Emir ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jazāʾirī

No more impressive figure, perhaps, exists in the modern history of Sufism than that of Emir Abd el-Kader. Head of state, war leader against the French for fifteen years, exiled as a prisoner in France, then freed and exiled to Damascus, where he became a great spiritual master, wrote metaphysical works of exceptional depth, and saved the lives of thousands of Christians during the riots of 1860. A life like a novel — except that it was lived.

The young scholar

ʿAbd al-Qādir ibn Muḥyī al-Dīn was born in 1808 in the family zawiya of El Guettana, near Mascara in Algeria. His family belonged to the high spiritual aristocracy of Algeria — his lineage traces back to the Prophet through the imam Ḥasan, and his father Muḥyī al-Dīn was a shaykh of the Qādiriyya, the oldest and most widespread of the Sufi brotherhoods of the Maghreb.

The young Abd el-Kader received a remarkable traditional education. At five, he could read the Quran. At twelve, he had memorised it entirely. As an adolescent, he studied Mālikī law, theology, grammar, rhetoric, logic, Peripatetic philosophy and Sufi metaphysics — in particular the work of Ibn ʿArabī, of which he became one of the most profound connoisseurs of his time.

In 1825, at seventeen, he accompanied his father on the pilgrimage to Mecca. The return journey passed through Egypt, where he witnessed the modernising reforms of Muḥammad ʿAlī — the beginning of a reflection on Islam and modernity that would remain central in his work.

The war leader

In 1830, the French landed at Algiers. It was the beginning of the colonial conquest. In 1832, at twenty-four, Abd el-Kader was proclaimed amīr al-muʾminīn — “commander of the believers” — by the tribes of western Algeria, who chose him to lead the resistance.

For fifteen years (1832-1847), he waged an exceptional war against the French army. A brilliant strategist, he built in a few years a veritable Algerian state — an itinerant capital, an administration, a currency, schools, a regular army, military hospitals. He negotiated on an equal footing with the French governor (General Bugeaud signed with him the treaty of the Tafna in 1837), he rallied tribe after tribe, he defeated the French armies several times.

But the disproportion of forces ended by imposing itself. Bugeaud applied total war — destruction of the villages, of the harvests, of the herds — which ruined the very bases of the resistance. In 1847, after fifteen years of wandering and combat, Abd el-Kader made his surrender to General Lamoricière, on the express condition that he be allowed to go into exile in Egypt or Syria.

This condition would be betrayed. Abd el-Kader was taken to France and imprisoned — first at Toulon, then at the château of Amboise, then at Pau. Four years of captivity in correct but, for a man of honour, wounding conditions.

The free exile — Damascus

In 1852, Napoleon III, freshly elected, took the just decision: he freed Abd el-Kader, in his presence and with his public excuses for the unkept promise. The Emir chose exile in Damascus — the city where Ibn ʿArabī, his posthumous spiritual master, lies. He settled there with his family in 1855.

In Damascus began what one might call his second life. No longer the warrior, but the spiritual master. Abd el-Kader taught in the great Umayyad mosque — on Ibn ʿArabī, on the Quran, on the ḥadīth. He gathered around him disciples come from the whole Muslim world. His zawiya became a radiant spiritual hearth.

1860 — The protector

In July 1860, communal riots broke out in Damascus. Muslims, stirred up by the political and economic conjuncture, rushed against the Christian community of the city. Several thousand Christians were threatened with massacre.

Abd el-Kader reacted immediately. He went out into the streets with his sons, his servants, his former Algerian fighters who had followed him into exile. He opened the doors of his own house — a vast residence — to shelter there the Christians fleeing the rioters. He negotiated with the Muslim chiefs, reminded them of the Quran and the ḥadīth that absolutely forbid harming the people of the Book who live in peace. He made rounds, went to fetch the women and children caught in the trap.

In a few days, Abd el-Kader saved the lives of about 12,000 people — Eastern Christians, but also European consuls, missionaries, merchants. The gesture, immense, was immediately recognised throughout the world. Napoleon III awarded him the Legion of Honour. Pope Pius IX sent him the Order of Pius. The American president Abraham Lincoln sent him a pair of revolvers with ivory grips — a fraternal gesture of admiration. A small American town in Iowa, in 1864, took his name — Elkader — which it still bears.

But above all, Abd el-Kader made nothing of this glory. To those who congratulated him for his act of tolerance, he answered simply: “I was not tolerant. I obeyed my Prophet, who absolutely forbids harming the innocent. Whoever departs from this rule departs from Islam.”

The metaphysical work

During his Damascene years, Abd el-Kader composed his spiritual work. Three major texts have passed to posterity:

These works show an Abd el-Kader fully master of the metaphysics of Ibn ʿArabī — which he knows in its slightest details — and capable of translating it into concrete, accessible spiritual meditations. His style mingles Akbarian conceptual rigour with a warmth of personal experience.

A political visionary

Abd el-Kader was also a political visionary. In Damascus, in the years 1860-1870, he proposed to the Ottoman sultan and to the Europeans an ambitious project: the construction of a Suez canal. When Ferdinand de Lesseps realised it a few years later, it was with his active support — the Emir presided over the inauguration ceremony in 1869.

He also thought of an Arab federation under the aegis of an enlightened sultanate, which would modernise Islam while preserving its spiritual heart. His ideas would influence the whole Islamic reform movement of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries — from Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī to Muḥammad ʿAbduh.

A death and a posterity

Abd el-Kader died in Damascus on 26 May 1883, at the age of seventy-five. He was buried, according to his wish, in the immediate vicinity of the tomb of Ibn ʿArabī, on the slopes of Mount Qāsiyūn. In 1965, his remains were transferred to independent Algeria, and rest today in the El-Alia cemetery in Algiers.

Today, Abd el-Kader is claimed by several traditions that see him as their own:

• Algerians make of him their national founding father — a fighter against colonisation, the creator of the first modern Algerian state.
• The Sufis consider him one of the greatest Akbarian masters of recent centuries.
• Eastern Christians venerate him as their historical protector.
• Universal humanists make of him an exemplary figure of courage and justice beyond religious borders.

The soul of the just, when it leaves this world, keeps in the memory of human beings a light that still illumines. This light is called example — and it is more precious than all the empires one has possessed. Abd el-Kader, Mawāqif