The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza’iri (1808–83)

Amir ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza’iri is best known for his determined resistance to the invading French army in Algeria between 1832 and 1847 and his decisive role in protecting the Christian inhabitants of Damascus during the 1860 uprisings in Lebanon and Syria. He was also an original thinker and writer whose ideas were influenced by the nature of his early instruction; the years spent leading the jihad against, and negotiations with, the French; his time as a political prisoner in France; and his eventual settlement in Damascus.

Born in western Algeria near the city of Mascara to a family of religious notables, he was educated in the port of Azrew by a local scholar (‘ālim), Tahir b. Ahmad, who instilled in his young pupil an interest in geography, mathematics, and astronomy, in addition to a deep knowledge of the Islamic sciences. Another formative influence was his pilgrimage to the Hijaz in modern Saudi Arabia made with his father beginning in November 1825, which conferred additional socio-spiritual authority upon him. Their sojourn in Egypt during the implementation of Muhammad ‘Ali’s modernization program exposed the future amir to novel methods of political and military organization, which he later attempted to introduce in his native Algeria. After completing the pilgrimage, father and son spent four months in Damascus, where they studied Naqshbandi teachings and rituals from prominent shaykhs and formed ties of friendship with the local ‘ulama’. The two Algerians returned home to the Oran just two years prior to France’s occupation of Algeria in 1830.

In 1832, ‘Abd al-Qadir was proclaimed the “sultan of the Arabs” for mobilizing tribesmen under his green-and-white flag, which became the symbol of the nationalist movement in the 20th century. After a decade and a half of fighting interspersed with cessations of hostilities against the French military, the amir’s movement was exhausted and outnumbered. In 1847, he surrendered to General Louis de La Moricière in exchange for a promise of safe passage either to Alexandria or to Acre, in Palestine. In flagrant violation of the agreement, ‘Abd al-Qadir and his large retinue were taken to France and imprisoned until 1852, when the prince-president Louis-Napoleon III released them. The Algerians first settled in Bursa (in Anatolia) and subsequently in Damascus in 1855, where some of his descendants reside to this day. The generous pension accorded by the French state conferred financial security upon the amir, his family, and his followers, allowing the Algerian leader to purchase considerable landholdings in the area. But it also alienated some Damascene notables and ‘ulama’, who condemned his close ties to the French government in a period of increasing European interventions in the affairs of the Ottoman Empire. Nevertheless, he held classes at the great Umayyad Mosque, lecturing on the Qur’an and the sunna.

During his four years in France, ‘Abd al-Qadir entertained wide-ranging contacts with political, military, and even Catholic leaders and thinkers. Soon after his relocation to Damascus, the Paris-based Asiatic Society invited him to become a member. He submitted an essay discussing the thorny issues of Muslim-Christian relations and the relationship between revelation and human reason, which won him praise. In his treatise Reminding the Rational Man and Alerting the Neglectful Man, ‘Abd al-Qadir sought to reconcile rational inquiry with religious belief and truth. As David D. Cummings points out, arguments in favor of reconciling modern science with revelation through a reinterpretation of the sources reflected an intellectual movement among some Islamic thinkers and represented a trend that later inspired the Salafis. This might be considered the first phase in the amir’s religiospiritual and intellectual trajectory.

The second phase came after the events of the 1860 civil strife in Lebanon and the Hawran, during which ‘Abd al-Qadir strove to calm Druze-Christian sectarian conflict, probably because he realized that civil war would provide a pretext for heightened European meddling—a lesson he had surely learned in Algeria. When his efforts failed, he provided shelter to several thousand Christians in his residence in Damascus, sparing them from death at the hands of mobs. His courageous actions earned him kudos not only from the European powers but also from President Abraham Lincoln, and it brought him to the attention of the Masons. In 1862, he performed another pilgrimage, staying in Mecca for an extended period, where he studied Shadhili Sufi teachings. On his way back to Damascus in 1864, he spent time in Alexandria, where he encountered Masonic ideas in one of the city’s lodges. One of the biggest controversies among scholars of ‘Abd al-Qadir’s life and thought revolves around his relationship to the Masons: How receptive or sympathetic was he to Masonic ideas? And did he really become a member, if only for a short period?

From the mid-1860s on, however, his thinking shifted as he became less concerned with “shari‘a-minded Sufism,” which maintained that the sunna and the law must represent the core of the Sufi way. The amir died and was buried in Damascus in May 1883. But in 1968, the newly independent state of Algeria recalled ‘Abd al-Qadir home, repatriating his remains to his native land after an exile of 121 years.

See also Algeria; North Africa