CHAPTER TWO

Lords of the Tent

GENERAL LAMORICIÈRE HAD TRIED to explain to the deaf parliamentarians in Paris the importance of Abd el-Kader’s voluntary surrender. The emir’s piety and knowledge of divine law had given him an authority over the Arabs like that conferred by bloodline for European monarchies: legitimacy.

And then, as the general said, Arabian horses were too fast and toughened by years of desert conditioning to allow the softer, clumsier French horses to catch them. For the Arab, love of God and love of horses were part of a single duty. The Koran, God’s perfect word, implied a nobler essence for the horse over other animals by calling it El-Kheir, “The Great Blessing.” In France, the horse was primarily an object to be sold or bartered. “You don’t marry your horse” was a popular expression. The Arab did marry his horse. Divine wisdom and the practical wisdom of the desert were one.

So, let us begin the emir’s story with the voice of Lamoricière’s fellow officer and veteran of North African campaigns, General Eugene Daumas. Daumas, whom we will meet again later, became something of a military anthropologist of the Saharan Arab. His friendship with Abd el-Kader allowed him to learn much about a culture that rested on two pillars that were becoming foreign to the increasingly urban and secular Frenchman of the mid-nineteenth century: horses and religion.

When I asked the emir about the origin of the Arab horse, he answered with a legend. “God made the horse from the south wind. He said, ‘ I want to make a creature out of you — condense. ’ The wind obeyed and condensed. Gabriel then appeared and presented a handful of the new substance to God, who said, ‘I call you horse. I make you Arabian and give you the burnt chestnut color of the ant. Men shall follow you wherever you go. You shall be as good for pursuit as for flight; you shall fly without wings; riches shall be on your back.’ Then God put the mark of glory on him — the white blaze on the middle of his forehead. No creature save man was as dear to God as the horse.

“The first man to mount a horse was Adam, but it was Ishmael who was the first to call horses and train the most spirited and beautiful ones. Over time, the horses of Ishmael lost their purity, but one line remained untainted — that preserved by King Solomon, son of David. It is to this line that all Arabians owe their origin.

“This situation came about when Arabs of the tribe of Azed went to Jerusalem to pay honor to Solomon at the time of his marriage to the Queen of Sheba. When preparing to return home leaders of the tribe came to Solomon with a plea. ‘O Prophet of God our country is far away and our supplies are exhausted. Thou art a great king; give us provisions that we may return home. ’ Solomon gave orders that a beautiful stallion be brought from his stables for the Arabs. He told them: This horse is my provision for your journey. When you are hungry, gather wood and prepare a fire. Put your best rider on this horse armed with a sharp lance. You will barely have started your fire when the rider will return with the spoils of the chase.

“Convinced of the value of their gift from the son of David by the quantity of ostriches and zebras killed, the tribe of Azed devoted the horse to stud. It produced a line which they called Zad al-Rakib, or Gift to the Rider, from which all Arab horses today are derived and has been spread from the east to the west by the Islamist conquests...”

 

The Arab horseman is foremost a hunter and a warrior. The pursuit of wild beasts teaches him the pursuit of men. This Lord of the Tent rarely stays in one place for more than fifteen or twenty days. He goes to the villages of the Tell but once a year to buy grain. For townspeople he has only mocking disdain. He calls the merchants, fattened by sedentary habits, “father of the belly.” The horseman by contrast, is lean and muscular, his face burnt by the sun. He has well-proportioned limbs, large rather than small, to which he has added vigor agility and courage. Above all courage. He values courage as the crowning virtue, yet does not condemn those who lack it. He knows it is not their fault if God has so arranged matters.

… These Lords of the Tent have a spirit of the chevaliers of the Middle Ages. He is expected to be wise, generous and courteous. His primary virtue is patience. Seated on his carpet with an air of gentle dignity, he listens to petitioners. This person accuses a neighbor of trying to seduce his wife; that one complains of a man richer than he who refuses to pay a debt; a father demands protection for his daughter whose brutal husband is mistreating her; a woman complains that her husband feeds and clothes her badly and, worst of all, denies her ‘her share of God. ’

Endowed with wisdom and patience, the chief reflects on the different ways to heal the wounds revealed by his people. He is flexible and applies different remedies for different cases. To some he gives orders. To others he gives counsel. No one is denied his enlightenment or justice. His tent is a refuge for the needy and unfortunate. No one in his camp should suffer from hunger, for he knows the hadiths: ‘God will only give mercy to the merciful... Believer, give alms, if only half a date… He who gives today will be replenished tomorrow.’

The Arab warrior is a man of leisure and pleasure. His main preoccupation will be the hunt that moulds him for his sole business of razzia — the art of the sudden raid. Razzia is the lifeblood of the Saharan nomad, from which he harvests glory, vengeance and booty. Glory does not lie in destruction but in plunder….

These stealthy actions take place at different times of day, according to the purpose of the raid. The bloodiest razzias are those undertaken to avenge a killing or the mistreatment of women, and may deploy a force of four to five hundred horsemen, known as a goum. This razzia, called el-tehha, is prepared with great care and use of deception. Once the camp is reconnoitered by scouts riding the strongest horses, the approach is made circuitously, so that, should the goum be surprised by the enemy or its allies, they will be coming from a direction where normally friendly tribes appear. If questioned they will offer a credible alibi for their presence.

The attack is planned for first light, a time when the “women are without their girdles and horses without their bridles.” The chief warns his men to kill first the men and kill thoroughly before ravishing the women or plundering tents. In these raids there is usually great carnage of the men, sparing only the farriers, as their work is considered holy. Women, children and wounded are simply left to their fate. In the desert, one is never burdened by prisoners. The victors will carry off tents, Negro slaves, horses, herds if there is time. Other razzias are for booty alone. Excessive cruelty is rare.

Before each raid, the attackers are blessed by a marabout who gives his benediction to the expedition. After a successful foray, there is a celebration to honor the marabouts and the poor. Widows, freed slaves and farriers are all invited to join in the festivity.

Booty is distributed equally among the horsemen of the tribe and its allies. Disputes over the division of spoils are resolved by the mokaddem. He is known for his wisdom, good sense and honesty, for the victors know that disputes over the booty can become violent...

Abd el-Kader might well have been a mokaddem who resolved such disputes, but he was born into a marabout tribe where piety and study were more valued than plunder and glory. His destiny, had it been his to guide, would have been that of a married monk, living a life of prayer, meditation and teaching.

Who, indeed, was this marabout who became a formidable warrior, but in the end put his trust in the word of a French general, believing that submission to France was the will of God?

Marabout. The word confused the French soldiers. Was it a person or a thing? Both, they learned eventually. A marabout is a holy man, a man “tied to religion.” It is also his tomb, but may be a 500-year-old oak tree thought by the common people to possess miraculous healing powers. Typically, it is a domed, white-washed mausoleum surrounded by a low mud wall, visited by the poor, frequently women who come to pray for intercession or simply need an excuse to leave the confinement of their homes by seeking the company of someone who is safely dead, but known to have been learned and saintly.

Maraboutism is still widespread in North Africa today, and is strongly rooted in rural populations and among the less-educated believers. Muslim reformers have considered these practices a degenerate form of Islam, full of superstitious and magical beliefs that border on the worship of men. There is no God but God. Idolatry is the supreme sin of Islam. It was into a distinguished marabout family living in the remote Turkish beylik of Oran, in what was known as the Regency of Algiers, that Abd el-Kader was born in September 1808, though some say it was May, 1807.

 

A cacophany of cries, chants and incantations could be heard from Lalla Zohra’s retinue of female relatives and servants gathered in her strong smelling goatskin tent. The most fervent were those of her Negro servant, Mohra. She would be the baby’s wet nurse and prayed more loudly than the others for her mistress that this be a boy. Zohra was served a cup of linden tea mixed with clove sticks, thyme and cinnamon to accelerate the contractions. Servants were throwing handfuls of salt in the corners of the tent to keep away evil jinns lurking in the darkness.

“Flap your wings, Oh angel of God, help deliver this child, protect it with your wings, deliver this child,” the midwife chanted as she brought a pot of boiling water. Zohra’s sister-in-law prayed to their patron saint, Abd el-Kader al-Jilani. “Push, Lalla Zohra! Push!” The head emerged. It was covered with hair, a good sign. “It’s a boy. Praise to God. Allahu Akbar! Alhamdulillah!”

The women chanted their prayers louder to give protection against any jinns still floating about the tent waiting to fall upon this newborn creature of God. One of the midwives sneaked off to bury the placenta in a secret hiding place. Afterward, servants brought Zohra a bowl of warm honey to prevent indigestion, followed by a baked pigeon served in pepper sauce with saffron and butter to restore her strength.

Muhi al-Din ordered a ram be sacrificed to renew his pact with Abraham, and then walked over to the womens’ tent and took his wife’s hand. “I am going to call him Servant of the Almighty, in honor of my mother who once had a dream that told of a grandchild who would have an exceptional destiny.” The midwife had prepared seven pieces of cloth, neatly laid across her knees. One by one, she dipped each strip in oil and henna to ritually wash the infant’s body. Muhi al-Din placed his hand tenderly on his wife’s forehead and thanked her for a job well done. She was happy to have delivered a boy for her husband.

The caids and sheikhs from clans throughout the beylik had come to pay their respects and congratulate Muhi al-Din, the respected head of the Kadiriyya brotherhood. Its influence stretched throughout North Africa thanks to Muhi al-Din’s reputation for learning, piety and wisdom — qualities that justified his name, “The Enlivener of Religion.” Warring tribes often sought out Muhi al-Din to settle their disputes. On this occasion, more than social politesse was on their minds. This was also an opportunity to talk with their spiritual leader about disquieting things going on in the region.

Across the Mediterranean, Europe was in turmoil. The Christians were fighting with each other and the Turks were anxious about their intentions. People spoke of a great French sultan, called Bonaparte, who had invaded Egypt and won a great victory at the Pyramids. He was said to admire Islam and to have taken a Mameluke bodyguard, but also to have sent spies to reconnoiter the coast of North Africa. The Arabs were unsure if the sultan in Istanbul was willing to defend the faith.

There was also talk of the growing power of the Tidjani Brotherhood, whose influence spread from Laghouat in the Sahara to the province of Oran. Its rebellious leader, Sheik Tidjani, was making things worse with the already oppressive Turkish overlords. The beys wanted peace so they could collect their taxes and lead lives of indolent luxury. These and other concerns were on the minds of those gathered around Muhi al-Din that morning as he sat with his legs folded, working the black wooden beads of his sebha, reciting to himself the ninety-nine divine names while politely nodding as each guest said his piece. Yes, there were many unsettling signs, but only God knows the future. Muhi al-Din had other things on his mind. Now was a time for celebration.

Zohra was the second of Muhi al-Din’s three wives. She was well educated for a woman of her time. Not only could she read and write, which was rare even in Europe in the early 19th century, she was schooled in the Koran and the traditions of the Prophet. People called her “Lalla,” a title of respect owed to her reputation for generosity, learning and piety. Some Arabs considered her a marabout.

His mother taught Abd el-Kader to read the Koran, to write and to make his own clothes. She showed him how to perform the ritual ablutions that precede daily prayers. They were always in threes: the hands were washed first, then the mouth by gargling, followed by the nostrils, the face from forehead to chin, the arms up to the elbows, then rinsing of the hair from the forehead to the neck, ears inside and out, and finally the feet, beginning always with the right side.

“Ritual purity is half of faith,” his mother would tell him. It was both symbol and reminder, a reminder of the other, harder half — to purify one’s inner self. To be a good Muslim and become an instrument of God’s will, it was necessary to be free of egotistical desires and unruly passions. Zohra also taught him the dangers of mechanical ritualism. He had to pray with his heart and not only his lips. “Don’t be like your father’s assistant who is like a rooster,” she told him. “He knows the hours of prayer but he doesn’t know how to pray.”

Zohra disapproved of the gossip, erotic conversation and constant tittering of her servants and sisters-in-law. Nor did she like their superstitious ways. She wanted to be sure her son did not believe the foolishness his black nurse Mohra told him about monsters and demons, even if she thought it useful to believe a little bit in demons, particularly those within, and to believe in Hell and the Day of Judgment.

Piety, and learning to fear God, had everyday implications. Life, Zohra explained, is hierarchical and submission needs to be practiced daily, to God and then to each other, according to rank. Each person should submit to the authority above, beginning with the angels and sultans, down to pilgrims and slaves. When before higher authority, one should be silent.

