In July 1830, a French expeditionary force landed west of Algiers and rapidly captured the city using artillery bombardment. Although the eventual outcome of this event—the French colonization of Algeria—was not immediately evident, the force's arrival swiftly introduced a new dynamic to the political configurations and conflicts that subsequently developed: the encounter with modern Europe. As in the Islamic East, this manifested itself first in the military sphere, where reform appeared necessary to consolidate unstable domestic political structures and provide a measure of protection against European territorial expansion. Changing military practices then became part of a larger context of reform, engagement with Europe, and resistance to colonialism. This process first affected Algeria but rapidly spread into the neighboring
Alawi sultanate of Morocco, where it defined relations between the state and society until the imposition of the French and Spanish protectorates in 1912.
Military reform entailed the adoption of the type of military organization characterized in the Ottoman Empire as niẓāmī (regular, ordered), a term derived from the name of the first corps of the type, the nizam-i cedid (new order), founded by Selim III in the 1790s,
1 Stanford J. Shaw, Between Old and New: The Ottoman Empire under Selim III, 1789–1807 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971).
and subsequently used to describe the new armies or corps of Muhammad
Ali Pasha,
2 Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha's Men (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
Mahmud II, and Ahmad Bey of Tunis.
3 Carl L. Brown, The Tunisia of Ahmad Bey, 1837–1855 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Unversity Press, 1974), 261–312.
Similar reforms also took place in Iran from the early Qajar period. These armies were modeled on contemporary European forces, and their formation frequently relied on non–Muslim instructors. Despite such evident reference to European prototypes, the formation of
niẓāmī corps was rarely a simple process of borrowing. It also involved competitive emulation, reform, and creative adaptation of existing religio-political discourses for purposes of legitimation.
4 I am grateful to Keith Watenpaugh for bringing the 19th-century European concept of “emulation”—an active engagement with new ideas rather than their passive receipt—to my attention.
This usually entailed assertions that military reform was essential for Muslim regimes to wage jihad against European powers. However,
niẓāmī corps were more frequently used to preserve and extend the reach of central government than to wage warfare against European adversaries, exposing them to accusations of being an un–Islamic innovation, which their opponents were quick to make.
The niẓāmī army was perceived as being new in various ways. As its name suggests, it introduced a new type of military organization that contrasted with what was increasingly seen as the military “disorganization” that preceded it. In this context, niẓām indicated a unified chain of command; a new balance among infantry, artillery, and cavalry; and battlefield formations that privileged discipline over individual acts of valor. Professionalism, the subjugation of the individual to the group, and hierarchy were expressed through standardized, rank-specific uniforms. It also initiated the process by which the previous military combination of elite corps of trained troops, often of slave or foreign origin, and tribal irregulars was replaced by larger forces of indigenous conscripted soldiers, which served as prototypes for national armies. This altered the relationship between combatants (askeri) and non-combatants (reaya) and between government and society as the former steadily extended its control over the daily lives of its subjects.
This article reviews the introduction and Islamization of the niẓāmī military order in the western Maghrib by looking at the corps established by
Abd al-Qadir in Algeria in the 1830s and the units established by the
Alawi rulers of Morocco, Mawlay
Abd al-Rahman and his son, Sidi Muhammad, between 1845 and 1873, when the latter was succeeded by his son, Mawlay al-Hasan. This creates a somewhat abitrary division between Mawlay al-Hasan's military reforms and those which preceded them, but it is possible to argue that the drive to enframe the niẓāmī army within an Islamic order perceived as legitimate and familiar was much more characteristic of
Abd al-Qadir and Sidi Muhammad's reforms than of Mawlay al-Hasan's. This chronology also allows a consideration of the writing of al-Nasiri, whose retrospective reflections on the implications of Sidi Muhammad's military reforms represent the end of one era and the start of another. Using textual representations and justifications of these niẓāmī corps, I aim to explore how the new colonial context, “borrowing” from Europe, and the indigenous religio-political milieu interacted, and how local interpretations of jihad, renewal (tajdīd), and reform (iṣlāḥ) could be creatively applied to justify the adoption of the European military “new order.” In so doing, I hope to emphasize the dynamism of the pre-colonial state rather than stasis and the ways in which indigenous frames of reference provided continuity within a context of change, imposed in part from outside but also motivated by internal processes of religious renewal and political evolution under way before the colonial encounter.
Although
Abd al-Qadir's state-building enterprise and Moroccan military reform have been seen as “modern” national awakenings, the instigators of military reform actually focused on integrating their niẓāmī corps into the existing religio-political order and made no reference to the nation. The new corps remained dynastic rather than national in character, and soldiers were asked to fight for their faith, not their country. In an area where government was theocratic in tendency although limited in actual scope, and a heritage of struggle against Christian powers in Iberia had engendered a strong militarist tradition, religion played the primary role in legitimizing the existence of the state and, by extension, military reform. Although the formation of niẓāmī corps frequently engendered a modernizing phase in government, in the West the adoption of “infidel” military practices was as much the product of the state's pre-existing centripedal tendencies as an agent producing them. Nevertheless, the “new order” did imply a different relationship between the sultan and his subjects, and its introduction raised questions of political and social identity. In answering those questions, new concepts of state and society did coalesce.
These niẓāmī initiatives have, of course, been studied by scholars of the Maghrib. Raphael Danziger discusses
Abd al-Qadir's niẓāmī army, and Wilfrid Rollman and Bahija Simou have both written detailed studies of military reform in Morocco between 1844 and 1912 and pointed to connections with similar projects in the rest of North Africa and the Middle East.
5 Raphael Danziger, Abd al-Qadir and the Algerians (London: Holmes and Meier, 1987); Bahija Simou, Les reformes militaires au Maroc de 1844 à 1912 (Rabat: Publications de la Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines, 1995); Wilfrid Rollman, “The New Order in a Pre-Colonial Muslim Society: Military Reform in Morocco, 1844–1904” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1983).
However their work has limited circulation among scholars of the Middle East, among whom a perception persists that Morocco was a closed world for much of the 19th century. Moreover, their main interest was not in the legitimization of these corps. By placing the military reforms of
Abd al-Qadir and the
Alawi sultans together as products of a shared cultural and political environment it is possible to clarify how the niẓāmī paradigm was articulated in the Maghribian milieu in a form distinct from comparable projects in the Mashriq. The Islamic solutions chosen by these regimes in their endeavor to make the new army palatable to restive tribal populations bely easy dichotomies between tradition and modernity and show the flexibility of Islamic discourses in managing change during the 19th century.
ABD AL-QADIR'S NIZAMI CORPS
The immediate effect of the French conquest of Algiers was the rapid collapse of the Ottoman ancien régime and the emergence of new political players on the Algerian stage. In the west, the
Alawi sultans of Morocco, perennially interested in eastward expansion, grasped the opportunity offered to them to occupy Tlemsen. This proved unsuccessful for various reasons, and the remnants of the Turkish politico-military elite, tribal notables, and religious leaders began to jostle for power, seeking the backing of the Moroccans, the French, or both. Within a couple of years the most prominent contender for power was
Abd al-Qadir ibn Muhyi al-Din. He owed his success to the Idrisi sharifian ancestry that his lineage claimed and the prestige of his father, a reputable marabout and shaykh of the west Algerian Qadiriyya. In Morocco, similar combinations of sharifian and Sufi credentials had offered political opportunities for centuries, and in the power vacuum created by the arrival of the French, the sharifian sultanate offered a useful state-building model for
Abd al-Qadir.
6 See Amira K. Bennison, “Abd al-Qadir, Morocco and the Sharifian Model,” Journal of Algerian Studies 4 and 5 (1999 and 2000): 1–20. Abdellah Hammoudi explores the significance of the Sufi master–disciple relationship in Moroccan power relations in Master and Disciple: The Cultural Foundations of Moroccan Authoritarianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
He also drew ideological sustenance from the recent, widespread wave of religious renewal (tajdīd) manifested in activist movements seeking to (re)create a pristine Islamic political and social order by means of jihad. In Arabia, the Wahhabi movement challenged the status quo; on both sides of the Sahara, a new brand of activist Sufism developed; and in Morocco, the
Alawi sultans themselves attempted to reform religious life.
7 See Fatima Harrak, “State and Religion in Eighteenth Century Morocco: The Religious Policy of Sidi Muhammad Ibn Abdallah” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1989); and Mohamed El Mansour, Morocco in the Reign of Mawlay Sulayman (Outwell, Wisbech, U.K.: Middle East and North African Studies Press, 1990).
