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Pascal Buresi
The research I conduct at the CNRS and the teaching I offer at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (particularly in Lyon centre of the EHESS) extend and renew my previous studies and the European research programme I led, entitled “Imperial authority and Government in Medieval Western Islam”. My experience of research and teaching led me to bring language and religion closer together around the question of power, in a peripheral space of the Islamic Empire: the Maghreb, whose history raises precisely central questions about the evolution of religion, the Arabic language, powers and political practices in Islam.
The renewal of studies on the Islamic Middle Ages requires the re-historicisation of the Arabic language, a reasoned comparison avoiding the traps of Orientalism and an attention not to the norm, but to the transgression, particularly significant in societies where innovation must be hidden behind the veil of tradition to be validated. Indeed, once the grammatical rules of “classical Arabic” had been elaborated, gradually emerged the belief in the anhistoricity of this language, which is still diverse; this led to serious misinterpretation and it is still a barrier to historical studies. The converging work of codicologists, manuscript specialists and linguists reveals the diversity of Arabic languages, despite the existence of a practically unchanging reference model at the heart of Islamic hermeneutics. The notion of the ‘Middle Arabic’, developed since the end of the nineteenth century by some linguists, reflects the vitality of a classical Arab whose very existence is thus called into question. The weight of tradition in the religious and linguistic fields makes innovation and neologism suspect respectively. The studies of 19th and early 20th century scholars, focusing on the norm, inevitably tended to reinforce at the same time essentialist prejudices and theological approaches that assimilated origins (tirelessly reconstructed) to an impassable norm and any evolution to a loss. Yet the creativity of the poet-embroiderers has never been interrupted; it uses linguistic devices that allow it never to appear as an innovation, but more surely as a respect for an unchanging tradition. The invention of new nominal or verbal forms most often appears in pragmatic medieval texts as the revelation of an original meaning present at the heart of the trilitary nucleus. However, either the term has already been used several centuries ago and its meaning has inevitably evolved, or a new form has just been created and we are witnessing a lexical genesis that deserves particular attention.
Arabic language and literature, Muslim religion and dogma, political authority and the exercise of power, positive law and divine law, thus constitute the four disciplinary fields that I am working simultaneously as a historian of the Maghreb chancelleries to try to understand the functioning of Islamic powers in the Middle Ages. This is the challenge: to re-contextualise the ideological history of the Maghreb, understood in the broadest sense (political, religious, legal), not only in a chronological continuum from the Arab conquest of the seventh century to the fifteenth century, but also in a synchrony that extends from India to the Atlantic. Indeed, scholars, armies and texts circulated throughout the medieval Muslim world: movement of Arab tribes from the East, pilgrimage and quest for knowledge by Western scholars, exile of Andalusian scholars before Iberian Christian troops. While the reference model of authority is eastern and Arab, regional developments and new political and ideological formations determine this model back.
The need for a parallel re-historicisation of language and religion is particularly acute at the beginning of the 21st century. It is not only scientifically, but also politically, that it is time to promote the issue of the historicity of Islam and the Arabic language, which is closely linked to it.
The renewal of studies on the Islamic Middle Ages requires the re-historicisation of the Arabic language, a reasoned comparison avoiding the traps of Orientalism and an attention not to the norm, but to the transgression, particularly significant in societies where innovation must be hidden behind the veil of tradition to be validated. Indeed, once the grammatical rules of “classical Arabic” had been elaborated, gradually emerged the belief in the anhistoricity of this language, which is still diverse; this led to serious misinterpretation and it is still a barrier to historical studies. The converging work of codicologists, manuscript specialists and linguists reveals the diversity of Arabic languages, despite the existence of a practically unchanging reference model at the heart of Islamic hermeneutics. The notion of the ‘Middle Arabic’, developed since the end of the nineteenth century by some linguists, reflects the vitality of a classical Arab whose very existence is thus called into question. The weight of tradition in the religious and linguistic fields makes innovation and neologism suspect respectively. The studies of 19th and early 20th century scholars, focusing on the norm, inevitably tended to reinforce at the same time essentialist prejudices and theological approaches that assimilated origins (tirelessly reconstructed) to an impassable norm and any evolution to a loss. Yet the creativity of the poet-embroiderers has never been interrupted; it uses linguistic devices that allow it never to appear as an innovation, but more surely as a respect for an unchanging tradition. The invention of new nominal or verbal forms most often appears in pragmatic medieval texts as the revelation of an original meaning present at the heart of the trilitary nucleus. However, either the term has already been used several centuries ago and its meaning has inevitably evolved, or a new form has just been created and we are witnessing a lexical genesis that deserves particular attention.
