Combatants of Muslim Origin in European Armies in the Twentieth Century: Far From Jihad 1474249426, 9781474249423

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Combatants of Muslim Origin in European Armies in the Twentieth Century

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Combatants of Muslim Origin in European Armies in the Twentieth Century Far From Jihad Edited by Xavier Bougarel, Raphaëlle Branche and Cloé Drieu

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

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Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York Y 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2017 © Xavier Bougarel, Raphaëlle Branche, Cloé Drieu and Contributors, 2017 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the authors. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN :

HB : ePDF: ePub:

978-1-4742-4942-3 978-1-4742-4944-7 978-1-4742-4943-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Cover image: An-Nasr-La Victoire, illustré mensuel arabe, June 1943 / Bibliothèque nationale de France. Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

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Contents List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations

Introduction Xavier Bougarel, Raphaëlle Branche and Cloé Drieu 1

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Algerians in the French Army, 1914–1918: From Military Integration to the Dawn of Algerian Patriotism Gilbert Meynier

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Feeding Muslim Troops during the First World War Emmanuelle Cronier

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Muslim Askaris in the Colonial Troops of German East Africa, 1889–1918 Tanja Bührer

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Turkic Muslims in the Russian Army: From the Beginning of the First World War to the Revolutions of 1917 Salavat M. Iskhakov

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Between ‘Non-Russian Nationalities’ and Muslim Identity: Perceptions and Self-Perceptions of Soviet Central Asian Soldiers in the Red Army, 1941–1945 Kiril Feferman

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Islam, a ‘Convenient Religion’? The Case of the 13th SS Division Handschar Xavier Bougarel

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The Officer for Muslim Military Affairs in the First French Army, 1944–1945: An Agent of Control or an Intermediary? Claire Miot

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Haunted by Jinns: Dealing with War Neuroses among Muslim Soldiers during the Second World War Julie Le Gac

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‘Allah Might Provide the Fuel’: Muslim Sailors in British Colonial Navies, from the Second World War to Independence Daniel Owen Spence

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Glossary Index

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List of Illustrations Figures 2.1 Tirailleurs marocains in Amiens preparing roast mutton, 1914. Postcard, private collection. 2.2 Hindus at La Barasse near Marseille preparing dough for chappattis Postcard, private collection. 2.3 Young girl offering champagne to tirailleurs algériens on their way to the frontier, 1914. Postcard, private collection.

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Table 9.1 Royal Indian Navy – ethnic and regional composition

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Notes on Contributors Xavier Bougarel is Research Fellow at the Centre d’Études Turques, Ottomanes, Balkaniques et Centrasiatiques in Paris. His research is focused on Islam in the Balkans, the Second World War in the Balkans and the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Amongst his publications: Survivre aux empires. Islam, identité nationale et allégeances politiques en Bosnie-Herzégovine (2015); Les musulmans de l’Europe du Sud-Est (with Nathalie Clayer, 2013); Investigating Srebrenica. Facts, Responsibilities, Institutions (with Isabelle Delpla and Jean-Louis Fournel, 2012); The New Bosnian Mosaic. Identities, Memories and Moral Claims in a Post-War Society (with Elissa Helms and Ger Duijzings, 2007); and Bosnie, anatomie d’un conflit (1996). Raphaëlle Branche is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Rouen, and Researcher at the Groupe de Recherche d’Histoire (EA 3831). She is the editor in chief of the journal Vingtième siècle. Revue d’histoire. Her work focuses on the Algerian war of independence, the French Army in colonial wars, colonial violence and gender issues. Amongst her publications: Prisonniers du FLN (2014); L’embuscade de Palestro, Algérie 1956 (2010); La Guerre d’Algérie: une histoire apaisée? (2005); and La Torture et l’armée pendant la guerre d’Algérie, 1954–1962 (2001). Tanja Bührer is currently Visiting Professor at the University of Rostock. Before that, she has been Visiting Fellow and Visiting Scholar at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS ), the Oxford Centre for Global History, the German Historical Institute London (GHIL ), and at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Amongst her publications: Die Kaiserliche Schutztruppe für Deutsch-Ostafrika. Koloniale Sicherheitspolitik und transkulturelle Kriegführung 1885 bis 1918 (2011); and Imperialkriege von 1500 bis heute. Strukturen – Akteure – Lernprozesse (with Christian Stachelbeck and Dierk Walter, 2011). Emmanuelle Cronier is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Picardie in Amiens. Her research to date has focused on the social and cultural history of the First World War. She has published on fighters on leave vii

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Notes on Contributors

and on the urban experience of war. She is currently doing research on food issues during the Great War in a comparative approach. Amongst her publications: Permissionnaires dans la Grande Guerre (2013). Cloé Drieu is Research Fellow at Centre d’Études Turques, Ottomanes, Balkaniques et Centrasiatiques in Paris. She specializes in the political and social history of Central Asia. Since 2014, she has carried out lengthy fieldworks in the archives in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Russia and she is now working on Central Asia during the First World War through the revolt of 1916. Amongst her publications: Fictions nationales. Cinéma, empire et nation en Ouzbékistan (1924–1937) (2013); and Ecrans d’Orient, Propagande, innovation et résistances dans les cinémas de Turquie, d’Iran et d’Asie Centrale (1897–1945) (edited volume, 2013). Kiril Feferman is Research Fellow at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research in Los Angeles, Senior Lecturer at Ariel University in Israel, and Associate Researcher at the Centre d’Étude des Mondes Russe, Caucasien et Centre-européen in Paris. He previously taught at the Russian State University and the Russian State University for Humanities in Moscow. Amongst his publications: The Holocaust in the Crimea and the North Caucasus (2015). Salavat M. Iskhakov is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. He specializes in the social and political history of the Muslim population of the Russian Empire and the USSR during the twentieth century. Among his publications: Grazhdanskaia Voina v Rossii i Musul’mane. Dokumenty i materialy [Civil war in Russia and the Muslim Populations, Documents] (2014); Pervaia Russkaia Revoliutsiia i Musul’mane Rossisskoi imperii [The First Russian Revolution and the Muslims of the Russian Empire] (2007); and Rossiskie Musul’mane i Revoliutsiia (1917–1919) [The Muslims of Russia and Revolution (1917–1919)] (2004). Julie Le Gac is a graduate of the École Normale Supérieure de Cachan and a Postdoctoral Fellow in Modern History at the University of Paris IV Sorbonne (LabEx EHNE – UMR Sirice). Her research explores the intersections of military history, colonial history, gender history and the history of medicine. She is currently researching the history of war psychiatry from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. Amongst her publications: Vaincre

Notes on Contributors

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sans gloire. Le corps expéditionnaire français en Italie (novembre 1942-juillet 1944) (2013). Gilbert Meynier has served on the faculty of Constantine University (1968– 1970) and Nancy II University (1971–2000). His research focuses on Algeria and the Arab world. Among his publications: L’Algérie révélée (1981); L’Émir Khaled, premier za‘îm? (with Ahmed Koulakssis, 1987); Histoire de la France coloniale – Tome II (1914–1990) (with Jacques Thobie, Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch and Charles-Robert Ageron, 1990); Histoire intérieure du FLN (2002); Le FLN, documents et histoire (with Mohammed Harbi, 2004); L’Algérie des origines. De la préhistoire à l’avènement de l’islam (2007); and L’Algérie, cœur du Maghreb classique. De l’ouverture islamo-arabe au repli (698–1518) (2010). Claire Miot is Associate Researcher at the Institut des Sciences Sociales du Politique at the École Normale Supérieure de Cachan. Amongst her publications: ‘L’armée de l’Empire ou l’armée de la Nation? Front et arrières pendant la seconde campagne de France (1944–1945)’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, no. 259 (2015), 39–56; and ‘Le retrait des tirailleurs sénégalais de la Première Armée française en 1944. Hérésie stratégique, bricolage politique ou conservatisme colonial ?’, Vingtième siècle. Revue d’histoire, no. 125 (2015), 77–89. Daniel Owen Spence is Senior Lecturer in the University of the Free State’s International Studies Group, Research Affiliate with the University of Sydney, and Fellow of Leiden University’s African Studies Centre Community. Amongst his publications: Colonial Naval Culture and British Imperialism, 1922–1967 (2015); and A History of the Royal Navy: Empire and Imperialism (2015).

Acknowledgments This book grew out of the conference Far from Jihad: Combatants of Muslim Origin in European Armies in the 20th Century, held on 22nd and 23rd May 2014 at the Cité Nationale pour l’Histoire de l’Immigration (CNHI ) in Paris. We are very grateful to the CNHI for hosting this event. We would also like to thank the Labex TEPSIS , the Centre d’Études Turques, Ottomanes, Balkaniques et Centrasiatiques (CETOBAC ), the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin, the Institut d’Études de l’Islam et des Sociétés du Monde Musulman (IISMM ), University of Paris I, the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF ), the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS ) and the Centre d’Histoire Sociale du XX e Siècle for making this conference possible. During the event, we benefited from comments and clarifications from Annette Becker, Robert Johnson and PierreJean Luizard. We wish to thank Christopher Mobley for translating the contributions of Xavier Bougarel and Gilbert Meynier and the introduction, and Ian Appleby for translating Salavat Iskhakov’s text. Our gratitude goes to Julie Le Gac for helping us find the cover illustration. While preparing this book, we were helped by many other colleagues. It would be impossible to name them all, but we would like to extend special thanks to Richard Fogarty and the two anonymous reviewers for their remarks and encouragement. Any errors or oversights in this book are, of course, our own responsibility.

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List of Abbreviations ABiH

Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine (Sarajevo)

AMM

Affaires militaires musulmanes (Muslim Military Affairs)

AN

Archives nationales (Paris)

AOS

Arhiv oružanih snaga (Belgrade)

BAL

Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde (Berlin)

BAMA

Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv (Freiburg)

BL

British Library (London)

BMC

bordel militaire de campagne (Field Military Brothel)

BNF

Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris)

BOR

British Other Rank

DIA

division d’infanterie algérienne (Algerian Infantry Division)

DOMDO

Domobranska dobrovoljačka pukovnija (Military Regiment of Volunteers)

ECPAD

Etablissement de communication et de production audiovisuelle de la Défense (Ivry-sur-Seine)

FOCRIN

Flag Officer Commanding Royal Indian Navy

GARF

Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv rossiiskoi federatsii (Moscow)

GEA

German East Africa

GOC

General Officer Commanding

IfZ

Institut für Zeitgeschichte (Munich)

IOR

Indian Other Rank

KRNVR

Kenya Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve xi

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List of Abbreviations

MNF

Malaysian Naval Force

MRNVR

Malaysian Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve

NCO

Non-Commissioned Officer

NMM

National Maritime Museum (London)

OMDS

Orenburgskoe magometanskoe dukhovnoe sobranie (Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly)

POW

prisoner of war

PRO

Public Record Office (Kew)

RGASPI

Rossiiskii gosudarstvenyi arhiv sotsial’no-istoricheskoi istorii (Moscow)

RGVA

Rossiiskii gosudarstvenyi voenny arkhiv (Moscow)

RGVIA

Rossiiskii gosudarstvenyi voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv (Moscow)

RIN

Royal Indian Navy

RTA

régiment de tirailleurs algériens (Algerian Tirailleur Regiment)

SAMHA

Service des archives médicales des hôpitaux de l’Armée (Limoges)

SHAT

Service historique de l’Armée de terre (Vincennes)

SHD

Service historique de la Défense (Vincennes)

SS

Schutzstaffel

SSNVR

Straits Settlement Naval Volunteer Reserve

TNA

Tanzania National Archives (Dar es Salaam)

TNA

The National Archives (Kew)

TsAMO

Tsentral’nyi arkhiv ministerstva oborony (Moscow)

UMNO

United Malays National Organisation

VMVSh

Vserossiiskoe musul’manskoe voennoe shura (All-Russian Muslim Military Shura)

Introduction Xavier Bougarel, Raphaëlle Branche and Cloé Drieu

In 1943, An Nasr (‘Victory’), a newspaper for North African combatants in the French Army, published a picture of a Saladin slicing a swastika with his sword. Between Orientalist cliché and deliberate anachronism, this image illustrates how, in the twentieth century, the European Great Powers at war sought to win the Muslim peoples over to their side. For the past few years, in the midst of the media’s sensationalist focus on jihadist movements, this historical reality has inspired several publications of varying quality about the ‘Jihad Made in Germany’ of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed V in 1914, or the pro-Nazi propaganda of the Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husayni, even though these two appeals had no important impact on Muslim populations.1 At the same time, the First World War centenary has been the occasion for numerous scientific publications and events. Breaking with the strictly national narratives of the First World War, considerable research has focused on the colonial troops, emphasized the imperial dimensions of the war, and shown that the Great War was also a multicultural experience.2 Other publications have focused on the religious dimensions of the First World War, endeavouring to reconstruct the religious beliefs and practices of ordinary soldiers.3 Yet Islam has remained relatively marginal in these works. The present collective work aims to show the importance of this theme by focusing on the combatants of Muslim origin that fought in European armies in the two world wars, and by using Islam as a prism through which to better understand how these soldiers were supervised, where their allegiances lay, and what their everyday practices were.

What do we mean by ‘combatants of Muslim origin’? In this collective work, we focus on combatants from societies with a Muslim culture. The aim is not to make any assumptions about their personal piety, but 1

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Combatants of Muslim Origin in European Armies

to investigate whether they were perceived as Muslims by their military commanders, and whether they viewed themselves in these terms. For example, it is equally important to know whether European leaders considered Islam to be a threat to their imperial hegemony, and whether the combatants of Muslim origin truly identified with the Umma (the community of the faithful), knowing that these two phenomena are not necessarily related. We are well aware that the term ‘Muslim’ must not overshadow the diverse geographic origins of the combatants in question, the wide range of imperial political and military frameworks that they were subject to, or the web of tribal, ethnic or regional identities that they adhered to. Moreover, we are interested in combatants of Muslim origin enrolled in armies with a non-Muslim majority of recruits, and therefore do not cover combatants of the Ottoman Army.4 European armies recruited combatants of Muslim origin from the time of the colonial conquest until the wars of decolonization. Indeed, the European Great Powers could not maintain their domination over vast empires without recruiting native soldiers and policemen.5 Combatants of Muslim origin were also involved in wars on European soil, including the Spanish Civil War in 1936–9.6 But rather than retracing the history of armed formations with very different statuses and destinies, we have preferred to focus on the two world wars. During these conflicts, the number of combatants of Muslim origin in the European armies reached unparalleled heights. A substantial proportion of them fought in Europe, with all the adaptation problems caused by this transfer. In addition, the experience of these two global conflicts affected the social and political mobilizations of Muslim populations after the Second World War, as shown in particular in Daniel Owen Spence’s contribution to this volume. All these reasons explain why we have chosen these two crucial periods of twentiethcentury history. Despite often incomplete sources and always problematic statistical categories, the number of these combatants in the two world wars can be roughly estimated. In the First World War, more than two million combatants of Muslim origin were enrolled in the Russian Army (more than one million Tatars and Bashkirs), the Indian Army (500,000, i.e. one-third of the troops in this Hindu-majority colonial army), the French Army (450,000 Africans and North Africans) and to a lesser extent, the German and Austro-Hungarian Armies. On certain battlefields, such as the Dardanelles, Palestine or Mesopotamia, combatants of Muslim origin represented a particularly high proportion of troops on the ground. They also played a decisive role in the Second World War. By far, the Red Army had the largest number of Muslim soldiers (several million Muslims from

Introduction

3

Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia), followed by the Indian Army (700,000), the French forces (500,000 in 1940 and 400,000 in the army raised in North Africa beginning in 1942), not to mention other smaller contingents in the Wehrmacht, the Waffen-SS and the Dutch Army. In 1944, the French Expeditionary Corps in Italy was 60 per cent comprised of colonial soldiers, the majority of whom were Muslims.7 While the history of imperial armies has been considerably renewed over the past few decades, Islam’s place in these armies has not been studied substantially. Historian Kaushik Roy, one of the leading specialists in the Indian Army, only addresses religion marginally, because he does not view it as an important factor of troops’ morale. According to Roy, ‘in the final analysis, the Commonwealth armies’ morale and discipline in the battlefields depended on the supply of food, drink, sex and qualitative and quantitative superiority in military hardware. These constituted the crucial components of in-combat motivation.’8 In another article, Roy admits that ‘a feature unique about the Indian Army was the fact that officers had to take personal care of the troops, especially their religious and cultural sensibilities’,9 but he does not expound on this point. More generally, only a few works have focused on Islam’s place in the way these soldiers were supervised, where their allegiances lay, and what their everyday practices were. Nile Green’s book, published in 2009, is particularly important. Green describes the tolerance that the Sufi Islam of the faqirs enjoyed in the Indian Army in the nineteenth century, until the emergence of a ‘barracks Islam’ that was more closely supervised, and was influenced by Muslim reformism and Protestant rigour.10 In 2008, Richard Fogarty dedicated a chapter of his book Race and War in France to Islam in the French colonial troops of the First World War. In this chapter, Fogarty emphasizes the ambiguities of the French authorities, aware that the main Islamic rituals had to be respected to ensure the loyalty of Muslim troops, while continuing to view Islam as a religion potentially hostile to the colonial power.11 In a more recent paper, Fogarty focuses on Muslim soldiers from France’s North African colonies who were held in German prisoner camps, showing the difficulties the German Empire faced in its attempts to instrumentalize Islam.12 Lastly, in 2014, David Motadel showed how the Third Reich also attempted to use Islam to recruit combatants and maintain troop discipline, relying on imams trained in special schools, and emphasizing its respect for the main Islamic rituals in the Muslim units of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS .13 Yet entire chapters of the religious history of these combatants have still to be written.

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Combatants of Muslim Origin in European Armies

This book does not claim to fill this void, even though its nine chapters cover the four belligerent Great Powers that used combatants of Muslim origin on a wide scale: Great Britain, France, Germany and Russia (later the Soviet Union). In this introduction, we begin by showing how the recruitment of combatants of Muslim origin fits into the broader issue of building colonial troops. Then, we investigate the possible role that Islam may have played in maintaining the loyalty of these combatants or, conversely, in encouraging resistance to the colonial order. Lastly, we focus on the institutionalization of Islam within the European armies, and on the actual forms that the Muslim faith assumed on the battlefields of the two World Wars.

Native soldiers and imperial order In the two world wars, the diversity of combat troops reflected that of the populations of the empires at war. It is because these empires were multiethnic and multi-confessional that combatants of Muslim origin served under their flags. It is also because the empires had Muslim subjects that Muslim soldiers had this status. Before becoming an issue for the army, Islam was an issue for the political authorities. The Muslim populations were dominated, and had had to accept the tutelage of empires that claimed another religion – the British and Russian Empires and, more ambiguously, the French Empire14 – or were detached from any religion, in the case of the Soviet Union explored in this volume by Kiril Feferman. For the state, religious belonging was one of the factors of diversity to which it had to adjust in order to solidify and maintain its power. The world wars in which the empires committed their armies thus constituted a trial not just for the men fighting, but also for the power structures that made their mobilization possible. To arm several million men from lands that had generally only belonged to the empire for a few generations, the empire had to be sure of the ties built since the colonial conquest. Giving weapons to young men from colonized populations required making sure that they would not turn those weapons against the dominant group, the colonizers, who were already in a weakened position due to the war itself. Thus, understanding how the empires were able to resort to troops of Muslim origin on a massive scale leads to the broader question of the use of colonial troops, either to enlarge the empire or to maintain order. Before seeing the effects of the two world wars on the ‘paths of accommodation’ between the colonizers and the colonized populations, between

Introduction

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the imperial army and the combatants of Muslim origin, we must understand how these armies were formed.15 Before the First World War, the empires had all resorted to using native men for instrumental reasons. Their aim was to save European manpower, while involving a portion of the colonized populations in the imperial undertaking. The appeal to native populations partially derived from a system of alliances with local powers in an unequal framework. The voluntary participation at the basis of this framework was a very relative concept that could overshadow multiple overlapping forms of domination. In her chapter, Tanja Bührer traces the converging interests of the German colonizers and the Arab populations of German East Africa. By developing a military force to serve and consolidate the colonial power, certain local actors were also able to gain strength and increase their social influence. Among native actors, and beyond the specific case of the native notables, there was indeed a form of agency that explains why the colonized populations, including Muslims, found it in their interest to join the colonial power’s army. Apart from the fact that the military order was ultimately more egalitarian than the colonial order, as Gilbert Meynier points out for Algerians in the French Army, this engagement could be a means for the colonial subjects to escape their condition. This was notably the case for the slaves of the territories of French West Africa: during the First World War, three-quarters of the 180,000 tirailleurs from French West Africa were former slaves.16 After becoming soldiers, they acquired skills but especially social capital that they could use when they returned home. The military experience also enabled them to renegotiate their former status as slaves and to erode or even completely undo the former masters’ control over the former slave population.17 It allowed these combatants to escape the rules of indigénat and forced labour, stakes that were even higher for the colonial powers as these soldiers were very numerous after the First World War. Indeed, the First World War marked a turning point in the history of military conscription in the empires, given the war’s length and high number of casualties. To cope with the immense need for men, the belligerent states had to recruit on a massive scale, both for the front lines and for support in the rear.18 The principle of recruiting volunteers was severely tested. Even the British had to begin drafting their own citizens in 1916. Four years earlier, France had instituted compulsory military service for all Algerians. However, it continued to present their service in the ranks as proof of their allegiance. Some native notables chose to play this role, and the French Army (like others) was able to exploit political and religious figures such as Si Ibrahim bin el-Hadj Mohammed, a dignitary

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from the important Rahmaniyya brotherhood, who was invited to visit injured Muslim combatants in order to boost their morale. He was later given the Legion of Honour, which the President of the Council justified by stating that it might ‘draw the sympathies of the Muslim chiefs who ask to serve us’.19 Even more symbolic was the role played by Khaled el-Hassani ben el-Hachemi, the grandson of Abd el-Kader. Whereas his grandfather had led the jihad against the French during the conquest of Algeria, Emir Khaled made his career in the French Army as one of the very few Algerians to enter the prestigious St Cyr military school. He even reached the exceptional rank of native captain, and fought in the first few months of the First World War, until the French authorities decided to use him for conferences and propaganda tours aimed at North African soldiers, as mentioned in Meynier’s contribution. Before the war, Khaled was a politician and the editor-in-chief of L’Islam, the newspaper of the Jeunes Algériens. He agreed to assist the French because he sought to build a new balance of power with the colonizer.20 While using native troops was an essential component of colonial power before 1914, it was not motivated exclusively by economic or political considerations. It was also linked to a very specific conception that developed in the late nineteenth century, lasting in the ranks of the army until the Second World War: the ‘martial races’ theory. In the British Empire, the Punjabi Sikhs, Nepalese Gurkhas and Highland Scots were highly valued, with a very strong impact on the makeup of the Indian Army, as Daniel Owen Spence shows in his contribution about the Royal Indian Navy.21 In the French Empire, this kind of viewpoint also found its defenders.22 With his experience in French Sudan, General Charles Mangin would promote the use of African soldiers, even on European battlefields.23 In 1910, when his book La Force noire (‘Black Force’)24 was published, nothing seemed less obvious for the empires, but a few years later, resistance to this idea disappeared. A minute assessment of the value of some categories of troops even led to specific assignments. For example, the tirailleurs from French Somaliland, supposedly skilled in hand-to-hand combat, were favoured as trench cleaners during the Battle of Verdun.25 During the Second World War, the engagement of French colonial troops in Europe was a foregone conclusion: alongside black troops, the North Africans – and in particular the Moroccans, who had fiercely resisted the French conquest until the 1930s – were engaged and appreciated for their skill on the battlefield.26 These regiments received recognition and decorations, but they were still military units marked by the colonial situation. This is chiefly what set them apart from other units. The French Army mainly relied on tirailleurs and, to a lesser

Introduction

7

extent, spahis. Thus, these were categories based on their role in the army, not their religion: light infantry for the tirailleurs and cavalry for the spahis. However, if we look more closely, we see that only troops from the empire served in these units. ‘Tunisian’, ‘Moroccan’, ‘Algerian’ or ‘Senegalese’ tirailleurs were soldiers of the empire, their units named after the territory where they were formed. Thus, the ‘Senegalese’ tirailleurs comprised troops from all of French Black Africa (West and East), but were in fact formed in Senegal in 1857 by Governor Louis Faidherbe. Only a soldier of Muslim culture who had become a full French citizen could have served in another type of regiment – but this is pure speculation because such a category of individuals was practically non-existent in the French Empire in the first half of the twentieth century. The colonial regiments were the only army units in which Islam could be an issue on a group level, even if not all the soldiers were Muslims. In these regiments, special arrangements could indeed be envisaged in response to the fact that a large proportion of the men were Muslims. During the Battle of France in May and June 1940, these regiments were still being used. As for the army that liberated France alongside the Allied troops in 1943–4, it relied on other types of units: goumiers and tabors, mainly Moroccans, who had been trained during the Moroccan conquest and were being sent outside Morocco for the first time. ‘Goums’ and ‘tabors’ are derived from Arabic words and indicate the soldiers’ origins, but their religion was only implied. Conversely, their colonial aspect was obvious, because the native officers could not be promoted above the rank of lieutenant and very few reached even that level. All these troops were commanded by French officers who were full citizens, as explained in the chapter written by Claire Miot. Although soldiers of the British Empire were used in all kinds of units, unlike in the French Army, there were nevertheless many forms of discrimination, notably for promotions and pay. The army corps were organized in reference either to the territories the men came from (Indian Army, Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, etc.), or to the territory where they served (as for the Egypt Expeditionary Force). However, as in the French Army, behind these geographic denominations lay colonial social realities that implied religious issues. Hence in the Indian Army (which grouped together the largest number of soldiers of Muslim origin), one finds signs of the importance of religious belonging in recruitment methods. During the First World War, most infantry battalions in particular were organized on an ethnic and/or religious basis, conveying a strong identity to the regiments.27 As Emmanuelle Cronier notes, Muslims represented around one-third of the soldiers who signed up voluntarily, i.e. probably around 500,000 men. During the Second World War, the Indian Army grew considerably

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Combatants of Muslim Origin in European Armies

to 2.5 million men. The foundations of its organization were changed, with soldiers signing up for shorter tours of duty, and units lost their cohesion, even though there was a much higher number of Indian officers.28 This crucial question of cohesion took another form in the Russian Army, where soldiers of Muslim origin comprised up to ten per cent of all troops during the First World War – between 1 million and 1.5 million men, according to Salavat Iskhakov, mainly Tatars and Bashkirs, who had long been incorporated into the Russian military world, including in the officer corps. At the turn of the twentieth century, the officer corps comprised 80 per cent Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians) and 20 per cent men of other origins, including Muslims.29 Universal conscription began fairly early on, with the 1874 reforms of Minister of War Dmitry Milyutin, but struggled to take hold in the Russian imperial (and later Soviet) world.30 As a result of the Bolshevik Revolution and the new Soviet nationalities policy, the populations of Central Asia and the Caucasus were granted national republics and citizenship status; national sentiments were encouraged, while being radically detached from any religious identity. The 1936 Soviet Constitution officially eliminated all restrictions related to national or class distinctions, notably with regard to conscription, and in 1939, exemptions for religious reasons were repealed.31 However, during the Second World War, the Soviet authorities remained distrustful of these men, notably for religious reasons. Thus, Feferman shows how the Red Army initially preferred to avoid conscription in the Central Asian republics, before being forced to change tack given the magnitude of casualties during the first year of the war. This distrust was genuine, but it was tempered by practical considerations. In reality, soldiers’ ability to understand Russian (the language of the commanders) was the key factor for recruitment of Central Asian soldiers. Recruitment methods were determined not only by how old the political and cultural ties were between the tutelary colonial power and the Muslim populations, which were colonized or integrated into the state to varying degrees; they were also influenced by the social imaginary of the colonial authorities. For them, the disadvantages of having men whose loyalty was – often unfairly – questioned due to their confinement to a religious identity assumed to be subversive were outweighed by the advantages. Three such advantages can be identified. First, grouping together men of the same religion made it possible to add forms of religious control to the military command structures, resulting in greater conformity in terms of practices and ultimately greater obedience. Second, there were also clear efficiencies in terms of logistics – as Cronier shows

Introduction

9

regarding the food supply – but also in terms of supervision, as religious homogeneity enabled officers to be more rapidly familiar with their men. Third, permitting soldiers to fight alongside other soldiers of the same faith was an essential morale factor, both for the soldiers themselves and for their families back home, who could be reassured that religious obligations, particularly in the event of death, would be respected. For Muslims, these obligations notably included the need to bury the corpse within twenty-four hours of death. As early as October 1914, the French Minister of War warned: ‘Any ceremony of a potentially religious nature must be avoided unless a Muslim can conduct it.’32 In December, a new circular specified: When a Muslim is about to die, he will not fail to recite the ‘shahada’, if he can, extending his right index finger. If his condition does not permit him to do so, any fellow Muslim present is obligated to recite for him this profession of the Muslim faith. Thus, on all occasions when a native soldier is in a hopeless condition, any other fellow Muslim or Muslims present in the same establishment must be alerted.33

Islam, forms of loyalty and resistance During the First World War, the Muslims prayed not only for their comrades fallen in battle. In 1914, the munajats (prayers for the Tsar said by Central Asian Muslims, and by some Christians and Jews as well) held particular importance for the Tsarist authorities: agents of the Okhrana (political police) serving in Russian Turkestan received orders to make sure that the khutbas (Friday sermons) given in mosques included this thought for the Tsar and the Russian Empire at war.34 These agents then discovered that many imams were not saying this prayer, or claimed to do so ‘silently’. This situation prompted the imperial authorities to issue a new circular ordering the prayer for the Tsar to be said aloud. This incident shows how much the imperial authorities and ultimately the Tsar himself gave particular importance to the different forms of declarations of allegiance. The Russian example is obviously not the only one. In 1914, the ulamas and leaders of Sufi brotherhoods within the French Empire also gave ever more frequent declarations of loyalty to the French authorities, while the Reis-ul-ulema of Bosnia-Herzegovina called for jihad in the ranks of the AustroHungarian Army. Likewise, in 1941, Mufti Abdurahman Rasulev of the Muslim Spiritual Directorate of Central Asia and Kazakhstan called on Muslims to support the Soviet war effort.

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Combatants of Muslim Origin in European Armies

Hence the question of loyalty was an urgent one for all empires, faced as they were with managing particularly heterogeneous populations. As mentioned above, the way that authorities viewed their loyalty (or disloyalty) determined, to a large extent, the rules for managing these populations in various instances, notably military. The conditions for recruitment and conscription varied depending on how long these populations had been in contact with the imperial authorities. These conditions were also dependent on the colonial imaginary, which was sometimes negative with regard to Islam. For example, state agents’ subjectivity, perceptions and stereotypes affected the conscription of the Russian Empire’s Muslim populations. While Tatars had served in the army since 1722 and Bashkirs since 1737, the Muslim populations of the Caucasus and especially Central Asia were not actually conscripted until the Second World War. This step-by-step integration of Muslims into the Russian Army can be attributed to historical circumstances – the Caucasian region was not conquered until the early nineteenth century, and Central Asia in the late nineteenth century – and to the imperial authorities’ suspicion towards populations considered to lack loyalty or reliability. In addition to poor or non-existent knowledge of Russian, a fact that raised serious problems for the military command, Muslim populations were deemed to have a ‘low level of mental development’ (in the case of the Kyrgyz, for example), and considered to be unsuitable for combat if deprived of their traditional diets or due to their poor health, notably on account of syphilis.35 As noted by Bührer and Spence, the martial qualities attributed to Islam may have motivated some European armies to recruit Muslim soldiers, reputed to be combative. Likewise, during the First World War, military authorities were no longer afraid to use Indian or North African contingents in the campaigns of Iraq, Palestine and Syria. They showed the greatest respect for Islam,36 and the Allied victories against the Ottomans were presented so as not to appear like new Crusades, as illustrated by the precautions the Allies took when entering Jerusalem.37 Yet European armies also harboured other more negative perceptions. For example, combatants of Muslim origin sparked fears among the French military and medical authorities due to their possible disloyal behaviour. Given their supposed ‘primitiveness’, ‘laziness’, and tendency to lose control more quickly in stressful situations, these troops were subject to stricter control, as shown by Julie Le Gac. This fitted into a colonial imaginary that perpetuated, at least until the Second World War, a paternalistic and infantilizing Orientalism, presented in this volume by Miot, and detectable even in the special psychiatric treatments described by Le Gac. Colonial authorities required combatants of Muslim origin to adhere to rigid religious norms (no consumption of

Introduction

11

alcohol, daily prayers, etc.), taking for granted that all of them were devout Muslims. Thus, the ‘Muslim’ category got reified, as shown by Cronier and Xavier Bougarel. In reality, the question of supposed loyalty or disloyalty was linked to the imperial and colonial authorities’ fear of a political and potentially subversive ‘Muslim identity’.38 Thus, the military authorities were stricken with panic when anonymous calls for jihad circulated amongst the askaris of German East Africa or the sepoys of the Indian Army.39 However, if we adopt the combatants’ perspective, insofar as possible given the small quantity of available sources, then religion appears to be related to everyday, private practices, devoid of any political dimension. The case of Russia in 1917 is an exception to this rule. Indeed, the revolutionary context of the period and the lack of modern national identification modes – which would not emerge until the Soviet period – facilitated the politicization of a Muslim identity, precisely on the issue of conscription. As described by Iskhakov, the policy of the Russian Provisional Government formed after the February Revolution favoured the formation of Muslim battalions, often following demands from the combatants themselves. Yet setting up Muslim units amounted to laying one of the pillars for political autonomy and a nascent nation. Thus, Islam became a real political resource for the Muslims of the former Russian Empire until the 1920s, when national republics were created along ethnic lines. The idea that Islam would provide a politically significant religious identity explains why it was instrumentalized by the belligerent European powers. The history of the First World War – and the Second World War, to a lesser extent – shows the importance of Western attempts to instrumentalize Islam and jihad among the colonized Muslim populations, but it also proves that such attempts were relatively ineffective because they overestimated the strength of panIslamism. The political loyalties of colonial subjects of Muslim origin – whether from British, French, German or Russian colonies – were not significantly swayed by the Ottoman call to jihad in November 1914, an important aspect of German foreign policy that was described quite early on as ‘jihad made in Germany’.40 This call actually fitted into an older Ottoman tradition of using Islam for political purposes, as a factor of resistance to European powers, as well as a factor for strengthening the Ottoman Empire’s internal cohesion.41 The Germans, as allies of the Ottomans, translated this call to jihad into Swahili and hurriedly broadcast it in East Africa to draw the askaris into war. Bührer shows that this manoeuvre was a failure. Despite a certain amount of agitation in North Africa, Central Asia and India, it was not enough to cause the Muslim populations to break with their

12

Combatants of Muslim Origin in European Armies

respective tutelary colonial powers. As a whole, they remained loyal, even in combat; for example, the number of desertions was low for Algerians fighting in the French Army, as Meynier reminds us.42 In his contribution, Iskhakov shows that in the Tatar and Bashkir regions of the Russian Empire, voices criticizing the Ottoman call to jihad could even be heard. Lastly, we could also cite the Muslim soldiers of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF ), whose behaviour contradicted those who doubted their loyalty.43 Attempts by Christian powers to instrumentalize Islam sometimes produced the reverse effect; exaggerated efforts, with Christians brandishing green flags or Qurans, shocked Muslims and caused them to lose respect for authority.44 During the Second World War, the Third Reich attempted to instrumentalize Islam, but the hoped-for uprisings in the British colonies never occurred, the Deutsch-Arabische Lehrabteilung (GermanArab Training Department), under the patronage of the Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husayni, brought together only a few hundred volunteers, and the OstLegionen made up of Soviet Muslim prisoners of war were chiefly an opportunity for these prisoners to escape probable death in German prisoner camps.45 According to Meynier, the fact that the Ottoman call to jihad did not trigger an uprising prompted the French decision to recruit more Algerians in 1916. This explanation could also be applied – in parallel to the Russian Army’s immense need for men – to the 1916 decision to requisition men from Central Asia for work battalions. These requisitions then triggered a wave of revolts in Algeria, French West Africa46 and Central Asia, due not to a lack of loyalty but, at least for Central Asia, to practical issues related to the timing of the requisition, at the height of the harvest season in summer 1916. The revolts targeted both the Russian and the native colonial administrations, but cannot be interpreted merely as a lack of loyalty to the empire. In the Algerian case, French Army deserters played an important role in the revolts, which were only in very rare cases led by religious leaders, who had reiterated their allegiance to the French Empire on several occasions.47 In Central Asia and in Algeria, these revolts were led by the poorest rural populations, and they attested to deeper social transformations and the weakening of traditional aristocratic, tribal and religious bonds. In French West Africa, unprecedented unrest started with a refusal to obey the mobilization order, giving rise to a ‘supra-tribal’ revolt – to borrow Marc Michel’s expression – that united various ethnic groups with a common history and cultural features.48 While the Ottoman call to jihad was initially launched in order to strengthen the Ottoman Empire’s internal cohesion, its instrumentalization of Islam was sometimes effective outside its borders, but only in a way that was limited in

Introduction

13

time and space, because it interacted with local political factors. The same can be said about the pro-British ‘counterjihad’ launched in 1916 by Hussayn bin ‘Ali, the Sharif of Mecca, who had supported the Ottoman jihad two years earlier while in secret talks with the British.49 Another local jihad, this time Shiite and supported by the Germans against the British in Iraq, was also launched by mujtaheds (ulamas entitled to engage in ijtihad – reasoned interpretation of Islamic sources) in Karbala.50 These calls had the desired effects because they corresponded to local political and military configurations: the British invasion of Iraq, the fact that the Young Turks and the Germans did not take Arab interests into account, maintaining their colonizing aims despite their pro-Muslim policy. In 1915 and especially 1916, in addition to resistance to conscription in Algeria, French West Africa and Central Asia, anti-colonial and anti-imperial revolts broke out on the margins of the Ottoman Empire and Persia (with Arab revolts in the Arabic peninsula and Shiite revolts in Najaf and Karbala). Likewise, during the Second World War, Amin al-Husayni’s appeals met with some success in Bosnia-Herzegovina because they corresponded to a local desire for political and military protection, as explained by Bougarel. Yet in no way can we speak of Islamism or jihadism using today’s definition of these terms. During the two World Wars, Islam remained a religion deeply anchored in local cultural traditions and social practices. For combatants of Muslim origin in the various European armies, Islam referred first and foremost to certain everyday practices and a quest for individual salvation.

Islam in European armies: Between institutionalization and practice Although combatants of Muslim origin were not recruited along religious criteria, European political and military leaders gave particular attention to Islam’s status in the units these soldiers served in. Generally speaking, the large European empires respected the religions of conquered territories and sought to win the support of local religious notables. This was also true for Islam. The ulamas and leaders of Sufi brotherhoods were often treated well by the imperial power, although some nationalist ulamas, dissident brotherhoods or armed millenarist movements suffered brutal repression.51 In this context, the Soviet Union was an exception in its relentless determination to dismantle religious institutions, even though the Second World War caused a shift in this antireligious policy.52

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Combatants of Muslim Origin in European Armies

In the armies, military leaders thought that the application of Islamic precepts would enhance control of the troops and improve their morale, and considered any breach in this regard to be a potential factor for disorder. The British, in particular, had bitter memories of the 1857 Indian Rebellion even though its causes were not exclusively religious.53 Thus, they made sure that religious precepts were respected, and provided the sepoys with religious books and ceremonial objects.54 During the First World War, recognition of Islam could involve the building of temporary wooden mosques, like the one that the French Army built at Nogent-sur-Marne near Paris or the one that the German Army erected in the Zossen prisoner camp near Berlin. However, Islam’s lack of formal hierarchy made it more difficult to institutionalize. Some armies created their own corps of specialized clerics, whereas others turned the organization of religious life over to the soldiers themselves. These differences depended in part on how the various European powers institutionalized the forms of Christianity that were practised by the majority of soldiers in their armies. As Salavat Iskhakov shows in this volume, beginning in the nineteenth century, the Russian Army had an internal religious hierarchy organized around akhuns, i.e. mullahs in charge of religious life in each military district. Yet this institutionalization of Islam initially applied only to certain elite units, before being extended to the entire army during the First World War. Likewise, beginning in 1881, the Austro-Hungarian Army had two army imams serving in its Bosnian regiments,55 and in 1943, this Austro-Hungarian tradition served as justification for the Waffen-SS to recruit imams with a twofold religious and ideological function, as explained by Bougarel. In the French Army, the institutionalization of Islam came much later and was more partial. Admittedly, some imams were recruited during the First World War, but they served mainly in hospitals behind the front lines. The French Army also called on outside religious figures – ulamas or leaders of Sufi brotherhoods – to visit the troops regularly, but they did not hold direct or standing authority over the troops.56 During the Second World War, the organization of religious life was the responsibility of non-Muslims: the Muslim Military Affairs officers. Miot explores their twofold role of surveillance and mediation. It would appear that the Indian Army let Muslim sepoys choose their religious leaders from within their ranks, but this question is given little attention in the abundant literature about the Indian Army.57 In general, the various people in charge of the religious lives of combatants of Muslim origin also filled surveillance or social assistance roles. Within military units, however, religious life was not very institutionalized, and the combatants often had to designate an imam from their ranks to lead

Introduction

15

prayer, take part in funeral services, or act as an intermediary with their superiors. Such informal arrangements existed not only in the British Army, but also in the French Army and the German Army in East Africa. During the Second World War, the Soviet Union re-established spiritual directorates for the Muslims of Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia, but these directorates had no prerogatives in the Red Army, and Feferman does not mention any organized form of religious life for Soviet soldiers of Muslim origin. Whereas the modes of institutionalization of Islam in European armies are fairly well known, the religious practices of combatants of Muslim origin are much less so, partly due to a dearth of sources, and partly on account of a lack of interest from historians. The chapters in this volume suggest that the religious lives of these combatants revolved around a few crucial practices. The issue of dietary restrictions, examined in detail by Cronier, is the most frequently mentioned. Indeed, many combatants attached great importance to these restrictions, and refused any foods suspected of being unclean. Likewise, during Ramadan, they strove to fast despite the practical difficulties that this entailed, notably in combat situations. The military hierarchies also gave great importance to the respect of dietary customs, and were thus careful to eliminate all pork from rations and to supply a certain number of traditional foodstuffs, even if this meant bringing them in from a great distance. For Ramadan, they sought instead to obtain derogations from legitimate religious authorities. Yet as Cronier and Meynier show, the combatants themselves often had to resort to finding and preparing foods that met their cultural requirements. Organizing prayers – especially Friday prayers – and celebrating religious feasts such as Eid al-fitr (the feast marking the end of Ramadan) or mawlid (the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday) were another essential part of the compromises made between combatants of Muslim origin and European military hierarchies. Lastly, during war, the issue of burial rites took on considerable importance. Although the combatants of Muslim origin were not waging jihad, anyone killed in combat would often be buried as shaheed (a martyr of the faith), with the requisite burial rituals (corpse not washed, wearing his uniform, etc.). Likewise, the presence of an imam (official or otherwise) at the funeral of the fallen combatant, and the choice of a gravestone indicating the Muslim identity of the decedent, were essential factors for ensuring the morale of his surviving comrades. Far from the major doctrinal debates and solemn calls to jihad, the religious question rarely gave rise to open confrontation, instead resulting in pragmatic arrangements between the soldiers of Muslim origin and European military commanders, building on and sometimes reformulating the ‘paths of

16

Combatants of Muslim Origin in European Armies

accommodation’ between European empires and their Muslim populations. Here again, these arrangements did not necessarily leave substantial traces in archives, and they have largely escaped the attention of historians. For the combatants, the goal was to follow the religious precepts that not only ensured their individual salvation but also formed a link with other combatants and symbolically connected them to their families and homelands. Religious practice thus also helped lessen feelings of being uprooted and isolated. For the military commanders, the aim was to reconcile a military rationale with a religious one, most often by dedicating specific times and spaces to religion. War, by projecting men into a radically different milieu, threatened these compromises that had been devised during times of peace. The supply of foodstuffs to the front lines became less reliable, Ramadan fasting made men weak, the pace of bombings and assaults disrupted the rhythm of prayers, the arrival of new officers and NCO s less familiar with the Muslim religion threatened earlier arrangements. In this context, military commanders sometimes stood as the guardians of religious orthodoxy. Regarding the Indian Army, for example, Tarak Barkawi writes that ‘there were appropriate holy men for each religion in the battalion, who would hold separate services for the Sikh, Hindu and Muslim companies. . . . Religion was woven in the fabric of discipline, making any deviation from religious precepts difficult for individuals, while violations of military discipline became a religious matter.’58 Indeed, isn’t a religion with well-regulated rituals easier to manage than heterodox and fluctuating practices? And doesn’t Islam also provide a means to curb alcohol consumption and control sexual behaviour? The paradox does not stop there. Hence the French Army decided to consider all its Senegalese tirailleurs to be ‘Muslims’ – even those that were animists – in order to simplify the issue of dietary restrictions. And the army could even become a place for wide-scale conversion to Islam, as shown by Bührer in the case of animist askaris from East Africa, for whom Islam was a means to gain access to ‘civilization’. As mentioned above, not all soldiers that their military commanders considered to be Muslims regarded themselves as Muslims. By the same token, not all those who considered themselves to be Muslims, in one way or another, had the same level of religiosity, as Feferman notes in particular in his research on the Red Army. Furthermore, the intensity and the forms of Muslim combatants’ religious practice during the two world wars remain a mystery, as this question is absent from existing literature and hard to unearth in source materials. In the books dedicated to the religious dimensions of the First World War, the dominant view is that the war triggered a revival in piety and religiosity, albeit not

Introduction

17

necessarily expressed within the framework of religious institutions.59 The various chapters in this volume give more an impression of lukewarm, irregular religiosity. The war’s impact on religious practice was not necessarily clear-cut: proximity with death could awaken a desire for religious purity or encourage various heterodox and magical practices, as described by Le Gac, but it could also lead combatants to overlook certain rituals, to consume alcohol or even, on rare occasions, to eat pork. Of the cases studied in this volume, the only one in which a clear increase in religious practice became a factor for tensions in the military is in the Royal Indian Navy, studied by Spence, but this revival in religiosity was less linked to the war itself than to the rise in nationalist demands in the British Empire after the Second World War. In the same vein, some religious actors asserted their autonomy vis-à-vis the military establishment, such as certain akhuns of the Russian Army, mentioned in Iskhakov’s chapter, or some imams of the Waffen-SS , as described by Bougarel. Other religious actors escaped the military command’s control – including the members of Sufi brotherhoods mentioned by Miot or the self-proclaimed ‘prophet’ identified by Spence – and could also relay political demands. Such reversals did not reflect a rise in religiosity, but rather the primacy of political issues, even for certain religious actors. Moreover, the post-war period did not see a rise in religious demands from veterans, but instead their focus on social rights that had been granted or that they claimed, as well as some veterans’ participation in political movements demanding full citizenship within the empire or foreboding nationalist claims.60

A Muslim experience of war? At the end of this introduction, we must re-emphasize how much the war experiences of combatants of Muslim origin over the two World Wars were very different and distinct from one another. The European Great Powers only gave secondary importance to religious matters in the mobilization of their colonial populations, and incorporated Muslims into their armies pragmatically, while continuing to hesitate in their perceptions of Islam, seen as a source of combativeness at certain moments and a potential threat at other times. For the combatants themselves, their religious identity mingled with many other types of identification, rather than surpassing them, and never formed a single, clearcut identity. Nor was there a single, uniform experience of the war shared by all combatants of Muslim origin. Even the jihads waged against the Entente

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Combatants of Muslim Origin in European Armies

countries during the First World War followed local rationales, and calls to global jihad were doomed to failure, even if they were made by the Ottoman Sultan or the Mufti of Jerusalem. Far from unlikely jihads, the religious experience of war for combatants of Muslim origin has to be sought in their everyday accommodations and private practices, for example by extending the paths opened up by David Omissi, Gajendra Singh and Santanu Das for the sepoys of the Indian Army.61 Therefore, future research should turn its sights to testimonial sources and compare these with administrative sources in order to shed light on the agency of the combatants themselves. This history from the bottom up has, in its religious dimension, not yet been written.

Notes 1 For a critique of the concept of ‘jihad made in Germany’, see Mustafa Aksakal, ‘ “Holy War Made in Germany”? Ottoman Origins of the 1914 Jihad’, War in History 18, no. 2 (2011): 184–99. On Amin al-Husayni’s role during the Second World War, see Gilbert Achcar, The Arabs and the Holocaust (London: Saqi Books, 2011). 2 See inter alia Robert Gewarth and Erez Manela (eds), Empires at War 1911–1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Richard Fogarty and Andrew Jarboe (eds), Empires in World War One: Shifting Frontiers and Imperial Dynamics in a Global Conflict (London: I. B. Tauris, 2014), as well as the conferences ‘The Great War as Intercultural Moment’ held in Paris in September 2013 and ‘Les troupes coloniales et la Grande Guerre’ held in Reims in November 2013. 3 See inter alia Xavier Bonniface, Histoire religieuse de la Grande Guerre (Paris: Fayard, 2014); Michael Snape and Edward Madigan (eds), The Clergy in Khaki: New Perspectives on British Army Chaplaincy in the First World War (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013); Jonathan Ebel, Faith in the Fight. Religion and the American Soldier in the Great War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). See also two older books: Michael Snape, God and the British Soldier: Religion in the British Army in the First and Second World Wars (London: Routledge, 2005); and Annette Becker, La guerre et la foi: De la mort à la mémoire 1914–1930 (Paris: Arnaud Colin, 1994). 4 On combatants in the Ottoman Army, see inter alia Mehmet Beşikçi, The Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower in the First World War. Between Voluntarism and Resistance (Leiden: Brill, 2012). 5 On the imperial armies in general, see inter alia David Killingray and David Omissi (eds), Guardians of Empire: The Armed Forces of the Colonial Powers c. 1700–1964 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999); Gerhard Höpp and Brigitte Reinwald (eds), Fremdeinsätze. Afrikaner und Asiaten in europäischen Kriegen 1914–1945 (Berlin: Das arabische Buch, 2000). On the police in a colonial context,

Introduction

6

7

8

9

10 11

12

13 14

19

see inter alia David Anderson and David Killingray, Policing the Empire: Government, Authority, and Control, 1830–1940 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991); Jean-Pierre Bat and Nicolas Courtin (eds), Le maintien de l’ordre en situation coloniale. Afrique et Madagascar, XIXème-XXème siècles (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2012). On the Moroccan troops in the Spanish civil war, see inter alia Sebastian Balfour, Deadly Embrace: Morocco and the Road to the Spanish Civil War, Oxford (Oxford University Press, 2002); Maria Rosa de Madariaga, ‘Moroccan Soldiers in the Spanish Civil War’, in Eric Storm and Ali Al Tuma (eds), Colonial Soldiers in Europe 1914– 1945. ‘Aliens in Uniform’ in Wartime Societies (New York: Routledge, 2016), 161–81; Ali Al Tuma, ‘ “Moor No Easting, Moor No Sleeping, Moor Leaving”: A Story of Moroccan Soldiers, Spanish Officers and Protest in the Spanish Civil War’, in Storm and Al Tuma (eds), Colonial Soldiers, 207–27. On the combatants of Muslim origin in the two World Wars, see also Storm and Al Tuma (eds), Colonial Soldiers in Europe; Kaushik Roy (ed.), The Indian Army in the Two World Wars (Leiden: Brill, 2012). Kaushik Roy, ‘Discipline and Morale of the African, British and Indian Army Units in Burma and India during Second World War’, Modern Asian Studies 44, no. 6 (November 2010),1281. Kaushik Roy, ‘Military Loyalty in the Colonial Context: A Case Study of the Indian Army during Second World War’, The Journal of Military History 73, no. 2 (April 2009), 527. Nile Green, Islam and the Army in Colonial India: Sepoy Religion in the Service of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Richard S. Fogarty, Race and War in France. Colonial Subjects in the French Army 1914–1918 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). See also Richard S. Fogarty, ‘Islam in the French Army during the Great War: Between Accommodation and Suspicion’, in Storm and Al Tuma (eds), Colonial Soldiers in Europe, 23–40. Richard S. Fogarty, ‘Out of North Africa: Contested Visions of French Muslim Soldiers during First World War’, in Fogarty and Jarboe (eds), Empires in World War One, 136–58. On Muslim prisoners of war in the First World War, see Gerhard Höpp, Muslime in der Mark. Als Kriegsgefangene und Internierte in Wünsdorf und Zossen (Berlin: Das Arabische Buch, 1997). On Muslim prisoners of war in the Second World War, see Raffael Scheck, French Colonial Soldiers in German Captivity during Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). David Motadel, Islam and Nazi Germany’s War (Cambridge, MA : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014). On this ambiguity, see Pierre-Jean Luizard (ed.), Le Choc colonial et l’islam. Les politiques religieuses des puissances coloniales en terres d’islam (Paris: La Découverte, 2006).

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15 The concept of accommodation emphasizes the agency of colonized subjects. See inter alia Julia Clancy-Smith, Rebel and Saint. Muslim Notables, Popular Protest, Colonial Encounters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800–1904) (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1994); David Robinson, Paths of Accommodation: Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880–1920 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000). 16 Martin Klein, Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 216–19. See also Myron Echenberg, Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs Sénégalais in French West Africa, 1857–1960 (Portsmouth: Heinemann Educational Books, 1991). 17 See inter alia Gregory Mann, Native Sons. West African Veterans and France in the Twentieth Century (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006); Jean-François Bayart, ‘Les chemins de traverse de l’hégémonie coloniale en Afrique de l’Ouest francophone. Anciens esclaves, anciens combattants, nouveaux musulmans’, Politique africaine, no. 105 (2007): 201–40. 18 The question of work battalions is definitely a blind spot in the historiography of the two world wars. 19 Letter from President of the Council Aristide Briant to War Minister Joseph Gallieni, 5 November 1915, Service Historique de la Défense (SHD ), 7N2103, quoted in Pascal Lepautremat, La Politique musulmane de la France au XXe siècle (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 2003), 152. On the role of religious notables in French West Africa, see Christopher Harrison, France and Islam in West Africa 1860–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 118–36. 20 On Emir Khaled, see also Ahmed Koulakssis and Gilbert Meynier, L’Émir Khaled: premier za’im? Identité algérienne et colonialisme français (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1987). 21 See also Heather Streets, Martial Races: The Military, Race and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). 22 Fogarty, Race und War in France, 55–95. 23 Marc Michel, Les Africains et la Grande Guerre: l’appel à l’Afrique (1914–1918) (Paris: Karthala, 2003). 24 Charles Mangin, La Force noire (Paris: Hachette, 1910). 25 Vincent Joly, Guerres d’Afrique: 130 ans de guerres coloniales. L’expérience française (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2009). 26 See also Julie Le Gac, Vaincre sans Gloire. Le Corps expéditionnaire français en Italie (novembre 1942–juillet 1944) (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2013). 27 David Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj: The Indian Army, 1860–1940 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994), 86–93. See also Tarak Barkawi, ‘Culture and Combat in the Colonies: The Indian Army in the Second World War’, Journal of Contemporary History 41, no. 2 (2006): 325–55.

Introduction

21

28 Kaushik Roy, ‘Military Loyalty in the Colonial Context: A Case Study of the Indian Army during the Second World War’, The Journal of Military History 73, no. 2 (April 2009). See also Roy, ‘Discipline and Morale’. 29 Mark Von Hagen, ‘The Limits of Reform: The Multiethnic Imperial Army Confronts Nationalism (1874–1917)’ in David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye and Bruce Menning (eds), Reforming the Tsarist Army (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 37. 30 See von Hagen, ‘The Limits of Reform’; Joshua Sanborn, Drafting the Russian Nation. Military Conscription, Total War and Mass Politics 1905–1925 (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2012); Roger Reese, Stalin’s Reluctant Soldiers: A Social History of the Red Army, 1925–1941 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996); and the special issue ‘The Integration of Non-Russian Servicemen in the Imperial, Soviet and Russian Army’ of The Journal of Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Studies, no. 10 (2009), available from http://pipss.revues. org/2293?lang=fr. 31 Roger R. Reese, The Soviet Military Experience (London: Routledge, 2000), 57. 32 Circular no. 4.695 9/11, dated 16 October 1914. Quoted in Lepautremat, La Politique musulmane de la France, 154. 33 Circular dated 8 December 1914, Article 58: Burial of Muslim Soldiers, Archives of Paris and the Seine – 1326 W, quoted by Michel Renard in ‘Gratitude, contrôle, accompagnement: le traitement du religieux islamique en métropole (1914–1950)’, Bulletin de l’IHTP 83 (June 2004), available from http://www.ihtp.cnrs.fr/spip. php%3Farticle328&lang=fr.html 34 Aftandil Erkinov, Praying for and against the Tsar. Prayers and Sermons in RussianDominated Khiva and Tsarist Turkestan (Berlin: Klaus Schwartz, 2004). 35 Von Hagen, ‘The Limits of Reform’, 42. 36 Jacques Frémeaux, La Question d’Orient (Paris: Fayard, 2014), 251. 37 See Henry Laurens, La Question de Palestine – tome I: L’Invention de la Terre Sainte 1799–1922 (Paris: Fayard, 1999), 372–5. 38 See, for example, Patrick Weil, ‘Le statut des musulmans en Algérie coloniale’, Histoire de la justice, no. 16 (2005): 93–109. See also Laure Blévis, ‘La citoyenneté française au miroir de la colonisation’, Genèses, no. 53 (2001): 25–47; Fogarty, ‘Out of North Africa’, 138. 39 On the case of German East Africa, see Tanja Bührer’s contribution. On the Indian Army, see Gajendra Singh, The Testimonies of Indian Soldiers and the Two World Wars: Between Self and Sepoy (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 99–127. 40 Snouck Hurgronje, The Holy War ‘Made in Germany’ (New York and London: G.P. Putnam’s, 1915). On this question, see inter alia Tilman Lüdke, Jihad Made in Germany: Ottoman and German Propaganda and Intelligence Operations in the First World War (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2005); Donald MacKale, War by Revolution:

22

41

42

43

44 45

46 47

48 49

50 51

Combatants of Muslim Origin in European Armies Germany and Great Britain in the Middle East in the Era of World War One (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1998). See inter alia Aksakal, ‘ “Holy War Made in Germany”?’; Gottfried Hagen, ‘The Prophet Muhammad as an Exemplar in War: Ottoman Views on the Eve of World War One’, New Perspectives on Turkey, no. 22 (Spring 2000): 145–72. Of the 4,000 Muslim North Africans held as prisoners in German camps, only 800 were ready to join the Central Empires. See Abdel-Raouf Sinno, ‘The Role of Islam in German Propaganda in the Arab East during the First World War: Aims, Means, Results and Local Reactions’, in Olaf Farschid, Manfred Kropp and Stephan Dähne (eds), The First World War as Remembered in the Countries of the Eastern Mediterranean (Würzburg: Orient-Institut Beirut, 2006), 408. On the EEF, see inter alia James Kitchen, The British Imperial Army in the Middle East. Morale and Military Identity in the Sinai and Palestine Campaigns 1916–1918 (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). On the loyalty of Muslim sepoys in general, see Philipp Stigger, ‘How Far Was the Loyalty of Muslim Soldiers in the Indian Army More in Doubt than Usual throughout the First World War?’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, no. 87 (2009): 225–33; Raymond Callahan, ‘The Indian Army, Total War, and the Dog That Didn’t Bark in the Night’, in Jane Hathaway (ed.), Rebellion, Repression, Reinvention: Mutiny in Comparative Perspective (Westport: Praeger, 2001), 119–28. Fogarty, ‘Out of North Africa’, 150. See inter alia Klaus Gensicke, Der Mufti von Jerusalem und die Nationalsozialisten. Eine politische Biographie Amin el-Husseini (Darmstadt: BWG , 2007); Joachim Hoffmann, Die Ostlegionen 1941–1943 (Freiburg: Rombach, 1986); Patrick Von Mühlen, Zwischen Hakenkreuz und Sowjetstern. Der Nationalismus der sowjetischen Orientvölker im 2. Weltkrieg (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1971). Mahir Şaul and Patrick Royer, West African Challenge to Empire: Culture and History in the Volta-Bani Anticolonial War (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001). Gilbert Meynier, L’Histoire sociale de l’Algérie, études, sources et documents (Oran: CRIDSSH , no date), 9–10. See also Gilbert Meynier, L’Algérie révélée. La guerre de 1914–1918 et le premier quart du vingtième siècle (Saint-Denis: Bouchène, 2015). Michel, Les Africains et la Grande Guerre, 49–63. In our view, it is important to mention this possibility of a ‘counterjihad’, even though only one author has mentioned it, to the best of our knowledge. See Sinno, ‘The Role of Islam in German Propaganda’, 391–408. Sinno, ‘The Role of Islam in German Propaganda’, 391. On the Muslim policy of the major European empires, see inter alia David Motadel, ‘Islam and the European Empires’, The Historical Journal 15, no. 3 (September 2012): 831–56; Luizard (ed.), Le Choc colonial et l’islam; Christopher Harrison, France and Islam in West Africa; Pascal Le Pautremat, La Politique musulmane de la France;

Introduction

52 53

54 55 56 57

58 59 60 61

23

Robert Crews, For Prophet and Tsar. Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2009). See inter alia Shoshana Keller, To Moscow, Not to Mecca: The Soviet Campaign against Islam in Central Asia 1917–1941 (London: Praeger, 2001). Streets, Martial Races, 18–51. See also Crispin Dates (ed.), Mutiny at the Margins: New Perspectives on the Indian Uprising of 1857 – Volume 5: Muslim, Dalit and Subaltern Narrative (London: Sage, 2013). See Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj, 99–102. See Zijad Šehić, ‘Vojni imami u bosanskohercegovačkim jedinicama u okviru austrougraske armije 1878–1918’, Godišnjak BZK Preporod 6 (2006), 309–21. See Fogarty, Race and War in France, 286–9. David Omissi makes brief reference to ‘religious teachers, appointed to each unit’ (Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj, 100), but to our knowledge, there is no work on Islam in the Indian Army in the twentieth century that would rival Nile Green’s book about the nineteenth century. Tarak Barkawi, ‘Army, Ethnicity and Society in British India’, in Roy (ed.), The Indian Army in the Two World Wars, 430–1. See inter alia Becker, La guerre et la foi. For the French case, see inter alia Mann, Native Sons; Bayart, ‘Les chemins de traverse de l’hégémonie coloniale’. David Omissi, Indian Voices of the Great War: Soldiers’ Letters 1914–1918 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999); Singh, The Testimonies of Indian Soldiers; Santanu Das (ed.), Race, Empire and First World War Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

24

1

Algerians in the French Army, 1914–1918: From Military Integration to the Dawn of Algerian Patriotism Gilbert Meynier

France enrols Algerians in the army Before the First World War, the Algerians were not familiar with France. If we are to believe the colonial press, only a few privileged members of the Gallicized elite had ever crossed the Mediterranean, for example, during trips organized by the editors of the newspapers of the Gallicized elite known as Jeunes Algériens. The few immigrant workers in France were located in a small number of geographic areas: Marseille, Paris, Lyon and Saint-Étienne, plus the coal mines of the Pas-de-Calais department. The war created new situations. It made Algeria’s ties with Metropolitan France uncertain, whereas such ties were indispensable to any colonial economy. The crisis in transport, which became scarce and risky due to German submarines patrolling the Mediterranean, highlighted the colonized Maghreb’s economic dependence on France. Yet the demographic conditions in France made it necessary to use North African manpower and soldiers as much as possible. At the same time, the economic difficulties pushed a larger number of Algerian men to seek work in France. As for the leaders of colonial Algeria, they held diverging views about the possibility of a large number of Algerians crossing over to France. The civil administration tended to discourage conscription efforts in favour of an ‘indigenous policy’ (politique indigène) focused on the security of French domination in Algeria. Indeed, there was a fear that the ‘indigenous peoples’, called on to defend the French homeland alongside French soldiers, would come to consider themselves French. Conversely, the majority of military officials of the 19th military region (covering Algeria and Tunisia), as well as the Africa Section of the Army General Staff, were in favour of conscription, even though 25

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they were also divided between the aim of supplying soldiers for the front lines and upholding this same ‘indigenous policy’. Conscription, which had been attempted half-heartedly before the war, was extended to all Algerians with the decrees of September 1916, after the proclamation of jihad by the Shaykh al-Islam of Istanbul in autumn 1914 failed to have the consequences that the French had feared in North Africa, and Algeria appeared to be relatively calm. The colonist community – a priori quite hostile to seeing ‘its’ potential labour force leaving – could not prevent French industry from bringing a portion of this labour to France for the war effort. Thus, the war provided around 110,000 soldiers who actually crossed the Mediterranean (out of a total of 173,000 incorporated) and around 80,000 workers with the opportunity to discover France.1 In all, nearly 200,000 men crossed the Mediterranean over a period of four years, representing about 4 per cent of the Algerian population, but perhaps 20 per cent of the male active population. Despite the starkly different conditions for soldiers and workers on foreign soil, this discovery of France during the Great War was an important fact in Algerian history. In this paper, we will endeavour to study the military aspect of this transplantation. It is important to begin by studying how the North Africans sent to France perceived it, starting with the immediate aspect of the climate.

France in the eyes of Algerians: A harsh climate The North Africans were unanimous in complaining about the French climate. Admittedly, precautions had been taken to set up the operating depots for these soldiers in towns in southern France with a milder climate fairly similar to that of coastal Algeria: Arles, Aix-en-Provence and Alès until 1917, then other towns in south-western France beginning with the large class of 1917. However, even in these regions, with a mild climate by French standards, winter seemed harsh to the North African soldiers. Early on, complaints were filed about the cold at the Aix-en-Provence depot. So what about the new recruits for the duration of the war, sent practically without training or a transitional period to the Battle of Charleroi, then in harsh combat during the Race to the Sea? For example, for the 2nd and 3rd régiments de tirailleurs algériens (RTA ), sanitary conditions quickly deteriorated and added to the heavy military casualties. In the 1st, 4th and 8th RTA , cases of frostbitten feet were frequent, with up to fifty per week in a regiment in the Cerny sector, then near Poperinge, where in December 1914, army doctors wrote

Algerians in the French Army, 1914–1918

27

alarming reports about the health situation of the North Africans. Cases of bronchitis, pneumonia and tuberculosis were more frequent among tirailleurs than among the zouaves (Jews and Europeans from Algeria), who in turn were more frequently affected than other soldiers. The Tunisians were, of all North Africans, the most affected. In December 1916, a young Tunisian wrote to his family (in Arabic): The country is very cold, it rains and snows all the time. There is constant fog and clouds, and the sun only shines on rare occasions.2

On 24 December 1914, General Georges de Bazelaire, the commanding officer of the 38th Infantry Division, reported that: [Due to] fatigue, aggravated by the cold and humidity, they [the tirailleurs] lack morale and energy and are prey to fatalism. . . . The physical state of the tirailleurs is poor. In the 1st Regiment, 240 cases of frostbite of the feet have been reported in the past month. Each time a unit is relieved in the trenches, the number of [medical] evacuations for illness or frostbite came to around twenty-five to thirty cases per regiment.3

Conversely, Algerians from the mountainous eastern regions appeared to be less susceptible to the cold than the other tirailleurs. Thereafter, following the first major accidents early in the war, the situation improved thanks to greater acclimatization, suitable training, and the provision of additional clothing. However, the percentage of soldiers suffering from illness due to the cold and humidity remained higher than in the other units. The tirailleurs’ military achievements depended on favourable weather conditions. In winter, there were times when they could not leave their trenches to attack because they were literally numb and frozen in place, unable to move. Conversely, when good weather returned, satisfactory reports of the tirailleurs’ enthusiasm were more numerous: in Champagne in 1915, in the Verdun counter-offensive in 1916, at Chemin des Dames in 1917. In the 2nd and 3rd RTA , for example, the Algerians’ fighting spirit peaked in the summer of 1918 as the French forces undertook their final offensive.

The ‘human climate’: How the soldiers were welcomed No less important than the actual climate, obviously, was the ‘human climate’. The welcome by the French population varied considerably. Satisfactory reports

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Combatants of Muslim Origin in European Armies

by North Africans were more numerous in the South of France than in the North, but even in the South, the welcome was not the same everywhere. In Montpellier in 1901, when Algerians arrested for the revolt in the Marguerite winemaking settlement had been transferred to Metropolitan France to avoid being judged by a jury of French Algerians, the local inhabitants had welcomed them warmly. In close ranks, the people had acclaimed the Algerians; women had thrown them bouquets. It is true that for people from the winemaking region of Languedoc, the Algerians oppressed by colonists were also seen as fighting against the competing winemakers from Algeria who produced heavier, cheaper wines. They were presumed to be right. In 1914, there were similar spontaneous movements from the working class population of Alès, during a scuffle between Tunisians who had snuck out and got drunk, and French NCO s who wanted them to return to the depot: the crowd took the Tunisians’ side and helped them rough up the French NCO s! In this case, in an anti-militarist working-class setting, people felt solidarity for those who were forcibly enrolled in the French Army. And a feeling of collusion between minority groups – Protestants and Muslims – may also have been at work in this centre of Protestantism. Conversely, in Aix-en-Provence, traditionally a very Catholic town that was less open and more bourgeois, the tirailleurs were not as warmly welcomed and tensions lasted throughout the war. Measures aimed at persecuting the Algerians grew in number, even prompting officers to react, as in the case of a major who publicly reprimanded a nun for calling for a racist crusade. The French attitude was fairly well summarized in this letter (in Arabic) by a labourer quartered on a farm in the Aude department: As for the French living in France, there are some good and some bad people. Everyone has his own luck. One goes to a good man’s house, another is sent to a dog. The good man gives some money and makes no criticism . . . the nasty individual gives absolutely nothing.4

Throughout France, the population was – at least initially – well inclined to the soldiers, but much less to the workers. North African farm workers in the Beauce region were well regarded and their work was appreciated. In some towns, such as Bourges or in the south-west, there were problems, and even attempts by Algerian workers to strike despite their military supervision. The soldiers treated in military hospitals were generally moved by the prevailing paternalistic attitudes, although they distrusted some French medical practices. In their view, sleeping in a bed, with white sheets, having bandages

Algerians in the French Army, 1914–1918

29

changed frequently and sometimes using a shower, and often being able to eat dishes from their home countries (couscous was added to the menu in medical units, following instructions by military interpreters) were luxuries that they genuinely appreciated. Trust shown towards nuns (as women of God), as well as stronger feelings inspired by the nurses, were common occurrences. Furthermore, the numerous cases of affairs between tirailleurs and nurses prompted military authorities to react to the risk of ‘blood corruption’ and weakening of warriors. French women acquired a strong reputation for being of loose morals or, at best, naive. The Africa Section of the Army General Staff eventually prohibited North African soldiers from staying with French families while on leave. The authorities were also wary of camaraderie becoming too strong between French and North African soldiers. However, for the French, the appreciation towards these foreigners who came to defend France was genuine. Real friendships were forged among soldiers despite the 1915 prohibition of spending leave with the French, and Algerian tirailleurs continued to visit French families in secret. This did not prevent racism, sparked by competition from North Africans on the job market, and especially mistrust towards penniless young men, often feeding their families back home, who had trouble controlling and budgeting their spending, were easily duped, and could not hold even a small amount of wine. Hence in Clermont-Ferrand, on several occasions, café owners hung signs on their doors: ‘Arab gentlemen are not admitted’ or ‘No sidis’. However, we cannot speak of a widespread racist sentiment among the French population, but instead of a mixture of appreciation and wariness. In any case, despite inevitable misunderstandings, the relationships between communities were better than they were in North Africa between Europeans and natives. Nevertheless, North Africans in France still pined for their faraway homeland.

Feelings of exile, between nostalgia and identity The tirailleurs’ letters home often expressed their attachment to their homeland and to the Muslim faith. Despite the feeling of being better accepted and respected in the army or in a factory than under the colonial regime, the North Africans held onto their love of their homeland. It is likely that the ‘Sultan Hâj Guillaume’ – German propaganda had depicted Kaiser Wilhelm as a friend of Islam, or even as a Muslim – was revered by all North Africans. For example, police reports stated that in Lyon, in the Guillotière district, Algerian workers

30

Combatants of Muslim Origin in European Armies

gathered in a café to sing tunes from their country, as well as songs to the glory of the Ottoman Sultan and ‘Hâj Guillaume’. Turkophilia and Germanophilia – which were in fact hard to distinguish from attachment to Islam – were still ways to express Algerian patriotism through Oriental references. Exile awakened a patriotic feeling, sparked by separation from the land of one’s ancestors. Only after the war did this feeling fuel political, anti-colonial claims. For the time being, it was simply a feeling of missing one’s family and country – a country that seemed even more desirable in the midst of the foggy weather of Lyon or the uncertain sunshine of Lorraine. Not until the Ottomans and the Germans were defeated did Algerian patriotic anti-colonialism develop on primarily Algerian foundations. For soldiers and workers alike, one name was known and revered everywhere: the Emir Khaled. The latter, a captain in the French Army, was a grandson of the Emir Abd el-Kader, a hero of the Algerian resistance to colonization between 1832 and 1847. Khaled’s presence in the French Army was regarded as a guarantee that fighting alongside the French was the proper choice for North African soldiers. Moreover, the army sent Khaled on a tour in the North African regiment to boost the soldiers’ morale, while at the same time regarding him with some suspicion, keeping him under surveillance, and exerting pressure on his family back in Morocco, which was suspected of complicity with his uncle Abd elMalek, who had joined the maquis against the French-protected Sultan of Morocco. Khaled was warmly welcomed and revered everywhere he went. He is often considered to be the initiator of Algerian patriotic demands just after the war; his political position had even greater impact because this genuine Algerian leader had been a prestigious comrade in arms. His political arguments were fuelled by the mention of the services rendered by his fellow Algerian soldiers, whose dignity he defended. The North Africans in France during the war remained very strongly attached to their Muslim faith. While an indeterminate number of North Africans drank wine, Islam remained very precious for a much higher number of them. Admittedly, the military and civil authorities sent imams and dignitaries from Sufi brotherhoods that were friendly to the French. These Muslim representatives were not very clearly differentiated by the French authorities, who generally treated them in official documents as military chaplains in charge of boosting troops’ morale. Prayer rooms were set aside, and in Nogent-sur-Marne, a wooden mosque was built, a pale replica of the mosque that the Germans had built in the prisoner camp in Zossen, near Berlin.5 The French military officials were surprised by the Muslims’ poor attendance at the mosque, and ultimately deemed

Algerians in the French Army, 1914–1918

31

investment in religious matters to be not very profitable. Soldiers had a lukewarm reaction to this religion, ready-made like the couscous or chewing tobacco, and clearly intended to ‘improve the ordinary fare’: they felt that the French were trying too hard. Conversely, the tirailleurs continued to say their prayers, on their own initiative, especially at the front, and not without difficulties. Among other problems, finding the Qibla (the direction of Mecca) was a source of worry for many of them. Perhaps more important in daily life was the question of whether the food was halal or haram (lawful or unlawful). In urban areas, the North Africans tried to go to Jewish shops when buying meat; if this was not possible, they had to make do with tinned fish. Even the necessities of war did not eliminate the tirailleurs’ distaste in nourishing themselves with questionable meat and bland dishes, often described in Algerians’ letters home as unclean. Thus, one tirailleur wrote: I can’t even find the Qibla. I can only find it at dawn. . . . I still say my prayers, cleansing myself with sand because I cannot take off my clothes or do my ablutions completely, for the reasons I have explained. The meat is served to us in platters, but we do not know if it is lawful or unlawful, and this is a source of torment for me: I think about it night and day, and you must tell me what my current situation is with regard to Allah. Know, my dear brother, that I shall never abandon my faith even if I were assailed with more terrible misfortunes than I find myself in at present, I am not boasting by telling you this, I am inspired by Allah. I ask him to help me remain faithful and to bring me through.6

For the North Africans transplanted to France, the war caused them to resort to Muslim values and to strengthen their attachment to these values. In the long term, after their return to colonial Algeria, the political osmosis between this specific religiosity and the new expressions of anti-colonial political activism would happen gradually. To what degree did the preaching of the reformist ulama association affect the veterans who, during the war years, had run the danger of being corrupted?

Incorporating the French army: Between tragedies and integration That said, we must still explain why the incorporation of North Africans in the French Army was ultimately an indisputable reality. Yet the commencement was difficult during the first few months of the war.

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Early in the war, the mixing of men in the mobilization often meant that officers who were unfamiliar with North Africa were in charge of troops from the region. Certain dramatic events resulted from this lack of knowledge. Thereafter, officers who had spent time in the Maghreb, and who were more intelligently placed in charge of North African units beginning in 1915, corrected some mistakes and often formed a good rapport with their men. This was notably the case for Colonel (later General) Octave Meynier, who at Verdun was appointed as the commanding officer of the 1st RTA . However, in 1914, the onslaught of the German Army, with its superior artillery and automatic weapons, caused a massacre in the ranks of the tirailleurs. Often incorporated too quickly and poorly trained, the new recruits had signed up for the duration of what was supposed to be a brief war, and their morale plummeted. The core group of the old ‘turcos’ (a nickname from the Crimean War) from before the war quickly shrank. In fact, 1914 was the low point for the morale of the North African troops. The notes in commanding officers’ logs offer an invaluable human testimony. In the 37th and 38th divisions, the soldiers were completely disoriented by the cold, the humidity, the gunfire, the fatigue, the food, and the genuine slaughter that occurred in some battles. In general, the Tunisians were more demoralized than the Algerians (at the time there was only one Moroccan regiment). Entire units refused to march; there was a sharp increase in cases of panic or deserting the battlefield. Officers, not fluent in Arabic, were powerless to maintain obedience. On several occasions, battalions of tirailleurs were reduced to a skeleton staff. Some battalions ended up with fewer than 150 men. On 13 December 1914, an extra 1,227 men were needed to bring the 8th RTA back to its normal level, with just two battalions.7 NCO s were fully aware of the condition of the men; Battalion Chief Bidault, the commander of the 1st RTA, wrote: The men are excessively tired, most of them are standing in 30 to 50 centimetres of mud. They are [illegible] and completely numb. I am frightened at the thought of a German assault for such men. As a result, I urgently ask you that the 1st [RTA ] not be sent to the trenches on the front tonight. It would be totally unable to resist and at the mercy of the slightest hit.

These remarks fell on deaf ears with the High Command, which maintained the assault planned for 14 December 1914 in the region of Verbrandenmolen: No recriminations can be accepted. The commander of the army [the 8th Army] orders the men to give an exceptional effort. Everyone must have it at heart to merit his trust. Stimulate their energy and do not tolerate any weakness. When a position has been won, it must be kept, and if chased from it, it must be retaken.8

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In two specific cases, this approach led to tragedy. On 23 September 1914, the general commanding the 73rd Brigade reported on the 20th RTA , on the Oise front: In my view, the brigade [the 73rd] is in no condition to resume serious action tomorrow. The tirailleur units behaved today in a regrettable fashion for me, as a former tirailleur colonel. The units that were not engaged would not have behaved better, I am now absolutely convinced of this. I killed twelve deserters with my own hand, and these examples were not sufficient to prevent the tirailleurs from deserting the battlefield.9

On 14 and 15 December 1914, during the Battle of Yser, the general commanding the 38th Division, following a direct order from General Ferdinand Foch, the Assistant Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Zone Armies, ordered a group execution in the 15th Company of the 8th RTA . Ten tirailleurs chosen randomly were shot dead. On this subject, the commander of the 38th Division wrote: The veteran soldiers with several years of service have almost entirely disappeared. The ranks are made up of young men enrolled since the war began, who had never fired a gun before arriving on the front. They know nothing of the soldier’s work. . . . They know that, in each regiment, those that went at the start of the war were killed. To overcome their discouragement, a complete reorganization would be necessary. Captain Khaled (who visited recently) had promised on the Quran that the natives would have some rest after taking the Maison du Passeur. They were deeply disappointed. . . . The execution on 15 December does not appear to have had any impact. The tirailleurs are trying more than ever to use every means possible, various chores, doctor’s visits, to escape their commanders’ authority (several have mutilated themselves voluntarily and been court-martialed). As these troops are not receptive to patriotic feelings, it is impossible for the commanding officers to correct the current state of decay.10

Independent of these atrocities, which may have been more numerous without leaving traces in the archives, the problem of Turkophilia and pan-Islamism had attracted the military’s attention following the Ottoman Sultan’s proclamation of jihad in November 1914.

Identity claims, call for jihad and ‘loyalism’ However, there is no indication that the Sultan’s proclamation produced an immediate effect among North Africans. It may have contributed to the acts of

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Combatants of Muslim Origin in European Armies

disobedience in December 1914, but on 23 September, Algerian troops had refused to march even though jihad had not yet been proclaimed. It is more likely that these incidents were caused by the troops’ exhaustion and terror, not by specific political motives. Yet after the Ottoman Empire entered the war, the Germans continually brandished green flags marked with the crescent along their front-line trenches facing the 37th, 38th and 45th divisions – the largest North African divisions – and the ‘Moroccan’ Division (in fact made up entirely of Algerians who had been fighting in Morocco on the eve of the war). The Germans also made proclamations in Arabic encouraging the tirailleurs to desert. These efforts had hardly any impact. Indeed, the Muslims were shocked to see Christians waving green flags. In the 37th Division, a tirailleur ran out of the trench to go retrieve the sacred symbol. Would he not have been just as shocked to see a flag in the hands of other naçârâ (literally, Nazarenes, i.e. Christians), even if they were French? In the field of North African ‘native policy’, the Germans admittedly did not have the lengthy experience of the French. Moreover, the proclamations in Mashriq Arabic – the form spoken by Arabic-speaking German officers – were hard to understand, except perhaps for a few literate ‘native officers’, who were under such close surveillance that they were unable to explain these proclamations to their men in their native Arabic dialect. In spring 1915, a wave of desertions hit the 37th Division. If we are to believe the French Army’s archives, the number of deserters was not more than ten, all from the same regiment and from the Constantine region, i.e. the leading province of Algerian irredentism. Thus, a French officer complained: I have had ten deserters in two months. It is starting to become rather worrying. Among the reinforcements that I have received, I have found a lot of poor subjects whose loyalty is doubtful. The recruitment roundup in Algeria was done too carelessly and they sought numbers rather than quality.11

The ‘native lieutenant’ Rabah Boukabouya, himself from Constantine, deserted following a racist comment from one of his superiors, taking a few of his troops with him. He was given the death penalty in absentia. Enrolled by the German Army, he wrote a defamatory pamphlet entitled L’Islam dans l’armée française (‘Islam in the French Army’), published under the pseudonym Abdallah El Hâj. This pamphlet caused great outrage among the French colonists and the French military. After this incident, desertions became rare in France. The 1917 class, which included many recruits who deserted just after their incorporation in the central regions of Algeria (Maison Carrée, Blida,

Algerians in the French Army, 1914–1918

35

Mostaganem), no longer attracted notice after arriving in France, except paradoxically when it was praised for its conduct under fire. Yet among these men, there were some from the Aurès Mountains that had participated in a nearly six-month revolt against conscription.12 ‘Loyalism’ – the form of loyalism that French reports boasted about with self-satisfaction, and which was highly questionable in Algeria – was widespread in France, even though all the tirailleurs recognized the military superiority of the Germans. It would appear that the reason for this ‘quieting down’ must be sought in a relatively successful integration of North Africans in the French Army, despite the difficult events of 1914. At the end of 1914, when the Race to the Sea was over and the front had been stabilized, the High Command paid more attention to the North African units, which had suffered enormous losses. It focused more on their military training. It worked to make them ready for war. The officers had noticed how much it was important for these soldiers to be attached to their leaders. Officers were chosen more carefully, and efforts were made to avoid moving them from one regiment to another too often, so that they could better know the men under their command. The basic principle of North African troops’‘morale’ was, apart from solidarity in arms as mentioned above, the concern for nif (honour, or being careful to show one’s worth) among the French tirailleurs who formed around one-fifth of the troops, and personal attachment to their officers, some of whom even boasted that they could make their men do anything they wanted.

Algerians in the French army at war: Respected soldiers In any case, as time went on, the High Command’s opinion of the combat value of the tirailleurs improved. From a miserable troop in 1914, they became excellent assault troops, not shying away from the bloodiest combat in Verdun, in the Somme, at Chemin des Dames and at Bois Brûlé, where they suffered heavy losses. Often looked down upon at the beginning of the war, they eventually drew as much praise as the zouaves (Europeans and Jews from Algeria), or even more so, in 1916, 1917 and 1918. One gets the impression that, as more recruits were conscripted and the percentage of volunteers shrank accordingly, the young tirailleurs fought all the more valiantly. For 1917, the archives do not give any evidence of mutinies within North African units, whereas there were several in French regiments. Likewise, the number and severity of sentences pronounced by military tribunals constantly declined over the course of the war.

36

Combatants of Muslim Origin in European Armies

It is still very hard to explain the reasons behind this attitude: as surprising as it may appear, it is nevertheless indisputable. As early as 1915, a report on the behaviour of ‘native’ troops shows this change: From the point of view of cohesion and manoeuvres, I obtained surprising results, and I would say without hesitation that [this battalion of tirailleurs] would compare with any other battalion.13

In September 1915, in the 3rd RTA , which had lost 38 per cent of its soldiers in two days, ‘morale is excellent, but the fatigue is clearly visible.’14 In Verdun, ‘in the 37th Division, the combat value remained strong . . . the soldiers still have a lot of energy on the offensive, and great tenacity to hold their ground.’ Yet at the same time, ‘among the tirailleurs, once the officers have fallen, the soldiers fall back. It is fair to add that they regroup quite quickly for another assault.’15 Two months later, in the same regiment, ‘the morale of the officers and troops remains excellent.’ However, a company of the Leclerc Battalion had only 23 men left, and three companies of the same battalion had a total of 129 men. The Gonnel Battalion, for its part, fell to 380 men.16 In December 1916, despite losing 190 men who were buried alive by shellings or missing, it took 950 prisoners.17 Not far from there, the commanding officer praised the 3rd Regiment for having ‘guts’; on 15 and 16 December 1916, it had suffered 100 fatalities, 398 other casualties and 387 missing: However, there have been no complaints or criticism. The sight of the Boche [‘Kraut’] prisoners valiantly cheered and comforted our soldiers. The 3rd [RTA ] added yet another page to its epic, and remains worthy of its flag. . . . Perfect discipline, no soldiers late, none gone astray despite the darkness and narrow connecting trenches. The troops’ morale is excellent. No shirkers. No men running away to hide.18

In April 1917, at Chemin des Dames, an officer wrote enthusiastically that, although they were being slaughtered during the offensive, the tirailleurs protested when ordered to pull back.19 In November 1917, in the 2nd RTA , Lieutenant-Colonel Xavier Jacques de Barbeyrac de Saint Maurice spoke of ‘physical deterioration’ but noted ‘high morale’ despite the number of cases of frostbite and enormous casualties: during the second assault at Verdun, this regiment had 1,300 casualties when it took and ‘cleaned’ the barracks of Meiningen, Cologne and Hamburg.20 On 8 August 1918, near Roye, the same 2nd Tirailleur Regiment . . . once again, during [the fighting], proved the strong warrior qualities that make it a wonderful assault unit, a great, brutal,

Algerians in the French Army, 1914–1918

37

overpowering and madly devoted unit. The 2nd [RTA ], recruited from a warlike and loyal population, has always struck the enemy like an iron blow. Its loyalism and devotion . . . are always backed by heroism that helps everything.21

Granted, better military training may explain this change in combat value. It is also possible that some officers ‘exaggerated’ in order to cast their units (and themselves) in a more favourable light. The youth of the recruits and the fact that they were not mercenaries must have had an impact, but this argument could cut both ways, considering the past attitude of the 1917 class in Algeria. So why this despondency in the beginning, and why this growing enthusiasm after 1915? Why did this hostile attitude in Algeria – at best distrustful and hesitant – become acquiescent and even actively cooperative on the French front? The low number of deserters can certainly be attributed to the fear of retaliation against the families back home and by the rumours about the poor food and harsh conditions in German prisoner camps, where Muslim prisoners could choose between a strict disciplinary regime and signing up for the Ottoman troops. In the end, a very small percentage of Algerian prisoners agreed to cooperate with the Ottomans (the Tunisians were more numerous to do so). Fighting alongside the French, with the same ardour as the French, increased the North African soldiers’ pride as they ‘smashed some Boche’ (the tirailleurs led the assault crying ‘inhaldin l’Boche!’ – ‘May God curse the Boche!’). This may have been a transfer of aggressiveness that had long been repressed in colonial Algeria: whereas ‘Hâj Guillaume’ might have been considered a potential ally in Algeria, on the side of the ‘Turks’ who could chase out the French invaders, the ‘Boche’, self-confident and domineering, was indeed the parallel of the French colonist, also self-confident and domineering. At play was a strategy of manipulation used by intelligent colonels. These leaders knew how to appear as idealized clan chiefs, attempting to transpose the uncertain Algerian tribal solidarity into an efficient regiment solidarity that could later be modelled into other forms of solidarity. This approach was used most effectively in the ‘Moroccan Division’. General Ernest Joseph Blondlat was one example. He knew each of his men personally, based on updated identification sheets, and organized celebrations within the division where the tirailleur’s role was glorified. Cultural difference and criticism were also welcomed, even by allowing satirical skits aimed at the French. Through countless ways of showing attention to his troops in a form of paternalism that was not just for show, Blondlat represented the ideal type of the colonel as clan chief. Other commanding officers also knew how to play on the transposition of Algerian

38

Combatants of Muslim Origin in European Armies

society to military society, both of them consisting of men, with shared values of virility, courage and honour.

The military order: More egalitarian than the colonial order? Generally speaking, to most of the North Africans, the military order also seemed more egalitarian than the colonial order they had known. Not that the tirailleurs were without complaint, but they complained more loudly about the lack of equal treatment between the French and North Africans, notably on the topic of leave: We have the honour of writing to you to ask you to tell us whether we are your enemies or your brave Muslim soldiers. . . . Ah! What an injustice! Instead of encouraging us with short leaves, you forbid us to see our parents, our families. . . . Also, what hatred, what contempt from our leaders, since when we are required to stay in any office, we are treated no better than dogs. Why? This is also true for our poor officers. One native officer returning to the depot, coming back from a hospital, is addressed as ‘tu’ just like a dog. So what rank do we hold? . . . If it is in the interest of the service, then cancel leave for everyone. That way, everyone will be satisfied, and [you should] notice that we are all equal, we are all working towards the same goal.22

This inequality partly disappeared as the tirailleurs’ ‘loyalism’ was noticed. In fact, does the term ‘loyalism’ fit? This behaviour was in fact more a form of gratitude expressed for sustenance and lodging, provided year in, year out, in the same conditions as all the soldiers, whether French or North African. Or it was a form of trust in chiefs, many of whom wrote about the extraordinary affection that their men had for them. Some wrote pieces on the virile beauty and ardour of these young recruits. In short, a feeling arose that, in the midst of the horrible slaughter that ground down the men, all discrimination had been set aside. Sources mention the friendships formed in the army, the gratitude for care provided by the medical units. Perhaps the Muslims were also impressed by the special efforts made during Muslim holidays, as well as for burial rites, despite the occasional misplaced zeal of some proselytizing priests: all things that must have affected the men more than the building of a wooden mosque. Various charities could contribute to this relative integration of North African soldiers into the French Army, for paternalism was one side of a political coin whose

Algerians in the French Army, 1914–1918

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other side was repression and racism in Algeria, but nevertheless not indifferent to the colonized population or to any human being. Compared to the passiveness and disillusioned wait-and-see attitude in Algeria, ‘loyalism’ in France would thus be the response to the recognition of a form of human dignity that was barely present in the colonial order. The French politicians of Algeria were not mistaken when they viewed Algerians’ military service and work migration to France as a serious threat. Therefore, the postarmistice period would prove the validity of these fears expressed by the tirailleurs as early as 1914: After we have given our blood for France, we will once again be treated in our country like the worst of pagans, for we will never be able to count on the appreciation of those for whom we are getting killed.23

In Algeria: Hopes of a better tomorrow, and disillusions Just after the armistice, in Algeria, nobody dared to criticize these valiant tirailleurs that had been so highly praised, even in the colonial press, although the Europeans of Algeria never really believed their sincerity. For a few months, the hurtful remarks and ambient racism remained absent from the newspapers in Algeria. However, the praise directed at the tirailleurs had never been accepted as anything else than a means of patriotic propaganda. The majority of Europeans in Algeria had only reluctantly accepted the Messimy Decree (1912) establishing the principle of compulsory military service for Algerians. In the final year of the war, the debates had already resumed about the extent of political rights to be granted to Algerians, but these debates were still unobtrusive and devoid of visible passion. Colonists pretended to remain calm and to address the issue with equanimity. Owing recognition to the former tirailleurs was nevertheless a bitter pill to swallow. The colonists were worried about higher wages. Farm labourers asked for up to 4.50 or 5 francs per day, compared to a normal wage of 1 to 1.50 francs in 1914. The colonial press insinuated that the government wanted to keep the mobilized men in France and to corner the Algerian labour force. Despite the solidarity in arms that could have existed between the zouaves and tirailleurs incorporated in the same divisions, and sometimes even in the same regiments (the ‘mixed’ regiments with zouaves and tirailleurs), and also despite the generous enthusiasm expressed by Jean Mélia, the defender in Algeria of the rights of the ‘natives’, who called for a future of understanding and

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fraternity between the Europeans of Algeria and native Algerians, the communitarian reflexes continued. They even grew stronger, as the Europeans were afraid of being dominated by the Algerians: the tirailleurs returning from the front were nevertheless to be classified among the people who ‘have rights over us’. Of course, the 1919 Jonnart Law on the political rights of Algerians did not deny this unusual ‘position of strength’. While the law was harmless – it did not significantly change the political inferiority of Algerians – it was nevertheless accepted reluctantly. Among the French of Algeria, the solidarity built during the conquest, and deeply felt since 1830, did not give way to a hypothetical class solidarity surpassing community lines, that the Algerian Communist Party was the first to attempt to promote. The solidarity of the trenches, the combat side by side during the war, were only conjured up artificially and in the very different and temporary form of fraternity in arms. Veterans’ associations in Metropolitan France were completely unaware of the colonial situation, and it was hardly in their nature to promote a progressive policy in this area. Moreover, by demanding the dignity that they believed they had won through their valour in 1914–18, Algerian veterans only heightened Europeans’ mistrust, insofar as such demands were an attack on the European preponderance, and thus an assault on the overall colonial order. Accusing the Algerians of being duplicitous was just one step further. The Europeans of Algeria continued to be afraid of the native Algerians; and Khaled’s electoral campaign in Algiers in 1919–20 was readily regarded as religious fanaticism that challenged the foundations of colonial society. The French administration summed up this situation well by reporting its fears, which had been exacerbated by Bolshevist or pan-Islamist intrigue, either real or imaginary. For example, in August 1921, Charles-André Julien (then the head in Algeria of the recently created Communist Party) took a trip to Moscow. In May 1920, the military authorities were carrying out investigations all across Algeria. In Miliana, Colonel Trousseau from the 9th RTA wrote: The Muslim mindset is indisputably undergoing a transformation. The exodus to cities, the numerous purchases of property by Arabs are one sign. Yet this is no more than the normal consequences of the enrichment caused by the war. One remark to be made is that many individuals sent to France as workers have brought unhealthy seeds back to the colony: in the regiments, demands are becoming more numerous and more precise; one feels that they are inspired by ideas coming from the working class in France. A bit everywhere, but particularly

Algerians in the French Army, 1914–1918

41

in the cities and especially in the ports, there is a suspicious population that must be watched.24

In Oran, the general commanding the division wrote: Over the course of the war, certain categories of natives, such as the colonial workers, for example, took on habits of intemperance and laziness, and this now results in excessive claims and demands that are very much unjustified, but this is a purely individual matter and cannot be viewed as collective and religious in nature.25

In Bône, Captain Dutueil wrote: After being cosseted [?] in France, sometimes treated even too well, the tirailleurs rediscovered here the contempt that a European population, the French component of which is in the minority, affects towards the natives. Colonial workers, returning home after forming couples with French women, albeit in some rare cases, have brought with them new, unhealthy ideas. They were not the last to support the recent strikes, either as dock workers, or as railway men. More than the tirailleurs, [these workers] have taken on revolutionary, or even antimilitarist, ideas.26

In February 1920, ‘native’ elections were held for the Constantine department. The older Gallicized Algerian candidates lost, and the election victory was loudly celebrated: [The Europeans] had some merit, while [they were] exasperated by the general shape of the events, they can be seen alternating between considerable discouragement and extreme irritation.27

In Algiers, an official report noted: One cannot . . . escape from an unpleasant feeling when one sees, in a city as European as Algiers, such a mass of voters gathering around the appeal of someone like Khaled, to fight with a single voice the assimilation policy of the Jeunes Algériens. . . . So what remains of the illusions fed by some parliamentarians regarding the inevitable development of this party? . . . They form only an intellectual elite, with no contact or influence on their Muslim brothers, and they are cast aside when a personality like Khaled rises up under the flag of intransigent religion.28

We know that Khaled was not especially devout, nor was he most likely even a very strong believer. However, he successfully instrumentalized Islam – something that the French authorities had never hesitated to do, moreover. Khaled embodied the new threat of political anti-colonialism in Algeria.

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Conclusion The Algerians, as a whole, had obviously never asked to be fully French before 1914, even though such a declaration by a leader of the Jeunes Algériens might have given this mistaken impression. Demanding equality with the French, as Khaled did, was already a way of challenging Algeria’s status as a colony. This was already an enormous step in the colonial context. It is well known that Georges Clemenceau had to use incredible energy to force the European notables of Algeria to accept equality for French and Algerian soldiers in terms of invalidity pensions. Oral sources indicate that Clemenceau firmly ordered a delegation of colonial notables out of his office, with the famous phrase, ‘Messieurs, je vous emmerde!’ The veterans merely wanted France to acknowledge that they had fought for the country and deserved recognition for their sacrifice. As a logical consequence of the war, Khaled took these wishes into account, first in a French framework (assimilation, but without abandoning the Muslim status, as the transitional moral grounds for an underlying national awareness that had yet to become a nation), then in a new framework: that of a separatist anti-colonial demand, expressed politically in an increasingly clear fashion. After 1918, it was clear that nothing could ever be the same in Algeria, and not only because of the 1919 Jonnart Law. Exile gave rise to more precise patriotic feelings. The military order had appeared more egalitarian than the colonial one. Contact with the French, in the army or in factories, had brought in ‘unhealthy seeds’. The latter were not yet clearly linked to Algerian patriotism or to the direct demand for Algerian national specificity. The return to Algeria and the realization that nothing had really changed could only suggest this connection. Despite Germany’s defeat, the Algerians had noticed its strength. The French, previously seen as invulnerable, had shown their weakness. After 1918, a common view in Algeria was that the Americans (and the Algerians) had won the war. The martial self-complacency of the Algerians found renewed vigour: the Algerians could fight and they could win. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire had discredited the Turks: they could no longer form a pillar of the Algerian resistance. The field was open for demands that would be more specifically Algerian. The fear of subversion strengthened the communitarian reflexes of the Europeans in Algeria. Therefore, it was normal that the Algerians’ demands would retreat into exclusivist forms of resistance, expressed by language, religion

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and attachment to watan (homeland), the solidity of which had in fact been measured by the First World War. The communitarian framework on the French side, versus the communitarian framework on the Algerian side, both excluding any real solidarity beyond community lines (despite the ideological hopes of the Communists), laid the foundations for the emergence of a modern form of Algerian patriotism. Later on, the colonel as clan chief built by the French foreshadowed the colonel as guide of the Algerian people, rooted symbolically in the maquis of the Algerian War (1954–62), even though many colonels commanded from rear bases in Morocco, then Tunisia, and not within the maquis. But before reaching that point, many upheavals were patterned on the First World War, which immediately preceded the anti-colonial political demands. Yet the colonial obstacles were such that they heightened the probability of a violent resolution, the validity of military culture and the likelihood of a future military power in Algeria. The military model that is so central to contemporary Algeria was not the least of the parameters caused by Algerians’ participation in the First World War.

Notes 1 A total of 120,000 work contracts were signed in France by Algerian workers, but some of these workers signed two or more contracts. 2 Service historique de l’armée de terre (hereafter SHAT ), état-major de l’armée hereafter (EMA ) deuxième bureau, box 9974 (former index code), postal inspection. 3 SHAT, Grand quartier général (GQG ), box 16 N 194, report by General Georges de Bazelaire, commanding officer of the 38th Division. 4 SHAT, EMA , box 2974, postal inspection, December 1917. 5 This camp was called Halbmondlager: camp of the crescent. 6 SHAT, EMA , deuxième bureau, box 2974, postal inspection. 7 SHAT, box 24 N 242. 8 SHAT, box 24 N 242. 9 SHAT, box 24 N 818, report by General Blanc, 23 September 1914. 10 SHAT, box 16 N 194, report by the general commanding the 38th Division, 25 December 1914. 11 SHAT, box 16 N 194, report by Colonel de Gouvello, 3rd Tirailleur Regiment. 12 To suppress this uprising, two regiments had to be called in from the front. 13 SHAT, EMA , premier bureau, box 41b (former index code). 14 SHAT, box 24 N 820, report from 26 September 1915.

44 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23

24 25 26 27 28

Combatants of Muslim Origin in European Armies SHAT, box 24 N 821, report from 11 May 1916. SHAT, box 24 N 821, report from 16 July 1916. SHAT, box 24 N 822, report from 15 December 1916. SHAT, box 24 N 823, report from 16 April 1917. SHAT, box 24 N 823, report from 16 April 1917. SHAT, box 24 N 825, report from 26 November 1917. SHAT, box 24 N 826, report from 12 August 1918. SHAT, box 4608 (former index code), section d’Afrique, file: vacations and leaves, letter from a group of Algerian soldiers at the Aix-en-Provence depot to Millerand, January 1915. SHAT, Section Afrique, box 4526 (former index code), file: Turkey’s attitude, German intrigues in 1914, report from 29 October 1914 on the depots of Aix-enProvence and Arles. SHAT, Section Afrique, box 4528 (former index code), report by Colonel Trousseau, 18 May 1920. SHAT, Section Afrique, box 4528 (former index code), report by the general commanding the Oran Division, 28 May 1920. SHAT, Section Afrique, box 4528 (former index code), report by Captain Dutueil, 17 May 1920. SHAT, Section Afrique, box 4528 (former index code), report by La Martinière. SHAT, Section Afrique, box 4528 (former index code), report by La Martinière.

Bibliography Azan, Paul. L’armée indigène nord-africaine. Paris: Charles-Lavauzelle, 1925. Bernard, Augustin. L’Afrique du Nord pendant la guerre. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1926. Carnévalé-Mauzan, Marino. Les Camps d’internés civils en France et en Afrique française pendant la Première Guerre mondiale: 1914–1919. Marseille: Philoffset, 1984. Charbonneau, Jean-Eugène. Du soleil et de la gloire, la grandiose épopée de nos contingents coloniaux. Paris: Charles-Lavauzelle. Combe, Louis. Le soldat d’Afrique – Tomes 1 et 2. Paris: Charles Lavauzelle, 1912 and 1921. Depont, Octave. Les troubles insurrectionnels de l’arrondissement de Batna en 1916. Alger: Gouvernement général de l’Algérie, Service des Affaires indigènes, 1917. D’Estre, Henry. D’Oran à Arras. Impression de guerre d’un officier d’Afrique. Paris: Plon, 1916. D’Estre, Henry. De l’Algérie au Rhin: journal de guerre du 3e tirailleurs de marche. Paris: A. Picard, 1920. D’Estre, Henry. Le Deuxième régiment de marche de tirailleurs. Souvenirs de guerre (1914–1918). Alger: Jules Carbonel, 1922.

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Gérard, Claude. De la Lorraine au Djebel. Paris: Editions de la Marquise, 2002. Gérard, Claude. Historique du 7e régiment de tirailleurs. Constantine: Lefert, n.d. Gérard, Claude. Historique du 9e régiment de marche de zouaves dans la Grande Guerre 1914–1918. Alger: Fontana frères, 1921. Lehuraux, Léon. Chants et chansons de l’armée d’Afrique. Paris: Société générale d’imprimerie et d’éditions, 1933. Mélia, Jean. L’Algérie et la guerre (1914–1918). Paris: Plon-Nourrit et Cie, 1918. Messimy, Adolphe. Mes souvenirs. Paris: Plon, 1937. Morizot, Jean. L’Aurès ou le mythe de la montagne rebelle. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1991. Morizot, Jean. Ô salut au drapeau. Tahiya al ’alam. Témoignage de loyalisme des Musulmans français – Tome 1: L’Algérie. Paris: E. Leroux, 1916. Passols, Antoine-Vincent. L’Algérie et l’assimilation des indigènes musulmans. Étude sur l’utilisation des ressources militaires de l’Algérie. Paris: Charles-Lavauzelle, 1903. Passols, Antoine-Vincent. Les troupes coloniales pendant la guerre 1914–1918. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1931.

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2

Feeding Muslim Troops during the First World War Emmanuelle Cronier

Many Muslim soldiers were engaged in the First World War. The vast majority of them served in the Ottoman army, which mobilized almost three million men during the war. On the Ottoman fronts, Muslims were fighting among fellow worshippers for jihad, declared on 11 November 1914 by the Sultan Mehmed V, in his capacity as caliph, the commander of the faithful. Islam was thus a propaganda tool and a cultural cement to appeal to all Muslims within and outside the empire to join. In the undernourished Ottoman army, however, the main issue regarding food was about quantities, not religious rules.1 Muslims were also mobilized in other forces, such as the French and the British armies, which conducted recruitment campaigns in Africa and India. In 1914, Muslims and Sikhs altogether represented about one-third of the Indian Army – 30,000 of them served in France and Belgium from October 1914 to December 1915. Then they were redeployed to Mesopotamia, where additional recruits from India were engaged. The total number of Indian combatants in Mesopotamia reached 300,000, among whom approximately 100,000 were Muslims.2 The French recruited 200,000 tirailleurs sénégalais all over French West Africa during the Great War, and about 135,000 of them were sent to Europe or the Middle East. The tirailleurs sénégalais were composed of people coming from areas where Islam and traditional beliefs were competing, but they were regarded by colonial authorities as a Muslim force. About 270,000 North Africans were also recruited, of whom two-thirds served in Europe. The Muslim minorities of the French and British imperial armies are thus crucial to investigate how cultural identities were challenged, preserved or encouraged during the war in order to preserve morale and discipline in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious war. Food offers a crucial perspective in that matter, as nutrition was a daily issue for all armies. Providing enough quantities of food to get the basic needs satisfied 47

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was of course critical for the purpose of victory, as logistics were strained by the blockade or discontinuities in the lines of supply. But for cultural minorities such as Muslims, food also encompassed practices, religious dietary requirements, specific rites and holy festivals. Islamic doctrine specified which food was halal (lawful) or haram (unlawful). The consumption of alcohol, blood, pork, carrion and animals dedicated to a being other than Allah was forbidden. The ritual slaughter of animals had to be conducted with a sharpened knife to cut the throat. The blood was drained afterwards. During Ramadan, the most sacred period of the year, the faithful had to fast and abstain from drinking and eating from dawn to sunset. But Islamic jurisprudence allowed exceptions to such rules according to the ‘law of necessity’. If no halal food was available and the men were facing starvation, they were allowed to consume haram food. The doctrine also allowed the faithful engaged in journeys, like soldiers, to abstain from the religious dietary requirements, such as fasting. They could make up the missed fasts later. Preserving religious cultures and traditional food practices was identified as a way to enforce discipline and to lift morale by the command structures of the imperial forces. For all troops, the pre-war diet of fighting men had to adapt to the new conditions of total war, as it was more difficult to get supplies. But specific issues appeared for Muslims, for whom, as for many other cultural minorities such as Hindus, religious requirements were a significant part of the contract with the command structure. It was even more important when troops were not conscripted but raised on a voluntary basis. Feeding Muslim troops during the Great War could thus rely on the pre-war experience of the management of the imperial troops. But preserving religious requirements was also a major challenge in wartime, and many adaptations to the local conditions regarding the supply, the preparation and the distribution of food occurred. The religious food standards had therefore to go through negotiations and tensions to balance the interests of morale and discipline. This chapter is an attempt to compare such issues in the French and British imperial forces during the First World War.

The pre-war experience of food management in imperial forces The management of food for religious minorities such as Muslims was shaped by the pre-war colonial experience. Both the Indian Army and the French Senegalese

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49

Corps were established during the nineteenth century. Structured then as allvolunteer forces, these units caught specific attention from the command structure regarding food matters, as they needed active duty rations and the opportunity to practise their culture. In the French case, it was an exception to the 1905 law on the separation of Church and State, which was not enforced in the colonial forces. By the end of the nineteenth century, a specific ration had been designed for the tirailleurs sénégalais. In 1911, it included a large ration of rice (18 oz – around 500 g), fresh meat (14 oz – around 400 g), coffee, sugar, oil and salt. According to some testimonies from their officers, the tirailleurs seemed satisfied with their rations. Captain Joseph Trémolet, who led them in Senegal and Morocco before 1914, testified that there was ‘no troop more easy to satisfy’ with the daily rations: ‘Some rice and water, that’s the basis of their diet. If you can add some meat, salt and coffee, they are perfectly satisfied.’ The major issue was to feed them the expected products and quantities: ‘They cook it their way and never complain’, Trémolet wrote.3 In his testimony, meat supplies did not seem to be an issue, even though men belonged to different cultures such as animism or Islam. It is thus likely that the meat rations included poultry, goat and mutton, which was a way to avoid tensions over the consumption of pork in particular. Therefore, already before 1914, the military rations differed a lot from the local food practices of West Africa. For example, the consumption of rice and meat was not prevalent in the West African savanna before the end of the nineteenth century, and the first mention of rice served to the tirailleurs sénégalais in Madagascar is found in 1857.4 In the British case, the management of food for minorities was a tougher issue going back to the nineteenth century. The sepoys, named after the Persian word sepah meaning soldiers, were engaged in the defence of British India and aggregated different local communities. The 1857 uprising of the Hindu and Muslim sepoys played a crucial role in shaping the management of food for cultural minorities within the British Army. In 1857, the British tried to introduce in the Indian Army a specific protocol to load the rifles. The soldiers were asked to bite the cartridges made from greased paper before loading the guns. The rumours that the grease was a mixture of beef and pork, forbidden both in Hinduism and Islam, led to the uprising and a large-scale rebellion in India.5 This experience led the British authorities to be watchful about any complaint regarding food and religious matters among the sepoys. Therefore, they limited their interventions in the diet of the minorities, which was being cared for by the Hindu, Sikh and Muslim communities themselves. Self-management of food in order to preserve religious requirements thus became a standard in the Indian

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Army. These purposes were supported by the recruitment policy assigning specific ethnic and religious groups to homogeneous companies or regiments, in order to prevent them uniting against the British, and to enforce discipline.6 In 1914, about 80 per cent of the Indian Army was composed of soldiers from the so-called ‘martial races’ from Punjab, Nepal and the northwest frontier of British India. In both the French and British imperial forces, the soldiers came from very poor and illiterate classes. As for the tirailleurs sénégalais, enlistment in the army was a meal ticket, and food was therefore seen as an important advantage adding to the pay. When they were on active duty, it was a tangible reward for the hardships they had to face. Food was thus a significant part of the contract with the command structure: the soldiers expected their superiors to secure sufficient quantities of food and to support their dietary requirements as a fundamental part of their religious practices.7 Before 1914, the French and British authorities were already aware that religious requirements were a great help to lift the spirits and to maintain discipline among troops who were regarded at the beginning of the war as potentially disobedient. The French had engaged the tirailleurs sénégalais in several campaigns abroad such as Madagascar (1895–1905) or Morocco (1908), but the vast majority of the sepoys served within the frontiers of India before 1914, external major operations being left to British units.8 There was thus more uncertainty about the sepoys’ response to uprooting, as they had had fewer occasions to serve abroad before the war.

The challenge of preserving religious dietary requirements in wartime The food arrangements aimed at the cultural minorities within the British and the French forces were challenged as soon as the war was declared and had to adapt to shifting local conditions. The tirailleurs and the sepoys were for the first time engaged in Europe in 1914, which was further from home than they ever went, except for the tirailleurs sénégalais corps deployed in Madagascar before 1914. As the sepoys were sent more than 6,000 kilometres from India during the Great War, the supply of local products was at stake. Some traditional products, such as ginger and atta, a whole-wheat flour, both important to sepoys, or kola nuts important to tirailleurs, had to be imported from afar if they were to be distributed to the troops. Maintaining food traditions and religious requirements was a challenge as logistics difficulties appeared quickly. Ships were threatened by blockades and submarine warfare, and securing calories was the priority

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regarding food issues. Specific food imports intended for religious minorities, such as spices or fresh local vegetables, could thus be seen as unnecessary compared to the strategic transportation of soldiers or weapons. Muslim troops were also engaged on several battlefields where local conditions differed a lot through time and from one place to another. It meant that the supply, preservation, preparation, distribution and consumption of food varied greatly. French imperial troops were engaged in Africa, France, Greece or the Middle East and some were also detained in German camps as prisoners. As for the sepoys, they were engaged in France and Belgium from October 1914 to December 1915 before being redeployed to Mesopotamia at the end of 1915. Some of them were also detained in German and Ottoman camps as prisoners of war.9 Logistics had thus to adapt to each site, which meant undertaking segmented adjustments according to the needs of each ethnic or religious minorities such as Muslims. If these men were fighting a global war along with the European soldiers, the ration designed for the British and the French included products like pork and alcohol unfit for the Muslims as well as for the Hindus or the Sikhs’ religious dietary requirements. Some traditional dishes were also essential to some groups, like the chapattis (flat bread) included in the sepoys’ rations, which differed from the kind of bread supplied to the European forces. The content of the rations thus differed according to the local conditions of catering. When they were fighting, men were supplied active duty rations – the same as for the European soldiers – which would include more meat to regain strength. The closer the troops were to the front, the more they depended on military rations. Kitchens were set up a few kilometres behind the lines, and the military cooks used fresh produce, along with tinned and dried products to provide the rations for the soldiers. During combat operations, or when lines of supply were cut, the men often depended on iron rations (preserves), which were developed during the war to provide long-term preservation of food. Muslim troops also had to stay for long periods in camps on their arrival in Europe or during rest at the rear, like Parc Borely in Marseille (France) or the Royal Pavilion in Brighton (England), where 14,000 sepoys were treated during the war. In the Senegalese camps of Fréjus and Saint-Raphaël, where soldiers were sent during winter after 1916, the practice of Islam increased during the war, which helped in unifying the diet. In these camps, the gathering of as many as 50,000 soldiers in 1918 imposed large-scale catering.10 Such shifting local conditions, along with different traditions in the practice of Islam among Senegalese, North African tirailleurs and Indian sepoys, raise

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difficulties in conducting a thorough comparison of their situation, but also underline the differentiated experiences of the Muslim soldiers regarding food issues in wartime.

Preserving food practices to enforce discipline and invigorate morale During the Great War, the established practices regarding self-management of food and segregation according to ethnic, social and religious criteria allowed the Muslims to observe religious requirements, even though adjustments about abstention and food rites occurred. The paternalistic views of the Europeans towards indigenous people were also mobilized to justify a special treatment for the imperial troops. In the British forces, the organization of the Indian Army in homogeneous units eased the management of food according to religious rules. As food was already identified as a potential source of complaints from the sepoys, the British command structure upheld or even improved pre-war commitments to specific food arrangements. To avoid complications, the British shaped for the sepoys a standard ration meant to satisfy all religious practices. It included rice, dal (lentils), vegetables and chapattis. Some items were imported from India, such as rice, lentils, ginger and ghee, a clarified butter. Meat was thus the changing part of the menu, as some sepoys were vegetarians, and others avoided pork or beef.11 The concern was as important in the French army, where it was crucial to show colonial soldiers that they were treated the same way the French were. Showing respect for the beliefs and the practices of the colonial conscripts was also a sign addressed to the local communities that the soldiers were treated with respect and allowed to follow food traditions. An alternative message would have slowed down the recruitment process for the French forces, who in 1917 were facing difficulties in West Africa as well as in North Africa, where compulsory conscription had been introduced or reinforced one year before in Tunisia and Algeria.12 As the Indian Army was still recruited on a voluntary basis during the First World War, it was also important to stick as much as possible to the pre-war food arrangements, which were a powerful inducement to enlist. Philippe Pétain, leading the French army in 1917, was well aware of the impact of dietary religious requirements on the morale and discipline of the colonial forces. His views met those of the colonial forces’ officers when he stressed the importance of creating places for Muslim soldiers where they could find ‘meals

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adapted to their taste and their mentalities’.13 Most of the military reports stated that tirailleurs sénégalais were easy to satisfy as long as they got decent food. In 1917, when the collapse of morale was under specific watch in the French army, reports stated that they were satisfied by the quantities of food provided. They only wished to improve the quality of rations by avoiding pork and getting extras like tea or kola nuts. Kolas were essential to the diet of people from West Africa, where they were used for their stimulating properties. Their bitter taste also embodied some of the local tastes and they were recognized by the officers to be crucial for morale, hence their nickname of ‘Senegalese plonk’, in reference to their occidental counterpart the pinard, a low-quality wine used to lift the soldiers’ morale.14 The sepoys and the tirailleurs were not granted home leave during the war, as seaways were disrupted and the command structure feared they would not come back. It was also very difficult for the North African soldiers to fight the depressing effects of nostalgia. By the end of 1917, over 8,000 Algerian and Tunisian soldiers had not been granted their annual leave due to significant delays in boat departures. As for the Moroccans, they were not allowed to go home on leave before September 1917. But then, the transportation delays and the resumption of military operations on the Western front later in 1918 prevented them from going home on leave at all.15 Many of them felt homesick, and Islamic food traditions helped to compensate for the uprooting through religious practices – the same way that cultural practices such as sports, music or local food helped European troops to overcome the depressing effects of a long war fought far from home.16 Muslim food practices were also used by the Germans and the Ottomans in prisoner camps for propaganda and discipline purposes. From the beginning of 1915, Muslim prisoners captured by the Germans were concentrated in two large camps dedicated to fellow worshippers: the Weinberglager at Zossen and the Halbmondlager at Wünsdorf, both close to Berlin. The camps housed several thousand Muslim prisoners each, who benefited from special treatment aimed to demonstrate the fair treatment of the POW s, a constant source of tensions between belligerents. In the camps, soldiers were kept separated, as in the Halbmondlager, where a so-called Inderlager (‘Indian camp’) was erected to separate the South Asian prisoners from others, mostly French North African soldiers. Prisoners were exposed to intense propaganda in order to turn them against their former side. As the camps were show camps aimed at the Ottomans allied with the Germans, some facilities for religious practices were provided for the Muslim inmates.17 Such facilities were also a way to enforce discipline. The

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Germans publicized the special treatment of the Muslim POW s through propaganda narratives like a movie shot during Eid al-Fitr in Zossen in 1916, showing the sacrifice of sheep according to Islamic rites.18 Specific food arrangements made in the camps were watched by humanitarian organizations and delegates from foreign embassies, such as John B. Jackson from the American embassy in Berlin, who visited Zossen’s camp in July 1915. He reported that the Indian prisoners were satisfied with religious arrangements. The Indian camp held four kitchens, ‘one each for the Mahommedans, Ghurkas, Sikhs, and Thakurs19 and each sect is allowed to prepare its food according to its own ritual’. The camp’s administrator avoided entering ‘their kitchens or the prayer section of the Mahommedan barracks’. At that time, the sanitary conditions of the detainees were good according to his testimony.20 These conditions worsened during the war, as from the end of 1916, known as the ‘turnip winter’, Germany had to face important food shortages. In December 1916, Tunisian Muslim detainees in Germany wrote 3,618 letters to their relatives in Tunisia. The mail censorship operating in Tunis disclosed they were complaining mostly about the chilly winter and the lack of food: ‘Rations must be scarce’, summarized the report, ‘as they list in each of their letters the missing food products (couscous, chillies, oil, etc.)’.21 The food parcels sent by the Comité de secours aux prisonniers de guerre (Relief Committee for POW s) were a help when they were not lost or despoiled by the Germans guards, who stole the food products or opened tins searching for prohibited material such as weapons.22 The importance of upholding or improving pre-war commitments to food terms meeting religious requirements was thus a constant concern of the management of religious minorities such as Muslims.

Setting up separate food lines for meat Some specific efforts were made regarding meat, as it was a sensitive issue for Muslim soldiers, involving the avoidance of pork and fat from pork, and undertaking a specific slaughtering process. Meat was also an important part of the soldier’s active duty ration according to hygienic injunctions advising intakes of several hundred grams a day for soldiers. Most of the meat distributed to British and French soldiers was not pork but beef, such as in the iron rations of ‘bully beef ’. But fat from pork was usual in the European rations. The command structure had thus to offer substitutes for the Muslim soldiers, as in the pre-war rations. The tirailleurs sénégalais, who had to avoid pork fat, received vegetable

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fat such as palm or peanut oil. The sepoys were to receive ghee imported from India, a clarified butter widely used in Indian food and a standard in the sepoys’ rations.23 By the end of 1914, disruption in the lines of supply from India led some hospitals to distribute margarine to the convalescent soldiers in the absence of ghee. The reaction of the Commissioner of Indian Hospitals in France and Britain was immediate, in order to avoid rumours spreading about margarine being contaminated with pork or beef fat: ‘If it got about that we were using margarine, there might be an explosion similar to the old cartridge trouble of the Mutiny’, wrote Alfred Keogh of the War Office to the Commissioner, giving orders to avoid margarine in the rations henceforth.24 The efforts made to avoid complaints about abstention from pork achieved a larger scale when at the end of 1916, instructions from the French Direction des troupes coloniales specified that tirailleurs sénégalais should get 400 g of meat in the active duty ration (the combat ration), and 350 g in the ordinary ration. These quantities met what was intended for the white troops in order to avoid discrimination and resentment.25 Abstaining from pork was not always easy to comply with when Muslim soldiers had to cross or stay in villages or large civilian cities like Paris. There was no Arab butcher in Paris during the war, and pork was widely consumed in rural France, which was a great surprise for Africans: ‘They use pork as often as we use olive oil or salted mutton at home’, wrote a desperate Tunisian worker to his family in June 1917.26 The discrepancy between the offer and the demand of some products increased the cost of living at the rear. Mutton was 7.50 francs a kilo in October 1917 in Carpentras, twice the price of the other meats, and oil 6 francs a litre. The minimum wage in war industries was then 5 francs a day for ten-hour shifts.27 The Muslim workers stationed in cities like Carpentras in the south of France therefore had to spend a lot on extras to keep up with traditional food practices or religious taboos, or simply to supplement the poor diet. The soldiers had to face similar high prices at the rear. Some narratives used the repulsive effect of pigs on Muslim soldiers for both folkloric and propaganda purposes, as Allied patriotic narratives frequently linked Germans and pigs. The picture Goumier with a pig by Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud, a famous photographer who led the Section photographique de l’armée (SPA ) at the end of the Great War, emphasized the repulsion of North African soldiers for pigs popping up in France like Germans in the battlefields.28 Such narratives met the actual need to substitute pork for other meats, as cattle were requisitioned for the Muslim troops. Flocks of sheep and rams, along with heads of goats and cattle were raised in the south of France and brought

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alive to the frontline or the camps to feed the Muslim soldiers. The British made purchases in the same regions to feed the sepoys, with an important impact on local economies, yet to be studied. The cattle were brought alive to where the slaughtering was conducted according to the ritually prescribed fashion. Homogeneous units contributed in order to facilitate the management of separate food lines for meat, as did the establishment of field kitchens close to the front, which were a standard for food supplies for all armies on the Western front. In the Indian Army, specific slaughtering areas were arranged for the Muslims on the one hand, and for the Hindus and Sikhs on the other hand. It was much more difficult, or even impossible, to feed the men fresh meat in the Balkans or the Middle East front, where Muslims were supplied iron rations mostly, like the European troops. From April 1915 to January 1916, several battalions of tirailleurs sénégalais were engaged in Gallipoli. The plans made during summer 1915 for the next winter pointed out the impossibility of raising cattle in the Gallipoli peninsula due to the lack of ‘wood, water, space and security’.29 The troops were living on iron rations (meat, salty soup and biscuits) when boat landing was impossible, and they could also get fresh meat from the refrigerated ships anchored in the Mediterranean. Each could preserve several hundred tons of meat. The shift from fresh to frozen or tinned meat, a general trend in the armies during the war, was thus slowed down for Muslim troops – at least on the Western front – thanks to the attention to lawful practices.

The faithful’s dilemma about dietary laws: ‘Has God dispensed us all?’30 The mail censorship of the North African and the Indian troops is evidence of the Muslim soldiers’ great concerns about religious practices during the First World War. Often dictated to a scribe, the letters were translated when they reached the censor’s office: some were read, summarized and quoted in extensive reports. According to their content, they were then passed on to their recipient or seized by the censors. Such records are thus essential for our understanding of the war experience of the imperial troops, as the reports of the Indian mail censorship specified the language and the religion of the senders and quoted many letters extensively.31 The correspondence of the North African soldiers was also monitored, but not that of the Senegalese, as there were very few letters exchanged with families. Food-related issues were nonetheless included in reports about morale.32

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The topic of food often recurred in the sepoys’ letters, as they wrote to their families or asked advice of religious leaders. The latter two showed much concern about how the soldiers were actually allowed to practise their religion, being a minority fighting among Christian forces. War circumstances allowed Muslim soldiers to be relieved of their religious obligations in order to preserve their lives. But for some soldiers, such choices were complicated by the fact that they were facing trying conditions at the front. For many of them, religious observance was crucial for coping with the hardships of the industrial war, and any violation of the rules could be seen as perilous as they may be facing death in the short term. Muslim units engaged in the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916 had to face such dilemmas, as Ramadan, the most sacred month of the Islamic calendar, began on 2 July. It is therefore no surprise that the Indian mail censorship in Boulogne reviewed many letters about food and religious matters during the summer of 1916. On 11 July 1916, a Pathan was pleased by the arrangements made for Ramadan, writing from France that ‘all are keeping the fast and the days are passing very well’.33 As the days passed, the letters became more anxious, as some soldiers who were waiting behind the front were due to reach the trenches to replace the fallen of the first days of the battle. In mid-July, a Punjabi Muslim driver who had been lectured about not observing the fast, expressed his concerns in a bitter tone: ‘If we want to keep the fast then what arrangements shall we make? The nights are very short and if we do not get our snack before 2 a.m. the day is on us . . . and we can get nothing more until 9.30 p.m. the following evening. . . . We don’t even know what are our sacred days and festivals.’ Asking for advice and approval of the difficult choices he had to make, he requested his correspondent to ‘say clearly what are the orders about keeping the Ramzan [sic] when on a journey’.34 The British censors were sometimes amazed by ‘the extraordinary ignorance of the Prophet’s ordinances as keeping the Ramzan [sic] while on active service’.35 Such assessment should be nuanced, since debates occurred between fellow Muslim worshippers about food obedience and exemptions.36 The need for approval from local religious authorities and families was in fact crucial in units recruited on a local basis and originating often from the same village. The fear of exclusion when they would return home thus played a role in such written exchanges also aimed at getting endorsement for unorthodox religious practices.37 It is nonetheless difficult to evaluate the proportion of Muslim soldiers who gave themselves dispensation from food obedience during the war, as during combat periods, men lost control of food supply and sometimes had to settle for iron rations with no guarantee about their contents. In the Indian Army, the

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general impression is that the Muslims were satisfied about the food arrangements made in 1914 and 1915 on the Western front, as were the other religious minorities of the British Army.38 As a Muslim wrote to his imam in Hindustan in August 1916, the quality of food supply in the British Army on the Western front was often praised: However heavy may be the firing, whether of shells or bullets or both, fresh goat’s flesh, and dal and cakes of various kinds with gur [a half-refined sugar] and tea reach the trenches of the Indians without fail. The entire force is very pleased with these arrangements. If we have to make a journey by road of fifty miles, we find, when we reach our destination that our rations are already there, having been sent on by motor cars.39

But their expectations about halal food did not necessarily match with the quantities and the type of food actually needed for men on active duty. This issue would be apparent in Mesopotamia in 1915 and 1916 where over 300,000 Indian soldiers were engaged, the Muslims representing about a third of them. As Mark Harrison has shown in his study on disease, the Indian Army had to face ‘a great dilemma in the management of its troops: of achieving balance between measures to ensure the fighting efficiency of sepoys, and of allowing them to exercise preference according to custom, caste and religion’.40 In Mesopotamia, the local conditions of climate combined with logistics failure along extended lines of supply to create a breakdown in the quality of food supplied to the soldiers. As the British Army failed to provide fresh food, many sepoys suffered from deficiency diseases, such as scurvy. The menus deteriorated down to iron rations as the troops marching up the Tigris were getting far from their base in Basra. During the siege of Kut-el-Amara from December 1915 to April 1916, the base was 400 kilometres south and both the British and the sepoys were depending on iron rations, made up of biscuit and bully beef or mutton. Deficiency diseases escalated, increased by the fact that the British had been saving on the sepoys’ rations, which represented four times less than the British rations.41 Such experiences may suggest that self-management of food among religious minorities was not only proof that the British respected their beliefs or tried to preserve discipline; it also helped to preserve resources unclaimed by the Muslims, such as large quantities of meat, always suspect in their view. The contract between the cultural minorities and the British command structure forced the latter to import special products to uphold the food terms. The British could thus have been tempted to save on quantities, as the case of the Mesopotamia campaign suggests. This issue should be investigated as well for the North African and the Senegalese troops.

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A massive presence of traditional food practices in wartime narratives Traditional food practices were much advertised during the Great War in pictures, postcards, films and press articles. Such narratives consolidated an orientalist vision of the indigenous people, based on traditions that had aroused the European people’s curiosity since the nineteenth century. The display of the traditional food practices of Senegalese, North African tirailleurs and Indian sepoys were thus renewed in the context of the war but presented many similarities with pre-war colonial cultures, as in scenes representing them in camps preparing food or sharing meals. Many postcards – a media exchanged by millions during the war – focused on the ethnic aspects of food practices. Series like Croquis de guerre (wartime sketches) or Guerre européenne (The European war) presented them in several activities related to food, typified in categories like ‘la soupe’, ‘meat supply’, ‘le méchoui’ (roast mutton), or ‘baking bread’. Cooks, bakers and butchers were often represented, as were scenes of meals in camps. A focus was put on the consumption of specific products or dishes worth showing to the European public, like rice, couscous, roast mutton or chapattis. When the scenes were located in desolate areas near the front or in ground clay camps, they actually seemed close, to a contemporary’s eye, to colonial settings. It is thus no surprise that they caught the eye of the photographers looking for exceptional scenes: orientalist curiosity met wartime’s folklore. The postcards could use the large number of pictures taken during the war to document it for future generations and to fill the needs of propaganda. Realistic scenes of Muslim troops celebrating holy festivals, sharing local food or undertaking food rites according to their beliefs were also a way to demonstrate to the imperial populations that Muslim troops were not only treated as equals to the European troops, but that specific attention was directed to dietary obligations. Such purposes were particularly obvious about meat, which was also important during holy festivals such as Eid al-Fitr. In some pictures, like Rams to feed Muslim troops, the intention was clearly specified and related to the actual practices of reserving specific animals for the Muslim troops.42 Postcard series also displayed the different steps of the sheep’s ritual slaughter and special arrangements for holy festivals (see Figure 2.1). These narratives did not avoid misrepresentations of reality. The French representations of Indian troops on postcards were generally vague about religion and unified the soldiers under a single category, ‘Hindous’, which was

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also often used in the press articles and among the French people to name the whole variety of communities composing the sepoys. It is thus often difficult to determine which communities the Indians belong to in the visual or textual sources (see Figure 2.2).

Figure 2.1 Tirailleurs marocains in Amiens preparing roast mutton, 1914. Postcard. Private collection.

Figure 2.2 Hindus at La Barasse near Marseille preparing dough for chapattis. Postcard. Private collection

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Other narratives missed their point when they chose to represent the offering of alcohol to demonstrate how well colonial troops were welcomed in France. Such pictures were very similar to pictures showing civilians offering wine in August 1914 to the European combatants going to war, as a symbolic reward for the dangers they were going to face. In 1914, several postcards showed local women from the Marne region serving champagne to Algerian or Senegalese troops, as if they did not have to abstain from alcohol (see Figure 2.3).43 It is quite striking though that such postcards went uncensored, since their reception within the local communities would have led to tensions and did not fit with the prohibition of alcohol among colonial troops. They were also

Figure 2.3 Young girl offering champagne to tirailleurs algériens en route to the frontier, 1914. Postcard. Private collection.

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undermining the demonstrations of efforts to satisfy the religious needs of Muslim soldiers.

Adaptation to lower food standards and tensions On many occasions during the Great War, Muslim troops had to face lower food standards and could not respect their food requirements. The specific rations intended for Muslims sometimes could not be fetched or delivered, especially when soldiers were engaged in combat. Conditions differed a lot from one place to another and many individual practices with regard to dietary obedience did not leave any trace in the archives. However, the reports of the mail censorship and additional sources provide information about the Muslims’ attitudes towards food observance during the war: complaints, tensions, refusals and negotiations occurred on many occasions and showed that the cultural minorities of the imperial forces could sometimes complain about the contents of rations when they were dissatisfied with the food terms. Islamic theology reckons that the drinking of wine is among the gravest of sins, and so the Muslim troops were not provided any alcohol by the army. Abstention from alcohol seems to have been more respected by soldiers than by North African workers, according to the censor’s office in Tunis, which expressed regret that many factory workers in France drank alcohol, causing trouble with the locals.44 The North African soldiers were less observant about alcohol than the Senegalese, who drank water, tea and coffee at the front. Providing wine to the European troops was nonetheless a way to serve hygienically safe beverages, as water was often spoiled by corpses, or could be scarce in some areas. Avoiding serving wine to the Muslim troops could thus have consequences on health if clean water could not be provided instead. As wine was also used to invigorate spirits in European troops, this crucial purpose could also explain why religious minorities such as Muslims received tea, kola nuts (Senegalese), or local spices like ginger as stimulating substitutes. When troops were resting at the rear, in camps or hospitals, it was much easier to avoid wine as water, tea, coffee or coco (a liquorice beverage) were easily available from the rations, but also offered by charities or sold in affordable cafés. As Lucie Cousturier hosted several tirailleurs sénégalais during the war in her home in Fréjus, near Cannes, she wrote in her testimony Des inconnus chez moi (‘Some strangers in my home’) how they constantly refrained from drinking alcohol, favouring lemonade as their pay allowed them to afford it.45 Contrary to the Senegalese, North African

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troops serving in the Middle East seem to have taken liberties with the prohibition of alcohol from as early as March 1915. At that time, a report on the use of Muslim troops on the Ottoman front stated that ‘the majority of tirailleurs algériens have abandoned their religious traditions’. Soldiers from Constantine and Alger ‘drink wine, alcohol (sometimes with excess), eat pork delicatessen, or food made with pork fat’. They ‘don’t pray anymore nor do the ablutions prescribed by the Koran [sic]’, wrote the author of the report.46 His conclusions should be discussed, though, as they may have been intended to influence the debate about using Muslim troops against Ottomans in the area. The supervision of halal food was also very difficult since on many occasions food was served already cooked: controlling the whole food process was obviously difficult in wartime. Military reports and mail censorship indicate that meat could arrive already cut and sometimes got mixed up during transport, which would lead the men to avoid eating it or to protest. Their suspicion was fair, as the use of fat from pork was prevalent in the French and the British armies, but sometimes went unnoticed when tasted. Muslim troops were also suspicious about frozen or tinned meat, which became widely used in military rations during the war. The development of processed food reduced their possibilities of controlling what was lawful: iron rations, packed food, preserves and meat extracts undermined the religious minorities’ confidence in food. The collective cooking and consumption of meals also disrupted the process of food control important to religious minorities. If self-management of food by the Muslim communities could protect them from consuming haram food, the fear of contamination was still a concern. Such fears were widespread among Muslim troops according to the letters caught by the Indian and the North-African mail censorship. In December 1916, a religious Tunisian Muslim shared his ‘torment’ that ‘meat is brought to us in plate but we do not know if it is lawful or unlawful’.47 As the war went on, some of them used the food issue to prevent members of their family from enlisting: ‘May God hold off this infidel land where you eat only pig’, wrote one Tunisian worker to his family in August 1917.48 The same complaints arose among Muslim sepoys, even if they were generally satisfied with the rations and holy festivals arrangements. In February 1917, a Pathan soldier wrote to a fellow sepoy in Punjab: ‘I have not touched meat for two years, even though it be halal. I have not touched meat for this reason – that it all comes together, both that intended for Sikhs and for us.’49 In some cases indeed, instead of being sent in separate batches from the railhead, the meat killed by the halal process could get mixed up ‘with that killed by a stroke at the back of the neck’, as wrote the censor, who also confirmed that it was then an isolated complaint.

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The fear of contamination also built up around the use of cutlery or the sharing of food with other communities. Such concerns were summarized in 1916 by a Punjabi Muslim proud to assure that ‘up to the present time we have abstained from eating with, or from the hands of these people [the French]’.50 Segregation and self-management of food helped the men to abstain from encounters with unfaithful Christians. But in villages at the rear or in trips around resting camps, some met European civilians, who were also active in charities for Muslim troops. Encounters with Europeans seemed to have been easier for the French imperial troops than the sepoys, even if the command structures did their best to prevent them. Transgressions occurred on the way to the front or around camps, when welcoming crowds offered fruit and refreshments to the imperial troops, as when they arrived in Marseille or Orléans in 1914.51 In July 1916, Tara Singh, a Sikh cavalryman, related how he ‘wandered’ in Paris for eight hours waiting for a train to the front: ‘On that day we all ate at the same table. Our company was composed of 5 sepoys of whom 3 were Sikhs and 2 Musslmans [sic], 2 sweepers and 3 cooks; but we all ate together at the same table. Moreover we have often eaten food and drunk tea prepared by Musslmans.’52 For men who did not want to transgress religious requirements, abstention from haram food was always a possibility. It was common practice among the sepoys, and many Muslims abstained from unlawful food when they had doubts.53 When soldiers were facing hardships on the front and lines of supply were disrupted, abstention was difficult to cope with: ‘my inner man begins to prompt me’, wrote an anxious Punjabi Muslim in 1917, surrounded by people ‘having given up making any distinction between clean and unclean things’.54 The fear of leading a starving force to battle was therefore a powerful inducement for the British to improve the sepoys’ rations. Abstinence could thus be seen as a strong asset for the Muslim troops, as the British discovered when they failed to feed tinned mutton to the 47th Sikh regiment in 1914, without realizing that the ‘bully-beef ’ tins containing the mutton rations would raise suspicions.55 After such experiences, it was difficult to inspire confidence about tinned rations among the sepoys. However, Muslim soldiers had alternatives to get halal or local products. Some of them bought extras when they were dissatisfied with the rations, but had to face the high cost of living in some areas like Greece. The North Africans complained they could not even find couscous in this ‘hopeless country’.56 Families were also asked to send them parcels of local products. Spices like harissa, dates or chillies, impossible to find in Europe, or couscous, were especially

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welcomed. As the demand of local products was very high during the war, some people saw the profit of turning it into a trade.57 Prisoners in German camps, as many other Muslims during the war, were desperate in their letters about getting oil or mutton fat to help them avoid pork fat.58 As shortages grew in Germany after 1916, they became unlikely to get any fat and charities working in the German camps did their best to improve the parcel service.

Conclusion Food arrangements for religious minorities during the First World War thus helped the Muslim soldiers to respect lawful practices. In the French forces, the colonial soldiers, such as the tirailleurs sénégalais, were treated as if all of them were Muslims, whereas the British management of food requirements distinguished the Muslims from the Hindus and other minorities. In both armies, maintaining separate food lines and improving self-management of food were set as essential objectives, and great efforts were made to supply the troops with halal food and to respect religious festivals. Local food practices and the fulfilment of dietary requirements could thus support morale and discipline in the long term. It could therefore have played a role in the shift in the representations of the Senegalese and the North African troops from potentially disobedient in 1914 to wholly loyal during the war. But the war was also a period for differentiated food experiences, such as between the Western front and the Middle East. In Europe, the local conditions of a stationary military front facilitated the management of separate food lines for the Muslims, and thus their respect of dietary laws. In the Middle East, logistics failures prevented the serving of lawful rations to Muslim soldiers as standard. But in many cases, the British and the French were credited for the efforts they were making, as managing troops in wartime was also about communication. After the war, such material and symbolic rewards would prove insufficient to slow down the claims to civic and political rights in the empires derived from collective blood sacrifice in defence of the homeland.

Notes 1 Erik Jan Zürcher, ‘Between Death and Desertion’, Turcica 28 (1996): 235–58; Mehmet Beşikçi, The Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower in the First World War: Between

66

2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10

11 12

13

14

15

16

Combatants of Muslim Origin in European Armies Voluntarism and Resistance (Leiden: Brill, 2012); Melanie Schulze-Tanielian, ‘Food and Nutrition (Ottoman Empire/Middle East)’, in 1914–1918-Online International Encyclopedia of the First World War (2014). Available online from: http://dx.doi. org/10.15463/ie1418.10322 (accessed 30 December 2015). George Morton-Jack, ‘The Indian Army on the Western Front, 1914–1915: A Portrait of Collaboration’, War in History 13, no. 3 (2006): 329–62; Nikolas Gardner, ‘Morale of the Indian Army in the Mesopotamia Campaign: 1914–17’, in Kaushik Roy (ed.), The Indian Army in the Two World Wars (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 391–417. Joseph Trémolet, Tirailleurs sénégalais et soudanais (Fontgombault: Association Petrus a Stella, 1912). Myron Echenberg, Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs Sénégalais in French West Africa, 1857–1960 (Portsmouth, NH : Heinemann, 1991), 52. Kim A. Wagner, The Great Fear of 1857: Rumours, Conspiracies and the Making of the Indian Uprising (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010). Gardner, ‘Morale of the Indian Army’. Gardner, ‘Morale of the Indian Army’. Morton-Jack, ‘The Indian Army on the Western Front’. Heather Jones, ‘Imperial Captivities: Colonial Prisoners of War in Germany and the Ottoman Empire, 1914–1918’, in Santanu Das (ed.), Race, Empire and First World War Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 175–93. Marc Michel, Les Africains et la Grande Guerre: l’appel à l’Afrique, 1914–1918 (Paris: Karthala, 2003); Jean-Yves Le Naour, Marseille, 1914–1918 (Paris: Qui vive éditions, 2005). Douglas Gressieux, Les Troupes indiennes en France: 1914–1918 (Saint-Cyr-surLoire: A. Sutton, 2007). Michel, Les Africains et la Grande Guerre; Jacques Frémeaux, Les Colonies dans la Grande Guerre: combats et épreuves des peuples d’outre-mer (Saint-Cloud: 14–18 éditions, 2006). Archives nationales du Sénégal, fonds AOF, 4D 89/2, rapport du contrôleur des troupes sénégalaises Logeay, June 1917, quoted in Michel, Les Africains et la Grande Guerre, 350. Archives nationales du Sénégal, fonds AOF, 4D 89/2, rapport du contrôleur des troupes sénégalaises Logeay, June 1917, quoted in Michel, Les Africains et la Grande Guerre, 350. Emmanuelle Cronier, ‘Les particularismes culturels, support du moral des troupes alliées pendant la Première Guerre mondiale’, in Michael Bourlet (ed.), Petites patries dans la Grande Guerre (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2013), 227–38. J. G. Fuller, Troop Morale and Popular Culture in the British and Dominion Armies 1914–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).

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17 Heike Liebau, ‘Prisoners of War (India)’, in 1914–1918-Online International Encyclopedia of the First World War (2014), available online from: http://dx.doi. org/10.15463/ie1418.10452 (accessed 30 December 2015). 18 Beiramfest im Mohamedaner-Gefangenenlager (Halbmond- und Weinbergslager) zu Wünsdorf bei Zossen, Germany, 1916, short documentary film, available online from: http://www.filmportal.de (accessed 30 December 2015). 19 The Thakurs are a mid-level caste of landowners. 20 The National Archives (hereafter TNA ), PRO 383/65, report by Mr. Jackson on visit to Indian prisoners of war camp at Wünsdorf (Zossen). 21 Service historique de la défense (hereafter SHD ), 7N7001, Commission de contrôle postal de Tunis, December 1916. 22 Many references to such practices in 1917 and 1918 in the mail censorship in Tunis: SHD, 7N7001. 23 Kusoom Vadgama, India in Britain: The Indian Contribution to the British Way of Life (London: Robert Royce Ltd, 1984). 24 TNA , WO 32/5110, letter from Alfred Keogh quoted in Andrew T. Jarboe, Soldiers of Empire: Indian Sepoys in and beyond the Imperial Metropole during the First World War, 1914–1919 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2013), 211. 25 SHD, 16 2642, 30 December 1916 (reference suggested by Marc Michel). 26 SHD, 7N1001, Etat-major de l’armée, commission de contrôle postal de Tunis, June 1917. 27 Frémeaux, Les colonies dans la Grande Guerre. 28 Etablissement de communication et de production audiovisuelle de la Défense (ECPAD ), collection Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud, frame D 193-1-796. 29 SHD, 7N2180, Corps expéditionnaire d’Orient, note de l’intendance, 5 August 1915; Ministère de la Guerre, EMA , quatrième bureau, note pour la Direction de l’intendance militaire, 12 October 1915. 30 British Library (hereafter BL ), IOR /L/MIL /5/826, Indian mail censor’s office in Boulogne, letter from Nur Mahomed, 26 July 1917. 31 David Omissi (ed.), Indian Voices of the Great War: Soldiers’ Letters, 1914–1918 (London: MacMillan, 1999). 32 SHD, 7N1001, Etat-major de l’armée, commission de contrôle postal de Tunis, 1916–1918 ; SHD, 7N979, commission de contrôle postal d’Alger; SHD, 16N1507 and 16N1517, Grand quartier général, deuxième bureau, rapports sur le moral des troupes coloniales. 33 BL , IOR /L/MIL /5/826, letter from Sayib Habid, 11 July 1916. 34 BL , IOR /L/MIL /5/826, letter from Lal Din, driver, 11 July 1916. 35 BL , IOR /L/MIL /5/826, general report, 17 July 1917. 36 BL , IOR /L/MIL /5/826, letter from Nur Mahomed, 26 July 1917.

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37 Gordon Corrigan, Sepoys in the Trenches: The Indian Corps on the Western Front 1914–1915 (Stroud: The History Press Ltd., 2006); Gardner, ‘Morale of the Indian Army’. 38 Omissi, Indian Voices of the Great War. 39 BL , IOR /L/MIL /5/826, letter from Hemayat Ullah Khan, 6 August 1916. 40 Mark Harrison, ‘The Fight Against Disease in the Mesopotamian Campaign’, in Hugh Cecil and Peter Liddle (eds), Facing Armageddon: The First World War Experienced (London: L. Cooper, 1996), 485. 41 Harrison, ‘The Fight Against Disease in the Mesopotamian Campaign’, 478. 42 Bibliothèque nationale de France (hereafter BNF ), ROL 45269, Béliers pour la nourriture des troupes marocaines, Agence Rol, September 1915. 43 See also BNF, ROL 43885, Jeune fille belge donnant à boire à un turco [tirailleur algérien], January 1915. 44 Many references in SHD, 7N1001, Etat-major de l’armée, commission de contrôle postal de Tunis. 45 Lucie Cousturier, Des inconnus chez moi (Paris: Editions de la Sirène, 1920). 46 SHD, 7N2180, Emploi des tirailleurs algériens dans l’expédition d’Orient, 15 March 1915. 47 SHD, 7N1001, Etat-major de l’armée, commission de contrôle postal de Tunis, December 1916. 48 SHD, 7N1001, Etat-major de l’armée, commission de contrôle postal de Tunis, August 1917. 49 BL , IOR /L/MIL /5/827, letter from Sowar Yakub Khan (Pathan), 12 February 1917. 50 BL , IOR /L/MIL /5/826, letter from Malik Sher Khan, 11 September 1916. 51 47th Sikhs War Records: The Great War, 1914–1918 (Chippenham: Picton Publishing, 1992 [1921]), 10–12. 52 BL , IOR /L/MIL /5/826, letter from Tara Singh, 17 July 1917. 53 Omissi, Indian Voices of the Great War. 54 BL , IOR /L/MIL /5/827, letter from Jemadar Abdul Khan, 20 February 1917. 55 47th Sikhs War Records, 12. 56 SHD, 7N1001, Etat-major de l’armée, commission de contrôle postal de Tunis, October 1917. 57 SHD, 7N1001, Etat-major de l’armée, commission de contrôle postal de Tunis, May and November 1917 58 SHD, 7N1001, Etat-major de l’armée, commission de contrôle postal de Tunis, November 1916.

Bibliography Beşikçi, Mehmet. The Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower in the First World War: Between Voluntarism and Resistance. Leiden: Brill, 2012.

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Corrigan, Gordon. Sepoys in the Trenches: The Indian Corps on the Western Front 1914–1915. Stroud: Spellmount, 2006. Cousturier, Lucie. Des inconnus chez moi. Paris: Editions de la Sirène, 1920. Cronier, Emmanuelle. ‘Les particularismes culturels, support du moral des troupes alliées pendant la Première Guerre mondiale’. In Michael Bourlet et al. (eds), Petites patries dans la Grande Guerre, 227–38. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2013. Cronier, Emmanuelle. Permissionnaires dans la Grande Guerre. Paris: Belin, 2013. Das, Santanu. 1914–1918, Indians on the Western Front. Paris: Gallimard, 2014. Das, Santanu. Race, Empire and First World War Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Echenberg, Myron J. Les tirailleurs sénégalais en Afrique occidentale française, 1857–1960. Paris: Karthala, 2009. Fogarty, Richard. Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914–1918. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. Frémeaux, Jacques. Les colonies dans la Grande Guerre: combats et épreuves des peuples d’outre-mer. Saint-Cloud: 14–18 éditions, 2006. Fuller, John G. Troop Morale and Popular Culture in the British and Dominion Armies 1914–1918. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. Gardner, Nicholas. ‘Morale of the Indian Army in the Mesopotamia Campaign: 1914–17’. In Kaushik Roy (ed.), The Indian Army in the Two World Wars, 391–417. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Greenhut, Jeffrey. ‘The Imperial Reserve: The Indian Corps on the Western Front, 1914–15’. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 12, no. 1 (1983): 54–73. Gressieux, Douglas. Les troupes indiennes en France: 1914–1918. Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire: A. Sutton, 2007. Gupta, Partha Sarathi. The British Raj and its Indian Armed Forces, 1857–1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Harrison, Mark. ‘The Fight Against Disease in the Mesopotamian Campaign’. In Hugh Cecil and Peter Liddle (eds), Facing Armageddon. The First World War Experienced, 475–89. London: Leo Cooper, 1996. Höpp, Gerhard. Muslime in der Mark: als Kriegsgefangene und Internierte in Wünsdorf und Zossen, 1914–1924. Berlin: Das Arabische Buch, 1997. Jarboe, Andrew Tait. ‘Propaganda and Empire in the Heart of Europe: Indian Soldiers in Hospital and Prison 1914–1918’. In Andrew Tait Jarboe and Richard S. Fogarty (eds), Empires in First World War. Shifting Frontiers and Imperial Dynamics in a Global Conflict, 107–35. London/New York: I.B. Tauris, 2014. Jarboe, Andrew Tait. Soldiers of Empire?: Indians Sepoys in and beyond the Imperial Metropole during the First World War, 1914–1919. Boston: Northeastern University, 2013. Available online from: https://repository.library.northeastern.edu/files/ neu:1461 (accessed 30 December 2015).

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Jones, Heather. ‘Imperial Captivities: Colonial Prisoners of War in Germany and the Ottoman Empire, 1914–1918’. In Santanu Das (ed.), Race, Empire and First World War Writing, 175–93. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Liebau, Heike. ‘Prisoners of War (India)’. In 1914–1918 Online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War. Available online from: http://dx.doi. org/10.15463/ie1418.10452 (accessed 30 December 2015). Liebau, Heike (ed.). The World in World Wars: Experiences, Perceptions and Perspectives from Africa and Asia. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Lunn, Joe. Memoirs of the Maelstrom: A Senegalese Oral History of the First World War. Oxford: James Currey, 1999. Meynier, Gilbert. L’Algérie révélée: la guerre de 1914–1918 et le premier quart du XXe siècle. Genève/Paris: Champion, 1981. Michel, Marc. Les Africains et la Grande Guerre: l’appel à l’Afrique, 1914–1918. Paris: Karthala, 2003. Morton-Jack, George. ‘The Indian Army on the Western Front, 1914–1915: A Portrait of Collaboration’. War in History 13, no. 3 (2006): 329–62. Le Naour, Jean-Yves. Marseille, 1914–1918. Paris: Qui vive, 2005. Omissi, David. Indian Voices of the Great War: Soldiers’ Letters, 1914–1918. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999. Omissi, David. The Sepoy and the Raj: The Indian Army, 1860–1940. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998. Roy, Kaushik. ‘The Army in India in Mesopotamia from 1916 to 1918: Tactics, Technology and Logistics Reconsidered’. In Ian F.W. Beckett (ed.), 1917: Beyond the Western Front, 131–57. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Schulze-Tanielian, Melanie. ‘Food and Nutrition (Ottoman Empire/Middle East)’. In 1914–1918 Online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War. Available online from: http://dx.doi.org/10.15463/ie1418.10322 (accessed 30 December 2015). Trémolet, Jacques. Tirailleurs sénégalais et soudanais. Fontgombault: Association Petrus a Stella, 1912. Vadgama, Kusoom. India in Britain: The Indian Contribution to the British Way of Life. London: Royce, 1984. Wagner, Kim. A. The Great Fear of 1857: Rumours, Conspiracies and the Making of the Indian Uprising. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010. Waines, David (ed.). Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Zürcher, Erik Jan. ‘Between Death and Desertion’. Turcica 28 (1996): 235–58.

3

Muslim Askaris in the Colonial Troops of German East Africa, 1889–1918 Tanja Bührer

After the outbreak of the First World War the Governor of German East Africa (GEA ), Heinrich Schnee, called on the Muslim population all over the colony to wage pan-Islamic holy war.1 Schnee announced the original text and a Swahili translation of the declaration produced by the Shaykh al-Islam2 after the Ottoman Empire had joined Germany for war, calling on Muslims all over the world to take up arms against the enemies of the Central Powers on 14 November 1914 from Istanbul. The Governor’s call for jihad aimed at the mobilization of the Muslim population within the German territory in order to support the colonial war effort against the British attack on GEA .3 In 1912 GEA had eight million inhabitants, which included 300,000–500,000 Muslims. This was significantly less than 10 per cent of the total population, but Muslims were strongly overrepresented both in colonial civil and military service.4 In 1913 the East African Schutztruppe (the German colonial army) consisted of 1,748 Muslims (67.3 per cent), 737 ‘heathens’ (28.3 per cent) and 113 Christians (4.4 per cent).5 But did the East African Muslims really follow the governmental call for jihad? Did it help to mobilize new recruits for the war effort as well as strengthen the motivation of Muslims already serving in the colonial army? The underlying argument running through this chapter is that pan-Islamic ideology did not have much appeal to the Muslim communities of GEA . Muslims’ motives to support German war efforts rather must be analysed in the continuity of the specific and long-standing cooperation between Muslims and German authorities in the colonial context and also with respect to their pre-colonial histories. Even though German preference for Muslim soldiers was not directly caused by religious reasons, a certain set of values and virtues referring to Islamic culture made them in German views better suited than others to serve. In turn Muslim identity was a crucial element for North East and East Africans to 71

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perceive themselves as ‘civilized’ and thus set themselves apart from the masses of the African people they were supposed to control. Thus, in order to explore the motives that lay behind the Muslims’ decision to support the German colonial Government during the First World War, we need to go back to the early recruitment practices and examine both the emergence of Muslim identities within the colonial state and governmental Muslim politics. In addition, the vast diversity of Muslim communities in GEA has to be taken into account. The following analysis differentiates between the Arab coastal elite, the mercenaries from Egypt and Sudan, and the soldiers recruited from within the German colonial territory.

The Arab coastal elite In the late 1880s European powers were putting more and more pressure on the ruling Omani-Arab dynasty of Zanzibar that controlled the East African coastal strip from the river Rovuma on the Mozambique border up to Somaliland. When the German East Africa Company began to assume control over the coastal towns opposite Zanzibar in August 1888, the Arab elite such as planters, wealthy townsmen traders and state employees, who were politically as well as economically tied to the Omani state, resorted to violent resistance. The immediate collapse of the German charter company convinced imperial Germany of the necessity of formal intervention against the rebellion referred to as ‘Arab Revolt’. As some of the leading figures were involved in the interregional slave trade, the German government used the abolition of the slave trade as a pretext for its interference.6 In March 1889 an expeditionary corps under the leadership of the African traveller and soldier Hermann Wissmann was deployed. After the uprising was defeated, a German ‘protectorate’ was founded in 1891. During the ‘Arab Revolt’, many Arabs had already gone over to the Germans because they had lost control of the movement when radicals from the margins of coastal society with a deep-seated hostility against the Omani rule had taken over some of the locally dispersed centres of resistance.7 The Germans eventually co-opted these often literate Arab elites into their coastal district administration by appointing them to paid governmental offices as local administrators. The African warriors of the Maji-Maji Rebellion (1905–7) – the most wide-ranging post-pacification revolt of GEA that attempted to overthrow colonial order – deliberately targeted these Arab officials, whom they perceived as representatives of the suppressive colonial state. Thus, in the most

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severe inner security crisis of the German colonial state, the Arab elites were allies and not a threat.8 However, there was also a group of Arabs whose political and commercial interests were so severely damaged by the emerging colonial state that they could not or did not want to be co-opted into the new regime. This relates to Zanzibari and coastal Arab figures such as Tippu Tip and Rumaliza, who were concerned with slave trade activities and had built up a network of powerful stations that controlled the trade-route to the interior, running as far as into the Congo State. In the early 1890s the Belgians were moving into the area west of Lake Tanganyika while the Germans were moving inland from the East Coast, both attempting to destroy the slave trading empires. Germans and Belgians were competing with Arab and African slave traders on recruiting cheap and unpaid labour, yet as colonial regimes could not admit continuity to pre-colonial slave trade, they opted for the alternative to impose direct taxes upon often unwilling rural households and individuals as an indirect means to mobilize labour. However, German authorities did not legally abolish slavery in their territory because it would undermine the prosperity of the slave-owning elites, often Arab plantation owners in the coastal areas, whose cooperation was thought to be essential to the colonial regime.9 Tippu Tip soon recognized that European imperialism would gain the upper hand and negotiated a contract with the Belgians to administer a district in the emerging Congo State. But as he constantly clashed with the Belgian government over interests and also refused to submit to colonial authority, he finally went back to Zanzibar, which was a British Protectorate since 1890.10 Rumaliza in turn was fighting the Belgians, and when in 1893 a German officer built a military station at Ujiji on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika, he also threatened the Germans with war for invading his sphere of influence. Rumaliza finally had to withdraw and reached the domains of the Hehe leader Mkwawa, whom he supported in putting up resistance against the Germans until his fortress suffered a German attack in 1894. He finally also escaped to Zanzibar by fishing boat.11 To sum up, if possible, the Germans developed a favourable cooperative relationship with the Muslim elite – which was the majority – and defeated or forced into emigration those who could not be reconciled with the new order. Yet, owing to their social status and skills, Arabs were placed in leading administrative positions on the local level and not recruited for service in the colonial army, which was organized along a strict racist hierarchy of German leadership and ordinary African soldiers.

