
an amount of surplus from every producer not
only of cereals but also of sheep, cattle, and
camels. Upon the completion of this
collection, the grains were distributed among
the indigent households; then the
functionaries of the Imamate proceeded to sell
these sheep, cattle, goats, and camels in the
markets. A part of the money received from
such sale was sent by the Imam to the
governors as their administrative budget. The
remaining sum was converted into wool and
oil, which then was proportionally distributed
to every household. This distribution favored
the Ibadite indigent families.
The public expenditures of the Imamate
were derived from the poll tax, Kharaj, from
habous lands, and various other sources. The
excess of state revenues was allocated to
public works that were of vital importance
and utility to the inhabitants. Thus, the
Ibadite theocratic republic of Tahert was
characterized by a distributive economic
system that took into account the welfare of
the people.
Nevertheless, Tahert became one of the
busiest and most cosmopolitan market centers

in the Islamic world. The accumulation of
wealth was so keen that it attracted orthodox
Moslem, Christian, and Jewish merchants
from all over the world. They came and
prospered within the theocratic republic of the
Ibadites. As a consequence, a genuine class
struggle appeared with this prosperity which
generated an internal socioeconomic
differentiation. This class conflict was ushered
in after the death of the fourth Imam. The
social strife centered always around the
designation ancL election of a new Imam. In
most cases, it took the form and
characteristics of factionalism. Each faction
tried to impose its candidate for the Imamate.
The most predominant faction was that of the
merchant class. Although it was composed of
diverse ethnic elements, it always supported
the ruling elite.
No less than the religious prestige of the Imams, the
resources of the region and the activity of its commerce
attracted to Tahert foreigners from Persia, or different
parts of ... Ifrikiya, Nafusa, Tripolitania, and Christians.
The Zenata nomads of Ifrikiya and the central Maghrib
frequented its markets and grew rich in them. Among these
heterogenous groups, some ... showed themselves regularly
the supporters of the established authority [42].
When in 911 the Shiite army of the Fatimids
attacked and seized the capital of the
theocratic republic, it allowed the sectarians to
realize for a time their grand "state of glory";
the Ibadites left Tahert with their last Imam,
Yakoub, and withdrew to Ouargla. According
to Abu Zakariya they "arrived there without
any obstacle" [43]. The Imam "was received
with full honor; he was given a magnificent
reception" by the inhabitants who were
probably Ibadites. Marcais attributed the fall
to the fact that several of the Imams were
scholars,
caring less for their tasks as rulers than for theological
speculation, not to mention profane studies like astronomy.
Their surprising tolerance of foreigners, even those hostile
to the sect, encouraged the entrance of dissident elements
into the administration and prepared the way for the
collapse of Tahert and the annexation of the kingdom by
the Shiis [44].
107
The survivors, with their Imam, again
emigrated from Tiaret, south-eastward into
the Sahara. They crossed about 400 miles of
steppe and desert in their search for another
isolated and protectible haven, until they
arrived at Ouargla, a wide oasis in southern
Touggourt, where an Ibadi colony had settled
earlier. There the refugees from Tiaret began
building the city of Sedrata. Once the new city
was completed, the Imam who led them there
renounced his leadership and returned to
private life. Henceforth, the religious and
secular authority of the entire Ibadite
community fell to the control of the clerks.
The last act of the resigning Imam was to
proclaim "the state of secrecy by which the
Ibadites separated themselves from the
heterodox world and decided to live entirely
on their own, instead of in mixed
communities" [45].
However, the newly built city of Sedrata
was not very secure militarily. It was exposed
to an open desert surrounded by large oases
inhabited by warlike nomads. Besides, there
were powerful black kingdoms situated in the
south. Nevertheless, Sedrata was located in a
very favorable and strategic trading area. A
great deal of trans-Saharan trade was directed
through it. The city "grew and prospered,
thanks to the industry and application of its
citizens and its position on a main caravan
route from the southwest to the northeast"
[46]. The city republic of Sedrata served as a
refugee center by attracting Ibadites who were
anxious to escape persecution from all over al-
Maghreb.
But in the long run, danger of attack was
anticipated by this exclusive sect, so a strategic
withdrawal was organized. In fact, the
Ibadites withdrew gradually into the arid and
inhospitable limestone highland of the
Sheibka, a safer place only 120 miles to the
southwest, about 400 miles south of Algiers.
This region was avoided, even by the nomads,
because it possessed no water resource and no
grazing grounds; in a word, it was a barren
and lifeless zone.