Many of these movements gave prominence to the model of Muhammad to legitimize an active reformist approach to religious and political life and used analogies from his life to add drama, symbolism, and legitimacy to change. This was evident in the Wahhabis' militant attempt to create a reformed society in Arabia modeled on the Prophet's community but also in reformist Sufi visions of the Prophet and belief in the possibility of spiritual union with him, a stance often described as the
tarīqamuḥammadiyya.
8 The definition of Sufism during this era is much debated, and scholars of the Bergen group have questioned what “tarīqa muhammadiyya” actually meant: see Rex S. O'Fahey and Bernd Radtke, “Neo-Sufism Reconsidered,” Der Islam 19 (1993): 52–87; and Knut Vikør, Sufi and Scholar on the Desert Edge (London: Hurst, 1995), 232–35.
These currents were present in the Maghrib, especially in Fes, the region's intellectual capital. In addition to being the focus of the reformist activities of the
Alawi sultans themselves, Fes provided an educational venue for reformist Sufis such as Ahmad ibn Idris, Muhammad al-Sanusi, and Ahmad al-Tijani, and an arena for discussion of Wahhabi ideology that disseminated across the Maghrib between 1803 and 1811.
9 El Mansour, Mawlay Sulayman, 138–43; idem, “Al-Haraka al-wahhabiyya wa'l-radd fa
l al-maghribi fi bidayat al-qarn al-tasi
ashar,” in al-Islah wa'l-Mujtama
al-Maghribi (Rabat: UniversitéMohamed V, 1986), 175–89.
The ensuing critiques of popular Sufi practices galvanized the restructuring of rural Sufism and its metamorphosis into the system of centralized brotherhoods with large regional followings such as the Darqawa, the Wazzaniyya-Tayyibiyya, the Tijaniyya, and the Sanusiyya.
The Qadiri marabouts stood on the edge of reformist Sufi circles. Muhyi al-Din's father, Mustafa, reformed the Qadiriyya and extended its influence among the tribes of western Algeria and the Moroccan Rif to compete with the Darqawa and Tayyibiyya. Muhyi al-Din knew Muhammad al-Sanusi personally. The symbolic value of this connection is illustrated by the legend that when he and
Abd al-Qadir performed the hajj in 1827–28, they visited al-Sanusi, who predicted that
Abd al-Qadir was destined to “become one of the defenders of the sacred principles of Islam” and a famous mujāhid.
10 Rex O'Fahey, Enigmatic Saint: Ahmad Ibn Idris and the Idrisi Tradition (London: Hurst, 1990), 136–37.
Furthermore, studies of
Abd al-Qadir's Sufism show that his position was close to that of Ahmad ibn Idris: doctrinally conservative and inclusive but also metaphysical, source-oriented, and sensitive to the model of Muhammad.
11 See M. Chodkiewicz, The Spiritual Writings of Amir
Abd al-Qadir (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 6–10.
The restructuring of rural Sufism was followed by Darqawa and Tijaniyya uprisings, and in Oran the shaken Turkish authorities feared that the Qadiriyya led by Muhyi al-Din would rise against them next, an event pre-empted by the French conquest of Algiers in 1830.
12 Three major revolts took place: a Darqawa revolt against the beys of Oran (1805–13); a Darqawa revolt against the Alawi sultans (1818–22); and a Tijani uprising against the beys of Oran (1826): Muhammad ibn
Abd al-Qadir, Tuhfat al-Za'ir fi Tarikh al-Jaza'ir wa'l-Amir
Abd al-Qadir (Beirut: Dar al-Yaqza al-
Arabiyya, 1964), 115, 125; Ahmad ibn Khalid al-Nasiri, Kitab al-Istiqsa l'Akhbar Duwal al-Maghrib al-Aqsa (Casablanca: Dar al-Kitab, 1954), 9:6.
In its aftermath, Muhyi al-Din cultivated relations with the
Alawi forces in Tlemsen and urged Qadiri tribes to wage jihad against the French in Oran. By the time they withdrew to Fes, he had become both a representative of the sharifian sultans and a mujāhid, roles that greatly augmented his influence and encouraged the Qadiri tribes to offer him their political allegiance in 1832. He declined but suggested that they take his second son,
Abd al-Qadir, who had distinguished himself in the jihad against Oran, as leader in his stead.
Abd al-Qadir's fortunes were thus closely tied to the status of his father as an Idrisi sharif, an
Alawi deputy, and a reformist Sufi shaykh, and these different paradigms of power and authority provided him with the ideological means to legitimize his movement and his introduction of the niẓāmī army to Algeria. From the outset, he presented his endeavor as a mission to replace the existing state of ignorance (jahiliyya) with a true Islamic order, analogous to that instituted by the Prophet, in which social, political, and economic life would be regulated according to the precepts of the shari
a.
13Abd al-Qadir, Tuhfat al-Za
ir, 169.
According to this schema, the Muslims would be able to wage a successful jihad against the French only after they had restored the domestic stability (
niẓām) that the French had destroyed.
14 His jihad was therefore internal as well as external, religious as well as military, the triumph of order over chaos rather than simply war against the French:
He strove (ijtahada) to the utmost for the reform (iṣlāḥ) of the Muhammadan community and spent the most precious part of his life doing so without limit. He fought in the way of God…and God made him ruler of His lands from Wajda to Tunis and he spread the rulings of the Muhammadan shari
a after they had been obliterated.
15 Muhammad ibn
Abd al-Salam, Wushah al-Mukatib wa Zaynat al-Jaysh al-Muhammadi al-Ghalib, ms. D1542, Bibliotheque Generale, Rabat, 6–7.
The implementation of this new order required the creation of a reliable military force, but when
Abd al-Qadir received the bay
a in November 1832, his “army” consisted simply of the tribesmen who had accepted his authority. They fought as discrete groups under their own tribal leaders, and their tactics were limited to the traditional “charge and retreat” (al-karr wa'l-farr). He possessed no regular infantry or artillery, since these had been the preserve of the old Turkish military elite, but badly needed to achieve military superiority over his rivals, whose forces were qualitatively the same as his own. His opportunity to create a new military force came in 1834 after he had negotiated the Desmichels Treaty with the French in Oran, thereby securing their recognition of his authority over the western Algerian tribes and the right to trade in munitions.
16 The secret convention signed by Desmichels and
Abd al-Qadir in March 1834 promised the free movement of the materials of war between French-held territory and
Abd al-Qadir's zone: Danziger, Abd al-Qadir, 246.
It is not clear what prompted him to adopt the
niẓāmī paradigm, but he had witnessed Muhammad
Ali Pasha's army while passing through Egypt with his father to perform the hajj in 1827–28.
17Abd al-Qadir, Tuhfat al-Za'ir, 930–32.
His primary inspiration, however, was the French army, which he had fought in several engagements and which provided the non-commissioned officers to train his corps.
18 Charles Henry Churchill, Life of Abdel Kader, Ex-Sultan of the Arabs of Algeria (London: Chapman and Hall, 1867), 62.
The main source of information about
Abd al-Qadir's niẓāmī army is his biography, Tuhfat al-Za'ir fi Tarikh al-Jaza'ir wa'l-Amir
Abd al-Qadir, written by his son, Muhammad.
19 Muhammad ibn
Abd al-Qadir, Tuhfat al-Za'ir fi Tarikh al-Jaza'ir wa'l-Amir
Abd al-Qadir (Beirut: Dar al-Yaqza al-
Arabiyya, 1964).
The biography recounts the circumstances of the corps' creation and incorporates its manual, titled
Wushah al-Katib wa Zaynat al-Jaysh al-Muhammadi al-Ghalib.
20 Muhammad ibn
Abd al-Salam, a follower of
Abd al-Qadir who retired to Tangier, left another manuscript copy of the manual, which contains basically the same information with additional commentary.
21 Muhammad ibn
Abd al-Salam, Wushah al-Mukatib wa Zaynat al-Jaysh al-Muhammadi al-Ghalib, ms. D1542, Biblioteque Generale, Rabat, 6–7. In Tuhfat al-Za'ir, the manual is given the slightly different name, Wushah al-Katib wa Zaynat al-Jaysh al-Muhammadi al-Ghalib.
Europeans such as Leon Roches and Colonel Scott who joined
Abd al-Qadir's entourage also described his regular army.
22 Leon Roches, Trente-deux ans à travers l'Islam (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1884); Colonel Scott, A Journal of a Residence in the Esmailla of Abd El Kader (London: Whittaker, 1842).
To these major sources can be added numerous incidental references in the British and French consular records and the French military archives.
23 Foreign office (FO) files, Public Record Office, London; Correspondance Politique: Maroc (hereafter, CPM); Archives des Affaires Etrangères, Quai d'Orsay, Paris; and Archives Historiques de la Guerre (hereafter, AHG), Chateau de Vincennes.
