Professor Hugh Roberts presents an exceptionally erudite, interdisciplinary study of pre-colonial Kabylia. This book displays the author's impressive aptitude as an historian, political scientist, sociologist, ethnologist, and even philologist. In the preface, he recounts his doctoral research, with fieldwork in the Jurjura, resulting in his doctorate from Oxford. In the late 1980s, he drafted four chapters, now included and updated in this book, before putting the manuscript aside since escalating civil strife in Algeria restricted travel and study. The author then became renowned as an insightful political analyst (notably as the Director of the International Crisis Group's North Africa Project [until 2007]), who authored The Battlefield: Algeria, 1988–2002: Studies in a Broken Polity (2003). As the violence ebbed, he resumed his Kabylia project and completed it, concurrent with his appointment as Edward Keller Professor of North African and Middle Eastern History at Tufts University. Thus, this book took over 25 years to complete, well worth the wait for scholars and students of Kabyle, comparative Berber, and Ottoman-Algerian studies.

Acknowledging that he has ‘relied on the existing literature in all its variety’ (xi), Roberts's acute critical rethinking of canonic works regarding Kabyle and Berber societies distinguishes the narrative. After differentiating the Kabyles as distinct from other Algerian Berbers (Chaouia, Tuareg, Ibadis), the author introduces and examines the works and theories of principal scholars who studied Kabylia, notably Adolphe Hanoteau, Aristide Letourneux, Ernest Gellner, and Pierre Bourdieu. Regarding Kabyle political process and development, he favors Hanoteau and Letourneux's emphasis on the primacy of the village and its non-kinship council or assembly, the jema‘a (thajma‘th), the collection of villages sharing common territory, the ‘arsh (pl. ‘arūsh/‘aarsh) (with its own jema‘a), and the importance of participatory parties or alignments, the mediating saff system. Roberts rejects Ernest Gellner's contention that the segmentary model, associated with his study of Morocco's Berbers, was applicable to the Kabyles. Like Gellner, Bourdieu de-emphasized the role of the village and considered clan relations more important. Roberts opposes this position, as well as Bourdieu's underestimation of precolonial Kabylia's economic vitality and diversity. Fundamentally, the author describes a discrete Kabyle polity with its own traditions, institutions, jurisprudence, and history, and offers, along the way, a new interpretation and paradigm.

The first half of the book features political anthropology. The second part presents a political and social history of Kabyle-Ottoman relations during the centuries of the Algiers Regency. The Ottoman irruption was a ‘revolutionary’ occurrence, unanticipated by Khaldunian political theory (regarding the replacement of one Maghribi state with another). The ambitions of the Ottomans, specifically those of Kheirredine and Aruj Barbarossa, compounded an already complicated geopolitical situation characterized by intrigues devised among the Almohad successor states, the Hafsids and Ziyanids, and the Spanish. Roberts recounts Kabyle conflicts and collaborations with these actors, especially with the Ottomans concerning the development and decline of Greater Kabylia's ‘Kingdom of Koukou’. The recurrent ‘waves’ of precolonial maraboutic activity eventually contributed during the first few decades of French colonialism, to the widespread popularity of the Rahmaniyya tarīqa, whose adherents became increasingly restive, resistant (1857), and rebellious (1871). The imagination or ‘hallucination’ of the colonial ‘Kabyle Myth’ was a misperception of Kabyle religiosity and polity. Nevertheless, some pre-colonial Ottoman ‘ulamā’ subscribed to similar impressions and profiles. For example, the ‘alim al-Warthilani stereotyped Kabyles as lawless, chronically roiling in civil strife.

The author asserts that ‘knowledge of pre-colonial Kabyle society and of its political organization and traditions is … indispensable to an understanding of the complex politics of the Kabyle question in post-colonial Algeria’ (10), as evidenced by the ‘coordination’ conducted by ‘aarsh after the killing of 120 Kabyles by police in 2001 (resulting in the Kseur Platform calling for regional and national reform including the insistent appeal to have Thamazighth recognized as an official language [achieved in February 2016]). An ‘exceptional’ mobilizing ‘transcendent’ tradition, exemplified by Kabyle engagement in the War of Liberation, continues to resonate ‘to honor the political obligation to the wider community, the umma’ (284).

International archival and Internet sources complement the author's fieldwork. The book includes 15 illustrations, 12 maps, 13 tables, and a very helpful glossary of Arabic and Berber terms. The publisher also provides convenient footnotes rather than endnotes.

Algerian studies often focus on the archive rich colonial era. The precolonial period has been understudied and its historical influence and contemporary significance underappreciated. Thus, this book is a most welcome addition. Scholars and students particularly interested in Kabyles (and Maghribi Berbers) will have to refer to its meticulous approach. The book deserves immediate inclusion in university research libraries. Hugh Robert's longstanding, dedicated interest regarding the Kabyles and their histories is especially commendable.