108
Thus in 1011 A.D., al Ateuf, the first city of
Mzab was founded by the Ibadi immigrants
from Sedrata; about three decades later, Bou-
Noura and Melika were built, followed by
Beni-Isquen and at last the construction of
Ghardaya began in 1053 A.D. History proved
that their decision to abandon Sedrata was a
wisely clairvoyant one; it was destroyed in
1075 A.D. by a warlike nomadic Berber tribe.
As the Ronarts wrote:
There, in the Wadi Mzab - whence the name under which
they are currently referred to - in centuries of hard work
they created palm-groves of nearly 300,000 date trees
irrigated by a dense network of channels under the
monotomous grating sound of the pulley and cords, the
"Song of the Wadi Mzab," which, kept in ceaseless motion
by donkeys and camels, take up in leather buckets the water
of some 3,000 wells over 200 feet deep. These plantations
requiring an enormous investment of work and energy are
not to be regarded, however, from the point of view of
economic returns; in fact, their maintenance is made
possible only by the gains of the Mozabite merchants
established in the towns all over Algeria. It is a deep-rooted
religious particularism which makes their upkeep,
commercially considered, a luxury, a sacred duty of the
Mozabite community [47].
The above passage is highly characteristic of
various studies devoted to the confederacy of
Mzab. Few authors paid attention to
diachronic sociocultural evolution of the
Mozabites. The majority of studies were
consecrated to the fascinating synchronic
description of the Beni-Mzabs' uniquely
religious "particularism" in North Africa.
Since the reasons that motivatied and
determinated the historical origins and growth
of the five cities that made up the
confederation of Mzab are thus outlined, I
will turn now to the analysis of the further
development and evolution of the Ibadites'
culture and society. However, a short
geographical description of the so-called
Sheibka region is in order. The word Sheibka
means " a net" in Arabic. This region is
situated, in a rocky limestone area in the
middle of the Sahara. The best description of
Mzab is provided again by Alport:
The ground of bare stone has eroded into a criss-cross
network or maze of short ravines and clefts. In the center
of this barren wilderness, the bed of the river Mzab forms
a valley between low, yellowish hills. In the lower part of
this valley lie the five cities perched on the slopes or on
higher ground in the river bed. They are built fairly close
together so that from each it is easy to see one or two of the
others ... They are all surrounded by stout walls and each
is crowned by the Minaret of its mosque, shaped like an
obelisk and lacking any kind of decoration [48].
Thus the settlement patterns of the newly
conceived and constructed cities appear to be
based on a well-thought-out a priori, strategic
plan that expected eventual onslaughts to be
repulsed. In fact, their long history as a
religious minority taught them how their cities
should be planned in such a way as to be
defensible against eventual military attacks.
The river Mzab does not flow frequently, it
only rises once every 12 or 13 years. But the
rain falls from time to time. However, in
order to irrigate the numerous artificially
made-out-of-nothing palmgroves described
above, a very complex irrigation system had to
be devised. Water was drawn from about
3,000 wells that vary in depth from 10 to 200
feet. Thus despite Huntington's contention
that the hot climate of a torrid zone makes
people lazy, the Mozabites, with an
extraordinary effort and a constantly
sustained hard labor, planted, maintained,
and cared for date-palms and various fruit
trees continually in the midst of the Sahara
desert. A long time before the invention and
utilization of modern technology that
revolutionized human ability to exploit diverse
ecological zones, the sectarians succeeded in
making the desert truly " b l o o m " on their own
and without any help from the outside. All
these achievements were brought about by an
arduous perseverence sustained by their
genuinely cohesive and highly integrative
sociocultural system. Nevertheless, the
forcefully imposed technological innovations
that made successful the economic adaptation
of the Mozabites to an originally barren
environment, could nourish only a certain
number of people. The ecological settings of

Sheibka were not favorable to trading
activities in which the Ibadites have been
specialized since Tiaret. Mzab was quite
isolated; here the Mozabites traded with only
a few oases which were inhabited by
sedentarized nomads. It should be noted at
this point that the Ibadites were the only
urbanized island surrounded by a sea of desert
nomads. The pressure of an increasing
population that was apparently generated by
the newly created palm-grove plantations and
various other fruit trees that were breedably
adaptable to the artifically made Saharan
oases, induced the Mozabites to expand to
other exploitable oases. These included
Berriane, situated 47 kilometers to the north;
Guerrera, 99 kilometers to the north-east and
not far from their metropolis; Metlili oasis,
which became widely owned by Ibadi groups
but remained settled by some sedentarized
Arab nomads.
A further development and expansion of
these highly innovative desert plantations of
date and fruit-tree gardens was nonetheless
ecologically limited; so the "Passive
environment" thwarted, in the long run, all
genuine effort made by the Mozabites to
continue increasing further sources of energy
which would have kept pace with a population
growth that had been magnified by the
constant arrival of Ibadite immigrants from
other parts of the Maghreb and the Mashreq.
The biophysical environment of a barren
desert limited the further colonization and
spread of the Mozabite population over the
Sahara. Historically, the Mozabites initiated
and developed an urban culture that more or
less ruled out any resort to nomadization
which is considered as the best adaptation to
a desert environment. The categorical refusal
on the part of the Mozabites to become
nomads refutes the claims of the
environmental determinists. Faced with such
basic demographic and economic problems
necessitating a sound and viable solution, the
sons and daughters of the exclusive
confederation required an effective new
109
economic and demographic adaptive radiation
to continue to propagate and perpetuate their
kind. This new adaptive radiation, initiated
after the 14th century, consisted of out-
migration to the Tell by traders who excelled
in lucrative mercantile activities of various
sorts (the pattern of this migration will be
analyzed below). As a result of this commerce,
the Mozabites have been successfully
satisfying their material needs up to the
present day without any hardship.
