Colonial Imaginary Hannoum

7/21/2019 Colonial Imaginary Hannoum

1/21

FORUM ON TRANSLATION AND HISTORIOGRAPHY

2.

TRANSLATION AND THE COLONIAL IMAGINARY:IBN KHALDN ORIENTALIST

ABDELMAJID HANNOUM

No translation would be possible if its ultimate essence strove for likeness to the original.Walter Benjamin

Imagining is first and foremost restructuring semantic fields.

Paul Ricoeur

ABSTRACT

Despite the increasing interest in translation in the last two decades, there has been no inves-tigation of the translation of historiography and its transformation from one language toanother. This article takes as a case study the translation into French of Ibn Khaldn, thefourteenth-century North African historian. It considers specifically the translation done byWilliam de Slane in the context of the colonization of Algeria. TheHistoire des Berbres,the French narrative of Ibn Khaldn that relates to the history of Arabs and Berbers in the

Maghreb, has become since then the source of French knowledge of North Africa. It is uponthat French narrative that colonial and post-colonial historians have constructed theirknowledge of North Africa, of Arabs, and of Berbers. The article shows how a portion ofthe writing of Ibn Khaldn was translated and transformed in the process in such a way asto become a French narrative with colonial categories specific to the nineteenth century.Using a semiotic approach and analyzing both the French text and its original, the articleshows how colonialism introduced what Castoriadis calls an imaginary by transforminglocal knowledge and converting it into colonial knowledge. In showing this the essayreveals that not only is translation not the transmission of a message from one language toanother, it is indeed the production of a new text. For translation is itself the product of animaginary, a creationin Ricoeurs words, a restructuring of semantic fields.

I. TRANSLATION AND THE IMAGINARY

Translation was a part of the whole enterprise that the early colonial administra-tion in Algeria set in place, an enterprise that made knowledge indispensable forcolonization. In order to know the natives, one had not only to observe them,study them, and understand their culture and their society, but also to know theirpast. The present was believed to be out there, to be apprehended by observa-tion; the past was assumed to be recorded in documents, to be grasped only by a

work of translation, either direct or indirect.The officers of the Arab Bureau, the military institution that assured both theproduction of knowledge and the establishment of order, were mainly ethnogra-phers, with little concern for history.1 The later interest in history among thescholars of the civilian regime was an attempt to go beyond the Arab Bureaus

History and Theory 42 (February 2003), 61-81 Wesleyan University 2003 ISSN: 0018-2656

1. A. Hannoum, Colonialism and Knowledge in Algeria: The Archives of the Arab Bureau,History and Anthropology 12, no. 4 (2001), 343-379.


2/21

politics, which were seen as too sympathetic to the Arabs. In fact, now that theopposition between Arabs and Berbers had been established and had gained theself-evidence of truth, one had to explain it. To explain it meant mainly to seek

its origin and its development, and above all to establish the extent of what wasArab and what was Berber in colonial Algeria. Only historical research would beable to respond to the challenge. To do this, the scholars of the civilian regimewere faced first with a search for documents. Usable documents already existedat that time. The Exploration Scientifique de lAlgrie (the Scientific Explorationof Algeria) translated Arab historiography on a small scale in the first decadeafter the conquest of Algiers. Of the thirty-nine published volumes dedicated tothe study of Algeria, three volumes were translations of Arabic works.2 However,Ibn Khaldn, the fourteenth-century Maghrebi historian, was not translated by

the members of the Exploration Scientifique, but he was extensively used by oneof its scholars, Ernest Carette, who was the first to trace the history of the tribesand to reveal the locations of Arabs and Berbers in colonial Algeria. This is tosay that Ibn Khaldn was already a subject of indirect translation in the contextof the Exploration Scientifique.3

However, it is the translation by William de Slane of a fragment of IbnKhaldn related to the history of the Berbers that might well be considered thegreatest textual event in the history of French Orientalism.4 De Slanes transla-tion of Ibn Khaldn, under the titleHistoire des Berbres, formed the foundation

of French historical knowledge of North Africa. It is this translation and itseffects that I wish to explore in this article. In particular, I wish to reveal themechanisms and the politics by which a fragment of the Ibar of Ibn Khaldnwas discovered by French Orientalism and converted into a colonial text withcolonial categories. It is this text that became central in French colonial histori-ography of North Africa, a text upon which all colonial historians built theirwork. This same colonial historiography became, from 1930 onwards, the foun-dation of national historiography in North Africa.

The article also has a theoretical dimension, for it attempts to show not only

how knowledge is regulated by power, but also how colonialism introduced andestablished a specific imaginary by transforming local knowledge and convert-ing it into colonial knowledge. Let me now define what I mean by the imaginary.I use the concept in the rich sense given to it by Cornelius Castoriadis. Theimaginary about which I talk, he says, is not an image of [something]. It is an

ABDELMAJID HANNOUM62

2. Those are related to history, geography, and law: Qayrawani, Histoire de lAfrique, transl. E.Pellissier and Ch. Remusat (Paris: Imprimerie Impriale, 1845); Al-Aiachi-Moula-Ahmed, Voyagesdans le sud de lAlgrie et des Etats barbaresques de lOuest et de lEst, transl. Louis AndrienBerbrugger (Paris: Imprimerie Impriale, 1846); Khalil B. Ishaq,Prcis de jurisprudence musulmane:

ou, Principes de lgislation musulmane civile et religieuse selon le rite mlkite , transl. NicolasPerron (Paris: Imprimerie Impriale, 18481852).

3. E. Carette,Recherches sur lorigine et les migrations des principales tribus de lAfrique septen-trionale et particulirement de lAlgrie (Paris: Imprimerie Impriale, 1853); E. Carette,Etudes surla Kabilie, 2 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Impriale, 1848).

4. Ibn Khaldn,Histoire des Berbres, transl. William de Slane, 4 vols. (Algiers: Imprimerie duGouvernement, 18521856).


3/21

incessant and essentially determined creation (sociohistorical and psychic) of fig-ures, forms/images, from which it must be only a question of something. Whatwe call reality and rationality are its products.5 The imaginary refers both to

the product of imagination (our worlds made up of systems of meanings) and toactivity, the ability by which we create a system of meaning that we identify asour world. Anthropologists have already explored the domain of the imaginaryin a certain way. They consider knowledge as a part of that complex whole thatTylor calls culture, and culture is a system of meaning, the product of the func-tion that Clifford Geertz calls a program. As Geertz puts it: Culture is bestseen not as complexes of concrete behavior patternscustoms, usages, tradi-tions, habits, clustersas has, by and large, been the case up to now, but as a setof control mechanismsplans, recipes, rules, instructions (what computer engi-

neers call programs)for governing behavior.6The imaginary is a function of producing meanings, and it is the product of

this function. However, unlike Castoriadis, I maintain that the imaginary doesnot create ex nihilo, but rather operates within systems of meanings, transform-ing them in such a way as to create new meanings out of old ones. Knowledge,in all its forms is in fact a product of imagination. It is widely argued today thatknowledge is regulated by power; however, its analysis cannot be reduced to thatlevel. Knowledge was not only the means by and through which colonialismgoverned. Knowledge is also regulated by the power of the mental structure that

produces it. Its function went beyond knowing the natives in order to governthem; it assured colonial domination even long after the collapse of the colonialenterprise. Colonial knowledge shaped postcolonial identities; it introducedcolonial categories and institutions that outlived colonialism. Indeed, colonialismproduced the knowledge by and through which it governed. It also transformedthe product of imagination and, in fact more importantly, the domain, the func-tion of imagination. The local culture, the webs of significance, has not onlybeen transformed (the natives have not only been caught in webs of significancethat they have not spun), but their native function (program) has been trans-

formed in such a way as to continue producing similar webs of significance inthe absence of colonial scholars or their collaboration. In short, colonialism notonly produced a body of knowledge, but it also implemented the colonial func-tion of the production of knowledge, and, by extension, of that culture thatassured the production of colonial webs of significance. This function was imple-mented not only by the existence of a powerful discursive formation, but also bycolonial institutions that were themselves the product of the imaginary. For soci-ety as a whole is the product of the imaginary insofar as it is a system of inter-pretation. Castoriadis writes:

It would be superficial and insufficient to say society contains a system of interpretationof the world. Each society is a system of interpretation of the world, and again, the terminterpretation is flat and inappropriate here. Each society is a construction, a creation of

TRANSLATION AND THE COLONIAL IMAGINARY 63

5. Cornelius Castoriadis,Linstitution et limaginaire (Paris: Seuil, 1975), 8.6. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 44.


4/21

a world, of its own world. Its own identity is nothing but this system of interpretation,this world it creates. And that is why (like every individual) it perceives any attack as amortal threat, as an attack upon its identity, upon itself.7

Society is a system of meaning; it constitutes who we are today. In order toanswer the Kantian question of who are we today? we in fact should firstattempt to answer the implicit question of who were we yesterday? Or to bemore precise, one has to find out how we have become who we are today. Thepresent is made up of the past, and the past itself is our present. Hence the fun-damental importance of historical knowledge in human societies. Thus, a systemof meaning is always historical; it always draws from the past, or as ErnstCassirer put it: Historical knowledge is the answer to definite questions, ananswer which must be given by the past; but the questions themselves are put and

dictated by the presentby our present intellectual interests and our presentmoral and social needs.8

However, the past is available to us mainly through documents, that is, throughnarratives that, however close to the event they may be, are themselves repre-sentations of the real, and not the real itself. Therefore, historians do not findanswers in the past, but they make them from documents of the past, that is, fromanswers given by others. In other words, the past does not provide answers toquestions of the present, but historians do, using other representations of thepast.9 Further, historians are the official producers of meaning in a society; their

knowledge is not only informative about things past, but it constitutes and shapesidentities and determines relations in the present. Identities, whether collective orindividual, are by definition historical. History, Merleau-Ponty says, is astrange object, an object which is ourselves.10 However, historians are not soli-tary people busy looking at documents of the past and making meaning out ofthem; their function takes various forms in different social institutions: schools,the family, the media, the press, the church. The social is, then, historical, and thehistorical is everywhere; it is not only a realm, but also the whole of reality.11

To say with Croce that all history is contemporary history is in fact to say that

above and beyond the realm of history there is no other realm of being.12All of this means that history involves the translation of (documents from) the

past into the language of the present. But what is translation? A central aim ofthis essay is to answer this question. A number of theorists have already shownthat translation is not the reproduction of a foreign text in ones own text; it is not


7. Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary: Creation in the Social-Historical Domain, inDisorderand Order: Proceedings of the Stanford International Symposium (Sept. 1416, 1981), ed. PaisleyLivingston (Saratoga, Calif.: Anma Libri, 1984), 152. For the French text, see Limaginaire: La cra-tion dans le domaine social-historique inDomaines de lhomme (Paris: Seuil, 1977), 226-227.

8. Ernst Cassirer,An Essay on Man (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944).9. See also R. G. Collingwood, for whom history is re-enactment of past experience in the mind

of the historian, The Idea of History (Oxford: Clarendon Press: 1946), 282.10. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Crisis of Understanding, inAdventures of the Dialectic, transl.

Joseph Bien (Evanston: Northwestern University Press: 1973), 11.11. Cassirer,An Essay on Man, 178.12.Ibid.


5/21

a transmission, faithful or not, of a message from one language to another; it isnot even a betrayal of the initial message. Translation is a domestication of aforeign text. Lawrence Venutis remark about literary translation is also valid in

the case of historiography: Not only does a translation constitute an interpreta-tion of the foreign text, varying with different cultural situations at different his-torical moments, but canons of accuracy are articulated and applied in thedomestic culture and therefore are basically ethnocentric, no matter how seem-ingly faithful, no matter how linguistically correct.13 However, I go beyond thisto argue that a translated text is not only an interpretation, it is also the produc-tion of a new text. For translation is itself the product of an imaginary, a cre-ationin Ricoeurs words, a restructuring of semantic fields.14 The foreigntext serves as the raw material, almost an excuse, for the production of another

text, a text that emerges within a specific discursive formation, with its own rulesand constraints. For while the foreign text is the expression of an imaginarystructure, which is the product of a historical moment, the translated text is theexpression of an imaginary structure that is also the product of a historicalmoment. Maybe this is why Berman notes that a translator without a historicalconsciousness remains a prisoner of his representation of translating and to thoserepresentations that convey the social discourses of the moment.15

This article, through its investigation of translation and the imaginary, servesto explain the relation of a colonial present to another pastspecifically, explor-

ing what questions a colonial present produced and how it answered them usingthe past of another culture. For, as will become clear, the colonial questions andanswers are regulated by a European epistemologya way of knowing made upof certain categoriesspecific to the nineteenth century, and the past as writtenby the natives contains another epistemology, another way of knowing relativeto a specific time and culturethe Arabic culture of the fourteenth century. Byexamining an Arabic text, its translation, and its subsequent interpretations, thearticle sheds light on what Michel Foucault would call the conditions of emer-gence of the colonial discourse in the form of a translation.

Let us now see how colonial scholars discovered Ibn Khaldn, and discuss theway in which that discovery has been the object of a whole discourse, insepara-ble from the French translated version of Ibn Khaldn.

II. DISCOVERING IBN KHALDN

Ibn Khaldns history was linked to the discovery of Islamic manuscripts thatSilvestre de Sacy undertook with an uncanny vitality and vigor. One of de Sacysachievements was that he put before the profession [Orientalism] an entire sys-


13. Lawrence Venuti, The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethic of Difference (New York:Routledge, 1998), 81-82.

14. Paul Ricoeur, Imagination in Discourse and in Action, inRethinking Imagination, ed. GillianRobinson and John Rundell (New York: Routledge, 1994).

15. A. Berman, Pour une critique des traductions: John Donne (Paris: Gallimard, 1995). Quotedin Venuti, The Scandals of Translation, 84.


6/21

tematic body of texts, a pedagogic practice, a scholarly tradition, and an impor-tant link between Oriental scholarship and public policy.16 Ibn Khaldns workor fragments of his work known in 180817was an important part of that body

of texts. In 1818, de Sacy wrote again, this time to give an impression of thewhole book, the Ibar; he straightforwardly stated that among the historicalbooks written in Arabic there is none that deserves more the honor of publicationthan this one.18 Soon afterward, frequent attempts were made by de Sacys stu-dents to make Ibn Khaldn known. Thus in 1822 Joseph de Hammer published intheJournal Asiatique a summary of the book and insisted on the importance oftranslating it.19 Two years later, Garcin de Tassy presented another review.20 F. E.Schulz gave a review of the whole book the following year, in the same journal.21

What sort of book is this history by Ibn Khaldn?22 He undertook his project

about the history of the Maghreb soon after he became dissatisfied with politics.He then retreated to the castle of Salama in what is today Algeria, a place that hassince vanished from sight. It was there that he wrote the first part of his project,known as theMuqaddima, and most of the second part related to the history of theBerbers. Having found that he needed some materials to verify or complete hismanuscript, Ibn Khaldn then moved to Tunis, where he ultimately offered thefirst copy to the Hafsid Sultan, Abu al-`Abbs. Thus it seems that the initial pro-ject was complete, for Ibn Khaldn deliberately chose not to write about theMachrek for lack of materials. This, however, changed once he settled in Egypt. It

is there that the part concerning the history of the Persians and the Romans waswritten, and it is also there that the last part, concerning his own life, more politi-cal and intellectual, was composed. Thus, the book is comprised of three parts: theMuqaddima; the history of the Berbers and the Arabs, the Persians, the Romansand other peoples; and finally the part usually considered a biography.23

Ibn Khaldn is thus a syncretism of authors. As regards the Muqaddima, he isan epistemic subject, who was not only able to evaluate the field of historiogra-phy in his time, but also, especially, to elaborate a rigorous way of writing histo-ry, a way that was deemed rational, modern, and in full conformity with the

European practice of history in the age of positivism. However, Ibn Khaldn isanother author when it comes to his historiography proper, in which he failed tofollow his own preaching. He is a researcher, a practitioner of historiography, who


16. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, Vintage Books, 1979), 124.17. Silvestre de Sacy, Chrestomathie Arabe, 3 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 18261827), II,

387, 393-401. Also de Sacy, Relation de lEgypte par Abd-Allatif, (Paris: Treuttel et Wrtz, 1810),509.

18. De Sacy, Ibn Khaldn inBiographie universelle (Paris: Michaud, 1818), t. 21, 154.19. Joseph de Hammer, Sur lintroduction la connaissance de lhistoire, clbre ouvrage dIbn

Khaldn,Journal Asiatique 1 (1822), 267-278.

20. Garcin de Tassy, Supplment la notice de M. de Hammer,Journal Asiatique 4 (1824), 158-161.

21. F. E. Schulz, Sur le grand ouvrage historique et critique dIbn Khaldn,Journal Asiatique 7(1825), 213-300.

22. Ibn Khaldn himself narrates the history of the composition of his book in the last part, enti-tled al-ta rif bi ibn Khaldn.

23. A. Cheddadi,Ibn Khaldn revisit(Casablanca: Les Editions Toubkal, 1999).


7/21

is no different from the previous historians whom he criticizes in the Muqaddimafor their lack of a critical approach (tamhs, nazar).24 Later, even Ibn Khaldn thepractitioner of historiography was divided into two: one is the author of the por-

tion related to the history of North Africa, who not only brought new knowledge,an ethnographic history as the colonial expression goes, but who also succeed-ed in applying, up to a point, the epistemological remarks elaborated in theMuqaddima.25 As for the author of the history of the Orient, he is usually consid-ered less competent, less original than the authors of the two other parts. The auto-biography has not drawn any attention despite the recent interest in the genre.26

When de Sacy drew attention to the need to translate the Muqaddima, he alsosuggested its French title: Prolgomnes historiques, a title that later wouldbecome the definitive title of the French translation by William de Slane, a stu-

dent of de Sacy. De Hammer, on the other hand, insisted on the urgency of trans-lating the part related to the history of the Berbers, that is, the second book. In1847, de Slane, the principal interpreter of the Arme dAfrique, published,under the auspices of the Imprimerie du Gouvernement (the Government Press),the Arabic text related to the history of the Berbers.27 In 1854, he published thetranslation under the titleHistoire des Berbres. In 1858, Quatremre publishedthe Arabic text of the Muqaddima.28 De Slane published his translation of theMuqaddima in 1863 under the title Prolgomnes. The two texts have had dif-ferent trajectories: the Muqaddima was used fruitfully by sociologists such as

Emile Durkheim29 and Robert Montagne,30 whereas the Histoire des Berbresserved as the framework for the history of North Africa. In fact, it was published,significantly enough, by the Ministry of War, and its importance for the colonialenterprise was immediately noted. Indeed, Joseph Reinaud wrote: The Historyof the Berbers of Ibn Khaldn could not fail to draw the attention of the Frenchgovernment. With the establishment of the French in Algeria daily relations, con-tacts of friendships and war have been established between them and the tribesthat occupy the interior of the country.31


24. This view was first expressed by de Sacy and reproduced in the Arab discourse of Ibn Khaldn;

see, for instance, Taha Hussein, Etude analytique de la philosophie sociale dIbn Khaldn (Paris:Vrin, 1919). It was confirmed by most of the subsequent interpreters of Ibn Khaldn.

25. Such is the view of Robert Brunschvig,La Bebrie orientale sous les Hafsides (Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 19401947), vol. 1.

26. An example of this is the collective workInterpreting the Self: Autobiography in the ArabicLiterary Tradition, ed. Dwight Reynolds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). It containsno treatment of the autobiography of Ibn Khaldn.

27. Ibn Khaldn,Histoire des Berbres, Arab text (Paris: Imprimerie du Gouvernement, 1847).28. Ibn Khaldn,Muqaddima, inNotices et extraits des mss. de la Bibliothque impriale, vols.

XVI-XVIII (Paris: Bibliothque impriale, 1858). Translated by de Slane, Prolgomnes, in ibid.,vols. XIX-XXI.

29. See Ernest Gellner, Muslim Society (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1981).However, Gellner does not investigate the relation between Ibn Khaldns thought and Durkheims.In addition to the fact that the work of Ibn Khaldn was available by mid-nineteenth century,Durkheim also had an Egyptian doctoral candidate, Taha Hussein, working on theMuqaddima.

30. See A. Hannoum, Lauteur comme authorit en ethnographie coloniale, in La sociologiemusulmane de Robert Montagne (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2000), 249-264.

31. Joseph Reinaud, Ibn Khaldn, inNouvelle biographie gnrale (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1854),vol. 25, 746.


8/21

Ibn Khaldn as a colonial author was, therefore, born in fragmentsArabictexts for the purpose of pedagogy; summaries of the entire book addressed todraw attention to his importance to the colonial enterprise; but also, equally

importantly, reviews of the book, entries in bibliographies, and statements aboutthe man, his age, and his culture. In short, a discourse on him, not of him,emerged that cannot be separated from the translation. In other words, the analy-sis of Ibn Khaldns translated text, what Ibn Khaldn says in French, should gohand in hand with what is said about Ibn Khaldn. He thus appears in this dis-course as a genius, skillful, and also solitary, a man who contrasts sharplywith his own milieu. Further, the discourse on Ibn Khaldn is made up of twodiametrically opposed statements: on the one hand he is a modern and, therefore,represents Europe with its rationality and its historicity; on the other hand, being

what he is, he contrasts with the civilization from which he came. While he isenlightened, it is dark; while he is rational, it is obscurantist; while he is excel-lent, a genius, it is poor and mediocre. (How is this possible? He may not be fromthat civilization. He may be European!32) And finally, while he is ignored in hisown country by his own people, he is discovered and given his due respect inEurope.33 The colonial discovery of Ibn Khaldn has thus become a discoverynot only for Orientalism, but even more importantly for his own peoplehe isthe genius who has long been ignored by his people, wrote Jacques Berque.34

To discover Ibn Khaldn means above all that the French scholar is a compe-

tent epistemic subject, able to evaluate and sanction an intellectual activity. Thisis a competence that is lacking in Arab and Islamic traditions for they have failedto recognize the genius of Ibn Khaldn. The supposed Orientalist discovery ofIbn Khaldn thus legitimizes the French interpretation of Ibn Khaldn. Indeed,despite the fact that in social science it has become evident that even a geniusis the product of a historical, social, and intellectual moment,35 this discoursecontinued to be produced not only by French scholars in the postcolonial peri-od,36 but also by natives and post-natives. For instance, when a FrenchOrientalist repeats the ide reue and says that Ibn Khaldn is a solitary mind

that arose all of a sudden to explain the profound causes of history, and that itis no wonder that this mind did not have an echo in a world that was not preparedto receive him,37 a native scholar echoes the judgment even more bluntly, usingthe language of the Enlightenment to mark his affiliation to it and his own dis-tance from the civilization of Ibn Khaldn: Ibn Khaldns star shines the morebrightly by contrast with the foil darkness against which it flashes out. . . . He is


32. Emile-Felix Gautier,Les sicles obscurs (Paris: Payot, 1927 ); F. Rosenthal, The Muqaddima(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966).

33. Jacques Berque,Lintrieur du Maghreb (Paris: Gallimard, 1978), 13.

34.Ibid.35. Especially in the work of Michel Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge, transl. A. M.

Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972).36. Regis Blachre, Place dIbn Khaldun dans lhumanisme Arabo-islamique,Revue des Deux

Mondes (October 1972), 70-79; Berque, Lintrieur du Maghreb; Yves Lacoste, Ibn Khaldun: TheBirth of History and the Past of the Third World(London: Verso, 1984).

37. Blachre, Place dIbn Khaldun dans lhumanisme Arabo-islamique, 79.


9/21

indeed the one outstanding personality in the history of a civilization whosesocial life on the whole was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.38

Colonizing the imaginary also means that colonial judgments, whose birth and

formulation are linked to a specific context, continue to be reproduced, passed onuncritically, even in the postcolonial period, carrying with them their originalmyths, and perpetuating colonial relations.

III. THE TRICKERY OF THE INTRODUCTION

De Slane precedes his translation of Ibn Khaldns text related to the history ofthe Berbers by an Introduction in which he states that

The task of the translator is not limited to the exact reproduction of ideas uttered in the

text that is the subject of his translation. There are other obligations as well. He shouldrectify the errors of the author, clarify the passages that offer some obscurities, provideideas that lead to the perfect understanding of the narrative and give the necessary assis-tance to make the book better understood.39

The translator is not only required to render ideas in one language in another,but also to add information necessary to make the translated work comprehensi-ble. In other words, the translator is required, by the act of translation, to add hisown voice to that of the author. His is in part a rectifying voice, without whichnot only could errors not be corrected, but the text itself could not be understood.

For the translator contests dates, events, and interpretations, he reveals defi-ciencies, and provides information. Thus, the translator not only transmits amessage from one language to another, but he also rectifies the errors of the mes-sage. In the colonial context this means that the translator converts the originaltext into a colonial one, for correction implies an inadequacy in the cognitive uni-verse of the author; the correction creates an adequacy, but at the expense of theauthor, whose voice, whose cognitive universe, has been changed to conform tothe cognitive universe of the translator.40

In the Introduction, de Slane maintains that despite its richness, the Arabic text

of Ibn Khaldn is obscure, and when it is not, it is verbose and repetitive. Infact, he continues, it is a simple draft, very badly written.41 Hence, the taskof the translator is both to clarify what is obscure and eliminate what is repeti-tive. While the translator sees his or her task as the reproduction of the same textin another language, leaving aside whether this is indeed possible, what he or shein fact does is construct another text that is alien to the original text, but isnonetheless part of it.

What function does the Introduction fulfill? An introduction usually takes theform of a preface which is a metadiscourse; it is written a posteriori, and is usu-


38. Charles Issawi,An Arab Philosophy of History: Selections (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1987), ix.39. William de Slane,Histoire des Berbres et des dynasties musulmanes de lAfrique septentri-

onale (Algiers: Imprimerie du Gouvernement, 18521856), i.40. A.-J. Greimas, Le savoir et le croire: un seul univers cognitif, inDu Sens II(Paris: Seuil,

1983), 115-133.41. De Slane,Histoire des Berbres, lxix.


10/21

ally a reflection of the author on his own discourse. As Algirdas-Julien Greimaswrote:

The preface is not a part of the corpus. Along the temporal axis, it is a post-face and fol-

lows on the discourse of the research and its being put into writing. Its status is that of ametadiscursive thought concerning a discourse that has already been produced. Thismetadiscourse is supposed to reveal what the author himself thinks of his own discourse,its goal, and its organization.42

The Introduction to the translation of Ibn Khaldn is not only a reflection onthe translated text, its composition, and its theses. It is not only a reflection onthe task of the translator, his cognitive endeavor, and his translation. TheIntroduction to the translated text of Ibn Khaldn is also a discursive strategy todetermine the reading of the translated text. For de Slane suggests an interpreta-

tion that in fact conditions any reading of his translated text. His Introduction isalso composed of a summary of the translated text. This summary is in fact ameans, a trap; it makes the reader perceive the text in a certain way. This is a cog-nitive manipulation to make the reader understand the translated text as inter-preted by the translator.

However, de Slane first gives a general description of the whole book by IbnKhaldn, the `Ibar, whose second part is the object of his translation. Thus, onefinds the familiar discourse on Ibn Khaldn as being a genius and yet attachedto superstition.43 De Slane then proceeds to give a general view of the trans-

lated book, the Histoire des Berbres, which, he says, is made up of the fourthsection of the Ibar, a section that narrates the history of the Arabs in NorthAfrica; he also says it is made up of the third book of the `Ibar, which containsa genealogical history of the great indigenous race that dominated for cen-turies.44 To make the reader understand the chronology of the history of NorthAfrica, the translator provides a linear narrative of the different empires that suc-ceeded one another in North Africa, from the Arab conquest of the seventh cen-tury to the fourteenth century, that is, to the time of Ibn Khaldn.

De Slanes narrative first describes a situation of lack. According to him, sec-

tarian divisions, indigenous revolts, and a Vandal conquest weakened RomanNorth Africa before the Arab conquest. The Latin population had abandonedtheir possessions to the Berbers and moved to the coast. The Vandals delivered afatal blow to Byzantine rule in North Africa, and despite the fact that Belisariusand Salomon re-established Byzantine rule, North Africa became a fragile land,easy prey for a religiously unified and aggressive adversary coming from theOrientArabia. To make things worse, the Goths of Spain took over Tingitana,thus creating a more divided North Africa: one part, mainly Carthage, still loyalto the Empire; the other part, the province of Tingitana, under the Goths yoke.

This is to say that North Africa was weakened and divided as a result of a


42. Algirdas-Julien Greimas, On Chance Occurences in What We Call the Human Sciences, inOn Meaning, transl. Paul J. Perron and Frank H. Collins, foreword by Fredric Jameson (London:Pinter, 1987).

43. De Slane,Histoire des Berbres, iii.44.Ibid., viii.


11/21

Christian heresy and a European conflict. Fragile and fragmented, it was soonfaced with the presence of the Arabs, unified by their new religionIslam. Onecan see, then, that the text opposes two entities. One is represented by Arab

Muslims, that is, by the Orient; the other is represented by a Christian Europewhose territory extends to, and includes, North Africa.

In any case, it is this situation of lack that made the conquest of North Africapossible. North Africa was taken away from the Romans. But what about theBerbers? They appear first as the indigenous population that had revolted, thusparticipating in the weakening of the empire, and then as servants of Romanlords who were liberated by the Arabs. However, their lives did not improve.Soon afterward, they joined the Romans against the Arabs who had burdenedthem by religious duties and heavier taxes, taking half of their harvest. This

alliance between Berbers and Romans resulted not only in a joint victory againstthe Arabs, but more importantly in the formation of the first Berber Empire.The actors in de Slanes narrative are all distinguished from the outset: on the onehand there are the Romans, on the other the Arabs, and in between there are theBerbers. The relation between the first and the last is perfectly clear, for it is oneof opposition. The Arabs were at war against the Romans; not only did they wantthe land, but they also wanted to impose their religion. The Romans, on the otherhand, were the masters of North Africa, weakened yet defending their posses-sions. However, it is the relation between the Berbers and the Arabs on the one

hand, and the Berbers and the Romans on the other, that seems unclear. TheBerbers revolted against the Romans and joined the Arabs only because theywere burdened by imperial taxes. Likewise, they initially joined the Arabs andthen revolted against them only because of a misunderstanding. For they first sawthe Arabs as liberators, but opposed them once they realized the Arabs were likethe Romans, if not worse. In other words, once they came to know the Arabs, theBerbers deliberately chose the Romans. Indeed, they defeated the Arabs. ABerber kingdom ensued under the leadership of Kusayla. This was only transito-ry, however, for the Arabs returned and crushed the Berbers. This is the begin-

ning of what de Slane calls the age of Arab domination. It is also the beginningof an opposition between the Arab nation and the Berber race that has alwaysbeen impatient under the foreign yoke.45 To show that his narrative is a sum-mary of the translated work, de Slane asks his readers to consult such and suchchapters for more details about the events he has just summarized.

This narrative became fundamental in French colonial historiography. For notonly does it explain how North Africa was subjugated by the Arabs in the sev-enth century, but it also shows that the country had been a part of the RomanEmpire. Further, the narrative is an expression of that same imaginary structure

developed long ago in Europe, namely the frequently analyzed oppositionbetween the Occident and the Orient. Moreover, when it is reproduced again inthis colonial context, it suggests a specific colonial policy, namely, divide andconquer. For instance, when de Slane mentions the great discord among Arabs


45.Ibid., xx.


12/21

that arose after the death of the Prophet in 622, he happily notes that the largestpart of the Arab nation was led into this quarrel that, fortunately for Europe, for-ever broke the unity of the Empire.46 In all of this, Europe, along with its strug-

gle against the Orient, is now a fundamental part of that French text called theHistoire des Berbres.

IV. THE TRANSLATION ITSELF: COLONIAL SEMANTICS

De Slanes narrative is supposedly a summary of his translation of Ibn Khaldn.Let us now examine the translation itself. It should be repeated that the transla-tion of the Arabic text into French means not so much the transmission of a mes-sage from the first to the second language, but rather the conversion of local cat-

egories into colonial categories, a conversion that is the result of the passagefrom one culture to another, from one historical moment to another. A long timeago Benjamin Whorf suggested that facts are unlike to speakers whose languagebackground provides for unlike formulation for them.47 But how do these factschange? Why are the facts of a text endowed with different or even contradicto-ry meaning when translated into another language?

It is important to mention that the type of translation under consideration iswhat Roman Jakobson calls interlingual translation, which means that oneinterprets a verbal sign as a verbal sign in another language.48 Therefore, one is

in fact removed not only from one cultural space to another, from the Maghrebto France, but also from one cultural time to another, from fourteenth-centuryIslam to nineteenth-century Europe. For after all, language is not only an instru-ment by which a group communicates, but it is also a tool made up of categoriesby which a group orders and signifies its world. To quote Whorf again:

Every language is a vast pattern-system, different from others, in which are culturallyordained the forms and categories by which the personality not only communicates, butalso analyzes nature, notices or neglects types of relationship and phenomena, channelshis reasoning, and builds the house of his consciousness.49

However, a language does not exist in theory only, but it is practiced in realsituations, it is a speech-act (parole, as Saussure put it); it is also a textual prac-tice (langue, in the same Saussurian terminology).50 It is clear that the type oflanguage to be considered in this instance is nineteenth-century French as actu-alized by de Slane in his translation. Therefore, I shall examine the componentsof the translators language, or rather text. However, I shall assume that the trans-lated text as a whole, including the Introduction, is made up of a number of lev-els. The text is not only divided into signifier (the expression, in the terminology


46.Ibid.47. Benjamin Whorf,Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT

Press, 1956), 235.48. Roman Jakobson, On the Linguistics Aspects of Translation, in Language and Literature

(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), 429-430.49. Whorf,Language, Thought, and Reality, 252.50. Ferdinand de Saussure, Cours de linguistique gnrale (Paris: Payot, 1985).


13/21

of Louis Hjelmslev) and signified (the content), but each has a form and a sub-stance. Thus, the text is made up of the form of the expression (the linguistic sys-tem) and the substance of the expression (the phonetic system). Further, the con-

tent itself has a form (grammar) and a substance (semantics).51 It is in terms ofthese various levels that I will now explain the transformation of the original textinto a colonial narrative.

LHistoire des Berbres, as presented, that is, interpreted by the translator tothe reader, is in two parts: one is about the Orient, including the non-Arab dynas-ties such as those of the Persians and the Israelites; the other is about the Berbers,but also the Arabs in North Africa. But whereas the histories of the non-Arabdynasties are narrated only for their relevance to the history of the Arab races,the history of the Arabs in North Africa is told for its relevance to the history of

the Berber races. In short, the history of Ibn Khaldn is in the final analysis ahistory of two races: a conqueror race coming from the Orient, and a conqueredone, indigenous to North Africa. Further, both Arabs and Berbers are not onlytwo races, but two nations as well. How does Ibn Khaldn designate them in theoriginal? What are the meanings of the terms he uses?

Before answering these questions, let me first attempt a definition of the termsrace and nation as they were used in nineteenth-century France. It is worthnoting that prior to the translation of de Slane, both Arabs and Berbers were des-ignated as races in the ethnography of the Arab Bureau.52 The terms race and

nation had by then gained specific meanings. In nineteenth-century Europe,with the rise of nationalism, the concepts of race and nation became fundamen-tal in the understanding of the development of human societies. Three influentialnames dominate in France: Comte de Gobineau, Ernest Renan, and HyppoliteTaine.53 But it was Gobineau who first articulated the most widely accepted dis-course on race in France. His views became most influential not so much becausethey were novel, but because they were widely accepted before he even articu-lated them. As Hannah Arendt put it in a comparative study of race-thinking inEurope:

The Comte de Gobineau developed an opinion already generally accepted within theFrench nobility into a full-fledged historical doctrine, claiming to have detected the secretlaw of the fall of civilization and to have exalted history to the dignity of a natural sci-ence. With him race-thinking completed its first stage, and began its second stage whoseinfluences were to be felt until the twenties of our century.54

Gobineaus conception consisted of at least two fundamental points: first, theworld is inhabited by races that are unequal, as are the various breeds of dogs;


51. See Louis Hjelmslev, Prolgomnes une thorie du langage (Paris: Minuit, 1968), translat-

ed from Danish by Una Canger. Also see the significant contribution of A.-J. Greimas, Smantiquestructurale (Paris: Larousse, 1966). For a very brief review see the entry Text in Dictionnaireraisonn du language (Paris: Hachette, 1979).