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The ‘Sudanese-askaris’12 When Wissmann received the instruction from the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1889 to raise a conquest army to fight the ‘Arab Revolt’, he was not able to recruit soldiers from within the rebellious territory. He thus recruited 600 unemployed ‘Sudanese’ mercenaries from Cairo as well as 400 ‘Zulu’ warriors from Mozambique and put them under the leadership of German officers and NCO s. The category ‘Zulu’ referred to Shangaan from southern Portuguese East Africa (today’s Mozambique), who supposedly were descendants of refugees from the Zulu wars. The label ‘Sudanese’ covered all recruits from north-eastern Africa, who were in the majority of cases soldiers released from the AngloEgyptian Army.13 The Zulus, having their origins in a presumably warlike society, were perceived by the Germans to be suited for soldiering in terms of colonial martial race theory,14 but many Germans expressed serious doubts with regard to the loyalty of the Muslim Sudanese as they would have to fight other Muslims.15 Yet the Sudanese proved themselves in battle right from the beginning, and while no further Zulus were recruited when they returned to Mozambique after their contracts had expired in 1892, the Sudanese became the model askaris and the very core of the Schutztruppe. German military officers characterized the Zulus as of high endurance due to their youth, but unreliable, undisciplined, even wild and careless.16 In contrast, they perceived in the Sudanese, German values of a good soldier such as steadfastness, discipline, dependability, and stoicism.17 German military officers did not know details about the origins of the recruited Sudanese, nor did many Sudanese themselves as they often had been taken as boys in raids by the Egyptian army in the southern Sudan provinces. But they knew that they had already served in the Anglo-Egyptian regiments, whereas the Zulus had never received any European style military training before their recruitment.18 They were also informed that many of the recruited Sudanese had been deployed by the Khedive or the British to defeat the Urabi Revolt (1879–82) and later on the Mahdiyya (1881–5), an Islamic messianic movement that addressed the widespread resentment among the Sudanese population against the Egyptian rulers. Due to the fact that the new recruits had already fought other Arabs and even a jihad, German military officers did not share the reservation that Muslim soldiers would not stay loyal fighting an ‘Arab rebellion’.19 They understood that the Sudanese were professional mercenaries like European Landsknechte (lansquenets) of the Middle Ages and early modern times who switched allegiance with ease.20

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In her study on askaris of the German Schutztruppe of East Africa, Michelle Moyd tracked down the only available biography of a Sudanese-askari: the life history of Abdulcher Farrag, which is included in the memoirs of the Schutztruppen-officer Captain August Leue.21 Even though it is a mediated view it is still a valuable source that helps to explain why the Sudanese embarked on a military career with the Germans. In addition, the narrative gives us an idea of a Sudanese soldier’s Muslim identity. In contrast to many Sudanese-askaris Farrag was not a military slave in his youth; instead he claimed to be Habbaniyya, one of the cattle-herding Arab nomads from north-eastern Sudan. Born in Darfur in the early 1860s, he went to Cairo to earn money and took up service in the Egyptian army under Khedive Tewfiq and then under British leadership. In the fatal expedition that attempted to recapture El-Obeid from the Mahdist army in November 1883, Farrag was taken prisoner. He only survived because Mahdi soldiers recognized from the scarification of his cheeks that he was also Habbaniyya. Farrag was deeply offended being called an ‘unbelieving dog’ by his captors because he thought of himself as a good Muslim. After he had experienced Egyptian civilization, he felt culturally superior to the inland peoples, including his tribesmen, whom he perceived as wild. In this educational gap he saw the reason why the cattle nomads were seduced by the false prophesy of the Mahdi and his Khalifs.22 Farrag ‘valued what he considered “Egyptian” culture, which had been shaped in part by modernization projects directed by European imperial powers’.23 Farrag finally escaped to the Egyptian force under the British General Charles Gordon, which was besieged by the Mahdists at Khartoum. Again he was lucky when he joined a guard for the three steamers on the Nile, so he was not in the fort when the Mahdist army launched their devastating attack. Back in Cairo, the Anglo-Egyptian regiments were disbanded because the British decided to withdraw from Sudan.24 Farrag’s narrative confirms that Sudanese soldiers allied to the patron who assumed responsibility for their honour, their working conditions and their families. This form of loyalty did not have much in common with religious, romantic, nationalistic, patriotic or any kind of ideological concepts of loyalty.25 In addition, Farrag differentiated between diverse Muslim communities. He identified himself with – in his perspective – a more sophisticated form of Muslim culture that was closely attached to the ‘Egyptian civilization’, influenced by European technological developments and imperial modernization projects. German military officers in turn often explained the fact that Sudanese fulfilled the best German expectations of soldierly loyalty, honour and duty by referring to their being Muslim. They did not argue with abstract religious

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principles, but rather they perceived some of their personal characteristics and values in everyday activities as a result of their Muslim identity. Their abstinence, for instance, had a disciplining effect on their conduct both on duty and off duty, while the Zulus often got drunk and fought.26 In addition, they thought of the Sudanese fatalistic response to war-related privations, explaining it as God’s will, as a typical Muslim attitude.27 Further, German officers related to the Sudanese sense of hygiene, which was important to preserve health in a tropical climate, as well as their ‘civilized’ behaviour towards men and animals, in contrast to the presumably unrestrained violence of African heathens. In short, in the East African context, Muslims were perceived to be best suited for military service in the German Schutztruppe.28

‘Heathens’ becoming Muslim askaris In the middle of the 1890s the British prohibited further German recruitment in Egypt due to their own requirements of soldiers for the re-conquest of Sudan. Even though until the early years of the twentieth century the colonial government undermined the prohibition by secret recruitments through private networks, and the Sudanese usually remained very long in German military service, some even up to 30 years, their number started to decline. The Schutztruppe thus began to draw on the local population, particularly on Nyamwezi, Sukuma, and Manyema from the lake regions.29 At first sight, colonial armies might seem particularly attractive to martial African societies. Yet, hardly any askari of the German East African Schutztruppe came from socio- and ethno-political groups who professed a strict military culture such as the Hehe and the Nguni, even though German military officers held them in high esteem for their martial qualities.30 In a special experiment seventeen Maasai were recruited, but soon had to be released owing to their refusal to submit to German military discipline.31 African warfare hardly required collective military training and within African heroic cultures warrior elites competed for individual reputation in physical performances that imposed little moral restraint on violence. Yet, as already demonstrated above in the comparison between Sudanese and Zulu, European military officers valued regimental discipline and loyalties above egotistical heroism.32 This clash of military cultures helps to explain why the Nyamwezi and Sukuma came to comprise the bulk of the new rank and file recruited from within GEA . Many of them had assumed occupations in the long-distance

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caravan trade of the Zanzibari or coastal ‘Swahili People’,33 working as porters, guards or leaders of the caravans. They thus acquired practical skills as trackers and scouts as well as expert knowledge of travel routes and social networks, and became accustomed to expeditionary living, wage labour, and long-term commitments far from home. These skills and labour cultures qualified them above all for German military service, expeditionary life, and small-unit combat methods.34 Involvement in the pre-colonial long-distance trade and the travels to the coast had automatically put Nyamwezi and Sukuma in contact with the Zanzibar commercial empire and as a consequence with Islam. Thus, many of them became Muslim during their caravan trade activities. However, this did not mean that they completely changed their belief systems, as Islam was not only a faith, but also a culture and a legal code. Traders obviously had material reasons for accepting Islam, as Muslims only really trusted other Muslims, thus being Muslim improved networking and business. Muslim identity was also a marker of social stratification; therefore another motive for becoming Muslim was the attempt to shed the disdainful status of a shenzi (wild person) and associate with the wealthy, cosmopolitan, ‘civilized’ and ‘modern’ coastal Swahili community. Nyamwezi back home generally remained indifferent to Islam, and so when Nyamwezi travellers returned home they often abandoned Islamic practices again.35 These social strategies of Nyamwezi and Sukuma migrant labourers, travellers and traders help explain why the new recruits from within GEA , who predominantly had an animist orientation, accepted Islam in the course of their service in the German colonial troops.36 They usually came under the tutelage of Sudanese senior askaris, who remained the model soldier for the rest of the German colonial period.37 By adopting Islam the new soldiers sought to attain the same professionalism as their role models. Similarly, they generally attempted to achieve a distinct social status from the African masses they were supposed to dominate and become part of ‘civilization’ and ‘modernization’ as represented both by Islamic coastal culture and European Imperialism. Like many Africans involved in the caravan trade they adopted a set of practices and beliefs, but not the Islamic faith in an orthodox form. German civil and military officers observed, often in a polemical tone, that Africans in GEA converted to Islam for materialist rather than religious reasons, that they only superficially adopted Islam and thus did not really understand the religion.38 Yet, as Felicitas Becker in her study on becoming Muslim in Tanzania points out, to differentiate between ‘genuine’ and only ‘nominal’ conversion misses the point. Becoming Muslim was

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often thought of as enlarging and not renouncing previous belief systems, spirit world and religious practices, and thus also as a social strategy to enlarge and improve agency.39

Muslim politics contested One of the unintended outcomes of European colonialism in Africa was that people converted to Islam,40 and they did so in disproportionately high numbers in GEA .41 In GEA , the Muslim askaris were not only a crucial group that helped to build up the colonial state, they were also responsible for the spread of Islam, not only within the colonial army but also among the population of GEA . The German military officers and NCO s generally compromised considerably on askari everyday social and family life, culture and religious freedom. Already Wissmann gave them explicit instructions to respect the African soldiers’ customs and religions.42 First of all, they had to concede that the askaris lived with their family and even established an enlarged household, including protégés such as askari boys and often also a ‘second wife’, as this was the very aim and precondition of African men to serve in the Schutztruppe.43 As Christianity prohibited polygamy, Muslim askaris only perceived severe disadvantages in becoming Christian.44 One advantage in the German perspective was that the household members could take care of the particular diet and general comfort of the askaris. In the coastal towns the askari families were accommodated in the barracks of the garrison. Due to the Islamic Swahili coastal culture, mosques and Muslim religious centres were already established in these areas, which the Muslim askaris joined. In contrast, in the interior so-called askari villages were built around the military stations, which were both fortified strongholds and administrative centres. Due to this spatial order askaris and their household members connected with the African population living in the area or visiting the military station through common economic, social or religious interests. The askaris thus were creating, in some parts of GEA , Muslim communities (including mosques) that may not have existed in pre-colonial times.45 Christian missionaries strongly criticized the fact that Muslim employees of the colonial administration and Muslim askaris vastly outnumbered Christians and particularly perceived Muslim askaris as proselytes of Islam. Time and again they complained that the colonial government thus counteracted their missionary duties.46 Military officials were either indifferent to their soldiers’ religion or even welcomed that most of their askaris were Muslim

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owing to the above-mentioned supposedly positive influence on their discipline and ‘civilized’ behaviour. Also, colonial officials usually did not share the fear that unchecked Islamic propaganda would undermine colonial rule or even become revolutionary, because they perceived, as outlined above, conversion of Africans as motivated by nominal-pragmatic rather than genuine-ideological considerations.47 As Christian missionaries failed to prevail on the colonial government within GEA , they took their case to the higher level of metropolitan politics. They relied in particular on the Catholic Zentrumspartei (Catholic Central Party) to advance their interests in the Reichstag. In several parliamentary debates representatives of the colonial office had to defend themselves against claims that the colonial government in GEA , in particular the military stations, were responsible for the propaganda of Islam. The fact that Muslims comprised the bulk of the askari rank and file was simply incomprehensible to outsiders and thus the parliament passed several petitions that required an increase in the number of Christian employees as well as askaris and in general to limit the spread of Islam.48 With the colonial government thus put under pressure, Governor Schnee initiated an investigation in October 1913 enquiring how best to limit Islam in GEA and prohibit Islamic propaganda by African employees and askaris. In a circular letter classified as ‘top secret’ he addressed military and civil district officers all over the colony to deliver their opinions on the issue. He particularly asked them to consider the Christian missionaries’ proposition that the introduction of pig breeding among African people would be an effective measure to limit Islam, suggesting that as soon as Africans were used to consuming pork meat they would not convert anymore. Probably Schnee only gave lip service to the idea that Islam had to be restricted. However, the result of the investigation was that all suggestions either were impossible to implement or impractical.49 Thus, the peripheral government that in the end put colonial policy into practice at no point in the German colonial period embarked upon an anti-Islam policy. Unfortunately for the Germans, a copy of these circulars fell into British hands in summer 1916, when the British invaders occupied the town of Moshi in the foothills of Kilimanjaro. It was accidentally left behind when district officials hastily withdrew ahead of the British advance. Now the British had documentary evidence at their disposal that they could use to counter German jihadi propaganda in the Middle East. They dropped leaflets in Arabic and Turkish over Syria and the Dardanelles claiming that the Germans had intended to prohibit Islam in their colonies and even to force Muslims to breed pigs.50

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Muslim loyalty on trial: The Mecca letters There was one situation though where the confidence of German authorities in the loyalty of their Muslim employees and soldiers was slightly shaken. In 1908, Arabic letters, presumably from Mecca, appeared in almost all major towns of the German territory. They spread millennial rumours prophesying the end of European rule and threatened those who did not pass the letter on that the Prophet himself would be their opponent on the approaching Day of Judgement.51 Some versions even referred to the Mahdi movement in Sudan.52 German district officials were seriously alarmed and reported a fanatical pan-Islamic movement that attempted to subvert German colonial rule. Governor Albrecht von Rechenberg thus initiated a thorough investigation, headed by the commander of the Schutztruppe, Kurt von Schleinitz, and two Arabs from the coastal elite, former local administrators Sulayman bin Nasr el-Lemki and Muhammad bin ‘Abd el-Rahman.53 Muslim askaris who attended the mosques on the coast, but also in former centres of the Arab-Zanzibari trade empire such as Tabora, certainly learned about the millenarian prophecy and some German military officers even perceived a certain danger of incitement and agitation among them. Commander Schleinitz claimed that he had to give a speech to reassure the askaris in the coastal town of Lindi. In Dar es Salaam governmental authorities arrested Sharif bin Muhammad from Zanzibar for attempted incitement to rebellion. He had approached Effendi Platan, one of the very few high-ranking askari military officers who already had joined the Schutztruppe under Wissmann. According to testimony from Platan he had tried to prevail upon him to rebel against colonial rule.54 German enquiries revealed that the letter originated in Zanzibar and had been composed by, or written for, Rumaliza. He had been, as outlined above, one of the main builders of the Arab-Zanzibari slave trade empire and had been forced to emigrate to Zanzibar in the course of the German invasion. The Mecca letter had been spread in the coastal town of Lindi by members of the Barwani clan – family of Rumaliza still living in this area. In addition, Rumaliza also was a member of the Qadiriyya brotherhood, which had its centre in Zanzibar and was responsible for the Islamic revival on the East African coast in the 1880s and 1890s. This connection certainly contributed to the rapid dissemination of the letter.55 It was Rumaliza’s last effort to launch a political initiative, using jihadi terminology and without risking much, watching the course of events from

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Zanzibar.56 Governor Rechenberg reckoned that Rumaliza’s objective was not only a rebellion of the Muslim coastal elites and Muslim askaris, but also to stir resistance of the African masses under Muslim leadership against German colonial rule. This idea, Rechenberg continued, was based on the assumption that the Maji-Maji rising had failed due to lack of communication, organization and leadership among the different African socio- and ethnopolitical groups.57 However, the Mecca letters disappeared as quickly as they had appeared without causing serious harm and a number of supposed proselytes were arrested or banned from GEA . Muslim employees and Muslim askaris helped the German authorities in their role as crucial intermediaries and informants who contributed significantly in shedding light on the matter. They had settled into a beneficial cooperation with the colonial government that left them enough freedom to practise their Islamic beliefs.

German global strategies and the dynamics of the First World War Considering that the Mecca letters were perceived as a threat by German authorities and that holy wars in the colonial context generally meant revolutionary wars and a counter to European Imperialism, Governor Schnee’s appeal for jihad after the outbreak of the First World War paradoxically seems to undermine the very authority of the German colonial state in a situation of crisis. The Governor’s strange call for jihad thus has to be understood against the background of imperial Germany’s global war strategy. Scholars of the First World War are still mainly concerned with Alfred von Schlieffen’s pre-war military planning on the European theatre of war, and if they take the global dimensions of the conflict into consideration, they focus on the French and British using their overseas resources to conquer the Central Powers. Yet, it was not the Entente, but the Central Powers that broadened the war in 1914 on its ‘peripheries’. Germany’s global strategy aimed to strike its opponents at their weakest points in Africa and Asia by stirring up jihad in French and British protectorates, where up to 240 million Muslims were under foreign rule.58 The Ottoman Empire as Germany’s war ally was designed to operate as both land bridge and political medium to implement these projects. On 14 November 1914, soon after the Ottomans had joined Germany for war, the Shaykh al-Islam declared in Istanbul a pan-Islamic holy war. The projects of this pan-Islamic holy

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war as negotiated between Germany and Turkey contained a campaign in the Caucasus and rebellions in French North Africa. But first priority was to be an attack on the Suez Canal and the occupation of Egypt, which for the Ottoman Empire was an end in itself, but for the Germans a means to cut Britain’s communications with India and eventually unleash revolutionary wars in India and Sub-Saharan Africa.59 A group of former colonial military officers even planned to use an Ottoman occupation of Egypt to relieve the pressure on the beleaguered German colonies in Africa and eventually for German imperial expansion in Central Africa. A German expeditionary corps would follow the invading Ottoman troops into Egypt, recruit some of the supposedly numerous jihadists against British foreign rule in Egypt and Sudan and then push south in order to attack Uganda and British East Africa, if possible in cooperation with the East African colonial army. Even though the project was discussed at the beginning of 1915 in a meeting of representatives of the German Colonial Office, the Foreign Office, the War Ministry and the General Staff, it was never put into practice.60 The Ottoman advance on Egypt already failed in the night of 2 to 3 February 1915 when the Ottoman troops tried to cross the Suez Canal. A few troops were left behind to launch disruptive activities on the Suez Canal, but until the middle of 1916 no further fighting occurred in Egypt. Generally, the subversive activities of both the Sublime Porte and the German propaganda institute, the Nachrichtenstelle für den Orient (Intelligence Agency for the Orient), went almost unheard. It soon became clear that the Central Powers had to provide men, munitions and victories to be a more promising protector and promoter of jihadi movements.61 The civil and military officials in GEA had to come to terms with the fact that no relief expedition would push through a revolutionary Sudan and that the isolated colony had completely to rely on its own human and material resources. The Governor’s call for jihad has thus to be seen in the context of the attempted total mobilization of the people from within the German territory in order to support the colonial war effort against the British attack on GEA .62 Actually several hundred men of the estimated 4,000 Arab people volunteered, among them members of some of the most honourable families, even though many of them were already advanced in age. They were organized in specific ‘Arab Corps’ and allowed to display the green flag symbolizing a panIslamic affinity.63 But how far can these displays of loyalty be referred to panIslamic propaganda and politics? Since the British declaration of war on 4 August 1914 the German colonies were completely cut off from telegraph and wireless transmission. The prints of the proclamation of holy war arrived in GEA via a

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secret channel of information, through a network of private companies based in Genova and Portuguese Mozambique, which took several months.64 The Arabs’ volunteering could thus not be a response to the belated governmental call. Yet, the news of the Shaykh al-Islam’s proclamation must have found its way to GEA before via a dhow from Zanzibar. The Ottoman Sultan was for many Muslims of East Africa the political leader of Islam. The Sultan of Zanzibar, Khalifa bin Harub, had particularly strong contacts with the Sultan in Istanbul, but as Zanzibar was a British protectorate, not much support could be expected.65 Yet his brother, Said Khalifa, who found asylum in GEA after the British had removed him from power in 1896, openly supported German–Ottoman jihadi propaganda and probably encouraged Arabs to volunteer for the Schutztruppe as well as to pray for German victory in the coastal mosques.66 However, German officials in retrospect reckoned that the news of the German–Ottoman coalition caused a certain excitement in Islamic centres of coastal towns, but that it was only superficial and very quickly dissipated.67 This assessment was certainly influenced by the fact that the Arab Corps completely failed in battle. One Arab corps of 200 men was deployed in the battle of Yassin in January 1915, a German plantation on the frontier of British East Africa, where British troops had concentrated. The Arabs were instructed to fight the approaching British relief columns, but they were very nervous and instead of preparing an effective attack they were shooting blind into the air and ran away in panic. They already had not fulfilled their task in the skirmishes the day before and many of them had begged the commander of the colonial troops, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, to release them.68 After the failure at Yassin, Lettow-Vorbeck finally dismissed them. Only a few Arabs stayed with the German troops and they were distributed among the ordinary askari companies. When Governor Schnee finally received the prints of the proclamation of jihad, the Arab corps had already been disbanded.69 Only a very few Arabs, who already had been released from military service, responded to the Governor’s call and asked him to allow them to take up service with the German troops again, referring to the religious argument that it was their duty as Muslims to join holy war.70 Even if the timing of the governmental call for jihad could have been better, it would not have turned the coastal Arab people into fanatical holy warriors ready for unlimited sacrifices. Also a certain affinity to pan-Islamic ideas could not make up for the lack of a tradition of colonial military service. Since the ‘Arab Revolt’ of 1889–90 the Arabs had not waged any military campaigns, and when they volunteered to join the German troops there was not enough time for training before leading them into battle. As Arabs had entered the civil service of

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the German colonial state, it comes as no surprise then that their effective support during the First World War was performed in the civil line until the German colonial state broke apart.71 Thus the effective Arab war effort went along the lines of long-term cooperation in the colonial context.72 After the disbandment of the Arab Corps and the call for jihad in early 1915, no further propaganda campaigns referring to Islam were launched, nor was Islam within the different companies specifically represented anymore. The Sudanese and Muslim askaris from within GEA did not respond to Governor Schnee’s call for jihad for the same reasons that they had not responded to other jihadi propaganda they encountered in their careers. Their motives to continue their service in the Schutztruppe or to volunteer for military service during the First World War were the same as ever and basically can be described in terms of patronage: good and regular payment, enhanced social standing, medical and family care. One of the most often quoted examples of a solemn declaration of loyalty at the outbreak of the First World War is the one expressed by the Sudanese-askari Adam Mohamed: ‘Our Kaiser did pay me my salary and did take care of me for twenty years, God willing, I will be killed in action for him today.’73 It is very probable that Adam Mohamad actually had exclaimed ‘inshallah!’ that had been ‘translated’ for a German audience. Still the religious reference reflects a fatalistic trust in the almighty and not a motive to fight for the Germans. The Germans very successfully defended the East African territory and thus could maintain an intact and efficient state and as a consequence their patronage duties. In a surprising triumph at the battle of Tanga on 4 November 1914 the Schutztruppe humiliatingly defeated the eight times superior British Expeditionary Force that had landed on the coast in order to bring the whole of GEA under British control. After the complete failure of the attack the British command was forced to re-embark the dispirited troops and to completely withdraw. Britain had to rethink its East African campaign and not until March 1916 had they prepared for an allied advance with the Belgians.74 Yet, mass mobilization after the outbreak of war had an impact upon the makeup of the colonial army in many ways. There are no statistics on the religious composition of the colonial troops during the First World War available anymore, but recruiting practices suggest that the percentage of Muslim askaris was decreasing considerably. Around 1914 the number of Sudanese had already dramatically declined. Some of the former Sudanese-askaris voluntarily reported back to service in order to support their former patron in a situation of crisis. German officers could not decline these touching gestures, but due to their

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advanced age they could only be used for guarding activities.75 Mass recruitment made the influence of the few remaining Sudanese role models dwindle even more. About 15,000 askaris in total served during the First World War and before the Anglo-Belgian offensive in March 1916 the troops numbered some 12,000 African soldiers, which was six times the pre-war size. On the one hand thousands of redundant plantation labourers were transferred to the Schutztruppe, on the other hand new Nyamwezi and Sukuma were recruited, who were all predominantly animists.76 As a consequence of mass mobilization combined with the lack of senior Sudanese, as well as German NCO s training these new companies, not only did the quality and military efficiency of the Schutztruppe decline, but also its Islamization. The Schutztruppen companies were partly drawn together and often deployed to different sites of the theatre of war. They thus lost their pre-war living bases around military stations, as well as their everyday life and culture of the askari villages. Even though these two aspects were not necessarily connected directly, the specific pre-war socio-military Muslim soldiers’ cultures in GEA tended to foster good soldiering, and when these milieus disintegrated so did the quality of the military forces. With the beginning of the Anglo-Belgian invasion from all sides of the colony in March 1916 the colonial troops were forced to retreat and eventually even the colonial state started to break apart. More and more, the military commanders failed to ensure their patronage responsibilities. African soldiers could not be paid anymore and food had become so scarce that everybody had to eat what they could get living off the land. There was no material incentive to stay with the troops anymore. Some askaris might have believed their superiors that Germany would win the war in Europe and that they would be rewarded for their loyalty by the re-installed German colonial state. Most askaris though simply could not escape anymore as the local population perceived them as part of the detested marauders and were eager for any opportunity of retaliation.77 When the commander-in-chief, Lettow-Vorbeck, saw himself encircled in the utmost south-eastern corner of the colony, he escaped with a few hundred askaris and Germans to Portuguese Mozambique. To avoid encirclement they had to march every day so that medical care could not be provided anymore; even askari wives who had given birth were left behind.78 The once highly disciplined body of troops had become a marauding bunch dressed in rags and ravaging through the country plundering the population. The Schutztruppe began forcibly conscripting young men living in the regions through which they marched. New recruitments often were carried out by raiding villages at dawn,

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carrying off everyone who could be captured. Some of them first became porters or askari boys and then at some point compensated the losses of askaris.79 The German officers’ awareness of finding themselves in a process of disintegrating civilization80 must have been shared by the askaris, at least by those who had already been part of the colonial army before the First World War. The German commander had brought the askaris into an inhuman situation of unlimited violence, hunger, exhaustion, and despair that left no room to cultivate Muslim cultures, identities, or any form of civilization. The only fanatical warrior was the German commander Lettow-Vorbeck himself, who was called the ‘Mad Mullah’,81 owing to his obsession with sticking to his global war strategy to engage as many Entente troops as possible on the colonial periphery, regardless of any human costs whatever, leaving behind a trail of death.

Conclusion The educated Arab elites of GEA , some of whom were members of the Qadiriyya Sufi brotherhood, were not unfamiliar with pan-Islamic ideas. The Mecca letters in the end came from among their community. Yet the authors were emigrants in British Zanzibar who could not reconcile their interests with German rule, while many Arabs within GEA had built up a mutually beneficial cooperation with the German authorities and thus were not ready to embark on a millenarian rebellion. In turn, the governmental call for jihad after the outbreak of the First World War found a positive echo due to the German–Ottoman alliance. Yet the appeal was not strong enough for the Arabs to risk their life for the colonial war effort and it also could not compensate for the complete lack of a tradition in the German military colonial service. However, there was another line of Muslim soldiering within the German colonial army in East Africa that had already emerged from the very first recruitments. For Africans recruited from outside as well as within GEA , their Muslim identity was crucial to perceiving themselves as culturally superior, and to developing a certain affinity to Western scientific and technological developments and imperial modernization projects, which set them apart from the masses of the African people they were supposed to control. In turn, German preference for Muslim soldiers was caused by exactly this attitude and a certain set of values and virtues presumably referring to their Islamic culture. However, German military officers and NCO s had to make compromises with regard to the Muslim askaris’ social life, culture and religious freedom, but they never

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complained that specific Muslim practices such as prayers, diet and burials would have an impact on military service and warfare. Even though German military officers often valued their askaris’ virtues according to a martial race theory in the sense of their belonging to a specific ‘ethnic’ group such as ‘Sudanese’, ‘Zulu’ and ‘Nyamwesi’,82 this ranking basically was always superimposed by the religious affiliation of the African soldiers. Most Muslim askaris did encounter jihadi movements before the outbreak of the First World War. Some of the Sudanese fought the Mahdi movement as soldiers of the Anglo-Egyptian army, and many learned about the millenarian prophecy of the Mecca letters. Yet as professional mercenaries they gave their allegiance to a patron who assumed his responsibilities; and at the end of the day their social standing and welfare was inextricably interwoven with the colonial state. In addition, their individual Muslim identities had a rather regional character corresponding to a certain socio-cultural lifestyle that did not respond to pan-Islamic ideologies. This helps to explain why the call for jihad from Istanbul, as mediated by Governor Schnee during the First World War in support of the German colonial government, did not have a positive appeal either. Nevertheless, on a different level there was a complex interconnectedness between the Muslim identities of the askaris and the quality and fighting power of the Schutztruppe, that not least became apparent during the First World War, when along with the declining numbers of Muslim askaris and the disintegration of Muslim milieus, the colonial army degenerated into a marauding trail of death.

Notes 1 Heinrich Schnee, Deutsch-Ostafrika im Weltkriege: Wie wir lebten und kämpften (Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1919), 139–40. 2 Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde (hereafter BAL ), R1001/875, Report of Governor Schnee to the Reichskolonialminister (Secretary of the Colonial Office) on the military situation in German East Africa during the First World War, 7 May 1919. 3 On the total mobilization of human and material resources in GEA during the First World War see: Tanja Bührer, ‘Die Massenmobilisierung der afrikanischen Bevölkerung: Zwangsarbeit als Militärstrategie während des Ersten Weltkrieges in Deutsch-Ostafrika’, in Klaus Gestwa and Kerstin von Lingen (eds), Zwangsarbeit als Kriegsressource (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2014), 109–26.

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4 Schnee, Deutsch-Ostafrika, 135. 5 BAL , R1001/923, 172–3, Governor Schnee to the Reichskolonialamt (Colonial Office), 31 December 1913. The percentage of Muslims was even higher in the Police Troops, which consisted of 1,670 Muslims, 291 heathens, and 116 Christians. Governor Schnee found it difficult to explain this difference due to the lack of information he could draw on. One possible reason is that many members of the Schutztruppe became Muslim only after taking up service, while the Police Troops consisted of many former Schutztruppen soldiers and thus already had adopted Islam when joining the Police Troops. 6 See the Act of Parliament in the minutes of the German Reichstag (parliament) approving the deployment of military troops to East Africa in order to fight the slave trade and protect German interests: Verhandlungen des Reichstags 1888/89, Attachments, 104, no. 71, 491–3. 7 For a detailed analysis of the complex social dynamics of the rebellion on the Swahili Coast, see Jonathon Glassmann, Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion, and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856–1888 (Portsmouth, NH : Heinemann, 1995), 199–248. 8 John Iliffe, A Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 168–72, 180, 208–10. 9 See in detail Jan Georg Deutsch, Emancipation without Abolition in German East Africa, c. 1884–1914 (Oxford: James Currey, 2006). 10 Heinrich Brode, Tippu Tib: Lebensbild eines Zentral-Afrikanischen Despoten (Berlin: W. Baensch, 1905). 11 Tom von Prince, Gegen Araber und Wahehe: Erinnerungen aus meiner ostafrikanischen Leutnantszeit 1890–1895, 2nd edn (Berlin: Mittler und Sohn, 1914), 293; Alison Redmayne, ‘Mkwawa and the Hehe Wars’, Journal of African History 9, no. 3 (1968): 409–36. 12 Askari is an Arabic and Kiswahili word for soldier. 13 Tanja Bührer, Die Kaiserliche Schutztruppe für Deutsch-Ostafrika: Koloniale Sicherheitspolitik und transkulturelle Kriegführung, 1885 bis 1918 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2011), 61–3. 14 Georg Richelmann, ‘Schaffung der Wissmanntruppe’, in Conradin von Perbandt, Georg Richelmann and Rochus Schmidt (eds), Hermann von Wissmann: Deutschlands größter Afrikaner (Berlin: Schall, 1906), 197. 15 BAL R1001/736, 44–7, St. Paul Illaire to the East German Company Headquarters in Berlin, Zanzibar, 30 January 1889. 16 Prince, Araber und Wahehe, 80, 141, 292; Georg Maercker, ‘Kriegführung in Ostafrika. Vortrag gehalten in der Militärischen Gesellschaft zu Berlin am 15. November 1893’, Beihefte zum Militär-Wochenblatt (1894): 149–77.

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17 Michelle Moyd, Violent Intermediaries: African Soldiers, Conquest, and Everyday Colonialism in German East Africa (Athens, OH : Ohio University Press, 2014), 44–6. 18 Bührer, Kaiserliche Schutztruppe, 61–3; Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 62–3. 19 Hugold F. von Behr, Kriegsbilder aus dem Araberaufstand in Deutsch-Ostafrika (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1891), 17–18; Heinrich Fonck, Deutsch-Ost-Afrika: Eine Schilderung deutscher Tropen nach 10 Wanderjahren (Berlin: Vossische Buchhandlung, 1910), 8; Rochus Schmidt, Geschichte des Araberaufstandes in Ost-Afrika: Seine Entstehung, seine Niederwerfung und seine Folgen (Frankfurt an der Oder: Trowitzsch, 1892), 44–6; Maercker, Kriegführung, 151. 20 Behr, Kriegsbilder, 20. 21 The following paragraphs rely heavily on Moyd’s chapter ‘Becoming Askari’. Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 36–87, in particular 49–64. 22 August Leue, Dar-es-Salaam: Bilder aus dem Kolonialleben (Berlin: Wilhelm Süsserott, 1903), 151–2. 23 Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 56. 24 Leue, Dar-es-Salaam, 153–8; Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 57–8. 25 Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 46–7. 26 Prince, Araber und Wahehe, 80. 27 Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 48–9. 28 Thomas Morlang, ‘ “Ich habe die Sache satt hier, herzlich satt”: Briefe des Kolonialoffiziers Rudolf von Hirsch aus Deutsch-Ostafrika, 1905–1907’, Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift 61 (2002): 500–1. 29 Bührer, Kaiserliche Schutztruppe, 130–8, 151. 30 See for instance the ‘socio-anthropological’ study of the German military officer Ernst Nigmann. Nigmann interviewed many of the former Hehe warriors when he was stationed as military district officer at Irigna after the Hehe had waged a protracted war of resistance. See Ernst Nigmann, Die Wahehe: Ihre Geschichte, Kult-, Rechts-, Kriegs- und Jagd-Gebräuche (Berlin: Mittler, 1908), 102–5. 31 Tanzania National Archives (hereafter TNA ), G 2/4, 132–3, Report of the District officer from Tanga, Tanga, 9 April 1892; Fonck, Deutsch-Ost-Afrika, 14. 32 John Iliffe, Honour in African History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 2, 228–30. 33 The coastal Swahili culture had emanated from a mixture of Arab, Indian and African influences and was characterized by trade, Swahili as lingua franca, and Muslim religion. 34 Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 61–74. On the pre-colonial order of the caravan trade see Michael Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft in Deutsch-Ostafrika: Expeditionen, Militär und Verwaltung seit 1880 (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2005), 40–101. 35 Iliffe, Modern History, 213–14.

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36 BAL , R1001/ 923, 172–3, Governor Schnee to the Reichskolonialamt, 31 December 1913. 37 Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 85–7. 38 Hauptmann Tafel, ‘Zum 25.-jährigen Jubiläum’, Deutsche Kolonialzeitung 31 (1914): 464; Schnee, Deutsch-Ostafrika, 134. 39 Felicitas Becker, Becoming Muslim in Mainland Tanzania 1890–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 8–9. 40 Spencer J. Trimingham, The Influence of Islam upon Africa (London: Longman, 1968), 1–2. 41 Michael Pesek, ‘Islam und Politik in Deutsch-Ostafrika’, in Albert Wirz, Andreas Eckert and Katrin Bromber (eds), Alles unter Kontrolle: Disziplinierungsprozesse im kolonialen Tansania (1850–1960) (Cologne: Köppe, 2003), 109–20. 42 Richelmann, Schaffung der Wissmanntruppe, 198. 43 Tafel, Zum 25.-jährigen Jubiläum: 464; Fonck, Deutsch-Ost-Afrika, 64. Family issues were very similarly dealt with in the King’s African Rifles of British East Africa (today’s Kenya). Timothy Parsons, ‘All Askaris are Family Men: Sex, Domesticity and Discipline in the King’s African Rifles, 1902–1964’, in David Killingray and David Omissi (eds), Guardians of Empire: The Armed Forces of the Colonial Powers c. 1700–1964 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 157–8, 168–9. 44 Personal Papers of Captain Rudolf von Hirsch, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv/ Kriegsarchiv München, Nachlass Hirsch/10, Letters from East Africa: Hirsch to his parents and siblings, 31 May 1906; Schnee, Deutsch-Ostafrika, 134. 45 Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 171. 46 Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 171–2. 47 Tafel, Zum 25.-jährigen Jubiläum: 464. 48 See detailed BAL , R 1001/955, Reichstagssachen (Parliamentary issues), 6–26, 30–31. 49 Schnee, Deutsch-Ostafrika, 136–7. 50 Schnee, Deutsch-Ostafrika, 138–9. 51 B. G. Martin, ‘Muslim Politics and Resistance to Colonial Rule: Shayk Uways B. Muhammad Al-Barawi and the Qadiriyya Brotherhood in East Africa’, Journal of African History 10, no. 3 (1969): 477–9. 52 Pesek, Islam und Politik, 106. 53 Sulayman bin Nasr el-Lemki was serving in the Omani coastal administration when the ‘Arab Revolt’ broke out, and then started his twenty years’ lasting cooperation with the German colonial authorities. Pesek, Islam und Politik, 105–6. 54 Pesek, Islam und Politik, 109. 55 Shayk Uways (1847–1909), who was an important leader of the Qadiriyya brotherhood, had studied in Iraq and made the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. Martin, Muslim Politics, 471–4; Iliffe, Modern History, 211–15; Pesek, Islam und Politik, 111–14.

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56 Martin, Muslim Politics: 471–4. 57 Martin, Muslim Politics: 482. 58 Hew Strachan, The First World War – Volume I: To Arms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 694–7. 59 Strachan, To Arms, 700. 60 Ernst Nigmann Papers, Geheimes Staatsarchiv – Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin, VI . HA , Nl Nigmann, 101, Oberstleutnant Rochus Schmidt on the Turkish attack against England, Berlin-Charlottenburg, 14 December 1914; ibid., 90, Mecklenburg to Ernst Nigmann, 8 March 1915. 61 Strachan, To Arms, 712. 62 For the total mobilization of human and material resources in GEA during the First World War, see Bührer, ‘Die Massenmobilisierung der afrikanischen Bevölkerung’. 63 Schnee, Deutsch-Ostafrika, 129. 64 After the British declared war on Germany, they imposed a naval blockade on the East African coast, cut off the telegraph lines on 3 August 1914 and bombarded the wireless station in Dar es Salaam on 8 August. The Zentralstelle des Hamburgischen Kolonialinstituts (Centre of the Hamburg Colonial Institute) sent some of the Arab prints of the proclamation it had received from Istanbul through the secret network of private companies in Genova and Portuguese Mozambique to GEA . Schnee, Deutsch-Ostafrika, 25–7, 61–2, 139–40; BAL , R1001/865, 51, Geheimrat Stuhlmann, Director of the Zentralstelle des Hamburgischen Kolonialinstituts to Geheimrat Dr W. Busse at the Reichskolonialamt, Hamburg, 13 January 1915. 65 Pesek, Islam und Politik, 119 66 Wilhelm Arning, Vier Jahre Weltkrieg in Deutsch-Ostafrika (Hannover: Gebrüder Jänecke, 1919), 16 67 BAL , R1001/875, Report of Governor Schnee to the Reichskolonialminister (Secretary of the Colonial Office) on the military situation in German East Africa during the First World War, 7 May 1919. 68 Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, Meine Erinnerungen aus Ostafrika (Leipzig: K. F. Koehler, 1920), 53. 69 Schnee does not give the exact date of the proclamation of jihad, but it is impossible that it could have happened before March 1915, as the transport of documents through the secret channel via Genova and Mozambique took several months. 70 Schnee, Deutsch-Ostafrika, 139–40. 71 Schnee, Deutsch-Ostafrika, 139. 72 Schnee, Deutsch-Ostafrika, 139; Arning, Vier Jahre Weltkrieg, 15–16. 73 Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv (hereafter BA-MA ), RM 5/2301, 303. 74 Ross Anderson, The Forgotten Front: The East African Campaign, 1914–1918 (Stroud: Tempus, 2004), 42–55.

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75 Wilhelm Methner, Unter drei Gouverneuren: 16 Jahre Dienst in deutschen Tropen (Breslau: Korn, 1938), 363–4; Artur Heye, Steppe im Sturm (Zürich: A. Müller, 1942), 55. 76 Bührer, Massenmobilisierung, 114–7. 77 Bührer, Kaiserliche Schutztruppe, 453–67. 78 Ludwig Deppe, Mit Lettow-Vorbeck durch Afrika (Berlin: August Scherl, 1919), 111; Kurt Gregorius, Bwana Mzungu. Der weiße Mann. Selbsterlebtes in Ostafrika unter Lettow-Vorbeck (Salvador-Bahia: Graph. Werkstätten Manu, 1953), 143. 79 Bührer, Kaiserliche Schutztruppe, 467–73. 80 Deppe, Mit Lettow-Vorbeck, 206 and 393; Gregorius, Bwana Mzungu, 202. 81 Ludwig Boell, Die Operationen in Ostafrika: Weltkrieg 1914–1918 (Hamburg: W. Dachert, 1951), 43. Maybe this surname was transferred from the powerful leader of the Salihiyya brotherhood, Shayk Muhammad Abdallah Hasan, whose followers assassinated the leader of the Qadiriyya brotherhood, Shayk Uways, in 1909. 82 See for instance charts and comments on the different ‘ethnicities’ of GEA military and police forces: TNA , G 2/4, 30 and 86.

Bibliography Anderson, Ross. The Forgotten Front: The East African Campaign, 1914–1918. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Tempus, 2004. Arning, Wilhelm. Vier Jahre Weltkrieg in Deutsch-Ostafrika. Hannover: Gebrüder Jänecke, 1919. Becker, Felicitas. Becoming Muslim in Mainland Tanzania 1890–2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Behr, Hugold F. Kriegsbilder aus dem Araberaufstand in Deutsch-Ostafrika. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1891. Boell, Ludwig. Die Operationen in Ostafrika: Weltkrieg 1914–1918. Hamburg: W. Dachert, 1951. Brode, Heinrich. Tippu Tib: Lebensbild eines Zentral-Afrikanischen Despoten. Berlin: W. Baensch, 1905. Bührer, Tanja. Die Kaiserliche Schutztruppe für Deutsch-Ostafrika: Koloniale Sicherheitspolitik und transkulturelle Kriegführung, 1885 bis 1918. Munich: Oldenbourg, 2011. Bührer, Tanja. ‘Die Massenmobilisierung der afrikanischen Bevölkerung: Zwangsarbeit als Militärstrategie während des Ersten Weltkrieges in Deutsch-Ostafrika’. In Zwangsarbeit als Kriegsressource, edited by Klaus Gestwa and Kerstin von Lingen, 109–26. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2014. Deppe, Ludwig. Mit Lettow-Vorbeck durch Afrika. Berlin: August Scherl, 1919. Deutsch, Jan Georg. Emancipation without Abolition in German East Africa, c. 1884–1914. Oxford: James Currey, 2006.

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Glassmann, Jonathon. Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion, and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856–1888. Portsmouth, NH : Heinemann, 1995. Gregorius, Kurt. Bwana Mzungu. Der weiße Mann. Selbsterlebtes in Ostafrika unter Lettow-Vorbeck. Salvador-Bahia: Graph. Werkstätten Manu, 1953. Heye, Artur. Steppe im Sturm. Zürich: A. Müller, 1942. Iliffe, John. A Modern History of Tanganyika. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Iliffe, John. Honour in African History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Leue, August. Dar-es-Salaam: Bilder aus dem Kolonialleben. Berlin: Wilhelm Süsserott, 1903. Lettow-Vorbeck, Paul von. Meine Erinnerungen aus Ostafrika. Leipzig: K. F. Koehler, 1920. Maercker, Georg. ‘Kriegführung in Ostafrika. Vortrag, gehalten in der Militärischen Gesellschaft zu Berlin am 15. November 1893’. Beihefte zum Militär-Wochenblatt (1894): 149–77. Martin, B. G. ‘Muslim Politics and Resistance to Colonial Rule: Shayk Uways B. Muhammad Al-Barawi and the Qadiriyya Brotherhood in East Africa’. Journal of African History 10, no. 3 (1969): 471–86. Methner, Wilhelm. Unter drei Gouverneuren: 16 Jahre Dienst in deutschen Tropen. Breslau: Korn, 1938. Morlang, Thomas. ‘ “Ich habe die Sache satt hier, herzlich satt”: Briefe des Kolonialoffiziers Rudolf von Hirsch aus Deutsch-Ostafrika, 1905–1907’. Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift 61 (2002): 489–521. Moyd, Michelle. Violent Intermediaries: African Soldiers, Conquest, and Everyday Colonialism in German East Africa. Athens, OH : Ohio University Press, 2014. Nigmann, Ernst. Die Wahehe: Ihre Geschichte, Kult-, Rechts-, Kriegs- und JagdGebräuche. Berlin: Mittler, 1908. Parsons, Timothy. ‘All Askaris are Family Men: Sex, Domesticity and Discipline in the King’s African Rifles, 1902–1964’. In David Killingray and David Omissi (eds), Guardians of Empire: The Armed Forces of the Colonial Powers c. 1700–1964, 157–78. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. Pesek, Michael. Koloniale Herrschaft in Deutsch-Ostafrika: Expeditionen, Militär und Verwaltung seit 1880. Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2005. Pesek, Michael. ‘Islam und Politik in Deutsch-Ostafrika’. In Albert Wirz, Andreas Eckert and Katrin Bromber (eds), Alles unter Kontrolle: Disziplinierungsprozesse im kolonialen Tansania (1850–1960), 99–140. Cologne: Köppe, 2003. Prince, Tom von. Gegen Araber und Wahehe: Erinnerungen aus meiner ostafrikanischen Leutnantszeit 1890–1895, 2nd edn. Berlin: Mittler und Sohn, 1914. Redmayne, Alison. ‘Mkwawa and the Hehe Wars’. Journal of African History 9, no. 3 (1968): 409–36. Richelmann, Georg. ‘Schaffung der Wissmanntruppe’. In Conradin von Perbandt, Georg Richelmann and Rochus Schmidt (eds), Hermann von Wissmann: Deutschlands größter Afrikaner, 184–201. Berlin: Schall, 1906.

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Schmidt, Rochus. Geschichte des Araberaufstandes in Ost-Afrika: Seine Entstehung, seine Niederwerfung und seine Folgen. Frankfurt an der Oder: Trowitzsch, 1892. Schnee, Heinrich. Deutsch-Ostafrika im Weltkriege: Wie wir lebten und kämpften. Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1919. Strachan, Hew. The First World War – Volume I: To Arms. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Tafel, Hauptmann. ‘Zum 25.-jährigen Jubiläum’. Deutsche Kolonialzeitung 31 (1914): 464. Trimingham, Spencer J. The Influence of Islam upon Africa. London: Longman, 1968.

4

Turkic Muslims in the Russian Army: From the Beginning of the First World War to the Revolutions of 19171 Salavat M. Iskhakov

A widely accepted scholarly estimate is that between 1 million and 1.5 million Turkic soldiers were called up to serve in the Russian army during the First World War, accounting for up to 10 per cent of the army’s total strength. Consequently, the First World War threw into particularly sharp relief the most acute of the issues that emerged from the Slavic–Turkic ‘dialogue’ being conducted between, on the one hand, the ethnic Russians who held sway in the Russian Empire and, on the other, the oppressed Turkic Muslim nationalities who were only brought to mind by the centre when society was undergoing crises or full-blown revolutions, or when the empire waged war and was in need of quiescent soldiers. Historians have yet to shed much light, let alone provide concrete historical analysis, on this subject. Whilst this chapter does not aim to present a fully faceted overview of the relations between Turkic and Slavic soldiers, it will remark upon the most important factors that influenced their interactions, whether positively or negatively. I shall first present the overall situation of Muslim soldiers, including a look at the relevant legislation, immediately prior to and during the First World War. Second, I shall focus on the impact of the revolutions of February and October 1917 on the questions of ‘Muslimification’ (musul’manizatsiia) and ‘nationalization’ of the armed forces, questions that were debated among both Muslim elites and the general Muslim soldiery.

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Turkic Muslims in the Russian Army immediately prior to the First World War Legislation and religious practices On the eve of the war, representatives of the Turkic Muslim nationalities (Tatars, Bashkirs, Meshcheriaks and Teptiars) serving in the regular Russian army numbered as follows: generals – 13; colonels, lieutenant colonels and captains – 186; staff-captains, lieutenants, sub-lieutenants and warrant officers – 37; other ranks – 38,000 (3.1 per cent of the army’s strength).2 According to the law of 23 June 1912, Muslim clerics were exempt from military service.3 Before the war, each military district was supposed to have one Muslim chaplain, who was under the command of that district’s headquarters.4 The Muslim deputies in the Fourth State Duma drew attention to the need to increase the numbers of mullahs in the army and to lighten the burden of military service on Turkic soldiers which arose from breaches of their religious laws. On 11 June 1912, one of these deputies reported that, for example, in the Irkutsk military district, where over 3,000 Turkic soldiers were serving, there was not a single Muslim chaplain. This situation was a cause of grievance among the soldiers.5 Turkic soldiers in the more privileged parts of the Russian army served in completely different conditions. For those Turkic servicemen (these were mostly Tatars from Kazan, Nizhnii Novgorod, Penza and Kasimov) who ended up in the Imperial Guard, quartered in St Petersburg and its environs, and likewise on board ships in the Baltic Fleet, the conditions in which they served were much better. The Guard and the Fleet had mullahs and muezzins, headed by an akhun (the senior mullah in a military district); the latter participated in ceremonial duties on occasions such as oath-taking, the blessing of standards and banners, bidding farewell to units as they set out for the theatre of military action or to ships as they put to sea, and funeral parades. He also ensured the observance of important Muslim dates in the calendar. Issues relating to the military service of Muslim soldiers and officers, as well as confirmation of the appointment of mullahs – who were elected by their community – were handled and resolved by the commanders of the Guard, and upheld by the Interior Ministry’s Department of Spiritual Matters in Foreign Faiths (Department Dukhovnykh Del Inostrannogo Veroispovedanie). For Turkic Muslims, special food was prepared that excluded pork products, while the traditional glass of vodka on ceremonial days in the fleet or in the army was substituted by tea and sugar. Once the unit buglers had sounded the tattoo,

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Muslim soldiers rolled out their prayer mats for the namaz (evening prayer). There existed within the Corps of Guards a ‘Society of Life-Guard Officers Professing Islam’. There was a ‘Mohammedan’ military induction in place in the capital for those who were serving in the army or navy or who were part of the Tsar’s escort and security detail.6 But all this was typical only in the elite units.

August 1914: Mobilization and anti-war agitation The entry of the Russian Empire into the world war on the whole had a great effect on the Muslims of the country.‘In the first few days following the declaration of war’, noted a report from the management of the Rostov Islamic Society, ‘our society experienced a very painful paralysis’. The war exerted ‘its heavy imprint’.7 This was particularly true with regard to mobilization, which in the summer of 1914 coincided with Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting. Thus, in the city of Sterlitamak, a district centre in Ufa province, thousands of men (mainly Bashkirs) were mustered, only to be left without food since, as the Ufa governor confessed, ‘facilities and provisions for feeding them had not been made ready in sufficient quantities by the military authorities.’ Foodstuffs rapidly went up in price at the market, as the hungry men demanded they be given so-called ‘foraging money’ as cash in hand. When this was refused – rudely so, thus adding insult to injury – they rushed to ransack local trading establishments. Broadly similar events occurred in another district centre as well: the town of Birsk.8 All this happened during Ramadan. The Ufa governor, in his report for the year 1914, wrote that the unrest in several locations in the province at the very start of the mobilization could be explained by the onset of Ramadan, during which Muslims ‘can have nothing to eat the whole day through, right until nightfall’.9 These circumstances were exploited by a small group of Tatar and Bashkir socialists in Ufa, including one who would go on to become a famous Bolshevik: Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev. He recalled that the group issued a proclamation which called upon Turkic soldiers to instigate a mutiny and leave the army. This appeal included the claim that ‘the [ethnic] Russian people are not content with only their subjugation of the Tatars, Bashkirs, Turkestanis, Caucasians, etc., they want also to subjugate the Turks and the Persians.’ A member of this group, a Bashkir teacher, headed for Sterlitamak to spread propaganda, where he was able ‘to link up with a few comrades’ and incite an uprising in army units. There were also mutinies in other towns in the province: Birsk and Belebei. In Sterlitamak, as part of the suppression of this unrest, several Tatars and Bashkirs were shot.10 In addition, during the initial mobilization of the first months of the war, in one of

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the provinces that was densely populated with Turkic Muslims, a raucous missionary rally was held, at which resolutions were passed on the ‘necessity of fighting against Islam’.11 The Muslim reaction to this was entirely appropriate. At the start of the war, according to Tsarist police reports,12 the reluctance to fight of the Tatars (both workers and peasants) in the Kazan province was reflected in evasion of the draft. The well-known Tatar writer and Socialist Revolutionary, Gayaz (Ayaz) Iskhakov,13 would later, in emigration, note that initially the Turkic population had a ‘defeatist’ mindset: that urban dwellers sought all means by which to avoid mobilization, while the boycott of the war by the Turkic intelligentsia led to a situation in which the number of officers from the Turkic population made up a tiny proportion in comparison with Turkic soldiers in the rank-and-file. Although the war did carry away many lives, averred Iskhakov, Turkic fighters endured in the hope of a better future, as they considered that in the event of a Russian victory there would be reform, while defeat would inevitably lead to revolution (as it had after the Russo-Japanese War, from which they had once similarly expected a resolution to their national problems). The world war, in his words, convinced Muslims as to the rightness of their point of view regarding future changes.14 In fact, the psychology of Turkic soldiers was quite different, not at all ‘defeatist’ (this was a direct borrowing from the Bolshevik political lexicon; they had famously called for ‘the defeat of our government in this imperialist war’). It should be borne in mind that, once in exile, it was not only Iskhakov but many other former politicians from Turkic circles who began speaking in similar vein. The Kazakh Mustafa Chokaev, former head of the Kokand Autonomy, wrote in exile that during the war ‘the Turks under Russia remain silent, gritting their teeth, waiting for and wanting the collapse of Russia. The enforced and official patriotism of a few could not by itself make up for the temperament of the people as a whole. Within Russia we are silent. We have not the strength to shout. We have not the way to an open expression of our wishes.’15 Let us now turn to the events of the first months of the war.

Patriotic reactions after the Ottoman Empire entered the war According to a report in the newspaper Kazanskii Telegraf (‘Le télégraphe de Kazan’) dated 26 August 1914, the Turkic Muslims of Petrograd gathered in that city’s main mosque for prayer, after which they decided to send a protest to the Ottoman government over its hostile actions against Russia. As soon as rumours began to spread that the Ottoman Empire was preparing to abandon its neutral stance, the

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Petrograd akhun Muhammed-Safa Baiazitov16 and other well-known representatives of Petrograd Muslims began to receive telegrams from every corner of the Russian Empire, from such Muslim centres as Kazan, Ufa, Orenburg, Troitsk and others, in which Muslims protested against the Ottoman encroachment on Russia’s territorial integrity. On 10 September 1914, the Orenburg Tatar newspaper Vakyt (‘The Time’) wrote in connection with this protest: ‘We live in Russia, we are Russian people, Russian citizens.’ And it was emphasized that: We Muslims are brothers to the Turks in both religion and in blood, and so it is naturally our wish that they should live in peaceful and happy existence in the world alongside their neighbours, and in particular Russia, our fatherland. There can, of course, also be no doubt as to our desire that they, the Turks, should not launch into any risky ventures and should not find themselves embroiled in actions which could harm our Russia, but that they should, following the Europeans, proceed according to the values of progress and civilization. However it might be that all this is simply a desire hidden in our hearts.17

Representatives of Muslims from Petersburg, Nizhnii Novgorod, Kazan, Ufa and other Russian towns and cities signed a letter of protest that originated with mullahs in the regional capitals of Kazan and Ufa.18 This position of theirs exerted serious influence on Turkic soldiers. On 14 October 1914, the Orenburg Mufti Muhamed’iar Sultanov,19 a religious leader appointed and paid by the Ministry of the Interior, called upon Russian Muslims in a fatwa: We Muslims are as one with the entire Russian people, in these difficult times we must provide assistance to our state to repel the enemy. . . . And, just as during previous wars in the defence of their fatherland, Russian Muslims contributed great self-sacrifices, so during these present events taking place before us, may God grant us that they once more manifest their patriotism to excess.20

Russian Muslims did not remain aloof from the patriotic surge in Russia, as was acknowledged in a secret circular from the Interior Minister dated 18 October 1914: In this manner, at this time, the march of historical events has created conditions which are self-evidently unfavourable . . . for the propagation among our Muslims of the idea of the spiritual and national unity of Muslims throughout the world and of the significance which their co-religionists in Turkey and their Caliph as the spiritual leader of all Islam ought to have for them.21

On 21 October, in Baku, at a rally of many thousands of Muslims, the qadi (judge) of the province said, ‘our loyalty to Russia is dictated not only by the

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principle of citizenship, but also by the voice of conscience and the dictates of the Quran.’22

The declaration of jihad, and responses to it On 29 October 1914, a combined German and Ottoman fleet attacked Russian vessels and shelled Sebastopol, Feodosiia and Novorossiisk. On 3 November, Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire. Seven days later, in the main Istanbul mosque, standing in front of a green ‘banner of the Prophet’, the Shaykh al-Islam declared jihad (a ‘holy war’ for Muslims in defence of their faith), emphasizing that Russia, Britain and France were ‘hostile to the Islamic Caliphate’ and were making every effort to ‘extinguish the great light of Islam’. He also called upon those Muslims living under the jurisdiction of these states to declare ‘holy war’ upon them.23 The tension was significantly heightened since the Ottoman Empire was presenting itself as the target of a new crusade. Russian Muslims reacted to the call to jihad in the following way. As early as 11 November 1914, the Orenburg Mufti Sultanov explained that this poorlythought-through step was undoubtedly made by the Ottoman Empire at the instigation of Germany, and was in the interests neither of the Ottoman Empire nor the religion of Islam. The Mufti underlined that ‘we have already lived for many centuries’ in the Russian state, and that ‘we have grown together historically; in this, our fatherland, we live, enjoying calm and the fruits of the earth; the integrity and equally the power of our fatherland is the source of our well-being and tranquillity. . . . Of course we Russian Muslims need to protect our fatherland from the enemy.’24 The Moscow mullah saw the entry of the Ottoman Empire into the war ‘not as a holy aim, but as a mercenary type of warfare, under compulsion from Berlin; that was where the declaration of jihad was dictated and, as such, an insult was delivered to the holy feelings of the entire Muslim world.’ The Ottoman army, in his words, had insulted the laws of Islam. Adil’girei Karashaisky,25 the Tauride Mufti, said in his proclamation to Muslims that the Ottoman Empire had ‘dared to attack our dear fatherland – Russia, being the sacred homeland of all the people who inhabit the country, including Muslims. Therefore, we Muslims, together with our compatriots, must try with all our might to drive our enemies from our homeland and protect it from harm, in fulfilment of our sacred duty.’26 According to a contemporary Turkish historian, the very method that the Ottoman Empire used to enter the war alarmed the Russians: the Ottoman declaration was accompanied by a proclamation of ‘holy war’ in five distinct

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fatwas issued by the Ottoman Shaykh al-Islam. It was obvious that the declaration of jihad was intended specifically for those Muslims living under Russian or British dominion. One fatwa was translated into Tatar and many copies were printed. Contrary to the calculations of the fatwa authors, the declaration of jihad did not bring about an immediate Muslim uprising in the dominions of the Entente.27 The hopes of the Ottoman leadership and their German sponsors as to the success of pan-Islamic and pan-Turkic propaganda were not well-founded. Muslims in Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia did not support the summons issued in Istanbul, while Arabs in Syria, Palestine, Hijaz and North Africa actively fought against the Ottomans.28 On the front lines, German agents and aircraft spread the Istanbul proclamation of jihad among the Muslims of the Russian army. One former Austrian spy maintained in his memoirs that such propaganda did have some effect.29 Such activities did not go unnoticed by the Russian military.

Russian Muslims fighting in the First World War The faithful at war: Religious practices and the authorities Under wartime conditions, after tens of thousands of Turkic soldiers had been mobilized (instances are known when there could be as many as five hundred in a single regiment30), there was a clear shortage of Muslim chaplains. It was the soldiers themselves who first felt the effects. They had been writing home about this problem since the start of hostilities. In one letter from the front, addressed to a prominent Tatar public figure, Khadi Maksudov,31 dated September 1914, it was stated that in each regiment there were two Orthodox priests, but ‘for us poor Muslims there is not a single mullah.’ The writer inquired: ‘Who should we ask to provide them?’32 Indeed, it was not at all clear who ought to solve this complicated problem, which had great significance in maintaining the morale of the Turkic soldiers. In December 1914, a conference of representatives from Muslim social organizations was held in Petrograd, which proposed to the elected Provisional Central Muslim Committee that the latter should obtain sanction from the authorities to send to the front a minimum of one mullah per division, at government expense.33 This was clearly inadequate. But the authorities did not hurry to engage with even this most modest proposal. The unhappiness of the soldiery also drove the work of the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly (Orenburgskoe magometanskoe dukhovnoe sobranie – OMDS , based in Ufa

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since 1789), which, it transpired, was not wholly prepared to function under wartime condition. Complaints aimed at the OMDS can frequently be encountered in the letters written by wounded Muslims who were recovering in various field hospitals, the gist of which was that the mullahs were not fulfilling their obligations towards the soldiers very well. An editorial in the Tatar newspaper Turmush (‘The Life’) dated 22 May 1915 noted that the OMDS should be concerning itself with organizing the duties of military mullahs. In this way, the resolution of this social matter was assigned by Tatar public opinion to those Muslim ‘hierarchs’ who had some connection to the authorities. Meanwhile, the situation within the OMDS itself was far from straightforward, since mufti Sultanov died at the beginning of 1915, while the new mufti – the Petrograd akhun Baiazitov – was only appointed in July of that year. The problems concerning Muslim chaplains were resolved shortly after, which most likely can be attributed to the new mullah, who enjoyed good connections among the higher echelons of power. In the words of F. Gabidullin, the military imam of the Second Army, who arrived in Orenburg in February 1916, the salary of an imam was ‘good’: between 400 and 550 roubles per month.34 In the spring of 1916, the military leadership finally took a decision that led to a significant increase in the number of Muslim chaplains. According to a decree from the commander-in-chief Nicholas II , a framework for regimental mullahs was established (a corresponding telegram to the army and front-line commanders followed on 7 April 1916). In the summer of 1916, the military mullah attached to 5th Army headquarters drew attention during an inspection of its units to the fact that Muslims who were killed in forward positions were being buried by the regimental priest, which was having a strongly negative effect on the morale of Muslim soldiers. It was highly inadequate to have just two mullahs in the entire 5th Army, given the significant number of Turkic soldiers serving within it, and so, a military analyst mooted with regard to this, it was necessary to appoint one mullah per division, to be drawn from the lower ranks within that division, the candidate to have completed studies at a madrasa and to be in possession of a certificate attesting to his passing the examinations necessary to claim the title of mullah. This appointment was neither to entail extra expenditure of government funds, nor to exempt the appointee from his main duties as a low-ranking soldier at other times. On 5 July 1916, during Ramadan, there emerged a decree from Nicholas II creating the post of divisional mullah.35 In the summer of 1916, a divisional imam, A. Iagubov, who had arrived in Ufa, reported that ‘at the present time, very many imams have been appointed in the army to perform the necessary religious rituals.’36

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At the end of July, when Muslims were celebrating the festival of Eid al-Fitr (Uraza-Bairam) following the end of their sacred fast, the Petrograd akhun Baiazitov sent a message to the Tsar and received the following answer: ‘I thank you and all the Muslims who have gathered for the prayer service to mark the festival of Uraza-Bairam for your prayers and your expression of loyal feelings. I highly value the prowess of those many Muslims who are fighting in the ranks of our brave army. Nicholas.’ Baiazitov sent a report of this to the front-line army along with a request to allow Muslim soldiers to hold a service on 24 September, during a Muslim holy period. This request was met, in particular by the high command of the Northern Front, who likewise in December 1916, following another telegram from Baiazitov, granted Muslim soldiers the opportunity to hold a service on the 24th of that month, the next Muslim holy day.37 All these changes in religious practice raised the morale of Muslim soldiers: there are records of outstanding bravery being displayed by Muslim soldiers, from privates to generals, in the fulfilment of their military duties.