In fact, as early as 1849, three years before
the imposition of the French protectorate
upon the desert confederation, a French
visitor described Mzab as follows:
The oasis of Oued-Mzab appears covered by near-bare and
arid mountains. The rocky asperities ... are separated by
valleys covered by a stout thick layer of sand; there are eight
small cities erected in the middle of palm-groves inhabited
by the most active and most mercantile population of
Algeria. There is not a single town in our establishments,
either on the coast or inland where the traders of Oued-
Mzab do not possess numerous stores. The eight cities of the
oases count altogether 36,000 souls; they have no less than
3,036 established in different areas under our occupation in
the Tell. All the natives agree on the commercial importance
of Ghardaya, capital of the oases. Numerous caravans, very
well loaded, arrive daily to Ghardaya; and in less than a few
hours their merchandise is sold and they depart again. Only
Ghardaya city is inhabited by 12,000 souls [49].
In 1852, after the fierce battle of Laghouat
in which the French colonial army opposed
the Algerian resistance, resulting in the
eradication of this city, and "the ignoble
bloody massacre of its population which was
not far from there" [50], the Mozabites
realized the danger and impossibility of
successfully resisting the invasion of their
territory by the army of the "infidels." They
finally decided to negotiate with the French
General Randon a protectorate for the specific
purpose of avoiding the fate of the Zibans, a
population that was exterminated by the
colonial army earlier. General Randon, Who
conducted these negotiations on behalf of the
French, declared that at this time it would not
be "opportune politically to extend a
tightening, direct administration over the
110
confederation" [51]. An agreement was
reached in May, 1853, by means of which the
colonial power obtained the right to circulate
its troops, and the Mozabites were to
dissociate themselves from the enemies of the
French emperor and begin the payment of
tributes. In exchange, the confederation was
guaranteed local self-government. The
document proclaimed that France "will not
modify the form of government which is in
function in their cities since many centuries
and to which they are attached." However,
the colonial governor reserved the right to
interfere when the acts of the Mozabites
involve "the general tranquility and the rights
of our nationals" [52].
This political arrangement, favorable to the
colonial authority of Algeria because it was
wrested from the confederation by the threat
of guns and cannons, lasted only thirty years.
In fact, in 1882, the French colonial authority
used the pretext of internal and intercity
conflict as a rationale for the total annexation
of the confederation. Ghardaya became the
capital of the Territoire du Sud, which
remained under a special martial military rule
throughout the colonial history of Algeria. A
French officer was subsequently appointed by
the army as an administrator of Mzab. He
designated a Kaid to assist him as a translator
and informer. This administrator also
organized mock elections for the designation
of a jama'a council.
But, the council of the clerks, which
governed the Mozabites since the declaration
of the state of secrecy in Ouargla, and which
was operating clandestinely, never recognized
either the legal validity of annexation or the
French authority represented locally by the
appointed officers. The clerks in accord with
the committee of the Halqas (circles)
organized the total boycott and avoidance of
the French administration and the means of its
presence: schools, hospitals, military service
and even tax evasion. In a word, the
Mozabites tried to minimize as much as
possible their dealings and relations with the
colonial power and the medium of its
domination; consequently, a silent struggle
was ushered in and prolonged to the end of the
French rule in Algeria. As Andre ChevriUon
put it, "here the opposition is evident, but
those that command it are i n v i s i b l e . . , in the
shadow of the mosque and its silence, the
mysterious tolba (clerk) lead the struggle"
[52]. Here again the form and substance of the
resistance to colonial penetration under its
multifaceted guises was preconditioned by the
Mozabites' historical experience and social
structure.
