The Last Breath - Chap1 From Emir Abdel Kader

8/12/2019 The Last Breath - Chap1 From Emir Abdel Kader

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The Last Breath

La ilaha illa LlahTere is no god but God. . .

Damascus, May , .o His Excellency Jules Grvy, President o the Republic.With sorrow, I have the honor o conveying the great misortune

that has struck us regarding my athers person . . . who died this Sat-urday evening at midnight (Le Figaro, May , ). It is in theselaconic terms that Muhammad Said announced the death o the EmirAbd el-Kader to the French President Jules Grvy.

During the rst days o the spring o , his state o health haddangerously worsened. An illness o the heart, Le Figaro specied,which, or several years, had slowly used up his strength and held hisentourage in incessant ear o an approaching end (Le Figaro, May ,

). His entire lie had prepared him to give up his soul. Far romdreading this moment, it was with a eeling o ulllment that he pre-pared to welcome it, rejoicing, he wrote to one o his sons, in goingto meet the Almighty. Te Su Abd el-Kader had made o his exis-tence a place o discovery o the inexpressible. A spiritual way whichhad led him to die to the world a little more each day, until the physicaldeath which placed him at the threshold o what he designated as thegreatest deliverance and the highest bliss. He dedicated the breaths

that separated him rom this decisive moment to the mention o thesupreme NameAllah. . . . Te last breath took place at midnight, Fri-day, May , , at Doummar, in the outskirts west o Damascus.

Cited in Marie dAire (ne Boissonnet), Abd-el-Kader. Quelques documents nou-veaux, lus et approuvs par lofficier en mission auprs lmir (Amiens: Impr. de Yvert etellier, ), p. .

Mawqif . Kitab al-Mawaqif (pl. o mawqif), or Te Book of Halts, is the spiritual

compendium o Abd el-Kader. We reer to the translations o Michel Chodkiewicz(Abd el-Kader, crits spirituels [Paris: Seuil, ]) and o A. Khurshd (Lyon: Ali di-tion, ). Te reerences are given as ollows without urther specication:Mawqifollowed by a number.


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At the rst light o day, the inert body o the son o Sidi Muhyiad-Din and Lalla Zuhra was placed in a bus going towards the old city.

Tere, where ormerly the deceased regularly met with his brethrenin God, the remains were lef in the care o the religious dignitarieswho undertook the uneral washing. Among them was one o his clos-est companions, the Shaykh Abd ar-Rahman Illaysh, his equal insanctity, his son pointed out. Outside, the crowd had not ceased togrow as the news o his death spread. Afer receiving military honorsin the presence o the city authorities and representatives o the con-sulate, the casket was conveyed in a uneral procession to the GrandUmayyad Mosque where an initial ceremony was celebrated. Te con-

voy, ollowed by a compact throng o , persons, then headednorth towards Salahieh, at the oot o Mount Qasiyun, the mountaino the Forty Saints. He was buried in the mausoleum o the amousSu o Andalusia o the th century, Shaykh Ibn Arabi. Te burial wasdone on orders o the Ottoman sultan, at the request o the governoro Damascus, Izzet Pasha. He thus shared the nal resting place o himwhom he considered to be one o his spiritual masters, and o whomhe was the most eminent disciple o the th centurya divine avor,

to which was added the one which the Andalusian considered to be thegreatest: to be buried by men extinguished rom themselves, o whomGod is the ear, the eye, and the tongue.

Many men o letters paid a last tribute to the Knight o the Faith,expressing mixed joy and sorrow in their soaring lyrics: i or us thydeparting tastes o Hell, Paradise is honored at thy coming, a poetwrote. And another, more somber one: I see the universe darkened;the days without sun, the nights without moon. . . . Whilst the birds

Te principal Arab terms are dened in a glossary at the end o the book.

Al-Hachemi, cited in Marie dAire,Abd-el-Kader, p. .

Mount Qasiyun contains some orty natural grottos called the Sanctuary o theForty Saints. Te spiritual tradition o Islam mentions the existence o an Assemblyo Saints, Diwan as-salihin, who govern the universe. In the present case, the FortySaints reer to a category o saints termed the Abdal or substitutes.

Futuhat, I, p. cited by Claude Addas in Ibn Arabi ou la Qute du soufre rouge(Paris: Gallimard, ), p. .

Nizar Abada, al-Amir Abd al-Qadir al-Jazairi, al-alimu al-Mujahidu (Beirut: Daral-Fikr al Muassir, h []), pp. -.