Muslim soldiers in their letters from the front A certain insight into the matters that preoccupied the Turkic soldiers on the front lines of the First World War can be gleaned from the letters they wrote. In truth, not many of these letters have survived. In the knowledge that their letters would be censored, soldiers were very cautious, often restricting themselves to talking about their health and asking after relatives. And yet these few preserved letters provide something of an opportunity to show how Turkic soldiers perceived the war. Muslim soldiers also sought the granting of opportunities to celebrate their religious ceremonies. The fact that they were oppressed due to their different nationality and faith caused acute grievance, given that they too, just like the ethnic Russians, were dying for Russia.38 An analysis of 54 letters written by Turkic soldiers that were published in the 1930s and which have since been subject, to greater or lesser degrees, to scholarly examination bears witness to a sense of national inferiority, and to incessant mockery and humiliation at the hands of ethnic Russian soldiers.39 The noted Turkic specialist Nikolai I. Ashmarin,40 who served during the war as military censor in Kazan, wrote in his report dated 8 September 1914 that: The letters of Muslim soldiers are usually composed according to one and the same template and include exceedingly little information about what is happening in the war. They are composed in a minor tone. . . . The war, it would

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seem, appears to the Muslim as some kind of unforeseen misfortune, visited by fate on some and bypassing others; he delves but little into the tragic chain of events, remaining discontent at the fact that something has disrupted the peaceful flow of his narrow-minded existence. As can be seen from their letters, many Muslims are in secondary roles in the rear echelons of the army, performing the duties of sentry and the like. In the letters of these Muslims the hope is frequently expressed that he will not have to go into action and that the end of the war is already nigh. Some among the Tatars obviously consider that the war with Germany and Austro-Hungary is a matter which has little connection with Muslim interests. ‘We are here in the service of the giaurs [infidels]; we must endure’, writes one of these. It is entirely possible that such a view of the current war does not constitute any kind of exception.41

In another of his reports, dated 29 August 1914, Ashmarin drew attention to a letter from a Tatar soldier that employed what he termed ‘a spreading turn of phrase’: ‘We, languishing in the Tsar’s service.’42 This widespread expression came into being under the influence of what the Turkic soldiers in the ranks of the Russian army were in reality experiencing. In the Kazan military censor’s report that was drawn up between late September and early October 1914, it was stated that, in letters written by Muslims, ‘there can be observed in some instances that same alienation from general Russian affairs that was also seen earlier; occasionally the very same expressions are encountered, along the lines of “I, in the hands of the giaurs.” ’43 An excerpt from a letter written by a Tatar soldier in Menzelinsk, dated 21 September 1914, reads: ‘There is a war on, we must fight. There’s nothing we can do, we have to knock the German on the head. This makes the [ethnic] Russians happy, they understand the idea of a motherland to defend, but for us Muslims it’s somehow not quite right. But we will fight bravely, no worse than the Russians.’ A letter dated 12 January 1915 contains the following lines: ‘Muslims are dying for Slavs and for the icon. . . . In the name of the motherland all we Muslims are dying arm in arm.’ Complaints are also constantly encountered in the letters of Turkic soldiers about the cold, the hunger, and the losses. In the letters of more educated people other motifs are encountered, and a completely different mindset – the desire for peace as soon as possible. One of the censors stated the following: ‘Neither is there seen in Tatar letters a clear understanding of the moment being lived through, whereas previously there used to be, but now the Tatars are not looking at the future of Russia; if any future interests them at all then it is exclusively their own, a narrowly national future.’

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Acknowledging that ‘I cannot write much, they flog us when they find out soldiers are writing the truth’, the writer of one letter nevertheless reports that ‘We are enduring many troubles. May the Tsars make peace soon, it can’t get any worse for us. . . . The mullah . . . says that there is some good to our people from us fighting here.’ Another soldier wrote to a Tatar newspaper to request that ‘In each issue write that there are many millions of us and that we have national consciousness.’ One of the letters from the front reports that ‘an order has come that a strict watch over Muslims should be established, since Muslims, so they say, are planning to surrender, and so for each Muslim soldier an [ethnic] Russian soldier has been appointed to keep surveillance. For us Muslims this is very insulting and shameful, and so our morale has fallen, for we all, just like the Russians, are spilling our blood.’44 Occasionally they had to hear from their officers that ‘a thousand of those wretched foreigners aren’t worth the sole of one Russian soldier’s boot’, that there was no point taking particular trouble over those ‘filthy Tatars’ and all their ‘Tatar claptrap’.45 Humiliation and violence at the hands of their officers was the common lot of every soldier, and they would at times take out their bitterness towards their commanders on Muslims. According to one Muslim soldier, a platoon commander in his company had forbidden them to converse in Tatar or to gather in groups; the company commander would hit them for being unable to sing ‘God save the Tsar’ due to their poor knowledge of Russian (they were forbidden to sing in Tatar), while some among the ethnic Russian soldiers tormented the Tatars, calling them ‘Turks’ and ‘Infidels’. ‘For two years now we have been suffering in this accursed war’, wrote a Tatar soldier originally from the town of Arsk, now at the front: ‘but never mind that we have complied with everything and behaved well. Just try speaking in your mother tongue, it means getting a punch in the mouth . . . That’s what being a Tatar means to me. I wanted to enter the warrant officer school, they didn’t take me.’ Similarly: ‘My wound has healed, I feel fine. I wanted to go home, but they wouldn’t allow it. Clearly, “being a Tatar” is a problem.’ A letter dated 28 May 1915 states: Here we are, sitting, thinking. Not knowing who we are going up against. When they sent us to the front, they said for the fatherland and for the Tsar, it meant nothing to us. We’re not allowed to talk in our mother tongue, as soon as we start they immediately yell “Hey, you, you heathen Turks, stop that”, and there you are, my friend, it’s a thousand times worse [here] than in prison.’

A Muslim private in the Gatchina Regiment offered advice to his loved ones in a letter dated 11 March 1915 that they should lop off two fingers from one relative

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who would otherwise end up in the army. ‘If I could escape from the clutches of the unbelievers’, he wrote, ‘I would even chop one [of his] hand[s] off.’ For himself, he wished ‘to be wounded, and sent back home in the near future’. From a letter dated 15 December 1915: Yesterday I won a Cross of St George. We had been on a long reconnaissance mission and captured an Austrian sentry unit. . . . The company commander said . . . that service to the Russian Tsar would not be forgotten. Now you will be beaten less . . . The Cross of St George will still be a protection, as otherwise it’s all clips round the back of the head and swearing . . . because I am Muslim.

The apparition of Muslim chaplains on the front lines also received assessments from the soldiers. In one of the Kazan letters, written by a Tatar serving in the 105th Artillery Regiment, this was greeted as follows: ‘Our army, the Third, has had a mullah appointed . . . he reads prayers, and exhorts us . . . to fight the enemy until our last drop of blood. This is the behest of our great prophet Muhammad, and you must carry it out precisely.’ The mullahs promised an improvement in the position of Muslims should Russia be victorious: ‘Muslims will benefit if Russian wins.’46

The revolutions of 1917: A growth in political awareness The February Revolution and the hope for Muslim military units The February Revolution, in leading to the fall of autocracy in the Russian Empire, presented great opportunities for all the many nationalities within the country who were bent on liberty, equality and democracy. Where earlier the military oath had sworn loyalty to the monarch, now it was to the new order. On 7 March 1917, the bulletin of the Provisional Government published the text of the oath of loyalty in service to the Russian state, with a special wording for Muslims. For them, it ended as follows: ‘I conclude this vow of mine by kissing the glorious Quran and I sign below.’47 In the Turkoman Cavalry Regiment, which numbered around 400 Turkmen cavalrymen, the regimental mullah led them in this oath. When the regiment had formed up under its standard, amid deep silence the mullah read a sura from the Quran, and then wordlessly raised his hands. The regiment followed his example. The mullah prayed for a minute before exclaiming ‘Ameen!’, after which everyone brought their hands to their face, and the oath was complete.48 The following lines from a letter written by a

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Tatar soldier in Kazan characterize his mindset following the swearing of the oath: ‘Yesterday, we swore an oath to the Provisional government. . . . Now we are our own masters.’ The mullah ‘says that we Muslims must now fight harder than ever for freedom. . . . It’s just that I don’t want to fight now. Now both Russian and Muslim are equals, and what’s the point of fighting . . .’49 The Turkic soldiers showed that they had no intention of watching passively while the new regime decided their fate. The greater part of them was counting on political autonomy. From Spring 1917 onwards, Muslim military organizations began to be formed in both the rear echelons and on the front lines. In the main they were preoccupied with explaining to the Turkic soldiers (who as a rule spoke Russian either very poorly or not at all) the changes in society and with preparing them for the elections to the all-Russian Constituent Assembly. The first of these Muslim military organizations to emerge was the Kazan Muslim Military Committee, formed on 8 March 1917. At its second meeting, on 12 March, the proposal to create regular Muslim military formations was first voiced, and greeted with delight.50 The idea of creating such formations had come to fruition not only among Turkic soldiers, but also among some Russian senior officers. The question of creating a separate Crimean Tatar regiment had first been put to the Crimean Tatars by the commander of the Crimean Cavalry Regiment, Aleksandr P. Revishin,51 who wrote in his report to the Tauride mufti that he considered it vital to offer support to the Tatars, which support might take the form of the creation of a unit to be manned exclusively by Crimean Tatars. Although the Crimean Regiment is already such a unit, the experience of both peacetime and war has shown that it is not enough. . . . I consider it would be best, if, preserving the Crimean Cavalry Regiment, there was also to be formed an infantry unit, either as part of the Regiment or separately, through whose ranks would pass the remaining Crimean Tatars . . . Such an organization, allowing Muslims to serve together and to observe their religious requirements, would offer great advantages as a military entity, since it would be fully homogenous in its makeup in terms of nationality and religion, and tight-knit, by dint of the individual soldiers’ affiliations to the same villages, towns, and districts.

In Revishin’s view, the Provisional Government could rely fully on the loyalty of Crimean Tatar military units, and see in them a solid buttress, proof of which, or so he averred, could be taken from the example of the Crimean Cavalry Regiment.52

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During the visit of Aleksandr Kerensky, then Provisional Government War Minister, to Sebastopol on 15 May 1917, a deputation of Crimean Tatars went to him to request the return of the Crimean Cavalry Regiment to Crimea and the formation from its replacement squadrons of a specifically Tatar regiment, and also the organization of another such regiment, the officers and soldiers of which were to be drawn from Crimean Tatars currently attached to reserve units. Kerensky listened attentively to the deputation, asking them an array of questions and being greatly pleased by the answers. He acknowledged that the requirements of the Crimean Tatars deserved satisfaction and he promised to help, proposing to forward a report to the government, which was done on 17 May.53 In meeting the requirement to allot Turkic Muslim officers and soldiers to separate reinforcement companies, battalions, squadrons and batteries, the commanding officer of forces in the Kazan military district, General Alexander Z. Myshlaevsky, permitted on 24 May 1917 the detachment of Muslim officers and soldiers from the district’s reserve infantry regiments, cavalry regiments and artillery brigades, on condition that the regimental commanders and committees agreed, that no special funding was allotted, and that the existing organization of regiments was not disrupted.54 Following this, Muslim formations appeared in garrisons in the Volga and Ural regions. In August 1917, representatives of Muslim groups and of the main ethnic army organizations (Ukrainians, Poles, Lithuanians, Estonians and Latvians) appealed to the Provisional Government, stating that ‘the half-year period of existence of the revolutionary army strongly demands that the question be settled as to the rights of the nationalities in the make-up of the army to have their own organizations.’55 Following the events at the end of August whereby through their efforts Muslim organizations successfully defended Petrograd from the ‘Wild Division’ (dikaia diviziia), which was the strike force of Lavr Kornilov and his supporters, the government began to cooperate in the creation of large-scale Muslim units – regiments, divisions and corps. On 15 September the General staff announced that the new War Minister Aleksandr Verkhovsky had given Muslims his agreement in principle to the recruitment of one Muslim division. Commander-in-Chief Kerensky, in agreement with the War Minister, ordered that a reserve Muslim battalion be formed in Kazan to reinforce one regiment in one of the divisions.56

The ‘Muslimification’ of the armed forces In response to the telegraphed announcement that the government had permitted the formation of Muslim regiments, the Azeri polemicist Asad Mamedov-

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Akhliev wrote the following in an article entitled ‘A National Muslim Army’: ‘For us today a new era dawns, and we must add two new notable dates to the list of our national commemorations: the day of liberation from the Tsarist yoke and the day of the decree on the creation of a national army.’57 When he received this news, Mamed Usuf Dzhafarov, an Azeri member of the Special Transcaucasian Commissariat of the Provisional Government,58 sent a telegram from Tiflis to War Minister Verkhovsky, in which it was said that Transcaucasian Muslims (Azeris) express the desire to form an infantry brigade, artillery division and the Second Tatar Cavalry Regiment, in order to participate in the ‘wider defence of the motherland’. Any refusal of this request, noted Dzhafarov, would cause great offence to Muslims, they would consider that under this government too they were ‘outcasts from the fatherland, and did not enjoy its trust’.59 In the middle of October, Dzhafarov reported that Transcaucasian Muslims considered it vital to perform every obligation to the state as a whole, on an equal footing with every other citizen of the free Russian republic, including completing military service, the form and type of which should be determined in accordance with the particular demands of both their religious and their daily lives. Most worthwhile of all would be to create new, separate volunteer units without delay – this idea was especially popular among Muslims.60 The Revolution needs an army of disciplined warriors, wrote the Muslim politician Islam Shagiakhmetov61 in his article ‘Muslim Regiments and Revolution’, while Muslim soldiers, in the opinion of military specialists, maintained discipline and all the other factors vital if they were to be used as armed forces by the state. At the same time, in the interests of military activity, it was desirable that there be mutual understanding between the soldiers within military units, and ‘the most complete unity of spirit’. But these conditions could not be met by hundreds of thousands of Muslim soldiers, who had a poor knowledge of Russian and were scattered throughout the various armies.62 The creation of Muslim military formations occurred against the general backdrop of the disintegration of the Russian army. The ‘Muslimification’ of the army appeared attractive both to national leaders and to the soldiery, as well. On 10 October, at a session of the Provisional Council of the Russian Republic, War Minister Verkhovsky touched on the issue of national forces, saying that alongside existing Polish units at the present time ‘the creation of other units is in fact already taking place: Ukrainian, Estonian, Georgian, and Tatar. . . . This will give us the opportunity to keep in the forces people who have lived together, and in addition to this will in exactly the same way allow us to increase the military capability of the army.’63 A Muslim army had become necessary to the

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Provisional Government in the guise of a buttress to it. Taken overall, ‘nationalization’ affected 53 infantry and rifle divisions, six cavalry divisions, three separate infantry regiments and five separate cavalry regiments, plus a multitude of auxiliary and technical units. Among the Muslim peoples striving for the creation of separate units there were, in the main, Tatars and Bashkirs, stated Chief of the General Staff Vladimir V. Marushevsky64 in a telegram dated 20 October to Nikolai N. Dukhonin,65 the Officer commanding the headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief. For both these and other Turkic peoples, united by the commonality of their religion, the general emphasized that, for them religion was ‘the main and most powerful unifying point of departure’. In his view, discord and the desire for isolation among the Muslim nationalities are not to be observed, while, on the contrary, there can be seen a strong urge towards conjunction on the basis of their common interests. All the most authoritative Muslim democratic revolutionary organizations, such as the All-Russian Muslim Soviet and the All-Russian Muslim Military Shura [Vserossiiskoe musul’manskoe voennoe shura – VMVS h66] are multinational in nature and, as their very names show, have as their aim to unite Muslims without distinction along ethnic grounds. . . . In accordance with the facts just laid out, the General Staff, in initially “Muslimifying” three reserve infantry regiments in Kazan, Ufa and Simferopol, did not find it possible to assign Muslim soldiers by individual nationality, which would only have complicated the presently unavoidable work of organizing military units along national lines.67

For its part, the VMVS h remarked: We consider that the reconstruction of the army along national lines into correspondingly national military units was prepared for by history itself. . . . There is no doubt that the allocation of men to army units along national lines, as betokened by the decree on self-identification of nationality, is proceeding without major breaches, one might say painlessly, both in the technical and the moral sense. And the military might of the army, the level of its awareness, will not suffer in the slightest as a result. On the contrary, we might hope for an increase and intensification in these qualities.68

The Provisional Government oversaw the process of creating national formations in the regular army. This was particularly important for Turkic Muslim soldiers. In November 1917, in Kazan, a rally of Muslim military personnel in the Kazan military district passed a resolution whereby no Muslim would be sent to the front until Muslim regiments had been created in the rear and Muslim

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divisions existed on the front.69 Reports reached headquarters on 17–18 November stating that Turkic soldiers were greatly perturbed by delays in resolving the issue of forming new Muslim units, in particular the Muslim Corps on the Romanian front. As a result, on 19 November, each front received Dukhonin’s orders via telegraph to immediately set about forming a Muslim infantry corps drawing on Muslim volunteers from the Northern, Western, South-Western and Romanian fronts. A VMVS h commissar present at headquarters ended his telegram reporting this news as follows: ‘This is the beginning of a new life in the history of the Muslims of Russia.’70 The project to create a Muslim Corps on the Romanian front was quickly set in motion. Later, the ‘Muslimification’ of the armed forces was to continue, but new problems would arise under Soviet power.

The October Revolution and the consolidation of Muslim units Following the October Revolution and the appointment of Nikolai Krylenko as commander-in-chief, the re-organization of the army along national lines was forbidden on the basis that the existing Polish Corps opposed the new leadership, while VMVS h conducted ‘un-Bolshevik tactics and programmes’. Indeed, the Shura had supported the Provisional Government after the February revolution, and remained neutral towards the Bolsheviks after October 1917, but planned to declare an Idel-Ural Republic within the Russian Democratic Federative Republic. The separation of Ukraine and the isolation of the Romanian front placed the 1st Muslim Corps, whose headquarter was located in Iassy, ‘outside the influence of Russian politics’. The friendly relations between the Ukrainian Rada (Parliament) and VMVS h facilitated ‘the external well-being of the Corps’, which received 144 light artillery pieces, 24 howitzers, armoured cars, aircraft and huge sums of money from dissolved units. Muslim soldiers from the Romanian and South-Western fronts began to concentrate in Iassy; similar dispositions were made on the other fronts, as well, but Commander-in-Chief Krylenko sought to prevent them. Despite the war with Ukraine, the Muslim Corps, in which there were up to 20,000 officers and soldiers, remained neutral towards Soviet Russia and recognized only the authority of VMVS h.71 The process of ‘Muslimification’ of the army, as part of its overall ‘nationalization’, was understood in different ways by different Bolshevik politicians. The Bolshevik coup, noted VMVS h, initially obstructed the ‘Muslimification’ of the army. Krylenko began to be suspicious of something or other, and to impose every possible condition, up to and including drawing

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Muslim soldiers into the civil war. He declared that the ‘Muslimification’ of the army was ‘a counter-revolutionary step’ since it had been begun under Dukhonin. VMVS h had to send a telegram to Krylenko and the head of the People’s Commissariat of Nationalities, Stalin, on 25 November, in which unhappiness was expressed at ‘the demotion to counter-revolutionaries of the 30 million strong Muslim population and their workers and peasants in grey overcoats’. Following this Krylenko approved Dukhonin’s order, and then ordered the formation of a Muslim Corps on the Romanian front consisting of three divisions. After Krylenko had made concessions and permitted Muslim soldiers to form their own military units, VMVS h began allocating Muslim soldiers both to rear echelons and to the front-lines.72 Stalin had counted on attracting Turkic soldiers over to his side. On 15 November 1917 he signed a directive on the issue of, as the document had it, ‘nationalizing’ the army. This stated that ‘the free grouping of soldiers along national lines within one or another military formation is permissible’, but ‘this must not be mixed with the autonomous departure home of groups that have been created in this way; such departures are impermissible in wartime conditions without the agreement of the general military organ’. To Krylenko’s question of how to deal with national formations, including Muslim units, Leon Trotsky – according to published telegraphic communications – replied that there should not be any political obstacles placed in the way of creating national regiments, but only those restrictions which arose from the situation on the front lines. Furthermore, direct contact should be established with these units via ‘energetic and tactful’ commissars, while there should also be prompt translation of all decrees, proclamations and orders from the new regime into the languages of the nationalities.73 On 28 November there followed order no. 12 from Commander-in-Chief Nikolai Krylenko, in which it was stated that the formation of national regiments might take place only on condition that those same principles which were governing the restructuring of the Russian revolutionary army be adopted in the internal structure of the new national regiments.74 When, on 2 December, Krylenko sent a telegram to VMVS h to state that in addition to his order dated 19 November the Muslim Corps may be formed according to the conditions laid out in order no. 12, VMVS h replied: on the basis of the call from the Council of People’s Commissars and the slogan of the Soviets on the self-identification of nationalities, VMVS h ‘as the highest organ of over one million Muslim soldiers considers that the organization of the army along national lines will not encounter obstacles from Russian revolutionary democracy. Concerning the

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organization of management and internal living arrangements within Muslim units, the Shura considers that neither Russian democracy nor the government is able to dictate to Muslims the conditions of internal living arrangements in their army units.’75 In this way, by December, there existed four frontline committees, 13 army committees, 12 district committees, 98 garrison committees, and over 150 divisional Muslim committees; in all around 300. There was not a single army or district in which a Muslim committee was not operative; there remained very few divisions and garrisons without Muslim organization. Moreover, there had emerged frontline committees, a development unforeseen by the First AllRussian Muslim Military Rally (Kazan, July 1917). Muslim cavalry and artillery units began to be formed. Turkic soldiers who had been scattered throughout the country were able to come together and create large, cohesive organizations which strove to attain the goal that all Turkic soldiers should serve in their own national units, and to support the vision of the Muslims of the Russian republic serving in their own ‘national army’.76 The ‘Muslim National Army’ founded by VMVS h included 20,000 soldiers in Kazan, 15,000 in Ufa, 12,000 in Orenburg and 10,000 in other cities of the Volga region.77 Scholars have yet to calculate the overall membership of all such formations that existed in the country at that time, but it was a significant number. Towards the end of 1917 there existed, according to information from VMVS h, the following Turkic Muslim units: the Tatar Regiment, two Crimean cavalry regiments, the Muslim Rifle Corps on the Romanian front, the 1st Muslim Rifle Regiment in Orenburg, the 2nd Muslim Reserve Regiment in Ufa, and the Turkoman regiments. Furthermore, there were several separate squadrons and numerous companies and battalions. The restructuring of the 95th infantry reserve regiment in Kazan and the 32nd infantry reserve regiment in Simferopol, plus two front-line divisions, was completed. The consolidation of Muslim troops into one regiment in Moscow and in Elizabetpol was begun.78 On 11 November in Simferopol the first unit of the Crimean Cavalry Regiment arrived from the front. ‘In Crimea there appeared Tatar squadron members, excellently disciplined and joyfully met not only by democratic organizations (Russian) but also the local population, which threw flowers. . . . This was how the Russian population, which had lived through worrying days, greeted the Tatar soldiers. . . . There was much in this that was momentous’, wrote an eyewitness.79 They were greeted rapturously not only by the public, but also by soldiers from the First Crimean Tatar Battalion, and also representatives from Ukrainian regiments. The battalion mentioned was reformed as a regiment. A

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distinctive style of uniform and equipment was prepared for the soldiers in Tatar regiments.80 By the end of November, the strength of the Crimean Tatar forces in Crimea numbered around 7,000 men, of whom around a third were on horseback. These forces (two regiments of cavalry and one of infantry) were constantly being supplemented by Tatar soldiers returning from the front lines or from captivity.81 In December 1917 a Tatar cavalry brigade was formed, consisting of two cavalry regiments.82 In early December 1917, Turkic soldiers in the Moscow garrison demanded the formation of a Muslim infantry regiment in Moscow, which was approved by the commanding officer of the Moscow military district, Nikolai I. Muralov.83 This issue was considered at a session of the Collegium of the Council of People’s Commissars on military affairs, on 20 December 1917.84 As a result, towards the start of January 1918 a Muslim regiment was created.85 On Transcaucasian territory several national Corps began to be formed in December, including a Muslim Corps manned by Azeris. On 27 December, Krylenko telegraphed the chief of staff on the Caucasian Front granting permission ‘to man regiments with Transcaucasian Muslims drawn from deserters from the front, on the assumption that it will be a Corps of no greater than two divisions in strength, and that the “Muslimification” of the regiments will proceed gradually, one after another’.86 Permission to form a two-division corps in the Caucasus manned by Transcaucasian Muslims was received.

Conclusion ‘Of course, this hateful war’, said a delegate to the Second All-Russian Muslim Military Congress (Kazan, January–March 1918), ‘has made all of us impatient and nervous; especially those of us, Muslim soldiers, who have been scattered throughout all the units of a multi-million strong army, isolated from our brothers.’87 The conditions of service for Muslims in the Russian army naturally left their imprint on the attitude of Turkic men towards Slavs and to Russian society as a whole. The burdens of a soldier’s life weighed far more heavily on a Muslim than on a Slav. The fulfilment of their military duty to the motherland was understood by them not as a defence of Russian power, at whose hands they had endured sufficient offence, but as a defence of their own nationality, which through the whim of history had become a part of the Russian state. The appearance of Muslim chaplains significantly improved the morale and fighting spirit of Muslim soldiers. In the conditions of the revolutionary year 1917, the

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opposing sides had need of reliable military formations and so they attempted to rely on Muslims, calculating that the latter would not be able to find their bearings in such circumstances. Politicians attempted to play the ‘Muslim card’ in their own interests. They gave no thought to the actual aspirations of Turkic soldiers. Meanwhile, the latter believed that they would achieve a worthy position in a renewed Russia. It can be provisionally stated that to a significant degree the ‘Muslimification’ of the army from below was driven by the soldiers’ urge to defend their own nationalities; in so doing, they strengthened both Russian power and statehood. In this distinctive form the Turkic soldiers of the Russian Empire actually revealed their understanding of patriotism, and maintained the ‘dialogue’ with Slavs in the conditions of the First World War and the Russian Revolutions of 1917. When the Bolsheviks seized power in October 1917, they began to use Muslim units in the struggle against their enemies, especially during the years of the Civil War. When the need for such units had fallen away, they were disbanded. However, the USSR would draw on this experience of creating military units along national lines again, very soon after the start of the war against Germany in 1941.

Notes 1 This text is an abridged translation of Salavat Iskhakov, ‘Tiurki-musul’mane v rossiiskoi armii (1914–1917)’, in Sergei Kliashtornyi et al. (eds), Tiurkologicheskii sbornik 2002: Rossiya i tiurskii mir (St. Petersburg: Vostochnaia literatura RAN , 2003), 245–80. It was translated into English by Ian Appleby. 2 Voenno-statisticheskii ezhegodnik armii za 1912 god (St. Petersburg: Glavnyi Shtab, 1914), 230–1, 374–5. 3 Rossiia. 1913 god: Statistiko-dokumental’nyi spravochnik (St. Petersburg: Blits, 1995), 279. 4 Aleksandr S. Senin, ‘Armeiskoe dukhovenstvo Rossii v Pervuiu mirovuiu voinu’, Voprosy istorii 10 (1990): 161. 5 Musul’manskie deputaty Gosudarstvennoi dumy Rossii 1905–1917 gg. Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Ufa: Kitap, 1998), 202, 224, 225. 6 Daud A. Aminov, Tatary v St. Peterburge. Istoricheskii ocherk (St. Petersburg: Al’d, 1994), 13–15; Islam na territorii byvshei Rossiiskoi imperii. Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ (Moscow: Vostochnaia literatura, 1998), 86–7. 7 Otchet Obshchestva prosveshcheniia magometan v Rostove i Nakhichevani-naDonu s 1-go iiulia 1914 goda po 1-e avgusta 1915 goda (Rostov-on-Don: n.p., 1915), 24.

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8 Nikolai N. Popov, ‘Vystupleniia rabochikh i krest’ian na Urale vo vremia iiul’skoi mobilizatsii 1914 g.’, in Rabochie Urala v period kapitalizma, 1861–1917 (Sverdlovsk: UrGU, 1985), 122. 9 State Archive of the Russian Federation (hereafter GARF ) F7952/5/49, 89. 10 Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev, Izbrannye Trudy (Kazan: Gasyr, 1998), 489. 11 Musul’manskie deputaty, 265. 12 Tsarskaia armiia v period mirovoi voiny i Fevral’skoi revoliutsii, Materialy k izucheniiu istorii imperialisticheskoi i grazhdanskoi voin (Kazan: Tatizdat, 1932), 179. 13 Gayaz Iskhakov (1878–1954) was a writer, journalist, translator and politician. He emigrated in 1920 from Russia to Europe. 14 Gayaz Iskhakov, Idel’-Ural (Kazan: Tatarskoe Knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1991), 47. 15 Russian State Military Archive (hereafter RGVA ) F461-K/2/142, 72. 16 Muhammed-Safa Baiazitov (1877–1937) was lecturer on Islamic studies in different military institutions of the capital and, from 1914, the imam of the Petrograd military district. He was also the mufti of the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly (1915–17). 17 Inorodcheskoe Obozrenie (Kazan) 8 (1914): 570–3. 18 Umar Iu. Idrisov, Sergei B. Seniutkin, Ol’ga N. Seniutkina and Iuliia N. Guseva, Iz istorii nizhegorodskikh musul’manskikh obshchin v XIX-30kh godakh XX veka (Nizhnii Novgorod: Nizhegorodskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet, 1997), 130. 19 Muhamed’iar Sultanov (1837–1915) was the mufti of the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly (1896–1915). 20 Inorodcheskoe obozrenie (Kazan) 9 (1914): 606–7. 21 Arslan Krichinskii, Ocherki russkoi politiki na okrainakh (Baku: n.p., 1919), 186–7. 22 Narody i oblasti (Moscow), no. 6, 7 (1914): 27. 23 Mustafa Kemal’, Put’ novoi Turtsii, 1919–1927 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe sotsial’noekonomicheskoe izdatel’stvo, 1934): 350–1. 24 Inorodcheskoe obozrenie (Kazan) 9 (1914): 608–10. 25 Adil’girei Karashaiskii: Tatar of Crimea, he was mufti and headed the Tauride Muslim Spiritual Board up to the February Revolution in 1917. 26 Liutsian Klimovich, Islam v tsarskoi Rossii, ocherki (Moscow: Gaiz, 1936), 295, 299, 321, 328. 27 Hakan Kirimli, National Movements and National Identity among the Crimean Tatars, 1905–1916 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 199–200. 28 Iurii N. Rozaliev, ‘Mustafa Kemal’ Atatiurk’, Voprosy Istorii (Moscow), no. 8 (1995): 63. 29 Maks Ronge, Razvedka i kontrrazvedka, voennyi i promyshlennyi shpionazh, 3rd edn (Moscow: Voennoe Isdatel’stvo Narodnogo komissariata oborony, 1943), 94. 30 Tsarskaia armiia, 198. 31 Khadi Maksudov (1868–1941) was a linguist and politician. 32 Russian State Military-Historical Archive (hereafter RGVIA ) F1720/11/3, 8.

Turkic Muslims in the Russian Army 33 34 35 36 37 38

39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55 56 57

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Inorodcheskoe Obozrenie (Kazan) 11 (1915): 868. Inorodcheskoe Obozrenie (Kazan) 2, no. 4, 5 (1916): 320–3. RGVIA F2003/2/306, 45, 81, 82; F2459/1/3, 40; F3588/1/134, 552. Klimovich, Islam, 343. RGVIA F3588/1/134, 634, 744. Nina A. Vakhrusheva,‘Soldatskie pis’ma i tsenzorskie otchety kak istoricheskii istochnik (1915–1917 gg.)’, in Ivan M. Ionenko (ed.), Oktiabr’v Povolzh’e i Priural’e (istochniki i voprosy istoriografii) (Kazan: Kazanskii Universitet, 1972), 77. Indus R. Tagirov, Revoliutsionnaia bor’ba i natsional’no-osvoboditel’noe dvizhenie v Povolzh’e i na Urale, fevral’-iiul’ 1917 goda (Kazan: Kazaskii Universitet, 1977), 74. Nikolai Ivanovich Ashmarin (1870–1933) was a Russian and Soviet linguist and Turcologist. RGVIA F1720/11/3, 5–6. RGVIA F1720/11/3, 5–6. RGVIA F1720/11/3, 9. Klimovich, Islam, 324–5; Tsarskaia armiia, 100, 106, 184–5. Matvei Zakharov, Natsional’noe stroitel’stvo v Krasnoi Armii (Moscow, Leningrad: n.p., 1927), 30. Tsarskaia armiia, 184–5, 187, 189, 190, 198. Islam v zakonodatel’stve Rossii, 1554–1929 gg., Sbornik zakonodatel’nykh aktov, postanovlenii i rasporiazhenii pravitel’stva Rossii (Ufa: Bashkirskii Universitet, 1998), 85; Ol’ga Iu. Red’kina, ‘Veroispovednaia politika Vremennogo pravitel’stva Rossii, fevral’-oktiabr’ 1917 goda’, Religiia, tserkov’v Rossii i za rubezhom. Informatsionnyi biulleten’ (Moscow), no. 5 (1995): 83. Razak B. Khan Khadzhiev, Velikii Boiar (Belgrade: n.p., 1927), 43–5. Tsarskaia armiia, 203. Izvestiia Vserossiiskogo musul’manskogo voennogo shuro (hereafter IVMVSh), 24 December 1917. Aleksandr Petrovich Revishin (1870–1920) was the Commander of the Crimean Cavalry Regiment (January 1916–June 1917), and then Head of the 3rd Cavalry Division in the Ukrainian Army. In 1919 he commanded the Chechen Cavalry Division in Wrangel’s Russian army in Crimea. Izvestiia komiteta Bakinskikh musul’manskikh obshchestvennykh organizatsii (hereafter IKBMOO ), 2 July 1917. IKBMOO , 20 June 1917; IKBMOO , 2 July 1917. RGVIA F1720/3/430, 1. RGVIA F366/1/60, 51. RGVIA F366/1/93, 31. IKBMOO , 7 October 1917.

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58 Iusif Mamed Dzhafarov (1885–1938) was member of the 4th State Duma, member of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, member of the Transcaucasian Commissariat, Minister of Trade and Industry of the Republic of Azerbaijan (1918) and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Azerbaijan (1919). 59 Izvestiia Vserossiiskogo musul’manskogo soveta (hereafter IVMS), 6 October 1917. 60 RGVIA F366/1/93, 46, 49, 50, 53. 61 Islam Shagiakhmetov (1882–after 1923) was a Bashkir publicist and assistant attorney. He was member of the Turkestan Regional Muslim Council, Deputy of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, member of the Provisional People’s Council of Autonomous Turkestan (1917–18) and Prime Minister of Autonomous Turkestan (1917–18). 62 Turkestanskie vedomosti, 6 October 1917. 63 Vestnik Vremennogo pravitel’stva, 11 October 1917. 64 Vladimir Vladimirovich Marushevskii (1874–1952) was a Major General during the First World War and, in 1917, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian Army. 65 Nikolai Nikolaevich Dukhonin (1876–1917) was a Russian general and the last commander-in-chief of the Russian Imperial Army. 66 The All-Russian Muslim Military Shura was founded at the First All-Russian Muslim Military Congress in Kazan (17–25 July 1917). It was the highest authority for Muslim soldiers in the Russian Army, and was recognized by the Provisional Government. It gained the right to its own commissars in the Political Directorate of the War Ministry, in the Main Directorate of the General Staff, in the headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief, and in headquarters on the front lines, in the various armies, in the headquarters of ‘Muslimified’ divisions and in military district headquarters. It was disbanded by the Soviet regime in March 1918. 67 RGVIA F2003/2/336, 60–62. 68 IVMVSh, 23 November 1917. 69 IVMVSh, 19 November 1917. 70 IVMS , 24 November 1917; IVMVSh, 23 November 1917; RGVIA F2003/2/336, 40, 42–5, 47. 71 RGVA F17/1/124, 4–5. 72 IVMVSh 14 and 28 January 1918. 73 Izvestiia TsIK Sovetov krest’ianskikh, rabochikh i soldatskikh deputatov i Petrogradskogo Soveta rabochikh i soldatskikh deputatov (hereafter ITsIK ), 24–25, November 1917. 74 RGVIA F2003/2/336, 48. 75 IVMVSh, 12 December 1917. 76 IVMVSh, 12 and 31 December 1917. 77 Sultan-Galiev, Izbrannye Trudy, 175, 420.

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82

83 84 85 86 87

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IVMVSh, 31 December 1917. Vlast’ naroda, 15 December 1917. IVMS , 29 December 1917. ‘Pervaia Konstitutsiia krymsko-tatarskogo naroda (1917 g.)’, Otechestvennaia Istoriia (Moscow), no. 2 (1999): 108; Iurii Gaven, ‘Oktiabr’ v Krymu’, Revoliutsiia v Krymu (Simferopol) 1 (1922): 20. Lidmila P. Garcheva,‘Tsentral’naia Rada i krymskotatarskii Kurultai – soiuzniki v bor’be s Sovnarkomom Rossii’, Problemy politicheskoi istorii Kryma (Simferopol) 1 (1996): 17–8. IVMVSh, 12 December 1917; IVMS , 29 December 1917; RGVIA F2003/2/336, 100, 102. RGVA F1/1/18, 9. IVMVSh, 28 January 1918. RGVIA F2003/2/336, 112. IVMVSh, 28 January 1918.

Bibliography Aminov, Daud A. Tatary v st. Peterburge. Istoricheskii ocherk. St. Petersburg: Al’d, 1994. Garcheva, Liudmila P. ‘Tsentral’naia Rada i krymskotatarskii Kurultai – soiuzniki v bor’be s Sovnarkomom Rossii’. Problemy politicheskoi istorii Kryma (Simferopol), 1 (1996): 17–18. Gaven, Iu. ‘Oktiabr’ v Krymu’, Revoliutsiia v Krymu (Simferopol), 1 (1922). Idrisov, Umar Iu., Sergei B. Seniutkin, Ol’ga N. Seniutkina and Iulia N. Guseva. Iz istorii nizhegorodskikh musul’manskikh obshchin v XIX-30kh godakh XX veka. Nizhnii Novgorod: Nizhegorodkii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet, 1997. Iskhakov, Gayaz. Idel’-Ural. Kazan: Tatarskoe Knizhnoe Isdatel’stvo, 1991. Islam na territorii byvshei Rossiiskoi imperii, Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’. Moscow: n.p., 1998: 86–8. Kemal’, Mustafa. Put’ novoi Turtsii, 1919–1927. Moscow : Gosudarstvennoe sotsial’noeeknomicheskoe izdatel’stvo, 1934. Klimovich, Liutisan. Islam v tsarskoi Rossii, Ocherki. Moscow : Gaiz, 1936. Kirimli, Hakan. National Movements and National Identity among the Crimean Tatars (1905–1916). Leiden: Brill, 1996. Krichinskii, Arslan. Ocherki russkoi politiki na okrainakh (part. 1). Baku: Izdanie Soiuza Musul’manskoi trudovoi intelligentsii, 1919. Khan Khadzhiev, Razak B. Velikii Boiar. Belgrade: n.p., 1929. Popov, Nikolai N. ‘Vystupleniia rabochikh i krest’ian na Urale vo vremia iiul’skoi mobilizatsii 1914 g.’, in Rabochie Urala v period kapitalizma (1861–1917). Sverdlovsk: UrGU, 1985.

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Red’kina, Ol’ga Iu. ‘Veroispovednaia politika Vremennogo pravitel’stva Rossii (fevral’oktiabr’ 1917 goda)’, Religiia, tserkov’ v Rossii i za rubezhom. Informatsionnyi biulleten’ (Moscow), no. 5 (1995): 80–7. Ronge, Maks. Razvedka i kontrrazvedka (voennyi i promyshlennyi shpionazh), 3rd edn. Moscow: Vonnoe izdatel’stvo Narodnogo Komissariata Oborony, 1943. Rozaliev, Iurii N. ‘Mustafa Kemal’ Atatiurk’. Voprosy Istorii (Moscow), no. 8 (1995): 57–77. Senin, Aleksandr S. ‘Armeiskoe dukhovenstvo Rossii v Pervuiu mirovuiu voinu’. Voprosy Istorii (Moscow), no. 10 (1990): 159–65. Sultan-Galiev, Mirsaid. Izbrannye Trudy. Kazan: Gasyr, 1998. Tagirov, Indus R. Revoliutsionnaia bor’ba i natsional’no-osvoboditel’noe dvizhenie v Povolzh’e i na Urale (fevral’-iiul’ 1917 goda). Kazan: Kazanskii gosudarsvennyi universitet, 1977. Vakhrusheva, Nina A. ‘Soldatskie pis’ma i tsenzorskie otchety kak istoricheskii istochnik (1915–1917 gg.)’. In Oktiabr’ v Povolzh’e i Priural’e (istochniki i voprosy istoriografii). Kazan: Kazanskii Universitet, 1972, 67–88. Zakharov, Matvei. Natsional’noe stroitel’stvo v Krasnoi Armii. Moscow, Leningrad: n.p., 1927.

5

Between ‘Non-Russian Nationalities’ and Muslim Identity: Perceptions and Self-Perceptions of Soviet Central Asian Soldiers in the Red Army, 1941–1945 Kiril Feferman

Introduction This chapter examines perceptions and self-perceptions of Soviet Muslim soldiers in the Red Army from the beginning of the German invasion in June 1941 to the end of the war in May 1945. My hypothesis is that in the second part of the war, Soviet soldiers that belonged to various Central Asian ethnic groups and had previously considered themselves mainly along ethnic lines, wound up perceiving themselves as a more coherent religious group, although without amassing specific religious knowledge. The chapter presents a short survey of the recruitment of Muslims in the Russian Army during the First World War and Soviet policies in Central Asia in the interwar period. This is followed by the analysis of the evolution of Soviet attitudes towards the conscription of Central Asian recruits in the Red Army during the Second World War. A special section is devoted to exploring the impact of German propaganda on the young Central Asians serving in the frontline Soviet units. Throughout the chapter, the focus is kept on understanding the perceptions and self-perceptions of young Central Asian soldiers. It draws on secondary literature and official Soviet records. Regrettably, the central archive of the Russian Ministry of Defence, the major repository of materials, including the collection of the Main Political Directorate (Glavnoe politicheskoe upravlenie) of the Red Army and political administrations at a lower level, remains closed to foreign researchers.

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Historical background During the First World War, between 1 million and 1.5 million Russian Muslims served in the Russian Army.1 Among these, there was also a small number of Central Asian volunteers.2 Available sources point to their overwhelming perception and self-perception as Muslims: despite certain differences, this was how they viewed themselves, and this was also how non-Muslim officers and soldiers viewed them.3 Moreover, this was how the Imperial administration and the army command preferred to regard them. Despite a serious challenge on the part of the Ottoman Empire, which declared jihad and targeted among others Russian Muslims,4 Russian Muslim soldiers turned out to be a rather loyal element in the army during the First World War.5 Massive pro-Russian propaganda, conducted by the Russian Empire along Islamic lines,6 was no doubt instrumental in forging the loyalty of the Russian Muslim soldiers. At the same time, a portion of them failed to identify their goals as Muslims with those set by the Russian Empire. This led to lower figures of draftees among some sectors and in some regions with a preponderantly Muslim population.7 The overwhelming majority of native people in Central Asia were not conscripted into the Russian Army during the First World War on a variety of grounds, primarily because of the government’s mistrust towards them as Muslims.8 As of the early 1920s, after a gradual takeover of the territories belonging to the Russian Empire and populated primarily by Muslims (including Central Asia), the Bolshevik leadership had pursued a relatively moderate policy towards Islam and its adherents, aimed at slowly winning them over to the Bolshevik cause.9 Starting from 1927–9, this line was sharply reversed, and the Soviets cracked down on Islam. The new policy entailed the closure of mosques, largescale arrests of mullahs, and cutting the connections with foreign centres of Islam.10 Needless to say, any armed resistance to Soviet policies, including Islamic-toned insurgencies, were crushed relentlessly.11 At the same time, the campaign against religion was counterbalanced by the encouragement of ethnic awareness among Soviet Muslims. All of them shared some common elements, including the socialist values promoted by the regime, but the Soviet Union insisted on their ethnic and historical distinctiveness. This Soviet ‘nationalities policy’ was rooted in Lenin’s ideas about the national question. It was aimed at bolstering the new power’s authority by developing each nationality’s national and socialist identity and identifying it with a republic or autonomous region.12 Islam, however, continued to exist and to exert influence

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on a certain proportion of the local population in Central Asia throughout the 1920s and 1930s, including young people.13 It would be important to understand how these approaches were implemented in the Red Army, with its huge personnel raised from all across the Soviet Union. By the time the Germans began to attack the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Red Army had enlisted more than five million people. Conscription was supposed to be quite comprehensive. Yet the Soviet Ministry of Defence (Narodnyi komissariat oborony) ordered that the native population of Central Asia be excluded from the draft.14 Available Soviet sources do not elaborate on the reasons for such a measure. However, the order also contained a list of other groups excluded from the draft: alongside ‘the suspicious class enemies’, it also made a reference to native inhabitants of the Caucasus and Baltic republics. This seems to indicate that the reasons for their exclusion were the Soviet mistrust (suspicions regarding their political reliability and/or estimates of their potentially low combat contribution to the Red Army’s strength) of these ethnic groups in the projected offensive war against Nazi Germany.15

The Great Patriotic War The first months of the war saw a continuation of the pre-war pattern of the Soviet policies towards enlisting young Central Asians into the Red Army, although for the Soviets, the war turned out to be defensive rather than offensive. This might have to do with both inertia and also with the Soviet belief that existing, mainly Slavic manpower would suffice in the ongoing war against Nazi Germany. Therefore, from June 1941 to August 1942, the Soviet Union did not resort to fully enlisting the military support of its Muslim citizens.16 Nor, insofar as we can judge, was there any substantial change in the Soviet conscription policies regarding the Central Asian peoples. This was camouflaged by the propaganda rhetoric about the establishment of the so-called ‘national formations’. In the case of Central Asia, these formations were formally proclaimed in November 1941. However, they were never fully manned, and this policy was actually abandoned as early as 1942, with most of the Central Asian units being disbanded.17 At the same time, evidently with an eye to possible change in the future, a shift was discernible with respect to the preconscription instruction programme: starting from the beginning of the war, the authorities increasingly endeavoured to apply it to the native inhabitants of Central Asia.18

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It took Soviet military planners time to realize that millions of the pre-war draftees no longer stood at their disposal: they had either fallen into German captivity or been killed in action.19 Despite their reluctance, the Soviet military planners gradually had to accept the idea that the existing and rapidly diminishing Slavic human resources might not suffice in the war. The Soviets appear to have arrived at this conclusion in the second part of 1942 when the Wehrmacht summer offensive brought about the deepest German penetration into Soviet territory. To meet this challenge, the draft had to be expanded and to include new, hitherto unaffected parts of the Soviet populace, including young Central Asians.20 This was done even though young draftees from Central Asia were problematic in several respects. In addition to the way this group had been perceived before the war, suffice it to mention their low proficiency in the Russian language, the only language of command in the Red Army, as well as health problems.21 What was the profile of an average draftee from Central Asia during this period?22 Presumably, he had a weak ethnic identity and also a weak religious identity, as religious ignorance among Muslim draftees was widespread. Certainly, this depended on draftees’ personal backgrounds, for example, whether they were conscripted in towns or villages. It is probable that compared to other Central Asians, Kazakh conscripts had a looser Muslim identity owing to remnants of paganism.23 On the whole, in Central Asia, a loosely articulated secular Muslim identity coexisted with an ethnic one, while the latter also reflected how the authorities, whether civil or military, regarded Central Asian draftees and referred to them. At the first stage, masses of Central Asian draftees were sent to the battlefield, after having undergone only quick and generally very basic military training. Their insufficient command of the Russian language, exacerbated by inadequate technical skills, resulted in Central Asian draftees being overwhelmingly placed in the infantry, the only branch of the army ready to accept soldiers with few or no technical skills. It was also this branch that needed ‘cannon fodder’ more than any other branch of the Red Army. This came as a result of a high death toll suffered by infantrymen. Predictably, the first waves of Central Asian draftees suffered from particularly heavy casualties.24 The inadequate ideological training of the recruits (they did not understand the Russian language, and propaganda in their own languages had not been developed by that time) led them inevitably to fail to understand the Soviet motives for fighting. Consequently, influenced by high casualties, they tended to

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demonstrate lower combat motivation. This was probably exacerbated by the fact that at no stage of the war was any part of Central Asia threatened by the German forces. Some of the soldiers raised in Central Asia resorted to deserting,25 which gained them a bad reputation among the predominantly Slavic military commanders. This was how the situation with the first waves of Central Asian conscripts was grasped by the inspectors sent by the Main Political Directorate (Glavnoe politicheskoe upravlenie) of the Red Army to enquire into complaints lodged by relatively many front-line Red Army commanders in the North Caucasus in the second half of 1942.26 This investigation revealed, inter alia, that Red Army commanders drew a sharp distinction between Central Asian recruits, with little or no knowledge of the Russian language, and Russian Muslims (mostly Tatars) that were proficient in Russian and integrated into Russian culture. As a result, the Central Asians – regardless of their ethnic origins – came to be increasingly referred to as ‘nonRussians’.27 This contrasted with the ‘Russians’, who included Russians and all those well integrated in their culture, which was manifested primarily in full proficiency in the Russian language.