The sociopolitical organization of the
Ibadites in Mzab was characterized by
segmentary and kinship oriented elementary
familial units that were tied together and
integrated into various lineages, sharing a
common dynamic ideology of descent. The
Mozabites lived in large corporate extended
families. The property of every family was
governed by an impartible rule of inheritance
that kept its members together. They were
designated by the same name, that of the
common ancestor which included four to five
generations. The patrilineage (farqa) unifed
several extended families which were often
territorially based; that is, they inhabited the
same quarter; they traced their line of descent
to the same ancestor; they shared the same
cemetery and the same estate. Certain large
lineages are subdivided further into sub-
lineages which consisted of several joint
family units. The ancestral founder of the
lineage is sacred and therefore is the object of
an annual ceremony organized by all the
descendent members. The farqa as the
fundamental social unit had its own common
budget. It possessed a meeting place where its
council assembled all the adults who met
regularly for the purpose of administering
their common interests, such as collective
work to be done, punishment to be inflicted,
distribution of income among households,
preparation of religious and familial
ceremonies and marriage arrangements. The

core of these lineage councils was constituted
by the leaders who were chosen on the basis of
experience and learning. They sometimes held
restricted meetings in the presence of one of
the members of the halqa (circle); the council
of the halqa is made up of 12 members who
are elected by the notables of the lineages to
govern every city. This council of the clerks is
presided over by a sheikh. There was,
apparently, no single head of the
confederation. When there were important
decisions that concerned all of the cities, all
the clerks of sheikhs of Mzab met in a general
assembly for special deliberations. The
measures taken required the backing of a
general consensus. These segmentary
sociopolitical organizations were conducive to
factionalism and all sorts of structural
dualism. Traditionally every city contained
the two saffs (factions) that put at loggerheads
the east and west sides [54]. Besides this, there
was a dual distinction made between the
Mozabites which divided them into two social
categories; the Azils formed the descendants
of the first inhabitants of every city, the Nazils
were those Ibadites who immigrated later on
to Mzab. With the development of a
mercantile bourgeoisie that possessed a
capitalist ethic of its own, a new dual feature
emerged and became, as will be shown later,
very significant in the political life of the
confederation. In fact, the lay council which
was organized to administer the economic life
of Beni Mzab had tried successfully to limit
the power of the clerks.
The struggle for power within the Mozabite
communities between the councils of the
clerks and those of the lay bourgeois
committees represented and expressed a clash
between the old sociocultural values and the
new innovations introduced by the migrant
merchants from the Tell. In fact, the Mozabite
traders who migrated to the North did not
only develop a rigorous mercantile ethic of
their own, but were exposed to a wider
experience that was constantly enriched and
modifed as a result of their social interaction
111
with Sunni Algerian Moslems, Christians, and
Jews. Besides, the magnitude of the migration
to the North was too important not to affect
basic changes in Mzab itself. The economic
survival of the Mozabite cities depended on
this emigration of the people to the North. By
the 1950s one third of the male population
lived outside Mzab where the acquisition of
necessary capital for the maintenance of the
life of the oases was made. A Mozabite
merchant once said that, "the true Mzab is
not found in Mzab, ... all its strength is
represented by the small groups of Mozabites
who are scattered over every part of Algeria."
Moreover, as the Ibadite doctrine requires
that its followers should be isolated from
orthodox faiths in order to live a pure and
austere religious life, the salient features
characterizing this Mozabite emigration to the
Tell can be summarized thus:
1) It was exclusively reserved to males over
thirteen years old; their wives were not
allowed to leave Mzab until the triumph of a
reformist movement that obtained the
permission for young women to follow their
husbands to the North after the 1940s;
2) The emigrants did not go to settle in the
Tell or to do manual labor, but to open
businesses;
3) The capital to be invested in any
commercial venture was usually furnished by
large extended or joint families claiming
descent from a patrilineage, therefore, most
Mozabite businesses were originally and some
still are, corporately owned and managed by
the family or lineage heads;
4) Women and children were left back in
Mzab. The latter were to be reared according
to the cultural norms and religious precepts of
the Ibadite dogma; they are taught the basic
three R's that prepare them to read the Holy
Koran and to attend to their future businesses;
5) Frequent visits to Mzab were required; all
Mozabites were to be buried in their lineage
cemeteries there; two formally
institutionalized rituals were practiced, in fact
they underwent a ritual of "desacralization"
112
on their departure and "sacralization" on
their arrival [55];
6) In the Tell, the Mozabites as emigrant
traders maintained only business relations
with the rest of the Moslems; as for their
social interactions, they tried to reduce them
to a minimum.
This emigration of highly motivated and
dedicated traders turned out to be among the
most successful business ventures in the
history of North Africa. The Mozabites'
specialization in trade was historically
determined, culturally fostered, and
ecologically conditioned and enhanced. As
Alport put it,
Since the soil of the Oued Mzab had to be created, because
there was practically none to begin with, it was clear from
the start that the only salvation of the Mozabite
communities lay in trade. Of this they had centuries of
experience, first in Tiaret where they were placed between
the stock-breeding plateaux and the agricultural plains of
the coastal Tell; and then in Sedrata which lay on the route
connecting the western Sudan and the Niger valley with the
Mediterranean through the oases of the Rhir and the Jerid.
The Mzab was less favorably placed, in fact, that is why it
was chosen as a retreat; so, although a north-south route
through their valley was gradually established by the Beni-
Mzab, it became necessary to trade elsewhere and send the
proceeds home [56].