The immediate context for the corps' formation was
Abd al-Qadir's failure to impose his authority on the recalcitrant Dawa'ir and Zmala tribes. Muhammad ibn
Abd al-Qadir reports that, as a result of this setback, his father realized the difference in performance between regular forces (al-junūd al-muntaẓima) and volunteers (al-ḥushūd al-mutaṭawwi
a) and decided to create an army run on the principles of order (tanzim), drilling (tamrīn), and training (tadrīb).
24Abd al-Qadir, Tuhfat al-Za
ir, 191.
He called an assembly of tribal and religious notables to secure communal approval and then issued the following announcement in the markets:
The command of our master Nasir al-Din [
Abd al-Qadir] to enlist soldiers and organize an army from all over the country has been issued. Anyone who wishes to serve under the Muhammadan banner (al-liwā
al-muḥammadī) and be enveloped by the glory of the [new] order (niẓām) should hurry to the capital of the emirate, Mascara, so that his name may be inscribed in the emir's rolls.
25 According to the manual,
Abd al-Qadir's niẓāmī army consisted of infantry (al-
askar al-muḥammadī), cavalry (al-khayala), and artillery (al-rumat al-tubjiyya). The infantry, the key to the niẓāmī army, was organized in thousands divided into units of one hundred and further subdivided into three “tents” (khibā
) of thirty-three men and a commander; the cavalry was organized in thousands divided into units of fifty men; and the artillery was organized in teams of twelve men per cannon plus a commander. An instructor (mu
allim) was assigned to each infantry unit to ensure that the troops knew how to fight in niẓāmī formation and drilled regularly. All soldiers were to receive regular wages and rations estimated according to their rank. If a soldier was injured or died in action, his family would continue to receive his wages as a pension. The manual also prescribed the establishment of camp hospitals offering free beds, food, and medical attention to soldiers, an innovative plan that shifted responsibility for the injured from the private to the public sphere.
26 The army's uniform consisted of shirts and loose “Turkish” trousers in red or black, giving it an indigenous feel that helped obviate the alienation Selim III's imposition of a European uniform had triggered in his niẓāmī corps in the 1790s. Rank was indicated by gold or silver bands and plates affixed to the uniforms, and
Abd al-Qadir prescribed strict penalties for those who failed to wear the correct uniform for their rank and section.
27 He equipped this force with European muskets, artillery, and gunpowder purchased from Oran, the
Alawi sultanate, and Gibraltar. He also tried to establish musket, powder, and cannon factories in towns subject to his authority.
Roches's and Scott's accounts indicate that
Abd al-Qadir's niẓāmī corps broadly conformed to the manual's provisions. Roches, a French convert to Islam who served
Abd al-Qadir in the period between the signing of the Tafna Treaty in May 1837 and the outbreak of war in late 1839, estimated the size of the niẓāmī army at 3,000
askar (infantry), 400 cavalrymen, and 60 tobjia (artillerymen). Traditional military elements—makhzan tribes and irregular tribal auxiliaries—provided additional firepower.
28 Abd al-Qadir also had a small bodyguard of thirty black slaves, a status symbol evoking the Moroccan
Abid al-Bukhari.
29 Colonel Scott, a British officer who entered
Abd al-Qadir's service in 1841, gives a higher estimate than Roches. He records that after the administrative reorganization that followed the Tafna Treaty in 1837, the deputy (khalīfa) of each of
Abd al-Qadir's seven provinces had “a regiment of regular infantry,” cavalry, and “a company of renegades, deserters from the French service” probably used as artillerymen. He gave the total size of the army as 12,000–13,000 infantry and 4,000–5,000 cavalry,
30 an estimate reduced to 9,000 infantry and 2,400 cavalry by French military intelligence three years later.
31 Rapport de monsieur le marechal Bugeaud sur les moyens d'affermir et d'utiliser la conquête de l'Algérie, 15 January 1844, AHG/H229.
Scott's description of the Tagdempt regiment gives the flavor of the Algerian niẓāmī army. He says that it consisted of 800 men recruited exclusively from the town who could perform basic maneuvers. The foot soldiers wore “Turkish trousers” and a “loose blue cloth jacket” fastened by a purse-belt that carried their ammunition. The officers wore red uniforms with gold and silver stripes on their cuffs and silver plates indicating their rank. The regiment's drummers were French, and the regiment thus marched to French tunes.32
Scott, Residence, 170–71.
Although neither the Wushah nor the Tuhfat al-Za
ir dwells on
Abd al-Qadir's reliance on the services of Europeans, Roches's and Scott's accounts show their importance, especially in the artillery and running of military industries. Roches himself assisted with the artillery at the seige of
Ayn Madi and mentions several other Europeans. The majority had made sincere or tactical conversions to Islam, like Roches, but others entered
Abd al-Qadir's service as Christians during the periods of peace that followed the Desmichels and Tafna treaties. They included a Polish artillery officer recruited by
Abd al-Qadir's agents in Oran to “organize” his artillery,
33 a Hungarian from an Austrian engineering corps who had deserted from the Foreign Legion, and French munitions workers recruited to work in Tagdempt on temporary contracts.
34 Most important, the corps owed its very existence to French support:
C'est, en effet, le général Desmichels qui du jeune marabout Abd-el-Kader [sic] a fait un emir redoutable en l'aidant a vaincre les douars et les smalas, ses plus terribles enemis, et en lui donnant les moyens de organiser, d'equiper et de armer un corps de troupes régulières.35
Scott, whose own contribution was presumably military, reports that
Abd al-Qadir possessed an artillery factory in Tlemsen run by a Don José, assisted by European prisoners of war, and had about eighty non-commissioned European officers working for him in Tlemsen, Tagdempt, and Taza.
36 In Tagdempt, there was a musket factory founded by French workmen from Paris who taught the Arabs to manufacture their own muskets before their contract ended in 1840.
37 Three armorers, deserters from Cherchell, subsequently arrived seeking employment in the factory.
38 A French mineralogist called De Casse established an iron foundry at Miliana.
39 Despite the niẓāmī corps innovative and European characteristics,
Abd al-Qadir took pains to integrate the corps into his reformist Islamic order and present it as an instrument for jihad. In 1836, he wrote to Mawlay
Abd al-Rahman asking for a fatwa from the Fasi ulama to legitimize warfare against his Muslim opponents. In his letter he specifically mentioned his military reforms (tanzīm al-jaysh), depicting his niẓāmī army as the means by which he would coerce his fellow tribesmen to reform their lives, unite, and wage war against the French.
40Abd al-Qadir, Tuhfat al-Za
ir, 316.
Its true aim was reform (
iṣlāḥ), the sine qua non for survival in the European-dominated world, a perspective elaborated in the fatwa that
Ali al-Tasuli issued for him in reply. In keeping with
Alawi religio-political theory, the fatwa asserted both the religious responsibility of an Islamic ruler (imām) to implement the shari
a and his right to muster resources, organize, and lead jihad, which included chastisement of Muslim “rebels.”
41 Within his own domains,
Abd al-Qadir conveyed his message using a variety of tactics involving language, ritual, and space. In the realm of language, the parallel between the career of the Prophet and his mission was reinforced by regular use of the adjective muḥammadī, which implied that military reform was comparable to the innovative practices of the early community and an integral part of broader societal reform.
Abd al-Qadir applied the adjective to the niẓāmī infantry (al-
askar al-muḥammadī), the Islamic community (al-umma al-muḥammadiyya), the army banner (al-liwā
al-muḥammadī), and even the shari
a. Furthermore, he called the main coin in his new currency used to pay the niẓāmī regulars the Muhammadiyya.
The routines of the niẓāmī corps placed a similar emphasis on religion. The practice of Islam was a key part of army discipline. The life of the soldiers was regulated by the five daily calls to prayer, and each tent of infantrymen had a scribe (kātib) who gave the men religious instruction and led them in their prayers. The abilities of the scribes were monitored by the head scribe (bāsh kātib) of the army.
42 The insignia indicating rank were embellished with Islamic slogans, and the corps' camp plan was infused with religious symbolism. The infantry tents formed a circular stockade, with
Abd al-Qadir's tent at the center. The artillery and hospital tents flanked the camp's entrance, which faced east toward Mecca.
43 Roches, l'Islam, 168–69;
Abd al-Qadir, Tuhfat al-Za
ir, 211.
In effect, the camp was a microcosm of the Islamic society
Abd al-Qadir wished to create with himself, the Commander of the Faithful, at its center defended by his niẓāmī army.