Arabic language and literature, Muslim religion and dogma, political authority and the exercise of power, positive law and divine law, thus constitute the four disciplinary fields that I am working simultaneously as a historian of the Maghreb chancelleries to try to understand the functioning of Islamic powers in the Middle Ages. This is the challenge: to re-contextualise the ideological history of the Maghreb, understood in the broadest sense (political, religious, legal), not only in a chronological continuum from the Arab conquest of the seventh century to the fifteenth century, but also in a synchrony that extends from India to the Atlantic. Indeed, scholars, armies and texts circulated throughout the medieval Muslim world: movement of Arab tribes from the East, pilgrimage and quest for knowledge by Western scholars, exile of Andalusian scholars before Iberian Christian troops. While the reference model of authority is eastern and Arab, regional developments and new political and ideological formations determine this model back.
The need for a parallel re-historicisation of language and religion is particularly acute at the beginning of the 21st century. It is not only scientifically, but also politically, that it is time to promote the issue of the historicity of Islam and the Arabic language, which is closely linked to it.
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Open Science and Scholarly Communication
The first training in Data Management is co-organised with the Centre for Digital Scholarship (CDS) of Leiden University (UL / NISIS) together with the International academic publisher Brill. Both of them offer courses and workshops on the challenges and opportunities of academic e-publishing for graduate students.
The central objective of the Centre for Digital Scholarship is to support and to facilitate digital scholarship within the academic sector. Built on the pillars Open Access, Data Management and Re-use of Digital Data, the CDS provides support for Open Science.
The International academic publisher Brill has unique expertise of disseminating scholarly publications in the field of Middle East studies, with its specific section on Middle East, Islamic, and African Studies.
PS Media, the documentary film production and media consulting based in Berlin and one of MIDA's non-academic partner, will produce some interviews with the Early Stage Researchers.
An international consortium of research institutes, universities and non-academic partners in six European countries has been awarded with a research grant from the Department for Research and Innovation of the European Commission in June 2018.
MIDA is coordinated by the ‘Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique’ (CNRS) in Paris. Twelve beneficiaries and thirteen partner organisations are part of the consortium including two units of the CNRS, UMS 2000, ‘Institut d’études de l’Islam et des sociétés du monde musulman’ (IISMM, EHESS) and USR 3103, ‘L’information visuelle et textuelle en histoire de l’art: nouveaux terrains, corpus, outils’ (InVisu), as well as UMR 196, ‘Centre population et développement (CEPED, IRD). MIDA Scientific Coordinator is Pascal Buresi (CNRS-EHESS). The two other scientists in charge in France are Penelope Larzillière (Ceped, IRD), and Mercedes Volait (InVisu, CNRS). Partner organisations include École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne, and Centre Pompidou.
ITN programs are designed to combine scientific research with an intensive training trajectory for young scholars in order to equip them with the necessary comprehensive knowledge and skills. These researchers work in an inter-sectoral, interdisciplinary and international environment to deepen their knowledge and to find answers to pressing contemporary societal issues.
The MIDA-project rests on the premise that digitisation and technological innovations have a tremendous impact on Islam, the effects of which are diverse and ubiquitous. They include first and foremost modes of expression and communication of religious messages and traditions and modes of engagement with society. Digitisation and concurrent innovations as they emerged in the past decades belong to the list of comparable fundamental technological transformations in human history such as the invention of paper, printing technology, steam power, electricity and telecommunication, which constituted major upheavals, even if these were not experienced in all societies and by everyone at the same time, in the same way.
It is commonly recognised that the digital revolution will indeed deeply transform human societies, much as the industrial revolution did in the nineteenth century. However, the rapid changes that are currently taking place generate a sense of loss of control and instability among the general public, politicians, journalists, academics, and, not least, among Muslims themselves. The spread of modern digital media and new technologies of communication, production and dissemination, prompts researchers and social actors, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, to make sense of, and understand these developments. Consequently, they have shaken up Islam as a field of academic study and have impacted on the ways Islam is to be studied in the future. The specificity of the current digital revolution calls for a re-evaluation of past situations and reflection on future prospects.
MIDA assesses these developments in all their dimensions by formulating three major questions: How does digitisation (1) shape Islam (i.e. beliefs, practices, societies, activism, political organisations, social institutions, and outlooks); (2) modify the relation Muslims have with their past; (3) modify and reorganise scholarship and research on Islam.
MIDA takes Islam as a broad field, not confined to theological dimensions as such. The study of Islam implies the study of mediating practices and concomitant social, political and cultural implications in past and present and consists of three interlocking dimensions. The first concerns texts, doctrines, material culture, and rituals as means to bridge the distance between the individual and the divine and to generate religious experience and reflection. The second dimension concerns the social, cultural, visual and institutional environments and settings in which mediation takes place, and the actors that are involved. The third dimension concerns social and political institutions and power relations in which mediation is embedded. An overall aim of the project is to understand how digitisation instigates renewed attention for the impact of similar processes in the past.
