New Perspectives on the Legal History of the Middle East? Rediscovering Jacques Berque, the “Field Historian”

1

New Perspectives on the Legal History of the Middle East?

Rediscovering Jacques Berque, the “field historian”1

Abstract

This article explores Jacques Berque’s early works on the legal history and anthropology of the

Maghreb, originally published between 1936 and 1958 and republished about a decade ago. In

the midst of the current debates about legal reform in the Middle East and North Africa, this

paper argues that both Berque’s method and his theoretical contributions can serve as a powerful

framework to better approach the phenomenon of legal pluralism in the region. Developed at a

time when the study of law was strictly divided between Orientalists, anthropologists, and social

historians, Berque’s truly interdisciplinary method was meant to transcend the prevailing barriers

and dichotomies by holistically apprehending the “legal life” of the populations studied. Such an

approach subsequently allowed him to explore issues of legal and normative pluralism by

focusing on the multiple symbioses between shari‘a and customary law, and by considering the

region’s legal history as a succession of creations, destructions, and revivals of these syntheses.

“Everything in his thought seems to say that there is always something to understand. As he himself used

to say, ‘there aren’t any under-developed societies, but under-analyzed societies.’

Here is undoubtedly the principle of this passion, this ‘pathos,’ that leads him from theme to theme, from

country to country, from the ‘lived experience of the social’ to the imaginary, from history to

anthropology: if his reflection escapes the ankylosis that threatens many thoughts, it is because Berque’s

changes with change...”

(J. Duvignaud, ‘Ce que l’on doit à Berque…’, in Adonis et al. (eds.), Rivages et déserts: Hommage à

Jacques Berque (Paris: Sindbad, 1988), 264 (personal translation).)

Introduction

In their introduction to the special issue of Islamic Law and Society edited in 2008, Iris Agmon

and Ido Shahar examine the question of why shariʿa courts were neglected for nearly two

centuries before eventually attracting the interest of scholars about two decades ago.2 To account

for this extensive disregard for shariʿa law, Agmon and Shahar invoke the “problematic division

of labor between and among”3 the various disciplines involved in its study, and convincingly

assert that “shariʿa court as a distinct socio-legal institution has suffered from ‘disciplinary

orphanhood’.”4 They underline the limitations of the theoretical and methodological paradigms

that long dominated the disciplines interested in shariʿa law, explaining how legal history gave

precedence to the study of normative texts within an Orientalist framework, how social history

relied on the uncritical collection and statistical analysis of data from court records, and how

legal anthropology preferred to focus on customary rather than Islamic law, thus constructing an

irreducible dichotomy between both.5

2

Furthermore, Agmon and Shahar argue that the critique of these paradigms and the shift

towards alternative theoretical and methodological premises in the past two decades have opened

up new perspectives for the study of shariʿa law from the three disciplines mentioned above. The

authors thus show how legal historians have begun to explore the role of justice practitioners in

the very making of the law, how social historians are increasingly taking into account the

recording practices and legal cultures of the court personnel, and how anthropologists are now

focusing on the socio-political and cultural dynamics of contemporary shariʿa courts.6 Finally,

Agmon and Shahar present and promote the latest work of these scholars, emphasizing the

fruitfulness of the socio-legal perspective that considers shariʿa law “in practice” and “in

society.”7

While I fully concur with the authors’ general assessment of the state of scholarship on law

in the Middle East and North Africa until the 1990s, I argue here that they have overlooked an

original scholar, whose work on law in the Maghreb, published between 1936 and 1958, had

avoided most of the pitfalls of the studies of his generation and whose method could serve as a

source of inspiration for a truly interdisciplinary approach to Islamic and Middle Eastern law.

This scholar is Jacques Berque (1910-1995).

A French colonial administrator in Morocco, Berque was “exiled” in the High Atlas for his

reformist ideas as early as 1947, and six years later, he left the colonial service altogether and

took a clear stance in favor of decolonisation.8 Praised by Edward Said and Albert Hourani for

his “methodological self-consciousness”9 and for being “one of those few Western scholars able

to observe Arabs and Islam in a sympathetic light,”10

he was condemned by Elie Kedourie for

going native and “third world” out of an “inner rebellion,” “intimate passions,” and “the guilt [...]

[of] being part of the French implantation in North Africa.”11

Having left the Sorbonne in 1932

as a student resenting its “provincialism of the universal,”12

he subsequently pursued his learning

outside of the system before eventually being promoted to its very top through his 1956

appointment at the Collège de France. But in spite of this achievement, Jacques Berque remained

somewhat of an outsider in an academy disconcerted by his style of scholarship and writing.

