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International audience; This article analyzes the career path of Aminata Kane Koné, a highly educated Ivorian Muslim woman, who has emerged as a female figure of success. A prominent activist of the Association des Élèves et Étudiants Musulmans de Côte d'Ivoire in the 2000s, she has become a self-made religious entrepreneur through media and social initiatives. She has overcome social constraints to establish herself as a highly mediatized Muslim public intellectual, influential not only in Islamic circles, but within the broader society. Her case illustrates ways in which relationships between gender and Islamic authority are changing in West Africa. She embodies a uniquely hybrid feminism, influenced by her secular education and her Muslim faith.

Ausgehend von den aufgeregten Reaktionen auf Michael Rothbergs deutsche Übersetzung von Multi-directional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization im Jahr 2021, zwölf Jahre nach der Veröffentlichung des Originals, untersucht dieses Arbeitspapier die Debatte in Deutschland aus der spezifischen Perspektive von Migrant*innen der zweiten und dritten Generation. Zunächst wird beleuchtet, dass der migrantische Teil der westdeutschen Gesellschaft nicht ausgenommen war von der sukzessiven Vergegenwärtigung der Menschheitsverbrechen des nationalsozialistischen Völkermords ab Ende der 1970 Jahre - eine Tatsache, die heute ignoriert wird. Anschließend wird die Frage gestellt, wie sich Garantien der Nichtwiederholung, ein wichtiger Grundsatz von Erinnerungsarbeit, in einem Land auswirken, das große Anstrengungen unternommen hat, um dem Vergessen der Verbrechen entgegenzuwirken und ein Lernen aus der Geschichte umzusetzen. Am Beispiel jüdischer Reaktionen auf die Ermordung der ägyptischen Apothekerin Marwa el-Sherbini in Dresden im Jahr 2009 entwickelt die Autorin die These, dass sich im Zuge der anhaltenden Gewalt in Deutschland (NSU, Halle, Hanau) muslimisch-jüdische Solidaritätsnetzwerke entwickeln. Diese Verbindungen sind derzeit - bewusst oder unbewusst - Ziel heftiger verbaler Angriffe. Man muss sich fragen, warum nicht-jüdische Deutsche bereit sind, Juden in Deutschland und deutsche Juden, die solche Empathie-Bande aufbauen, als "antisemitisch" zu charakterisieren? Die Autorin schlägt vor, die "hermeneutische Schikane", mit der auf Beiträge von Michael Rothberg und Susan Neiman im sogenannten Historikerstreit 2.0 reagiert wurde, im Kontext jüdisch-muslimischer Solidarität zu verstehen. Stellen Kolonialhistoriker, postkoloniale Theoretiker und Wissenschaftler der vergleichenden Völkermordforschung tatsächlich die Einzigartigkeit des Holocausts in Frage? Oder sind andere Motive im Spiel, die über Deutschland hinausweisen, um ihnen zu unterstellen, eine Opferkonkurrenz zu konstruieren? Departing from the fierce reactions to the German translation of Michael Rothberg's Multi-directional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization, published in 2021, twelve years after the original first appeared, this working paper investigates the debate in Germany from a migrant second and third generation point of view. To start, the paper looks into the awakening of West German society to the atrocities of the Holocaust in the late 1970s, zooming in on its migrant counterpart that was not exempted from this learning process - a fact ignored today. The paper then asks how guarantees for non-repetition, an important cornerstone of commemoration as a means of preventing future persecution of minorities, plays out today in a country that has invested much effort into countering the forgetting of past carnages. Choosing the murder of the Egyptian pharmacist Marwa el-Sherbini in Dresden in 2009 as a decisive event in time, I put forward the thesis that Muslim-Jewish networks of solidarity have developed in the wake of ongoing anti-migrant violence (NSU, Halle, Hanau), are now, explicitly or implicitly, the target of fierce verbal attacks. One must ask why non-Jewish Germans are ready to revert to casting Jews in Germany and German Jews who pursue such linkages, as "Antisemites"? This paper proposes to come to an understanding of the "hermeneutical chicane" that authors like Michael Rothberg and Susan Neiman have been confronted with in the so-called Historikerstreit 2.0 in the frame of such Muslim-Jewish bonds. Are historians of colonialism, postcolonial theorists and scholars of comparative genocide studies indeed questioning the uniqueness of the Holocaust? Or are other motives at play that point beyond Germany, which insinuate that they allegedly seek to construct a competition of sorts among victims?

