Magic and Religion in North Africa

In our lands, if the Rogui pretender/insurgent who aspires to the throne of Fez does not take the title of Master of the Hour, he at least gives his revolt the most orthodox motives. He claims, in effect, to have no other design than to rectify the wanderings of Sultan Abd el-Aziz, who is guilty of indulging in the forbidden amusements provided for him by the infidels: strictly speaking, the ih’tisâb the duty of enjoining good and forbidding evil could justify his conduct. Do the Abâd’ites an Islamic sect not profess that an imâm leader/religious head who innovates must be deposed? That is the origin of the conflict of Ali against the khâredjites secessionists.

It has become a banal observation that one religion never entirely supplants another, but that it partially assimilates it: however, this is perhaps less true of Islam than of many other religions. The rigid character of the dogma and the meticulous precision that governs the ritual are obstacles to its interpenetration with all the religious institutions it succeeds. What has remained intact in the current religion of the indigenous people of North Africa, from their previous beliefs, from their primitive deities? Very little: if we did not have some inscriptions, some passages from ancient authors, and some names in the Berber dialects(1), we would hardly be in a state to prove that the inhabitants of this country never worshipped any other god than Allah the Unique. North Africa is

(1) See the Corpus and Corippus; Partsch, The Berbers according to Corippus, in Satura Viadrina, Breslau, 1896, VI, 161 pp.; among the Muslim authors, El Bekri is the only one who gives us indications (Gurzé, Iakoûch); cf. de Motylinski, "The Berber name of God among the Abadhites," in Rec. Afr., XLIX, 1905, p. 141 seq. and the references given in that work.