Some colleagues, like René Maunier and Georges Balandier, deemed it nothing less than

brilliant, while others, such as Ernest Gellner, considered it as revealing “obfuscation and an ill-

founded judgment.”13

In this article, I would like to bring to light a less known part of his work that is dedicated to

the general and historical anthropology of law in the Maghreb, and that was republished – but

went largely unnoticed – as the first volume of a collection of opera minora in 2001. I will

successively focus on:

the intellectual traditions to which these works belong,

the particularly innovative style, method, and theory that Berque developed in these

seminal works and that he retained until almost the end of his life,

the critiques raised by his scholarship and, finally, the legacy of “Berquisme”14

and the

inspiration it can provide today for the legal history of the Middle East.

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The origins of Berque’s method

The origins of Berque’s scholarship can be found at the intersection of three main intellectual

traditions: the socio-economic history of the Annales, the social sciences stemming from the

Durkheimian thought, and, to a lesser extent, the Orientalist philological and Islamic studies.15

The influence of the Annales can be measured in terms of both Berque’s intellectual

affinities with the school and his personal relations to its founders: March Bloch, Lucien Febvre,

and Fernand Braudel. In line with the Annales’ agenda, Berque focused his first works on the

evolution of the social pacts, exchanges, and structures that governed life in the rural

communities of Morocco over the “longue durée.” One of these very first articles, entitled “Sur

un coin de terre marocaine: seigneur terrien et paysans,” was published in the Annales d'Histoire

Economique et Sociale with a laudatory foreword by Marc Bloch.16

Between 1936 and 1958, the

young administrator will publish, in the school journal, four other important contributions to the

field, including prefigurations of his masterpiece on the social structures of the Moroccan High

Atlas and of his monograph on the Egyptian village of Sirs al-Layyān. In 1954, Jacques Berque

also paid tribute to Lucien Febvre by participating in an edited volume in his honor with “Qu’est-

ce qu’une tribu nord-africaine?”.17

Finally, it is thanks to the support of both Lucien Febvre and

Fernand Braudel that Berque was elected two years later to the 6th

section of the Ecole Pratique

des Hautes Etudes, the institutional heart of the Annales, and to the Collège de France.18

More significant and far-reaching than the Annales’, however, is the influence of the

Durkheimian school on Jacques Berque’s work, notably through two of its earliest proponents,

Marcel Mauss and Louis Gernet.19

In his memoirs, Berque recalls the moment when, at the age

of 24, he was appointed to his first position among the tribe of the Beni Meskin: “Having left

with, under the arm, the 9th

volume of L’Année sociologique that Louis Gernet had entrusted me

with, Durkheim together with pastoral life will have welcomed me in Morocco.”20

From

Durkheim, Berque retained the ambition to investigate the structural social facts presiding over

the life of the group, and the role played by law in upholding the latter’s normative system and

strengthening its cohesion. From Mauss, however, he adopted an intensely ethnographic method,

and a profound interest in the symbolic, imaginary dimension of social obligations. Marcel

Mauss also acted as a mentor for the young scholar, reading and providing feedback on the drafts

of his first two books Contribution à l’étude des contrats nord-africains (les pactes pastoraux

Beni Meskine) published in 1936 and Etudes d’histoire rurale maghrébine published in 1938.21

But Berque undoubtedly owed his greatest intellectual debt to his professor of Greek at the

University of Algiers, Louis Gernet.22

A specialist of the philology, history, and legal

anthropology of ancient Greece, Gernet is considered as a “pioneer” of interdisciplinarity in the

study of law. After his first work on wheat supply in 5th

and 4th

centuries Athens, he wrote a

masterpiece on the development of legal and moral thought in ancient Greece.23

A student of

Mauss, Gernet used language to investigate in this work “the formation of the categories of

thought (time, space, and causality) underlying social relations”.24

While his original approach

seems to have initially been rejected by his peers (which would explain his subsequent

appointment to Algiers in 1921), it was eventually recognized as highly innovative and fruitful

from the late 1940s onwards and continues to this day to be an important source of inspiration

notably for works on situations of legal pluralism.25

In 1948, Gernet joined Febvre and Braudel

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at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes as the director of studies in legal sociology, and a year

later, he became the editor of L’Année sociologique.