For further information, please contact
info@itn-mida.org
www.itn-mida.org
The 33rd Congress of the SHMESP, which took place at the Casa Velasquez in Madrid in May 2002 sought to look beyond ideological bias and illuminate this highly emotionally-charged period. It was important to establish what differentiated this period of expansion from that of modern colonization of which the people of Iberia were among the pioneers. This can be seen from the point of view of the fronts of conquest, which in the Middle Ages were oriented towards the North and the East as well as the South, and from the point of view of territorial consequences, which produced little in the form of population movement. It would be wrong to reduce Western expansion in the Middle Ages to the inexorable progress of conquering states. The studies brought together here draw a picture of this global historical movement, stressing the diversity of human types, the complexity of their motives and the variety of the period’s rhythms. The result is a more contrasted and more certain understanding of an historical fact which volens nolens is part of the foundation of Western identity.
Pour répondre à ces questions et comprendre les processus complexes à l'œuvre dans les pays d'Islam, il faut sortir du "présentisme" qu'affectionnent les politistes pour plonger dans l'histoire: l'histoire politiques des Empires modernes, ottoman, safavide et moghol à partir du XVe siècle, l'histoire économique des territoires, qui se sont ouverts au monde dans un cadre islamique et plus récemment à la globalisation, l'histoire sociale de populations diverses, pluri-ethniques et multi-confessionnelles, l'histoire intellectuelle de savants et de penseurs qui analysent leur monde en vue de le réformer.
Des grands empires de l'époque moderne à la crise contemporaine des États-nations, cet ouvrage donne les clés pour comprendre l'histoire récente des pays d'Islam.
Les actes reproduits par Yaḥyá s’insèrent dans le genre très codifié de la littérature de chancellerie. Écrits le plus souvent en prose rimée (saǧʿ) et destinés à être proclamés dans les Grandes mosquées de l’Empire, ils obéissent à des règles de rédaction et à des procédés, rhétoriques, syntaxiques et linguistiques, qui les rattachent, de l’affirmation-même du compilateur, au champ de l’adab, les belles-lettres, ou plus généralement la culture de l’« honnête homme ». À la frontière de la poésie, du sermon, de l’art oratoire, de la littérature normative et du discours religieux, les nominations reproduites sont l’expression d’un ordre souverain, l’ordre almohade impérial, ou anti-almohade de la principauté hūdide de Murcie. Couchés par écrit, rendus anonymes par la suppression quasi systématique des noms de personne, des toponymes et des dates, ces actes ont été neutralisés pour servir aux spécialistes postérieurs de la langue du pouvoir. De performatifs qu’ils étaient, ils deviennent modèles et entrent ainsi dans le thesaurus toujours grandissant des textes de référence. Cette documentation pragmatique est le dernier vestige de l’autorité indigène la plus importante de l’histoire maghrébine.
Dans un premier temps, Gouverner l’Empire retrace l’histoire politique de l’Empire almohade et les étapes de la constitution d’un territoire et d’une autorité. Il rappelle les fondements idéologiques, politiques et religieux, qui ont permis l’unification du Maghreb et d’al-Andalus au milieu du xiie siècle au service d’une dynastie d’origine berbère. ʿAbd al-Mu’min (r. 1130-1162) et ses descendants, les Mu’minides, ont mobilisé la force des tribus de l’époque, berbères et arabes, pour imposer un dogme élaboré par les plus grands savants contemporains. Témoignant de l’islamisation et de l’arabisation du Maghreb, cette dynastie s’est proposé de réorganiser les structures du pouvoir et de l’autorité à son profit. Les souverains almohades, qui avaient adopté le titre califal cohérent avec leur prétention à diriger la totalité des peuples de l’Islam (umma), dans le prolongement de la tentative muʿtazilite du ixe siècle irakien, ont revendiqué pour eux-mêmes l’interprétation de la Loi divine. À cette fin, ils ont écarté les juristes et les savants du processus interprétatif que l’école malékite leur réservait depuis le ixe siècle, et ils les ont réduits aux tâches judiciaires ou enrôlés dans les services de la chancellerie. La littérature que celle-ci produit et dont le manuscrit présenté, réédité et traduit, est une des productions essentielles, révèle pleinement cette inversion des rapports d’autorité entre le savoir religieux des oulémas et le pouvoir politique du calife.
