This chapter explores the intersecting histories of the slavery, family, and law in Algeria in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Using untapped missionary records, supplemented by records held in Algerian national and French colonial archives, it focuses on the trajectories of the enslaved, emancipated, and fugitive women who came into contact with the missionary society known as the “White Sisters” in the southern oases of Ouargla and Ghardaïa. These women’s stories show how French colonial observers conflated forms of women’s bondage with marriage in Islam, which sometimes led women to seek emancipation from their masters by petitioning for divorce inqadi courts. However, this conflation also informed colonial abolitionist legislation that tried to distinguish women’s productive labour as a matter of “public order” from women’s reproductive labour as a private matter of Muslim “personal status” law.

1. 1.

   Bulletin officiel du Gouvernement général de l’Algerie (15 July 1906, No. 486): « Décret relatif aux peines encourues par quiconque, en Algérie et dans les Territoires du Sud, aura conclu une convention ayant pour objet d’aliéner, soit à titre gratuit, soit à titre onéreux, la liberté d’une tierce personne »: p. 756.

2. 2.

   Examples from the literature on nineteenth-century Algeria include: Benjamin C. Brower,A Desert Named Peace: The Violence of France’s Empire in the Algerian Sahara, 1844–1902 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009); Dennis D. Cordell, “No liberty, not much equality, and very little fraternity: The mirage of manumission in the Algerian Sahara in the second half of the nineteenth Century,”Slavery & Abolition 19.2 (1998): 38–56; Raëd Bader, “L’esclavage dans l’Algérie coloniale, 1830–1870”.Maǧalla Al-Tārīk̲iyya Al-Maġribiyya (Li-Al-ʻahd Al-Ḥadīt̲ Wa-Al-Muʻāṣir) 26. 93/94 (1999): 57–69; Ismael Musah Montana and Ehud R. Toledano,The abolition of slavery in Ottoman Tunisia. Gainesville (University Press of Florida, 2013).

3. 3.

   See especially Eve Troutt Powell,Tell This in My Memory: Stories of Enslavement from Egypt, Sudan, and the Ottoman Empire (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2012); Diane Robinson-Dunn,The Harem, Slavery and British Imperial Culture: Anglo-Muslim Relations in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006); Beth Baron,Egypt As a Woman: Nationalism, Gender, and Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); and Judith E. Tucker,Women in Nineteenth-Century Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

4. 4.

   Edmond Norès,L’ouevre de la France en Algérie: La Justice (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1931): pp. 84–85.

5. 5.

   Though most important, slaves were not, of course, the only commodities of the caravan trade. Merchants arrived in the south with weapons, books, spices, perfumes, manufactured textiles, and carpets which they sold or traded for slaves, leather products, ostrich feathers, gum, wax, ivory, and kola nuts. Adu Boden, “The Caravan Trade in the Nineteenth-Century,”The Journal of African History 3. 2 (1962): pp. 357–358. See also Ghislaine Lydon,On trans-Saharan trails: Islamic law, trade networks, and cross-cultural exchange in nineteenth-century Western Africa (New York, N.Y: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

6. 6.

   Archives Nationales d’Outre-mer (ANOM) 22H/26. July 23, 1876, Secretary General of the Chamber of Commerce, “Au sujet des mesures à prendre pour l’extension de ce commerce (de l’intérieur de l’Afrique).”

7. 7.

   E. Savage, “Berbers and Blacks: Ibāḍī Slave Traffic in Eighth-Century North Africa,”The Journal of African History 33. 3 (1992): pp. 351–368.

8. 8.

   Boden, “The Caravan Trade”: p. 350. See also Ehud Toledano,The Ottoman Slave Trade and its Suppression, 1840–1890 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982).

9. 9.

   Benjamin C. Brower,A Desert Named Peace: The Violence of France’s Empire in the Algerian Sahara, 1844–1902 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009): pp. 156–158.

10. 10.

    It has been argued that the high probability of Muslims falling into slavery through the trans-Saharan trade sparked the debate, which eventually ended slavery in Tunisia in 1846. Proscriptions against taking slaves from known or potentially Muslim-inhabited lands had occupied the minds of jurists in the Maghreb since the earliest days of this long-distance commerce. Montana and Toledano,The abolition of slavery in Ottoman Tunisia. See also: Ahmad Baba, “Mi’raj al-Su’ud, Ahmad Baba’s Replies on Slavery,” in John Hunwick and Fatima Harrack (ed. and trans.),Textes et Documents (University Mohammed V, Institute of African Studies, 2000): pp. 7–65.

11. 11.

    Ralph A. Austen, “The trans-Saharan slave trade: a tentative census,” in H.A. Gemery and J.S. Hogendorn (eds.),Uncommon Market; Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (New York: Academic Press, 1979): p. 66.

12. 12.

    Henri Duveyrier, “Ghadâmes, un centre d’esclavage de quelque importance,”Journal de Route (Leselle, 1860): p. 15. See also: R. Bader, “L’esclavage dans l’Algérie coloniale”: p. 59.

13. 13.

    Marcel Émerit,La Révolution de 1848 en Algérie (Paris: Larose, 1949): p. 30.

14. 14.

    Ibid., p. 39.

15. 15.

    Adolphe de Calassanti-Motylinski,Notes historiques sur le Mzab. Guerara depuis sa fondation (Alger: A. Jordan, 1885), writes: “C’est. de ce point qu’arrivaient toutes les caravanes d’esclaves destinés à être vendus sur les marchés du Mzab. Les Nègres amenés étaient, presque tous, des enfants de 14 à 15 ans; ils appartenaient aux populations du Haut-Niger, de Timbouctou, du Haoussa, du Bornou, du Bambara et même aux Foulanes. Un jeune Nègre se vendait de 300 à 500 francs. Les jeunes filles esclaves, les plus haut cotées, atteignaient parfois le prix de 1000 francs.”

16. 16.

    It should be noted that sub-Saharan Africans were not the only group whose skin tone marked them out for particular kinds of labour. The Haratin (singular: Hartani) were a sub-group of dark-skinned people indigenous to Algeria who were not slaves but performed toilsome menial and agricultural work. Haratin were often grouped as “noirs” in colonial records, while the word “nègre” usually indicated slave and the word “esclave,” if not otherwise qualified, almost always meant Black.

17. 17.

    Nil-Joseph Robin,Le Mzab et son annexion à la France (Alger: Adolphe Jourdan, 1884): p. 52.

18. 18.

    Suzanne Miers,Britain and the ending of the slave trade (New York: Africana Pub. Corp 1975): pp. 201–205.

19. 19.

    White Fathers General Archives, Rome, Italy. Charles M. Lavigerie, “Speech before the London Missionary Society,” 1889.

20. 20.

    Brower (2009) details the contradictions surrounding slavery within the scheme of “Saharan pacification” in Chap. 9.

21. 21.

    Cordell, “No liberty, not much equality, and very little fraternity”: pp. 39–40. Emphasis mine.

22. 22.

    Montana and Toledano,The abolition of slavery in Ottoman Tunisia. See also Ismael Musah Montana, “The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade of Ottoman Tunisia, 1574 to 1782,”The Maghreb Review Majallat Al-Maghrib 33.2 (2008): pp. 132–150.

23. 23.

    Cordell, “No liberty, not much equality, and very little fraternity”: pp. 52–55.

24. 24.

    Brower,A Desert Named Peace. Yacine Daddi Addoun,L’Abolition de l’esclavage en Alǵérie: 1816–1871, PhD thesis, York University, 2010. The idea to rejuvenate or “refleurir” comes from a report by the Oran Chambre of Commerce, 9 October 1879. ANOM 22H/26.

25. 25.

    Paul Soleillet,L’Afrique occidentale: Algérie, Mzab, Tildikelt (Avignon, 1877).

26. 26.

    Fatiha Loualich, “Emancipated female slaves in Algiers: marriage, property and social advancement in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries” in Stephanie Cronin (ed.),Subalterns and Social Protest: History from Below in the Middle East and North Africa (London; New York: Routledge, 2008).

27. 27.

    Elke E. Stockreiter, “Child Marriage and Domestic Violence: Islamic and Colonial Discourses on Gender Roles and Female Status in Zanzibar, 1900–1950s,” in Emily S. Burrill, Richard L. Roberts, and Elizabeth Thornberry (eds.),New African Histories: Domestic Violence and the Law in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa (Athens, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2010): pp. 138–158.

28. 28.

    Ahmad b. Hattal Tilimsani,Riḥlat Muhammad al-Kabīr Bāy al-Gharb al-jazāʼirī ilá al-Janūb al-ṣaḥrāwī al-jazāʼirī (al-Qāhira, 1969): p. 15.

29. 29.

    Stockreiter, “Child Marriage and Domestic Violence”: pp. 138–158.

30. 30.

    ANA (Archives nationales de l’Algérie) D177,Rasm talaq el-Mekki bin Salem, No. 429, 4 September 1853.

31. 31.

    ANA D177,Rasm zawaj Rabah ben Mohammed min Laghouat, No. 549, 19 October 1881.

32. 32.

    Emily S. Burrill, “‘Wives of Circumstance’: Gender and Slave Emancipation in Late Nineteenth-century Senegal.”Slavery & Abolition 29.1 (2008): pp. 49–64.

33. 33.

    Ahmad A. Sikainga, “Shari’a’s Courts and the Manumission of Female Slaves in the Sudan, 1898–1939,”International Journal of African Historical Studies 28. 1 (1995): pp. 1–24.

34. 34.

    Archives centrales des Soeurs missionnaires de Notre Dame d’Afrique (ACSMNDA), Rome, Italy. “Mabrouka: Histoire d’une Petite Nègresse” (St. Charles, 1898).

35. 35.

    ANOM 22H/26. Rapport sur l’oued Souf et ses relations commerciales (undated). The term used here could refer either to being “raised,” as in children, or “bred,” as in animals.

36. 36.

    ACSMNDA, White Sisters’ Ghardaïa Station Diary, 2 July 1905 (No. 46).

37. 37.

    For example, ANOM, Préfecture d’Oran, Letter No.28 from the prefect to the commandant general of the subdivision, “au sujet de la négresse Rahma réclamée par le nègre Salem son mari.” In this case the master against whom Rahma was claiming emancipation sent his male slave to fill the role of the reclaiming husband. Discussed further in Cordell, “No liberty, not much equality, and very little fraternity,” p. 50.

38. 38.

    For example, ANOM 12H50, Letter No. 924 (Doc No. 1093), sent 4 Mar 1899, by Général Pédoya to the Governor General, “A.P. d’un Hartania et deux négresses esclaves, d’In Salah par une caravane de Géryville.” Earlier such contracts were usually amateurly done and not very convincing. Often, they were not dated or signed, did not indicate the amount of the dowry, and did not indicate whether the women or their guardians (wali) was present. On occasion, officers did go to the trouble of having a third party check the veracity of these documents.

39. 39.

    ANOM 12H50, Gen Pedoya to Gov Gen, 28 Feb 1889.

40. 40.

    ANOM 12H50, Cercle d’Oran, Affaires Indigènes – Gov Gen (undated), “Note sur l’esclavage dans la région d’Ouargla.”

41. 41.

    ANOM 12H50, Letter sent 14 Feb 1905.

42. 42.

    It is nearly impossible to confirm this; however, the White Sisters’ diaries include the details of a betrothal between a Black man and Black woman for which the dower paid was 100 francs.

43. 43.

    ANOM 12H50, Div Alger to Gouv. Gen. re “Negrèsses saisies à Berrian.”

44. 44.

    ANOM 12H50, Letters to Gouv. Gen. sent 23 April and 3 Aug 1905.

45. 45.

    ACSMNDA, White Sisters’ Ghardaïa Diary, 23 Aug 1905: p. 203.

46. 46.

    Christelow,Muslim law courts and the French colonial state in Algeria: p. 121. Another girl named Khadija, aged 18, was not so lucky when she fled to Constantine in 1866 and tried to divorce her husband whom she said was in reality her master. The presiding qadi determined that there were no grounds for divorce and she was forced to return.

47. 47.

    ACSMNDA, White Sisters’ Ghardaïa Diary, 12–13 Sept 1900.

48. 48.

    ACSMNDA, White Sisters’ Ghardaïa Diary, 8 Jan 1903.

49. 49.

    ACSMNDA, White Sisters’ Ghardaïa Diary, 2 Jan 1905.

50. 50.

    ACSMNDA, White Sisters’ Ghardaïa Diary, 22 May 1905.

51. 51.

    La Dépêche Algérienne, Thurs, 3 Dec 1896 (No. 4156).

52. 52.

    ANOM 12H50, Letter to Sup, Cercle de Mecheria, 6 Dec 1896.

53. 53.

    J. Bouveresse,Un parlement colonial?: les délégations financières algériennes, 1898–1945 (Mont-Saint-Aignan: Univ. de Rouen et du Havre, 2008): p. 715.

54. 54.

    Amélie Marie Goichon,La Vie féminine au Mzab. Étude de sociologie musulmane (Paris: Librairie orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1927): pp. 119–120.

The author would like to thank the archivists at various research sites, especially the General Archives of the Missionaries of Africa (White Father and White Sisters) in Rome, and the National Archives in Algeria, for their advice and generosity of time. The photographs included in this article are reproduced by permission of the General Archives of the Missionaries of Africa.

Authors and Affiliations

1. Department of History, Concordia University, Montreal, QC, Canada

   Sarah Ghabrial

Corresponding author

Correspondence toSarah Ghabrial.

Editors and Affiliations

1. Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD, USA

   Mary Ann Fay

© 2019 The Author(s)

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