It was during his Algerian “exile,” however, that Berque asked him to supervise his first

studies in the legal anthropology and history of the Maghreb. At the time, these fields were

strictly divided between, on the one hand, anthropologists focusing on the alleged primitivity of

customary/Berber law on the basis of observations, and, on the other, Orientalists specializing in

the imagined orthodoxy of shariʿa/Arab-Islamic law stemming from the analysis of written

sources.26

Having studied Arabic, the Qur’an, and Islamic law with Muslim legal scholars,

Berque shared with the Orientalists an interest in language and texts, but he could not endorse

their theoretical vision of shariʿa as a monolithic and immutable legal system that was simply in

need, in the Maghreb, of some Western-inspired codification. As for the anthropologists, he

certainly appreciated their attention to legal practice, but he criticized their quasi-exclusive

search for the archaic and the magical in customary law, and rejected their unquestioned reliance

on Durkheim’s abstract theory of the Berber society as segmentary and governed by mechanical

solidarity; a theory that was being contradicted by the results of his fieldwork on pastoral

contracts.27

Drawing on Louis Gernet’s work and his own experience as a civil inspector of the

Moroccan indigenous courts, Berque wanted to overcome the constructed dichotomies that

dominated the field (notably between customary and Islamic law, and orality and writing), and to

explore precisely what neither the Orientalists nor the anthropologists of the time could

conceived of: the practical and continuous adaptation of law to historical change and the

resulting mixtures and symbioses between various legal and normative frameworks. To

contribute to this aim, he developed an original interdisciplinary method anchoring the study of

legal sources in a thick analysis of the “vécu social”28

of the group members and a hermeneutic

approach to the group’s symbolic imaginary.

“Berquisme”? Style, Method, and Theory

The most striking element of Jacques Berque’s work is undoubtedly his writing style. Through

dense, poetic, and sometimes convoluted passages, the French scholar simultaneously engaged

and challenged his audience. While some of his peers appreciated the literary prowess, others –

both native and non-native French readers – rejected the style as too lively and personal to be

scientific. Few, however, recognized the extent to which Berque’s way of writing was directly

guided by the original research method he had developed, with its ambition to both analyze and

render the lived experiences of the people he studied and to explore the symbolic meanings they

attached to these experiences from a hermeneutic perspective.29

Let us try to get a sense of what this particular approach entailed by examining Berque’s

second book, Etudes d’histoire rurale maghrébine,30

published in 1938. In this text, the author

analyzes the conflicting relationships between the large landowner, the rural community, and its

individual members in the Western Moroccan region of Rharb. He focuses his study more

specifically on the khammessat, one of the main farming systems in North Africa, according to

which the landlord owned the land, tools, seeds, and livestock, and hired peasants to cultivate his

property in exchange for one fifth of the harvest.

In his introduction, Berque argues: “The legal expert, the Arabic scholar, the historian, the

geographer, the folklorist, and so many more, will have to unite, or better, blend into one. Who

can claim to grasp the slightest North African social fact, without consulting each of these

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gentlemen, or better yet, trying to be each of them in turn?”31

To implement this

interdisciplinarity, Berque divides his book into two parts. The first part is a rich ethnography of

the agrarian relationships in the Rharb, based on his own fieldwork and that of previous scholars,

and complemented by a wide range of secondary literature allowing him to historicize the

farming contracts and trace the khammessat back to Muslim Spain. The second part consists of a

close contextualization and translation of a lively legal document by a 12th

century Muslim jurist,

a text that defended the institution of the khammessat against the attacks of other legal scholars,

and that was still widely used by Moroccan qādīs32

in the 1930s.

In addition to this double attempt to simultaneously historicize anthropology and

“anthropologize” history, Berque’s text illustrates a second element of his method: an approach

“from below” that takes as its object of research the issues raised by the actors themselves

through their conflicts and that analyzes them through these actors’ own categories. Thus, the

study opens on a profound reflection on the meanings of the “field” for the various parties

involved, based on both a semantic analysis of the different terms used and an ethnographic

consideration of topography and landscape.33

Besides words, Berque also explores the multiple

images34

that underlie the social solidarities in Morocco, and especially the symbolic and

imaginary dimensions of the tribal genealogy invented and called upon to establish in law the

rural community’s collective tenure.35

Such an approach, naturally resulting from his position of colonial administrator directly

grappling with growing social conflict both inside and outside of the courts, led him to focus his

research on situations of transition, and more specifically on moments revealing the practical

adaptation of law to historical change, whether in Fes in 1117 or in the Rharb in 1937. Thus, the