L’organisation du « recueil de Yaḥyá », présentée dans un deuxième temps, met en lumière les conceptions idéologiques originales prédominant à la fin de l’époque almohade : en effet les fonctions militaires et fiscales, qui relèvent de l’ordre politique — gouverneurs, généraux d’armée, amiraux de la flotte et percepteurs —, sont clairement distinguées des fonctions judiciaires dévolues aux juges. L’établissement des règles du droit reviennent au souverain, seul interprète autorisé de la Loi divine, telle qu’elle s’incarne dans le Coran et la Tradition. Le processus de création du droit positif repose ainsi intégralement sur le calife-imām, héritier du fondateur du mouvement almohade, Ibn Tūmart (m. 1130), guide inspiré par Dieu, « imām impeccable et Mahdī reconnu ». Des tâches attribuées aux fonctionnaires nommés, des conseils et des ordres qui leur sont donnés, ainsi que des consignes adressées aux sujets ressort clairement la conception organique de la société et de l’autorité impériale, qui prévaut dans l’idéologie almohade. Celle-ci est révolutionnaire dans la mesure où elle se démarque nettement des approches fonctionnalistes, comme celle qui se dégage des aḥkām al-sulṭāniyya wa l-wilāyat al-dīniyya (« Des décrets sultaniens et des charges religieuses ») d’al-Māwardī (m. 1058).
L’édition rigoureuse et la traduction française du formulaire de Yaḥyá qui occupent la troisième partie de Gouverner l’Empire, permettent d’appréhender l’étendue du talent littéraire nécessaire aux secrétaires de chancellerie, véritables orfèvres de la langue, pour produire les actes-mêmes du pouvoir. Les infinies variations stylistiques et lexicales articulent le respect des codes rigides de la langue de chancellerie avec les innovations poétiques et rhétoriques qui caractérisent les grandes œuvres littéraires. Ce travail sur la langue du pouvoir, tout à la fois laborieux et artisanal, administratif et poétique, donne voix à une autorité spécifique, celle des califes almohades, enracinée dans un temps et un espace : le Maghreb au xiiie siècle. La compilation posthume de ces allocutions performatives déracine ces actes de pouvoir et permet à l’histoire, au dogme et à l’ordre almohades d’entrer à leur tour dans le corps des auctoritates atemporelles de l’Islam. Ce formulaire permet ainsi d’entrevoir la nature et le rôle spécifiques que jouent les archives administratives dans le monde musulman médiéval et témoignent de l’élaboration exceptionnelle des bureaucraties impériales islamiques à travers leur chancellerie, le dīwān al-inšā’, littéralement le « bureau de la création ».
Partaking of poetry, sermon, oratory, normative literature and religious discourse, the appointments reproduced there are the expression of a sovereign order, the Almohad imperial order, or the anti-Almohad order of the Hūdi principality of Murcia. Set down in writing and rendered anonymous through the quasi-systematic deletion of proper names, toponyms and dates, these acts were neutralized for the use of successive specialists in the language of power. Performative as they were, they came to be accepted as models and thus were absorbed into the ever-growing thesaurus of reference texts. This pragmatic collection is the last vestige of the most important indigenous authority in the history of the Maghreb.
Governing Empire begins by retracing the political history of the Almohad Empire and the stages through which a territory and an authority were built up. It recalls the ideological, political and religious foundations which made Ibn Tūmart possible to unify the Maghreb and al-Andalus in the mid-12th century in the service of a dynasty of Berber origin. ʿAbd al-Mu’min (r. 1130-1162) and his descendants, the Mu’minids, mobilised the strength of the tribes of the time, Berber and Arab, to impose a dogma devised by the greatest of contemporary thinkers. Living witnesses of the islamization and arabization of the Maghreb, this dynasty resolved to reorganize the structures of power and authority to its own advantage. The Almohad sovereigns, who had assumed the title of Caliph in consonance with their pretension to guide all the peoples of Islam (umma), in the manner of the Muʿtazilite in 9th-century Iraq, claimed for themselves the authority to interpret divine law. To that end, jurists and wise men were separated from the interpretative process that the Malikite school had reserved to them since the 9th century, and they were reduced to judicial tasks or enrolled in the chancery services.
The literature that the chancery produced, of which the manuscript presented, re-edited and translated here is one of the fundamental examples, plainly reveals this reversal of the relationships of authority between the religious knowledge of the ulemas and the political power of the caliphs. The organization of the “compendium of Yaḥyá”, which is presented in the second part, throws light on the original ideological concepts predominating at the close of the Almohad era: thus, military and fiscal functions, which belong to the political order —governors, army generals, admirals of the fleet and tax collectors— are clearly set apart from the judicial functions pertaining to the judges. Law-making devolved upon the sovereign, the sole authorized interpreter of divine law as embodied in the Qur’an and Tradition. The task of creating positive law thus rested entirely with the Caliph-imām, heir to the founder of the Almohad movement, Ibn Tūmart (d. 1130) — the guide inspired by God, “impeccable imām and acknowledged Mahdī”. The tasks assigned to the appointed functionaries, the counsels and orders given them, and the instructions addressed to subjects, all clearly reflect the organic conception of society and of imperial authority that characterized the Almohad ideology. That ideology was revolutionary inasmuch as it clearly departed from functionalist approaches, like that implicit in the al-Aḥkām al-Sulṭāniyya wa l-Wilāyat al-Dīniyya (“The Ordinances of Government”) of al-Māwardī (d. 1058).
