March 2017 Lecture: Ahmed Bouyerdene

PISAI on Thursday 23 March 2017 5pm Lecture by Ahmed Bouyerdene 'Abd el-Kader: humanisme et humanité en islam'. Lecture in French.

Ahmed Bouyerdene was born in Algeria in 1967, but emigrated with his family to France when he was five; he has both Algerian and French nationality. Dr. Bouyerdene is an independent researcher in history and a specialist on the great Algerian leader Emir Abd el-Kader (d. 1883). Dr. Bouyerdene completed his PhD on the life of Abd el-Kader at the Université Marc Bloch, Strasbourg, and has since published several books and articles on the Emir, including Abd el-Kader, l’harmonie des contraires (Seuil, 2008; translated into English as Emir Abd el-Kader: Hero and Saint of Islam, World Wisdom, 2012) and Abd el-Kader par ses contemporains (Ibis Press, 2008). He is co-director of the collective work Abd el-Kader, un spirituel dans la modernité (IFPO, 2010). Dr. Bouyerdene has also attended conferences around the world to present papers on the intellectual and spiritual qualities of the Emir, and has been a consultant on various media projects on the Emir. Dr. Bouyerdene lives and works in southern France.

Amīr ‘Abd al-Qādir b. Muḥyī l-Dīn al-Ḥasanī (1808-1883) was an Algerian leader of resistance to the French conquest in 1832-1847, and a state-builder, scholar, and mystical thinker. He was born in 1808, or according to some sources, 1807, near Mascara, in what is today western Algeria. His father was the regional head of the Qādiriyya ṭarīqa (Ṣūfī brotherhood), and, because the family claimed the status of sharīfs by virtue of descent from the prophet Muḥammad, it enjoyed considerable spiritual and genealogical prestige in the region. ‘Abd al-Qādir died in Damascus on 26 May 1883, and was buried, in accordance with his wishes, next to the tomb of Ibn ‘Arabī. In July 1966, his remains were repatriated to Algeria and ceremonially re-interred in the martyrs’ square of al-‘Āliya cemetery near Algiers [taken from: J. McDougall, “‘Abd al-Qādir, Amīr”, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE].