Entre récit conciliant et héritage contraignant : les conquêtes islamiques du Maghreb et les « invasions hilaliennes » dans l’historiographie coloniale et réformiste

This study examines the historiographical construction of medieval studies in contemporary Algeria. Using a comparative approach based on the history of representations, we propose to analyse the historiographical positions of two twentieth-century currents. On the one hand, those of “reformist” historians, members of the Association des oulémas musulmans founded in 1931 by ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Ibn Bādīs and authors of works of synthesis, in particular the three volumes of Mubārak al-Mīlī, Tāriḫ al-Ğazāʾir fī-l-qadīm wa-l hadīṯ [The history of Ancient and Modern Algeria] (1928–1932), that of Tawfiq al-Madanī, Tārīḫ al-Ğazāʾir [The history of Algeria] (1931), and finally that of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ǧilālī, Tārīḫ al-Ğazāʾir al-ʿāmm [A General history of Algeria] (1954–1955). These writings are set against works linked to colonial historiography, inseparable from the University of Algiers (founded in 1909), notably Georges Marçais’s La Berbérie orientale et l’Orient au Moyen-Âge, Émile-Félix Gauthier’s Le passé de l’Afrique du Nord: les siècles obscurs, and Christian Courtois’s Les Vandales et l’Afrique (1955). We should also mention the thesis published in 1962 by Hady Roger Idris on La Berbérie orientale sous les Zirides (xe-xiiie siècles), and two of his articles on the “Hilalian invasions” (Idris, 1968a, 1968b). The treatment given to divisive historical and historiographical events, based on sources that are generally identical, reveals interpretations that are specific to each of these currents and, above all, diametrically opposed. These are the Islamic conquests of North Africa in the seventh century and the “Hilalian invasions” of the eleventh century. The French authors of the Algiers school adopted a vision imbued with a fatalistic view of events, in which the Islamic conquests and the “Hilalian invasions” could only be seen in a negative light. The reaction of Algerian historians, which began in the 1930s, offered an inverted vision of these events. Their historiographical project developed in opposition to the commemoration of the centenary of the beginning of the conquest of Algeria, which gave French historians the opportunity to give their version of the past in numerous publications. In a colonial context where historical practice is difficult to distinguish from political militancy and ideology, the Islamic conquests of North Africa and the “Hilalian invasions” are the subject—on both sides—of antagonistic regressive or meliorative discourse. These events give rise to manichean interpretations, often exploited for political ends. For some, these conquests represented the advent of divine blessing, spreading Islam and the Arabic language; for others, they marked a violent break from Christianized “Berberia”, or even the beginning of a decline. The Hilalian migration has similarly given rise to contrasting interpretations, reflecting divergent historical perspectives. French authors, relying mainly on certain medieval sources, tend to emphasize the destructive aspects of this episode, seeing it as a major and regressive break. From a different perspective, reformist thinkers propose a re-reading that evaluates the historical role of the Hilalians on a broader scale, judging it to be beneficial, as their arrival helped to strengthen the presence of Islam and the Arabic language in the Maghrib. In this way, these episodes become battlefields of memory, from which each camp draws arguments to legitimize its political project. The reformists do so in a quest to build Algeria’s identity, which they perceive as inseparable from Islam and Arabness. The principles (ṯawābit) they defend underpin an institutional policy of “writing and rewriting history” after independence (Remaoun, 2003), according to which the history of Algeria cannot be perceived outside the Arab-Islamic framework.