Sanctity, Puritanism, Sécularisation and Nationalism in North Africa - article ; n°1 ; vol.15, pg 71-86

Archives-des-sciences-sociales-des-religions - Ernest Gellner.

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Archives des sciences sociales des religions - Année 1963 - Volume 15 - Numéro 1 - Pages 71-86
16 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.

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Philosophie et théologie

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Publié par	Archives-des-sciences-sociales-des-religions
Publié le	01 janvier 1963
Nombre de lectures	92
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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Ernest Gellner
Sanctity, Puritanism, Sécularisation and Nationalism in North
Africa
In: Archives des sciences sociales des religions. N. 15, 1963. pp. 71-86.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
Gellner Ernest. Sanctity, Puritanism, Sécularisation and Nationalism in North Africa. In: Archives des sciences sociales des
religions. N. 15, 1963. pp. 71-86.
doi : 10.3406/assr.1963.1725
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/assr_0003-9659_1963_num_15_1_1725SANCTITY PURITANISM
SECULARISATION AND NATIONALISM
IN NORTH AFRICA
case study
nephew for such successive proliferate having teacher-disciple as by lineages the spiritual HE complex genetic-spiritual the North most for in son saint and generations which there merit net African Moreover characteristic forni ones the of is and the two holy no lineages lineages Thus saint links role of kinds reason no personage holy living are does condemnation social are and of so why expected formed to personages not kinship saints dynasties institution speak he As need should not and Islam to are attaches to be by dead not bequeath of Nepotism there not passed does father-son North the enshrined have to not are only on such his African or enjoin in also would possible relationships spiritual should the ones family spiritual-spiritual family religious celibacy be are bond not power succession misnomer connected admit line between but life saints to But by to is
The saints are not all of one kind of course One interesting spectrum is
that between rural and urban ones the former operating in tribal contexts the
latter amongst city populations It is still possible though it will not be possible
for much longer to study the functioning of rural saints by observation stu
died one saintly lineage intermittently during the fifties and am publishing the
findings elsewhere By way of contrast it would also have been interesting to see
something of the working of their urban counterparts but by the middle of this
century whatever was left of this phenomenon and no doubt something
remained was extremely difficult or impossible to study In any case such
attempts as made in this direction soon discouraged me
Fortunately book appeared recently which assembled good deal of docu
mentation concerning one urban saint The book is written from the viewpoint
of interest in religion as such rather than religion as social form The present
paper is an attempt to interpret the material sociologically and to place it
against general picture of the role of religion in North Africa traditionally and in
transition
Martin LINOS Moslem Saint of the Twentieth Century London Alien TTnwin
1961
71 DE SOCIOLOGIE DES RELIGIONS ARCHIVES
In religion the southern Muslim shore of the Mediterranean is kind of
mirror-image of the northern shore of Europe Europe is or was Christendom
Within Western Christianity one has become habituated to the opposition between
the central tradition and the deviant splinter churches and sects which even when
relatively large remain small in comparison with the Church The central tradition
has certain marked features it has hierarchy it makes use of personal mediation
between the ordinary believer and the deity it verges on cult of personality or
personalities it has strong rural appeal it stresses and uses ritual good deal it
incorporates or is tolerant of good deal of rural superstition or rites it possesses
an organisation economically dependent at least in part on the donations of the
faithful it satisfies the emotional needs of its believers By contrast the deviant
splinter groups tend to dispense with personal mediation with ritual with
emotional and sensuous accompaniments of faith with hierarchy they tend to
be puritanical stress the Book and hence literacy rather than mediators and ritual
and so forth
In North Africa all this is reversed It is the central tradition which has the
protestant characteristics tradition without clergy in the full sense but
rich in lawyer-theologians or personal mediation based on trading towns stres
sing literacy and learning sometimes hostile to shrines and popular cults It is
the deviant cults which are hierarchical employ personal mediation with the deity
indulge in greater ritual richness personal cults and so forth