International audience; This article reflects on the unprecedented opportunities that digital technology offers for developing new methods of research and data dissemination on the history of Islam in West Africa, as well as some of the methodological, technological, and ethical issues raised by such initiatives. At the center of these considerations is the Islam Burkina Faso Collection. This open access digital database project, which I launched in 2021 and which is hosted by the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida, currently contains over 2,500 archival materials, newspaper articles, Islamic publications in various forms, and photographs, in addition to 200 bibliographic references related to Islam and Muslims in Burkina Faso (https://islam.domains.uflib.ufl.edu/s/bf/). The paper also provides a brief overview of digital humanities in the field of African studies and, more specifically, on Islam.; Cet article propose une réflexion sur les possibilités inédites qu’offre le numérique pour développer de nouvelles méthodes de recherche et de diffusion de données sur l’histoire de l’islam en Afrique de l’Ouest, ainsi que quelques considérations méthodologiques, technologiques et éthiques soulevées par de telles initiatives. Au centre de ces considérations se trouve la Collection Islam Burkina Faso. Ce projet de base de données numérique en libre accès, que j’ai lancé en 2021 et qui est hébergée par les bibliothèques George A. Smathers de l’Université de Floride (UF), contient actuellement plus de 2 500 documents d’archives, articles de la presse généraliste, publications islamiques sous diverses formes et photographies, en plus de 200 références bibliographiques liées à l’islam et aux musulmans du Burkina Faso (https://islam.domains.uflib.ufl.edu/s/bf-fr). Le texte propose également un bref état des lieux des humanités numériques dans le champ des études africanistes et plus spécifiquement sur l’islam.

In Togo, the opposition movement behind the anti-government protests that broke out in 2017–2018 appears to reflect a greater role for Islam in politics. Tikpi Atchadam, leader of the Parti National Panafricain, was the preeminent figure in the movement, having built a solid grassroots base among his fellow Muslims. This article examines the unique role that Muslim leaders played in these protests, as well as the Faure Gnassingbé regime's strategic response. The ruling party made spurious claims against Muslim opponents, associating them with a dangerous wave of political Islam. I argue that by portraying Atchadam as the leader of a radical ethnic and religious movement with Islamist goals, Faure Gnassingbé and his supporters sought to weaken this emerging challenger and deter members of the public from backing calls for political change. The strategy also helped garner support from Western countries while simultaneously driving a wedge between Muslim community leaders.

In 1943, the Soviet government decided to reverse its policy towards religious communities with the purpose of building alliances during the Second World War. With regard to Islam, it arranged for the establishment of a Central Asian Spiritual Administration of Muslims (SAD-UM) in Tashkent. Eventually, the state used SADUM to establish cultural diplomatic ties with some Middle Eastern countries by sending students of Soviet-based religious schools - the Madrasas Mir-i Arab (1946-1991), Bara-qkhan (1956-1961) and the Tashkent Islam Institute, Oliy Ma’had, (1971-1991) - to study and gain experience in Islamic universities of the Middle East, notably Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Morocco, Jordan, and Syria, between 1955-1991. The main aim of this essay is to study the exchange expe-riences of these Soviet madrasa students in Middle Eastern countries and the ways this exchange became part of Soviet foreign policy. Studying the foreign madrasa education of these Soviet students, their student life abroad, and their activity, will shed some new light on religious policy in the Soviet period. The analysis of the activities of these students is based on their correspondence. Specifically, I argue that these exchanges helped the Soviet Union to strengthen its ties with foreign academic institutions and Muslims in those countries. Strategically, it was to contribute to strengthening Soviet influence in the Middle East which played an important role in its global and regional political calculations. Here, I distinguish between the intended and unintended consequences of those foreign connections. Although the Party and government viewed this activity in primarily instrumental terms, I suggest that the students used the opportunities to exchange ideas with their foreign interlocutors, which also had its own impact on religious discourse and prac-tice upon their return to Central Asia.

This essay is the first stage in a larger project that investigates an inter-imperial history of knowledge production through the prism of Baḥrī's activities and networks at various imperial sites in the Dutch, British and German empires as well as the French imperial nation-state. In this essay, I begin by asking how we can tell the history of the nationalist, journalist, author and traveller Yūnis Baḥrī (ca. 1901-1979) - once known in Arab-speaking populations from Europe across the Middle East to South East Asia as the "Iraqi traveller" (Arabic al-sāʾiḥ al-ʿirāqī) - by acknowledging his inter-imperial life and activities. Taking the archives of the German Foreign Office as examples, I seek to render these inter-imperial coordinates of his life visible. Previous research on Baḥrī has neglected these inter-imperial connections. Due to this reduction, Baḥrī's case could be described as a dualistic story of "Middle Eastern-German" relations. Thus, he could be a symbol for an ideological proximity of Arab nationalists and National Socialism. In this essay, I want to move away from the civilizational lens underlying such arguments by developing a broader methodological outlook. If Baḥrī's story forms part of the historical relationship between Arab nationalists and National Socialism, it is also an element of wider inter-imperial histories. To bring out these histories requires reading practices of the archives that do not follow civilizational or national logics. I therefore take what the archives of the German Foreign Office tell about Baḥrī as a starting point to tease out how his activities transgress civilizational historio graphical frameworks. In conclusion, I explain how the conceptual shift involved in my argument leads to a both broader and denser account of the politics that governed Baḥrī's life and other actors like him.

This paper discusses the ways in which a revolution inspired by Islam emerged in the few decades in West Africa, mainly through the intervention of Salafi actors, institutions, and reform practices. Salafism as an Islamic discourse became popular in the region at the end of the 20th century as Islam acquired a renewed interest and became a potent discourse, restructuring from within, formulating new political agendas and mobilising for social change and radical reconfigurations of social order. The paper calls for attention to context, noting the varieties of Salafism, while problematising the views promoters of this Islamic trend have expressed in relation to state institutions, in particular the secular school system. Emphasising the role of the Salafi preacher, the paper argues that Salafism has had a crucial impact not only on the religious, but also on the public spheres. A social and political critique, Salafism proves a major challenge while it promotes alternative moral and political orders including a Jihadi regime.

International audience; In his 1954 address to the American Philosophical Society on the role of the Ottoman Empire in world history, Arnold Toynbee emphasized the importance of the year 1453. The subsequent centuries he envisioned as merely a series of splendours and failures leading inevitably to the collapse of the Empire and the creation of the modern Turkish state. For many years, the process was seen as follows: the Ottoman Empire was a counterpoint to great global frescoes which had little to do with the methodological progress to be accomplished later in the field of history, now tackled from a global perspective. Even in this framework, as will be seen, the place of the eighteenth century cannot be taken for granted. The Ottoman Empire’s important position is recognized, of course, in valuations of the interlaced cultural and institutional spheres which have shaped the world; it is conceded that the Empire incarnated certain crucial aspects of the evolution of these spheres and their interstices at the moment when modernity emerged, the fundamentals of which are to be discussed on a solid base, beyond cumbersome ideological wreckage. Nevertheless, in the field of Ottoman studies, the common era eighteenth century is rarely considered as a key period. Work has tended to focus on Ottoman expansion in earlier period, as well as on the decline, portrayed as irremediable, of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, for the Ottoman Empire – and in particular for its Arab provinces, the eighteenth century represents a crucial moment. (This is not to ignore other aspects of the Empire nor non-Ottoman areas of the Arabic cultural domain). From a global historical perspective, the study of these provinces is a crucial area for current research.

