Jacques Berque
Encyclopedia
Jacques Augustin Berque was a French
Islamic scholar and sociologist
. His expertise was the decolonisation of Algeria
and Morocco
.
(now in Tiaret Province
) in French Algeria
, he was a pied-noir
. His father, Augustin Berque, was a scholar and Arabist
of distinction, one of the few to take an interest in the Muslim
culture of the Maghreb
. Berque graduated from University of Algiers
in 1929, and obtained a M.A.
degree a year later. He joined the French army
, and from 1934 to 1944 worked as a civil servant in Morocco. As such, he worked as an agronomist
in attempts to improve Moroccan agriculture and the life of the peasants. Later he became administrator of the Seksawa tribe, at Imi n'Tanout, High Atlas
. Five years of residence among them led to the book which established his scholarly reputation, Les Structures Sociales du Haut Atlas (1955). It remains one of the most thorough ethnographies of the Berbers
. He lived his last years and died in a village in the Landes, the region in south-west France from which the Berque family originates. He died in Saint-Julien-en-Born
.
. He was sent to Egypt
in 1953, returning to Paris two years later. He was made director of Muslim Sociological Studies at the Ecole Practique des Hautes Etudes, and a year later, in 1956, was appointed Professor of the Social History
of Contemporary Islam at the Collège de France
, a post he occupied until his retirement in 1981. Later he presided over two government missions, one at the Ministry of Research (1981–1982) and the other at the Ministry of Education (1984–1985).
Among some of Berque's most important works are his books Les Arabes d'hier a demain (1960) and L'Egypte: imperialisme et revolution (1967), translated into English by Jean Stewart as The Arabs: their history and future (1964) and Egypt: imperialism and revolution (1972). The latter, which is divided into five parts, deals with the history and social structure of Egypt from the 18th century up to 1952 when the monarchy
was toppled.
In an earlier work, Le Maghreb entre deux guerres ("The Maghreb between two world wars", 1962), Berque criticizes the colonial
system. His administrative and ethnographic
experience eventually took him in a direction adopted by few North-African-born Frenchmen or by colonial administrators: he came out in favour of independence. Berque was one of the few Europeans who retained links with the new Algeria after the bloody war. As the theoretician of third-worldist
romanticism, he became influential to the entire Arab-Muslim world, and even of the Third World
as a whole. Another work on the Maghreb, L'Interieur du Maghreb, XVe-XIXe siecle (1978), gives Berque's own interpretation of its history. Based on a reading of 15 texts which he had taught at the Collège de France
, the book runs to more than 500 pages, and is an important document on the history of the Maghreb.
Important as well is Languages arabes du present ("Present-day languages of the Arabs", 1974), which delves into the literary history of the Arabs, their language and culture. Berque's linguistic
versatility is made apparent here in his translations of Arabic poetry
from the classical period to the present, and in his analysis of the varieties of spoken and written Arabic. He was an accomplished Arabist, perfecting several Arabic dialects of both the Maghreb and the Middle East. He believed in the importance of bringing together different, but related, regions, whether in the Arabic- speaking world or in the Mediterranean, as can be seen from the titles of two of his books, De l'Euphrate a l'Atlas ("From the Euphrates to the Atlas", 1978) and Memoires des deux rives ("Recollections from Both Shores of the Mediterranean", 1989), the latter described by Ernest Gellner
, as 'a splendid account of what it was to be a pied-noir slowly converted to anti-colonialism'. He once said in an interview that since childhood he had tried fervently 'to synthesise the cultures of the northern shore of the Mediterranean with those of its southern shore'.
Berque's most lasting contribution might have been to the study of Islam
. A devout Christian
, he found in Islam "a new version of the truth of the world". Made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur
in his own country, he was decorated also by Morocco, Syria
and Tunisia
. In Egypt he was made a member of the Arabic Language Academy of Cairo
.
and Edward Said
, who criticized Orientalist
scholarship, claiming Lewis' work to be a prime example of Orientalism, in his 1978 book Orientalism, Berque was among the scholars, such as Maxime Rodinson
, Malcolm Kerr, Albert Hourani
, and William Montgomery Watt
, who maintained that Said's disregard for all the evidence that contradicted his narrative made Orientalism a deeply flawed account of Western scholarship.
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
Islamic scholar and sociologist
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
. His expertise was the decolonisation of Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
and Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
.
Biography
Born of French parents in FrendaFrenda
Frenda is a town and commune in Tiaret Province in northwestern Algeria. It is best known for ancient Berber monumental tombs known as Jedars. -Notable people:* Larbi Belkheir - Algerian politician* Abdelkader Benayada - Algerian association football player...
