{"id":9858,"date":"2022-09-05T10:51:56","date_gmt":"2022-09-05T08:51:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/?p=9858"},"modified":"2022-12-25T11:22:29","modified_gmt":"2022-12-25T09:22:29","slug":"al-konis-tuareg-perspective-on-islams-conquest-of-north-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/al-konis-tuareg-perspective-on-islams-conquest-of-north-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Al-Koni&#8217;s Tuareg Perspective on Islam&#8217;s Conquest of North Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_9867\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9867\" style=\"width: 1400px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/features\/2012\/8\/10\/tackling-conflict-on-libyas-margins\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-9867 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Wedding-feast-in-Ghadames-Libya-al-Koni-birthplace-iason-athanasiadis.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1400\" height=\"933\" srcset=\"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Wedding-feast-in-Ghadames-Libya-al-Koni-birthplace-iason-athanasiadis.jpg 1400w, https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Wedding-feast-in-Ghadames-Libya-al-Koni-birthplace-iason-athanasiadis-600x400.jpg 600w, https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Wedding-feast-in-Ghadames-Libya-al-Koni-birthplace-iason-athanasiadis-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Wedding-feast-in-Ghadames-Libya-al-Koni-birthplace-iason-athanasiadis-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Wedding-feast-in-Ghadames-Libya-al-Koni-birthplace-iason-athanasiadis-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Wedding-feast-in-Ghadames-Libya-al-Koni-birthplace-iason-athanasiadis-1320x880.jpg 1320w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1400px) 100vw, 1400px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-9867\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A wedding feast in Ghadames, Libya, Ibrahim al-Koni&#8217;s birthplace, a city from which the Tuaregs have been banished almost entirely, driven out by jihadi Arab Libyan groups that descended on the city after the fall of Gaddafi (photo courtesy Iason Athanasiadis).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>The Night Will Have Its Say<\/em>, a novel by Ibrahim al-Koni<br \/>\nTranslated from the Arabic by Nancy Roberts<br \/>\nHoopoe\/<a href=\"https:\/\/aucpress.com\/product\/the-night-will-have-its-say\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">AUC Press<\/a> 2022<br \/>\nISBN 9781649031860\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>A damning alternative retelling of how Islam expanded into Amazigh North Africa by an authoritative insider-outsider voice<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h4>Iason Athanasiadis<\/p>\n<\/h4>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>An ominous prediction from the oracle of Delphi about the troubles about to befall the land of Libya, and a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad about how \u201cnine-tenths of evil\u201d come from the East, is how Ibrahim al-Koni embarks on a novel unsparing in its treatment of Islam\u2019s early armies.<\/p>\n<p>The standard narrative of the Islamic conquests involves swashbuckling Arab Muslims advancing across the known world, and attempting to win over hearts and minds to the new religion. But Koni chooses to fix his gaze on the plunder, revenge killings, vindictive taxation, kidnapped children, raped women and encompassing injustice justified by self-serving interpretations of divine rulings. And he highlights how, when they were not finding ways to engage in plunder (which ballooned into such a mainstream activity as for the word <em>ghanima<\/em> \u2014 \u201cspoils of war\u201d \u2014 to be formalized in religious doctrine), the purveyors of the new faith were often busy backstabbing each other. A poignant example of this concludes Koni\u2019s novel.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_9860\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9860\" style=\"width: 435px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/aucpress.com\/product\/the-night-will-have-its-say\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-9860\" src=\"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/the-night-will-have-its-say-ibrahim-al-koni-the-markaz-review.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"435\" height=\"863\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-9860\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>The Night Will Have Its Say<\/em> recounts the conquest of North Africa.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Hassan Ibn al-Nu\u2019man, commander of an Arab Muslim army and a man whose name is today prefixed by the faithful with the honorific <em>hadhrat<\/em>, spends much of <em>The Night Will Have Its Say<\/em> ruminating on his role, as he hesitates during a stalled advance in the no-man\u2019s-land of Barca (today\u2019s eastern Libya), biding his time before a final confrontation with his great adversary, the Amazigh leader Kahina.<\/p>\n<p>The seer Kahina is the leader of North Africa\u2019s indigenous Amazigh community, and the suitably tough product of a matrilineal society. She is a cruel yet farsighted strategist in seeking to pump vigor back into her society\u2019s bloodstream by destroying its cities, a general in how she marshals her subjects, and a mother in the manner that she tries to \u201covercome enmity among the world\u2019s peoples by commingling their\u00a0blood.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Although they are never to meet, the magical realist sequence of mental exchanges between Kahina and Nu\u2019man form the nucleus of a novel examining the fading of a people who were vanquished militarily (but also culturally) by the unstoppable advance of monotheistic and monocultural modernity. The psychology and inner struggles of Nu\u2019man plays along Kahina\u2019s personality, who becomes ever more aware of her own and her people\u2019s demise as the novel progresses.<\/p>\n<p>This is a rare book, both for the voice it gives the traditionally marginalized Amazigh, and the unorthodox thoughts it dares express in a censorship-riddled and taboo-strewn literary scene.<\/p>\n<p>So who is author Ibrahim al-Koni and what impelled him to take stances so extremely critical of Islam and Arab authoritarianism?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Both stateless and exiled <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Koni was born stateless in a Saharan oasis in 1948, a few years before a UN referendum brought Libya into existence. He is not Arab, and from the context of this novel, which punctures the foundational myth of Islam by portraying the first <em>ghazis <\/em>(\u201cwarriors\u201d) as little more than rampaging booty-seekers and rapists, he does not appear to have a high opinion of Islam, at least in its mainstream practice.<\/p>\n<p>An ethnic Tuareg (one of the many communities of the Amazigh), Koni grew up in the medieval trading crossroad of Ghadames, located in modern-day Libya, in the years immediately following World War II. The mudbrick town was once a caravan station, and today huddles in a patch of desert where the corners of Libya, Tunisia and Algeria meet. One of the world\u2019s masterpieces of desert architecture, Ghadames saw its extraordinary bioclimatic urban web restored by UNESCO just before the 2011 revolution in Libya. But it is also empty, following the forced relocations of its inhabitants, initially by former Libyan leader Muammar Ghaddafi (who moved them to a collection of air-conditioned, flat-topped cement buildings as part of his modernization drive) and in the early 2010s by Arab Islamist militias carrying out a racial purification drive. When this writer visited Ghadames in 2013, some of the Salafist fighters who had driven out the Tuareg from the city were already setting off for Syria in order to wage jihad against the Alawite Bashar al-Assad, as they put it.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_9864\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9864\" style=\"width: 583px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9864\" src=\"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/ibrahim-al-koni-from-libya-the-markaz-review-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"583\" height=\"863\" srcset=\"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/ibrahim-al-koni-from-libya-the-markaz-review-1.jpg 583w, https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/ibrahim-al-koni-from-libya-the-markaz-review-1-203x300.jpg 203w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 583px) 100vw, 583px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-9864\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ibrahim al-Koni was born in Libya in 1948. A Tuareg who writes in Arabic, he spent his childhood in the desert and learned to read and write Arabic when he was 12. His novels include Anubis, Gold Dust, and The Seven Veils of Seth, from the American University in Cairo Press, and another novel, The Bleeding of the Stone. In 2008 he received the Sheikh Zayed Prize for Literature for his novel Nida\u2019 ma kan ba\u2018idan (Calling the Distant). In 2010, he received in Cairo the Arab Novel Award and dedicated the prize to the children of the Tuareg tribes from which he originally hails.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cI was driven out of my paradise as a young child,\u201d Koni lamented in an <a href=\"https:\/\/arablit.org\/2010\/12\/23\/a-celebration-of-ibrahim-al-koni-the-desert-russian-literature-and-swiss-sufism\/\">interview<\/a>, referring to Ghadames. Subsequently, his books \u2014 which recreate a lost world of desert dwelling \u2014 have been translated into 40 languages. Koni was named a finalist for the 2015 Man Booker International Prize.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEven if I were a prophet, I would not have managed to write sixty books about it [Ghadames] from memory&#8230;So in order to make this beloved of mine present I have had recourse to memory of another kind, what the Sufis, the Islamic mystics, like to call \u2018inner memory\u2019 and psychologists refer to as \u2018the unconscious,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Despite only learning Arabic at age 12, Koni went on to become one of the most awarded authors in Arabic today. Rather than viewing the desert as a bourgeois escape hatch from civilization (increasingly how urban Arabs choose to experience it), Koni evokes the balance it brings to its remaining residents.