Army Reform and Elite Movements between the Maghrib and the
Near East (1830-1912)
During the "long 19th century”, the southern and eastern
Mediterranean was characterized by profound transformation, in
which intra-Muslim relations played a crucial role. This project
explores the role these relations played with respect to army
reform, which here becomes the prism through which less exposed
aspects of political reorganization in the region will be scrutinized.
The creation of a standing army can actually be considered as
one of the key elements in the course of the creation and/or consolidation
of centralized statehood. It aimed at internal societal mobilization
and control as well as at the drawing of frontiers, or, at times,
expansionism. At the local and national level, both dynamics met
with practical problems and created new demands for legitimization.
Moreover army reform did not evolve in terms of dependence on
and/or opposition to Europe alone. Indeed, the historical experience
of reform as well as the frames of reference were never a function
of political or socio-cultural boundaries, given the horizontal
mobility of religious and politico-military elites and the appeal
of translocal identities within the Muslim world. Conversely,
the experiences of reform and frames of reference were themselves
affected by change. Working from the perspective of concrete actors,
the project intends to reconstruct how contacts and references
across borders within the Muslim world have shaped the appropriation/creation
of forms of modern statehood and how these in turn influenced
such contacts and references. The first sub-project (part 1) explores
encounters by members of the Moroccan military and learned elites
with reforms and reformism(s) in North Africa and the Near East.
The second sub-project (part 2) studies a specific group of Arab-Ottoman
officers active in different countries of the region, with reference
to the quality of their experts, instructors and consultants.
The third sub-project (part 3) looks at army reform in Egypt and
Egyptian expansionism from a scholar and scholarly literature
perspective at the Azhar mosque university.
project publications 
Part 1
Itineraries of the "(New) Order” – Moroccan encounters
with North African and Near Eastern reformism
Bettina Dennerlein
Bettina Dennerlein challenges generalizations regarding the degree
and impact of the ‘Muslim’ (i.e., Algerian, Egyptian,
Ottoman, Tunisian...) influence on Moroccan army reform, by looking
at the concrete experiences, strategies and perceptions of individual
actors. She starts from two basic assumptions. Firstly, reform
in general should be understood in terms of a multitude of practices,
points of view, ideas, techniques and institutions. Secondly,
the intra-Muslim space for implementing and experimenting with
new techniques and models of order can by no means be considered
a homogeneous one, nor was it free from conflict. By exploring
the lives and activities of different members of the Moroccan
administrative and scholarly elites in touch with developments
in the region, this study seeks to reconstitute the forms, conditions,
and possible impact of individual encounters and experiences with
North African and Middle Eastern reforms.
Part 2
Army reform as a profession and transnational experiment : Arab-Ottoman
experts in Morocco at the beginning of the 20th Century
Odile Moreau
Odile Moreau examines a group of Arab-Ottoman officers and military
reform experts who came to Morocco at the beginning of the 20th
century and how they contributed to military reform in Morocco.
Their expert knowledge had been accumulated in reform experiments
in different areas of the Middle East and North Africa. This project
seeks to contribute to the social history of interaction between
the southern countries of the Mediterranean. By tracing the socio-cultural
trajectory of Ottoman military experts, it follows a micro-historical
approach. At the same time, this case study will allow us to examine
their professional careers more closely in order to outline the
category of professional expertise in the Muslim Mediterranean
at the beginning of the 20th century.
Part 3
Discourses of legitimation in the age of reform. The Azhar,
the Army and Egyptian Expansionism (1822-1882)
Dyala Hamzah
Dyala Hamzah looks at the creation of Egypt’s standing army
(1822) and the novel wars it waged during the 19th century from
the point of view of Azhar mosque university scholars. She asks
whether and if so, how Islamic theories of government and political
order (siyâsa shar‘iyya, khilâfa) were transformed
in the wake of state centralization and expansionism; and whether
specific jurisprudential concepts, such as ‘abd, dhimmî,
jihâd, etc., were affected in any way by military reform
itself. In order to gauge the social relevance of ulema, the scope
of their networks, and the translocal significance of their ideas
across the Ottoman Empire (and beyond), she examines the conditions
of production for scholarly literature as a whole in the context
of reform, with particular focus on legal advice literature (fatâwâ).
Ultimately, she aims at establishing the persistence of Azhar
scholars’ power of legitimation vs. the new, competing world
views that had begun to emerge from bureaucratic and technical
rationale and practice.
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