(now in Tiaret Province
Tiaret Province
Tiaret is a province of Algeria. The capital is Tiaret.-Administrative division:The province is divided into 14 districts , which are further divided into 42 communes or municipalities.-Districts:# Aïn Deheb# Aïn Kermes...
) in French Algeria
French Algeria
French Algeria lasted from 1830 to 1962, under a variety of governmental systems. From 1848 until independence, the whole Mediterranean region of Algeria was administered as an integral part of France, much like Corsica and Réunion are to this day. The vast arid interior of Algeria, like the rest...
, he was a pied-noir
Pied-noir
Pied-Noir , plural Pieds-Noirs, pronounced , is a term referring to French citizens of various origins who lived in French Algeria before independence....
. His father, Augustin Berque, was a scholar and Arabist
Arabist
This is an article about the western scholars known as Arabists, not the political movement Pan-Arabism.An Arabist is someone normally from outside the Arab World who specialises in the study of the Arabic language and Arab culture, and often Arabic literature.-Origins:Arabists began in medieval...
of distinction, one of the few to take an interest in the Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
culture of the Maghreb
Maghreb
The Maghreb is the region of Northwest Africa, west of Egypt. It includes five countries: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Mauritania and the disputed territory of Western Sahara...
. Berque graduated from University of Algiers
University of Algiers
The University of Algiers Benyoucef Benkhedda is a university located in Algiers, Algeria. It was founded in 1909 and is organized into seven faculties.-History:...
in 1929, and obtained a M.A.
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
degree a year later. He joined the French army
French Army
The French Army, officially the Armée de Terre , is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces.As of 2010, the army employs 123,100 regulars, 18,350 part-time reservists and 7,700 Legionnaires. All soldiers are professionals, following the suspension of conscription, voted in...
, and from 1934 to 1944 worked as a civil servant in Morocco. As such, he worked as an agronomist
Agronomist
An agronomist is a scientist who specializes in agronomy, which is the science of utilizing plants for food, fuel, feed, and fiber. An agronomist is an expert in agricultural and allied sciences, with the exception veterinary sciences.Agronomists deal with interactions between plants, soils, and...
in attempts to improve Moroccan agriculture and the life of the peasants. Later he became administrator of the Seksawa tribe, at Imi n'Tanout, High Atlas
High Atlas
High Atlas, also called the Grand Atlas Mountains is a mountain range in central Morocco in Northern Africa.The High Atlas rises in the west at the Atlantic Ocean and stretches in an eastern direction to the Moroccan-Algerian border. At the Atlantic and to the southwest the range drops abruptly...
. Five years of residence among them led to the book which established his scholarly reputation, Les Structures Sociales du Haut Atlas (1955). It remains one of the most thorough ethnographies of the Berbers
Berber people
Berbers are the indigenous peoples of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are continuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River. Historically they spoke the Berber language or varieties of it, which together form a branch...
. He lived his last years and died in a village in the Landes, the region in south-west France from which the Berque family originates. He died in Saint-Julien-en-Born
Saint-Julien-en-Born
Saint-Julien-en-Born is a commune in the Landes department in Aquitaine in south-western France.-References:*...
.
Career
In 1947 he became a Middle East expert for UnescoUNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
. He was sent to Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
in 1953, returning to Paris two years later. He was made director of Muslim Sociological Studies at the Ecole Practique des Hautes Etudes, and a year later, in 1956, was appointed Professor of the Social History
Social history
Social history, often called the new social history, is a branch of History that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies of coping with life. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments...
of Contemporary Islam at the Collège de France
Collège de France
The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...
, a post he occupied until his retirement in 1981. Later he presided over two government missions, one at the Ministry of Research (1981–1982) and the other at the Ministry of Education (1984–1985).
Among some of Berque's most important works are his books Les Arabes d'hier a demain (1960) and L'Egypte: imperialisme et revolution (1967), translated into English by Jean Stewart as The Arabs: their history and future (1964) and Egypt: imperialism and revolution (1972). The latter, which is divided into five parts, deals with the history and social structure of Egypt from the 18th century up to 1952 when the monarchy
Monarchy
A monarchy is a form of government in which the office of head of state is usually held until death or abdication and is often hereditary and includes a royal house. In some cases, the monarch is elected...
was toppled.