12th

century legal text in defense of the khammessat presented in Etudes d’histoire rurale

maghrébine perfectly shows how, despite the fact that this customary contract should

theoretically – and was practically but temporarily – forbidden in Islamic law,36

certain scholars

developed a rationale allowing them to justify it, thereby blending elements from two different

legal frameworks.37

This propensity of shari‘a, throughout history, to “adapt[] to the real”38

and

the subsequent “hybridizations”39

between Berber and Islamic legal and normative traditions that

resulted would become Berque’s main object of study for at least the following decade, notably

through highly contextualized analyses of jurisprudential texts by qādīs and muftīs, from 12th

century al-Ma‘dānī,40

to 18th

century al-‘Abbāsī,41

and early 20th

century al-Wazzānī.42

From these various case-studies, Berque drew powerful arguments about what he called “the

North African legal method”43

and significant theoretical contributions. In his 147 page Essai sur

la méthode juridique maghrébine published in 1944, the French scholar thus shed light on the

primordial importance of the legal method in Islamic jurisprudence (i.e. the act and art of

judging), over any kind of specific content. By focusing on the method and the various ways it

integrates custom, Berque revealed how the element of “law in the making”44

that shari‘a

contains opens up possibilities to assimilate heterogeneous – be they ancient or novel – legal and

normative cultures, notably through the process of ijtihād.45

This led him in turn to analyze the

relationships between law and culture in Arab-Islamic/Berber “symbioses,”46

and to go as far as

viewing the architecture of the qubba (North African saint shrines that consist of four square

walls with a dome) as the aesthetic manifestation of these legal symbioses and ultimately “the

resolution of the problem of squaring the circle.”47

On a more theoretical level, Berque laid out his main contributions to the field in a last

article entitled “Problèmes initiaux de la sociologie juridique en Afrique du Nord”48

and

published in 1953. The text was written both as a critique of the prevalent approaches to the legal

6

anthropology and history of the Maghreb at the time, and the presentation of a whole research

program to implement. Berque thus underlined the “vanity of the debate on the origins”49

of the

legal systems in the Maghreb, and denounced the essentialization of its various components (in

particular the Arab-Islamic and Berber elements) and of their relationships. He also deplored the

“compartmentalization”50

along regional or institutional lines used to analyze the inherent

diversity of the system, and advocated a holistic approach to what he coined the “legal life.”51

By

focusing on the “legal life,” Berque shed light on the historical interaction between an “agro-

pastoral” legal (or pre-legal) background52

and the profound reception of Islam and fiqh.53

On

this basis, he argued for a study of the great variety of the Arab-Islamic/Berber syntheses of the

Maghreb, not in terms of a relative proximity to some pure primitive model, but rather through

the lens of the relative elaboration of the legal system, in an analysis considering its socio-

economic dimension in all its complexity. Similarly, he called for a diachronic approach to the

relationship between the agro-pastoral and the Islamic elements, that would identify moments of

creation, destruction, and revival of the syntheses. Unfortunately, this long, complex, and

fascinating history still largely remains to be written.

Critiques and Legacy

In spite of the extremely stimulating avenues of research it has opened up, Berque’s scholarship

is not without shortcomings or limitations. First of all, as a colonial administrator, he seems to

have been, at least until 1947 and his banishment to the High Atlas, the victim of the illusion of

the modernizing mission of colonialism. This appears very clearly in a short chapter of his 1938

Etudes d’histoire rurale maghrébine entitled “A page of rural history” and dedicated to the

analysis of the social change entailed by the French colonization in the Moroccan countryside.

Through a comparison of the Rharb between 1900 and 1930, Berque showed how the local rural

communities made use of the French initiated land registration procedure to assert their rights to

the land over absentee landowners, and enthusiastically praised the progressive replacement of

the relationships of clientelism of the pre-colonial era with the wage system promoted by the

French authorities.54

On a more methodological level, his scholarly work generally betrays a lack of reflexivity

regarding his own position as a colonial administrator. While his analyses of the “legal life” in

Morocco undoubtedly benefited immensely from his immersion in the rural communities and his

direct experience of the indigenous courts,55

he was clearly unaware of the consequences of his

special position on both the social interactions of the group and their interpretations.56

In his

memoirs, Berque recognized that “the task [he] assumed with passion was both bringing [him]

closer and moving [him] away from the indigenous mass.”57

But he would merely describe his

situation as that of the “unwelcome guest” acting as “master,” and explain that he was able to

resolve this contradiction “through knowledge, service, and [eventually] taking sides.”58