Such tactics gave the niẓāmī army a comprehensible place in
Abd al-Qadir's mission that helped to obviate opposition to its non–Islamic source. The fact that it did not challenge the position of an existing politico-military elite undoubtedly facilitated its integration. Many questioned the validity of
Abd al-Qadir's mission, his right to assume power, and his motivation, but they did not criticize his introduction of “infidel” military organization or employment of Europeans, despite the deep hostility with which the indigenous population viewed the latter. Furthermore, the fact that he did deploy his niẓāmī troops against the French validated his claim to be a mujahid and his characterization of his army as an instrument for the jihad.
However, the corps faced the same difficulties in obtaining resources common to non–European armies of its type.
44 Jeremy Black, War and the World: Military Power and the Fate of Continents, 1450–2000 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998), 168–69.
Without the demographic base and industrial infrastructure enjoyed by European states, severe constraints were placed on the maintenance of a
niẓāmī army. Despite the number of Europeans with some expertise in his entourage,
Abd al-Qadir found it impossible to retain the skilled personnel necessary to support his niẓāmī corps. Most Europeans spent only a limited time with
Abd al-Qadir, either because they returned to French-held territories or because they succumbed to disease. For instance, the iron foundry floundered when De Casse died from fever in 1841. As the war intensified and the death toll among
Abd al-Qadir's supporters rose, it also became harder for him to replace losses within the rank and file of the corps.
In addition to manpower shortages, arms manufacture depended on
Abd al-Qadir's possession of towns—or, at least, permanent bases—where factories could be located. Sustained French attacks on the towns he held from 1839 onward made the maintenance of an industrial infrastructure impossible, and he became dependent on what supplies he could purchase from Gibraltar and Morocco and smuggle through French lines. Even when supplies were forthcoming,
Abd al-Qadir found it ever harder to pay for them and became reliant on pious donations from Morocco, a fickle source that dried up whenever French protests to the
Alawi Makhzan became too insistent.
45 Hay to Aberdeen, 19 July 1842, FO99/9; De Nion to Guizot, 22 July 1842, CPM8.
When
Abd al-Qadir transferred his base camp to the Moroccan Rif in 1843 to evade the French, his niẓāmī corps was a shadow of its former self: a couple of hundred infantrymen and a cavalry band supplemented by a motley assortment of tribal auxiliaries from Algeria and the Moroccan Rif.
46 Rapport de monsieur le marechal Bugeaud sur les moyens d'affermir et d'utiliser la conquête de l'Algérie, 15 January 1844, AHG/H229; Rapport de Daumas, 25 November 1845, and Mauboussin to Guizot, 5 March 1845, CPM13; Hay to Aberdeen, 6 March 1845, FO99/25; De Chasteau to Guizot, 21 August 1846, CPM17; Lieutenant Général Bedeau to ministre de la guerre, 2 September 1847, and Colonel MacMahon to Général Renault, 19 September 1847, AHG/H122.
Even though they continued to drill daily, by 1847 the troops were hungry, their uniforms were in tatters, and their weapons were of low-quality Maghribian manufacture.
47 De Chasteau to Guizot, 10 June 1847.
When the
Alawi Makhzan decided to take military action against
Abd al-Qadir a few months later and drove him across the border into Algeria, his surviving niẓāmī troops either surrendered to the French or melted into the Algerian countryside.
THE INTRODUCTION OF NIZAM IN THE ALAWI SULTANATE
During the 1830s and 1840s, the unfolding colonial drama in Algeria had a growing impact on the
Alawi sultanate of Morocco to the west. After his abortive effort to extend
Alawi power to Tlemsen in 1830–31, the Moroccan sultan, Mawlay
Abd al-Rahman, offered
Abd al-Qadir considerable material and moral support in what turned out to be a misguided effort to keep the French away from his domains and persuade his subjects that he was contributing to the defense of Muslim territory against non–Muslim aggression. Instead, his policies led to repeated French protests that culminated in the Battle of Isly in eastern Morocco in 1844, when a French force from Algeria routed the
Alawi army. This was its first major defeat by a non–Muslim power since the battle of Wadi'l-Makhazin in 1578 and had tremendous pyschological impact on the Makhzan and its subjects. As a result, the sultan's heir apparent, Sidi Muhammad, set about reforming the army by creating his own niẓāmī corps, which, like that of
Abd al-Qadir, he characterized as a necessary instrument for successful jihad. Although relatively unsuccessful, this early Moroccan niẓāmī initiative produced a spate of literature that connected the introduction of the niẓāmī army to long-established jihad imperatives and reform in a way prefigured by
Abd al-Qadir but explicated more fully in Morocco.
In the early 19th century, the
Alawi military establishment consisted of the
Abid al-Bukhari, a regular corps founded in the 17th century but much diminished by the 1830s; several military “tribes,” including the Udaya, Sharaga, Awlad Jami
, and Shararda, who performed permanent military service in return for land and tax exemptions; tribal levies known as nā
iba; and urban militias (rumāh).
48 Rollman, “Military Reform,” 380–99.
The sultans also possessed artillery units manned predominantly by European converts to Islam, known disparagingly as
uluj or renegades. The majority of these men were of Spanish origin, deserters and petty criminals from Ceuta and Melilla. After 1830, they were joined by deserters from the French armée de l'Afrique and prisoners of war who sought to ameliorate their conditions by conversion to Islam.
49 Ibid., 562–65; Simou, Reformes, 120–23.
Scott was struck by the large number of such “renegades” in Makhzan service, although his unconfirmed estimate of a corps of 6,000 men seems wildly exaggerated.
50 Scott, Residence, 34. Simou suggests that the number fluctuated between 200 and 2,500: Simou, Reformes, 123.
Before the war in Algeria spilled over into the sultanate, the Moroccans saw little need for radical change, despite their awareness of European states' burgeoning military power and expansionist tendencies. The first suggestion for military reform came from the Ottoman sultan, Abdülmecid, who sent an emissary, Yusuf Badr al-Din al-Madani, to Morocco in 1842 to offer the sultan munitions, skilled workers, and military instructors.51
Abdallah Laroui, Les origines sociales et culturelles du nationalisme marocaine (Paris: Maspero, 1977), 207; Mohamed al-Mannouni, Mazahir Yaqzat al-Maghrib al-Hadith (Rabat, 1966), 57.
Although the sultan had the contents of Abdülmecid's missive publicized in great mosques as a sign of a new Pan-Islamic alliance against the Europeans, nothing concrete came of the initiative.
52 Sultan to Muhammad Ash
ash, 7 July 1842/29 Jumada II 1258, al-Tartib al-
Amm files, Direction des Archives Royales (hereafter, DAR/TA), Rabat.
When al-Madani returned in December 1844, the French defeat of the
Alawi army at Isly, their bombardment of Tangier and Essaouira, and the breakdown of domestic order had convinced the sultan's son, Sidi Muhammad, that military reform was essential. After a skirmish between French and
Alawi forces prior to Isly, he had noted that the Moroccans were defeated by poor leadership, undisciplined and unpaid soldiers, and a lack of a battle plan or formation (ṣaff).
53 Sidi Muhammad to the Sultan, 21 June 1844/4 Jumada II 1260, DAR/TA.
The battle of Isly shortly afterward confirmed his observations, destroyed the domestic reputation of the
Alawi army, and severely undermined the dynasty's prestige. The formation of a niẓāmī army seemed the only way for Mawlay
Abd al-Rahman and Sidi Muhammad to restore Makhzan control over the country and defend it from fresh European attacks.
Details about the corps' foundation appear in Makhzan correspondence and French and British consular sources.
54 DAR/TA and subject files; FO files, PRO; CPM. Additional material is in the Makhzan registers (kunnash) and Spanish sources, which, unfortunately, were not consulted for this paper.
The Moroccan archives also contain
niẓāmī manuals imported from Egypt during this phase and indigenous tracts promoting and justifying the
niẓāmī army, which are discussed later. The documentation includes a letter from Mustafa al-Dukkali, a merchant and Makhzan adviser, to Muhammad ibn Idris, the sultan's chief minister, describing how a
niẓāmī army should operate and be funded, dated “London, April 1845.”
55 Mustafa al-Dukkali to Muhammad ibn Idris, 9 April 1845/1 Rabi
II 1261, DAR/TA.
These sources show that the early
Alawi niẓāmī project relied on a diverse range of models, which included
Abd al-Qadir's niẓāmī corps, the French armée de l'Afrique, and the British army, as well as Ottoman niẓāmī armies. While the niẓāmī manuals came from the Ottoman Empire, instructors from Algeria had gained their experience either with
Abd al-Qadir or in the French army. European converts to Islam had a similar background, and Mustafa al-Dukkali drew on his experience in London, where he observed “everything closely and record[ed] it in a file” for the Makhzan.