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were in continual song, suddenly they ell silent. Tere also is an in-spired poem that was retained as an epitaph. Composed by Abd al-

Majid al-Khani, a ellow disciple in the Suc Way o Shaykh Ibn Arabi,it pays homage to the spiritual heir o the Prophet: Saint and son othe Prophet, thou assuredly art. Tou hast received rom the supremeCompanion the grace o contemplation in the most sublime Stations onearness. Te most signicant tribute, however, came rom the crowdthat had swarmed into the surrounding narrow streets, representingthe cultural and religious mosaic o the ancient Umayyad capital, rec-onciled or the duration o the ceremony around the memory o a manwhose most ervent prayer had been precisely to unite the human am-

ily around a common principle.In France, beginning Monday the th o May, most o the nation-

al dailies dedicated an article to the death o the Emir Abd el-Kader.Ranging rom the most simple dispatch to the most glowing tributes,all acknowledged the historical signicance o the event. Le Figaro(May , ), with the pen o the well-inormed Henri dIdeville, re-called the stature o the deceased: Te most redoubtable adversarythat France encountered on Arican soil, the man who or sixteen years

o heroic battles ought or his aith and or the independence o hiscountry, Abd el-Kader is, unquestionably, the most important person-age that has arisen in the last century among the Muslim populations.And he ended his article with the amous quote o Marshal Soult, theormer president o the Council: At present in the world there are onlythree men who can legitimately be called great, and all three pertainto [Islam]: they are Abd el-Kader, Muhammad Ali, and Shamil. Leemps(May , ), which dedicated its ront page to the event, em-

phasized the exceptional character o the personage: His career wasdivided into two periods: the rst was a true heroic epic; the second

Ibid.

Ibid.

Islamism in the original. In the nineteenth century, this term meant Islam, andnot political Islam as it has come to mean in our day. In order to avoid any misinter-pretation, and as an exception, we have substituted Islam or Islamism.

Mehemed-Ali, or according to another spelling Muhammad Ali, was the viceroy oEgypt until his death in . He introduced important reorms in his country. ImamShamil (-) was the hero o the independence o the Caucasus against the Rus-sian troops. He met the Emir Abd el-Kader in Egypt in .


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was a renunciation o all the tumult o the past. Judged rom the stand-point o history, and aside rom all the prejudices o our civilization,

Abd el-Kader will appear as one o the most extraordinary men o ourtimes. Some amous newspapers published engraved portraits o theEmir on the ront page o their issues; or example, theJournal illustr(June , ) and also La Rpublique illustre (June , ). Te Eng-lish and American newspapers were part o this editorial movement.On May , the New York imes published the dispatch o the son o thedeceased in its obituary, in order to complete it several weeks later witha signed article by Ferdinand de Lesseps. Te day afer his demise, theChicago Daily ribune (May , ) summed-up the general eelingprevailing then with the headline, Death o Abd el-Kader, who oncelled the world with his name.

Le emps (May , ) recalled a curious act that had occurredthree years earlier. Between the years and , the rumor o Abdel-Kaders death went around the world. At the time, it gave rise to asuccession o laudatory articles that were brought to the notice o thedeceased, who had recovered rom the attacks that had put his liein danger, and who read them with deep emotion, and then collecting

himsel or a ew moments said, I rejoice that in France it was believedthat I was dead; or through your newspapers I have acquired the cer-titude that my memory will be respected by the French; and that is agreat happiness or me. Abd el-Kader al-Hasani, however, had neversought gratitude or any notoriety, nor still less posthumous glory. Hewas acutely aware o the evanescence o things human and had neverclaimed any o the merits attributed to himan abnegation that heormulated in these terms: I have not made events: it is events that

have made me what I have been.

Nevertheless, it was the historicalevents in which he took part and the responses he gave to their chal-lenges marking his lie that have revealed him whom the chroniclersand historians have immortalized with the title o Emir Abd el-Kad-er, and that have made him one o the great gures o his century.

Le Petit Journal o November and also Le Monde illustr o November announced on their ront page the death o the Emir with a ull page portrait. Te

New York imes o November , , had the headline: Death o Abd el-Kader, theDeender o Arab Nationality. It seems that a similar rumor was disseminated by thepress at the beginning o .

A.F.P. de Comte,Mmoires dun royalist (Paris: Perrin, ), vol. , pp. -.


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Abd el-Kader bin Muhyi ad-Din was born seventy-ve years ear-lier, in , in the West o the Ottoman Regency o Algiers, in a am-

ily o the religious nobility. In the religious and spiritual institution ledby his ather, seat o the Qadiriyya Suc brotherhood o which he wasalso a representative, he acquired a classical knowledge that destinedhim to be dedicated to a religious career. Te landing o French troopsat the outskirts o Algiers in June o decided otherwise. In theall o , at the insistence o his ather, he was placed at the heado the tribes o the province o Oran and acquired the title o Com-mander o the Faithul: that date marked his entry into history. Start-ing rom almost nothing, without experience, within the space o a ew

years, the Emir Abd el-Kader developed a military organization andestablished the basis o a edgling State. For more than feen yearshe held off the oremost army in the world and was able to imposetwo peace treaties allowing him to consolidate his administration. Hisreusal to compromise, his strength o soul in the ace o setbacks, hismagnanimity, aroused a current o sympathy in the very ranks o hisadversaries. Already at that time, numerous testimonies emphasized

According to numerous sources, the birth date o Abd el-Kader bin Muhyi ad-Dinal-Hasani lies between the years and o the hegira, which corresponds to theyears - o the Julian calendar. Te biographical essay that his son MuhammadSaid dedicates to him, uhfat az-zair tarikh al-Jazair wal-Amir (henceorth cited asuhfat; Gif to the Pilgrim concerning the History o Algeria and the Emir [Alexan-dria, ; Beirut, ]), indicates a precise date, rajab , which corresponds tothe month o September, . Te same month and the same year are also indicatedby another son o the Emir Abd el-Kader, al-Hashimi (Marie dAire, Abd el-Qader,p. ). Te amily hagiography certainly draws rom the same source as the Englishbiography o the Emir: Charles Henry Churchill, in his biography Te Life of Abd-el-

Qader, ex-Sultan of the Arabs of Algeria (London: Chapman Hall, ), opts or themonth o May . Alexandre Bellemare, who in published his biography o theEmir, places his birth at the beginning o the year o the hegira () (Abd-el-Kader, sa vie politique et militaire [Paris: Hachette, ], p. ). Te work o LonRoches, rente-deux ans travers lIslam (Paris: Firmin-Didot, ), mentions ra-

jab , which corresponds to September , . According to a biographical essaywritten under the supervision o Abd el-Kader during his captivity, it is the years and that are used, and thus repeat the data given by the sons and by Churchill.However, it is impossible to affirm anything on this question and to exclude one dateover another. Te only thing we are sure o is that everyone bases himsel on an ap-

proximate oral tradition, hence subject to caution. Let us add nally that most o thelater biographies published in France use the year ; such is the case, among others,o Paul Azan, or P. dEstailleur-Chanteraine, to cite only the authors o the rst hal othe twentieth century.


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the paradoxical character o the personage, at once warrior and saint:the Emir had chosen to nourish his political action by continual medi-

tation. However, the scorched earth policy practiced by his emblem-atic adversary Marshal Bugeaud, reduced years o efforts to naught.Abandoned by a party o his own, harassed on all sides by French andMoroccan troops, Abd el-Kader agreed to give himsel up, and in De-cember o signed a treaty o surrender with the French AricaArmy. Tereupon ended the rst phase o his lie. Victim o a perjurer,he was placed in captivity with a hundred o his companions. First heldin oulon, then in Pau, he spent our o his ve years in captivity inAmboise, which in many respects was like a spiritual retreat, revealing

a dimension that until then had been masked by the man o politics.It was also a period rich in dialogues at once cultural, intellectual, andreligious. In October o , the Emir was set ree, and he denitivelyrenounced political action.

Te new stage o his lie unolded in the East. Afer a stay o twoyears in Bursa, urkey, which he lef in the spring o , Abd el-Kad-er settled in Damascus, where he would end his days. He returned toFrance three times, notably in and , on the occasion o the

Universal Expositions which were then held in Paris. His interventionin avor o the Christians during the uprisings which took place againstthem in the Syrian capital in July o , emphasized his humanistdimension and, more undamentally, his conviction o a supra-con-essional brotherhood. Yet, while tributes poured in rom the wholeworld, the Emir continued his quest o the inexpressible through thestudy and teaching o the religious and spiritual traditions o Islam. Inparticular, he embarked on a subtle exegesis o the spiritual works o

Shaykh Muhyi ad-Din Ibn Arabi, o which he became one o the rstmodern editors. During this time as well, the hidden ace o the SuAbd el-Kader was ully revealed. In , the encounter in Mecca withhis spiritual master, Sidi Muhammad al-Fasi ash-Shadhili, gave a naldecisive turn to his lie. Under his direction, he entered into a spiri-tual retreat rom which he emerged transgured, ull o an experiencethat illumined his view o the world, a view that was lucid and serene.Spiritual speculations did not, however, cut him off rom the realitieso his time, o which he became an enthusiastic and active witness. Hissupport o the project to construct the Suez Canal, the inaugurationo which he attended in November o , attests to this. Proo o aresolutely modern thought, the support given to this projectthe key


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event o its centuryhad also been a tangible maniestation o his aithin a reconciliation o the human amily. In the s, the man little by

little withdrew into silence, ending his years, wrote a witness, as hehad begun them, in a retreat lit by his writings, and in the practice ohis worship. Nonetheless, he was not to ade into oblivion. He whoduring his very lie had become at once a legend and a major gure ohistory would leave a posterity which he did not suspect.

Lady Anne Blunt, Voyage en Arabie, plerinage au Nedjed berceau de la race Arabe,translated rom the English by L. Derome (Paris: Librairie Hachette, ), pp. -.

The Last Breath - Chap1 From Emir Abdel Kader

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