52. See A. Hannoum, Colonialism and Knowledge in Algeria.53. John White, Taine on Race and Genius, Social Research 10 (February 1943), 76-99.54. Hannah Arendt, Race-Thinking Before Racism, Review of Politics 6 (January 1944), 47.

Also, Theophile Simar,Etude critique sur la formation de la doctrine des races au 18 et son expan-sion au 19 sicle (Brussels: M. Lamertin, 1922).


14/21

second, the races are necessarily antagonistic. But what is a race? A race ismarked by inherent, hereditary, permanent qualities, psychological, physical, andintellectual. No matter how much a race is subjected to change and accidents of

nature, it will always preserve these elements.55 Gobineau states unwaveringly:The existing races constitute separate branches of one or many primitive stocks. Thesestocks have now vanished. They are not known in historical times at all, and we cannotform even the most general idea of their qualities. They differed from each other in theshape and proportions of the limbs, the structure of the skull, the internal conformation ofthe body, the nature of the capillary system, the color of the skin, and the like; and theynever succeeded in losing their characteristic features except under powerful influence ofthe crossing blood.56

According to Gobineau, the Aryan race has proved its excellence throughout

the ages. Excellence in a race is manifested in its phenotypes, and the Aryan raceis by far the most beautiful, the most well shaped, and especially the most capa-ble of creating civilization. Aryan civilization has always shown proofs of itsexcellence.57 Civilization is thus associated with race, and a race is by definitiona people with a common origin, common blood, common identity, and thespecific ability (or lack of ability) to create civilization. Indeed, civilization is theproduct of a race, it is specific to this race, and it is the expression of its genius.If one wants to study a race, one studies the form of its civilization. 58 If, then,civilizations are expressions of races, they are therefore, like races, antagonistic

to each other, and when they combine, this results in degeneration. Gobineauwrites: Civilization is incommunicable, not only to savages, but also to moreenlightened nations. This is shown by the efforts of French goodwill and concil-iation in the ancient kingdom of Algiers at the present day, as well as the experi-ence of the English in India, and the Dutch in Java.59

If, then, by the mid-nineteenth century, race-thinking had come to constitute asubconscious culture, in which human relations in general and civilizations inparticular were defined essentially by inequality and antagonism, it is no wonderthat the translated text of Ibn Khaldn carried with it this colonial semantics.

This can be seen in the Arab concepts that de Slane translated as race andnation.

The Arab concepts translated as race and nation are these:jl, umma, andtabaqa. The most often used by Ibn Khaldn is jl. This term appears as a syn-


55. See A. Gobineau,Essai sur lingalit des races humaines (Paris: Firmin Didot, 18531855).English translation by Adrian Collins,Inequality of Human Races (New York: H. Fertig, 1967). Seealso H. Taine,Histoire de la littrature anglaise (Paris: Hachette, 1863), vol. 1.

56. Gobineau,Inequality of Human Races, 133.57.Ibid, 92-93.

58. It is these forms that constitute Taines work, which was mainly a study of the genius of races,interestingly enough European races, especially the Latin and German. Taine was one of the mostdominant figures in nineteenth-century Europe. Among his admirers was Nietzsche. After a solidbackground in philosophy, he turned to the study of art and literature. Among his well-known workis his dissertationLa Fontaine et ses Fables (Paris: Hachette, 1861);Histoire de la littrature anglaise(Paris: Hachette, 1863);De lintelligence (Paris: Hachette, 1861).

59. Gobineau, The Inequality of Human Races, 171.


15/21

onym of both umma and tabaqa; however, it has a specific meaning that the twoothers may not share. Etymologically, jl means a generation, but Ibn Khaldnuses it in the sense of a tribe or a group of tribes living in a specific historical

moment. Ibn Khaldn speaks of thejl al-àrab (generation of the Arabs) andthejl al-barbar (generation of the Berbers). Ibn Khaldn also uses the termjlto designate a specific stage in human development: jl al-badw (those who arein the stage of nature, or in a much more literal translation, those with a Bedouinlifestyle) orjl al-hadar (those who are in the stage of culture, or again in a moreliteral sense, those with an urban lifestyle).60

One would conclude, then, that the concept jl is temporal, chronological.Jlis in fact a human grouping clearly defined in time (for Ibn Khaldn speaks ofthejl al-awwal li-al-àrab [the first generation of Arabs], al-jl ath-thni li-al-

àrab [the second generation of Arabs], and so forth).Jl is also a genealogicalterm, forjl are also linked to each other by a common ancestor (nasab), real oroften imaginary. In other words,jl as a unified group is differentiated from oth-ers mainly by a representation of its origins (today one would say by its history).However, a jl in the understanding of Ibn Khaldn may also be otherwisedefined. First, ajl can be defined by its phenotypes, which Ibn Khaldn explainsfirst by the climate that changes the color of a groups skin and may in fact eveninfluence its members moods. Second, ajl can also be defined by its culture asa result of its economic activity (inna ikhtilaf al-ajyal innama huwa bi ikhtilaf

nihlatahum mina al-maàsh) (The differences among the ajyl are the result oftheir different ways of making their living).61

As for the term umma, it is more global. It refers to either a religious communi-ty with its total historical experiences (the umma of Islam is, in fact, not only Arabs,but all those who have shared the Islamic religious experience), or a historical com-munity with its different stages that does not take into account transformations,religious or dynastic, to be referred to as one entity (as is the case of the umma ofthe Arabs, or the umma of the Persians). Let me quote Ibn Khaldn again:

The genealogists were led into error by their belief that the difference between umma

[people] is in their nasab [genealogy]. This is not so. The difference between ajl or ummafor some is due to genealogy [nasab] as in the case of the Arabs, the Children of Israel,and the Persians. For others such as the Zinj, the Abyssinians, the Slavs, and the SudaneseNegroes it is due to geographical location and phenotype [sima]. It may be caused by cus-toms [àwaid] and sentiments [shiàr] as in the case of the Arabs. It may be caused byother conditions [ahwal], features [khawas] and specific traits [mumayizt] of umam [pl.umma]. But to generalize and say that the inhabitants of such and such region in the southor in the north are the descendants of the well known so and so because they have a com-mon nihla [sect] or color or phenotype of the forehead, is of [the order] of these errorscaused by the ignorance of the nature of beings and places which changes through gener-

ations [a`qab] and does not stay the same.

62


60. According to the translation of Jacques Berque, Ibn Khaldn et les Bedouins, inMaghreb,histoire et socits (Algiers, Duculot, 1974), 18. Berque, too, translatesjl as race.

61.Muqaddima, 129.62.Muqaddima, 91. I intentionally, but unavoidably, depart from the English translation of Franz

Rosenthal because it is too inscribed in the same colonial discourse. He too translatesjl or umma asrace and nation.