More generally, Berque’s fieldwork techniques remain largely unmentioned. They seem to

have been circumscribed to “a total immersion and a permanent dialogue with his hosts.”59

But

the French scholar rarely quotes his interviewees, and he never indicates either the circumstances

of his fieldwork or his techniques of interview and observation.60

This seems to have been the

result of a choice on Berque’s part, rather than an omission. By directly presenting the results of

his research, instead of the raw material, he was making a point against the “objectivist”

anthropologists of the time who “treat[ed] social facts as things”61

and failed to see that, in order

to please them, their informers might have given them the answers they thought they expected.62

7

These various limitations, along with his idiosyncratic – and sometimes difficult – style,

probably explain Berque’s relative lack of intellectual heirs. While very few scholars have

directly referred to his work, I argue that he has not only been, but still can be, a major source of

inspiration for many.63

In the broader field of the anthropology of the Maghreb between

berberity and Islam, some light has already been shed on the complex relationships of Jacques

Berque’s thought to those of Ernest Gellner and Clifford Geertz.64

With regard to the legal

anthropology and history of the region, his legacy is less known. To my knowledge, the only

scholar who has directly referred to Berque’s scholarship is Lawrence Rosen. In The

Anthropology of Justice,65

Rosen builds his analysis of the differences between the “Muslim”

and the “common law” concepts of justice, using Berque’s argument that Islamic law is defined

by a particular legal method rather than any specific content. Furthermore, Rosen expands on

Berque’s attention to the socially pragmatic dimension of shari‘a and his emphasis on the

recognition of local practice.66

If Jacques Berque’s legal scholarship of the 1940s has not been

more frequently cited, one is struck by the echoes it finds in two other major works of the field

published in the past twenty years. One of these is Brinkley Messick’s Calligraphic State.67

While Messick’s powerful combination of the close study of doctrinal texts and a very rich

anthropological fieldwork is undoubtedly reminiscent of Berque’s approach, it is again at the

level of the founding argument that the proximity is the most remarkable. Indeed, when reading

Messick’s brilliant analysis of the 20th

century reform of shari‘a in highland Yemen and the

transformation of the spiral manuscript text into the straight printed form, one cannot help but

think of Berque’s subtle analysis of the “revolution” caused by the introduction of printing on the

legal scholars of Qarawiyīn – and hence on fiqh – and the transition from the “talisman” to the

“prospectus.”68

The second work major that echoes Berque’s method, although in a different and

less obvious manner, is Leslie Peirce’s Morality Tales.69

Here, the way Peirce associates a very

fine social history of mid-16th

century Aintab with references to late 20th

century anthropological

studies to analyze “the dilemma of a pregnant peasant girl”70

reminds us of how Berque used his

own fieldwork and interest in Annales style micro-history to study and interpret the real estate71

or penal laws of the Seksawa tribe72

or the archives of a rural qādī.73

Each of these authors seems

to have drawn Berque’s scholarship in a different direction: Rosen focusing on his study of the

legal technique, Messick on his hermeneutic insights, and Peirce – to a lesser extent – on his

combination of anthropology and social history. None, however, tried to emulate his method in

its entirety.

Conclusion

Today, the question of the respective place and legitimacy of state, customary, and shari‘a laws

is shaping the public debate about legal reform in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. Since these various

sources of the law are too often essentialized by the different actors involved, there is a pressing

need for legal scholars concentrating on the region to help both “historicize” and

“anthropologize” the terms of the discussion.

Within this context, I believe that Berque’s scholarship can serve as a unique source of

inspiration for the study of Ottoman, colonial, and contemporary laws in the Middle East and

North Africa, through the lens of legal and normative pluralism. His truly interdisciplinary

approach, by anchoring the study of legal archives in a rigorous historical analysis of the “vécu

8

social” and a hermeneutic approach to the symbols and representations attached to it, has proved

extremely fruitful, not only to investigate legal and normative systems “from below,” but also to

shed light on law’s fundamental ability to adapt to historical change and assimilate disparate

elements.

Today like yesterday, Berque’s work on legal “symbioses” can help us reject the “vanity of

the debate on the origins,” the essentialization of the various components of current and past

legal systems, and the compartmentalization of “legal life.” More profoundly, it encourages us to

situate and contextualize the present moment within a long history of creation, destruction, and

revival of original legal syntheses. Thereby, it allows us to restore to law its malleability, and to

the various actors of the legal process and legal reform, their agency and responsibility.

