ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jazāʾirī, Migration, and the Rule of Law: ‘A Reply to Certain Persons of Distinction’

This article deals with a text authored by ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jazāʾirī during the later years of his rule in what is now Western Algeria. Ostensibly a justification for some of his major policies through recourse to Mālikite (and to a lesser extent Shāfiʿī) juridical traditions, this text is a suggestive of understanding ʿAbd al-Qādir’s religious politics. As well as presenting legal precedents, it illustrates several of ʿAbd al-Qādir’s views on the primacy of divine law, its relationship with Sufism, and its place in the history of Islamo-Christian contact and conflict in the Western Mediterranean. It is hoped that this article will contribute to the general understanding of ʿAbd al-Qādir by elucidating his moral and ideological perspectives from a textual basis. This article also informs the question, implicit in many historical discussions, of whether ʿAbd al-Qādir’s rule in Algeria an instance of rule of law or rule by law.