16/21

It should be noted that history, that is, the trkh of the Arabs, is originally areligious discipline, and its development was a result of the success of theIslamic conquests.63 Given the fact that the Arab conquest was ultimately an

experience of the Other, the explanation of this otherness itself had a religiouscharacter. In Islam, too, human unity is presented as an unquestionable fact.Humanity is not only one, the creature of the same Creator, but it is also equal inthe sense that humans are all able to receive the divine message. The inequalityof humans does not occur on a genetic levelit is not the result of the ability orlack of ability of a group to create civilizationbut rather on a moral level.Therefore, humanity is not divided into inferior and superior races, but ratherinto believers and nonbelievers. Moreover, this inequality is not given, nor is itirreversible; a nonbeliever is as susceptible to becoming a believer as a believer

is susceptible to becoming a nonbeliever. Hence, the importance of the conceptof thefath, that is the transition from belief to nonbelief.64

Be that as it may be, Ibn Khaldn is too much of a historian not to notice thaton a practical level tribes but also individuals are unequal as far as their might(jh) is concerned, and that despite the fact that religion provides cohesion for agroup (this is why he talks about the umma of Islam and the umma ofMuhammad), there is also diversity and inequality within the same umma. Inother words, the umma is also made up of a number of jls that differ in might,in conquest, in deeds. It is their diversityone may even say their inequality

that Ibn Khaldn explains. How is this inequality engendered?It is here that Ibn Khaldn uses his concept of àsabiya (tribal solidarity). For

him, àsabiya is general, but uneven in strength among tribes. The bigger thetribe the stronger its tribal solidarity; the stronger the tribal solidarity, the morepowerful the tribe. However, the power of the tribe, however great it may be, isnot a sufficient condition for it to become a dynasty. Religion is an important fac-tor for àsabiya to become operational; it allows the tribe not only to solidify itspower but also to go beyond itself and become a dynasty. However, given the factthat one of the keys of Ibn Khaldns explanation of human transformations is

the fact that power is provisional, the tribe-dynasty itself is subject to a processof disintegration. Its power results in luxury, in unjust practices, which them-selves result in weakening the àsabiya that provides the cohesion and thereforethe strength of a group. The dynasty then comes to an end and is replaced by thatof another tribe that goes through the same patterns of rise and fall. The superi-ority of a tribe is contingent, and that superiority is not inherent in the tribe, asstrength is inherent in superior races according to Gobineau, Taine, and Renan.For Ibn Khaldn inequality is constant and variant at the same time. It is constantin that humans are constituted of dominant and dominated. But as the material

world, including humans and human conditions, is subject to dissolution, neitherinequality nor superiority is inherent in a group; they are contingencies


63. See Tarif Khaldidi, Arabic Thought in the Classical Period (Cambridge, Eng.: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1994).

64. The transition from belief to disbelief is also possible; it is the murtadd, apostate, but thispossibility is to be eliminated.


17/21

(àwrid), and as such they are doomed to end. Among the people who domi-nated and later lost their strength, Ibn Khaldn mentions the Greeks, Romans,Persians, Arabs, and Jews. For states (duwal) have ages, he asserts, like those of

individuals.65Moreover, there is also diversity within the same jl. Of course, not all the

members of a jl are equal in terms of might (jh). How can this inequality beexplained? Here Ibn Khaldn uses a number of concepts to account for the dif-ference in power (qudra) among individuals or groups within the same jl. ForIbn Khaldn the superiority is always maintained by a superiority in number, bya noble genealogy (hasab sharf), but equally importantly byjh, that is, a power(qudra) to impose the will in order to establish a religious and political order.(This should be understood as a necessary domination for the benefit of both the

dominator [ghlib] and the dominated [maghlb]. They both benefit from theelimination of what is harmful and the pursuit of what is useful.66) To say thesame thing differently, Ibn Khaldn suggests that people, or rather tribes, areunequal only insofar as some of them have a hasab (nobility) that is not inherentin their nature but is generated from their own deeds, associated, one wouldassume, with might and conquest. However, hasab does not last more than fourgenerations (ajyal).67

One can see that there is neither progress, nor degeneration, nor racialhierarchy in Ibn Khaldn. His historical narrative is regulated by other cate-

gories such as jl, àsabiya, nasab, and hasab. In some ways historical eventsreproduce themselves in the same way: tribes become dynasties due to àsabiyaand religion; they decline after they reach their peak, only to be replaced byanother tribe that follows the same pattern of rise and fall.

The text of de Slane is marked not only by a racial ideology that sets Arabsand Berbers apart and in opposition, but also by the theme of domination, whichconnotes a colonialism of the bad type because it is Oriental and therefore basedon force and destruction. Even in his introduction, de Slane speaks of Arab dom-ination, and he translates the title of the first chapter of Ibn Khaldn as Arab

Domination. Further, de Slane translates the termfath as domination or con-quest, both meaning forced subordination (of course to other people) imposedby the force of weaponry, a relation of a loser to a winner, and finally, as a formof colonialism in which the goal is to impose religion on the vanquished.68 Whatdoes the wordfath actually mean? It is a positive term for Ibn Khaldn as for anyMuslim; it designates the opening of an area of belief, of Islam, and the endingof a period of disbelief, ofJhiliya; therefore, it is a divine favor for both thosewho arrive and those who join of their own free will or by force. Submission, in


65.Muqaddima, 180.

66. See Cheddadi,Ibn Khaldn revisit.67.Muqaddima, 145.68. In the nineteenth-century French dictionary, domination means: Authorit qui, accept ou

non des subordonns, sexerce pleinement. (Emile Littr,Dictionnaire de la langue franaise [Paris:Gallimard/Hachette, 1967). As for the word authorit, it means pouvoir de se faire obir (ibid.).Further, whereas Ibn Khaldn always mentions thefath as Islamic (al-fath al-islami), de Slane men-tions it also as Arab conquest. The word conqute means to soumettre par les armes (ibid.).


18/21

this view, is not of people to other people, but to God. Historically, the earlyMuslim community itself went through this transformation, from the Jhiliya toIslam. Fath is a necessary condition for a Muslim. Once again de Slane translates

a term (here,fath) through the colonialist lens that perceived the world in termsof domination, and in the process both misrepresents Ibn Khaldn and at thesame time reinforces the French domination of North Africa.

V. THE TRANSLATION ITSELF: COLONIAL SYNTAX

In the colonial text, the term Arab does not mean what it does in the originaltext of Ibn Khaldn: the various Arab populations, either originally or morerecently Arabized, with their various generations (ajyl, pl. ofjl), each marked

with different levels of cohesiveness (`asabiya) and the power (jh) that resultsfrom levels. Rather, the term Arab refers to the Oriental of Orientalism whoseimage is all too familiar to the European reader; they are one and the same. Theydo not change, nor do they disappear. They are always dominant, and their dom-ination brings destruction. In addition, the term Berber does not mean in thecolonial discourse what it means in Ibn Khaldn: the diverse Berber tribes,whose origins are mostly Oriental, and whose histories and deeds are associatedwith Arabs. Rather, the term Berber refers to newcomers in the field ofOrientalism. They did not exist prior to the conquest of Algiers, or rather they

were the Arabs, the Moors, the Saracens. The Berbers now exist in the Frenchimaginary, but they join a category of people who have also been familiar to theEuropean since the beginning of the nineteenth century: they are the primitiveswho represent the past of Europeans. Let us now see how this new semanticsaffects or, better, determines the narrative syntax of the translation of de Slane,that is, how it determines the actors, the objects, and the relations involved in thenarrative.

Colonial historiography, based on the translated Ibn Khaldn, is marked bytwo major narratives, the narrative of the Khina, whose significance in colonial

scholarship is immense, and the episode of the Banu Hilal. Both narrativesexplained the present of North Africa to colonial scholars, and how it hadbecome Arab and Muslim despite a massive Berber presence and a long Romanhistory.69 These two episodes of Arab invasion constitute in French colonial his-toriography not only narratives of origins but also great discontinuities that havechanged the course of North African history and have shaped it in a certain wayrelevant to the French presence in the Maghreb. Let me now show how race-thinking and nation-thinking have shaped the colonial narrative. To this end, Ibriefly discuss the objects found in Ibn Khaldns original text in order to under-

stand their transformations in the colonial translation.De Slane admits that the Introduction has not attained all its objectives of cor-

rection, rectification, and orientation: The translator has proposed to devote anumber of pages in this short introduction to examine the origins of the Berbers.