9

1 G. Albergoni, ‘Présentation’, in J. Berque, Opera Minora, 3 vols. (Paris: Bouchène, 2001), vol.

2, II. 2 I. Agmon, and I. Shahar, ‘Introduction’, Islamic Law and Society, 15 (2008): 1-19.

3 Agmon, and Shahar, ‘Introduction’, 3.

4 Ibid., 9.

5 Ibid., 4-10.

6 Ibid., 10-15.

7 Ibid., 15-19.

8 For an account of the evolution of his thought on the colonial system, see his autobiography: J.

Berque, Mémoires des deux rives (Paris: Seuil, 1989). 9 E. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979, c1978), 326. Said interestingly

explains: “What one finds in [his] work is always, first of all, a direct sensitivity to the material

before [him], and then a continual self-examination of [his] methodology and practice, a constant

attempt to keep [his] work responsive to the material and not to a doctrinal preconception.” Ibid.,

327. 10

J. Whidden, ‘Jacques Berque and the Academy: Islam and the West’, The Journal of North

African Studies, 13/4 (2008): 471. 11

E. Kedourie, ‘Politics and the Academy’, Commentary, 94 (1992): 54-55. 12

i.e. “another name for national complacency,” see: Berque, Mémoires, 32. 13

A. Mahé, ‘Jacques Berque et l’anthropologie juridique du Maghreb’, in J. Berque, Opera

Minora, 3 vols. (Paris: Bouchène, 2001), vol. 1, VIII. 14

A. Demeerseman, ‘Berquisme ou approche du reel?’, in Adonis et al. (eds.), Rivages et

déserts: Hommage à Jacques Berque (Paris: Sindbad, 1988), 249–257. 15

Berque, Mémoires, 141-142. 16

J. Berque, ‘Sur un coin de terre marocaine: seigneur terrien et paysans’, Annales d'histoire

économique et sociale, 45 (1937): 227-235; republished in J. Berque, Opera Minora, 3 vols.

(Paris: Bouchène, 2001), vol. 2, 7-16. 17

J. Berque, ‘Qu’est-ce qu’une « tribu » nord-africaine?’, in F. Braudel, Eventail de l’histoire

vivante: hommage à Lucien Febvre (Paris: Armand Colin, 1953), vol. 1, 260-271; republished in

J. Berque, Opera Minora, 3 vols. (Paris: Bouchène, 2001), vol. 2, 161-170. 18

Berque, Mémoires, 141, 165, 167. 19

Ibid., 141-142. 20

Ibid., 46 (personal translation). 21

Mahé, ‘Jacques Berque et l’anthropologie juridique du Maghreb’, XIII. 22

Berque, Mémoires, 22-23; on Louis Gernet, see: M. Sellès, ‘GERNET Louis-Jules’, in F.

Pouillon (ed.), Dictionnaire des orientalistes de langue française (Paris: Karthala, 2008), 440-

441. 23

L. Gernet, Recherches sur le développement de la pensée juridique et morale en Grèce: étude

sémantique (Paris: E. Leroux, 1917). 24

Sellès, ‘GERNET Louis-Jules’, 440. 25

Ibid., 441. As Michelle Sellès mentions, Gernet’s 1917 dissertation was republished for the

first time in 2001: L. Gernet, Recherches sur le développement de la pensée juridique et morale

en Grèce: étude sémantique, 2nd

edn. (Paris: Albin Michel, 2001).

10

26

On this division of labor between anthropologists and Orientalists, see: Mahé, ‘Jacques Berque

et l’anthropologie juridique du Maghreb’, VII, IX, XIV; as well as: J. Berque, ‘Cent vingt-cinq

ans de sociologie maghrébine’, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 3 (1956): 296-324;

republished in J. Berque, Opera Minora, 3 vols. (Paris: Bouchène, 2001), vol. 2, 183-212. 27

Mahé, ‘Jacques Berque et l’anthropologie juridique du Maghreb’, XII-XIV. 28

i.e. the lived experience of the social. 29

On Berque’s style as resulting from his scientific approach, see: Mahé, ‘Jacques Berque et

l’anthropologie juridique du Maghreb’, VII-VIII; and Demeerseman, ‘Berquisme ou approche du

reel?’, 254-255. 30

J. Berque, Etudes d’histoire rurale maghrébine (Tangier; Fes: Editions Internationales, 1938);


Ibid., 71. 32

Qādīs are judges in Islamic Law. 33

Berque, ‘Etudes d’histoire rurale maghrébine’, 75-81. 34

Ibid., 82. 35

Ibid., 103-109. 36

The problem raised by the khammessat is the uncertainty of the salary that it entails and that is

forbidden in Islamic law. 37


Ibid., 143. 39

Ibid., 191. 40

Ibid., 69-195; and J. Berque, Tad’mīn aç-çunnā‘: De la responsabilité civile de l’artisan

