Introduction to Maghreb Review and Maghreb Studies Association Conference: ‘Colonial Heritage in the Middle East and the Maghreb: The Shaping of Hopes and perspectives’

The Maghreb Review, Vol. 39, 2, 2014 © The Maghreb Review 2014 This publication is printed on longlife paper INTRODUCTION TO MAGHREB REVIEW AND MAGHREB STUDIES ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE: ‘COLONIAL HERITAGE IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE MAGHREB: THE SHAPING OF HOPES AND PERSPECTIVES’ Mansfield College, Oxford: 24-25 June 2013 ALLAN CHRISTELOW I would like to welcome you to this conference. We can all offer our sincere thanks to Mohamed Ben Madani who has put a great deal of work into organising this conference, and who has contributed over more than three decades to developing an understanding of the Maghreb in the English-speaking world, through the publication of the Maghreb Review. This journal has helped to place the Maghreb in a larger context. It has helped to bring down the barriers established by those who conceive of the Maghreb as defined by the boundaries around the French colonial territories of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. The Islamic Maghreb, or, to translate, the Islamic West, is a region that extends from the shores of the Mediterranean to the southern side of the Sahara, the West African Sahel, which extends from Senegal and Mauritania, to northern Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Libya. The Islamic Maghreb stands at the frontier of the Muslim world with Christian Europe, and also at the frontier with sub-Saharan Africa, a situation connected to two different legal frameworks defining the status of non-Muslims. On the northern frontier, Christians and Jews could be respected as dhimmis, or protected people, as long as they did not take up arms. Jews were accepted as refugees from the Spanish inquisition, and welcomed as traders who linked the Maghreb with Livorno, the trading hub in northern Italy. To the south, Africans following traditional religions might be seen as potential enthusiastic recruits to Islam, who could bring a new vitality to the faith, but if they rejected Islam they were seen as kuffar, unbelievers who could be enslaved. The Maghreb is also a region with close ties to the Middle East, through culture, religion, trade, travel and migration. It is a region that offers interesting comparisons to territories further off, notably the former Russian territories of the Caucasus and Central Asia. Both the Maghreb and the Caucasus produced muhajirs, refugees fleeing non-Muslim conquest. They met in such settings as Damascus. Amir Khalid, grandson of Amir fiAbd al-Qadir, and a hero of the Algerian national cause, grew up in Damascus. He had one parent from both of these regions. He went on to serve as an officer in the French army, and after the war he sent a petition to the United States president, Woodrow Wilson, asking that he support Algerian independence. Today, as emigrants or refugees, OPENING INTRODUCTION 119 Muslims from diverse settings meet in locations stretching from Canada to Australia. There is a common assumption in the English-speaking world of Middle East studies that the Maghreb is of minor importance compared with the core area of the Middle East, both politically and intellectually. Yet if we go back to the past, one of the greatest thinkers in the Arab world had his roots in the Maghreb: fiAbd al-Rahman Ibn Khaldün. His life began in a family of Andalusian refugees living in 14th-century Tunis. He then moved on to other places, from Morocco, to Egypt to Syria. This gave him a wide perspective as he developed his theory of historical cycles, examining how strong political systems eventually fall apart as they are weakened by the comfort and ease of urban life, eventually to be replaced by a new movement propelled by an inspirational leader supported by people who had learned self-reliance living in the austere environment of the mountains or desert. Since we are here at Oxford, we might also recall Arnold Toynbee, a graduate of Balliol College, who went on to adapt cyclical theory to the modern age, recognising that the second world war had brought an end to the age of European empires, that dialogue – not domination – was the path to the future. It is these theories of historical cycles that helped to inspire the theme of this conference. This pattern of cycles described by...

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