The Soviet–German propaganda war for the hearts and minds of Central Asian soldiers Soviet concerns about inadequate integration of Central Asian recruits, their poor combat performance, and their potentially being a ‘weak link’ in the army were exacerpated by another weighty factor that impacted Central Asian soldiers serving in the front-line units of the Red Army: they were particularly exposed to German front-line propaganda.28 By the second half of 1942, when masses of Central Asian recruits were deployed to the front-line units for the first time, Germany was already actively engaged in propaganda directed at Soviet peoples, including Red Army personnel. With respect to the Central Asians, German propaganda occasionally contained ethnic connotations: sometimes, propaganda leaflets were printed in Central Asian languages; in many cases, Central Asian soldiers were addressed as ‘Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Turkmens, and Tajiks’. However, from the second part of 1942 until the end of the war, one of the basic messages it attempted to convey towards Soviet Muslims was about Islamic unity.29 This propaganda motive was in keeping with the general turn in the German strategy in the war waged against the Soviet Union. Starting from the first half of

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1942, all German institutions gradually embraced the view whereby Soviet Muslims and Islam had to be given distinctly favourable treatment. Soviet Muslim POW s were not only spared annihilation, but were henceforth routinely released from prisoner camps, and encouraged to enlist in the Wehrmacht, the SS and police formations.30 In line with this approach, in the Crimea and the North Caucasus (the only occupied regions with a considerable Muslim population), the Germans treated Islam in a particularly favourable manner and launched a massive propaganda campaign to combat ‘the assault of the godless Bolshevik regime on Islam’. This was done in order to ensure the large-scale enlistment of local Muslims and to draw the support of Soviet Muslims in the territories that remained under Soviet control.31 One of the most important targets of this propaganda effort was Soviet Muslims serving in the Red Army. To counter Germany’s Islamic-themed propaganda, the Soviets launched an initially half-hearted but increasingly vociferous effort directed largely at the Muslims in Soviet-held areas, as well as those living in the occupied territories. Emphasis was laid on the Muslims’ religious duty to defend their mother country, the USSR , against the foreign invader, i.e. Germany.32 At this point, the Soviet Union retained under its sway its entire Muslim population and made every effort to preserve its allegiance, even employing Islamic rhetoric.33 Important but well-measured concessions were proclaimed to Muslim clergy and laypeople. The growing number of Muslim soldiers among Red Army personnel since late 1942 turned them into a special target of concern for the Soviet military authorities.34 They could no longer dismiss Nazi Islamic-themed propaganda out of hand. Nor could they disregard it at the time when significant and visible concessions were being made to Orthodox Christianity.35 Orthodox Christianity experienced religious revival in the territories that remained under Soviet control. Starting from mid-1943, Soviet authorities gradually came to tolerate Orthodox Christian religious practices more. This found its expression in the opening of churches, conducting of baptisms and services on an increasing scale, as well as references in the media to Orthodox activities.36 Orthodox draftees conscripted in these areas were frequently willing to continue practising Christianity in the ranks of the Red Army. Probably even more remarkable was the Christian religious revival in the Soviet territories under German occupation, since the Germans encouraged freedom of conscience from the early days of the occupation: some commanders issued orders for churches to be reopened; soldiers and officers helped clean and restore

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church buildings or collected money for that purpose, even if this involvement was banned shortly after.37 As a result, the Soviets cautiously extended this benevolent approach to other religions, with Islam benefiting from this change probably later than other denominations. Along these lines, more moderate policies towards Islam were adhered to in Central Asia: it was awarded with its own Muslim Spiritual Directorate (Dukhovnoe upravlenie musul’man Srednei Azii i Kazakhstana) established in Tashkent under the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults (Sovet po delam religioznykh kul’tov), while new religious communities and prayer houses were registered.38 In 1944, following a long interruption since 1932, six Muslims from Central Asia were permitted to make the Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca).39 Having said that, the Soviet authorities prevented religion from infiltrating the Red Army, with the latter apparently regarded as the untouchable stronghold of Soviet secularism. As early as May 1943, the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (Narodnyi kommissariat vnutennikh del) forbade any kind of ‘patriotic services’ on the part of the Orthodox Church such as ‘patronage’ of dioceses directly over actual military hospitals, supplying them with food and other necessities, holding concerts or visiting injured soldiers.40 It goes without saying that the ban applied to all religions. Thus, Red Army approaches towards Islam, alongside other religions, were more reserved than those of the civilian authorities. Instead of religion, Soviet propaganda started to emphasize ethnically based heroism and the brotherhood of comrades-in-arms. This found expression also with respect to heroic deeds by Central Asian soldiers. Such deeds were given some exposure in local Soviet media and even in the central press, albeit on a small scale.41 For its part, Soviet Army propaganda put renewed stress on the brotherhood of Soviet soldiers of various nationalities (including Central Asians) – a brotherhood forged by fighting side by side.42 The army was also quick to suppress discontent among Red Army officers over Central Asian recruits. As a matter of fact, this evolved into a sort of conflict between military commanders and political officers. The problem was taken from the military commanders and handled by the army’s political administration, which saw it at a macro level.43 It rebuked the military commanders and took care to urgently enhance the Central Asian soldiers’ proficiency in the Russian language and provided them with propaganda material in their own languages. The problem was solved in a sense that from then on, the commanders were cautious to reprimand the Central Asian soldiers, while referring to them as

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‘non-Russians’. Furthermore, over time, Central Asian soldiers became better integrated into the army and fulfilled more complicated tasks than just serving as cannon fodder for the army. It also largely resolved the problems of the political reliability of Central Asian soldiers.44 However, it seems that in the longer run, the combined effects of being treated as one distinct identity by the Russian commanders and their rank-and-file peers, as well as by German propaganda, led at least some Central Asian soldiers to form this distinct identity. Arguably, this was especially manifest in the units with a considerable presence of Central Asian soldiers.45 Generally speaking, the number of Central Asian soldiers (with the exception of the Tajiks) in the Red Army decreased in the second half of the war.46 This was a result, on the one hand, of the high death toll in the Soviet Army in general – and in infantry in particular – and on the other, of exemptions from conscription, obviously for security reasons, granted in 1943–4 by the State Committee for Defence (Gosudarstvennyi komitet oborony) to native inhabitants of all Central Asian republics.47 Yet this development was counterbalanced by the increase in the relative share of Central Asians among all Muslims serving in the Soviet Army in 1944. This came as a result of a complete withdrawal of many Muslim soldiers from the Soviet Army in the course of 1944 when they were forced to join their nations deported to the Soviet interior because of their allegedly large-scale collaboration with Nazi Germany. Thus, there was a combined effect of many Central Asians serving together, which led them to develop a common consciousness and likewise, led other soldiers to view them collectively as one group. This new awareness could not be an ethnic identity (although the authorities continued treating them along ethnic lines) because there was no unified Central Asian ethnicity. Nor could many of them view themselves as Soviet people in the age when Soviet propaganda laid stress, albeit with certain limitations, on a unique contribution of the Russian people to the Soviet military effort.48 It seems that Islamic identity, however vague and certainly without being nurtured by religious knowledge, turned out to be a natural venue for many such soldiers to express their identity. The Red Army was not an easy place to develop and maintain this identity. In the second part of the war, the Red Army propaganda directed at its soldiers from Central Asia reiterated Soviet atheism: Islam was regarded by the army (probably more than by civilian authorities) as a potentially dangerous consolidating factor for Soviet Muslims.49

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Conclusion Before the war, young Central Asians, future draftees in the Red Army, were frequently confused about their identity: its Muslim component was shaken and partly gave way to the local ethnic one promoted by the Soviet authorities. Once in the Soviet Army, Central Asian recruits, detached from their cultures and traditional setting, were initially collectively referred to as ‘non-Russians’ by both their commanders and peers, unable to make a distinction between various Central Asian ethnic groups. The army’s political leadership did its best to promote a differential treatment of every ethnicity and largely succeeded in imposing its will on the Soviet commanders. However, it seems to have had little impact on the attitudes of the rank-and-file, who often continued to consider Central Asian draftees to be one coherent group. This in turn influenced selfperceptions of many Central Asians in the army, who tended to regard themselves as one group. Partly influenced by the German propaganda, partly responding to a religious rebirth among Orthodox Christians, by the end of the war, a sizeable number of young Central Asians serving in the Soviet army wound up perceiving themselves as Muslims, albeit still largely devoid of purely religious awareness. This was an unexpected development in a non-Muslim country (the Soviet Union) engaged in a struggle against another non-Muslim country (Nazi Germany) and trying to rally its Muslim soldiers to its non-Muslim cause.50 At the same time, this appeared to be a logical outcome caused by the confusion of previous identities in extreme conditions, the weakening of the Bolshevik ideological appeal, the exposure to Nazi propaganda, and the perceptions on the part of their comrades-in-arms. Noteworthy is the fact that this process was developing in parallel to similar processes that were unfolding in civil society in Central Asia, starting from the second half of the war.51 Over time, it appeared that in post-war Central Asia, this new Muslim identity could be smoothly reconciled with the Soviet identity.52

Notes 1 Salavat Iskhakov, ‘Tyurki-musul’mane v rossiiskoi armii (1914–1917)’, in Sergei Klyashtornyi et al. (eds), Tyurkologicheskii sbornik 2002: Rossiya i tyurkskii mir (St Petersburg: Vostochnaya literature, 2003), 245. 2 Uyama Tomohiko, ‘A Particularist Empire: The Russian Policies of Christianization and Military Conscription in Central Asia’, in Uyama Tomohiko (ed.), Empire, Islam,

130

3 4 5 6

7 8 9

10

11

12

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and Politics in Central Eurasia (Sapporo: Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, 2007), 50–1. Iskhakov, ‘Tyurki-musul’mane v rossiiskoi armii’, 254–6. Mustafa Aksakal, ‘Holy War Made in Germany? Ottoman Origins of the 1914 Jihad’, War in History 18, no. 2 (April 2011): 184–99. Dmitrii Arapov, ‘Mozhno otmetit’ ryad vysokikh podvigov voinskoi doblesti, proyavlennykh musul’manami’, Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal 11 (2004): 42–4. Dalya Gataulina, ‘Tatarskaya pressa 1914–1915 gg. ob otnoshenii rossiiskikh musul’man k Pervoi Mirovoi voine’, Uchenye zapiski Kazanskogo universiteta. Seriya: gumanitarnye nauki 1 (2008): 133–9. Iskhakov, ‘Tyurki-musul’mane v rossiiskoi armii’, 257–60. Tomohiko, ‘A Particularist Empire’, 53–5. Cloé Drieu, ‘Cinema, Local Power and the Central State: Agencies in Early AntiReligious Propaganda in Uzbekistan’, Die Welt des Islams 50, no. 3 (2010): 532–63; Shoshana Keller, To Moscow, not Mecca: The Soviet Campaign against Islam in Central Asia, 1917–1941 (Westport: Praeger, 2001), 107–40; Fanny Bryan, ‘State Efforts to Undermine Religious Allegiances: Themes and Arguments of Anti-Islamic Propaganda during the Soviet Period’, PhD diss., University of Illinois (1992); Fanny Bryan, ‘Anti-Islamic Propaganda: “Bezbozhnik”, 1925–1935’, Central Asian Survey 5, no. 1 (1986): 29–47. Vyacheslav Akhmadulin, ‘Deyatel’nost’ Sovetskogo gosudarstva po organizatsii hadzha sovetskikh musul’man v 1944 g.’, Vlast’ 6 (2013): 162–4; Adeeb Khalid, ‘ “Backwardness” and the Quest for Civilization: Early Soviet Central Asia in Comparative Perspective’, Slavic Review 65, no. 2 (Summer 2006): 243–4. Niccolo Pianciola, ‘Interpreting an Insurgency in Soviet Kazakhstan: The OGPU, Islam and Qazaq “Clans” in Suzak, 1930’, in Niccolo Pianciola and Paolo Sartori (eds), Islam, Society and States across the Qazaq Steppe (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2013), 297–340. On Central Asia, see inter alia Arne Haugen, The Establishment of National Republics in Soviet Central Asia (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003); John Schoeberlein-Engel, ‘Identity in Central Asia: Construction and Contention in the Conceptions of “Özbek”, “Tâjik”, “Muslim”, “Samarqandi”, and Other Groups’, PhD diss., Harvard University (1994). On the Soviet Union in general, see inter alia Francine Hirsch, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005); Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire. Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union 1923–1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011). Ashirbek Muminov,‘Fundamentalist Challenges to Local Islamic Traditions in Soviet and Post-Soviet Central Asia’, in Uyama Tomohiko (ed.), Empire, Islam, and Politics

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14 15 16

17

18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26

27 28

29

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in Central Eurasia (Sapporo: Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, 2007), 252–6. Radyanski organi derzhavnoi bezpeki u 1939 – chervni 1941 r. Dokumenti GDA SB Ukraini (Kyiv: Vidavnichii dim ‘Kievo-Mogilyanska akademiya’, 2009), 144. Evan Mawdsley, ‘Crossing the Rubicon: Soviet Plans for Offensive War in 1941’, International History Review 25, no. 4 (2003): 818–65. This does not mean that Soviet Central Asians were not occasionally conscripted. See, for example, Jumardurdy Annaorazov, ‘Turkmenistan during the Second World War’, The Journal of Slavic Military Studies 25, no. 1 (2012): 54–5. But this seems to be a deviation from the trend. Nikolai Podpryatov, ‘Uchastie predstavitelei nerusskikh narodov Sovetskogo Soyuza v boevykh deistviyakh Vtoroi Mirovoi voiny v protivoborstvuyushikh armiyakh: Sravnitel’nyi analiz’, Izvestiya Altaiskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 4, no. 3 (2010): 190–1. Roberto Carmack, ‘ “And They Fought for their Socialist Motherland” ’, The Creation of the Multiethnic Red Army’, Otan Tarikhy 64, no. 4 (2013): 36–7. Grigorii Krivosheev (ed.), Rossiya i SSSR v voinakh XX veka. Poteri vooruzhennykh sil. Statisticheskoe issledovanie (Moscow: Olma-Press, 2001), 259–79. David Glantz, Colossus Reborn: The Red Army at War 1941–1943 (Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2005), 536–48. Carmack, ‘ “And They Fought for their Socialist Motherland” ’, 39. Roberto Carmack, ‘History and Hero-Making: Patriotic Narratives and the Sovietization of Kazakh Front-Line Propaganda, 1941–1945’, Central Asian Survey 33, no. 1 (2014): 96. Bruce Privratsky, ‘Turkistan: Kazak Religion and Collective Memory’, PhD diss., University of Tennessee (1998), 197–387. Carmack, ‘ “And They Fought for their Socialist Motherland” ’, 40–1; Podpryatov, ‘Uchastie predstavitelei nerusskikh narodov Sovetskogo Soyuza’, 190–1. Fedor Sinitsyn, Za russkii narod! Natsional’nyi vopros v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine (Moscow: Eksmo, 2010), 89. Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (hereafter RGASPI ): 17/125/85, 55–68. See also Brandon Schechter, ‘ “The People’s Instructions”: Indigenizing the Great Patriotic War among “Non-Russians” ’, Ab Imperio 3 (2012): 112. Schechter, ‘ “The People’s Instructions”, 109–10. Jeffrey Herf, ‘Nazi Germany’s Propaganda Aimed at Arabs and Muslims during the Second World War and the Holocaust: Old Themes, New Archival Findings’, Central European History 42, no. 4 (December 2009): 709–36. David Motadel, Islam and Nazi Germany’s War (Cambridge, MA : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), 133–77; David Motadel, ‘Islam and Germany’s War in the Soviet Borderlands, 1941–45’, Journal of Contemporary History 48, no. 4

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30 31 32

33

34

35

36 37

38 39 40

41 42

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(October 2013): 784–820; Sebastian Cwiklinski, ‘Die Panturkismus-Politik der SS : Angehörige sowjetischer Turkvölker als Objekte und Subjekte der SS Politik’, in Gerhard Höpp and Brigitte Reinwald (eds), Fremdeinsätze. Afrikaner und Asiaten in europäischen Kriegen, 1914–1945 (Berlin: Das Arabische Buch, 2000), 149–66. Kiril Feferman, The Holocaust in the Crimea and the Caucasus (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem Publications, 2016), 411–13, 456–7. Motadel, ‘Islam and Germany’s War in the Soviet Borderlands’, 791. Abdul A. Nurullaev, ‘Musul’mane Sovetskogo Soyuza v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine’, in Nikolai Trofimchuk (ed.), Religioznye organizatsii Sovetskogo Soyuza v period Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny 1941–1945 gg. (Moscow: RAGS , 1995), 57–69. Cloé Drieu, ‘Grande Guerre Patriotique et propagande cinématographique en Ouzbékistan: les motifs du renouveau nationaliste (1937–1945)’, in Cloé Drieu (ed.), Écrans d’Orient: Propagande, innovation et résistance dans les cinémas de Turquie, d’Iran et d’Asie centrale (1897–1945) (Paris: Karthala, 2015), 258–9. Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense, Main Administration of the Cadre, People’s Commissariat of Defense (hereafter TsAMO /GUK /NKO ): 33/11454/476, 162. Steven Miner, Stalin’s Holy War: Religion, Nationalism, and Alliance Politics, 1941– 1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Daniel Peris, ‘ “God is Now on Our Side”: The Religious Revival on Unoccupied Soviet Territory during the Second World War’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 1, no. 1 (Winter 2000): 97–118. Karel Berkhoff, Motherland in Danger: Soviet Propaganda during the Second World War (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2012), 208–9. Leonid Rein, ‘The Orthodox Church in Byelorussia under Nazi Occupation (1941–1944)’, East European Quarterly 39, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 13–46; Karel Berkhoff, ‘Was There a Religious Revival in Soviet Ukraine under the Nazi Regime?’, Slavonic and East European Review 78, no. 3 (2000): 536–67. Imanutdin Sulaev, ‘Musul’manskoe dukhovenstvo v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine 1941–45 gg.’, Voenno-Istoricheskii zhurnal 5 (2007): 24–6. Akhmadulin, ‘Deyatel’nost’ Sovetskogo gosudarstva’, 163–4. Gulzhaukhar Kokebayeva, Yerke Kartabayeva and Aigul Sadykova, ‘The Evolution of Soviet Power’s Religious Policy during the Great Patriotic War’, Asian Social Science 11, no. 13 (June 2015): 237. Berkhoff, Motherland in Danger, 210. Natalia Naumova, and Igor Naumov, ‘ “. . . Zdes’ naveki spayalis’ v druzhbe kak odin gruziny, russkie, uzbeki, tadzhik, kazakh i armyanin” (pesni, rozhdennye v ogne Stalingradskoi bitvy)’, Izvestiya volgogradskogo gosudarstvennogo tekhnicheskogo universiteta 13, no. 140 (2014): 107–8. Carmack, ‘History and Hero-Making’, 97–9.

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44 Nurullaev, ‘Musul’mane Sovetskogo Soyuza v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine’, 57–69. 45 TsAMO /GUK /NKO : 33/11454/476, 163. 46 On 1 January 1943, the share of the Central Asian nations in the Soviet rifle divisions was as follows: Kazakhs 3.05 per cent, Uzbeks 2.42 per cent, Turkmens 0.30 per cent and Tajiks 0.25 per cent. On 1 January 1944, this share was Kazakhs 1.57 per cent, Uzbeks 1.02 per cent, Turkmens 0.40 per cent and Tajiks 0.46 per cent. On 1 July 1944, it was Kazakhs 1.12 per cent, Uzbeks 1.25 per cent, Turkmens 0.23 per cent, Tajiks 0.32 per cent. See Sinitsyn, Za russkii narod . . ., 354. 47 Sinitsyn, Za russkii narod . . ., 89–90. 48 Carmack, ‘History and Hero-Making’, 102–3; Berkhoff, Motherland in Danger, 205–7. 49 TsAMO /GUK /NKO : 33/11454/476, pp. 163–5. 50 For background on the thematically close issue of Muslims fighting for a nonMuslim power in a Muslim land, see Christian Bleuer, ‘Muslim Soldiers in NonMuslim Militaries at War in Muslim Lands: The Soviet, American and Indian Experience’, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 32, no. 4 (2012): 492–506; Zhou Jiayi, ‘The Muslim Battalions: Soviet Central Asians in the Soviet-Afghan War’, The Journal of Slavic Military Studies 25, no. 3 (2012): 302–28. 51 Eren Tasar, ‘Islamically Informed Soviet Patriotism in Postwar Kyrgyzstan’, Cahiers du monde russe 52, no. 2–3 (2011): 387–404; Eren Tasar, ‘Soviet and Muslim: The Institutionalization of Islam in Central Asia (1943–1991)’, PhD diss., Harvard University (2010), 20–3. 52 Timur Dadabaev, ‘Religiosity and Soviet “Modernization” in Central Asia: Locating Religious Traditions and Rituals in Recollections of Antireligious Policies in Uzbekistan’, Religion, State and Society 42, no. 4 (2014): 328–53; Adeeb Khalid, Islam after Communism: Religion and Politics in Central Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 110–15.

Bibliography Akhmadulin, Vyacheslav. ‘Deyatel’nost’ Sovetskogo gosudarstva po organizatsii hadzha sovetskikh musul’man v 1944 g.’, Vlast’ 6 (2013): 162–4. Aksakal, Mustafa. ‘Holy War Made in Germany? Ottoman Origins of the 1914 Jihad’. War in History 18, no. 2 (April 2011): 184–99. Annaorazov, Jumardudy. ‘Turkmenistan during the Second World War’. The Journal of Slavic Military Studies 25, no. 1 (2012): 53–64. Arapov, Dmitrii. ‘Mozhno otmetit’ ryad vysokikh podvigov voinskoi doblesti, proyavlennykh musul’manami’. Voenno-ostoricheskii zhurnal 11 (2004): 42–4.

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Berkhoff, Karel. Motherland in Danger: Soviet Propaganda during the Second World War. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2012. Berkhoff, Karel. ‘Was There a Religious Revival in Soviet Ukraine under the Nazi Regime?’ Slavonic and East European Review 78, no. 3 (2000): 536–67. Bleuer, Christian. ‘Muslim Soldiers in Non-Muslim Militaries at War in Muslim Lands: The Soviet, American and Indian Experience’. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 32, no. 4 (2012): 492–506. Bryan, Fanny. ‘Anti-Islamic Propaganda: “Bezbozhnik”, 1925–1935’. Central Asian Survey 5, no. 1 (1986): 29–47. Bryan, Fanny, ‘State Efforts to Undermine Religious Allegiances: Themes and Arguments of Anti-Islamic Propaganda during the Soviet Period’. PhD diss., University of Illinois, 1992. Carmack, Roberto. ‘History and Hero-Making: Patriotic Narratives and the Sovietization of Kazakh Front-Line Propaganda, 1941–1945’. Central Asian Survey 33, no. 1 (2014): 95–112. Carmack, Roberto. ‘ “And They Fought for their Socialist Motherland”: The Creation of the Multiethnic Red Army’. Otan Tarikhy 64, no. 4 (2013): 35–45. Cwiklinski, Sebastian. ‘Die Panturkismus-Politik der SS : Angehörige sowjetischer Turkvölker als Objekte und Subjekte der SS Politik’. In Gerhard Höpp and Brigitte Reinwald (eds), Fremdeinsätze. Afrikaner und Asiaten in europäischen Kriegen, 1914 – 1945, 149–66. Berlin: Das Arabische Buch, 2000. Dadabaev, Timur. ‘Religiosity and Soviet “Modernisation” in Central Asia: Locating Religious Traditions and Rituals in Recollections of Antireligious Policies in Uzbekistan’. Religion, State and Society 42, no. 4 (2014): 328–53. Drieu, Cloé. ‘Grande Guerre Patriotique et propagande cinématographique en Ouzbékistan: les motifs du renouveau nationaliste (1937–1945)’. In Cloé Drieu (ed.), Écrans d’Orient: Propagande, innovation et résistance dans les cinémas de Turquie, d’Iran et d’Asie centrale (1897–1945), 229–66. Paris: Karthala, 2015. Drieu, Cloé. ‘Cinema, Local Power and the Central State: Agencies in Early AntiReligious Propaganda in Uzbekistan’. Die Welt des Islams 50, no. 3 (2010): 532–63. Feferman, Kiril. The Holocaust in the Crimea and the Caucasus. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem Publications, 2016. Gataulina, Dalya. ‘Tatarskaya pressa 1914–1915 gg. ob otnoshenii rossiiskikh musul’man k Pervoi Mirovoi voine’. Uchenye zapiski Kazanskogo universiteta. Seriya: gumanitarnye nauki 1 (2008): 133–9. Glantz, David, Colossus Reborn: The Red Army at War: 1941–1943. Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2005. Iskhakov, Salavat. ‘Tyurki musul’mane v rossiiskoi armii (1914–1917)’. In Sergei Klyashtornyi et al. (eds), Tyrkologicheskii sbornik 2002. Rossiya i tyurkskii mir, 245–80. Moscow : Vostochnaya literature, 2003. Jiayi, Zhu. ‘The Muslim Battalions: Soviet Central Asians in the Soviet-Afghan War’. The Journal of Slavic Military Studies 25, no. 3 (2012): 302–28.

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Keller, Shoshana. To Moscow, not Mecca: The Soviet Campaign against Islam in Central Asia, 1917–1941. Westport: Praeger, 2001. Khalid, Adeeb. ‘ “Backwardness” and the Quest for Civilization: Early Soviet Central Asia in Comparative Perspective’. Slavic Review 65, no. 2 (Summer 2006): 231–51. Khalid, Adeeb. Islam after Communism: Religion and Politics in Central Asia. Berkeley : University of California Press, 2007. Kokebayeva, Gulzhavkar, Yerke Kartabayeva and Aigul Sadykova. ‘The Evolution of Soviet Power’s Religious Policy during the Great Patriotic War’. Asian Social Science 11, no. 13 (2015): 235–9. Krivosheev, Grigorii, ed. Rossiya i SSSR v voinakh XX veka. Poteri vooruzhennykh sil. Statisticheskoe issledovanie. Moscow : Olma-Press, 2001. Mawdsley, Evan. ‘Crossing the Rubicon: Soviet Plans for Offensive War in 1941’. International History Review 24, no. 4 (2003): 818–65. Miner, Steven. Stalin’s Holy War: Religion, Nationalism, and Alliance Politics, 1941–1945. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Motadel, David. ‘Islam and Germany’s War in the Soviet Borderlands, 1941–5’. Journal of Contemporary History 48, no. 4 (2013): 784–820. Motadel, David. Islam and Nazi Germany’s War. Cambridge, MA : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014. Muminov, Ashirbek. ‘Fundamentalist Challenges to Local Islamic Traditions in Soviet and Post-Soviet Central Asia’. In Uyama Tomohiko (ed.), Empire, Islam, and Politics in Central Eurasia, 247–62. Sapporo: Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, 2007. Naumova, Natalia and Igor Naumov. ‘ “. . . Zdes’ naveki spayalis’ v druzhbe kak odin gruziny, russkie, uzbeki, tadzhik, kazakh i armyanin” (pesni, rozhdennye v ogne Stalingradskoi bitvy)’. Izvestiya Volgogradskogo gosudarstvennogo tekhnicheskogo universiteta 13, no. 140 (2014): 107–8. Nurullaev, Abdul A. ‘Musul’mane Sovetskogo Soyuza v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine’. In Nikolai Trofimchuk (ed.), Religioznye organizatsii Sovetskogo Soyuza v period Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny 1941–1945 gg., 57–69. Moscow: RAGS , 1995. Peris, Daniel. ‘ “God is Now on Our Side”: The Religious Revival on Unoccupied Soviet Territory during the Second World War’. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 1, no. 1 (Winter 2000): 97–118. Pianciola, Niccolo. ‘Interpreting an Insurgency in Soviet Kazakhstan: The OGPU, Islam and Qazaq “Clans” in Suzak, 1930’. In Niccolo Pianciola and Paolo Sartori (eds), Islam, Society and States across the Qazaq Steppe, 297–340. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2013. Podpryatov, Nikolai. ‘Uchastie predstavitelei nerusskikh narodov Sovetskogo Soyuza v boevykh deistviyakh Vtoroi Mirovoi voiny v protivoborstvuyushikh armiyakh: Sravnitel’nyi analiz’. Izvestiya Altaiskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 4, no. 3 (2010): 190–1.

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Privratsky, Bruce. ‘Turkistan: Kazak Religion and Collective Memory’. PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 1998. Rein, Leonid. ‘The Orthodox Church in Byelorussia under Nazi Occupation (1941–1944)’. East European Quarterly 39, no. 1 (2005): 13–46. Schechter, Brandon. ‘ “The People’s Instructions”: Indigenizing the Great Patriotic War among “Non-Russians” ’. Ab Imperio 3 (2012): 109–33. Schoeberlein-Engel, John. ‘Identity in Central Asia: Construction and Contention in the Conceptions of “Özbek,” “Tâjik,” “Muslim,” “Samarqandi,” and Other Groups.’ PhD diss., Harvard University, 1994. Shin, Boram, ‘Red Army Propaganda for Uzbek Soldiers and Localised Soviet Internationalism during Second World War’. The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 42, no. 1 (2015): 39–63. Sinitsyn, Fedor. Za russkii narod! Natsional’nyi vopros v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine. Moscow: Eksmo, 2010. Sulaev, Imanutdin. ‘Musul’manskoe dukhovenstvo v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine 1941–45 gg.’. Voenno-Istoricheskii zhurnal 5 (2007): 24–6. Tasar, Eren. ‘Islamically Informed Soviet Patriotism in Postwar Kyrgyzstan’. Cahiers du monde russe 52, no. 2–3 (2011): 387–404. Tasar, Eren. ‘Soviet and Muslim: The Institutionalization of Islam in Central Asia (1943–1991)’. PhD diss., Harvard University, 2010. Tomohiko, Uyama. ‘A Particularist Empire: The Russian Policies of Christianization and Military Conscription in Central Asia’. In Uyama Tomohiko (ed.), Empire, Islam, and politics in Central Eurasia, 23–63. Sapporo: Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, 2007.

6

Islam, a ‘Convenient Religion’? The Case of the 13th SS Division Handschar1 Xavier Bougarel

On 10 February 1943, Adolf Hitler signed a decree creating the Croat SS Volunteer Division (Kroatische SS-Freiwilligen-Division), better known after 1944 as the 13th SS Division Handschar.2 This was a turning point in the history of the Waffen-SS , with non-Germanic soldiers joining the organization for the first time, after being recruited according to religious criteria. For the top SS officials involved in this project, beginning with the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, the 13th SS Division was to bring together Muslims from BosniaHerzegovina3 and give them the religious rights that their fathers and grandfathers had enjoyed earlier in the Austro-Hungarian Army. Apart from this imperial reminiscence, however, recognizing Islam within an SS division met more pressing political concerns. The goal was not just to transform this division into a showcase for the Muslim world, but also to forge in battle an alliance between Islam and National-Socialism, with the blessing of Amin al-Husayni, the Mufti of Jerusalem who had taken refuge in Berlin. At the time, some high-level SS officials made no secret of their sympathy for Islam, and Himmler himself, speaking to an audience of Nazi officials, described the Muslim religion as ‘a convenient and pleasant religion’ because it promised a reward in paradise for soldiers that died in combat.4 During the war, the 13th SS Division fought against the Yugoslav communist partisans, and entered into an uneasy alliance with the Ustashas, the Croat fascists placed at the head of the Independent State of Croatia created by Germany and Italy in 1941, and the Chetniks, Serb nationalists who carried out many massacres of Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina and gradually entered into collaboration with the occupying Italian and German troops. After the war ended, the 13th SS Division was often presented as a horde of Muslims made fanatical by their imams. This was the view presented first in communist 137

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Yugoslavia, where in 1947, the State Commission for the Establishment of War Crimes described in these terms the place of religion in the 13th SS Division: ‘Young muftis [sic] were assigned each to one unit, serving as an example and guide for fanaticized soldiers. . . . Upon their arrival in Yugoslavia, the soldiers of this division, poisoned with hatred, . . . killed anyone not wearing a fez.’5 But this reputation quickly crossed borders, and also in 1947, Simon Wiesenthal wrote that the Mufti of Jerusalem al-Husayni had ‘led the Mohammedans of the Balkans in a “holy war” under the banner of the Prophet, in the manner of Goebbels’.6 References to the ‘cursed Handschar division’ (‘zloglasna Handžar divizija’) continued throughout the communist period, but were relatively marginal compared to the incessant denunciations of the Croat Ustashas and Serb Chetniks. In the 1990s, with the awakening of Serb nationalism, the 13th SS Division became a subject of propaganda again. While Serb media ceaselessly denounced the crimes of this division, a few timid attempts at rehabilitation appeared in Bosnia-Herzegovina: in the weekly newspaper of the main Muslim party, a former imam of the division presented it as a simple act of self-defence against Serb Chetniks,7 and in a book published in 2000, the son of a Muslim dignitary of the Ustasha regime strove to demonstrate that the division had not committed war crimes.8 The 11 September attacks in 2001 changed the situation again, with al-Husayni and the 13th SS Division being presented by some polemicists as the precursors for Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.9 This chapter does not aim to write the history of the 13th SS Division or to list its crimes, which were relatively well recorded by the Yugoslav State Commission for the Establishment of War Crimes.10 Instead, I would like to focus on the place held by Islam within this division, and what it teaches us about the integration of Bosnian Muslims into a very peculiar military formation: the Waffen-SS . In a first section, I will show how the Muslim elite of BosniaHerzegovina participated (or not) in plans for a Muslim SS division, and how their attitude on this project changed as it was being implemented. Then, I will focus on how the Waffen-SS defined the status of Islam within the 13th SS Division, and on the possible gap between this official status and the actual military and religious life of Muslim SS soldiers. Lastly, I will turn to SS imams, their sociological and religious profile, the place they held within the division, and particularly the degree of autonomy that they enjoyed, and how they used it. In so doing, I hope to grasp the reality of Islam in the Waffen-SS more closely than authors such as George Lepre or David Motadel,11 and thus help answer this question: was Islam really a ‘convenient religion’ for the SS leaders that sought to instrumentalize it?

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Creation of the 13th SS Division and the role of the Bosnian Muslim elite To understand how the 13th SS Division was formed in 1943, one should take into account two distinct processes. In the first process, in order to meet the needs on the Eastern Front and extend its empire at the expense of the Wehrmacht, the Waffen-SS began to recruit SS soldiers from outside the borders of the Reich and to gradually renounce its previous status as a force of volunteers.12 In the Balkans, this process was symbolized by the creation of an SS division in spring 1942, made up of ethnic Germans from Serbia drafted by force: the 7th SS Division Prinz Eugen. We must remember that at the same time, the Wehrmacht was setting up ‘legionnaire divisions’ in Croatia, made up of German officers and NCO s and Croat soldiers, according to the then definition of Croat or, in other words, including both Catholics and Muslims from the Ustasha State led by Ante Pavelić.13 In the second process, which is of more direct interest to us, the Bosnian Muslim elite’s initial strong allegiance to the new Croatian State gradually grew weaker and weaker. Indeed, following the creation of the Ustasha State in April 1941, the Muslim political and religious elite quickly rallied to the new power, on ideological grounds or, most often, out of the habit of trading their support to the central power in exchange for a guarantee of their safety and religious autonomy. But this alliance was weakened when massacres of Serbs by Ustasha militias triggered retaliation by Serb Chetniks against Muslims. So, beginning in autumn 1941, local Muslim notables from various Bosnian towns adopted resolutions denouncing Ustasha violence and asking Croatian authorities to re-establish order and to protect the Muslim population. Additional massacres by Chetniks occurred in 1942, and some political and religious leaders met in Sarajevo in August 1942 to form a Committee for People’s Salvation (Odbor narodnog spasa) headed by Mehmed Handžić, also president of the ulama association el-Hidaje (‘The Just Path’). This committee’s purpose was to organize aid for Muslim refugees, find weapons to protect the Muslim population, and inform the outside world about violence committed against their community. Concretely, the weapons procurement mission was assigned to Muhamed Pandža, member of the ulema-medžlis, the four-member council assisting the Reis-ul-ulema in the management of the Islamic religious institutions in BosniaHerzegovina. Relatively autonomous Muslim militias were formed throughout 1942, a sign that the Muslim community no longer trusted the Croatian State. The largest such militia was DOMDO, set up in the Tuzla region and commanded by Muhamed Hadžiefendić.14 Likewise, the second half of 1942 saw a new wave

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of resolutions, this time addressed to German military authorities, asking them to arm and train the Muslim population. This is the agitated context that gave rise to the idea of creating an SS division made up of Bosnian Muslims. Initially, the German authorities turned down all requests for weapons. Thus, in December 1942, General Rudolf Lüters, the commanding officer for German forces in Croatia, told Pandža to send his request to the Croatian authorities. In the same period, several copies of a memorandum dated 1 November 1942 were circulating among German officials. This memorandum, addressed to Hitler, is generally attributed to three people: Uzeir Hadžihasanović, an influential politician and éminence grise of the Committee for People’s Salvation; Mustafa Softić, the mayor of Sarajevo and son-in-law of the former; and Suljaga Salihagić, a politician from Banja Luka. This document presented Bosnian Muslims as descendants of the Goths, faithful supporters of the Reich, and a natural bridge to the Muslim world. It then proposed the creation of an autonomous Bosnian province under German tutelage and the formation of a ‘Bosnian Guard’ (Bosanska straža) based on DOMDO and other Muslim militias.15 While German diplomats and military officials had reservations about the memo, it made its way to the desk of Himmler, where this mixture of racial rambling, opening up to the Orient, and promises of easy recruiting appealed to the Reichsführer. So this document apparently brought together the Waffen-SS need for new recruits and the Muslim leaders’ need for arms. In February 1943, Himmler ordered Gottlob Berger, the SS-Hauptamt commander in charge of recruitment for the Waffen-SS , to set up a Muslim SS division. Some doubts remain about who wrote this memorandum and about its actual influence on Himmler’s decision to create the 13th SS Division, emphasizing how the rapprochement between top SS officials and Bosnian Muslim notables was an informal process with several middlemen. The most important and best known of these intermediaries was al-Husayni, the Mufti of Jerusalem, who passed the memo on to Himmler. Having organized the World Islamic Congress in 1931, attended by a sizeable Bosnian delegation, al-Husayni enjoyed considerable prestige among the Muslim political and religious elite of BosniaHerzegovina. Living in Berlin since November 1941, he used his networks to serve the Reich, but failed to spark an uprising of the Muslim masses against the British Empire. In late 1942, al-Husayni was nearly completely sidelined following the failure of his plans for an Arab Legion and the German defeat in the Battle of El Alamein. By relaying the requests of Bosnian Muslims for weapons, then presenting himself as a privileged intermediary between the top SS officials and Bosnian Muslim notables, he salvaged his own legitimacy. On

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the Bosnian side, one of the most interesting middlemen was Salihagić. An engineer educated in Vienna, Salihagić was elected as an MP for Banja Luka with the Serb Radical Party in the interwar period, and therefore held a rather marginal place in the Muslim community. But after 1941, his knowledge of the German language and his overt Germanophilia made him one of the preferred contacts for the German authorities. In summer 1942, the Ustasha intelligence services in Banja Luka had already reported plans to send a memorandum to Hitler.16 Salihagić may therefore have been the actual initiator, with Hadžihasanović and Softić merely giving their more or less enthusiastic support. Finally, this portrait gallery would be incomplete without Rudolf Treu. Raised in Skopje, Macedonia, where he frequented the city’s Orthodox and Muslim populations, Treu became a teacher at the German high school of Osijek, Croatia, in the 1930s, and frequented the Yugoslav Fascist movement Zbor (‘Gathering’). In 1941, Treu was won over to National-Socialist ideas and became an agent of the SS intelligence service, in charge of contacts with Muslim and Serb notables in Eastern Bosnia. After the war, the Yugoslav secret police accused him of playing a major role in the creation of the 13th SS Division, but this is hard to verify. Yet in a transcription of a conversation with Hadžihasanović dated 26 November 1942, Treu sensed that the latter was reticent to send his requests directly to the Führer, for fear of the Ustasha’s reaction, and insisted heavily on the fact that the time had come to take action. . . .17 In this initial phase, the main obstacle to setting up the 13th SS Division was the Ustasha State, hostile to a Muslim division that, if it existed, could fuel demands for autonomy for Bosnia-Herzegovina. Nevertheless, an agreement was signed on 5 March 1943 by the SS and the Croatian government, calling for the Croatian authorities to recruit Muslim and Catholic volunteers and detach officers from the Croatian Army. But on the ground, the Waffen-SS continued to recruit Muslim volunteers without going through the Croatian authorities, and even attempted to extend its recruitment efforts to the Orthodox population. In April, SS officials inflicted further humiliation on the Ustasha State by organizing a visit by al-Husayni to Zagreb, Banja Luka and Sarajevo, with the goal of dispelling Muslim leaders’ doubts about the planned SS division. The Mufti helped mobilize the local Muslim elite, and also passed on their demands upon his return to Berlin: the SS division should remain based in Bosnia-Herzegovina, DOMDO must not be incorporated in it, and SS soldiers must be allowed to keep their weapons until the end of the war.18 These conditions laid down by Bosnian Muslim leaders were almost immediately cast aside by the Waffen-SS , which decided to incorporate the men of the DOMDO by force given the lack

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of volunteers. Hadžiefendić put on the SS uniform, but several DOMDO officers called for soldiers to refuse to do so and instead join the partisans. Despite the absorption of DOMDO and extension of recruitment to the Catholic population and to the Sanjak region,19 the new SS division still lacked personnel. Berger travelled to Zagreb and, on 11 July, forced the Croatian Minister of Defence to sign a new agreement whereby the Croatian State would send the Waffen-SS two-thirds of Muslim recruits born in the years 1924 and 1925, and also authorizing the Waffen-SS to take the soldiers, NCO s and officers it needed for the SS division from the Croatian Army. In the following months, the 13th SS Division finally reached the personnel target of around 20,000 men, but far from making Bosnian Muslims safer from Serb Chetniks, it reduced their safety even further: DOMDO had disappeared, several units of the Croatian Army had been disorganized due to lost Muslim recruits and in July 1943, the 13th SS Division was sent to France for military training. The 13th SS Division’s long assignment in France, then in Germany, was just one of the reasons that Bosnian Muslim leaders gradually withdrew their support for this mainly Muslim armed force. SS Imam Hasan Bajraktarević, returning from a visit to Bosnia-Herzegovina in November 1943, thus explained in a report to General Arthur Phleps, commander of the 5th SS Mountain Corps, that hopes related to the SS division were declining. Not only had the division’s return to the country been delayed, leaving the Muslim population exposed to Chetnik reprisals, but many families of SS soldiers were among the refugees left without aid, and on 12 July, the 7th SS Division Prinz Eugen had killed several dozen Muslim civilians in the village of Košutice, including family members of several SS soldiers. Bajraktarević thus asked for the division to return to BosniaHerzegovina by year end, for humanitarian aid to be given to the refugees, and for an investigation into the Košutice massacre.20 In the end, the 13th SS Division returned home in February 1944, but the joy was short-lived. Deployed to the far north-eastern part of Bosnia, the division was engaged in ferocious fighting against partisans and carried out large massacres, especially in Serb villages. Aiming to transform its deployment sector into a sort of SS military frontier, the division avoided going through Croatian authorities, but cooperated with various local military formations. Among these were not just local Muslim militias grouped together under the name zeleni kadar (‘Green Frame’),21 but also local Chetnik groups. The general evolution of the war and the 13th SS Division’s own contradictions soon eroded its cohesion and desertions began to rise in August 1944. Such desertions sometimes involved compact groups of several hundred combatants, and totalled several thousand soldiers. This did not

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prevent the Waffen-SS from trying to set up a second Muslim division, the 23rd SS Division Kama.22 In the end, the remainder of the 13th SS Division was transferred to Hungary in November 1944, where it faced the Soviet and Bulgarian armies. The soldiers of the 13th SS Division then followed the retreating German Army, and surrendered to British troops near Klagenfurt, Austria, in May 1945. What was the actual involvement of religious institutions in setting up the 13th SS Division? The division was formed during a period when the Islamic religious community was destabilized due to its leader, the Reis-ul-ulema Fehim Spaho, not being replaced when he died in 1942, and due to the death of one of the four members of the ulema-medžlis. In this context, Muhamed Pandža openly came out in favour of recruitment for the SS division, travelling through the towns of Bosnia-Herzegovina alongside SS recruitment agents and encouraging the pupils of religious schools in Sarajevo to sign up as military imams. It is hard to know whether Pandža was acting in his own name or on behalf of the ulema-medžlis, but the two other members of this council were apparently more reserved about a project that would not please the ruling Ustashas. Handžić, the influential president of the ulama association el-Hidaje, was in favour of the SS division project, but insisted to al-Husayni on the need to arm local Muslim militias,23 and refrained from expressing his opinion in public. In the Sanjak region, Derviš Šećerkadić, the Mufti of Pljevlja, actively supported the recruitment of Muslim volunteers. At the local level, the WaffenSS tried to rely on imams, who also played a non-religious administrative role in keeping the public registry. The Waffen-SS asked them to distribute propaganda, receive volunteers’ applications, and deliver summons. Croatian authorities protested against such an instrumentalization. It is hard to assess the magnitude of imams’ participation in Waffen-SS recruitment, but an internal report of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs described them as ‘zealous recruiters’,24 and a history of the 13th SS Division written by the SS-Hauptamt explained that, given the hostility of the Croatian authorities, the SS could only rely on ‘itself and help from the Islamic clergy, which made a substantial contribution to setting up the division through exemplary cooperation with the Schutzstaffel [SS ]’.25 In some cases, imams were indeed zealous: in Nevesinje, the head of the canton travelled across the countryside in search of volunteers, along with an imam and a priest,26 and according to the Italian Consul in Sarajevo, this was a fairly common practice.27 In Hrasnica, a village near Sarajevo, an agent for the Ustasha intelligence service claimed that the local imam went to town leading a contingent of 2,000 volunteers!28 But the disillusions about the 13th SS Division

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also affected the religious community. In October 1943, even Pandža appears to have lost his illusions, as he attempted to create an unlikely Muslim Liberation Movement (Muslimanski oslobodilački pokret), before joining the ranks of the partisans, falling into the hands of the German Army, and ultimately being sent to jail under the Ustasha regime. Pandža’s defection shook the Muslim community’s confidence in the Waffen-SS and, according to Bajraktarević, the division’s imams were also in shock.29 In any case, when the 13th SS Division returned to Bosnia-Herzegovina in February 1944, its relationship with the Islamic community had chilled considerably: in June 1944, when the division’s commander asked for ten additional imams from the best religious schools, the acting Reis-ul-ulema Salih Bašić declined politely but firmly.30 The division had to rely on its own imams to recruit new volunteers, with sometimes limited success: in June 1944, Imam Halim Malkoč left for western Bosnia with two SS officers to rally the local Muslim militia, which had several thousand men. However, this project failed and they returned with a miserable group of 60 volunteers.31 With this general context in mind, we will now focus on the status of Islam and the imams’ authority within the 13th SS Division itself.

Islam in the 13th SS Division: From the ideological project to the ordinary religious life As already said, in 1943, Himmler considered giving the future SS division the same religious rights that Bosnian Muslims had enjoyed in the Austro-Hungarian Army. In his letter asking General Phleps to begin recruiting Muslim volunteers, he wrote, ‘You can clearly grant the Bosnians, within our division, the former rights that they had in the Austrian Army: free exercise of religion, right to wear the fez.’32 In the following weeks, Himmler himself enquired about the size and colour of the fez that the division’s soldiers would wear, and asked religious authorities about the diet of Muslim soldiers.33 While Bosnian ulamas, probably influenced by the prevailing practices in the former Yugoslav Army, thought that no particular diet was required, al-Husayni insisted on the prohibition of pork and alcohol. These sometimes obscure discussions of Islamic rituals concealed more important stakes, namely, how to transform Islam into a warlike political ideology. In an agreement between Berger and al-Husayni on 19 May 1943, it was specified that National-Socialism is a Germanic ideology that must not be forced upon Muslim soldiers, but Islam and National-Socialism are two worldviews that are similar because they share

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several common enemies – the Jews, Anglo-Americans, Communism, Free Masonry and Catholicism – and common values, beginning with a ‘warlike attitude’ (kämpferische Grundeinstellung). In this context, the soldiers’ ideological education was in the hands of military imams, under the supervision of the Abteilung VI (department VI ) of the division’s staff, in charge of ideological questions and propaganda.34 The imams’ activity was thus aimed chiefly at training good Muslim ‘political soldiers’, as noted in a directive sent to the imams on 15 March 1944: The imam is the representative of Islam within the division. He must awaken and channel the forces of religion to make the members of the division good SS members and good soldiers. . . . National-Socialism and Islam are similar in their ideological principles. Moreover, they have the same enemies. The goal of [ideological] education is thus the same for both: a determined and energetic combatant who is ready to risk his life for a new and better European order.35

Other circulars gave details on the role of Abteilung VI and the imams within the division. One imam was assigned to each regiment, then in 1944 and depending on availability, to each battalion and company. A directive dated 15 March 1944 distinguished between two functions: spiritual care (geistliche Betreuung) and ideological education (weltanschauliche Erziehung). For the former, the imams were mainly to celebrate the main religious holidays, to guide Friday prayers, and to carry out military funerals. The directive focused in particular on how to reconcile time dedicated to military and religious activities (notably on Fridays and during the Ramadan fast). Regarding their ideological role, the imams were to speak to the troops at least once a week on a topic chosen by Abteilung VI , and to take advantage of any other occasion to educate their men, while serving as a personal example, notably by taking direct part in combat. Once a month, the imams were to submit a report on troop morale to Abteilung VI . The imams also served as intermediaries between Germans and Muslims: they were to explain the customs of the Bosnian population to the German officers and NCO s, to help in negotiations with local notables, especially regarding quartering of troops, and even to participate in interrogations of prisoners and defectors. Lastly, they were involved in another essential activity for the cohesion and motivation of the troops, often neglected in studies of the Waffen-SS , namely social aid (Fürsorge), also supervised by Abteilung VI : An imam must be with the troops as often as possible, during active duty and when off duty. He must also look after the personal wellbeing of the members of the division and their families, and in agreement with the officer in charge of

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social aid, must initiate all necessary measures. He must also take part in all appropriate measures to ensure the physical and spiritual wellbeing of the troops, and thus increase their efficiency and combativeness (entertainment, groups for games or singing, etc.).36

Thus, the imams were given important functions that were partly reminiscent of those held by the Schulungsleiter in other Waffen-SS divisions. Yet they were also caught in a complex military hierarchy that reduced their room for manoeuvre and increased the number of potential sources of conflict. On a military level, they obeyed their unit commander. In their religious functions, they were subject to the orders of the Divisionsimam. Lastly, in their ideological activities, they depended on the head of Abteilung VI and had to work side by side with the latter’s correspondents in each unit. In reality, Abteilung VI had itself to fight to assert its existence in the face of officers that were not very interested in ideological issues and were even more indifferent to religious matters. Heinrich Gaese, the first head of Abteilung VI , threw in the towel in October 1943 and asked for reassignment to a combat unit.37 His successor Ekkehard Wangemann complained that political work was neglected within the division, came into conflict with the commanding officer General Gustav Sauberzweig, and resigned in June 1944.38 Within Abteilung VI , the imams held a secondary role: apart from the Divisionsimam, all the officers responsible for this department were Germans; among operating staff, Imam Osman Delić was the only one to work briefly for the department, writing antiSemitic texts.39 The Muslims that helped produce propaganda materials for the division were in fact lay people: Alija Selimbegović came from Pavelić’s personal press department, and Omer Zuhrić was a second-rate author who had become a supporter of the Ustasha state in 1941. Moreover, there were few articles about Islam or authored by imams in Handžar, the division’s newspaper, which preferred to celebrate the Austro-Hungarian military tradition or to present the major principles of National-Socialism, sprinkled with anti-Semitic remarks. Obviously, this newspaper was intended more for the German officers than the Muslim troops, most of whom were illiterate. The imams were involved in some training activities: in April 1944, Imam Kasim Mašić took part in a political education course, but spoke about the customs of Bosnia-Herzegovina, while a German officer, Erich Wiegandt, was in charge of explaining the ties between Islam and National-Socialism.40 In their respective units, the imams had to contend with their officers’ lack of interest in religious questions, and probably also their prejudices against Islam and Bosnian Muslims. Evidence of this is seen

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in the term ‘Mujo’,41 which the Germans used in their conversations to refer to Muslims. Further evidence, at a different level, is visible in General Sauberzweig’s comments when the division crossed the River Sava to return to BosniaHerzegovina: the general called on the imams to explain to their German comrades the daily and religious customs of the Bosnian population, because ‘by crossing the Sava, we are entering an entirely different world’.42 The limits set for Islam and its representatives can be seen in the fact that the combat of SS soldiers was never presented in terms of jihad, but always placed in a German perspective. Thus, in the newspaper Handžar, Imam Husein Đozo went over the duties of an SS soldier and called on his companions in arms to create a new world, to free Europe of Bolshevism, Capitalism and Judaism, and to bring Croatia the peace and order it was missing.43 But not a word about Islam. The 13th SS Division remained a German and National-Socialist division, where Islam played only a secondary role. However, soldiers killed in combat were buried as shaheeds (martyrs of the faith): shortly after the return of the 13th SS Division in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a circular dated 15 March 1944 noted that a soldier killed in combat must be buried in his uniform, without being washed or placed in a coffin; this is the burial ritual reserved for a shaheed. Imam Fuad Mujakić, interviewed in 2010, remembers haranguing soldiers preparing for combat against the Bulgarian Army, reminding them that those killed that day would die as shaheeds.44 More generally, imams were responsible for religious rituals. The end of Ramadan was celebrated in October 1943 in Neuhammer, where the division was in training, and the mawlid (Prophet’s birthday) was celebrated in March 1944 in Brčko, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Friday prayers were organized in each unit of the division. However, in April 1944, Wangemann complained that attendance was low: according to the regulations, soldiers’ attendance was optional, and many preferred to use this free time to rest or attend to other business. Fifty years later, Wangemann was still complaining to military historian Lepre that Friday prayers were left up to each individual’s responsibility, officers and NCO s did not take Muslim religious customs seriously, and they tolerated the consumption of pork and alcohol, to the great displeasure of the imams, and the great pleasure of the soldiers: In fact, the young volunteers preferred soup cooked with pork and drank šljivovica [brandy] immoderately. . . . I was unable to convince Sauberzweig that a young volunteer from a very simple background was unable to determine whether the consumption of pork or alcohol was in contradiction with the demands of his religion, especially if many German officers were unaware of the problem or didn’t care.45

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Thus, the fact that there were imams present in the 13th SS Division does not mean that religious observance was high. An internal division report noted that even some imams drank alcohol,46 and Imam Mujakić recalls taking part in this sort of arrangement with religious rules: when a German officer caught him eating pork with other soldiers and called him out, Mujakić calmly replied that it was permissible in Islam when there was nothing else to eat.47 The return to the combat zone in February 1944 further disorganized religious life: the temporalities of war took priority over religious time, Friday prayers became irregular, and the imams’ energy was mainly devoted to burials and the subsequent administrative formalities. In 2010, former imam Adem Gadžo told how, once on the Russian front, burials became his sole activity.48 In October 1944, in a letter transmitted to the ulema-medžlis, Bosnian SS soldier Fehim Karahasilović complained that in three months he has only attended one jumah [Friday prayer] and the imams do not visit the soldiers on the front line, whereas his unit is constantly on the front line. When one of the soldiers is killed, they [the other soldiers] prepare [the corpse] themselves, and if one of them knows something, he recites it. Likewise, the food is prepared with pork fat and they are given pork to eat. He complains that the imams do not care at all about the soldiers’ religious life.49

Returning to Bosnia-Herzegovina had other consequences for the imams of the 13th SS Division. Their propaganda activity, previously limited to soldiers in their unit, was expanded to address local populations as well. The imams notably took part in the propaganda tours that Abteilung VI organized in nearby Muslim villages, using a truck equipped with speakers and showing films. Thus, in October 1944, an agent of the Ustasha intelligence service in the village of Žabare (Čelić) attended speeches from staff officer Franz Matheis, new Abteilung VI head Georg Floritsch and Imam Malkoč, whose comments he described as ‘empty words’.50 Imams campaigning for the Waffen-SS did not necessarily use religious arguments to persuade their audience: testifying to his judges in 1945, Mašić acknowledged that he had travelled across Bosnia-Herzegovina to recruit new volunteers, and had ‘spoken of the conditions for entering the SS division and of the [material] advantages that new SS recruits would enjoy.’51 Another area of activity for imams underwent a substantial transformation in spring 1944: social aid. Until then, this aid consisted of helping soldiers carry out the administrative procedures needed to obtain certain social benefits, writing letters to their families, and organizing literacy classes. Once back in BosniaHerzegovina, social aid also targeted the local population: in collaboration with

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the local Muslim charity Merhamet (‘Mercy’) and with the imams’ participation, Abteilung VI organized the distribution of food and clothing in villages and refugee camps. Here, too, political propaganda and social aid went hand in hand. Lastly, between February and October 1944, the 13th SS Division attempted to transform its sector of deployment in north-eastern Bosnia into a sort of military frontier, where the Waffen-SS would exercise sole power, despite protests from Croatian authorities. This situation enabled the division’s imams to exert some control over local religious life, as shown in a few surviving documents. Thus, in April 1944, the local waqf commission in Derventa complained to the ulemamedžlis that a mysterious ‘SS commission’ was getting involved in a local conflict about the appointment of a new professor of religion, and some SS members were attempting to bribe or intimidate members of local religious institutions.52 Four months later, the local waqf commission in Tuzla asked Croatian regional authorities whether minarets could be lit in the evening during Ramadan despite air raid alerts. In this case, the answer came from the Divisionsimam of the 13th SS Division: Abdulah Muhasilović transmitted authorization to light minarets until one hour after akšam,53 also stating that Croatian authorities had been ordered to prohibit the sale of alcohol to Muslims during Ramadan, and to close inns selling alcohol in Muslims villages.54 However, the division’s imams were not the only ones trying to influence local religious authorities. In March 1944, partisans leaving the city of Bijeljina due to the advance of the 13th SS Division instructed local imams to contact the division’s imams and tell them the truth about the partisan movement, namely that it was protecting Muslims from Serb Chetniks.55 Despite a sometimes uncomfortable status and the somewhat relative religious fervour of their flock, the imams of the 13th SS Division enjoyed undisputed authority among the troops and even beyond, and this proved decisive during certain moments of crisis. Thus, on 17 September 1943 in Villefranche-de-Rouergue, a serious mutiny broke out in the division’s engineering battalion. This mutiny was led by a Muslim officer and three NCO s (two Croats and one Muslim), and resulted in the execution of five German officers. But Malkoč, the battalion’s imam, opposed the mutineers and successfully turned back part of the troops, thus contributing to the eventual failure of the mutiny. However, contrary to what Mirko Grmek and Louise Lambrichs believe, based on a report by the main imam of the Croatian Army Mustafa Mehić, it is not certain that Malkoč used mainly religious arguments: in his own report, Malkoč makes no mention of such arguments.56 Several months later, in early May 1945 near Klagenfurt, the remainder of the 13th SS Division was preparing

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for surrender to British troops. At the request of certain imams, the division’s commander Desiderius Hampel freed Muslim soldiers from their oaths, authorizing those who so desired to return to Yugoslavia. Around a thousand of them set out for home, led by Imam Mašić.57 Yet here again, it is not certain that Mašić’s arguments were religious in nature.