(Algiers: Carbonel, 1949); republished in J. Berque, Opera Minora, 3 vols. (Paris: Bouchène,

2001), vol. 1, 431-445. 41

J. Berque, ‘Les Ajwiba d’Al-‘Abassi’, Revue Algérienne, Tunisienne et Marocaine de

Législation et de Jurisprudence, mars-avril (1950): 1-11; republished in J. Berque, Opera

Minora, 3 vols. (Paris: Bouchène, 2001), vol. 1, 453-463. 42

J. Berque, Les Nawāzil el-Muzāra‘a du Mi‘yār Al-Wazzānī: étude et traduction (Rabat:

Moncho, 1940); republished in J. Berque, Opera Minora, 3 vols. (Paris: Bouchène, 2001), vol. 1,

211-271. 43

See: J. Berque, Essai sur la méthode juridique maghrébine (Rabat: M. Leforestier, 1944);


Berque uses the phrase “droit-se-faisant,” see: Berque, Mémoires, 71.

45 Ijtihād is “the making of a decision in Islamic Law by personal effort [on the basis of the

Qur’an and Hadīth, and] independently of any school of jurisprudence.” H. Wehr, ‘Ijtihād’, in J.

M. Cowan (ed.), Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, 3rd

edn. (Ithaca, N.Y.:

Spoken Language Services, 1976), 143. It is often opposed to taqlīd according to which the legal

scholar follows previous decisions without re-examining either their reasoning or scriptural

sources. 46

Mahé, ‘Jacques Berque et l’anthropologie juridique du Maghreb’, XIX-XXI. 47

Ibid., XXII; on the “Muslim aesthetics” see as well: J. Berque, ‘A propos de l’art musulman:

remarques sur le non-figuratif’, in J. Berque and J.P. Charnay (eds.), Normes et valeurs dans

l’Islam contemporain (Paris: Payot, 1966), 101-115; and J. Berque, ‘Polygones étoilés’, in J.

Berque, De l’Euphrate à l’Atlas (Paris: Sindbad, 1978), vol. 2, 531-544.

11

48

J. Berque, ‘Problèmes initiaux de la sociologie juridique en Afrique du Nord’, Studia Islamica,

1 (1953): 137-162; republished in J. Berque, Opera Minora, 3 vols. (Paris: Bouchène, 2001), vol.

1, 465-482. 49

Ibid., 467-469. 50

Ibid., 465-467. 51

In Etudes d’histoire rurale maghrébine, Berque had already introduced this notion of “legal

life” or “vie juridique.” He explained: “Que cette expression de ‘vie juridique’, où chacun des

deux termes est en quelque sorte l’antidote de l’autre, nous mette en garde dès l’abord contre

certaines outrances du système.

Rien de plus séduisant, - et d’éminents esprits s’y sont laissés aller non sans bonheur -, que de

montrer soit une analyse abstraite, avec divisions, tiroirs et sous-tiroirs, soit une description

éloquente. C’est à mi-chemin de ces deux extrêmes qu’on a le plus de chance de voir juste.”


Berque, ‘Problèmes initiaux de la sociologie juridique’, 473-475. 53

Fiqh in Islamic law refers to the jurisprudence; see: Ibid., 475-477. 54

On this point, see Alain Mahé’s critique: A. Mahé, ‘Notices, variantes et notes’, in J. Berque,

Opera Minora, 3 vols. (Paris: Bouchène, 2001), vol. 1, 545-546. 55

Berque, Mémoires, 46-73. 56

On this point, see: Mahé, ‘Jacques Berque et l’anthropologie juridique du Maghreb’, X-XI; F.