There are about 500,000 Mozabites today,
one-third of them are scattered all over
Algeria. But culturally they are still attached,
as ever, to Mzab where they own summer
houses. This Mozabite emigration generated
one of the most complex urban kinship
networks in the world. In the long run, despite
their inherent religious conservatism and their
stubborn effort to preserve their total cultural
identity, the phenomenon of emigration
caused drastic social changes. I will choose
only three areas to illustrate this point. The
power within the Ibadi communities was held
by the clerks since the declaration of secrecy
and the abolition of the office of Imam that
occurred in Sedrata. Since emigration to the
Tell, and its economic success, a new center of
power emerged that included the councils or
committees of the laymen which administer or
regulate the secular activities of the
confederacy. Henceforth, "their world of
values [would be] organized around two
opposite poles; the domain of the secular, the
economic, and the domain of the sacred, the
religious life" [57]. The political life rotates
between these social forces. This structural
innovation was introduced in order to foster
further the consolidation of their economic
adaptation to a new cultural and ecological
environment.
The clerks are still furnishing the
"dignitaries" of the Mosques such as the
Imams and Muzzins, the teachers of the
schools and those who wish to wash the dead.
The latter are considered as the "censors of
morals" because they are endowed with an
effective moral authority. All these religious
elites are still powerful because in order to
resolve current problems, interpretations of
religious jurisprudence must refer to the
Koran and the Mozabite Ittifaqat, the written
compilation of Mozabite customs. This falls
to the competence of the clerks. Nevertheless,
the authority of the clerks has been steadily weakened in the
past twenty years. The lay jama'a is tending to free itself
from the control of the clerks and to dispute their right to
judicial and legislative powers, although the sheikh of the
halqa (circle) still has the duty of verifying whether
decisions have been in conformity with Ibadite doctrine
[581.
In other words, the power now is balanced
between a lay executive and a clerical judiciary
that interprets the religious foundations of the
laws.
The second significant change occurring in
Mzab as a result of emigration of the
masculine active population regards the
position of women. In fact, traditionally
women were completely dominated by the
men; however, when the males left, the total
responsibility of the entire household fell into
the hands of the women.
It is through the Mozabite woman, the real safeguard of the
group, that the society of emigrants remains firmly attached
to their homeland, as may be seen from the fundamental

regulation, a true "law of public safety," which forbids any
woman to leave the Mzab and by which is asserted the firm
desire to preserve the community by preventing any
permanent exodus [59].
A committee, made up of the most
intelligent, virtuous and socio-politically
minded women, was created by the fathers of
Mzab who left to their young wives the
responsibility of running entire households
during their long absences trading in the Tell.
The function of this order of women is to
teach the young wives child-rearing practices
and domestic economics, as well as preaching
to them religious virtues. They explain
Moslem dogma to them: the Koran: the
meaning of prayers, the laws and the history
of their cities and doctrine. These ladies are
feared and respected because they are invested
by the clerks with the power of public blame,
ridicule and religious ostracism. They also
serve as intermediaries between the laymen,
the clerks, and these young housewives.
The third important modification that
might have far-reaching effects pertains to the
already mentioned permission to let the
Mozabite women accompany their husbands
to the North. Reformist movements headed by
successful wealthy businessmen and modernist
sheikhs such as Bayoud, tried and succeeded
in obtaining in 1953, permission for their
wives and children to leave for the Tell. Since
then a large number of Mozabites have taken
their wives with them. Others have married
the daughters of Mozabites already settled in
the Tell [60]. If this trend continues, the
Mozabite emigrant traders may be integrated
gradually into the Tellian society. It must be
noted that one of the revolutionary nationalist
poets, who wrote Kassamen, the Algerian
anthem, is Mofedi Zakaria, a Mozabite.
However, as Bourdieu put it,
fierce resistance, obstinate and scrupulous particularism, a
self-loyalty can co-exist with a cautious desire for evolution,
an attempt at compromise and planned development; never
perhaps has the interaction between permanence and change
been presented so clearly and distinctly. The maintenance of
stability, far from excluding change, presupposes the
capacity to modify oneself to adapt to new situations [61].
113
Bourdieu here perceived with great accuracy
the synchronic structural elasticity that
characterized the Mozabites' sociocultural
propensities to respond, if need be, to changes
in the environment by resorting to piecemeal
adjustment, and if required, by turning to
radical adaptive responses which permit them
to cope anew with their habitat; in so doing,
they resolved the basic material problems of
the biosocial existence of the group. But, like
many other scholars who were illusorily
fascinated mostly by the Ibadites' religious
particularism, he paid less attention, if any at
all, to the underlying diachronic social,
historical, economic, political and specifically
ecological causal factors that shaped,
conditioned, and determined these perceptibly
distinct sociocultural features. These flexible
and versatile societal structures of the
confederacy were generated by long adaptive
historical exposure not only to the hostile
barren and torrid desert habitat, but also and
most importantly to continual selective
pressures exerted upon them by a larger
society that was attempting directly or
indirectly to absorb them socially and
culturally. Like all other sociocultural
adaptive mechanisms, Mozabite culture did
not descend from heaven; it is the sum total of
social practice carried out through the
processes of multivarious intra- and inter-
societal interactions as determined by power
relations. The articulation of the Ibadites with
their unique physical environment came to
reinforce and shape the nature of
sociocultural and behavioral patterns used as
the means of their social integration. In a
word, Bourdieu has overlooked the basic
technomic, ecological and social causes that
propelled and determined the overall
sociocultural development and evolution of
the Ibadi Mozabites.