SS imams: Between ideological radicalization and relative autonomy To better understand the role of imams in the 13th SS Division, we need to look at their individual backgrounds before and after incorporating the SS .58 A first group of around fifteen imams, recruited when the division was created in 1943, was born between 1912 and 1919. In 1943, they were between 24 and 31 years old. Only the first Divisionsimam Muhasilović was significantly older, being born in 1898. This initial cohort of SS imams was characterized by a relatively high level of studies. Most of them were from madrasa Gazi Husrev-beg in Sarajevo and the Higher Islamic School for Sharia and Theology, also in Sarajevo. In addition, Đozo and Haris Korkut had studied at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. Only Muhasilović had lengthy experience as a military imam in the Yugoslav Army, but several other imams were, at the time they joined the Waffen-SS , military imams in the regular Croatian Army or, in Malkoč’s case, in an Ustasha unit. Testimony by several imams emphasizes Muhamed Pandža’s personal influence in their decision to join the 13th SS Division. Therefore, thanks to Pandža, the Waffen-SS successfully attracted some of the most promising young ulama of Bosnia-Herzegovina. However, those already serving in the Croatian Army may have been transferred without being consulted. Immediately after being incorporated into the 13th SS Division, the imams were sent to an ImamenLehrgang (‘course for imams’) lasting three weeks in Babelsberg, near Berlin. There, according to Zvonimir Bernwald, a young ethnic German who worked as an interpreter for the imams,59 Abteilung VI head Gaese told the young recruits about the principles of National-Socialism and its areas of convergence with Islam, in compliance with the agreement between Berger and al-Husayni. While the shared hostility to Jews, Bolsheviks and the British (then supporters of the Chetniks) did not pose any particular problems to the young imams, they failed to see the need to oppose Free Masonry and the Catholic Church. Moreover, the presentation of the Lebensborn – the institution in charge of caring for the illegitimate children of SS soldiers – sparked indignation. The imams could

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adhere to National-Socialist ideology, or silently tolerate it, but they could not renounce some religious principles. Likewise, we cannot be sure that all the imams returned from Babelsberg with the same conception of their role. The Divisionsimam Muhasilović saw himself more as a military chaplain than a political soldier, which explains his conflicts with his German superiors and his replacement by Malkoč in October 1944, as the former Ustasha was probably more inclined to turn Islam into a combat ideology. More generally, the writings of some imams before their incorporation into the Waffen-SS give us an approximate idea of their personal attitudes. Mustafa Hadžimulić published various articles in the Bosnian Muslim press on the figure of the Prophet, the main precepts of Islam, and on religious teaching in school. His articles were strictly religious and devoid of any political dimension. Thus, his conception of the function of a military imam may also have been apolitical. In any case, his hierarchical superiors did not have a high opinion of him. In his personnel record, Hadžimulić is described as being ‘impenetrable’ and ‘lazy’, his services rendered are ‘close to zero’, and his ideological attitude is simply ‘in order’ (‘in Ordnung’).60 Other imams were more combative. For example, in an article published in May 1943, Bajraktarević presented Islam as an ideal worth fighting and dying for, and rejected religious fatalism.61 This ideological radicalization of Islam was even more visible with Đozo, whose positions in the 1930s were close to Islamic reformism and scientism, then evolving gradually towards social Darwinism wherein life is a combat and there is only room for the strongest and most determined. In 1941, just before Germany’s invasion of Yugoslavia, Đozo still appeared neutral on the ‘combat between the democratic and totalitarian visions of mankind’.62 However, in the following months, he called for Muslim nations to side with the strongest – the Axis powers – and made multiple attacks of British colonialists and Jewish capitalists.63 His calls in the newspaper Handžar to free Europe from Bolshevism, Capitalism and Judaism are therefore the culmination of an ideological radicalization that occurred over several years, not just a one-time statement. Đozo’s personnel record has been lost, but his appointment as director of a new Imamen-Lehrgang inaugurated in April 1944 in Guben, East Prussia, suggests that his superiors were satisfied with his ideological convictions and services rendered. It appears therefore that the nature and level of motivation of the first group of imams joining the Waffen-SS was quite variable, the same being even more true for the second group of imams formed in 1944. The Imamen-Lehrgang in Guben was intended to train a second cohort of a few dozen SS imams to fill the vacant imam positions in the battalions and

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companies. However, this second cohort was formed under very different circumstances. On the one hand, the religious institutions refused to cooperate: the acting Reis-ul-ulema Bašić rejected General Sauberzweig’s request for ten more imams trained in the best religious schools.64 On the other hand, the 13th SS Division was deployed in Bosnia-Herzegovina at the time, and could therefore handle its own recruitment, as seen in three different and significant cases. The first example is that of Fadil Mehanović, a philosophy student from Vlasenica in eastern Bosnia. In 1941, Mehanović participated in the creation of an Ustasha militia in Vlasenica and, according to the 1 June 1946 issue of the Sarajevski dnevnik (‘Sarajevo Daily’), spread terror among the region’s Serb population and took part in several summary executions. He disappeared after the partisans took control of Vlasenica in July 1942, and then he joined the 13th SS Division in 1943. Noticed for his level of studies and maybe also for his previous political activities, he was sent to Guben and became a military imam. At the end of the war, he was captured by the Yugoslav Army at the SlovenianAustrian border, and sentenced to death in 1946.65 The second example is that of Mušan Tunović, born in 1925 in a village near Gacko in eastern Herzegovina. Tunović spent four years at the Sarajevo Sharia Secondary School until the war forced him to interrupt his studies and join the Muslim militia of Gacko in charge of fighting the Chetniks. In 1943, Waffen-SS recruitment sergeants ordered this local militia to send a portion of its members to the 13th SS Division, and Tunović was part of this group. In 1944, he was sent to Guben as well, returning as a military imam, first for the shortlived SS Division Kama, then in the 13th SS Division, which he followed to Austria.66 Lastly, the third example is that of Safet Karić, born in 1920 in a village near Gradačac, northern Bosnia. Karić finished his studies at the Tuzla madrasa in 1936 and was appointed as imam in various small Bosnian towns. In 1941, he became a military imam in the regular Croatian Army before being captured and drafted by partisans in October 1943. Five months later, he was captured by the 13th SS Division and presented to the Divisionsimam, who decided to send him to Guben. He returned three months later and was also appointed as an imam for the SS Division Kama before being sent with other Muslim SS members to build fortifications on the border between Austria and Hungary.67 The tortuous trajectories of Mehanović, Tunović and Karić illustrate the complexity of the Second World War in Bosnia-Herzegovina. They also reveal

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the differences between this second cohort of imams and the first cohort of 1943: the dozens of pupils going through the Imamen-Lehrgang in Guben were younger, coming from small provincial madrasas or lacking religious training. They were not volunteers but had been incorporated by force in the 13th SS Division and then selected for Guben by German officers or the imams of their units. In Guben, they spent three or four months under the supervision of Imamen-Lehrgang director Đozo, SS Imam Korkut, who taught the history of Islam, and Salih Hadžialić, the imam of the Croatian Embassy in Berlin, in charge of explaining the links between Islam and National-Socialism to the young imams in training.68 The imams of the 13th SS Division, in particular those incorporated in 1943, enjoyed special authority, which they used to win some autonomy from their German superiors. For example, Fadil Sirčo’s personnel record describes him as a ‘good National-Socialist and a great friend of Germany’, but also as a ‘fanatical Muslim’ easily in conflict with the Catholic Croats in the division.69 Similarly, Ahmed Skaka was presented by his superiors as a ‘fanatic of Muslim ideology’.70 Moreover, some imams used their relative autonomy to protest openly against some German policies. In November 1943, as we have seen, Bajraktarević pressed General Phleps to bring the 13th SS Division back to Bosnia-Herzegovina and to open an investigation into the Košutice massacre; seven months later, Mašić wrote to the Divisionsimam to ask that the 7th SS Division Prinz Eugen cease all collaboration with the Chetniks and leave the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina!71 Yet SS imams did not stray from their German superiors with regard to NationalSocialist ideology or crimes committed by the 13th SS Division, even though three of them had signed the Sarajevo Muslim resolution of 1941 denouncing the crimes of the Ustashas against the Serbs,72 and although Mujakić says that he refused to execute a man arrested on the edge of the forest, without facing any disciplinary action for this refusal.73 In fact, conflicts broke out between the imams and their officers when German interests diverged too far from Bosnian Muslim ones, and the German collaboration with the Chetniks was therefore the main source of friction. In September 1944, Divisionsimam Muhasilović tried with great difficulty to convince the imams that this collaboration was warranted by the priorities of fighting communism, and that they had the duty to explain it to the troops.74 In Budapest in early October, al-Husayni met with the division’s imams in a hastily prepared meeting, but this was not enough to tighten the ranks even though the Mufti repeated his old diatribes about the Third Reich and Islam’s common enemies.75 Over the following weeks, the 13th SS Division’s departure

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for Hungary was a moment of truth for some of the imams. According to Lepre, citing the war diary of the 9th SS Mountain Corps, Muhasilović organized a mutiny within the staff security guard, and deserted along with about one hundred men.76 Delić apparently deserted at the same period. Lastly, according to Abdulah Budimlija, SS imams Bajraktarević and Hadžimulić were shot to death at Brčko for opposing the marching order.77 Nevertheless, most of the imams followed the remainder of the 13th SS Division until its surrender in Austria in May 1945. Why? Probably out of a mixture of ideological radicalization, personal loyalties, and fear of surrendering to Yugoslav partisans or Red Army soldiers. Moreover, once in Hungary, they could no more expect the support of the local population for any desertion attempt. Thus, former Imam Mujakić recalls that Salih Šabanović had plans for a group desertion that were never implemented,78 and Gadžo tells how Đozo hoped that Turkey would enter the war in order to organize a collective surrender to Turkish troops.79 But Mujakić concedes that still others believed in victory until the very end. The same range of reasons explains probably why several thousand Bosnian SS soldiers decided to follow the Germans in their retreat to the Reich until the capitulation in May 1945.

Conclusion In 1943, top German SS officials sought to rely on Islam to mobilize and radicalize the Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina. However, the fact that most of the 20,000 men of the 13th SS Division were recruited by force, and several thousand of them deserted in autumn 1944, shows that this project was largely illusory. Islam was not the ‘convenient religion’ that Himmler dreamt it to be. Concretely, the religious elite and institutions initially supported plans for a Muslim SS division, but withdrew their support once it became apparent that this project served only German interests. Within the 13th SS Division, military imams were sometimes close to National-Socialist ideology, and took their roles as supervisors and mediators seriously, but they also remained focused on the specific interests of Bosnian Muslims. It is hard to know how ordinary soldiers lived their faith, but religious practice appears to have been fairly weak. Even in the specific setting of the Waffen-SS , it seems that Muslim soldiers did not perceive Islam as a warlike political ideology to be followed blindly, but as a set of religious principles and practices to be negotiated day after day.

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Notes 1 Text translated into English by Christopher Mobley. 2 The 13th SS Division changed name several times. The term ‘Handschar’ (‘handžar’ in Serbo-Croatian) refers to a dagger with a slightly curved blade. 3 In 1931, Bosnia-Herzegovina had 2,323,566 inhabitants: 44.3 per cent of them were Orthodox (Serbs), 30.9 per cent were Muslims, 24.0 per cent were Catholics (Croats), and 0.8 per cent were ‘Others’ (most of them Jews). It was not until 1968 that Bosnian Muslims were recognized as a distinct national group. 4 Speech by Himmler on 28 January 1944 to the directors of the Reich propaganda services, Institut für Zeitgeschichte München (hereafter IfZ), Reichsführer – Personalstab, Part IV, MA 316, 66–7. 5 Report of the State Commission for the Establishment of War Crimes on the 13th SS Division Handschar, Archives of Bosnia-Herzegovina (hereafter AB iH), collection Provincial Commission for the Establishment of War Crimes, reports, box 6, document 60, 2–3. 6 Simon Wiesenthal, Grossmufti – Grossagent der Achse (Salzburg-Vienna: Ried-Verlag, 1947), 48. 7 Edib Jelašanin [Mustafa Ćeman], ‘Uz 50-godišnjicu pobjede nad fašizmom’, series published in Ljiljan, from no. 118, dated 19 April 1995, to no. 121, dated 10 May 1995. 8 Zija Sulejmanpašić, 13. SS divizija Handžar. Istine i laži (Zagreb: KDB Preporod, 2000). 9 See, for example, David Dalin and John Rothmann, Icon of Evil. Hitler’s Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2009). 10 See Miodrag Zečević and Jovan Popović (eds), Dokumenti iz istorije Jugoslavije – Državna komisija za utvrđivanje zločina okupatora i njegovih pomagača iz drugog svetskog rata (Beograd: Arhiv Jugoslavije, 1996). 11 George Lepre, Himmler’s Bosnian Division. The Waffen-SS Handschar Division 1943–1945 (Atglen: Schiffer Publishing Ltd, 1997); David Motadel, Islam and Nazi Germany’s War (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2014). 12 See Bernd Wegner, Hitlers politische Soldaten: Die Waffen-SS 1933–1945 (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 2008). 13 The Independent State of Croatia, created in 1941, covered most of the territory of present-day Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. 14 DOMDO is an acronym for Domobranska dobrovoljačka pukovnija (‘Military Regiment of Volunteers’). Hadžiefendić, born 1898, was an influential merchant from the town of Tuzla, a veteran of the Austro-Hungarian Army and a reserve officer in the Yugoslav Army. 15 Memorandum to his Excellency Adolf Hitler, Führer of the German People, dated 1 November 1942, reproduced in Vladimir Dedijer and Antun Miletić (eds), Genocid nad Muslimanima (Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1990), 250–64.

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16 See Dušan Lukač, Banja Luka i okolica u ratu i revoluciji (Banja Luka: Savez udruženja boraca NOR-a, 1968), 258–9. 17 Archives of the Serbian Armed Forces (hereafter AOS ), collection Third Reich, box 40 G, file 3, document 31. 18 Report from al-Husayni to the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs dated 30 April 1943, quoted in Enver Redžić, Muslimansko automaštvo i 13. SS divizija (Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1987), 100–1. 19 Sanjak is a region on the border between Serbia and Montenegro, with a significant Muslim population. From 1941 to 1943, the Montenegrin part was occupied by Italy and the Serbian part by Germany. 20 Letter from Bajraktarević to Phleps, dated 15 November 1943, IfZ, Reichsführer SS – Persönlicher Stab, Part II , MA 302. 21 The term ‘zeleni kadar’ appeared during the First World War, and referred to groups of deserters from the Austro-Hungarian army that sought refuge in the forest. 22 In Serbo-Croatian, ‘kama’ means ‘dagger’. 23 Report by Gustav Winkler on his visit to Sarajevo, dated 28 April 1943, Political Archive of the Auswärtiges Amt (hereafter PA-AA ), R 69287, 171–2. 24 Report by Gustav Winkler on the political situation of the Muslims of BosniaHerzegovina, dated 4 May 1943, PA-AA , R 101094, 4. 25 History of the 13th SS Division by the SS-Hauptamt, dated 30 November 1943, IfZ, Nurnberg documents, NO 3577. 26 Judgment in trial of Muhamed Tanović, dated 19 October 1948, AB iH, collection Provincial Commission for the Establishment of War Crimes, judgments, box 8, document K 306/48. 27 Report by the Italian Consul in Sarajevo to the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the 13th SS Division, 1 May 1943, Historical Museum of Bosnia-Herzegovina (hereafter HMB iH), collection Ustaška nadzorna služba, box 6, document 1402. 28 Message from agent Darko-9 to the Ustasha intelligence service, dated 8 May 1944, HMB iH, collection Ustaška nadzorna služba, box 13, document 3217. 29 Letter from Bajraktarević to Phleps, dated 15 November 1943, IfZ, Reichsführer SS – Persönlicher Stab, Part II , MA 302. 30 Letter from the acting Reis-ul-ulema Bašić to General Sauberzweig, dated 27 June 1944, Library Gazi Husrev-beg in Sarajevo (hereafter GHB ), collection Ulemamedžlis, document Taj 19/44. 31 Judgment in trial of Halim Malkoč, dated 5 November 1946, AB iH, Provincial Commission for the Establishment of War Crimes, judgments, box 3, document Ko 320/46. 32 Letter from Himmler to Phleps, dated 13 February 1943, IfZ, Reichsführer SS – Persönnlicher Stab, Part II , MA 302. 33 See Stefan Petke, ‘Militärische Vergemeinschaftungsversuche muslimischer Soldaten in der Waffen-SS . Die Beispiele der Division “Handschar” und des “Osttürkischen

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35

36

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

47 48 49 50

51 52 53

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Waffenverbands der SS ” ’, in Jan Erik Schulte, Peter Lieb and Bernd Wegner (eds), Die Waffen-SS. Neue Forschungen, 248–66 (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 2014), 252. Letter from Berger on the ideological and spiritual education in the Muslim SS division, dated 19 May 1943, IfZ, Reichsführer SS – Persönnlicher Stab, Part II , MA 302. Directive of the Abteilung VI for imams of the 13th SS Division of BosnianHerzegovinian Volunteers, dated 15 March 1944, IfZ, Reichsführer SS – Persönnlicher Stab, Part II , MA 302. Directive of the Abteilung VI for imams of the 13th SS Division of BosnianHerzegovinian Volunteers, dated 15 March 1944, IfZ, Reichsführer SS – Persönnlicher Stab, Part II , MA 302. Before being made head of Abteilung VI , Gaese was a member of the editorial board for the SS-Leithefte magazine. Before joining the Waffen-SS , Wangemann had studied Protestant theology. Interview with Erich Elbling, former interpreter for Abteilung VI , Forli, 22 April 2010. Outline for the political education course of 29 March 1944, IfZ, Reichsführer SS – Persönnlicher Stab, Part II , MA 302. ‘Mujo’ is a diminutive of Muhammad, and is often used mockingly or pejoratively to refer to Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Circular from General Sauberzweig on the imams’ role within the 13th SS Division, dated 8 March 1944, IfZ, Reichsführer SS – Persönnlicher Stab, Part II , MA 302. Husein Đozo, ‘Zadaća SS -vojnika’, Handžar no. 7 (1943), 5. Interview with Fuad Mujakić, former imam of the 13th SS Division, Bihać, 9 May 2010. See Lepre, Himmler’s Bosnian Division, 184. Report no. 8 on the situation for the period from 1 March to 6 April 1944, personal record for Karl-Gustav Sauberzweig, Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde (hereafter BAL ), Berlin Documentation Center. Interview with Fuad Mujakić. Interview with Adem Gadžo, former imam of the 13th SS Division, Sarajevo, 12 May 2010. Minutes of the meeting of the ulema-medžlis with Muhamed Lazović on 20 October 1944, GHB , collection Ulema-medžlis, document 3019/1944. Report by agent IX -BS -31 to the Ustasha intelligence service, dated 16 October 1944, Croatian State Archive (hereafter HDA ), collection Izvorna građa NDH , file I / 7, document 577. Judgment in the trial of Kasim Mašić, dated 18 August 1945, personal archives. Letter from the local waqf commission of Derventa to the ulema-medžlis, dated 17 May 1944, GHB , collection Ulema-medžlis, document 3100/1944. Akšam (in Arabic: maghrib) is the fourth of the five daily prayers.

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54 Letter from Divisionsimam Muhasilović to the regional waqf commission of Tuzla, dated 15 August 1944, Cantonal archive Tuzla, collection Islamska vjerska zajednica Tuzla, box 692. 55 Abdulah Budimlija, Moja sjećanja (Bijeljina: BKZ Preporod), 62. 56 See Mirko Grmek and Louise Lambrichs, Les révoltés de Villefranche. Mutinerie d’un bataillon de Waffen-SS en septembre 1943 (Paris: Seuil, 1998), 323–4. 57 Interrogation of Mušan Tunović, AB iH, Provincial Commission for the Establishment of War Crimes, war criminals, box 2, document 60747. 58 This study of the individual background of the imams of the 13th SS division is based, among others, on the documentation of the former Berlin Documentation Center (Bundesarchiv, Berlin-Lichterfelde) and of the Yugoslav State Commission for the Establishment of War Crimes (Yugoslav Archive, Belgrade). 59 Interview with Zvonimir Bernwald, former interpreter for Abteilung VI , Nesselwang, 13 July 2010. See also Zvonimir Bernwald, Muslime in der Waffen-SS. Erinnerungen an die bosnische Division Handžar (1943–1945) (Graz: Ares, 2012), 47–55. 60 Personnel record for Mustafa Hadžimulić, BAL , Berlin Documentation Center. 61 Hasan Bajraktarević, ‘Smisao islamskog idealizma – značaj rada, borbe i žrtve u islamu’, el-Hidaje 11, no. 5–6 (May 1943): 108–18. 62 Husein Đozo, ‘Kako islam gleda na čovjeka’, Glasnik Islamske vjerske zajednice 9, no. 4–5 (April 1941): 115–18, 115. 63 See notably Husein Đozo, ‘Protuglavničarske smjernice islama’, Hrvat – muslimanski godišnjak 1 (1943): 63–6. 64 See letter from General Sauberzweig to the acting Reis-ul-ulema Bašić, dated 15 June 1944, GHB , unsorted document, and letter from the acting Reis-ul-ulema Bašić to Sauberzweig, dated 27 June 1944, GHB , collection Ulema-medžlis, document Taj19/44. 65 ‘Začetnik pokolja u Vlasenici osuđen je na smrt’, Sarajevski dnevnik, 1 June 1946. 66 Interrogation of Mušan Tunović, AB iH, collection Provincial Commission for the Establishment of War Crimes, war criminals, box 2, document 60747. 67 Interrogation of Safet Karić, AB iH, collection Provincial Commission for the Establishment of War Crimes, war criminals, box 1, document 60745. 68 Đozo, Korkut and Hadžialić all studied at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University. 69 Personnel record for Fadil Sirčo, BAL , Berlin Documentation Center. 70 Personnel record for Ahmed Skaka, BAL , Berlin Documentation Center. 71 Letter from Mašić to Muhasilović, dated 16 June 1944, quoted in Thomas Casagrande, Die volksdeutsche SS-Division ‘Prinz Eugen’ (Frankfurt: Campus, 2003), 282. 72 These three were Đozo, Bajraktarević and Skaka. 73 Interview with Fuad Mujakić. 74 Speech to the imams of the SS Divisions Handschar and Kama, dated 6 September 1944, AOS , collection Third Reich, box 9, file 4, document 14.

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75 Speech by Amin al-Husayni to the imams of the 13th SS Division, reproduced in Höpp, Mufti-Papiere, 219–24. 76 Lepre, Himmler’s Bosnian Division, 266. The fate of Muhasilović after the war is unknown. 77 Abdulah Budimlija, Moja sjećanja, 63. 78 Interview with Fuad Mujakić. 79 Interview with Adem Gadžo.

Bibliography Bernwald, Zvonimir. Muslime in der Waffen-SS. Erinnerungen an die bosnische Division ‘Handzar’ (1943–1945). Graz: Ares Verlag, 2012. Gensicke, Klaus. Der Mufti von Jerusalem und die Nationalsozialisten. Eine politische Biographie Amin el-Husseinis. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007. Heine, Peter. ‘Die Mullah-Kurse der Waffen-SS ’. In Gerhard Höpp and Brigitte Reinwald (eds), Fremdeinsätze. Afrikaner und Asiaten in europäischen Kriegen, 1914–1945, 181–8. Berlin: Das arabische Buch, 2000. Höpp, Gerhard, ed. Mufti-Papiere. Briefe, Memoranden, Reden und Aufrufe Amin al-Husainis aus dem Exil, 1940–1945. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 2004. Koop, Volker. Hitlers Muslime. Die Geschichte einer unheiligen Allianz. Berlin: Be-Bra-Verlag, 2012. Leleu, Jean-Luc. La Waffen-SS. Soldats politiques en guerre. Paris: Perrin, 2007. Lepre, George. Himmler’s Bosnian Division. The Waffen-SS Handschar Division 1943–1945. Atglen: Schiffer Publishing Ltd, 1997. Motadel, David. Islam and Nazi Germany’s War. Cambridge, MA : The Belknap Press, 2014. Petke, Stefan. ‘Militärische Vergemeinschaftungsversuche muslimischer Soldaten in der Waffen-SS . Die Beispiele der Division “Handschar” und des “Osttürkischen Waffenverbands der SS ” ’. In Jan Erik Schulte, Peter Lieb and Bernd Wegner (eds), Die Waffen-SS. Neue Forschungen, 248–66. Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 2014. Redžić, Enver. Muslimansko automaštvo i 13. SS divizija. Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1987. Schulte, Jan Erik, Peter Lieb and Bernd Wegner, eds. Die Waffen-SS. Neue Forschungen. Paderborn: Schönungh, 2014. Sundhaussen, Holm. ‘Zur Geschichte der Waffen-SS in Kroatien 1941–1945’. Südostforschungen 30 (1971): 176–96. Van Konningsveld, Pieter Sjoerd. ‘The Training of Imams by the Third Reich’. In Willem B. Drees (ed.), The Study of Religion and the Training of Muslim Clergy in Europe, 333–68. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008. Wegner, Bernd. Hitlers politische Soldaten: Die Waffen-SS 1933–1945. Paderborn: Schönungh, 1982.

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The Officer for Muslim Military Affairs in the First French Army, 1944–1945: An Agent of Control or an Intermediary? Claire Miot

The 1st French Army, mustered in North Africa and commanded by General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, was an integral part of the Allied landing in Provence in August 1944. Its troops liberated Marseille, Toulon and Lyon, then fought in the Vosges Mountains and in Alsace before finally entering southern Germany, where it obtained an occupation zone in Baden-Württemberg in 1945. Given that half of its soldiers – around 130,000 men – were considered by the French military hierarchy to be native conscripts, this Army can be viewed as a colonial army.1 While more than 100,000 of the colonial soldiers were from North Africa, around 20,000 came from Sub-Saharan Africa and a few hundred from the Asian part of the French Empire. Compared with the Sub-Saharan soldiers, the North African soldiers were more often labelled ‘Muslims’ by the military hierarchy and their European officers. Indeed, the military administration used the two terms ‘indigène’ (‘native’) and ‘musulman’ (‘Muslim’) interchangeably. The army used the colonial administration’s categories, assimilating the North African ‘indigènes’ with their assumed religion and culture. In reality, however, this word covered different legal statutes. Since Tunisia and Morocco were French protectorates, Tunisian and Moroccan soldiers were subjects of the Sultan and the Bey, respectively. Conversely, Algeria had been annexed by France and divided into three French départements in 1848. But Algerians were not given full French citizenship until the law of 1865. Even then, to be granted citizenship, they had to renounce Islamic law, which was considered incompatible with the French civil code. As Patrick Weil has pointed out, for the colonial authorities, the term ‘Muslim’ referred not only to the religion, it also had an ‘ethnic-political dimension’.2 In 161

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the colonial archives as well as in the military sources, the term ‘Muslim’ is foremost a political category expressing colonial domination. However, for the colonial power, this category also referred to a specific group of native soldiers, supposedly sharing a common religion or at least a culture that needed to be preserved and respected by the army – not for humanitarian reasons, but for the sake of efficiency. From the beginning, the French Army took a paternalistic approach to its colonial soldiers. Good material conditions and respect of cultural traditions were required to motivate the colonial conscripts. The French Army initially mobilized these soldiers to achieve colonial conquest.3 Then, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the most important colonial units – such as the zouaves4 or the tabors5 – were created to ‘pacify’ the conquered territories.6 During the First World War, their role was extended to the defence of Metropolitan France: 270,000 North African combatants were mobilized and 125,000 Algerians fought on European soil.7 After the end of the Great War, French colonial authorities established conscription for the ‘natives’ in Algeria, and during the interwar period, the African societies were gradually militarized. For the French military, the creation of a massive colonial army required the enlistment and education of specially trained officers who could manage colonial conscripts. Therefore, European officers who had been trained in the so-called Armée d’Afrique and had experience in the African territories during the conquest operations were considered to be best able to understand and lead their men on the battlefield during the Great War. Just before the Second World War, this practice was formalized by the creation, in 1938, of the Corps of Officers for Muslim Military Affairs (Corps des officiers des affaires militaires musulmanes), a body that reactivated the Corps of Arabic Military Interpreters (Corps des interprètes militaires arabes) created during the conquest of Algeria. These officers for Muslim Military Affairs (hereafter: AMM ) operated either inside the units or in the military districts in North Africa. Their mission at the time overlapped between expertise and intelligence services; this revealed the ambiguity of colonial authority at the end of the Second World War at a time when North Africa was being destabilized by increasingly vigorous nationalist movements. Thus, by analysing the mission of these specific officers enlisted in the colonial troops during the second campaign of France, we can understand the army’s forms of paternalistic management of Muslim troops throughout the imperial period, where it constantly oscillated between intelligence, control and ‘protection’. The French Army’s knowledge and supervision of Muslim cultural practices played a key role in this management.

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First, I will trace the AMM office from its origins up to the second campaign of France, since this reveals the continuity of the concepts and practices inside the military institution in managing the native troops, from the time of the colonial conquest to the time when military enlistment was generalized in the Empire. Second, I will investigate the specific tensions that characterized this corps at the end of the Second World War.

From the Corps of Arabic Military Interpreters to the Corps of Officers for Muslim Military Affairs: Expertise, control and protection The Corps of Officers for Muslim Military Affairs has its origins in the Corps of Arabic Military Interpreters, with their twofold mission of translating and producing a base of imperial knowledge on the colonial world. This Corps of Arabic Military Interpreters was, from the outset, distinct from the Corps for Native Affairs (Corps des affaires indigènes), derived from the bureaux arabes, whose function was to control the population. However, in 1938, in a time of protest against colonial rule, the creation of the AMM Corps extended the former Corps of Military Interpreters’ competencies and included increasing intelligence missions. From the beginning, the French military conquest of non-European territories had coincided with the constitution of a new understanding about these territories and their populations. The building of imperial expertise was regarded as an important condition for a lasting and successful colonial project.8 The army played a decisive role in building this expertise because very often, soldiers were the only agents present in Africa or Asia, and also because the military institution gave itself the means to control and administer the conquered territories.9 For example, it created the so-called bureaux arabes in 1844, in which officers played the role of administrators of the conquered territories, acting as if they were in charge of social and economic life. However, they remained above all intelligence officers.10 To administer the conquered territories, the army needed specialized officers able both to understand the languages of the native population, and to formalize their substantial expertise on these populations. While some officers were the French Army elite and had become fluent in Arabic, the standard level was generally low.11 This explains why a Corps of Arabic Military Interpreters was created in 1845, dedicated to helping the officers in the bureaux arabes. These offices were replaced by the bureaux indigènes in 1875,

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when military control was reduced in favour of civil administration in the North African territories. During the conquest of Algeria, some military interpreters who had developed expertise in Arabic and Muslim culture played an intermediary role between the military power and the colonized population and contributed to colonial knowledge about Algeria.12 The French War Office recruited sixty interpreters to join the French Expeditionary Corps in Algiers in 1830. Twenty of them, considered to be brilliant Orientalists, had already taken part in Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian expedition.13 This group formed a nexus of scholars specialized in Oriental studies. In Algeria, the use of military interpreters was made systematic. Although these military interpreters had only scant knowledge of Arabic,14 some of them were known as eminent scholars of Arabic studies, first in Paris, and then in scientific communities in colonial Algiers. Thus, these military interpreters contributed to the institutionalization of colonial knowledge at the end of the nineteenth century.15 For instance, Baron de Slane, a major interpreter in Algiers between 1846 and 1853, translated the medieval philosopher Ibn Khaldun’s work and contributed to the first Berber dictionary. Laurent-Charles Ferraud formalized the first Kabyle language lesson book.16 This process of knowledge production cannot be separated from the colonial project since the two books were ordered by the War Office during the conquest of Kabylia in the 1840s.17 The Corps of Arabic Military Interpreters was gradually professionalized, and its size increased regularly (to 61 in 1901 and 120 in 1938).18 Although at the beginning of the conquest the French authorities were forced to recruit foreigners – in other words, Jewish or Eastern translators – the corps had been gradually ‘Frenchified’.19 A 1901 decree stipulated that only French citizens could apply.20 The competitive exam was formalized in 1901, including exercises on translation, Arabic grammar, ‘conversation with a native’, and the history of Africa. This demonstrates that military interpreters at that time had to have many more skills than simple translation.21 In Algeria, they were employed as agents of the colonial order in the affaires indigènes. In Morocco and later in Tunisia, they took part in the so-called pacification during the interwar period.22 During the interwar period, interest in the recruitment exams declined. Only two candidates applied in 1937.23 This can be attributed to the fact that fewer Europeans were able to use Arabic and that the ‘use of the term “interpreter” seems to put the officer in the subordinate role of a translator’,24 and also to the fact that the army was less and less involved in the administration of North Africa. Moreover, since the time of the conquest, the colonial administration’s

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needs had changed, and the interpreters’ missions had to be transformed in view of the upheavals caused by the nationalist movements in North Africa. The colonial order needed more specialists able to communicate with, and report on, the native population in general and native soldiers in particular. In 1935, the French War Minister reiterated that Arabic military interpreters were of great importance given the ‘development of nationalist ideas in the Muslim countries’.25 General Georges Catroux, at the time an important figure in the Armée d’Afrique, highlighted that in Algeria, the loyalty of the troops was decreasing because the soldiers ‘no longer lived separated from the North African civilian population’, and shared ‘the passions which characterized the Berber Arabic population of Muslim religion where they come from’. To prevent these problems, the army had to recruit ‘men of knowledge’ and to offer attractive careers inside the army for those officers.26 Moreover, in the tense international context of the late 1930s, the Daladier government passed a number of laws and decrees preparing ‘the organization of the nation in time of war’ and organizing wide-scale mobilization of native soldiers. Under these conditions, more than ever, the army needed specialists to manage native soldiers. Although the Decree of 14 June 1938 increased officers’ powers, it also created the newly-named ‘Officers for Muslim Military Affairs’. Selection for the corps was much more difficult in that candidates were the only officers required to pass an exam to become captains or commanders. Moreover, this decree ‘militarized’ the Corps of Military Interpreters insofar as the officers now had access to the Ecole de guerre, whose staff included 120 officers.27 During the Battle of France in May 1940, the majority of the AMM officers led the North African units,28 and most were taken prisoner.29 Nevertheless, the AMM office in Algiers continued to organize an exam session in early 1941, targeting officers who were ‘used to the practice of Arabic or Berber languages’, and who had ‘personal experience of Muslim questions’.30 However, due to the conditions of the Franco-German Armistice, the AMM Corps was dissolved on 15 April 1941. It was officially transformed into a civilian administration by a decree of 20 October 1941, even though it actually remained a military corps.31 In fact, continuity with the pre-war administration characterized the management of the colonial population. Vichy in North Africa was concerned about the control of the native population in general and the native soldiers in particular.32 It is significant that the new name for this civil corps – ‘Advisor for Muslim Affairs’ (Conseiller des affaires musulmanes) – avoided the word ‘Islamic’ generally used only for questions related to religion (theology), law (Islamic law) and the related sciences.33 This revealed that the

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mission of the civilian corps of Muslim affairs was not only ‘to manage religious, political and Muslim social status questions’ and to ‘contribute to the development of Arabic, Berber and Muslim sociology’, but also ‘to furnish experts to administer the Muslim populations’.34 In other words, its mission covered both intelligence and monitoring aspects. The officers also had to fulfil their traditional intelligence mission, which was extended to the European population to detect anti-Vichy opinions, to instruct the commander in chief on the ‘mindset of the European and indigenous populations’.35 However, officers continued to fulfil their mission as experts in Muslim culture. European officers and NCO s serving with the colonial troops were urged to have training not just in the ‘Arabic language’, but also in ‘Muslim sociology’. This included religious knowledge (pre-Islamic Arabic, the life of the Prophet, the Quran and its traditions, religious practices, Islamic law, etc.). This training was provided by AMM officers who were in charge of teaching the officers serving with colonial troops.36 The use of the term ‘sociology’ illustrates the progress in the institutionalization of sociology as an academic discipline whose knowledge could be used by other institutions. The AMM office also appeared increasingly as a prescriber of standards for the supervision of native North African troops. Thus, the AMM office of the 19th Military Region (Constantine) produced abundant literature for European officers supervising colonial troops. A text published by the AMM office in 1941 exemplifies the paternalistic management of North African troops, as well as the influence of a racial conception of warlike qualities:37 ‘Coming from a vigorous and energetic race, the North African Muslim traditionally enjoys fighting and has an acute sense of honour, generous gestures, while not neglecting resources such as trickery and cunning. This born warrior shows real soldiering skills.’38 According to this theory, Islam was one of the bases for these soldiers’ warlike qualities: ‘His courage, his contempt of danger are indisputable and come from a vision of Allah as the master of human destiny, who gives or takes life at his discretion.’39 It is remarkable to notice how this ‘scientific production’ was not free of contradictions. Indeed, at this time, some Berber combatants such as the Kabyles were considered to be the best fighters precisely because they were seen as being very slightly Islamized, contrary to Arab soldiers.40 While Muslim soldiers were considered to be potentially good soldiers, their atavistic quality was expressed only if they were supervised by officers who knew their ‘manners and customs’. Thus, the reference to the figure of the child is recurrent in the AMM office text cited above, and the European officer in a North African unit ‘must guide his men as he would guide his children’.41

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Therefore, officers were expected to ensure strict moral and material comfort for their men. Religious rituals had to be strictly observed not only to maintain the troops’ morale, but also because these rituals were seen as the guarantee of order and cohesion among the combatants. For instance, the AMM Corps suggested that European officers serving with the colonial troops organize leave the day before mawlid, which commemorates the birth of the Prophet Muhammad.42 It also encouraged these officers to organize Ramadan. They had to be careful about the ‘physical and psychological effects that might be caused by prolonged fasting’. They were supposed to be more indulgent towards the soldiers, while ensuring that these special arrangements during the period were not interpreted by Muslim soldiers as a sign of weakened discipline.43 While the AMM literature suggested that European officers should have full respect for the Muslim culture, it also revealed a specifically Western conception of Islam and Muslim practices. For instance, reports constantly reminded officers that: ‘If native soldiers ask for forbidden food, officers must refuse them, especially wine. The reason behind this warning is that this food is bad, especially if it is too easily used and abused to the point that Muslim soldiers become intoxicated and their natural violence suddenly reappears.’44 Thus, while for the military administration, the soldiers’ observance of traditional Muslim rules could serve as a factor of order and cohesion among the troops, any deviation from a European conception of religious norms was considered a potential for disorder. Although some continuity in the management of colonial troops can be observed between the Republican period and the Vichy regime, this conception of religious norms did not fundamentally change in de Gaulle’s army.

The AMM officer in the French Liberation Army: A protector of Muslim combatants, or an intelligence agent? The Corps of Officers for Muslim Military Affairs was remilitarized when General Henri Giraud and General Charles de Gaulle reformed the French Army in North Africa after November 1942. In February 1945, 134,000 Algerians, 26,000 Tunisians and 73,000 Moroccans were serving in the French Army,45 first during the Tunisian campaign (1943), then within the French Expeditionary Corps in Italy (November 1943–June 1944), and finally in the 1st French Army in Metropolitan France and in Germany (August 1944–May 1945). Once again, the French Army led numerous native soldiers on African soil as well as on

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European soil. As in the past, the AMM officers were considered the best intermediaries to control and protect the Muslim soldiers. In many respects, their mission inside the 1st French Army illustrated the continuity in the paternalistic handling of native troops. However, the reactivation of nationalist movements in North Africa at the end of the war tended to reinforce AMM officers’ intelligence missions and to transform their functions. During the Algerian War, their sole mission was intelligence and psychological action, until the Corps was ultimately disbanded in 1960. Like Vichy, the Comité français de libération nationale (CFLN ) was particularly concerned about the role of the AMM officers inside the new army. In September 1943, a new programme was implemented for the competitive examination. For the oral exams, candidates had to show good knowledge of the ‘general history of Islam’, and not only, as previously,‘some elements of Muslim history and sociology’. The ‘History of France since 1789’ was replaced with the ‘History of French colonization’. The maths examination was replaced with the geography of Muslim countries and, interestingly, a topic called ‘The Intellectual, Political and Moral Evolution of the Muslim World during the Twentieth Century’.46 The objective of this new programme was clearly to modify the profile of the successful candidates, who were expected to be more specialized in the Arabo-Muslim culture. An exam was organized in June 1944, but the military hierarchy appears to have had a huge need for AMM officers, due to ‘the current political situation in Morocco and Tunisia’, on the one hand, and to the French Army’s commitment first in Italy and then in France, on the other hand.47 Indeed, in January 1944, Morocco was the scene of revolts that were severely put down by the colonial power,48 and while recriminations appear to have been effectively silenced, the colonial administration remained cautious. In Tunisia, the number of desertions apparently surged in early summer 1944.49 According to various reports of the colonial administration at the time, the situation in Algeria was also tense.50 The colonial administration also required specialized officers for intelligence missions to monitor the civilian population in North Africa, and the army demanded officers to manage the enlisted colonial conscripts at the front. This was the cause of tensions in the distribution of the reduced military personnel manpower. André Diethelm, the Commissioner of War, deplored the fact that the 1st French Army – now called Army B – did not have enough AMM officers and asked for better distribution in favour of combat troops.51 Since the AMM officers in North Africa were assigned to traditional intelligence missions, those that were enlisted in the army had to fulfil a twofold mission: protection and intelligence.

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General de Lattre, the head of Army B, defined their mission. In his view, the military leaders had two shortcomings. Those recruited in North Africa ‘have sometimes been inclined to apply to military life the instructions of an anti-Arab policy’. De Lattre seemed to consider – like other officers from Metropolitan France – that Europeans living in North Africa had a particularly sceptical attitude towards the possibilities for improving the living conditions of the ‘indigènes’. Conversely, the officers from Metropolitan France52 ‘had no ideas about the indigènes’ way of thinking’. To solve the staff ’s difficulties, the AMM officer should be the ‘technical advisor’ of the command and fulfil a threefold mission: protect morale, assist the ‘indigènes’ in their personal problems, and carry out some teaching activities concerning ‘knowledge of political ideas’ and the ‘religion of the Muslim world’ to the European officers.53 De Lattre was not the only high-ranking officer to deplore a lack of knowledge about the Muslim culture among officers serving with colonial troops. In Algeria, General Louis Koeltz required the AMM officers to teach other officers specific knowledge about ‘the mindset of North Africans’, as well as elements about ‘orthodox Islam, mystic Islam, survival of pre-Islamic beliefs’, and finally to explain the current reformist and nationalist movements in North Africa.54 The sources do not reveal much about the social background, recruitment or experience of AMM officers. Nevertheless, it is clear that at the end of 1945, this was a group of highly qualified men. A wide majority of recruited intern officers had attended special Arabic classes at an Algiers high school. These classes were nicknamed ‘the goum class’, referring to the goumiers, Moroccan natives serving in the tabors. The majority of them had the full baccalaureate, and one captain had a PhD in law. Most of them had also studied Arabic courses at the University of Algiers, which led to the assertion that the AMM recruitment was mostly North African. Some of the AMM officers were fluent in both Arabic and Berber languages, and many spoke Spanish as well, which may be a sign that Europeans of Spanish origin were overrepresented.55 Nevertheless, the composition of this Corps in 1945 reveals a kind of continuity in the recruitment process between the Corps of Arabic Military Interpreters and the AMM Corps, insofar as both recruited highly qualified candidates. These specific officers did not always have good relationships with the other European officers, and some rare testimonies reveal rivalries with other non-AMM officers serving with the colonial troops. Christian Jeantelot, a former officer for Muslim military affairs, recalled the tense relations with other European officers, and justified his role by asserting that: ‘It might be useful and even necessary to go into the complex ways of thinking of these men . . . who are distinguished less by racial and social level

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than by the influence exerted on them by religion’, deploring the fact that the European officers in general had ‘little spirit or knowledge or expertise, nor the time to complete this exercise’.56 The actions and representations of the officers serving with the troops during the campaign can be analysed through the morale reports regularly addressed to the command. At first, these reports generally confirmed the idea that these officers could be viewed as a ‘transmission belt’ for very conservative management of the Muslim troops, combining control and paternalism. In addition, the way the reports were structured illustrates the two aspects of this paternalistic management: reports were always divided into two parts entitled ‘surveillance’ (‘oversight’) and ‘assistance’ (‘care’). More than other officers serving with North African troops, the AMM officers worried about the material conditions necessary for maintaining soldiers’ morale. Indeed, during the campaign, the 1st French Army ran short of supplies and this affected all units, natives as well as Europeans. These constant shortages were partly attributable to the French Army’s total dependence on American supplies, but also to flaws in its own stewardship. In any event, the AMM officers were concerned that these shortages undermined respect for religious rules. Thus, the Office of Muslim Military Affairs of the 2nd Army Corps expressed his regret in a report in September 1944 that: ‘Many Muslims are eating tinned rations that contain pork’.57 This was confirmed by another report, which underlined that: ‘The native infantryman has certainly adapted to American food, which most of the time contains some pork. Nevertheless, a very small number of soldiers had refused from the beginning to eat this food, and had been eating merely biscuits, cheese, coffee and cocoa.’58 Indeed, although in principle the United States provided rations without pork, sometimes Muslim soldiers had to make do with food containing pork. Furthermore, the French usually had to supplement menus providing special ‘Muslim food’. This constant attention to Muslim soldiers’ meals was justified by the AMM officers’ ‘belief that the deterioration in the supplies and non-compliance with dietary restrictions could have disastrous consequences on morale and [would be] even likely to cause a slackening of the colonial order’. For instance, an AMM officer wrote: ‘One day an agitator, driven by feelings of latent xenophobia that exist among native soldiers, maybe coming from outside the army, will begin a vicious campaign on this issue and we will see native soldiers refuse to eat and say that the French are forcing them to consume food strictly forbidden by their religion. They could also take this issue back home to North Africa and use this argument as a basis for blackmailing.’59 In fact, AMM officers urged the

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administration to obtain substantial means to celebrate Muslim holidays. For example, an officer was delighted that the feast of Eid al-Kabir could take place in good conditions: ‘The Eid-al-kabir feast involved ceremonies by the natives. The menus include the traditional sheep and gruyere cheese 50 g, oil 28 g, pepper 3 g, cigarettes 1 package, sheep 1 for 40 men, couscous 300 g, candies three rolls, sugar 12 g, coffee 3 g, tea 3 g.’60 Officials were also concerned about the respect for religious burial rituals, which were hard to carry out on the battlefield. For instance, the AMM Head Administrator of the 1st French Army was concerned because local civilians had buried Muslim infantrymen alongside their non-Muslim peers. Therefore, he asked all AMM officers to be scrupulous in making sure that Muslim customs were respected.61 Taking care of colonial troops involved much more than simply respecting religious constraints; it also targeted other parts of soldiers’ lives: reading and writing letters back home, helping soldiers obtain military allowances and visiting the convalescents in military hospitals. Organizing entertainment during the rest periods was also part of AMM officers’ mission inside the unit. In other words, they accompanied soldiers in all their activities except combat, which was supervised by ordinary officers. The AMM officers’ intrusion into soldiers’ private lives went as far as the organization of their sexuality. In the ‘assistance’ section, AMM officers frequently mentioned the so-called Bordels militaires de campagne (BMC ), the military brothels. The creation of BMC exclusively for the North African soldiers was decided during the French occupation of the Rhineland after the First World War. At that time, German authorities accused the French Army’s native soldiers of wide-scale rapes in the region. The so-called ‘Schwarze Schande’ (‘Black Shame’) denounced the crime committed by the French authorities by using colonial troops who were accused of having ‘infected’ the ‘white race’.62 One of the responses of the French High Command was the creation of special brothels where only North African prostitutes were recruited. The fear that intimate relationships between North African soldiers and ‘white’ women would harm the colonial order was still present during the Second World War. In Italy, European officers required the transfer of North African prostitutes to the front, to supervise the sexuality of the Moroccan soldiers and to avoid rapes within the Italian population.63 In liberated France, military authorities welcomed the enthusiastic hospitality of the French civilian population, but feared unions between French women and North African soldiers. In a special report, an AMM officer from an Algerian regiment warned authorities of the future impact on Algerian society of the numerous encounters between North African soldiers and women from

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Metropolitan France: ‘The tirailleur will try to date French women, which he has been doing successfully since he has been living in France.’64 One of the AMM ’s solutions to this problem was to reinforce control of soldiers’ sexual relations through the special military brothels: ‘If we want to stop relations between North Africans and French women, it is urgent to fully refresh the recruitment of the Division’s BMC ’,65 warned the AMM officer of the 3rd Algerian Infantry Division. As indicated above, preserving the well-being of Muslim soldiers was connected with rigorous control of their intimacy. This control was anchored in the French authority’s racist conceptions and was aimed at preserving the colonial order. However, the AMM officers’ role was also to control soldiers’ mindset. Indeed, as they had (or were expected to have) detailed knowledge of Muslim culture and native customs, Muslim Military Affairs officers were agents for special control. Many of their reports indicate censorship and rising surveillance of the troops. At the end of the conflict, the army was increasingly anxious about the growing discontent among North African troops on the European front. Since the beginning of the campaign, AMM officers paid close attention to the potential development of anti-colonial ideas within units. Consequently, control missions tended to prevail over the care mission. As early as February 1945, an officer was concerned about the possible consequences of the demobilization of the 7th Algerian Infantry Regiment, and wrote: ‘I think that Muslim Military Affairs officers should stay in their regiment at least three months after the demobilization. . . . They might play an important role because they could study, better than anyone, our infantrymen’s reactions to the situation in Algeria and the evolution of troops’ morale.’66 Riots in the Constantine region, which began in Setif on 8 May 1945 when the colonial army put down a nationalist demonstration,67 was a major source of concern for the AMM officers serving in the 1st French Army. At the end of May 1945, the office for Muslim Military Affairs sent a particularly alarming report on the possible impact of the riots and their repression and of the crackdown on North African soldiers. This report recommended that European officers apply stricter surveillance and also improve living conditions: ‘European officers will reinforce discipline and will make an effort to show the French gratitude towards our Muslim troops (awards, better living conditions, entertainment, etc.).’68 Therefore, it would appear that AMM officers had their paternalistic model (of care/control) for managing Muslim troops and it is difficult to detect a trend revealing a more egalitarian view of how to manage colonial troops. One officer criticized how his colleagues imposed a particular view and practice of Islam

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onto the colonial soldiers: ‘Natives who are more inspired by a personal sense than by the spirit of the Quran do not understand that the necessities of war require them to eat pork but do not serve them in the distribution of wine. . . . While it is normal to allow them to exercise their religion, it seems unfair to me to impose upon them certain restrictions, just because we want to economize in the supply, which they have certainly discovered.’69 In fact, the question of alcohol consumption crystallized the debate. Since 1935, alcohol consumption ‘including beer, wine and cider’ by native soldiers had been strictly forbidden, a ban officially justified by the military hierarchy with the prescriptions of the Quran. Nevertheless, for the officers, this prohibition was chiefly motivated by the idea that alcohol could cause disorder among colonial troops.70 Yet at the same time, the distribution of alcoholic beverages to European soldiers was widespread to improve their morale.71 During the winter of 1944–5, this ban was increasingly challenged by soldiers who had to fight in adverse weather conditions. Some European officers even requested that Muslim soldiers be authorized to drink alcohol to help them maintain their morale. For instance, the colonel commanding the 1st Algerian Infantry Regiment required schnapps to be distributed to warm the troops fighting in the Alps during autumn 1944, because the commissariat was unable to provide enough warm coffee.72 In fact, the diligence in organizing Muslim religious practices stands in sharp contrast with the kind of religious practices within the army that the sources reveal. AMM officers of the 3rd Algerian Infantry Division made no secret that Ramadan was ‘observed only by a few’,73 a fact that can be partly explained by the tiring fighting and living conditions in the Vosges Mountains. During the First World War, two imams from Algiers and Tunis had exempted the Muslim soldiers fighting in France from observing Ramadan in order to prevent exhaustion.74 Nevertheless, the alcohol prohibition for Muslim soldiers was criticized by soldiers who considered that the law ‘did not have to interpret the Quran’, and some soldiers were said to have remarked that: ‘It made no sense because of the existence of the law organizing the separation between Church and the State.’75 Captain Revillaud, who was Head Administrator of the AMM , emphasized that ‘eighty per cent of the soldiers’ had asked to have wine ‘like their French comrades in arms’, and that ‘in the majority of the units of the 1st French Army, the indigènes asked for and obtained wine’.76 Although some AMM officers underlined the need to be pragmatic with the alcohol question, most of them complained about what they considered to be deviant religious practices that could, in their view, destroy the group’s cohesion. For example, Captain Riehl deplored in a report the increasing role of ‘religious

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sects’ within the First Armoured Division.77 He was probably referring to the Sufi brotherhoods that had been seen as a rival authority to the colonial power since the beginning of the colonization of Algeria.78 Moreover, as the ulama organization was part of the nationalist protest that was growing in 1944–5 in Algeria, the army strictly controlled any ‘religious influence’ among North African troops, and AMM officers were tasked with detecting any religious organizations suspected of spreading rebellion amongst the soldiers. This highlights the ambiguous role of religion in the management of Muslim soldiers. On the one hand, religious practice was considered to be a guarantee of order within the troops’ ranks, but on the other hand, the army viewed with suspicion the existence of non-French religious intermediaries between the hierarchy and the soldiers. The AMM officers’ discourse was not exempt from this tension. The guide published in 1941 by the AMM office and addressed to European officers managing North African soldiers recommended not opening mosques within the army in order to avoid ‘Muslim proselytizing’.79 Contrary to the Jewish and Catholic cases, there were no Muslim military chaplains or official imams at that time. However, the official stance was to consider the practice of an ‘official’ Islam as a guarantee of order and morale. That is why some voices supported recruiting official imams who could ‘carry out services for the French Army’.80 In fact, this debate was not new in the army. During the Great War, the French Army had recruited seven imams, but their religious activities were held only in military hospitals and camps behind the lines.81 During the campaign of May 1940, an ‘office of religious assistance for Muslim soldiers’ was briefly created.82 In March 1943, Giraud had authorized the recruitment of imams within the army who had demonstrated their loyalty to France. The members of the religious brotherhoods, considered to be hotbeds of nationalism, were indeed excluded.83 The project seemed to have failed, as no imams were serving in the 1st French Army. Nevertheless, some sources mentioned that for the religious burials, taleb (students in Quranic schools) were employed ‘as imams’.84

Conclusion The case study of the AMM officers illustrates the significant role of the colonial armies and its evolution during the imperial period. During the time of conquest, the army was both an inescapable agent of intelligence and a source of imperial knowledge for the entire colonial power. Inside the military institution, knowledge about native soldiers was increasingly motivated by

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control considerations, as the level of protest increased beginning in the interwar period. However, this knowledge was less and less a scholarly corpus constituted by brilliant specialists, and more and more a rigid view of what were considered good – that is to say obedient – Muslim customs. The perception of Islam inside the French Army is a revealing example: as in other aspects of the lives of native soldiers, the military hierarchy imposed its conception of Islam to avoid the development of a subversive practice of Islam. Initially used as an instrument of domination, Islam became for the authorities an instrument of subversion at the beginning of the decolonization period. Moreover, the evolution of the Corps illustrated the imperial incapacity to reform: although AMM officers were supposed to be experts about changes in the ‘Muslim World’, they do not appear to have spread reformist ideas within the army. During the decolonization period, their mission was increasingly reduced to military intelligence. The majority of the officers served during the wars for independence, and especially during the repression of the Madagascar riots in 1947, and thereafter in Indochina, where colonial troops were engaged after 1948.85 During the Algerian War, the AMM officers were recruited inside the bureaux psychologiques, which were involved in diffusing propaganda campaigns aimed at Algerian civilians and also played the role of intelligence officers. At that time, the corps began to fall apart: there were no candidates for the 1946 exam, and only one in the 1947 session.86 The successive reform projects failed and the corps was definitively disbanded in 1960.

Notes 1 Jacques Frémeaux, ‘Les contingents impériaux au cœur de la guerre’, Histoire, économie et société 23, no. 2 (2004): 215–33. 2 Patrick Weil, ‘Le statut des musulmans en Algérie coloniale’, Histoire de la justice, no. 16 (2005): 93–109. See also Laure Blévis, ‘La citoyenneté française au miroir de la colonisation’, Genèses, no. 53 (2001): 25–47. 3 Vincent Joly, Guerres d’Afrique. 130 ans de guerres coloniales (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2009). 4 The military corps of the zouaves was created during the conquest of Algeria by first incorporating Kabyle soldiers from the Regence of Algiers. After 1842, the corps was constituted only of European recruits. 5 The tabors or goumiers were, from the beginning of the Moroccan wars in 1907–8, natives who were incorporated into the French Army to participate in the conquest and domination of the Moroccan territory.