56 The first concrete steps toward military reform were taken in October 1844, when Edward Villiers arrived in Tangier offering “to organize and discipline” the Moroccan troops. He was carrying letters for the governors of Tangier and Tetuan from Moroccans in London who had presumably discussed the matter with him. The British consul, Drummond Hay, prevented him from proceeding, believing that the French would interpret his offer as provocative.57
Hay to Aberdeen, 16 October 1844, FO99/18; Aberdeen to Hay, 16 November 1844, FO99/13.
The Ottoman envoy, al-Madani, returned to Morocco soon afterward, although what advice or aid he offered, if any, is unknown.
58 Hay to Aberdeen, 17 December 1844, FO99/18.
The niẓāmī project got under way shortly before the arrival of al-Dukkali's missive in April 1845, which stated that the sultan had established a corps of 2,000 that he intended to enlarge.59
Al-Dukkali to Ibn Idris, 9 April 1845/1 Rabi
II 1261, DAR/TA.
The letter tackled two pressing issues: what a
niẓāmī corps actually was and how it should be financed. Al-Dukkali explained that participation in the corps was a profession and that recruits should be young, unmarried men without other commitments. Their entry into the corps should entail a break with wider society and their integration into a new, self-sufficient military community that lived, ate, and trained together. Strict discipline, uniforms, and regular salaries graded according to rank were essential to promote identity in and loyalty to the new corps. Since the formation of such a corps was an expensive undertaking that canonical taxes would not cover, al-Dukkali recommended that the sultan raise revenue from foreign trade, a path already taken by “the sultan of Tunis, the Ottoman sultan and the pasha of Egypt,” by encouraging imports from Europe and lowering export duties to encourage Europeans to export commodities rather than specie. To ensure maximum state gain, he suggested a system of state monopolies on staple goods in addition to war materiel, which he offered to import from London on the Makhzan's behalf. He also offered to recruit instructors.
60 In the following months, European representatives in Tangier commented on the corps' progress. Consul Hay informed London:
The Sultan is organising a body of troops with European tactics. Each individual is required to take an oath before the Cadi to serve for a certain number of years, seven I believe, safely and loyally the Sultan. The pay is fixed at about three pence sterling per day, in addition to clothing, which I understand, is to be similar to the uniform of the troops of the Pasha of Egypt.61
Hay to Aberdeen, 13 May 1845, FO99/26.
Roches, now attached to the French consulate in Tangier, and the consul, De Chasteau, confirmed the existence of a corps à l'Européenne of 2,000 men, garbed in Turkish trousers and armed with English rifles, who could maneuver tolerably well.62
Hay to Aberdeen, 12 June 1845, FO99/26; De Chasteau to Guizot, 16 July 1845, CPM14.
De Chasteau added that the sultan had selected 500 more men to be trained as officers.
The first niẓāmī units appeared in Fes and Meknes. They were followed by units in Tangier, Laraish, Tetuan, and possibly Marrakesh and Essaouira. In the words of Muhammad ibn Idris, the sultan was “determined to install a niẓāmī unit in every town, augment their number and…organize them most seriously.”
63 Muhammad ibn Idris to Muhammad al-Razini, 3 June 1845/27 Jumada I 1261, DAR/TA.
Recruits came from a variety of sources. The governors, Bu Silham and Ash
ash, received instructions to gather recruits in Tangier and Tetuan, respectively, probably from the poorer elements of society, a tactic reminiscent of Selim III and Mahmud II's press-ganging of the poor of Istanbul. In 1846, Sidi Muhammad made an unsuccessful attempt to recruit 1,500 Fasis of good family. Soon after, he enlisted 400 members of the Algerian Banu
Amir who had defected from
Abd al-Qadir's Rif camp.
64 De Chasteau to Guizot, 26 March 1847, CPM18.
In later years, peripatetic recruiters traveled around the countryside. In 1848, for instance,
Abd al-Salam Aqla
i received instructions to enlist niẓāmī volunteers in the Gharb, Jbala, and Rif districts.
65 Sultan to Bu Silham, 22 May 1848/18 Jumada II 1264, DAR, Tanger II file.
The caliber of such recruits was often low, and when Aqla
i tried to enter Tangier with them, Bu Silham complained of his reckless disregard for public order.
66 Idem, 31 October 1848/3 Dhu'l-Hijja 1264, DAR, Tetuan II file.
These references suggest that entry to the corps involved underprivileged sectors of the population, a factor that undermined the prestige of the corps from the outset. According to al-Nasiri, writing about 1880, more routinized attempts at conscription developed only in the 1860s, when the Makhzan began to organize annual call-ups of young men and the selection of a given number of recruits by ballot.
67 Al-Nasiri, Kitab al-Istiqsa, 9:104.
Even then the ability of the rich to pay for substitutes continued to undermine the caliber of recruits. It was equally difficult for the Makhzan to find qualified instructors. Although Ottoman and Egyptian military reform relied on European instructors, the intense hostility toward Christians generated by events in Algeria and the Franco-Moroccan war of 1844 made such a choice politically undesirable. Instead, the Makhzan used European converts and Muslims from other parts of the Maghrib, often without verification of their credentials. For instance, Isma
il Bu Darba, the first instructor of the corps, was the son of one of
Abd al-Qadir's commercial agents but had grown up in Marseille, had no military background, and had left France to escape his creditors.
68 Hay to Aberdeen, 13 May 1845, FO99/26; De la Rue to Guizot, 7 August 1845, CPM14.
Within a short time, the Makhzan was obliged to demote him.
69 De Chasteau to Guizot, 26 September 1845, CPM14.
Some instructors were found—the sources mention
Ali al-Tunisi and Hammuda al-Jaza'iri—but knowledgeable officers were few and far between, and many units lacked qualified instructors.
70 Bu Silham to the Sultan, 21 January 1846/23 Muharram 1262, DAR/TA; idem, 28 August 1849/9 Shawwal 1265, DAR, al-Jaza
ir file.
Sidi Muhammad later tried to remedy the lack of an indigenous cadre by founding the Dar al-Makhzan school in Fes.
71 Rollman, “Military Reform,” 575.
As al-Dukkali had predicted, the niẓāmī venture was costly.
72 Sultan to
Abd al-Qadir Ash
ash, 27 April 1845/19 Rabi
II 1261, DAR/TA.
The Makhzan had to supply uniforms, weapons, and ammunition, mainly imported from Gibraltar, as well as feed, house, and pay the new troops.
73 Bu Silham to the Sultan, 24 April 1845/16 Rabi
II 1261, DAR, Tanger I file; Sultan to
Abd al-Qadir Ash
ash, 1 June 1845/25 Jumada I 1261, DAR,
Abd al-Qadir Ash
ash I file.
The problem was exacerbated by the Makhzan's inability to collect taxes in the anarchic post–Isly circumstances for which the sultan compensated by instituting a new system of monopolies on staples and raising customs duties in 1845.
74 Sultan to Muhammad al-Razini, 27 April 1845/19 Rabi
II 1261 and 17 May 1845/10 Jumada I 1261, DAR/TA; Sultan to
Abd al-Qadir Ash
ash, 17 May 1845/10 Jumada I 1261.
The British in particular resented the new commercial regime because it made provisioning the Gibraltar garrison more complicated and expensive, and they put ultimately successful pressure on the Makhzan to abandon it.
75 Hay to Aberdeen, 31 July 1845, FO99/26; Aberdeen to Hay, 26 September 1845, FO99/24.
At this time,
Alawi attempts to legitimize their adoption of the niẓāmī paradigm were minimal. Within Makhzan circles, military reform had the support of Sidi Muhammad, the governor of Tetuan;
Abd al-Qadir Ash
ash, an admirer of the European order and special envoy to Paris in 1846; the chief minister, Muhammad ibn Idris; and Mustafa al-Dukkali, who stated almost in passing that niẓāmī methods were essential for successful warfare against European powers:
When the Muslims learn their [type of] warfare and tactics it surely upsets the Christians to discover that the Muslims—praise be to God—are more prepared than they are and determined to fight them.76
Al-Dukkali to Ibn Idris, 9 April 1845/1 Rabi
II 1261, DAR/TA.
In a similar vein, Muhammad ibn Idris commented, “My brother, if you had only seen [the niẓāmī army's] resolve and courage, you would realize that it is the very thing to tear down the defenses of the infidel” to convince a skeptical Bu Silham in Tangier to recruit and outfit 1,000 men.
77 Muhammad ibn Idris to Bu Silham, 19 July 1845/14 Rajab 1261, DAR, Tanger I file; Muhammad ibn Idris to Bu Silham, 26 July 1845/21 Rajab 1261, DAR/TA.
However, despite popular support for jihad as shown by tribal assistance to
Abd al-Qadir and massive annual mobilizations in the years before Isly, there was no broader consensus that the “new order” borrowed from the enemy was the key to victory.