At the age of eight, Abd el-Kader passed from his mother’s world over to the all-male world of his father. Circumcision marked the passage, a rite that renewed the original pact of obedience between God and their ancestor, Abraham. Henceforth, he too would practice obedience to God’s will.

According to time-honored tradition, the day Abd el-Kader officially entered manhood began with a prayer at dawn. With his palms turned to the heavens, Muhi al-Din beseeched God for peace and protection from idolatry. A ceremonial meal was prepared, accompanied by the sounds of oboes, tambourines and flutes while Muhi al-Din spoke to the elder of each group of guests who had come to honor him. With a slight bow, he thanked each by name, and in sequence, according to age. Afterward, Lalla Zohra’s brother-in-law, Abu Taleb, led Abd el-Kader forward to the master of the prepuce as the sisters-in-law and servants cried out their you yous and prayers. Abu Taleb held the boy, rigid with anticipation, as the village barber extended the child’s foreskin and deftly performed the operation.

Abd el-Kader did well. He didn’t cry out. The master sprayed onto the wound a mixture of olive oil and honey he had been holding in his mouth. Afterward, the boy was taken to his nanny, Mohra. She turned him over to the midwife who had brought him into the world. Following custom, she first covered the wound with her saliva and then washed it seven times with butter before sprinkling a fine powder of henna over the cut.

There is another Muslim tradition that says in each century God sends an exemplary man, known for holiness and learning, to counter the natural tendencies of laziness and neglect among believers. Arising from some indefinable source within, Muhi al-Din sensed from the day of his birth that Abd el-Kader was destined to have an exceptional future and gave special attention to his education.

Father now replaced mother as teacher, as tradition required. Abd el-Kader was invited to all-male gatherings to observe, listen and learn in silence. Every morning, Muhi al-Din taught Abd el-Kader the traditions of the Prophet Mohammed, or Sunna, those saying and actions of the Prophet that had been recorded by at least three credible witnesses. Always wanting to know “why,” he also studied the commentaries of the great religious scholars who had wrestled with the different meanings that could be extracted from the Koran, interpreted in the light of the Prophet’s own deeds and words.

The scholars often disagreed, his father explained, but where there was disagreement and ambiguity, there should also be latitude. Though ambiguity could be exploited by evildoers, and was condemned in the Koran, it was not necessarily bad either. Ambiguity, Muhi al-Din noted, also provided room for growth, flexibility and change. When Abd el-Kader turned thirteen, he was qualified as an authorized commentator of the Koran and of the hadith, those thousands of sayings attributed to the Prophet. He had become a religious instructor, a taleb. His family began to call him by the honorific diminutive, Si Kada.

Muhi al-Din educated his son in the tradition of their patron saint, Abd el-Kader al-Jilani. Their Kadiriyya brotherhood had been named to honor the teachings of this 11th-century holy man. During a pilgrimage to the Middle East, Muhi al-Din’s father, Mustafa, had adopted his doctrines. Al-Jilani preached a simple, universal message that attracted not only Muslims but also Jews and Christians: Muslims had a duty to pray for the well-being of all people, not simply for fellow Muslims. He taught Muslims to hold a special place of respect for Jesus Christ. Jesus was the goodness of God and his power of love set him apart from all the other prophets.

Al-Jilani’s mission was to save souls, do good works and guide all humanity away from Hell toward the gates of Heaven. When Mustafa returned from Mecca in 1791, he turned Guetna into a center of al-Jilani’s teachings and built a shrine in his honor.

A zawiya grew up around the marabout at Guetna dedicated to al-Jilani. This school of prayer and study served as a hostelry for pilgrims, students and travelers. As many as 600 students came to study Islamic law during a year, some from Fez and Alexandria. The zawiya was a boarding school, but also a refuge for the poor, the sick and the persecuted. Its handful of buildings clung to a wooded hillside above the warm mineral waters of Oued el-Hammam that irrigated lemon and orange groves in the valley. Wheat was ground in Guetna’s windmill and what the zawiya didn’t consume was given to the poor. Prayer, study and charity provided the rhythms of life at Guetna.