In an earlier work, Le Maghreb entre deux guerres ("The Maghreb between two world wars", 1962), Berque criticizes the colonial
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
system. His administrative and ethnographic
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
experience eventually took him in a direction adopted by few North-African-born Frenchmen or by colonial administrators: he came out in favour of independence. Berque was one of the few Europeans who retained links with the new Algeria after the bloody war. As the theoretician of third-worldist
Third-worldism
Third-worldism is a tendency within left-wing political thought to regard the division between developed countries, and developing countries or "Third World" nations against the background of primary political importance...
romanticism, he became influential to the entire Arab-Muslim world, and even of the Third World
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
as a whole. Another work on the Maghreb, L'Interieur du Maghreb, XVe-XIXe siecle (1978), gives Berque's own interpretation of its history. Based on a reading of 15 texts which he had taught at the Collège de France
Collège de France
The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...
, the book runs to more than 500 pages, and is an important document on the history of the Maghreb.
Important as well is Languages arabes du present ("Present-day languages of the Arabs", 1974), which delves into the literary history of the Arabs, their language and culture. Berque's linguistic
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
versatility is made apparent here in his translations of Arabic poetry
Arabic poetry
Arabic poetry is the earliest form of Arabic literature. Present knowledge of poetry in Arabic dates from the 6th century, but oral poetry is believed to predate that. Arabic poetry is categorized into two main types, rhymed, or measured, and prose, with the former greatly preceding the latter...
from the classical period to the present, and in his analysis of the varieties of spoken and written Arabic. He was an accomplished Arabist, perfecting several Arabic dialects of both the Maghreb and the Middle East. He believed in the importance of bringing together different, but related, regions, whether in the Arabic- speaking world or in the Mediterranean, as can be seen from the titles of two of his books, De l'Euphrate a l'Atlas ("From the Euphrates to the Atlas", 1978) and Memoires des deux rives ("Recollections from Both Shores of the Mediterranean", 1989), the latter described by Ernest Gellner
Ernest Gellner
Ernest André Gellner was a philosopher and social anthropologist, described by The Daily Telegraph when he died as one of the world's most vigorous intellectuals and by The Independent as a "one-man crusade for critical rationalism."His first book, Words and Things —famously, and uniquely...
, as 'a splendid account of what it was to be a pied-noir slowly converted to anti-colonialism'. He once said in an interview that since childhood he had tried fervently 'to synthesise the cultures of the northern shore of the Mediterranean with those of its southern shore'.
Berque's most lasting contribution might have been to the study of Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
. A devout Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
, he found in Islam "a new version of the truth of the world". Made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur
Légion d'honneur
The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
in his own country, he was decorated also by Morocco, Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
and Tunisia
Tunisia
Tunisia , officially the Tunisian RepublicThe long name of Tunisia in other languages used in the country is: , is the northernmost country in Africa. It is a Maghreb country and is bordered by Algeria to the west, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its area...
. In Egypt he was made a member of the Arabic Language Academy of Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
.
Orientalism controversy
In the literary sparrings between Bernard LewisBernard Lewis
Bernard Lewis, FBA is a British-American historian, scholar in Oriental studies, and political commentator. He is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University...
and Edward Said
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...
, who criticized Orientalist
Orientalism
Orientalism is a term used for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, as well as having other meanings...
scholarship, claiming Lewis' work to be a prime example of Orientalism, in his 1978 book Orientalism, Berque was among the scholars, such as Maxime Rodinson
Maxime Rodinson
Maxime Rodinson was a French Marxist historian, sociologist and orientalist. He was the son of a Russian-Polish clothing trader and his wife who both died in the Auschwitz concentration camp. After studying oriental languages, he became a professor of Ethiopian at EPHE...
, Malcolm Kerr, Albert Hourani
Albert Hourani
-Life and career:Hourani was born in Manchester, England, the son of Soumaya Rassi and Fadlo Issa Hourani, immigrants from Marjeyoun in what is now South Lebanon. His brothers were George Hourani and Cecil Hourani. His family had converted from Greek Orthodoxy...
, and William Montgomery Watt
William Montgomery Watt
William Montgomery Watt was a Scottish historian, an Emeritus Professor in Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Edinburgh...
, who maintained that Said's disregard for all the evidence that contradicted his narrative made Orientalism a deeply flawed account of Western scholarship.
External links
- Obituary of Jacques Berque, The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, July 11, 1995 - Quel islam? by Jacques Berque, oumma.com, July 28, 2005 (French)
- Jacques Berque. Une sociologie vaste et profonde by Réda Benkirane, September 26, 2005 (French)
- Hommage à Jacques Berque by Ahmed Moatassime, June 23, 2000 (French)
- Centre Jacques Berque pour les études en sciences humaines et sociales (French)
- Association des amis de Jacques Berque (French)
- Repossession du monde - Portrait et bibliographie de l'orientaliste français Jacques Berque (French)