Pouillon, ‘L'hôtesse arabe (Hodna 1932)’, Revue du Monde Musulman et de la Méditerranée, 83-

84 (1997): 51-63. 57

Berque, Mémoires, 67. 58

Ibid., 67-68. 59

Mahé, ‘Jacques Berque et l’anthropologie juridique du Maghreb’, X. 60

Ibid., IX; B. Traimond, ‘La monographie de village: Berque en Egypte et ailleurs’, Revue du

Monde Musulman et de la Méditerranée, 83-84 (1997): 115-119. 61

Mahé, ‘Jacques Berque et l’anthropologie juridique du Maghreb’, IX. 62

J. Berque, ‘Aux sources d’une thèse universitaire. (Entretien avec Bernard Traimond)’,

Cahiers Ethnologiques, 9 (1988): 29-47; republished in J. Berque, Opera Minora, 3 vols. (Paris:

Bouchène, 2001), vol. 2, 431-437; B. Traimond, ‘La monographie de village’, 117-118. 63

Albergoni, ‘Présentation’, VII. 64

On this point, see: Mahé, ‘Jacques Berque et l’anthropologie juridique du Maghreb’, V, XVI-

XVII; Albergoni, ‘Présentation’, V-VIII; G. Albergoni, ‘Logiques d’assemblage, logiques

segmentaires’, Revue du Monde Musulman et de la Méditerranée, 83-84 (1997): 141-170; D.

Eickelman, ‘Jacques Berque (1910-1995)’, Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, 29 (1995):

149-151; E. Gellner, ‘Obituary of Jacques Berque’, The Guardian, 11 July 1995. 65

L. Rosen, The Anthropology of Justice: Law as Culture in Islamic Society (Cambridge; New

York: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 66

See Ibid., 58-79 (‘Chapter 4: Judicial discretion, state power, and the concept of justice’), and

especially 72-77. For the exact references to Berque’s work see Ibid., ‘note “pp.74-75”’, 90 and

‘note “pp. 46-47”’, 86. 67

B. Messick, The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination and History in a Muslim Society

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 68

See: J. Berque, ‘Essai sur la méthode juridique maghrébine’, 281-284 (‘Chapitre I:

Changements d’optique’). In this three page introductory chapter, Berque writes: “En même

12

temps que l’utilité mnémotechnique disparaît, cette spirale infinie du commentaire, qui dans le

vieux style oratoire s’imposait tout naturellement, paraît aujourd’hui gaucherie et lourdeur. Du

même coup, le fondement de ces deux genres nationaux s’écroule.

Et avec lui la nécessité sociale du vénérable maître, récitant, officiant, vaguement sacré, parfois

un peu fol, volontiers saint homme, et si peu fonctionnaire…

(…) Non seulement changement d’expression, de manière, mais changement d’optique, de

texture logique.

(…)

C’est une véritable révolution qui se traduit ici. Et ce passage de la récitation à la lecture, du

discours à l’imprimé, du manuscrit au manuel, de la vieille logique capricieuse de l’aède aux

nécessités du plan analytique, tout cela était bien plus lourd de conséquences pour la pensée

musulmane, et son contenu même, que ne put jamais l’être à nos clercs médiévaux une

révolution similaire. Il est vrai que toute méthode de connaissance façonne son propre objet,

jamais ce ne fut plus vrai que du fiqh. Car le fiqh est un droit où la technique joue un rôle de tout

premier plan.” (p. 283). On a different note, I should add that this 1944 text also bears the mark

of the colonial administrator’s faith in France’s “educational” mission when he evokes, along

with the “éloquentes importations orientales,” “cet entraînement à la ‘composition française’ que

nous passons aux autres; (); ce déliement des esprits et des langues que la France porte partout

avec elle.” (p. 283). 69

L. Peirce, Morality Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 2003). 70

Ibid., 351-374 (‘Part IV. Making Justice at the Court of Aintab - Fatma’s Story: The Dilemma

of a Pregnant Peasant Girl’). 71

J. Berque, ‘Documents anciens sur la coutume immobilière des Seksawa’, Revue Africaine, 93

(1948): 363-402; republished in J. Berque, Opera Minora, 3 vols. (Paris: Bouchène, 2001), vol.

1, 359-384. 72

J. Berque, ‘Quelques documents sur le droit répressif ancien du Haut-Atlas’, Revue

Algérienne, 1-2 (1953): 1-8; republished in J. Berque, Opera Minora, 3 vols. (Paris: Bouchène,

2001), vol. 1, 483-490. 73

J. Berque, ‘Petits documents d’histoire sociale marocaine: les archives d’un cadi rural’, Revue

Africaine, 94 (1950): 113-124; republished in J. Berque, Opera Minora, 3 vols. (Paris:

Bouchène, 2001), vol. 2, 43-50.

13

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