The phenomenon of travelling religious traditions has attracted the attention of various scholars, but a differentiated understanding of its nature and impact is still lacking. This essay addresses the transnational and transregional impact of educational traditions in Islam in the South-South direction. It traces the impact of two education networks based in South Asia on Islamic learning in South East Asia. Both the modernist institutions of the International Islamic University and the conservative Deoband schools together with the affiliated Tablighi Jama'at have made significant headway in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and beyond. The case study argues that the impact is far from unidirectional and more multifaceted than often assumed. It is largely shaped by the social and cultural experience of local society and driven by its needs, rather than by a transnational agenda.

An interpretation of the 1873-1874 travel to the Orient by the Hungarian orientalist Goldziher, and of the reception of his work 100 years later in Egypt.; Le rapport d'Ignac Golziher au monde musulman ressort à la fois de la dimension d'érudition qui imprègne tout le parcours de l'orientaliste, et de celle de quête identitaire qui guide son voyage de 1873-1874 en Orient . De Jérusalem à Damas puis au Caire, c'est autant à la recherche de sources pour son grand projet de connaissance que d'une idée personnelle que Goldziher est à la recherche. De cette posture d'ouverture et de disposition à la rencontre naît la possibilité d'un des moments cruciaux du parcours de l'érudit, qui s'avèrera également constituer un moment clé de la formation de la sphère orientaliste moderne en Europe. Un siècle plus tard, à Al-Azhar, dans le contexte de la mise en forme d'une critique musulmane de l'orientalisme européen, Goldziher est de nouveau, cette fois au travers de son œuvre, au cœur d'un débat sur la nature de l'Islam et de la société musulmane, dont le cheikh docteur de l'université islamique 'Abd al-Jalîl 'Abduh Shalabî est le promoteur principal. Le présent article n'entend pas se situer dans une narration linéaire par rapport à ces deux moments. Il s'agit au contraire, sans prétendre que l'arc factuel et chronologique choisi puisse permettre d'expliciter toutes les dimensions problématiques et tous les enjeux, de réfléchir à la fois au voyage de 1873-1874 et aux échos de l'œuvre de Goldziher un siècle plus tard ans le but non seulement de disserter sur la réception des grandes œuvres de l'orientalisme européen dans le monde arabe, mais également de tenter de percevoir au travers des interprétations de Shalabî les tensions présentes au sein de la société docte égyptienne autour de la question de la réforme de l'interprétation et du rapport à la science européenne.

In many societies, petitions are a means of communication between rulers and ruled. Since the 1980s, historians have tried to analyse the nature of this relationship and to answer linked questions, such as the emergence of public opinion, the existence of a civil society and the capacity of a society to develop forms of democracy. Petitions are indeed a very abundant archival resource, and also a very specific individual or collective expression of discontent, protest, opinion or need. As such, they are invaluable historical sources, both informative and reflective of the nature of the society that produced them. From ancient times to the era of Byzantium, from medieval England to18th century North America, or from 18th century Japan to present times, petitions have been crucial in shedding light on the whole governance context, as scholars have frequently shown. In the Ottoman empire, petitions were also central features of the relationship between rulers and ruled. In the Ottoman empire, communication between local societies and the central administration in Istanbul was codified during the period of the old regime on the basis of various medieval practices, themselves sometimes of ancient origin. In cases of conflict, or where generally accepted administrative processes had broken down, or in cases where new demands or problems had arisen, inhabitants were granted the right to write petitions either on an individual basis or as a group (professional, confessional, civic collective body). But this system of petitioning was more than mere recourse to remedies or adjustments. Rather, it was an integral tool in the functioning of the empire and in the definition of imperial power in the provinces. The petition was not just an exceptional tool, but a normal procedure, whose bureaucratic nature had been formalised over the course of the Ottoman centuries. Indeed, the central archives in Istanbul contain hundreds of thousands of such petitions from throughout the empire and spanning the 15th to the 20th centuries. These petitions were registered by a specialised administrative bureau, whose consistency and importance grew as the empire set about constructing its bureaucratic apparatus. Petitions were registered in daftar, and subjected to a whole administrative process that constituted the very essence of imperial authority. The petition cannot be likened to a bottle thrown into the ocean in the hopes of capturing the sultan's attention, and nor was it merely akin to a medieval supplicant's appeal to the sovereign in the hopes of gaining an exception. It was rather an act of codified administrative communication whose role is pivotal to an understanding of the very essence of the Ottoman empire and the relationship between centre and peripheries. This codification had a multifaceted heritage dating from the period from the 16th to the 18th centuries, an era that in administrative terms constitutes the Ottoman old regime. However, during the Tanzimat era and, for cities, the period of municipal reform during the second half of the 19th century, when both the whole administrative system and the very foundations the organisation of society itself were reordered, these old practices were, paradoxically, used intensively to negotiate the accommodation of the new administrative system with local configurations. At the very moment of its reform, the old system was the object of strong collective investment, which reveals both the importance of the old channels of communication and of the mediation process for accommodating the new., Une analyse du rôle du système pétitionnaire dans la structuration de la société et de l'administration ottomanes. Les pétitions sont vues dans cette contribution comme le vecteur d'une communication codifiée d'un point de vue bureaucratique entre périphéries et centre, et comme l'indicateur de l'existence d'une vaste sphère de conscience civique.