78 Amira K. Bennison, Jihad and Its Interpretations in Precolonial Morocco (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002), 101–102.
The existing regular
Abid corps, such as the janissaries, considered the niẓāmī units rivals for their position, which fueled their already rebellious tendencies.
79 Hay to Aberdeen, 11 October 1845, FO99/26; Rollman, “Military Reform,” 553.
More seriously, the Makhzan's poor performance against the French had raised the whole matter of legitimacy. Although the ulama accepted the sultan's right to wage jihad against “rebellion” (fasād) as God's representative on Earth, it was contingent on his performance in jihad against the “infidel.”
80 The situation was exacerbated by the fact that the sultan's prime target after Isly was
Abd al-Qadir, whose “rebellion” consisted in part of castigating the sultan for his lukewarm devotion to Islam and failure to continue jihad against the French while attacking fellow Muslims. The Franco-Moroccan treaties of Tangier (1844) and Lalla Maghnia (1845), which outlawed
Abd al-Qadir and French gifts of artillery pieces and offers of military instructors, did nothing to assuage the impression that the niẓāmī army was actually for the benefit of the French.
81 Hay to Addington, 2 October 1846, FO99/31.
Strenuous Makhzan efforts to discredit
Abd al-Qadir only slowly bore fruit. This political environment exacerbated the difficulties of low prestige and insufficient funding already facing the corps, and desertion was common.
82 In 1846, Sidi Muhammad retrieved rifles from eighty-four deserters, and the Fes corps was reported to have been reduced from nearly 3,000 to 400 men: De Chasteau to Guizot, 20 August 1846, CPM17.
When the Makhzan finally decide to take military action against
Abd al-Qadir in 1847, the niẓāmī corps faced a critical test. Ironically, the Makhzan had its own doubts about its loyalty, which were confirmed after Banu
Amir and Hashem tribesmen attempted to rejoin
Abd al-Qadir in the Rif.
83 See Amira K. Bennison, “The 1847 Revolt of
Abd al-Qadir and the Algerians Against Mawlay
Abd al-Rahman, Sultan of Morocco,” Maghreb Review 22 (1997): 109–23.
In the aftermath, Banu
Amir members of the Fes niẓāmī corps deserted and joined fellow tribesmen in Tangier for repatriation to French Algeria.
84 Sultan to Bu Silham, 10 January 1848/3 Safar 1264, DAR, Tanger II file; Bu Silham to Sultan, 21 January 1848/14 Safar 1264,.
Sidi Muhammad also discovered that five
niẓāmī captains had secretly promised to give
Abd al-Qadir rather than himself their allegiance if the sick Mawlay
Abd al-Rahman were to die before the conflict was resolved.
85 De Chasteau to Guizot, 25 November 1847, CPM19; Hay to Palmerston, 26 November 1847, FO99/35.
During the military offensive against
Abd al-Qadir in winter 1847–48, the niẓāmī corps played little evident part, despite the dispatch of niẓāmī troops to the northern front.
86 De Chasteau to Guizot, 24 May 1847, CPM18; Sultan to Sidi Muhammad, 6 October 1847/25 Shawwal 1263, DAR, Wajda file.
After the campaign, it sank into obscurity and did not take center stage until after the Tetuan war with Spain (1859–60) had again revealed the weakness of the
Alawi army against a European foe. In the interim, the emphasis shifted from the technical to the ideological arena, preparing the ground for Sidi Muhammad to re-embark on military reform in the 1860s.
THE “NEW ORDER” AND ISLAMIC ORDER
The appeal of
Abd al-Qadir's call for jihad and the power of his accusation that the
Alawi sultans had become allies of the “infidels” against their own people presented the Makhzan with a serious challenge. Its response was to assert that it was for the imam, not his subjects, to decide when and how jihad should be waged, and that actions against his will such as
Abd al-Qadir's constituted rebellion.
87 This theme informed much of the literature that attempted to locate the
niẓāmī corps within
Alawi political culture over the next decades.
88 These works are discussed in al-Mannouni, Yaqzat al-Maghrib; Laroui, Origines, 274–78; Simou, Reformes, 92–109; and Rollman, “Military Reform,” 588–96.
These works included polemic calls for jihad such as the
risāla attributed to Ibn
Azzuz,
89 Risalat
Abd al-Da
if illa al-Sultan al-A
zam al-Sharif, ms. D1623, Bibliotheque Generale, Rabat.
technical manuals such as Muhammad al-Khuja al-Tunisi's
Risala fi Tanzim al-Jaysh (1851),
90 Muhammad al-Khuja al-Tunisi, “Risala fi Tanzim al-Jaysh,” ms. K2733, Bibliotheque Generale, Rabat.
and religio-political tracts such as Muhammad al-Kardudi al-Fasi's
Kashf al-Ghumma bi-Bayan inna Harb al-Nizam Haqqala al-Umma (1848)
91 Muhammad al-Kardudi al-Fasi, Kashf al-Ghumma bi-Bayan inna Harb al-Nizam Haqq
ala al-Umma, ms. D1281, Bibliotheque Generale, Rabat. Although a lithograph version was published in Fes in 1885, all references are to the manuscript version.
and al-Ghali ibn Muhammad al-Laja'i's
Maqmaal-Kufra bi'l-Sinan wa'l-Husam fi Bayan Iyjab al-Isti
dad wa-Harb al-Nizam (1864–65).
92 Al-Ghali ibn Muhammad al-Laja
i, Maqma
al-Kufra bi'l-Sinan wa'l-Husam fi Bayan Iyjab al-Isti
dad wa-Harb al-Nizam, ms. 965, Bibliotheque Generale, Rabat.
These authors were relatively minor figures, provincial ulama or Makhzan officials rather than members of the Fasi ulama elite or the highest court circles, whose “peripherality” had actually brought them into contact with Europeans in the ports and abroad.
Their narratives assumed that warfare against European powers was inevitable and that to ensure that the contest went in their favor, Muslims had to adopt military niẓām, presented as a historical type rather than a European invention. By referring to the Prophet's military practices, they confirmed that a legitimate Muslim niẓām existed and suggested that, by reforming their army, the sharifian sultans were actually preserving the custom of their illustrious ancestor. The niẓāmī army thus became representative of order in a general sense, which these texts then equated with the
Alawi religio-political hierarchy. It provided the edifice of state with firm foundations, the physical equivalent of the righteous umma to which all Muslims owed their allegiance, especially in a time of impending jihad. Acceptance of military niẓām and obedience to the state became two sides of the same coin, both of which were required for a successful jihad against the “infidel,” a connection also implicitly made by
Abd al-Qadir's apologists.
The first of these works, Ibn
Azzuz's call to Mawlay
Abd al-Rahman to form a niẓāmī army to wage jihad in Algeria, written about 1848, was of the same genre as al-Dukkali's letter in that it recommended the niẓāmī army as essential for jihad without further qualification and then described how it should be recruited and supplied. Although extremely unrealistic in its suggestion of a full mobilization of society, Rollman sees it as potentially useful to the Makhzan because it legitimated extensive, and coercive, state accumulation of resources for war and foreign trade.
93 Rollman, “Military Reform,” 593.
However, Ibn
Azzuz's insistence that the niẓāmī army's raison d'être was war in Algeria and his populist interpretation of military responsibility contravened the Makhzan's preference for maintaining tight control over the modalities of jihad.
Al-Kardudi's Kashf al-Ghumma (1848), a book-length justification of the adoption of European military niẓām dedicated to Mawlay
Abd al-Rahman, appeared around the same time. Al-Kardudi's motive for writing was his zeal for Islam awakened by the “infidel” conquest of Algeria and defeat of Morocco “using warfare of a specialized kind: rows in a tightly packed block” about which the
Alawi army “lacked knowledge.”
94 Al-Fasi, Kashf al-Ghumma, 2.
He presents the typologies of warfare, leadership, and preparation, and the desirable characteristics of fighters in ten chapters peppered with quotations from the Qur
an and hadith and from eminent scholars such as al-Tabari, al-Turtushi, and, above all, Ibn Khaldun, whose Muqaddima is his main reference.
Paraphrasing Ibn Khaldun, al-Kardudi presents two primordial types of warfare: infantry advances in formation (zaḥf), which characterize sedentary societies; and cavalry charges, which are usual among nomads. Both types of warfare have non–Islamic and Islamic precedents, but fighting in lines (ṣufūf) has the virtue of organizing soldiers like believers at prayer.95
Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, tras. Franz Rosenthal (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969), 223–24; Al-Fasi, Kashf al-Ghumma, 5.
