Frontiers in North Africa

2.2 The Precolonial Situation

Indeed, the impression that the colonial period somehow resolved the major issues is even more strongly confirmed when the location of modern frontiers is contrasted with the precolonial situation. Although Morocco and Tunisia existed as independent or autonomous and virtually independent political entities (from 1837, the Beylik of Tunis accepted the formal suzereinty of the Ottoman empire, largely in an attempt to avoid European interference) frontiers - or more correctly boundaries (Prescott 1978; 31) in the modern sense of an alignment, a line allocating territory to states (Brownlie 1979; 3) - did not exist. Indeed, the only recognisable territorial distinction between states was a border march, a region of indeterminate political authority where military power provided the basis for political distinction between the authority of different states (Prescott 1978; 44). This status typified the border regions between the independent Hussainid Beylik of Tunisia and the Ottoman Vilayet of Tripoli (Joffe 1982; 19-42: Joffe 1984; 113-128) or the region between the Beyliks of Titteri and Oran in what is today western Algeria and the Moroccan sultanate.

Political entities corresponding to the modern states of Libya and Algeria simply did not exist. In the eighteenth century, the Regency of Tripoli had been a virtually independent state under the Qaramanlis, a dynasty of Ottoman origin. After 1835, Libya was composed of two Ottoman-controlled vilayets, based at Tripoli and Benghazi, although Benghazi was really a mutasarrifiyya as far as military matters, justice and customs controls were concerned (Abun Nasr, 1975; 304). Outside the coastal strip, however, real power eventually devolved on the Sanusi religious order in Cyrenaica, particularly after the 1850s (Morsy 1984; 276) and on local tribes in Tripolitania and the Fezzan (Wright 1969; 102,112). After 1671, Algeria consisted of the Deylik or Algiers and the three Beyliks of Constantine, Titteri and Oran - all of which, although formally integrated under the Deylik of Algiers, enjoyed virtual autonomy as, indeed, did the Deylik of Algiers itself from its nominal suzerein, the Ottoman sultan in Istanbul (Abun-Nasr 1975; 175-176).

Further south, as the littoral regions of North Africa shaded off into the arid pre-Sahara zone and the desert itself, clear and continuous territorial divisions were completely lacking. As local populations became more and more concentrated around the available resources of water and land, so political control became correspondingly punctiform and, with increasing distance from the centres of political power along the coast, ineffective. Nomads paid little attention to formalistic considerations of political authority and sedentary oasis populations tended towards political autonomy, even if they recognised some overriding hegemony, based on religious or cultural associations.

Tuat oasis, now in modern Algeria, for example, recognised Moroccan hegemony because of a Moroccan conquest in the sixteenth century (Abun Nasr 1975; 213,297) and because of links with the Tihamiyya order in the north Moroccan town of Wazzan. There were even Moroccan officials there as late as 1891, as there were in In Salah (Morsy 1984; 210). The Sanusi order continually extended its area of control southwards from Jaghbub in eastern Cyrenaica towards northern Chad and westwards towards Tripolitania, while the Fezzan - at one time under its own autonomous sultanate - and Surt - originally controlled by the Awlad Sulaiman (Morsy 1984; 100-101) - accepted Ottoman suzereinty in the 1840s and extended Ottoman influence southwards towards Tibesti (Abun Nasr 1975; 304). By the end of the century, however, the dominant power in the Sahara region and in the Borkou-Tibesti region was Sanusi (Morsy 1984; 281283).

The crucial feature of the precolonial situation was that political authority was expressed through communal links and was of varying intensity, depending on a series of factors involving, inter alia, tradition, geographic location and political relationships. The underlying consideration, however, was common throughout the region and involved a concept of political sovereignty that derived from Islamic practice. The essential consideration was that ruler and ruled were bound together through a conditional social contract in which the ruler could expect loyalty in return for ensuring the conditions in civil society for the correct practice of Islam (Zartman 1984; 151-152). Failure on his part to provide such conditions automatically authorised the community to replace him (Joffe 1986; 12-14: Mardin 1962: Lahbabi 1968). The contract itself was a reflection of divine sanction on the ruler, whose legitimacy - since he could not claim sovereignty - depended on his own observance of the principles necessary for the preservation of Islamic practice within the collectivity.

It was this relationship that was encapsulated in the bayah - which, in the North African context, came to be represented by a written document of allegiance and fealty from populations or groups within a population, to the ruler (amir, sultan, bey or dey) in which the restrictions on his authority were mentioned (Pennell 1986; 246-251). The crucial feature of this relationship was that it defined sovereign power and thus sovereignty itself in terms of communal relationships. It did not relate to territorial control, as the comparative European concept did (Thomas 1985; 3-5) but, instead, was primarily concerned with community and communal organisation.

There was, of course, a concept of territoriality, since populations occupied territory, but this was not the essential component, as the patchwork nature of political control in the Sahara made evident. Unpopulated territory could not, of itself, form the subject of sovereign identity (Zartman 1984; 152). Similarly, the confused situation of the border marches between Tripolitania and Tunisia arose because the limits of political authority were defined in terms of the recognised political links between local tribes and the authorities in Tunis or Tripoli. Territorial division had existed in pre-Islamic times - as with the Roman limes or the famous frontier between Cyrenaica and Tripolitania created by the Greeks and Carthaginians (Goodchild 1976; 17-21, 155-162, 195-196). However, the juridical basis that had underpinned them from the Classical period had been abandoned when the region was Islamised.

Furthermore, the conditionality of political authority in such peripheral regions was underlined by local assumptions of automonus tribal status (for the situation in Djerid region of Tunisia, see Hernia 1980; 188-190, 219-220: for the situation along the Tunisia-Tripolitanian border march, see Martel 1965;1, 401-410). The one exception to this practice, but one which only came to be practised after colonial ambitions in the region had already been made manifest in the wake of the French occupations of Algeria and Tunisia, was the Ottoman attempt to justify claims of territorial sovereignty extending into Chad (Lanne 1982; 30-31, 36-38).