69. See A. Hannoum, Colonial Histories, Postcolonial Memories (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2001).


19/21

His work was about to be finished when a number of items of information cameto modify his conclusions.70 In other words, despite the fact that one finds in IbnKhaldn an explanation of the origins of the Berbers, this seemed to de Slane to

be unsatisfactory and needed to be corrected. De Slane promised his readers thathe would put his text regarding the origins of the Berbers in the third volume. Buthe did not do so. Why does de Slane judge Ibn Khaldns views of the origins ofthe Berbers as unsatisfactory?

The early ethnographers of the Arab Bureau had already set in place a dis-course on the origins of the Berbers that provided them with a European origin.For, by the color of their skin, by their culture, their architecture, and even theirreligious beliefs the Berbers were believed to be descended from both an indige-nous population about which little is known and Roman, Greek, and German

populations that inhabited the country at the dawn of historical time. The Arabinvasion had changed little in the racial landscape of North Africa: now as beforethe Berbers still speak a distinct language, they still preserve their same skincolor (white), and they are still liberal, unconcerned about religion, that is,Islam (they still observe Roman law [qnn], not Islamic law [shar`a]). Furtherthey still live in a primitive republic with democratic principles: in Berber cus-tom, a municipal council (djemaa) is elected. This is to say that by the time thetranslation of Ibn Khaldn was made, there was already a widely accepted dis-course about the Berbers, a discourse that made them primitive Europeans.71

Thus, when Faidherbe, a general in the army and a vice president of the Socitdanthropologie, summed up the situation of anthropological research in Algeriain 1874 as regards the Berbers and their origins, he reached a statistical conclu-sion.72 For him the inhabitants of Algeria by the beginning of the nineteenth cen-tury were divided in the following manner:

North Africa was, then, believed to be inhabited by a predominantly Berber,

that is, European population. They constituted a little more than 76 percent of thepopulation, as opposed to the Arabs who constituted 15or rather 17percent,


70. De Slane,Histoire des Berbres, lxvi.71. See Hannoum, Colonialism and Knowledge in Algeria.72. Louis Leon Cesar Faidherbe,Instructions sur lanthropologie de lAlgrie (Paris: Hennuyer,

1874), 12.

Indigenous Libyans} Berbers

Blonds from the NorthPhoenicians

Romans, their auxiliaries, and Greeks from the Late EmpireVandals (in the East)Arabs (a good number of them remained pure; stronger proportions in the East

and the West)Negroes of all races and sorts (the majority at the stage of interbreeding in all

degrees) more numerous in the SouthJews (completely analogous to the Arabs)Turks from all the provinces and European renegades

75%

1%

1%0.5%

15%

5%2%

0.5%


20/21

given that at this date Arabs and Jews were still part of the same discourse (theywere the Semites of Renan and Gobineaua degenerate race, a mixture of whiteand black). Algeria then, in French colonial ethnography, was numerically large-

ly Berber and historically European. Such a discourse contradicts the narrative ofIbn Khaldn on the origins of the Berbers, but it does fit nicely with the translat-ed text of de Slane that makes the history of North Africa the history of a strug-gle between Arabs and Berbers.

What was Ibn Khaldns account of the origin of the Berbers? The `Ibar of IbnKhaldn was polemical in its time. It was a defense of the Berbers against thenegative image that was created soon after the Arab conquest of North Africa inthe late seventh century. Ibn Khaldn states the goal of his book clearly. For, hesays, he wants to show the strength [the Berbers have shown] through time, that

they inspired fear; they are brave and powerful comparable to other nations andpeoples of the world such as the Arabs, the Persians, the Greeks and theRomans.73 It is with this intention that Ibn Khaldn describes the genealogy ofthe Berbers:

The truth that should be accepted regarding the origin of the Berbers is that they aredescendants of Canaan, son of Ham, son of Noah, as indicated in the presentation of thegenealogies of men since the Creation. The name of their ancestors is Mazigh; theKerethetes [Arqish] and the Philistines were their brothers; their brother Casluhim, son ofMizrain, son of Ham. Their king Goliath is well-known as one of their kings. There werewell-known wars between the Philistines and the Children of Israel in Syria. TheCanaanites and the Kerethites were allies of the Philistines. This is what one must believe,because it is the truth that must not be ignored.74

The project of Arabizing the Berber was the culmination of a long-term effortundertaken from the ninth century onward to fuse two populations that seemedto be opposed as conqueror and conquered.75 In other words, the conquest ofNorth Africa by the Arabs had to be interpreted in such a way that it would notseem a conquest, that is the domination of one group by another. After the estab-lishment of Berber dynasties, the conquest of North Africa came to be seen rather

as a reunion of two groups of the same origins. They were both Arabs; one ofthem came at the dawn of time, and the other came in the late seventh century totransmit the prophetic message.76

This discourse, which I have elsewhere characterized as inclusive and inte-grative,77 questions the whole colonial discourse that was built on the division ofArab versus Berber. Obliterating the opposition between Arabs and Berberswould lead to one of two conclusions: either that both groups are Algerians, ofmixed origins, and that therefore Algeria belongs to them, and to them only; or,if the view of Ibn Khaldn is adopted, that both groups are Arabs, and therefore

here too, not only is the French presence illegitimate, but so also was the Roman


73. `Ibar, 121.74.Ibid., 6, 113.75. For more details see Hannoum, Colonial Histories, Postcolonial Memories, 1-28.76.Ibid.77.Ibid.


21/21

presence. Small wonder that, when de Slane could not convert the view of IbnKhaldn on the issue by an act of translation, he simply deemed it incorrect anddeclared it as such by his authority as translator, an authority based not only on

a bilingual competence, but also on a wide reading in two traditions.

The Arabic text of Ibn Khaldn reveals, as I have attempted to show, a differentimaginary structure, one that is marked neither by racialism nor by a colonial ide-ology, nor does it contain a plot in which a hero and anti-hero pursue oppositequests. Nor does it point to a major lack that is at the heart of North African his-tory. Instead, Ibn Khaldns long and complex narrative reveals a complex set ofrelations between tribes; it is a recording (trkh) of various states of successivegenerations; it is an ordering of the Maghreb of the fourteenth century accord-

ing to a number of categories specific to his time: tribal, genealogical, religious,`asabiya, jh, and nasab. Above all, history happens in a cyclic way; it repro-duces the same patterns, with actors grouped in different polities, tribal anddynastic. It is a history that undoubtedly implies change and transformation,but excludes the notion of progress and a shared human future towards whichall peoples head with different and unequal speed.

Yet, Ibn Khaldns history became the Histoire des Berbres, a colonial textthat employed colonialist categories to perceive, to think, and to re-present NorthAfrican history. This occurred not only in the colonial period by colonial histo-

rians, but also in the post-colonial period, by national and post (?) orientalist his-torians alike.78 In all of this de Slanes translation too is a product of the imagi-nary.

Simons Rock College of Bard


78. The most known of this is Abdallah Laroui who, despite his criticism, was caught in colonialcategories. The most illustrative example of a post (?) orientalist historiography is Maya Shatzmiller,The Berbers and the Islamic State (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2000) in which she writes the historyof the Berbers using racial categories found in de Slane.

Documents

Colonial Imaginary Hannoum