Abd el-Kader learned about his roots as well. He was a member of the Beni Hachem tribe. Its numerous clans occupied the Plain of Ghriss — an elongated bread basket, rimmed by low-lying mountains, dotted with patches of wheat and olive groves, as well as herds of goats, sheep, and camels, that stretched for fifty miles. Abd el-Kader was not of Hachemite blood himself. According to family genealogy, his lineage was descended from the Prophet Mohammed through the Idriss monarchy that founded Fez and ruled Morocco where his grandfather, Mustafa, had lived. A wise man by reputation, Mustafa was invited by the Beni Hachem to live with them and provide their people with learning and knowledge.

To acquire knowledge, Muhi al-Din catechized his favorite son in the Way of the Beloved One:

If you are asked what is the Way, say: It is knowledge, purity of heart and body, patience and having excellent offspring.

If you are asked what are the obligations imposed by the Way, say: To not utter evil words, to repeat continuously the names of God, to have contempt for the goods of this world, to fear God.

If you are asked by what signs one recognizes people of the Way, say: By their good works, discretion in speech, gentleness, compassion and absence of sinful behavior.

Mystical knowledge of the Divine Path was important, but so was more down-to-earth knowledge. To acquire worldly knowledge, Muhi al-Din put Abd el-Kader in the guiding hands of his friend, Ahmed Ben Tahar. This versatile scholar was the cadi of Arzew, a small fishing village outside of Oran and an easy two-day horseback ride from Guetna. Under Ben Tahar’s tutelage, mathematics, geography, astronomy, philosophy and history were added to the moral and religious foundation laid by Abd el-Kader’s parents. Abd el-Kader also learned about plant pharmacology and veterinary medicine, knowledge that would serve him well in the future. The old cadi had Abd el-Kader read Aristotle, Plato and great Islamic thinkers such as Averroes and Avicenna, Ghazali, Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Kaldun. A collector of books and old manuscripts, Ben Tahar possessed a portion of the Organon, Aristotle’s great treatise on the nature of the universe that had been translated into Arabic by Muslim scholars.

Si Kada’s education was not unusual for a boy born into a marabout family. The ink of the scholar is worth more than the blood of martyrs or, To have knowledge and not use it is to be like a donkey loaded with books, were sayings of the Prophet that Abd el-Kader learned by heart. Marabouts were expected to be literate and learned and disdainful of material things. Religion and knowledge were considered inseparable.

Adab, or good manners, was an important part of Abd el-Kader’s curriculum: when and how to greet others and in which sequence; the right ritual response to a sneeze; how best to control a yawn; when to visit the sick, the poor and one’s parents and the proper order for doing so; when to give gifts to others and all the gestures and attitudes that are important for social relations and form the basis of the community of believers. Right relationships between people recognized a natural hierarchy.

Aristocracy was regarded as a law of nature by the Arabs. Breeding produced a natural hierarchy. What was true for horses was true for men. The simplest shepherd knew, “The head is the head and the tail is the tail.” Two natural aristocracies existed among the Arabs: marabouts and douads. The former, the French called “the nobility of religion”; the latter, “the nobility of the sword.”

Warfare was the profession of the douads. Their specialty was the razzia. The douads were suspicious of too much book learning, fearing that an overly refined mind softened the heart in battle. Wealth was acquired by plundering enemies. Their prestige came from their skill in battle and their bravery was measured by how many horses had been shot from beneath them. The douads accused the marabouts of intrigue, greed and hypocrisy. The marabouts accused the douads of violence and ungodly behavior. The charge of ungodly behavior was a powerful weapon among God-fearing men. The more astute French officers recognized in the marabouts’ relation to the douad what the Christian clergy of the Middle Ages was to Europe’s warring barons: a conscience. Yet, both aristocracies expected from their chieftains courage, generosity and wisdom.

Abd el-Kader didn’t share the rapacious instincts of the douad, yet he still learned the arts of war from the universal sport of the aristocracy — the chase. Skill in the chase began with strong horses and good horsemanship. Horsemanship was a core course in his disciplined curriculum. Like other members of the nobility, Abd el-Kader started riding from the day he was old enough to stay on the back of a young colt and the foal got used to carrying weight proportionate to its strength. Young Arab boys learned balance by riding bareback to graze and water their horses.