In conclusion, it must be stressed that
without the use of a diachronic sociocultural
and ecological analysis, the economic causes
and historical processes which determined the
constitution of the Mozabite desert
114
confederation could not have been clearly
understood. This historical approach allowed
us to extricate the interrelated multicausal
factors underlying the emergence,
development, and evolution of Mozabite
culture and society. History enabled us to
comprehend not only the essence but also the
substance of structural changes and
continuities that have occurred over time as a
result of specific events and vicissitudes that
were ushered in by the followers of Ibn Ibad.
This article has demonstrated that the basis
of politics is society, which is brought into
shape by the "unaided effort" of individuals
in their relationships with groups, classes, and
factions. It is thus social relationships and
interactions that generate sociopolitical
forms. The social structures of the Ibadite
communities emerged from their praxis; they
did not appear sui generis and did not subsist
"in the air." They had a material basis around
which the social division of labor and the
mode of production were organized. As a
result of this specific social practice, the
Ibadites devised techniques, organized
institutions, and elaborated ideologies to
rationalize their interpersonal and
intrasocietal relationships. It is in ideology
that people become conscious of class conflict
and "fight it out" in its religious, ethical,
legal, and political forms. In this sense
ideology is an objective sociocultural reality
and the ideological struggle not only reflects
but also constitutes an organic part of class,
factional or inter-societal struggle. Every
sociopolitical aspect of the Ibadites was
traditionally tinged with a ritualized
religiosity. This fact was probably due to the
role played by religious values in the rise and
development of Ibadite culture both as a
cosmological system and as the essential frame
of reference of their ideology which justified
the interpersonal relations of the followers of
this sect. Although one may be right in
considering ideologies as mythologies that are
elaborated a posteriori to justify current
practices and to legitimate power relations
operative within a community, ideologies,
however (customs, habits, and ideas), are
always bound to have a life of their own once
they are brought into social focus. Though
they are results of social praxis, they become
determinant factors possessing a dynamic of
their own which shapes the behavior of
individuals and makes their relationships to
one another predictable.
Although the main ideas that make up the
basic Ibadi ideological component were
originally derived from and based upon a
fundamental interpretation of the Koran,
these ideas have been transformed in the
process in order to be incorporated into the
doctrine. As a result, those ideas strikingly
reflect the Ibadites' existential experiences.
The customary rulings and precepts of the
numerous sheikhs, though based on the
Koran, were thus enriched by the historical
experiences of their community and the
official dogma of the sect. Their long historic
struggle shaped, conditioned and determined
the form of the Ibadite social praxis, which
generated in return the fascinating patterns of
their societal arrangements.
The ideas in men's minds, the aims they set themselves, and
the emotions they feel, arise in response to their material
conditions of existence, which include relationship with
nature and relationship with one another in society. The
forces bringing about social change are not "ideas" or
"aims" in the abstract, nor abstract individuals each of
whom decided independently what he will do, but, as Marx
and Engels put it in The German Ideology, "real, active
men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of
their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding
to these"; and they form their ideas and aims "on the basis
of their real life process." It is the necessary condition of
any human life that people should produce their means of
subsistence, and that they should enter into production
relations corresponding with their productive forces . . .
possessing certain productive forces and living within
certain production relations, people then form their ideas
and intentions corresponding to these real-life conditions in
which they find themselves.
From these conditions arise definite interests,
contradictions of interest, aims and ambitions. Ideas,
passions, plans and intentions arise in the minds of
individuals accordingly, in response to those conditions of
life. And so social life proceeds [62].

The Kharijite movement from which the
Ibadite doctrine emerged, sprang from and
prevailed among the socio-economic and
political strata that had been relegated to a
subservient position within the Islamic empire
since the beginning of the 7th century A.D. in
Arabia and the fertile crescent as well as in the
Maghreb. The causes of the schism that
induced the "hiving o f f " of the Kharijite-
Ibadite followers were primarily motivated by
specific socio-economic and political
conditions, which made the underprivileged
strata receptive or responsive to a philosophy
that stressed the equality of all the believers.
The Sunni dogma was the prevalent official
doctrine, which tended to favor, even to
sanctify, the Arab aristocracy as a hereditary
ruling class within a paradoxical, newly
formed theocratic-secular world empire into
which numerous peoples of diverse cultural
backgrounds were incorporated as equal
Moslems. Indeed, the very foundation of this
empire was justified and legitimated by a
religion (as an ideology) which emphasized the
socio-political equality of all its followers. To
put it otherwise, the religious ideological
rationalizations, which were merely the
appearance of the underlying causes that led
to the fissioning off of the Ibadites from the
orthodox Moslems, were considered by the
orientalists who were proponents of
normative determinism, as the prime movers
of this split. However, the actual underlying
causes, which were completely overlooked and
which triggered and propelled the conflict,
were generated by concrete socio-economic
and political stratification and class
differentiation within the expanding empire.