In the contemporary era, however, the Europeans (
rūm) show most dedication to it:
They place four or five rows in the vanguard, row after row interspersed by cannon. The wings and rear guard are organized in the same way. The cavalry is behind the rows following the center which is filled with men and materiel. The whole formation is a single entity, its reins in the hand of one man in the center who communicates with a horn or the beat of a drum from which they understand his wish…. The first row facing the enemy fire like a single man then fall to their knees and those behind them do the same, and the firing continues without break and bullets fall like pouring rain.96
Al-Fasi, Kashf al-Ghumma, 5.
This, al-Kardudi continues, is the type of fighting meant by niẓām, which the Qur
an itself advocates by comparing rows of fighters to a building with firm foundations, a metaphor popular with advocates of the niẓāmī army.
97 “God loves those who fight in his path in rows as if they were a firmly founded building”: Qur
an 61:4.
He strengthens his argument with numerous hadiths and Khaldunian examples that set up a timeless infantry paradigm, rendering contemporary
niẓām a variant of the sedentary style of infantry warfare practiced by such illustrious dynasties as the Sasanians, Byzantines, Umayyads, and
Abbasids. Al-Kardudi thus deracinates the niẓāmī army and gives it an Islamic pedigree. He also quotes Ibn Khaldun on the Maghribian regimes' use of mercenaries from Frankish “nations accustomed to standing firm” in battle lines (maṣāff) to complement indigenous tribal fighters who use “charge and retreat” tactics.
98 Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah, 227; Al-Fasi, Kashf al-Ghumma, 9.
On the one hand, this highlighted a long history of Muslims' using European techniques and even soldiers when expedient; on the other, it implied that warfare had a cultural dimension, an issue of growing significance in 19th-century Morocco.
After these introductory comments, detailed references to European warfare are conspicuous by their absence. A discussion of the legitimacy of gunpowder weaponry adopted by the Ottomans occurs in chapter 6, but the bulk of the book consists of hadiths related to the Prophet's battles, early Islamic warfare, and Islamic military heroes.99
Al-Fasi, Kashf al-Ghumma, 40–41.
Mentions of medieval Andalusian and Maghribian military practices and contemporary European and Ottoman consultation (
shūrā,
mashwara) also appear, but considered in its entirety, the book has the flavor of a jihad chapter in a hadith collection.
100 This format reflects al-Kardudi's scholarly background but equally reiterates that Muslims need not fear
niẓām because it is not a modern European invention but a version of a time-honored military tradition sanctioned by religion and practiced by several Islamic empires.
However, al-Kardudi also introduces a note of ambiguity, saying that its efficacy depends on good governance and that victory in the jihad requires reform (iṣlāḥ) and the achievement of the just social equilibrium promised by the shari
a, a view reminiscent of
Abd al-Qadir's project:
God guarantees victory to kings but imposes four conditions upon them. When their government decays, when rebellions in the outlying districts of their kingdom shake them, when an enemy, a rebel or a jealous [rival] rises against them, they must seek refuge with God by reforming (iṣlāḥ) their relationship with Him by restoring the balance (mizān) which he has prescribed (shara
a) for his servants; by following the path of justice and truth which the heavens and earth undertake; by making manifest the rites of religion, succoring the oppressed, staying the hand of the oppressor, keeping the strong from the weak, and caring for the poor and needy.
101 Military reform can only benefit a regime that has put its house in order, a pointed statement in 1840s Morocco where the Makhzan had been rocked by French invasion and bombardment, the rise of
Abd al-Qadir, and endless tribal uprisings. However, since warfare and jihad are synonymous in the hadiths he cites, al-Kardudi also implies that communal obedience and commitment to warfare are incumbent on true believers and that rebellion is counter-productive. His concentration on the Prophet's example and early Islamic battles during which faith compensated for numerical inferiority reiterated the importance of Muslim unity under the sultan's leadership in view of Europe's superior manpower and resources. The overall thrust of the Kashf al-Ghumma, therefore, is not to explain how a modern professional army works but to assert the permanent existence of a military type that transcends religio-cultural boundaries and can be placed at the service of any community. This is why it is not simply a right but a duty (ḥaqq) for Muslims to accept the most advanced type of niẓām, to renew their faith, and to fight under their sultan so that they can achieve victory against non-Muslim aggressors.
The second work, Risala fi Tanzim al-Jaysh, a small manuscript of forty pages, summarizes what the author, Muhammad al-Khuja al-Tunisi, “witnessed in the lands of the Turks and Europeans (rūm)” and learned from Egyptian niẓāmī manuals.102
Al-Tunisi, Tanzim al-Jaysh, 2.
His stated purpose is to address the ignorance concerning
niẓāmī regulations (
qawānīn) that he has found among those entrusted with training the Moroccan army. Although at first glance it is pragmatic, his text shares the tendency to familiarize the
niẓāmī army as
Kashf al-Ghumma. Quoting the hadith “War is deceit,” al-Tunisi asserts that military success depends on adapting one's tactics to the terrain and the enemy. Since “most holy war in this time of ours is [fought] with gunpowder, a chief instructor who knows the rules for forming a regular army is essential.”
103 Quotations from the Qur
an and hadith underline the religious vocation on which his promotion of the niẓāmī army rests. He reinforces this by describing niẓām using the evocative term “sunna” (practice), which would have naturally called to mind the sunna of the Prophet, thereby legitimizing niẓām by association with the early Muslim community. He then describes the spread of modern niẓāmī vocabulary around the Mediterranean:
The terminology according to which the soldiers fight contains many words…. The instructors wished to translate them into Arabic but found no way and found no better languages to explain the invention than the Turkish and European languages. So they chose Turkish rather than a European language and mixed it with Persian because it is authentic (ṣaḥīḥa). This became the language of war in the Ottoman cities and in Syria, Egypt, Tripoli, and Tunis. They then composed numerous books explaining it in Arabic to benefit everyone enthusiastic about this glorious invention.104
This emphasis on the linguistic dimension of niẓām enables al-Tunisi to present the niẓāmī army as the equivalent of an Islamic army in which each niẓāmī unit and rank has a Muslim counterpart. Into this familiar framework al-Tunisi inserts the new concepts of a set parade (and battle) formation; a unified chain of command linking, among others, muqaddam (sergeant), qā
id (captain), and ra
īs al-jaysh (colonel); respect for rank; and strict discipline. He also alludes to the importance of rank-and-file soldiers adhering to the shari
a and officers and army officials behaving with zeal and probity.
105 Interestingly, his brief description of
niẓāmī camping formation is very similar to
Abd al-Qadir's, with which he may have been familiar.
In this informal risāla written to a colleague, niẓām becomes the reform of the existing army, which is marred by its disorganization, disunity, slack discipline, and greedy officers. No reference is made to new recruiting practices, the establishment of barracks, or regular salaries. Furthermore, the work presents niẓām as a legitimate type of (re)ordering because it has already been used throughout the Muslim Mediterranean and, implicitly, transformed by its translation into Muslim languages. As in al-Kardudi's work, what begins as the product of an alien order becomes subsumed within the Islamic context, where it serves as a support for religion and state without further question.
Morocco's defeat in the Tetuan war in 1859–60 persuaded Sidi Muhammad to renew the niẓāmī initiative with the support of the ulama, who produced five fatwas approving the idea.
106 Rollman, “Military Reform,” 621.
However, as in 1844, military defeat severely compromised the sultan's prestige and made resorting to European techniques highly suspect. In response, al-Ghali ibn Muhammad al-Laja
i wrote Maqma
al-Kufra, a manuscript of nearly 500 pages divided into fifteen chapters. His intention was not to explain niẓām, although he describes its organization, efficacy, and necessity, but to insist that preparation for the jihad meant adopting niẓāmī tactics. He then used the theme of preparedness for the jihad to assert the religio-political rights of the sultan and counteract the collapse of Sidi Muhammad's prestige. As a result, the manuscript is more militant, polemical, and state-centric than the preceding texts and most evidently presents modern niẓām as a pillar of the state and the Islamic order it represents.
Al-Laja
i proposes that “fighting the people of unbelief” is not simply one of a Muslim's responsibilities but his primary one.
107 Al-Laja
i, Maqma
al-Kufra, 2.
From his perspective, Islam's civilizational success and military prowess are inextricable, and Islamic civilization flourished until Muslims became complacent and allowed the enemy to gain strength over them. In such circumstances, military reform is not merely religiously acceptable; it is as much a duty as jihad itself, “so that protection and glory may be obtained for Islam and shame and scorn cast upon reprehensible unbelief.”
108 Like other authors, al-Laja
i legitimizes this viewpoint by depicting niẓām as a generic type of warfare with Islamic variants dating from the heroic era of the Prophet and cites hadiths to prove it.