"A growing body of anthropological research has turned to study Islam as a discursive tradition that informs the attempts of Muslims to live pious and moral lives, the aff ects and emotions they cultivate and the challenges they pose to a liberal secular ideology. While this turn has provided direction for a number of innovative studies, it appears to stop short of some key questions regarding everyday religious and moral practice, notably the ambivalence, the inconsistencies and the openness of people’s lives that never fi t into the framework of a single tradition. In short, there is too much Islam in the anthropology of Islam. To fi nd ways to account for both the ambivalence of people’s everyday lives and the often perfectionist ideals of good life, society and self they articulate, I argue that we may have to talk a little less about traditions, discourses and powers and a little more about the existential and pragmatic sensibilities of living a life in a complex and often troubling world. By broadening our focus to include the concerns, practice and experience of everyday life in its various moments and directions, we may eventually also be better able to make sense of the signifi cance of a grand scheme like Islam in it." [author's abstract]

An analysis of the Ottoman Urban Reforms of the last third of the 19th c. in the light of the evolution of the Ottoman urban old regime, Le texte de ma communication sur les réformes municipales ottomanes au 1er symposium d'histoire organisé par la municipalité d'Eminönü à Istanbul en 2006.

The text of a conference I gave in May 2006 at the Accademia Mediterranea in Ancona, ItalyLe texte d'une conférence donnée à l'Accademia Mediterranea en mai 2006 à Ancône., Il testo di una mia conferenza ad Ancona nel maggio 2006, presso L'Accademia Mediterranea

International audience; Le texte de ma communication au colloque de Marrakech 2004: La fabrique des villes au Maghreb

Du texte de Michele Amari datant du XIXeesiècle et de diverses chroniques arabes, se dégagent les caractères principaux du gouvernement urbain dans la Sicile musulmane. Ces écrits permettent de connaître l’organisation des activités marchandes et de la gestion de la ville, la répartition en quartiers, les communautés. Ils évoquent l’existence d’une assemblée (jema’a) urbaine de notables et d’Anciens, et le rôle des qadi. Au regard de ces textes, il semble bien que les villes de la Sicile musulmane ont bénéficié d’un système de gouvernement urbain complexe, entre les héritages antérieurs et les innovations de cette période. From the Michele Amari’s text dating from the XIXth century and different arabic chronicles are showed principal characters from urban government in moslem Sicily. These written documents allow us to know trading activities’s organization and city’s administration, quarters’s partition, communities. They evoke an urban assembly’s life (jema’a) made up by notables and Ancients and qadi’s part. In comparison with these texts, it seems well that moslem Sicily’s cities made a profit on complex urban government’s system, between anterior inheritances and this period’s innovations.

This paper deals with food supply in Islamic towns, and particularly with civic charity organized by the institutions of urban government in the hands of the local notability, Cet article propose une étude des caractéristiques de l'annone dans les villes du monde arabo-musulman, et met en relief l'importance dans ce domaine des institutions de gouvernement urbain controllée par la notabilité marchande.