<\/p>\n<p>As a young man, Koni worked in Tripoli as a journalist. His political dissidence soon drove him out of Libya to the Soviet Union, where he studied comparative literature and philosophy. He worked as a journalist in Moscow, founded a literary magazine in Warsaw and, shortly after communism\u2019s collapse, moved to Switzerland for twenty years, then Sweden, and onwards to Spain, where he lives today.<\/p>\n<p>As time passed, the anti-authoritarian symbolism Koni injected into his novels became more overtly political. In 2011, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.qantara.de\/content\/interview-with-the-libyan-writer-ibrahim-al-koni-the-destructive-nature-of-tyranny\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">he praised<\/a> Mohammed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor who sparked the Arab Spring by immolating himself after a routine incident of police harassment, as \u201ca saint\u2026 the Christ of our time\u201d who \u201cbore his cross and sacrificed his life.\u201d Gaddafi\u2019s fall followed (with a helping hand by NATO) but rather than a happy ending, Libya segued into ripping itself apart in an ongoing orgy of violent turmoil.<\/p>\n<p>From his perch in Spain, Koni acts as the voice of the stateless and voiceless Tuareg. He relentlessly reminds us in his books and interviews that Tuareg isolation and their traditional lifestyle in the Sahara were exploited to deny them the twin agencies modernity requires: a recognized state and language. Instead, French colonialists occupied Tuareg areas, subjected them to years of withering nuclear tests, before divvying up the land between Algeria, Libya, Niger and Senegal, none of whom acknowledge Tamasheq (a variant of Amazigh) as a formal language. Koni likes to remind the world in interviews that the Sahara is humanity\u2019s cradle, and that therefore the Tuareg deserve a better fate than their current one.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Islamic conquest<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In focusing on the Islamic conquest of North Africa, <em>The Night Will Have Its Say<\/em> identifies the key turning point in Amazigh loss of agency. Koni views Islam as neither enlightening nor civilizing, but as the purveyor of a corrupting modernity that taints the purity of animistic culture.<\/p>\n<p>Kahina, the Amazigh queen, has a greater ambition than just defeating the Arab Muslim invaders: she hopes to end racial competition through creating a mixed race, a \u201creconciliation among the races through the magical mediation of motherhood.\u201d But as the Arab troops approach, her project shifts into a confrontation between a matrilineal society and Arab patriarchy. Koni writes:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">\u201cHow was she to exact revenge on people who made a profession of igniting wars when, as everyone knows, in wartime all is lawful, and the copies of the Quran raised high on their spear tips were nothing but an excuse to amass blood-drenched plunder?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As the Arabs edge closer, Kahina institutes a scorched earth policy, cutting down the forests that offer respite from the Sahara\u2019s furnace. \u201cShe ordered her men to cut down its trees and raze its fortresses, destroying every remnant of civilization and vegetation alike\u2026 in the belief that wiping the Shade off the face of the earth would shield her from the Arabs, who had only come out against her out of greed for a civilization they had forfeited in their own homelands.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Kahina is also fighting an internal rearguard action against her own people\u2019s compromises. Many have ceased their nomadic life to urbanize. She has \u201cno sympathy for people who, to her disgust, were content to spend their days lolling in houses of clay and whose affinity for life in the Shade had extinguished the flames of heroism in their hearts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Although she will never meet her conqueror (and his conquest will come through betrayal), Nu\u2019man, they share this instinctive distrust of the urban: \u201cI have avoided living in cities for fear of falling captive to these very customs,\u201d he notes. \u201cI refused to live in Kairouan (an Arab garrison city developed after the conquest of the territory that is today\u2019s Tunisia), or claim my share of the booty or take concubines. I didn\u2019t want to give myself a taste of luxury, lest wealth be my demise, as it had been for so many.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the end, Koni shows that it is money that makes the world go round: the new religion becomes an empty vessel, exploited by booty-seekers to enhance their reach. A few sensitive outsiders, like Nu\u2019man or the dervish Hanash Sanaani, hold onto their values at the cost of swift marginalization. Ultimately, Koni signals to us that the fate of the person who chooses to remain authentic, whether in the 7<sup>th<\/sup> century or the 21<sup>st<\/sup>, is to be violently pushed aside.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Iason Athanasiadis reviews the new Ibrahim al-Koni translation of a story that recounts Islam&#8217;s conquest of North Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":9867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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