Moreover in Europe with its strong states and long-established freedom from
tribalism the Church is or was kind of disembodied and not always disembodied
state In North Africa where states were weak and tribalism strong the deviant
religious organizations were species of and not always
tribes
This is the reality under the apparent religious homogeneity of North Africa
Statistically disregarding the European and Jewish minorities virtually all
North Africans are Sunni Muslims of the Maliki rite The only significant exception
is the Ibadi minority with such strong protestant features as have been
described as the Calvinists of Islam and who thanks to trade manage to
wrest living from their desert base in Mzab and their island base in erba This
group still awaits its Max Weber But this appearance of homogeneity is only
superficial Underneath there is or was rich and varied world of religious
associations of living traditions of sanctity perpetuated and reproduced by
both physical and spiritual lineages of saints. The saints whom one can find on
the map of Europe from say St Andrews to St Tropez no longer represent
living social form The map of North Africa is richer in Sidis than the map of
Europe is in saints but the type of personage commemorated by place and shrine
is stih to be found in life
But here some qualification is required In very recent years even in North
Africa there has been decline in this form of popular religious life Uprooting
and industrialisation new wave of Muslim Reformism and purification and
finally nationalism have all significantly diminished the extent and importance
of these religious manifestations In this respect there is striking contrast with
West Africa There Europeans were identified with Christianity and so all forms
of Muslim religious life could continue to flourish whether orthodox or not
none were tainted by association with colonial powers In North Africa Christian
proselytism was not significant in as far as the colonial power worked on the
indigenous masses through religion it did so not through Christianity but through
the more archaic and segmented religious traditions Partly for this reason
national revival also meant decline of the saints and special cults Today they
72 SANCTITY PURITANISM SECULARISATION AND NATIONALISM IN NORTH AFRICA
are on the way out the day is probably near when Sidi on the North African
map will like St on European one merely be an echo of past form of
life
Except for the occupying French and Spaniards Europeans have on the
whole not had much contact with this sanctity at least for some time Outside
Tangier there is shrine of saint who became such for fighting the English
when they held the town and of course far greater number became sancti
fied for fighting the Portuguese In the XXth century more Europeans in
Europe have probably been in contact with these forms of North African religious
life unwittingly in the circus than in any other way Southern Morocco exports
circus acrobats and it is not generally recognised that these form something
between clan and guild and attribute their skill to the saintliness transmitted
charisma of their patron saint..
The literature on this subject in English is scanty the most important item
is probably the book by an Englishwoman who married into one of the saintly
lineages Emily Shareefa of Wazan and one sociological masterpiece Pro
fessor study of the Sanusi Order) and Mr Lings book is
most welcome addition to it Mr Lings is interested in religion and mysticism as
such rather than specifically in the social manifestations of it But this in way
makes the sociological material all the more valuable it is assembled quite un
selfconsciously
Shaikh Ahmad Alawi was born in Mostaganem in Western Algeria in
1869 and died in 1934 He was an extremely interesting example of the living
tradition of sanctity as it is conceived in North Africa Mr Lings remarks that
he remains wholly unknown outside the precincts of Islamic mysticism Within
those precincts he did however acquire enough fame to attract the interest of
French scholars concerned with Sufism notably of Berque and of Massignon
The former of these published an article about him two years after his death
entitled Un Mystique Moderniste This article curiously reproduces as fact an
emergent legend about the supposed travels in the East including India
legend is fabrication or as Mr Lings more charitably puts it ..these ten
years in the East were no more real than dream ..(but correspond to what
the Shaikh would have chosen for himself if his destiny had allowed it Mr
Lings charity suggests that there is something like Licence which
permits some vagueness in differentiating between real and imaginary travels
In my own experience North African saints are indeed addicted to mystical
travels to the holy places of Hej âz travels frequently unaided by normal means
of transportation though sometimes aided by sprouting wings for the purpose
and