Tradition taught the Arabs that toughness and docility were the essential qualities of a good horse. Docility came with handling, first at the hands of women whose gentle nature the Arabs believed was calming to a foal; then through contact with people and other animals, and finally, exposure to noise and strange objects. This happened naturally; colts and fillies enjoyed the tent’s shelter along with the family menagerie of pet ostriches, goats, gazelles, falcons and their salukis, sleek hunting dogs that resembled greyhounds. Docility made Arab horses easy to mount. They learned to stand stock-still for hours in the desert with reins dropped to the ground.

“A true horseman should eat little and drink little,” the Arabs said. Their horses’ famous toughness came from conditioning that gradually increased the distances they covered and limited the amount of food and water they consumed. The horse and rider were to become a single personality, each capable of enduring heat and cold, thirst, hunger and fatigue. A good Arab horse could be ridden hard for two days without water. Stamina, courage, agility and an even temperament were the qualities most valued in a horse, as well as the rider. A toughened Arabian could cover 150 miles in a day when pushed.

Days were divided between religious instruction and horsemanship. Mornings were for studying and being quizzed by his father. If Abd el-Kadar was going to rely on the deeds of the Prophet as case history to interpret God’s law, then he had to know the chain of witnesses for each of his reported acts or sayings, and know about the reliability of the witnesses used for determining the authenticity of the hadith, and its context. All this study was needed for a true religious scholar to intelligently interpret the law. Horses were the subject of hadiths as well: The true believer who has trained his horse to shine in jihad shall have the sweat, the hair, even the dung and urine, weighed in the scale of good works on the final day of Final Judgment. Was that authentic? Could that be valid even if not authentic? Or, to care for a horse has the value of fasting. Under his father’s prodding, Abd el-Kader’s love of horses fed his love of study.

Afternoons, he would go riding with one of several instructors. Young boys were taught to control a horse as they did their hands. They had to master maneuvers that could save their lives in the fray of battle: to stop suddenly at full gallop and spin around after firing their rifles, those “airs above ground” movements — equine acrobatics, essential in a melee, which were taught in the French cavalry school at Saumur, long known by the Arab horseman. Abd el-Kader learned how to ride in a strong wind, to shelter himself between the neck of a horse and the flaps of his burnoose, to navigate his horse over rocky and slippery terrain, and to wave and flap his burnoose to conceal the position of his body when galloping into battle.

Abd el-Kader would disappear into the Sahara to learn the art of surviving in the desert: to make tisane from the mugwort plant to cure fevers and stay alert in the saddle; uses of bou nafâa, the multipurpose meadow parsnip the Arabs called “the father of usefulness,” and other plants for treating sick or injured horses; the proper times to feed and water a horse; to identify the telltale signs of water under the sand and near rocks. Abd el-Kader learned the names of the tribes and how to identify them from a distance as friendly or hostile from the shape of their tents or by the raptors they used to hunt — eagle or falcon, gray or yellow — and so the endless details that determined life or death in the desert.

At age thirteen, Abd el-Kader was ready to join the hunting expeditions. Unlike the douads, for whom the chase was preparation for hunting men, Abd el-Kader hunted in the spirit of the Arab poet who praised the chase because, “it frees the soul of cares, adds vigor to intelligence, brings joy, dissipates worries, and renders useless the skill of doctors by maintaining the well-being of the body.” The hunt built qualities needed for life: intelligence, patience, endurance and courage. The chase taught contempt for danger. Courage was one of the four virtues necessary for moral progress, to which were added intellect, justice and self-control.

Si Kada’s quick intelligence, natural piety and questioning mind confirmed Muhi al-Din’s belief that his third son had a special destiny. He was better than his brothers at finding water and good pasture, planting seeds, shooting birds, leaping from his horse to slit the throat of a wounded animal and firing a rifle accurately at full gallop. Abd el-Kader could recognize eighteen different types of camels, knew how to efficiently load a mule and find the best route through the bled. He could charm the women of the family into agreement when they argued, and could haggle with the wiliest of the merchants over the price of barley. Ben Tahar, the cadi of Arzew, reported to Muhi al-Din that Abd el-Kader was an outstanding student in everything he took up.

Muhi al-Din knew that the nobility of the sword had contempt for the sedentary life of marabouts and their bookish ways. Yet, he also believed that only with the authority of religious knowledge could Abd el-Kader succeed in carrying forward his teachings — to have faith in the power, goodness and mercy of God; to pursue peace, justice, charity and brotherhood.