An analysis of the roots of urban government in an Islamic city, and on their influence on the passage towards the ottoman municipality. This book assesses the existence of old regime like structures of urban government, in the hands of the notables (merchants, landowners, hierarchy of the guilds), and their evolution during the period of the ottoman tanzimat. The shaykh al-bilâd, the traditional "chief of the town", becomes mayor, the civic assembly (jama'a al-bilâd) become municipal council. This matter of facts is also an illustration of the limits of the "importation" paradigm in the characterization of the implementation of "modern", a term generally intended as the equivalent of "european" administrative solutions in the ottoman empire., Une analyse des racines du gouvernement urbain dans une ville ottomane et de leur transformation pendant la période des réformes ottomanes (tanzimat). Dans ce livre est démontrée l'existence, à partir aussi bien d'archives locales, de chroniques, que d'archives centrales ottomanes et consulaires, de structures de gouvernement urbain d'ancien régime. Celles-ci étaient organisées autour du personnage de cheikh al-bilâd (chef de la ville) et de l'assemblée urbaine (jama'a al-bilâd), dans laquelle siégeaient les principaux notables de la ville (marchands, propriétaires, chefs de grandes familles, hiérarchie des corporations), avec de vastes attributions (ordre public, contrôle des marchés et transactions, fiscalité urbaine, construction, biens publics civics, annone). Il est également démontré qu'au moment des réformes urbaines ottomanes, que l'on a longtemps considérées comme importées d'Europe dans une jachère institutionnelle locale, ces instances ont joué un rôle primordial et ont constitué l'armature de la nouvelle municipalité. Cela invite donc à reconsidérer non seulement le gouvernement local dans les villes arabes, mais aussi la circulation des idées relatives à la modernité, à ses racines, caractéristiques et éventuelles limites. A Tripoli au moment des réformes ottomanes du dernier tiers du XIXe siècle, le cheikh al-bilâd devient maire. La jama'a al-bilâd devient conseil municipal.http://www.harmattan.fr/index.asp?navig=catalogue&obj=livre&no=4980An analysis of the roots of urban government in an Islamic city, and on their influence on the passage towards the ottoman municipality. This book assesses the existence of old regime like structures of urban government, in the hands of the notables (merchants, landowners, hierarchy of the guilds), and their evolution during the period of the ottoman tanzimat. The shaykh al-bilâd, the traditional "chief of the town", becomes mayor, the civic assembly (jama'a al-bilâd) become municipal council. This matter of facts is also an illustration of the limits of the "importation" paradigm in the characterization of the implementation of "modern", a term generally intended as the equivalent of "european" administrative solutions in the ottoman empire.http://www.harmattan.fr/index.asp?navig=catalogue&obj=livre&no=4980

International audience; La façon dont les villes européennes passent, entre les XVIIe et XIXe siècles, de formes de gestion urbaine traditionnelles, souvent dites d'Ancien Régime, évidemment très diverses selon les lieux, à des formes modernisées, autour de la déclinaison d'un contenu municipal renouvelé et réinterprété, occupe dans l'historiographie et les études urbaines en général une place prépondérante. Pour les villes de la rive sud de la Méditerranée, Maghreb et Moyen-Orient en particulier, le constat ne peut être que très différent : d'une part la ville arabe, les villes arabes, sont souvent l'objet de réifications excessives, qui, sous l'inflation linguistique de termes autochtones pour désigner la ville et les catégories de l'urbain, ont pour effet de couper les études urbaines pour cette aire géographique du débat historiographique général ; d'autre part, on observe dans les études urbaines arabes une forte césure, confirmée de génération en génération par la tradition académique, entre les études sur la ville, disons, traditionnelle, et des villes des XIXe et XXe siècles souvent réduites à leur réalité coloniale, ne serait-ce que par un usage prépondérant des sources coloniales. La présente contribution, à partir du cas de Tripoli, entend contribuer à remettre en question ces perceptions de la ville arabe