Re-collecting Algerian Cultural History: The Work of Bilqasim Sacadallah

Abstract

On his way through an airport in 1988, Professor Bilqasim Sacadallah of the University of Algiers experienced a scholar's worst nightmare. He lost a briefcase containing a partially completed manuscript, research notes, and documents difficult to replace. This disaster might be read as a metaphor for his object of study, Algerian cultural history. On a far larger scale, French colonialism posed a potentially irreversible disaster for the Arabic and Islamic cultural heritage of Algeria. With the initial French onslaught in the 1830s, many documents and manuscripts were destroyed; some for no better reason than that French soldiers found them convenient for lighting their pipes. French confiscation of Islamic endowment properties in urban areas left educational institutions dependent on meager allocations from colonial authorities. The prolonged upheaval of the revolution from 1954 to 1962 also took its toll as the militant settlers of the Secret Army Organization (OAS) used their incendiary skills on the National Library, and as private collections of books and periodicals were destroyed or dispersed, and archives were carted off to France.