His father wanted Abd el-Kader to perfect his public speaking and rhetorical skills, and learn to recite the Koran correctly. The last was of great importance. If his son was to acquire the religious authority needed to tame the tribes, he would have to know how to read the Koran so as to mimic the divine breath that God breathed into man.

Muhi al-Din taught that the human spirit was like an army in battle, constantly exposed to disorganizing forces that are countered only by the discipline of good order and rituals rightly performed. The Koran was the perfect word of God, his father explained, but it had to be recited perfectly to capture the divine energy that organizes the chaos. Man is surrounded by oscillation and random motion. Without the organizing force of ritual, the world becomes unstable.

Muhi al-Din sent him to another zawiya, this one in the provincial capital, run by Ahmed Ben Khodja, a respected scholar and specialist in poetry, rhetoric and recitation of the Koran. When the fourteen-year-old Abd el-Kader arrived in Oran, he was more likely struck by the chaos than the divine organizing energy. He was like the sheltered, if learned, son of a strait-laced country preacher thrown for the first time into the hurly-burly of a big city swarming with temptations and distractions. That, too, was part of Muhi al-Din’s educational plan. He knew his son needed to experience diversity and witness the temptations and corruption of the world.

At the zawiya of Ben Khodja, he lived with the sons of Turkish functionaries who governed Oran, the children of douads, as well as Kougoulis — the scorned halfbreeds of the ruling Turks who mated with local women. Ben Khodja warned Abd el-Kader to keep a low profile. The Turks could be abominably arrogant. He was advised to be humble and discreet, and to concentrate on one thing: learn and learn some more.

But he couldn’t. Abd el-Kader knew his father wanted him to be more than a bookworm. In 1822, Oran had a population of some 20,000 people. The city bore the imprint of the Jews and Moors who had been chased out of Spain centuries earlier and had brought with them knowledge of metal and leather working, and the plaintive music of Andalusia. Abd el-Kader wandered the streets in amazement.

Everything was new: the noisy bazaars, the colorful potpourri of Berbers, Arabs, Turks, Jews and Kougoulis; the half-moon bay filled with sails of all sizes, its western end punctuated by the large wedge of Mt. Aidour slicing into the sea. He had never breathed sea air before. He was shocked by the filth and stench at the port where he saw barefooted blacks from West Africa and Maltese dockhands staggering like overloaded mules, drunken seamen and ragged beggars who brazenly panhandled. He noticed women shamelessly walking the streets without a veil and with exposed bare legs.

Not content to simply look at all these new and dubious big city wonders, Abd el-Kader tasted the unfamiliar delights of cream-filled pastries and the Turkish baklava served in the homes of schoolmates. Sometimes, he found himself lying on soft silky cushions at a friend’s house, being lulled to sleep by the sensual voice of a Jewish songstress warbling songs of a lost Andalusia. But the Koranically correct young man from Guetna found no lasting pleasure in the sensuality of the city. He had been schooled by his father in self-denial.

The impiety all around was incomprehensible. He saw gambling, even by the poor, and the practice of divination of entrails, activities condemned in the hadith. With drink and gambling, Satan introduces among you the germs of discord… Divination of entrails and fortune telling are acts of the Devil.

The pious student from tiny Guetna couldn’t hold back his disgust any longer. One day, Abd el-Kader blurted out a burning question to Ben Khodja. How, he wanted to know, could the Turks be considered defenders of the faith with their loose living and contempt for the local population? The worldly-wise Ben Khodja listened sympathetically. Then he replied, telling Abd el-Kader of other things to despise — of Bey Hassan’s ruthlessness in collecting taxes throughout the beylik, of prostitution and drugs, of the revolts by some of the tribes against the bey for his lack of compassion toward the poor, of the unrest in the eastern beylik of Constantine. The old master’s litany of evils was his way of impressing upon the young boy that disorder and godless behavior marked the way of the world.

“Yes, but if you see evil remove it.” The Koran was Abd el-Kader’s reference in all things.

“Your time will come, but not yet. Evil is powerful. Removing it requires more than your passion and sincerity,” his father’s friend responded gently.