Thus sprang in Arabia and the fertile
crescent the Ibadite doctrine which was
diffused as an ideology as far as al Maghreb,
where the fleeing sectarians were
enthusiastically received by Berber
mountaineer agro-pastoralists who embraced
this rebel doctrine with zeal and fervor. After
settling for four years in Kairowan, Tunisia,
the sectarians were forced to flee. So, all the
115
Ibadites joined forces, and left for central
Algeria where they established their city-state
of Tiaret, which flourished and prospered for
150 years. During this period the former
Berber agro-pastoralists were induced by their
geographical position to specialize in trade
that rendered them excellent middlemen
between coastal-plains agriculturalists, grain
growers, and the pastoralist sheep breeders of
the steppes. When their city was destroyed by
the Fatimid Shi'ite army, the survivors were
led by their Imam to join an Ibadi community
that was established and settled early in the
region of Ouargla in the middle of the Sahara.
Once there~ they succeeded in controlling the
most profitable trans-Saharan trade from
which they accumulated enough gold to move
to a more secure place where they would live
in a state of glory, practicing their religious
beliefs without external threat. Thus in 1011
the first city of Mzab was constructed and
finally four other cities were added.
Nevertheless, despite their industrious
economic dynamism, which enabled them to
plant and irrigate palm grove plantations and
various fruit trees in the middle of the desert,
demographic pressure was aggravated by the
physical environment that limited any further
expansion; the Mozabites were forced to
initiate an economic adaptive strategy that
would permit them to cope effectively with the
propagation of their offspring. Thus they
resorted to emigration of male traders to the
Tell. The early Mozabite businesses were, and
some are still, corporately owned and
managed. This fact made them highly
competitive because of the elaborate and
devoted, and highly cohesive kinship networks
t h a t furnished a cheap, abundant, family or
lineage labor. Their sociocultural cohesion, in
addition to their corporate commercial
ventures facilitated their transformation from
parasitic but successful middlemen to highly
modern capitalist financial speculations, and
prompted the development of dynamic
wholesale businesses and the organization of
import-export companies that were managed
116
with skill and technical know-how.
The complex of differing and conflicting
ideologies and aims was born from the given
environmental and historical circumstances;
eventually these conditions that gave rise to
sociopolitical struggles were modified by the
social activities of the Ibadites. The successive
socioeconomic developments of the Mozabites
resulted from their productive forces. But
once their political organization came into
existence it conditioned in turn the structures
and the rate of social, economic, and
demographic changes within the Ibadite
communities because all the organic
components of the society were dialectically
interrelated to one another. Following Marx
and Engels, one is strongly tempted to say that
culture, ecology, social structure, even
history does nothing, it "possesses no immense wealth," it
"wages no battle." It is man, real living man, that does all
that, that possesses and fights; "history" is not a person
apart, using as a means for its own particular aims; history
is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims [63].
If the structuralists object to this statement
on the basis that human activities are
themselves patterned by the existing
structures, they should be assured that Marx
was in tull agreement with them a long time
before the elaboration of structuralism in
anthropology. Indeed, he wrote in 1852:
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just
NOTES
1. B. Lewis, The Arabs in History (New York: Harper and
Row, 1966), p. 164.
2. Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: A n Introduction to
History, vol. 1, trans, from Arabic by Rosenthal (New
York: Bollinger Foundation, 1958), pp. 175-76.
3. J. Bodin, Les Six Livres de la Rdpublique (Lyon, revised
edition, 1850), pp. 480-481.
4. Ibid., p. 485.
5. Buffon, Oeuvres Choisies, vol. 2. (Paris: Didot, 1861), p.
87.
6. Quoted in M. Sahlins, "Culture and Environment," in Sol
Tax (ed.), Horizons o f Anthropology (Chicago: Aldine,
1964), p. 132.
as they please; they do not make it under circumstances
chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly
encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The
tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare
on the brain of the living. And just when they seem engaged
in revolutionizing themselves and things, in creating
something that has never yet existed, precisely in such
periods of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the
spirits of the past to their service and borrow from them
names, battle cries and costumes in order to present the new
scene of world history in this time-honored disguise and this
borrowed language ... In like manner a beginner who has
learnt a new language always translates it back into his
mother tongue, but he has assimilated the spirit of the new
language and can freely express himself in it only when he
finds his way in it without recalling the old and forgets his
native tongue in the use of the new [64].
The origin, development, and evolution of
the Ibadite sociocultural system of the
Mozabite confederacy was brought into form
and kept in motion by the dialectical interplay
of culture, nature, and humans as the makers
of their own history, manufacturers of their
tools with which they transformed their
physical landscape, and organizers of their
social structures that allowed them to channel
their collective efforts and energies in such a
way as to maintain their society functioning
and free, and the creators of their own
ideology that explained their place in the
universe and rationalized their social
relationships. And these sociocultural
components are dialectically, functionally,
and causally interconnected.
