The first thirty years of the French conquest of Algeria witnessed the large-scale destruction of Algiers’s cultural heritage. Researching the processes by which this came about leads us to consider the conditions of production of two sources that refer to the period before the conquest: Les édifices religieux de l’ancien Alger (The Religious Edifices of Old Algiers), by Albert Devoulx, and the “Ottoman collection” of archives initially established by the same figure. This dual archaeology, based on the reconstitution of Devoulx’s activities during his lifetime, reveals a virulent struggle over civic rights and particularly over the appropriation of endowments established by the city’s religious institutions. The sources considered here were part and parcel of this struggle. By paying attention to the claims they set out and the interactions between them, it becomes possible to retrace the disappearance of the mosques of Algiers and to appreciate the true nature of these sources.

Enquêter sur les processus de destruction du patrimoine cultuel algérois au cours des trente premières années de la conquête française de l'Algérie nous amène, en prêtant attention à la genèse de leur production, à considérer deux sources qui renvoient à une période antérieure à la conquête : Les édifices religieux de l'ancien Alger d'Albert Devoulx et le « Fonds ottoman », dont l'archivage fut initialement mis en œuvre par celui-ci. Ce double travail archéologique mené à partir de la reconstitution des activités d'A. Devoulx conduit à la mise au jour d'une lutte virulente pour les droits de cité et, notamment, pour l'appropriation des fondations pieuses des institutions dévotionnelles de la ville, une bataille dont ces sources furent partie prenante. En prêtant attention à leur charge revendicative et à la nature de leurs interactions, il devient possible de retracer l'histoire de la fin des mosquées d'Alger et d'apprécier, dans le même temps, la nature véritable de ces sources.

Our collaborative project originates in an attempt to articulate the intrinsic specificity of cases and contexts within a resolutely comparative approach. We focus particularly on what we believe to be the major limitation of comparison, namely the supposed need to rigidify the objects of comparison, to detach them from their contingent specificities and reduce cases to a set of data homogeneous enough to be compared. Our intent is to start a critical discussion regarding the hypothetical need to let go of specificity as the condition of comparison. With this in mind, we propose a comparative approach focused on sources rather than objects, and we consider them in terms of actions endowed with intentionality. The present study compares two institutions: the droit d'aubaine, and the Bayt al-mâl or Treasury, a traditional Islamic fiscal institution found in a number of Ottoman-era governments, whose prerogatives have typically been reduced to managing heirless estates and burying the poor. In theory, the aubaine and the Bayt al-mâl belong to distinct cultural and historical realms. Yet, as we demonstrate here, a careful analysis of the sources produced by each institution helps unpack these “cultural” constructions, produces new contexts in which both can be situated, and sheds light on the process of their construction and their amenability to comparison.