The careful edition and the English translation of Yaḥyá’s formulary in the third part of Governing Empire give a good idea of the breadth of literary talent demanded of chancery secretaries, veritable craftsmen of language, simply to produce the decrees of power. The infinite stylistic and lexical variations combine adherence to rigid codes of chancery language with the kind of poetic and rhetorical innovations characteristic of great works of literature. This work on the language of power, at once laborious and skilled, bureaucratic and poetic, puts a voice to a specific authority —the authority of the Almohad caliphs, rooted in a particular time and place: the 13th-century Maghreb. The posthumous compilation of these performative utterances abstracts the language of power and sets Almohad history, dogma and order in the context of the corpus of timeless Islamic authorities. This formulary thus affords a glimpse of the specific nature of and the role played by administrative archives in the mediaeval Muslim world and throws light on the exceptional intricacy of Islamic imperial bureaucracies as exemplified by their chancery, the dīwān al-inšā’, literally the “bureau of creation”.""
Open Science and Scholarly Communication
The first training in Data Management is co-organised with the Centre for Digital Scholarship (CDS) of Leiden University (UL / NISIS) together with the International academic publisher Brill. Both of them offer courses and workshops on the challenges and opportunities of academic e-publishing for graduate students.
The central objective of the Centre for Digital Scholarship is to support and to facilitate digital scholarship within the academic sector. Built on the pillars Open Access, Data Management and Re-use of Digital Data, the CDS provides support for Open Science.
The International academic publisher Brill has unique expertise of disseminating scholarly publications in the field of Middle East studies, with its specific section on Middle East, Islamic, and African Studies.
PS Media, the documentary film production and media consulting based in Berlin and one of MIDA's non-academic partner, will produce some interviews with the Early Stage Researchers.
An international consortium of research institutes, universities and non-academic partners in six European countries has been awarded with a research grant from the Department for Research and Innovation of the European Commission in June 2018.
MIDA is coordinated by the ‘Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique’ (CNRS) in Paris. Twelve beneficiaries and thirteen partner organisations are part of the consortium including two units of the CNRS, UMS 2000, ‘Institut d’études de l’Islam et des sociétés du monde musulman’ (IISMM, EHESS) and USR 3103, ‘L’information visuelle et textuelle en histoire de l’art: nouveaux terrains, corpus, outils’ (InVisu), as well as UMR 196, ‘Centre population et développement (CEPED, IRD). MIDA Scientific Coordinator is Pascal Buresi (CNRS-EHESS). The two other scientists in charge in France are Penelope Larzillière (Ceped, IRD), and Mercedes Volait (InVisu, CNRS). Partner organisations include École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne, and Centre Pompidou.
ITN programs are designed to combine scientific research with an intensive training trajectory for young scholars in order to equip them with the necessary comprehensive knowledge and skills. These researchers work in an inter-sectoral, interdisciplinary and international environment to deepen their knowledge and to find answers to pressing contemporary societal issues.
The MIDA-project rests on the premise that digitisation and technological innovations have a tremendous impact on Islam, the effects of which are diverse and ubiquitous. They include first and foremost modes of expression and communication of religious messages and traditions and modes of engagement with society. Digitisation and concurrent innovations as they emerged in the past decades belong to the list of comparable fundamental technological transformations in human history such as the invention of paper, printing technology, steam power, electricity and telecommunication, which constituted major upheavals, even if these were not experienced in all societies and by everyone at the same time, in the same way.
It is commonly recognised that the digital revolution will indeed deeply transform human societies, much as the industrial revolution did in the nineteenth century. However, the rapid changes that are currently taking place generate a sense of loss of control and instability among the general public, politicians, journalists, academics, and, not least, among Muslims themselves. The spread of modern digital media and new technologies of communication, production and dissemination, prompts researchers and social actors, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, to make sense of, and understand these developments. Consequently, they have shaken up Islam as a field of academic study and have impacted on the ways Islam is to be studied in the future. The specificity of the current digital revolution calls for a re-evaluation of past situations and reflection on future prospects.
MIDA assesses these developments in all their dimensions by formulating three major questions: How does digitisation (1) shape Islam (i.e. beliefs, practices, societies, activism, political organisations, social institutions, and outlooks); (2) modify the relation Muslims have with their past; (3) modify and reorganise scholarship and research on Islam.
MIDA takes Islam as a broad field, not confined to theological dimensions as such. The study of Islam implies the study of mediating practices and concomitant social, political and cultural implications in past and present and consists of three interlocking dimensions. The first concerns texts, doctrines, material culture, and rituals as means to bridge the distance between the individual and the divine and to generate religious experience and reflection. The second dimension concerns the social, cultural, visual and institutional environments and settings in which mediation takes place, and the actors that are involved. The third dimension concerns social and political institutions and power relations in which mediation is embedded. An overall aim of the project is to understand how digitisation instigates renewed attention for the impact of similar processes in the past.
For further information, please contact
info@itn-mida.org
www.itn-mida.org
The 33rd Congress of the SHMESP, which took place at the Casa Velasquez in Madrid in May 2002 sought to look beyond ideological bias and illuminate this highly emotionally-charged period. It was important to establish what differentiated this period of expansion from that of modern colonization of which the people of Iberia were among the pioneers. This can be seen from the point of view of the fronts of conquest, which in the Middle Ages were oriented towards the North and the East as well as the South, and from the point of view of territorial consequences, which produced little in the form of population movement. It would be wrong to reduce Western expansion in the Middle Ages to the inexorable progress of conquering states. The studies brought together here draw a picture of this global historical movement, stressing the diversity of human types, the complexity of their motives and the variety of the period’s rhythms. The result is a more contrasted and more certain understanding of an historical fact which volens nolens is part of the foundation of Western identity.
Pour répondre à ces questions et comprendre les processus complexes à l'œuvre dans les pays d'Islam, il faut sortir du "présentisme" qu'affectionnent les politistes pour plonger dans l'histoire: l'histoire politiques des Empires modernes, ottoman, safavide et moghol à partir du XVe siècle, l'histoire économique des territoires, qui se sont ouverts au monde dans un cadre islamique et plus récemment à la globalisation, l'histoire sociale de populations diverses, pluri-ethniques et multi-confessionnelles, l'histoire intellectuelle de savants et de penseurs qui analysent leur monde en vue de le réformer.
Des grands empires de l'époque moderne à la crise contemporaine des États-nations, cet ouvrage donne les clés pour comprendre l'histoire récente des pays d'Islam.
Les actes reproduits par Yaḥyá s’insèrent dans le genre très codifié de la littérature de chancellerie. Écrits le plus souvent en prose rimée (saǧʿ) et destinés à être proclamés dans les Grandes mosquées de l’Empire, ils obéissent à des règles de rédaction et à des procédés, rhétoriques, syntaxiques et linguistiques, qui les rattachent, de l’affirmation-même du compilateur, au champ de l’adab, les belles-lettres, ou plus généralement la culture de l’« honnête homme ». À la frontière de la poésie, du sermon, de l’art oratoire, de la littérature normative et du discours religieux, les nominations reproduites sont l’expression d’un ordre souverain, l’ordre almohade impérial, ou anti-almohade de la principauté hūdide de Murcie. Couchés par écrit, rendus anonymes par la suppression quasi systématique des noms de personne, des toponymes et des dates, ces actes ont été neutralisés pour servir aux spécialistes postérieurs de la langue du pouvoir. De performatifs qu’ils étaient, ils deviennent modèles et entrent ainsi dans le thesaurus toujours grandissant des textes de référence. Cette documentation pragmatique est le dernier vestige de l’autorité indigène la plus importante de l’histoire maghrébine.
Dans un premier temps, Gouverner l’Empire retrace l’histoire politique de l’Empire almohade et les étapes de la constitution d’un territoire et d’une autorité. Il rappelle les fondements idéologiques, politiques et religieux, qui ont permis l’unification du Maghreb et d’al-Andalus au milieu du xiie siècle au service d’une dynastie d’origine berbère. ʿAbd al-Mu’min (r. 1130-1162) et ses descendants, les Mu’minides, ont mobilisé la force des tribus de l’époque, berbères et arabes, pour imposer un dogme élaboré par les plus grands savants contemporains. Témoignant de l’islamisation et de l’arabisation du Maghreb, cette dynastie s’est proposé de réorganiser les structures du pouvoir et de l’autorité à son profit. Les souverains almohades, qui avaient adopté le titre califal cohérent avec leur prétention à diriger la totalité des peuples de l’Islam (umma), dans le prolongement de la tentative muʿtazilite du ixe siècle irakien, ont revendiqué pour eux-mêmes l’interprétation de la Loi divine. À cette fin, ils ont écarté les juristes et les savants du processus interprétatif que l’école malékite leur réservait depuis le ixe siècle, et ils les ont réduits aux tâches judiciaires ou enrôlés dans les services de la chancellerie. La littérature que celle-ci produit et dont le manuscrit présenté, réédité et traduit, est une des productions essentielles, révèle pleinement cette inversion des rapports d’autorité entre le savoir religieux des oulémas et le pouvoir politique du calife.
L’organisation du « recueil de Yaḥyá », présentée dans un deuxième temps, met en lumière les conceptions idéologiques originales prédominant à la fin de l’époque almohade : en effet les fonctions militaires et fiscales, qui relèvent de l’ordre politique — gouverneurs, généraux d’armée, amiraux de la flotte et percepteurs —, sont clairement distinguées des fonctions judiciaires dévolues aux juges. L’établissement des règles du droit reviennent au souverain, seul interprète autorisé de la Loi divine, telle qu’elle s’incarne dans le Coran et la Tradition. Le processus de création du droit positif repose ainsi intégralement sur le calife-imām, héritier du fondateur du mouvement almohade, Ibn Tūmart (m. 1130), guide inspiré par Dieu, « imām impeccable et Mahdī reconnu ». Des tâches attribuées aux fonctionnaires nommés, des conseils et des ordres qui leur sont donnés, ainsi que des consignes adressées aux sujets ressort clairement la conception organique de la société et de l’autorité impériale, qui prévaut dans l’idéologie almohade. Celle-ci est révolutionnaire dans la mesure où elle se démarque nettement des approches fonctionnalistes, comme celle qui se dégage des aḥkām al-sulṭāniyya wa l-wilāyat al-dīniyya (« Des décrets sultaniens et des charges religieuses ») d’al-Māwardī (m. 1058).
L’édition rigoureuse et la traduction française du formulaire de Yaḥyá qui occupent la troisième partie de Gouverner l’Empire, permettent d’appréhender l’étendue du talent littéraire nécessaire aux secrétaires de chancellerie, véritables orfèvres de la langue, pour produire les actes-mêmes du pouvoir. Les infinies variations stylistiques et lexicales articulent le respect des codes rigides de la langue de chancellerie avec les innovations poétiques et rhétoriques qui caractérisent les grandes œuvres littéraires. Ce travail sur la langue du pouvoir, tout à la fois laborieux et artisanal, administratif et poétique, donne voix à une autorité spécifique, celle des califes almohades, enracinée dans un temps et un espace : le Maghreb au xiiie siècle. La compilation posthume de ces allocutions performatives déracine ces actes de pouvoir et permet à l’histoire, au dogme et à l’ordre almohades d’entrer à leur tour dans le corps des auctoritates atemporelles de l’Islam. Ce formulaire permet ainsi d’entrevoir la nature et le rôle spécifiques que jouent les archives administratives dans le monde musulman médiéval et témoignent de l’élaboration exceptionnelle des bureaucraties impériales islamiques à travers leur chancellerie, le dīwān al-inšā’, littéralement le « bureau de la création ».
Partaking of poetry, sermon, oratory, normative literature and religious discourse, the appointments reproduced there are the expression of a sovereign order, the Almohad imperial order, or the anti-Almohad order of the Hūdi principality of Murcia. Set down in writing and rendered anonymous through the quasi-systematic deletion of proper names, toponyms and dates, these acts were neutralized for the use of successive specialists in the language of power. Performative as they were, they came to be accepted as models and thus were absorbed into the ever-growing thesaurus of reference texts. This pragmatic collection is the last vestige of the most important indigenous authority in the history of the Maghreb.
Governing Empire begins by retracing the political history of the Almohad Empire and the stages through which a territory and an authority were built up. It recalls the ideological, political and religious foundations which made Ibn Tūmart possible to unify the Maghreb and al-Andalus in the mid-12th century in the service of a dynasty of Berber origin. ʿAbd al-Mu’min (r. 1130-1162) and his descendants, the Mu’minids, mobilised the strength of the tribes of the time, Berber and Arab, to impose a dogma devised by the greatest of contemporary thinkers. Living witnesses of the islamization and arabization of the Maghreb, this dynasty resolved to reorganize the structures of power and authority to its own advantage. The Almohad sovereigns, who had assumed the title of Caliph in consonance with their pretension to guide all the peoples of Islam (umma), in the manner of the Muʿtazilite in 9th-century Iraq, claimed for themselves the authority to interpret divine law. To that end, jurists and wise men were separated from the interpretative process that the Malikite school had reserved to them since the 9th century, and they were reduced to judicial tasks or enrolled in the chancery services.
The literature that the chancery produced, of which the manuscript presented, re-edited and translated here is one of the fundamental examples, plainly reveals this reversal of the relationships of authority between the religious knowledge of the ulemas and the political power of the caliphs. The organization of the “compendium of Yaḥyá”, which is presented in the second part, throws light on the original ideological concepts predominating at the close of the Almohad era: thus, military and fiscal functions, which belong to the political order —governors, army generals, admirals of the fleet and tax collectors— are clearly set apart from the judicial functions pertaining to the judges. Law-making devolved upon the sovereign, the sole authorized interpreter of divine law as embodied in the Qur’an and Tradition. The task of creating positive law thus rested entirely with the Caliph-imām, heir to the founder of the Almohad movement, Ibn Tūmart (d. 1130) — the guide inspired by God, “impeccable imām and acknowledged Mahdī”. The tasks assigned to the appointed functionaries, the counsels and orders given them, and the instructions addressed to subjects, all clearly reflect the organic conception of society and of imperial authority that characterized the Almohad ideology. That ideology was revolutionary inasmuch as it clearly departed from functionalist approaches, like that implicit in the al-Aḥkām al-Sulṭāniyya wa l-Wilāyat al-Dīniyya (“The Ordinances of Government”) of al-Māwardī (d. 1058).
The careful edition and the English translation of Yaḥyá’s formulary in the third part of Governing Empire give a good idea of the breadth of literary talent demanded of chancery secretaries, veritable craftsmen of language, simply to produce the decrees of power. The infinite stylistic and lexical variations combine adherence to rigid codes of chancery language with the kind of poetic and rhetorical innovations characteristic of great works of literature. This work on the language of power, at once laborious and skilled, bureaucratic and poetic, puts a voice to a specific authority —the authority of the Almohad caliphs, rooted in a particular time and place: the 13th-century Maghreb. The posthumous compilation of these performative utterances abstracts the language of power and sets Almohad history, dogma and order in the context of the corpus of timeless Islamic authorities. This formulary thus affords a glimpse of the specific nature of and the role played by administrative archives in the mediaeval Muslim world and throws light on the exceptional intricacy of Islamic imperial bureaucracies as exemplified by their chancery, the dīwān al-inšā’, literally the “bureau of creation”.""
Nevertheless, their interests go beyond their informative aspects about the imperial administration. The heavily codified chancery language they were redacted in is at the heart of the process of lexical and semantic genesis that determined the elaboration of the political and religious thinking of the Arab and Muslim world. Within sajʿ (prosed rime typical to Chancery style), neologisms, semantic revitalizations, systematic associations of terms, allow the scribes to participate actively to the constitution of linguistic tools that would be used by future authors and thinkers, when trying to conceptualize Power and Authority.
Thus, paradoxically, though they were in theory under the highest authority, that of the Caliph, whom they served faithfully, the kuttāb were indeed masters of the order; they literally put in order the sovereign’s words. They were authority. This is all the more remarkable during the Almohad Era since jurists and men of Law had gone into the Chancery offices, after having been deprived of any jurisprudential function, by the interdiction of the Malekite school and practice and by the imposition of the Almohad dogma which reserved to the Caliph alone the right to interpret the Divine Law.
- Naissance d'une nouvelle religion
- Histoire politique et religieuse du " domaine de l'islam "
- La progressive définition du dogme, des pratiques et du droit musulman
- Religion et pouvoir en islam
- L'islam à l'heure des colonisations et des décolonisations
- L'islam aujourd'hui
Fondements et débats
- La péninsule Arabique à l'aube de l'islam
- Muhammad
- Schismes
- La canonisation du Coran
- Différentes interprétations du Coran
- Islam et conquêtes
- Islamisation et arabisation
Évolution des doctrines, évolution des pratiques
- Prier, du désert à la mosquée
- Vivre et travailler à l'heure de l'islam
- Pèlerinages et lieux saints
- Soufis et saints de l'islam
- Sciences religieuses, sciences profanes
- Monothéismes autour de la Méditerranée au XIIe siècle
- Islam et politique
Islams dans le monde contemporain
- Le statut de la femme en islam
- La question de l'image
- Islam et économie de marché
- Islam radical
- L'islam et la France au Maghreb
- Islams d'Europe
- Islams en Afrique subsaharienne
- L'Indonésie, premier pays musulman du monde
- L'islam dans le monde"
C’est à de telles questions que ce colloque répondra, en étudiant les religions qui ont marqué le monde méditerranéen depuis la plus haute Antiquité jusqu’à la fin du Moyen Âge : les divers polythéismes, le judaïsme, le christianisme, l’islam. La prise en compte d’une aire géographique cohérente permettra d’établir des comparaisons probantes entre des époques différentes et des confessions variées.
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