7. Quoted in C. Geertz, Agricultural Involutions (Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966), p.
6.
8. See E. Semple's Influences o f Geographic Environment
(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1911).
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid., p. 2.
11. E. Huntington, Mainsprings o f Civilization (New York:
New American Library, 1945), p. vii.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., p. 285.
14. L. Febvre and L. Bataillon, A Geographical Introduction
to History, trans. Mountford and Paxton (New York:
Barnes and Noble, 1924).
15. Ibid., p. 17.
16. Ibid., pp. 19-20.
 117

17. W.D. Wallis, "Geographic Environment and Culture," in (Paris: P.U.F., 1964 [1340]), p. 328.
Social Change (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960), p. 20. 38. G. Marcais, "Rustumids," in Leyden and London (eds.),
18. E. Wolf, Anthropology (Princeton: Princeton University Encyclopedia o f l s l a m , (1936)Vol. III, p. 1187.
Press, 1964), p. 60. 39. Ibid., p. 1188.
19. J. Steward, Theory o f Culture Change (Urbana: 40. A. Zakaria, Chronique d'Abou-Zakaria trans, and
University of Illinois Press), p. 337. comments, E. Masqueray (Alger: 1978), p. 317.
20. E. Wolf, Anthropology, op. cit., p. 55. 41. C.A. Julien, Histoire de I'Algeria Contemporaine ..., op.
21. J. Steward, Theory o f Culture Change, op. cit., p. 40. cit., p. 335.
22. M. Sahlins, "Culture and Environment," op. cit., pp. 42. G. Marcais, "Rustumids," op. cit., p. 1188.
132-33. 43. A. Zakaria, Chronique .... op.cit., p.317.
23. L. White, The Science o f Culture (New York: Grove 44. G. Marcais, "Rustumids," op. cit.
Press, 1949), p. xviii. 45. E.A. Alport, "The Mzab (Algeria)," in Sweet (ed.),
24. See Kent Flannery's book review in Scientific American Peoples and Cultures o f the Middle East vol. 2 (American
(1967), p.69. Museum of Natural History, 1970), p. 231.
25. J. Friedman, "Marxism, Structuralism, and Vulgar 46. Ibid., p. 231.
Materialism," Man (1976), p. 457. 47. S. Ronart and N. Ronart, Concise Encyclopedia o f Arabic
26. Ibid. Civilization.
27. E. Leach, Political Systems o f Highland Burma: A Study 48. E.A. Alport, "The Mzab (Algeria)," op. cit., p. 225.
o f Kachin Social Structure (Cambridge: Harvard 49. R. Carette, Algerie, l~tats Tripolitains, Tunis (Paris:
University Press, 1964), p. 5. Librarie de Firmin, Didot Cie, 1849), p. 75.
28. Y. Cohen, Man in Adaptation: The Cultural Present 50. C.A. Julien, Histoire de l'Algerie Contemporaine ..., op.
(Chicago: Aldine, 1967), p. 451. cit., p. 396.
29. P.C. Lloyd, "The Political Structure of African 51. Ibid.
Kingdoms: An Explanatory Model," in M. Banton, (ed.), 52. Ibid.
Political Systems and the Distribution o f Power (London: 53. A. Chevrillon, Les Puritains de Desert (Sud Algerien)
Tavistock, 1965), pp. 78-79. (Paris: PLON, 1927), p. 156.
30. J.A. Williams (ed.), Islam (Princeton: Princeton 54. P. Bourdieu, Sociologie de I'Algerie op. cit., p. 40.
University Press, 1964), p. 197. 55. Ibid., p. 38.
31. Ibid., p. 198. 56. E.A. Alport, "The Mzab (Algeria)," op. cit., p. 238.
32. Jawzi, al-Ibn, Naqd al-llm Wa-I Ulama (Cairo:1340), p. 57. P. Bourdieu, Sociologie de l'Algerie op. cit., p. 49.
102. 58. Ibid., p. 41.
33. S. Ronart and N. Ronart, Concise Encyclopedia o f Arabic 59. Ibid., p. 46.
Civilizations: The Arab West (Amsterdam: Djambatan, 60. Ibid.
1966), p. 355. 61. Ibid., p. 49.
34. R. Nicholson, A Literary History o f the Arabs 62. M. Cornforth, Historical Materialism (New York:
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907), p. 213. International Publishers, 1954), pp. 15-16.
35. J.A. Williams, Islam, op. cit., pp. 203-204. 63. F. Marek, Philosophy o f World Materialism (New York:
36. Ibid., p. 200. International Publishers, 1969), p. 48.
37. C.A. Julien, Histoire de l'Algerie Contemporaine: Les 64. K. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire o f Louis Bonaparte
Conqudtes et les Debuts de la Colonisation, 1830-1871 (New York: International Publishers, 1963), pp. 15-16.