109 Having set the stage, al-Laja
i then presents his state-centric vision by asserting that jihad leadership is the exclusive prerogative of an Islamic ruler, whom he describes as “the imam.” Since niẓām is necessary for successful jihad, it is his right and duty to force his subjects to accept it.
110 They should also accept higher taxation as a necessary evil in view of the likelihood of jihad. However, al-Laja
i also accords the ruler the right to prohibit jihad and make truces with European powers if, in his opinion (ijtihād), they are in the Muslim public interest (maṣlaḥa).
111 For al-Laja
i, the implications of niẓām thus extend from the military to the wider political and social spheres, both of which he sees as religious as well as temporal domains. If the imam's flock refuses to accept niẓām or proves recalcitrant in other ways, it is in fact denying the Islamic order he represents and therefore verges on unbelief.
112 By making this connection between resistance to the state and apostasy, already employed several times by the Makhzan and in al-Tasuli's fatwa to
Abd al-Qadir, al-Laja
i could make an unambiguous attack on independent, non-state jihad initiatives and bring the chastising of rebels within the scope of the imam's jihad responsibilities. Such an ideological sleight of hand was not new to Islamic political discourse, as Ibn Taymiyya's discussion of jihad shows, but its linkage with modern niẓām as the opposite of rebellion and disorder was.
113 Rudolph Peters, Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam (Princeton, N.J.: Marcus Wiener, 1996), 43–54.
While clearly prompted by recent events—Sidi Muhammad's settlement with Spain, which included a large indemnity to pay off, and a restive population keen to engage in jihad—al-Laja
i argument is also the most evolved statement of the place of niẓām in the
Alawi religio-political order. Simultaneously, his use of terms such as “ijtihād,” “shūrā,” and “maṣlaḥa,” also employed by Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi in Aqwam al-Masalik li-Ma
rifat Ahwal al-Mamalik (1867), created a bridge between the religious reformism that inspired
Abd al-Qadir and the later Salafiyya movement in the East.
114 Carl L. Brown, The Surest Path: The Political Treatise of a Nineteenth Century Statesman (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), 8.
Although thoroughly Islamic in origin, these terms, like
niẓām itself, gradually came to be seen as generic to all civilization, whatever their specific manifestations:
shūrā was both a practice of the Prophet and a representative assembly;
maṣlaḥa was both an Islamic legal concept and a more general public interest; and
ijtihād denoted both an Islamic legal technique and rational thought.
Although it is difficult to gauge the impact of these texts or to assess how widely they circulated, their existence indicates a sustained effort to naturalize the niẓāmī army through references to the Qur
an, the hadith, prophetic precedents, and contemporary Muslim needs. With respect to the Makhzan, the argument was won: military restructuring continued and became more intensive with every reign. However, the relatively muted disquiet about borrowing from an alien culture evident in the 1840s became stronger, and by the 1870s it was evident that the “new order” was not as easy to transform into an aspect of the Islamic order as its earlier advocates had supposed it would be. The dilemma was best expressed by Ahmad al-Nasiri in his retrospective comments about Sidi Muhammad's renewal of the niẓāmī project in the 1860s:
Disaster has spread among the Muslim armies with the spread of foreign morals. They wish to learn [European] warfare to defend the faith but they lose their faith through that process of learning. For less than two or three years pass before the children of Muslims become foreign, operating by their moral code, behaving according to their customs, so that they abandon the form of greeting laid down in the Qur
an and substitute a salute.
115 Al-Nasiri, Kitab al-Istiqsa, 9:106–107.
He therefore returns to the position of
Abd al-Qadir that soldiers must be inculcated not only with military but also with religious knowledge and insists that rural recruits should be given six to ten months of education in Islam's basic precepts, moral instruction, and daily readings of edifying texts prior to their military training:
It is essential to organize a daily session in which [the recruits] listen to the sīra of the Messenger of God—Peace be upon him—his battle exploits, the exploits of the Rightly Guided Caliphs and the early Muslims (salaf al-umma), stories of Arab leaders, men of wisdom and poets and their merits and characteristics.116
Al-Nasiri's worries reflect the sensibilities of a generation for whom exposure to European culture, commercial penetration, and diplomacy was threatening, disruptive, and all too familiar. However, the education he envisaged was no longer simply religious but also cultural, as his reference to leaders, men of wisdom, and poets indicates. Like Khayr al-Din, al-Nasiri's very understanding of Islamic civilization and awareness of the importance of literature and history to communal identity implied engagement with the European concept of civilization. To this he added a nascent sense of territorial nationality:
The best of characteristics with God and His servants is zeal for religion and country (waṭan), love of the sultan, and advice to him. It might be said to him, for example: if the unbelieving non-Arab (al-
ajamī al-zindīq) defends his worthless religion and country, how can the Arab believer not care for his religion, his state, and his country?
117 This awareness of a new global order marks al-Nasiri as different from his predecessors. While the writings of al-Kardudi and other midcentury scholars and officials have been characterized as indicative of the “awakening of the modern Maghrib,” it is debatable whether awareness of an external threat can truly be construed an awakening or a “crise de conscience.”118
Al-Mannouni, Yaqzat al-Maghrib; Laroui, Origines, 19.
Certainly, shocked Moroccan recognition of European military and technological superiority after the Battle of Isly in 1844 was a critical moment. However, the first wave of jihadist literature sought to merge what seemed merely to be a technology into the existing Islamic order without questioning the relationship between the two. It was al-Nasiri's generation and those who followed who truly awakened to the implications of the new European order while also inadvertently engaging with the new concepts it promulgated.
CONCLUSION
The early western Maghribi niẓāmī initiatives are two examples of military reform to be set alongside the projects taking place in Istanbul, Cairo, Tunis, and other Middle Eastern centers at the same time. Although they were small in scale and of relatively short duration and impact, the mere fact of their existence indicated the region's participation in the processes of change that were altering state–society relations across the Muslim Mediterranean as it entered a new economic and political relationship with Europe.
Like their Ottoman counterparts,
Abd al-Qadir and the
Alawi sultans justified the adoption of European military tactics as the only way to wage effective jihad against the Europeans but also used their new corps against their subjects. What distinguished the western Maghribian experiments was direct and early European imperialism in the form of the French conquest of Algeria and chastisement of Morocco, which put popular pressure on rulers actually to wage jihad and made the need for an efficient Muslim military apparent but rendered borrowing from Europe unpopular and even treacherous. To compensate for this double bind,
Abd al-Qadir and the
Alawi Makhzan adapted the religio-political symbols available to them in innovative ways.
The linguistic and visual tactics used by
Abd al-Qadir to legitimize his niẓāmī corps and the polemical and justificatory literature produced in the
Alawi sultanate from the late 1840s show the means by which they did this. They took up the themes of jihad and Islamic reform that
Alawi state ideology and Sufi reformism were in the process of modifying to link successful resistance to European imperialism to the adoption of niẓām, interpreted not simply as military order but also as a pillar of a state-centred Islamic order. As a result, the “new order” became a means to achieve reform (iṣlāḥ) that both required and facilitated a multi-dimensional jihad.
Their dynamic assertions of an Islamic political and social hierarchy headed by God and His representative were derived from local political and religious thought and initially owed little to the revolutionary, secular, and national concepts underlying the European “new order.” However, the religious vocabulary employed by Maghribian writers untouched by Tanzimat secularism should not obscure the changing content of that vocabulary or the interwoven threads in Muslim Mediterranean discourse. Just as the language used by
Abd al-Qadir and the
Alawi Makhzan evoked earlier Sufi and Wahhabi discourses, it also prefigured the vocabulary adopted by Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi and the Salafiyya and showed a similar fluidity of content.
Over the 19th century, a cluster of terms—“niẓām,” “jihād,” “iṣlāḥ,” “maṣlaḥa,” “shūrā,” and “ijtihād”—were invested with a range of meanings to legitimize military reform and ongoing processes of state formation and centralization. By al-Nasiri's time, such self-strengthening appeared in a rather different light from that of its earlier manifestations. While the literature of the 1840s sought to legitimize the “new order,” al-Nasiri realized that it was as likely to overthrow the house of Islam as to strengthen it. As a result, his jihad for Muslim welfare took the form of begging his fellow Muslims to recognize that niẓām was foreign and that strenuous efforts were needed to maintain Islamic values while using it. However, his vision of the sultanate and its place in the international political order was in many ways “modern” and certainly different from that of
Abd al-Qadir or the
Alawi sultans who had initiated reform forty years before.
Author's note: I thank the Leverhulme Trust and the University of Manchester for granting me a post-doctoral fellowship (1996–97) during which I completed part of the research for this article. I also thank the article's readers for their constructive comments.
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