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6 Anthony Clayton, France, Soldiers and Africa (London: Brassey’s Defence Publishers, 1988). 7 Frémeaux, ‘Les contingents impériaux’, 218. For the contribution of the African continent to the war effort during the First World War, see Marc Michel, Les Africains et la Grande Guerre. L’appel à l’Afrique (1914–1918) (Paris: Karthala, 2009). 8 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978); Brett Bennett and Joseph Hodge (eds), Science and Empire: Knowledge and Networks of Science across the British Empire (1800–1970) (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011); Emmanuelle Sibeud, Une science impériale pour l’Afrique? La construction des savoirs africanistes en France (1870–1930) (Paris: EHESS , 2002); Pierre Singaravélou, Professer l’Empire. Les ‘sciences sociales’ en France sous la IIIe République (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2011). 9 The same phenomenon was observed during the Russian conquest of the Caucasus at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Some officers of the imperial army published studies about the conquered populations, which were at this time acknowledged by Russian Orientalist science. See Lorraine de Meaux, La Russie et la tentation de l’Orient (Paris: Fayard, 2010), 40–3. 10 Jacques Frémeaux, Les Bureaux arabes dans l’Algérie de la conquête (Paris: Denoël, 1993), 33, 37. 11 Frémeaux, Les Bureaux arabes, 47. 12 Alain Messaoudi, ‘Renseigner, enseigner. Les interprètes militaires et la constitution d’un premier corpus savant “algérien” (1830–1870)’, Revue d’histoire du XIXe siècle, no. 41 (2010): 97–112. 13 Messaoudi, ‘Renseigner, enseigner’. 14 Frémeaux, Les Bureaux arabes, 50. 15 Pierre Singaravélou, ‘Le moment “impérial” de l’histoire des sciences-sociales (1880–1910)’, Mil neuf cent. Revue d’histoire intellectuelle, no. 27 (2009): 87–102. 16 Michèle Sellès, ‘Les manuels de berbère publiés en France et en Algérie (XVIII -XX e siècles): d’une production orientaliste à l’affirmation d’une identité postcoloniale’, in Sylvette Larzul and Alain Messaoudi (eds), Manuels d’arabe hier et aujourd’hui: France et Maghreb, XIXe-XXe siècles (Paris: Editions de la BNF, 2013), 47–64. 17 Yacine Tassadit, ‘La Kabylie entre 1839 et 1871: construction identitaire et répression coloniale’, in Abderrahmane Bouche (ed.), Histoire de l’Algérie à la période coloniale (Paris: La Découverte, 2013), 114–19. 18 Jacques Frémeaux, L’Afrique à l’ombre des épées (1830–1930) (Vincennes: SHAT, 1995), 106. 19 Messaoudi, ‘Renseigner, enseigner’, 34. 20 With the Crémieux Decree (1870), Jews were awarded French citizenship. In the wake of the First World War, the majority of the Jewish population in Algeria spoke both French and Arabic. See Gilbert Meynier, L’Algérie révélée. La Guerre de 1914–1918 et le premier quart du XXe siècle (Geneva: Droz, 1981); Kamel Kateb,

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Européens, ‘indigènes’ et Juifs en Algérie (1830–1962): représentations et réalités des populations (Paris: INED, 2001). Jules Baruch, Historique du corps des officiers interprètes de l’armée d’Afrique (Constantine: D. Braham, 1901). Jacques Frémeaux, Intervention et humanisme. Le style des armées françaises au XIXe siècle (Paris: Economica, 2006), 137. Report of the Minister of National Defence and the War to the President of the French Republic, Journal officiel de la République française, 14 June 1938. Report of the Minister of National Defence and the War to the President of the French Republic, Journal officiel de la République française, 14 June 1938. Service historique de la défense (hereafter SHD ), GR 1R43, Letter from the French War Minister to the French Ambassador in Morocco, 29 July 1935. SHD, GR 1R43, Memo from General Catroux about the reform of the status of military interpreters of the Arabic language, 10 March 1937. SHD, GR 1R43, Memo from General Catroux about the reform of the status of military interpreters of the Arabic language, 10 March 1937. On 1 March 1940, 70,000 North Africans were standing in Metropolitan France. Belkacem Recham, Les Musulmans algériens dans l’armée française (1919–1945) (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999), 129. SHD, GR 1R43, Report from Commandant Favard, Commander in Chief of the AMM Office of the 19th Army Corps, Constantine, undated. SHD, GR 1H2868, Memo from the AMM inspection, 22 February 1941. SHD, GR 1R43, Decree about the dissolution of the AMM Corps, 15 April 1941, and decree about the creation of a civilian corps of Muslim affairs advisers, 20 October 1941. Concerning Vichy and its conception of the empire, see Eric Jennings, Vichy and the Tropics: Pétain’s National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina (1940–1944) (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001); Jacques Cantier and Eric Jennings, L’Empire colonial sous Vichy (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2004). SHD, GR 1R43, Memo about the status of Muslim military affairs, 6 April 1941. SHD, GR 1R43, Decree about the creation of a civil corps of experts about Muslim affairs, 20 October 1941. SHD, GR 1H2868, Memo to AMM officers, commander in chief for the troops in North Africa, 4 April 1942. SHD, GR 1H2868, Memo from the Office for Muslim Affairs of the 19th military region, 22 October 1942. About the theory of martial races and its evolution, see Heather Streets, Martial Races: The Military, Race and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture (1857–1914) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004); Richard S. Fogarty, Race and War in France. Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914–1918 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008); Myles Osborne, Ethnicity and Empire in Kenya:

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39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

51 52

53 54 55 56 57 58

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Loyalty and Martial Race among the Kamba, c.1800 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Etat-major de la 19e armée, section des affaires militaires musulmanes, Notice à l’usage des gradés appelés à commander des militaires musulmans nord africains (Paris: Ministère de la guerre, 1941). Section des affaires militaires musulmanes, Notice à l’usage des gradés. Julie Le Gac, Vaincre sans gloire. Le corps expéditionnaire français en Italie (1943–1944) (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2013), 74–5. Le Gac, Vaincre sans gloire, 75. SHD, GR 1H2868, Memo from the AMM , 11 June 1942. SHD, GR 1H2868, Memo from the AMM , 11 June 1942. Section des affaires militaires musulmanes, Notice à l’usage des gradés. Archives Nationales (hereafter AN ) F60/993, Memo on the North African war effort since November 1942, February 1945. SHD, GR 1R43, Memo about the amendment of the programme for the competitive exam of the AMM , 1 September 1943. SHD, GR 2H222, Letter from French War Commissioner André Diethelm, 27 June 1944. Martin Thomas, The French Empire at War: 1940–1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 180–2. AN , C15/265, Report of the speech by André Marty in the Foreign Affairs commission of the Provisional National Assembly, 23 August 1944. The reports from the prefects of Constantine, Algiers and Oran, as well as the postal inspection made by the colonial administration, can be found in the French National Archives, under the reference F1A/3803. SHD, GR 2H222, Letter from French War Commissioner André Diethelm, 27 June 1944. The majority of them had escaped occupied France across the Pyrenees. See Robert Belot, Aux frontières de la liberté. Vichy, Madrid, Alger, Londres. S’évader de France sous l’Occupation (Paris: Fayard, 1998). SHD, GR 1H2868, Memo from the Headquarters of Army B about the role of AMM officers serving with the troops, 21 February 1944. SHD, GR 1H2868, Memo from General Koeltz, 20 March 1944. SHD, GR 2H222, Table of the AMM staff, undated but probably late 1945. Christian Jeantelot, Espoirs irraisonnés (Paris: Nouvelles éditions latines, 2005), 257. SHD, GR 11P61, Summary of the morale of native soldiers for the month of September 1944. SHD, GR 11P61, Technical report of the Officer for Muslim Military Affairs, 25 October 1944.

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59 SHD, GR 11P61, Report on morale, September 1944, Office for Muslim Military Affairs, 17 October 1944. 60 SHD, GR 11P61, Report of the AMM officer of the 3rd Algerian Infantry Division, 25 November 1944. 61 SHD, GR 10P89, Memo from the military section of Muslim Affairs, 1st French Army, 16 October 1944. 62 Christelle Gomis, ‘Les troupes coloniales françaises et l’occupation de la Rhénanie (1918–1930)’, Cahiers sens public, no. 10 (2009): 69–79; Jean-Yves Le Naour, La Honte noire: l’Allemagne et les troupes coloniales françaises (1914–1945) (Paris: Hachette, 2004). 63 Le Gac, Vaincre sans gloire, 355. 64 SHD, GR 12P56, Special report from the AMM officer of the 7th Algerian Regiment about the future demobilization of the regiment, 20 February 1945. 65 SHD, GR 11P61, Report from the AMM officer of the 3rd Algerian Infantry Division, 24 December 1944. 66 SHD, GR 12P56, Special report of the Muslim Military Affairs officer of the 7th Algerian Infantry Regiment, 20 February 1945. 67 See for instance Annie Rey-Goldzeiguer, Aux origines de la guerre d’Algérie 1940– 1945. De Mers-el-Kébir aux massacres du Nord-Constantinois (Paris: La Découverte, 2002); Jean-Louis Planche, Sétif 1945: histoire d’un massacre annoncé (Paris: Perrin, 2006); Jean-Pierre Peyroulou, ‘Les massacres du Nord-Constantinois de 1945, un événement polymorphe’, in Abderrahmane Bouchène, Jean-Pierre Peyroulou, Ouanassa Siari Tengour and Sylvie Thénault (eds), Histoire de l’Algérie à la période coloniale (1830–1962) (Paris: La Découverte, 2014), 502–7. 68 Institut de France, Collection Marshal de Lattre de Tassigny, J9132, Report of the Staff of the Muslim Military Affairs of the 1st French Army, undated but probably May 1945. 69 SHD, GR 11P186, Report from Captain Riehl, AMM Officer of the 1st Armoured Division, 10 January 1945. 70 SHD, GR 6P3, Memo from the AMM , 20 January 1945. 71 François Cochet, ‘1914–1918: l’alcool aux armées, représentations et essai de typologie’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains no. 222 (2006): 19–32. 72 SHD, GR 11P126, Letter from General Sevez to the Colonel of the First Algerian Regiment, 19 November 1944. 73 SHD, GR 11P61, Report from the AMM Officer of the 3rd Algerian Infantry Division, October 1944. 74 Xavier Boniface, Histoire religieuse de la Grande Guerre (Paris: Fayard, 2014), 217. 75 SHD, GR 1H2868, Memo from the AMM officer responsible for the military region of Constantine, 20 August 1944. 76 SHD, GR 6P3, Letter from the Chief of the AMM to the Chief of the Military Cabinet of the War Minister, 14 February 1945.

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77 SHD, GR 6P3, Letter from the Chief of the AMM to the Chief of the Military Cabinet of the War Minister, 14 February 1945. 78 See, for instance, Mouloud Haddad, ‘Les maîtres de l’Heure. Soufisme et eschatologie en Algérie coloniale (1845–1901)’, Revue d’histoire du XIXe siècle, no. 41 (2010): 49–61; Oissila Saaïda, ‘Islam et ordre colonial dans les empires britanniques et français: entre collaboration et contestation’, Histoire, monde et cultures religieuses, no. 25 (2013): 75–105. 79 Section des affaires militaires musulmanes, Notice à l’usage des gradés. 80 Institut de France, Collection Marshall de Lattre de Tassigny, 1941–2, Letter to General de Lattre de Tassigny, 19 October 1944. 81 Michel Renard, ‘Le religieux musulman et l’armée française (1914–1920)’ (2014), available from http://etudescoloniales.canalblog.com/archives/2014/08/23/30279901. html (accessed 27 April 2015). 82 Xavier Boniface, ‘Les aumôniers militaires’, in Robert Vandenbussche (ed.), De Georges Clemenceau à Jacques Chirac: l’Etat et la pratique de la loi de séparation (Villeneuve d’Ascq: IRHIS , 2008), 131–47. 83 SHD, GR 1H2868, Memo from General André concerning the Muslim military chaplaincy, 22 August 1944. 84 SHD, GR 11P61, Report of the AMM officer of the 2nd Corps of the 1st French Army, November 1944. 85 Michel Bodin, Les Africains dans la guerre d’Indochine (1947–1954) (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000). 86 SHD, GR 1R44, Memo about the status of the AMM Corps, 12 February 1948.

Bibliography Fogarty, Richard. Race and War in France. Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914–1918. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. Frémeaux, Jacques. Les Bureaux arabes dans l’Algérie de la conquête. Paris: Denoël, 1993. Frémeaux, Jacques. ‘Les contingents impériaux au cœur de la guerre’. Histoire, économie et société 23, no. 2 (2004): 215–33. Joly, Vincent. Guerres d’Afrique. 130 ans de guerres coloniales. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2009. Kateb, Kamel. Européens, ‘indigènes’ et Juifs en Algérie (1830–1962): représentations et réalités des populations. Paris: INED, 2001. Le Gac, Julie. Vaincre sans gloire. Le corps expéditionnaire français en Italie (novembre 1942–juillet 1944). Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2013. Messaoudi, Alain. ‘Renseigner, enseigner. Les interprètes militaires et la constitution d’un premier corpus savant “algérien” (1830–1870)’. Revue d’histoire du XIXe siècle, no. 41 (2010): 97–112.

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Meynier, Gilbert. L’Algérie révélée. La Guerre de 1914–1918 et le premier quart du XXe siècle. Geneva: Droz, 1981. Michel, Marc. Les Africains et la Grande Guerre. L’appel à l’Afrique (1914–1918). Paris: Karthala, 2009. Osborne, Miles. Ethnicity and Empire in Kenya: Loyalty and Martial Race among the Kamba, c.1800 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Recham, Belkacem. Les Musulmans algériens dans l’armée française (1919–1945). Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999. Sibeud, Emmanuelle. Une Science impériale pour l’Afrique? La construction des savoirs africanistes en France (1870–1930). Paris: EHESS , 2002. Singaravélou, Pierre. Professer l’Empire. Les ‘sciences sociales’ en France sous la IIIe République. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2011. Streets, Heather. Martial Races: The Military, Race and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture (1857–1914). Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004.

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Haunted by Jinns: Dealing with War Neuroses among Muslim Soldiers during the Second World War Julie Le Gac

‘There is no such thing as “getting used to combat”. . . . Each moment of combat imposes a strain so great that men will break down in direct relation to the intensity and duration of their exposure. Thus, psychiatric casualties are as inevitable as gunshot and shrapnel wounds in warfare’, argued John Appel, a US Army psychiatrist in 1944.1 While British and American doctors sought to change the way the army command viewed war neuroses and to find an appropriate solution to this threat to military effectiveness, the phenomenon was neglected in the French Army, which returned to combat in November 1942 in Tunisia, and later fought in Europe during the Italian, French and German campaigns. Although cases of soldiers incapable of continuing fighting were observed by doctors in Tunisia as early as 1942, it was only in October 1944 that a psychiatrist was officially attached to the 1st French Army. Given that the revived French Army drew heavily upon the resources of its empire between 1942 and 1945 – in total, 230,000 indigenous soldiers from Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco took part in the fighting in Europe2 – the management of wartime psychological disorders rested on knowledge acquired in colonial psychology which, as a number of authors have shown, was an instrument of colonial domination3 (‘a tool of Empire’4). Since the first period of colonization, Europeans considered North Africa as ‘a space of insanity’5 that they observed with an orientalist fascination as well as a high degree of distrust. Influenced by the proliferation of studies which, in the early twentieth century, speculated about the psychological influence of religion, culture and civilization, often without really distinguishing between these concepts,6 the Algiers School of psychiatry during the interwar period questioned the role of Islam on the indigenous 183

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psyche and more generally on indigenous society. Founded in 1925 by Professor Antoine Porot who, after a brief stay in Tunis, was offered the chair in psychiatry at the Faculty of Medicine in Algiers in 1916, the Algiers School sought to confirm a set of presuppositions about Islam through scientific observation and experimentation, and to translate them into medical terms. As the revived French Army was first engaged in North Africa in 1942, the Algiers School of psychiatry played a particularly important role. Jean Sutter, the first psychiatrist officially attached to the French Army and head of the psychiatric centre of the 1st French Army, was one of its most renowned representatives, while the Maillot Psychiatric Hospital in Algiers admitted those soldiers who were too badly affected to be treated near the front. This chapter will examine, first, the role that was attributed to Islam in shaping the supposedly unique North African psyche. It will then address the consequences of this supposed specificity with regard to the handling of war neuroses on the battlefield. Did the military command react differently when North African soldiers ‘lost their nerve’? And to what extent were they subjected to different treatment by doctors? Finally, it will assess the specificities of French thought and its inherent contradictions through a comparison with British colonial psychiatry.

‘Primitivism’ and ‘fatalism’ among Muslim combatants Both officers and doctors attributed a decisive role to Islam in the behaviour of the North African soldiers enlisted in the French Army. According to Angelo Hesnard and Antoine Porot, who treated combatants during the First World War, their mentality was ruled both by ‘the most rudimentary instincts and a sort of religious and fatalistic spiritualism which enters into all acts of individual and collective life’.7 According to the Algiers School, belief in Islam encouraged a form of fatalism among North African soldiers that helped them adapt to military life. Such an idea was not new: in 1843, Jacques-Joseph Moreau de Tours, a renowned psychiatrist and co-founder of the periodical Annales médico-psychologiques, after travelling through the Orient for three years, felt that ‘Islamic fatalism’ engendered a lack of will.8 Likewise, based on his observations as a doctor in the asylum in Aix-en-Provence, to which patients from Algeria were sent, AbelJoseph Meilhon endeavoured in 1896 to demonstrate that the religion of the Quran was extremely effective in preventing mental alienation. The religious

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fanaticism of the North African population, he argued, ‘makes man the docile instrument of events’ and would thus guard against the risks of psychological disorders. Moreover, the fact that Islam prohibited the consumption of alcohol, often seen as a cause of psychological disorders at that time, was presented as an additional advantage.9 The Algiers School, drawing on the work on primitivism of the anthropologist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl and his disciple, the philosopher and psychologist Charles Blondel,10 reinforced this idea by establishing a correlation between religious fatalism and primitivism. The Algiers School, while differentiating itself from pseudo-scientific writings dismissing Islam as being incompatible with civilization,11 did not entirely free itself from the denigration of Islam, which was viewed as a fundamental cause of the primitivism of the North Africans, and certainly essentialized the behaviour of the North African combatants in battle. Fatalism, it was suggested, was the great advantage of the North African troops, because it was the key to their bravery under fire. Instructions for officers commanding North African Muslim soldiers in 1941 made the following observation: ‘His courage and disregard for danger are undeniable and stem, moreover, from a sense of religious order: Allah, master of human destiny, gives life and takes it away at will. It is his will that commands salvation or death.’12 In her 1939 thesis, Suzanne Taieb, another student of Porot, argued that an unwavering faith in Allah and in his prophet Muhammad made the natives ‘Mousselmin’, that is men who have ‘abandoned’ or submitted themselves to God and who do not therefore question their environment or their fate.13 Belief in predestination was considered an asset, allowing combatants to endure the violence of battle and exposure to constant danger. In daily life, fear of divine wrath found expression in an increase of rituals and superstitious practices. To protect themselves from the dangers of combat some of them made amulets or turned to their village marabout (holy man) to have prayers said for their protection in battle and their swift return home.14 The officers tolerated these practices (which they nevertheless viewed condescendingly) insofar as they had a positive impact on the morale of the soldiers. ‘All these feelings are natural’, observed one goum commander, ‘and are by no means cause for concern, neither for morale nor for discipline, provided that they are closely monitored and that idleness does not transform them into an obsession.’15 In the eyes of the Algiers School, this fatalism inherited from Islam, along with the mysticism of the North African soldiers, was also the main cause of their ‘primitivism’, a central concept in the School’s ideas. The psychiatrists made a direct link between religious belief and primitivism: ‘Located at the

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foundation of all thought, all intellectual undertaking’, it was argued, mysticism gave the indigenous North Africans a view of the external world that was ‘more affective than intellectual and objective’, in which ‘everything, every being was defined for them by its mystical value, by its more or less specific occult power’.16 Mysticism and fatalism, it was claimed, removed all capacity for abstract thought among the natives and generated instinctive reactions that were often alien to European logic. As Porot and his pupil Sutter argued: ‘The very notion of causality is, to the primitive, fully tinged by mysticism: the recognition of the natural or scientific laws edified by observation and experimentation do not exist for him; the causes which appear to us as the most self-evident, the most natural, lose their value in the face of unverifiable, mystical hypotheses.’17 As such, while the fatalism of North African soldiers was considered a source of bravery in battle, their primitivism carried risks that the commanding officers had to monitor closely. Psychiatrists drew a picture of a Muslim combatant who was lazy, made only the minimum effort and was quick to lose control of himself. He was, according to three psychiatrists at the Maillot Hospital in Algiers, ‘an idle, apathetic creature of habit’.18 It was up to the military command, therefore, to encourage and motivate him constantly. Psychiatrists even put forward the theory of the criminal impulsiveness of North Africans,19 which was seen in both positive and negative terms. On the one hand, this supposed criminal impulsiveness was viewed as something that could increase the bravery of North African soldiers in battle and facilitate their transition between civilian and military life, as killing would not have the same status as a taboo. On the other hand, it was also seen as a source of danger: the military command, it was argued, would have to be vigilant to keep it under control and prevent any outburst of violence which would cause disturbance within units. Côme Don Arrii, another of Porot’s pupils, explained the supposed criminal impulsiveness of the natives by ‘the commanding imprint of religious absolutism, of Quranic fatalism, the weakness of social feeling in altruistic forms, a contempt for the life of others when it comes to satisfying [one’s own] instincts and beliefs’.20 Above all, the indigenous soldier was presented as easily influenced. ‘Extremely suggestible, he lets himself get dragged along by all contagions of the mind, good or bad’,21 wrote André Fribourg-Blanc, psychiatrist at the Val-de-Grâce, the main military hospital in Paris. Even more so than in the case of European combatants, it was thus important for the military command to be vigilant in order to avoid any situation in which general panic could spread. The fatalism and primitivism of the North African soldiers, both supposedly inherited from Islam, were also used to explain why, during the fighting in Europe,

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indigenous soldiers did not suffer from more war neuroses than the Europeans, as had been the case during the First World War.22 Sutter explained: ‘Although there is a lack of statistical data, which alone would allow for a precise evaluation, we have never had the impression, in the 1st French Army, that mental illnesses have had a higher toll on the natives than on the Europeans.’23 However, the psychiatrists, well versed in theories stressing the influence of climate on the individual psyche, recognized that the conditions of combat in Europe, particularly in winter, in the mountains of the Abruzzo in Italy or in the Vosges in France, were a greater shock for the North Africans than for the Europeans. André Manceaux, Charles Bardenat and Robert Susini observed, for example, that ‘the native from the countryside, living in calm, sparsely populated places, often a nomad, who has remained more or less ignorant of the reasons for such a conflict, found in this situation more profound reasons for weakness than the European, who was already prepared and to a certain degree morally adjusted to the events.’24 Attempting to explain this apparent paradox, the Algiers School underlined that, for any individual, two conditions were necessary to permit a successful passage from civilian to military life and thus to avoid war neuroses. The first was the abandonment of individual for collective behaviour: ‘the native generally adapts to military discipline quickly and without particular difficulty while, for the more developed Europeans, it always proves troublesome and will sometimes be extremely annoying.’25 The second condition was the edification of a ‘collective super-ego’ equivalent to ‘unit morale’. While the morale of indigenous soldiers was, theoretically, less likely to be sustained by abstract ideas of patriotism or a desire to liberate the mère patrie, psychiatrists argued that the strong attachments to the primary group made up for this considerably: ‘what counts above all’, argued Sutter, ‘is individual selfesteem, fear of the consequences of defeat, [and] the prestige of the unit to which one belongs or even of a much more limited group (the crew of a tank or the members of a patrol)’. In the eyes of the psychiatrists associated with the army between 1943 and 1945, therefore, the sense of disorientation (dépaysement) caused by being sent to the front was greater for indigenous than for European combatants, but the indigenous combatants would tend to adapt to it more easily, owing to their supposed primitivism. The difference, it was argued, was therefore qualitative rather than quantitative. Thus, by equating belief in Islam with mysticism and viewing such belief as the main cause of the supposed primitivism of the North Africans, the psychiatrists of the Algiers School attributed a decisive role to Islam in explaining the behaviour of North African soldiers in battle and in distinguishing their potential weaknesses from those of the Europeans.

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A predisposition to hysteria The doctors and psychologists treating combatants during the Second World War were of the opinion that battle stress manifested itself differently among colonial soldiers. Again, this specificity was thought to have its roots in the beliefs and the mysticism of the Muslim soldiers. While Europeans mainly suffered from anxiety, neurasthenia or psychasthenia, the indigenous soldiers were above all subject to bouts of hysteria, i.e. to nervous tension, overdramatic behaviour and physical symptoms such as paralysis, trembling or convulsions which could not be explained by any physical pathology. Still frequently considered a disease peculiar to women, as the etymology of the term illustrates, hysteria remained a diagnosis with pejorative connotations. In total, out of 1,700 native soldiers hospitalized during the war in the Maillot Hospital in Algiers, 500 suffered from ‘pithiatism’ (particularly violent fits of hysteria), while this diagnosis was only made in the case of 88 of the 2,700 Europeans hospitalized.26 The neologism ‘pithiatism’, which Joseph Babinski preferred to the term ‘hysteria’, emphasizes the importance of suggestion in the origin of the disorder and, by using this term, the psychiatrists of the Algiers School thus underlined the tendency of the North African soldiers to be influenced and to develop disorders in an irrational way.27 In order to explain this difference, psychiatrists turned once more to the primitivism of North African soldiers and their supposed incapacity for abstract thought. ‘Faced with a situation which puts his existence at serious risk and tends to change his personality profoundly, [the native soldier] is unable to incorporate the terms of the conflict into his consciousness.’28 Two possible scenarios were therefore envisaged: either the indigenous soldier reacts violently, and this emotional release in turn allows him to calm down, or the indigenous soldier is incapable of reacting violently because of ‘the abstract or imperceptible character’ of the event and escapes the conflict through hysteria.29 These bouts of hysteria made a particularly strong impression. They were described as ‘base, massive, brutal’.30 ‘The grand theatrical attack [of hysteria] which has practically disappeared from European hospitals reminds us, in the case of the native, of the good old days of hysteria from the time of Charcot’,31 observed the doctors of the Maillot Hospital in Algiers between 1940 and 1945. They cited the example of a 21-year-old soldier, who had been in the army for 20 days when, without an obvious motive, he was subject to several attacks. Admitted to hospital, he was diagnosed as pithiatic: While these attacks can appear spontaneously, the sight of a key is certain to provoke them and the spraying of cold water stops them instantly. Upon seeing

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a key, with a fixed stare, arms raised up, his breathing stertorous, the subject walks straight ahead; after a few paces he falls over theatrically, landing on his hands in the manner of a gymnast. He then rolls on the ground groaning in a grotesque manner. While the fit tends to subside, seeing the key again brings it back in all its intensity. Just a few drops of water stop it instantly. And so one can, knowing the trigger and the remedy, provoke and stop the fits at will.32

These attacks of hysteria were, moreover, profoundly marked by a belief in Islam. The natives, it was claimed, were particularly susceptible to hallucinations and delusions of being possessed. They had the impression of being haunted by jinns, mythical beings generally thought to harbour malevolent intentions. These jinns were a relic of older, deeper rooted, pre-Islamic religions, tolerated by the Quran, which devotes a sura to them. The examples are numerous. For example, Moktar B., a 23-year-old tirailleur, was called up in 1942. In Italy, after a night haunted by terrifying dreams (a crowd of people was attacking him, cutting off his arms and legs) he suddenly fell and saw himself surrounded by jinns which entered him through his fingernails. Since then the attacks have been repeated every five or six days. In December 1944 he was involved in a bloody battle, without playing an active role because he was an orderly in the battalion office. He had an attack and woke up alone next to a corpse. So began a subacute anxiety attack which led to his hospitalization. In hospital we did an abreaction which showed the emotional importance of the loss of a friend killed by his side.33

Ao B., meanwhile, a 35-year-old Moroccan goumier, who had been in the army for five years, was hospitalized in the Vosges. Two or three days after a fierce battle, he suddenly lost consciousness when he stopped to drink near a fountain. He showed no sign of physical injury but his behaviour caused concern among the medical staff: The patient, bedridden, weary-looking, depressed, speaks with a faint voice, with a coarse puerilism of expression and gesticulations. Every now and then he displays the sudden convulsion of a limb or part of the body. It is reported that, during the night, he makes a strange screeching noise. He gives a rather vague account of hallucinations: he is tormented by jinns [‘djenouns’] who look like negroes but speak in Moroccan, especially during the night: he tries to get rid of them, tells them to go away.34

These hysterical displays were considered naïve, puerile and grotesque by doctors, who observed them with a combination of fascination and condescension. The supposed importance of superstition in the psychological disorders of indigenous soldiers also had an effect on the way in which they were

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treated, both at the front and at the rear. At the front, first of all, it affected the way officers and doctors viewed the soldiers’ disorders and thus influenced whether they were sent directly back to their units or kept for observation or evacuated to the rear. Moreover, the sincerity of the patient was often called into question, an issue of great importance in wartime: ‘what throws us off balance when it comes to the native, in certain cases, is that his reactions are so obviously consistent with his own self-interest and inspired by it, that it seems impossible that this consistency is not conscious and intentional’, observed Sutter.35 The crude and exaggerated character of these pithiatic attacks strengthened the impression of the doctors that they were feigned. ‘While [the] form [of the attack] varies, it is always spectacular, most often grotesque, sometimes clownish and, as a result, frequently gives the impression of simulation’, claimed the psychiatrists of the Maillot Hospital. Consequently, while psychiatrists noted that such cases of simulation in the army were extremely rare,36 military psychiatrists working with indigenous soldiers during the war considered that, in their case, malingering was the rule and sincerity the exception. The army doctors, who had the task of exposing fakers in order to send them back to the front, were convinced that ‘a compulsive liar by nature, the native takes pleasure in this confabulation of words and gestures; he feels no embarrassment in persevering, even when he feels he has been discovered’,37 as Susini put it. Indeed, according to the psychiatrists of the Algiers School, the North Africans did not attach the same cultural importance to telling the truth, and lying did not therefore give rise to feelings of guilt. As a result, the North African soldiers were quickly suspected of feigning their disorders. The experience acquired during the Second World War seemed to confirm their prejudices. In Italy, out of 300 soldiers admitted into hospital for psychiatric disorders, 18 were accused of malingering: all of them were Muslims.38 Manceaux, Bardenat and Susini argued, for example, that: ‘The native willingly transgresses a law that does not have the same social value for him as it does for us. Falsehood, lies, tricks, they are all the same for him, and are at once a habit linked to his conditions of existence and a defence mechanism which customs do not condemn fully, it is not a disloyal manoeuvre.’39 This problem was further exacerbated by the mysticism of the North African soldiers, as one of the psychiatrists of the Maillot Hospital argued: ‘The native’s train of thought follows the path of much superstition and myth, carrying him from observed reality to the intellectual concepts fixed in his memory: jinns and evil spells easily take the place of the laws of nature.’40

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As such, psychiatrists claimed, while it was not difficult to catch out simulating patients, it was more difficult to obtain an admission on their part. For example, Simbi M., a 20-year-old farmer from Aurès serving in a regiment of pioneers, arrived on 18 January 1944 at the field hospital 425, where he remained in ‘a state of permanent and cultivated prostration’. Showing no medical signs he was transferred on 20 April 1944 to another hospital for an expert psychological assessment. There he explained to doctors that during regular attacks he lies down on the ground ‘and no longer knows what is going on around him. He feels the djenoun take him by the belly, or in the legs or in the head, [and] penetrate into his bones.’ He was subjected to sessions of electric shocks on 22, 24 and 26 April. These sometimes left the patient without a reaction or brought on an episode. The doctors suspected simulation and placed the patient in solitary confinement. After another session of electric shocks on 9 May, which did not bring on an attack, they decided to send him back to his unit on 16 May 1944.41 Faced with such difficulties, the doctors were pragmatic. Except for the cases of legal expertise, where they had to distinguish between genuine illness and simulation, they simply endeavoured to send the largest possible number back to the front, and to do so as quickly as possible. Thus, in Italy, whether psychological disorders were treated or considered as negligible for being simply inherent to the psychology of the North Africans, all but three indigenous patients were sent back to their unit.42 The importance of the mysticism and superstition of indigenous soldiers also had an effect on the treatment of their psychological disorders. At the front, when the soldiers were first received, the treatment was identical: rest was essential and the soldiers received barbiturates if necessary. At the rear, the French doctors, like their British and American counterparts, recognized the need to create ‘a psychotherapeutic atmosphere’. However, the treatment given to indigenous patients differed from that received by Europeans. Owing to the language difference and the primitivism attributed to Muslim soldiers, doctors soon judged it futile to have recourse to psychotherapy. As Sutter argued, [A]ll the notions of psychotherapy that we possess seem to be disproved: the doctor often finds himself obliged to capitulate before a force of perseveration that he has never encountered in his usual patients; and yet the main foundations of psychological life are, there, precisely what they are elsewhere; but between the patient and the therapist there are too large differences of thought, of milieu [and] of language, to be able to establish between them that psychological and emotional harmony without which the latter cannot instil in the former his volitional energy and his conviction.43

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Consequently, while French psychiatrists seemed seduced by the therapy of narco-analysis using sodium pentothal – a chemical compound later known as truth serum – to which they were introduced by their British colleagues in 1943, they judged this practice, which they viewed as ‘a psychoanalytic form of psychotherapy’44 ineffective for dealing with indigenous patients.45 Trials were carried out: Sutter and Susini mention the case of an indigenous soldier admitted to hospital in a state of ‘complete mutism’ about which they had no background information. He has a vacant look, does not say a word, but is not confused; he understands and executes the orders he is given, answering with gestures. We are told that this state has lasted for twenty days and that it began on the front line following fantastic visions of which he has horrifying memories, as suggested by his gesticulations when he is asked about the circumstances.

The doctors began a course of treatment with pentothal. This, however, did not bring about a release of emotions and did not allow for the externalization of the scene that brought on the psychosis. . . . In the days that followed, the patient spoke but his voice remained low and monotonous. He is indifferent, inert and seems completely inhibited. His answers are correct but not very explicit; he is reticent and all that we can get him to say is that one of his comrades was killed in Alsace during an attack. Despite daily psychotherapy, the patient has not made progress.46

In the case of indigenous patients, doctors prioritized the techniques of so-called ‘armed psychotherapy’ (psychothérapie armée), a more radical set of procedures that aimed at impressing the patient and that was rarely used in the case of European patients other than as a last resort for patients categorized as ‘severely retarded’ (‘gros débiles’).47 Depending on the symptoms, treatments would involve isolation, being made to fast for a few days, sometimes accompanied by laxatives, water deprivation for several days, forced confinement to bed, the plastering of a limb affected by trembling, the injection of cardiazol to provoke seizures and an epileptic fit, as well as, often, electric shock treatment.48 However, the doctors were struck above all by the resistance to treatment of Muslim patients who invoked their traditional beliefs. ‘The pithiatic native’, observed Susini, ‘only very rarely displays a desire to get better and, more often than not, gives the opposite impression; fatalistic, he accepts his affliction with resignation; he can do nothing against it and even sometimes thinks that trying to fight against divine will could have harmful consequences.’49 The case of Ali is a case

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in point. Taken into the psychiatric hospital of the 1st French Army on 20 January 1945 for experiencing fits in which he was struck by jinns, he ‘proved quite difficult, declaring that only the marabout can cure him and that doctors would never succeed’. Not managing to make sufficient progress to be sent back to his unit, he was transferred to Algeria.50 In the same way, Moktar B., whose case has already been described, ‘feared that the jinns, irritated by these manoeuvres would avenge themselves on him or on his entourage, or on the doctor. He thus resists any therapy with all his strength.’ Nevertheless, the results of the treatment were generally judged to be satisfactory: of the 331 indigenous soldiers admitted to the Maillot Hospital as a result of pithiatic attacks during the war, only 58 were declared unfit for service and invalided out of the army. Crucially, however, the doctors themselves recognized that their main objective was not to cure the patients but simply to aid the psychiatric casualty sufficiently to justify sending him back into the front line.51 In actual fact, this proportion was higher than that of those who were really cured, as a certain number of patients were sent back to their units with symptoms of disorders, without being cured. Those suffering from fits, among whom the recovery rate was high – 252 out of 331 patients – often re-joined their units despite their fits if these were quite spaced out and of moderate intensity, and if the mental foundation of the subject was not too affected.52

Religion, culture and race While the psychiatrists of the Algiers School attributed a large part of the specificity of the indigenous combatants’ psyche to their faith in Islam, their theories reveal a certain confusion between religion, culture and race. For instance, they noted that those indigenous soldiers coming from cities and having been in contact with Europeans (but not having renounced their faith) displayed psychological disorders similar to Europeans. By claiming, in this way, that they were not attributing the specific nature of North African soldiers’ mental disorders to biological, and therefore racial, causes, they distinguished themselves from the works of the British doctors of the East African School who attributed the specificities of a supposed ‘African mentality’ to the incomplete development of the brain.53 Sutter observed, meanwhile, that [I]t does not seem necessary to evoke morphobiological differences that are properly racial: these differences, in fact, as far as we understand them, appear as

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minimal or inconsistent; and besides, among the natives studied, those whose culture and lifestyle was the most “Europeanized” displayed very similar reactions to those of the Europeans. Those, on the other hand, far more numerous, who came from rural areas that were not very evolved socially, externalized much more unusual reactions.54

The doctors of the Algiers School preferred to emphasize the role of environment, culture and intellectual development. For this reason, they underlined the role of Islam in the development of psychiatric disorders of the North Africans, even though the indigenous population in the cities had not generally renounced its Muslim faith. However, the idea of the superiority of European civilization over North African civilization influenced psychiatrists treating soldiers in the French Army. As the degree of intellectual development was taken to explain the difference between the indigenous and the European psyche, Porot compared the disorder displayed by the indigenous North Africans to ‘our old crises of medieval hysteria’ or even to ‘a veritable hysteria of the savage’.55 Unlike Dr A.-L.-D. Costedoat of the Val-de-Grâce who, making a comparison with the superstitions in the French countryside, argued that ‘one should not therefore consider the frequency of stories of being possessed as anything other than the sign of a rather undeveloped social milieu. There is nothing specific to race’,56 the works of the Algiers School essentialized the North African psyche and emphasized its difference from the European one. Sutter, for instance, argued that ‘the clinical dimension of war psychiatry assumes, among the natives, rather different forms from those which we observe among the Europeans, but which are very similar, on the other hand . . . to those observed far from the front or in peacetime.’57 Similarly, Susini emphasized ‘the existence of a mental constitution peculiar to the North African which would be favourable to the development of hysterical disorders’.58 Thus, while the British and American psychiatrists were emphasizing the influence of combat on war neuroses, the doctors of the Algiers School were essentializing the disorders displayed by the North Africans in putting forward the concepts of religion and culture in their psychiatric discourses. Moreover, while Islam was viewed by the Algiers School as the main explanatory factor in the specificity of the psyche of North African soldiers, the religious beliefs of soldiers from Sub-Saharan Africa did not seem worthy of interest and were generally not mentioned in the studies. Henri Aubin, who treated the tirailleurs sénégalais evacuated from their units in 1939, nevertheless observed certain similarities when examining their psychiatric disorders. He

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emphasized their strong inclination towards hysteria, the dramatic nature of their fits, and even the role of ‘legends and folklore’ in the expression of the symptoms.59 But just as North African soldiers were associated essentially with Islam, the Sub-Saharan African soldiers were viewed only through the lens of their supposed primitivism. Indirectly, the notion of a hierarchy of races emerged in the psychiatric thoughts of the Algiers School. Porot and Sutter argued, for instance, that ‘to see our [North African] natives as primitives would be a blatant exaggeration and they are, on the whole, much more evolved than the negroes and the Polynesian tribes.’60 The insistence of the doctors of the Algiers School on the role of Islam in the origins of wartime psychological disorders was unique to the French case. The British Army, which also employed Muslim colonial soldiers during the Second World War (within the Indian Army and among soldiers recruited in Africa) was certainly anxious to respect the Muslim beliefs of the troops on a day-to-day basis, notably their dietary requirements and their rejection of certain tasks (such as sweeping the floor). Since the nineteenth century, the British Army had encouraged the maintenance of ethnic and religious identities within units.61 However, while it also questioned the specificity of the psychiatric disorders of colonial soldiers, it did not insist on the role of Islam in particular, whether in the origins of these disorders or in the nature of their treatment. Instead, the doctors of the British Army underlined the role of superstition and magic practices. They observed that ‘rigid taboos, belief in magic and inadequate reality testing according to western standards are present and have important bearing on the interpretation of symptoms and on methods of dealing with them’. They were also conscious of the fact that many soldiers sought treatment for their mental illnesses from traditional sources ‘by occasional visits to the faqir [a Muslim Sufi ascetic], some sacrifice, or wearing a charm’.62 The British doctors also questioned the specificity of psychological disorders among Muslim soldiers, emphasizing first and foremost that they were less common than among British troops. During the Second Arakan Campaign in Burma (1943–4), although the strength of the British and Indian formations was approximately 24,000 and 45,000 respectively, the number of psychiatric casualties dealt with by psychiatrists was 363 British and 263 Indian. There were also fewer psychoneuroses among East Africans. Their response to severe stress was often to ‘go to bush’. Like their French counterparts, the British psychiatrists emphasized the prevalence of hysteria as a form of expression of war psychoses among both Indian and African troops. The psychiatrist of the 15th Indian Corps observed: ‘Those with conversion symptoms outnumbered all other types, as one would

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expect at the existing cultural level’.63 Captain N. Dembowitz, a psychiatrist of the Royal Army Medical Corps, argued that ‘hysteria is the hallmark of psychiatry in Africans. Cases of gross, low grade, hysterical deafness or paralysis are common and hysterical exaggeration and prolongation of symptoms are the rule rather than the exception.’64 They also underlined the notion that colonial soldiers were subject to disorders that were manifested in a more demonstrative manner and noted the frequency of hallucinations. ‘Hallucinations, particularly auditory, occur in hysterical states in I.O.Rs. [Indian Other Ranks, i.e. non officers] while otherwise in full contact with their environment due to their inadequate differentiation of concept and precept. The knowledge that their parents wanted them to return home becomes their hearing their parents weeping and calling them home.’65 The patients sometimes explained their behaviour ‘as being due to a spirit inside or outside himself influencing his actions’. In the case of African patients, Dembowitz wrote that ‘hallucinations are of much less significance than among Europeans. Normal Africans see and speak to their dead parents. The presence of accusing voices, or terrifying dwarfs, does not necessarily imply a serious mental illness, for they occur in simple depressions and anxiety states and, of course, in hysteria.’66 Nevertheless, some British military psychologists underlined the need to relativize the distinctions between the diagnoses given to the Indian and British soldiers. Major A. S. Johnson, for example, wrote just after the war that [I]t is commonly remarked that hysteria occurs most commonly amongst the I.O.Rs., and that cases of anxiety state are common amongst B.O.Rs. [British Other Ranks]. Anxiety states are common amongst the Indian patients (amongst both garrison and forward area cases) as well. . . . The I.O.R. rationalizes the causes of his bodily disturbance according to his own local conceptions. When he has symptoms of anxiety he fixes his interest on one of the prominent symptoms like dyspepsia [indigestion] and argues that the other symptoms arise therefrom. Therefore when he comes up with any complaint he always speaks about his major disability and does not make any reference to any other symptoms unless his attention is drawn to them gradually. Anyone overlooking this fact is bound to diagnose states of anxiety as cases of hysteria.67

However, religious affiliation was not, in the eyes of the British Army doctors, a decisive criterion in the triggering, the manifestation or the treatment of psychiatric disorders. Dembowitz saw no difference between ‘northern territory men who make up most of the fighting battalion and whose dominants are Mohammedans and most tribes are pagan and the coast Africans who are pagans’.68 Concepts of race and of primitivism, on the other hand, were put

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forward as explanatory factors in the specificity of psychological disorders among colonial soldiers. During the fighting in Burma, for example, doctors observed that ‘race also plays a part as the Madrasi [ethnic groups of Southern India] formed a large part of L of C [Lines of Communication] troops in the Arakan [a region on the Western coast of Burma] and they appeared to be more prone to psychotic illness than northern races.’69 Another British Army psychiatrist also remarked that ‘the mental invaliding rate from the south of India was always higher than from the north.’70 As such, the observations of British psychiatrists seemed to back up the theories of martial races developed since the nineteenth century71: soldiers belonging to ‘martial races’ seemed less prone to develop psychiatric disorders. ‘The experiment giving races without a martial background combatant duties was not a great success in the Arakan.’ Conversely, the sepoy was described as ‘a well adjusted person’, who ‘accepts the army, its discipline, its customs and leaders uncritically’.72 Writing in more gendered terms, another doctor compared ‘the virile Sikh, Punjabi Mussulman, and Frontier tribesman with the Bengali Babu or the softer of South India’, but also recalled that ‘the South of India also produced the Mahrattas and the cultivators of Deccan are a virile type’.73 The education of soldiers and their capacity for reasoning were taken as decisive factors in the aetiology of psychiatric disorders. Indian soldiers were said to be ‘illiterate or just literate’ and to ‘live in an unsophisticated age of ready belief without a great critical faculty’.74 Their view of African troops was more condescending: like their French counterparts, British psychiatrists compared their intellectual development to that of a child. Dembowitz asserts that: ‘The general impression is that they are about as intelligent as a European boy of 10 years. . . . Emotionally, they may be safely compared with schoolboys.’75 Similar comments were made about nonMuslim tribes. Captain L.A. Nichols, for instance, underlined the proneness to hysteria of soldiers from the Basuto tribe in South Africa, for whom ‘events, both natural and unnatural, all good or evil, and every sickness are attributed to spirits’,76 and observed that ‘the lack of education leads to the dramatic and gross expression of symptoms.’77 The comparison between the French and British armies reveals additional similarities. Dembowitz also emphasized the violence of the West African troops: ‘Contented African troops are quite delightful people, but discontented ones are not only vexatious but also dangerous.’ Like their French counterparts, British psychiatrists considered that the supposed intellectual development or, conversely, the primitivism of the colonial soldiers had an impact on psychiatric disorders arising in battle. Nevertheless, while the British were very attentive to respecting the religious practices of their colonial

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troops, they did not attribute a particular importance to Islam in determining the cause of psychological disorders. Their viewpoint contributed to reinforcing the theories of martial races: certain races were, they argued, more suited for combat and therefore less susceptible to developing war psychoneuroses.

Conclusion During the battles of the Liberation, French doctors treating combatants both at the front and at the rear underlined the singularity of the psychiatric disorders of Muslim soldiers. Belief in Islam, they claimed, was at the root of their supposed primitivism and explained the fact that these disorders manifested themselves in a more theatrical and violent manner. Belief in Islam thus seemed to be a key factor defining the psyche of the vast majority of the North African soldiers serving in the French Army. This insistence on the role of Islam and the supposed link between Islam and primitivism masked, however, a great degree of confusion among the doctors of the Algiers School between religion, culture, intellectual development and race. While such an understanding of the role of Islamic religious belief in the psyche of the North African soldiers, which appears to be specific to the French Army, had obvious shortcomings, it nevertheless had important consequences. First and foremost, it led to the different treatment of indigenous combatants. At the front, French doctors were more inclined to suspect the Muslim soldiers of malingering; at the rear, these disorders were thought to require rougher treatment. Moreover, psychiatric practice during the war essentialized the behaviour of the Muslim soldiers and minimized the impact of the war on their psyche, which they sought to demonstrate was different from that of the Europeans. Thus, French psychiatrists examined their patients through the eyes of the coloniser and contributed to the establishment of hierarchies among the different peoples of the Empire based on their supposed level of development, which was presumed, in turn, to have an impact on their behaviour in combat.

Notes 1 John W. Appel, and Gilbert W. Beebe, ‘Preventive Psychiatry: An Epidemiologic Approach’, Journal of the American Medical Association 131, no. 18 (1946): 1469–75.

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2 Gouvernement provisoire de la République française, L’Effort de guerre de l’Afrique du Nord depuis novembre 1942, Paris, Archives Nationales, F60/993. 3 Jock McCulloch, Colonial Psychiatry and the ‘African Mind’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Megan Vaughan, ‘The Madman and the Medicine Men: Colonial Psychiatry and the Theory of Deculturation’, in Megan Vaughan (ed.), Curing their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), 100–28; Waltraud Ernst, Mad Tales from the Raj. The European Insane in British India (London: Routledge, 1991). 4 Daniel R. Headrick, The Tools of Empire. Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). 5 On the Algiers School of psychiatry, see Richard Keller, Colonial Madness: Psychiatry in French Africa (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007). 6 See for example Alexander Pilcz, Lehrbuch der speziellen Psychiatrie für Studierende und Ärzte (Leipzig: Deuticke, 1904); Victor Trenga, Sur les psychoses chez les Juifs d’Algérie (Montpellier: Éditeurs du nouveau Montpellier médical, 1902); Victor Trenga, L’âme arabo-berbère: Etude sociologique sur la société musulmane nordafricaine (Alger: Homar, 1913). 7 Angelo Hesnard and Antoine Porot, Psychiatrie de guerre, étude clinique (Paris: F. Alcan, 1919). 8 Jacques Moreau de Tours, ‘Recherches sur les aliénés en Orient. Notes sur les établissements qui leur sont consacrés à Malte, au Caire, à Smyrne, à Constantinople’, Annales médico-psychologiques 1, no. 1 (1843): 103–32. 9 Abel-Joseph Meilhon, ‘L’aliénation mentale chez les Arabes. Études de nosologie comparée’, Annales médico-psychologiques 54, no. 1 (1896): 17–32, 177–207, 364–77, and 54, no. 2: 26–40, 204–20, 344–63. 10 Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, La mentalité primitive (Paris: F. Alcan, 1922); Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, L’Âme primitive (Paris: F. Alcan, 1927); Charles Blondel, La mentalité primitive (Paris: Stock, 1926). 11 See Maurice Boigey, ‘Étude psychologique sur l’Islam’, Annales médico-psychologiques 66, no. 2 (1908): 5–14; and its refutation: Ahmed Cherif, ‘Étude psychologique sur l’Islam (réfutation de l’article de Boigey)’, Annales médico-psychologiques 67, no. 1 (1909): 353–63. 12 État-major de la 19e armée, section des affaires militaires musulmanes, Notice à l’usage des gradés appelés à commander des militaires musulmans nord-africains (Paris: Ministère de la Guerre, 1941), 24. 13 Suzanne Taieb, Les idées d’influence dans la pathologie mentale de l’indigène nordafricain. Le rôle des superstitions, medical thesis, University of Algiers (1939). 14 Report on the morale of the 70th goum in March 1944, 29 March 1944, Service Historique de la Défense (hereafter SHD ), Département de l’armée de terre (hereafter DAT ), 3H2531.

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15 Report on the morale of the 4th groupement de tabors marocains in February 1944, 5 April 1944, SHD DAT 3H2517. 16 Antoine Porot and Jean Sutter, ‘Le primitivisme des indigènes Nord-Africains. Ses incidences en pathologie mentale’, Sud médical et chirurgical 15 April 1939: 227. 17 Porot and Sutter, ‘Le primitivisme des indigènes Nord-Africains’, 227. 18 André Manceaux, Charles Bardenat and Robert Susini, ‘L’hystérie chez l’indigène algérien. Quelques aspects de ses manifestations en milieu militaire’, Annales médico-psychologiques 105, no. 2 (1947): 24. 19 Côme Don Arrii, ‘De l’impulsivité criminelle chez l’indigène algérien’, medical thesis, University of Algiers (1927). 20 Arrii, ‘De l’impulsivité criminelle’, 112. 21 André Fribourg-Blanc, ‘L’état mental des indigènes de l’Afrique du Nord et leurs réactions psychopathiques’, L’hygiène mentale 22, no. 9 (1927):137. 22 Antoine Porot, ‘Notes de psychiatrie musulmane’, Annales médico-psychologiques 76, no. 9 (1918): 377–84. 23 Jean Sutter, ‘Les indigènes Nord-Africains au combat (Étude psychopathologique)’, Cahiers médicaux de l’Union française 107, no. 1 (1947): 486. 24 André Manceaux et al., ‘Sur quelques aspects des manifestations hystériques chez l’indigène Nord-Africain en particulier en milieu militaire’, L’Algérie médicale no. 4 (July–August 1946): 324. 25 Sutter, ‘Les indigènes Nord-Africains au combat’, 487. 26 Robert Susini, ‘Aspects cliniques de l’hystérie chez l’indigène nord-africain (en milieu militaire)’, medical thesis, University of Algiers (1947): 127. 27 Joseph Babinski and Jules Froment, Hystérie-pithiatisme et troubles nerveux d’ordre réflexe en neurologie de guerre (Paris: Masson, 1917). 28 Manceaux et al., ‘L’hystérie chez l’indigène algérien’, 24. 29 Manceaux et al., ‘L’hystérie chez l’indigène algérien’, 29. 30 Manceaux et al., ‘Sur quelques aspects des manifestations hystériques’, 321. 31 Manceaux et al., ‘L’hystérie chez l’indigène algérien’, 4. 32 Manceaux et al., ‘L’hystérie chez l’indigène algérien’, 4–5. 33 Sutter, ‘Les indigènes Nord-Africains au combat’, 491. 34 Jean Sutter, Henri Stern and Robert Susini, ‘Psychonévroses de guerre. Etude d’une centaine de cas personnels’, Annales médico-psychologiques 105, no. 2 (1947), 501. 35 Sutter, ‘Les indigènes Nord-Africains au combat’, 490. 36 André Fribourg-Blanc, La pratique psychiatrique dans l’armée (Paris: Charles Lavauzelle, 1935): 490–1. 37 Susini, ‘Aspects cliniques de l’hystérie’, 116. 38 Statistics established with the registries of military hospitals of the French Expeditionary Corps in Italy, Service des archives médicales des hôpitaux de l’Armée (hereafter SAMHA ), Limoges, France.

War Neuroses among Muslim Soldiers 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

57 58 59 60 61 62

63 64 65

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Manceaux et al., ‘L’hystérie chez l’indigène algérien’, 26. Manceaux et al., ‘L’hystérie chez l’indigène algérien’, 26. Medical file of Simbi M., summary of observations, SAMHA . Statistics established with the registries of military hospitals of the French Expeditionary Corps in Italy, SAMHA . Sutter, ‘Les indigènes Nord-Africains au combat’, 492. Sutter et al., ‘Psychonévroses de guerre’, 322. Jean Sutter and Robert Susini, ‘La subnarcose au penthotal dans les psychonévroses de guerre récentes’, Algérie médicale, no. 3 (1946): 297–305. Sutter and Susini, ‘La subnarcose au penthotal dans les psychonévroses de guerre récentes’: 297–305. Sutter et al., ‘Psychonévroses de guerre’: 321 Manceaux et al., ‘Sur quelques aspects des manifestations hystériques’, 328. Susini, ‘Aspects cliniques de l’hystérie’, 56. Sutter, ‘Les indigènes Nord-Africains au combat’, 488–9. It is the case in all armies. See for example William Menninger, Psychiatry in a Troubled World. Yesterday’s War and Today’s Challenge (New York: Macmillan, 1948), 37. Susini, ‘Aspects cliniques de l’hystérie’, 127. John C. Carothers, ‘A Study of Mental Derangement in Africans’, Journal of Mental Science 93, no. 392 (July 1947): 548–97. Sutter, ‘Les indigènes Nord-Africains au combat’, 485. Hesnard and Porot, Psychiatrie de guerre, étude clinique, 66. A.-L.-D. Costedoat, ‘Les troubles mentaux des militaires indigènes musulmans de l’Afrique du Nord’, Archives de médecine et de pharmacie militaires 101, no. 2 (1934): 231–52, 240. Sutter, ‘Les indigènes Nord-Africains au combat’, 491. Susini, ‘Aspects cliniques de l’hystérie’, 89. Henri Aubin, ‘Introduction à l’étude de la psychiatrie chez les noirs’, Annales médico-psychologiques 97, no. 1 (1939): 1–29 and 97, no. 2 (1939): 181–213. Porot and Sutter, ‘Le primitivisme des indigènes Nord-Africains’, 226. Nile Green, Islam and the Army in Colonial India. Sepoy Religion in the Service of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Report on Psychiatry in the Arakan Campaigns by J. Matus, psychiatrist of the 15th Indian Corps, 1945, The National Archives (hereafter TNA ), Public Record Office (hereafter PRO ), WO 222/1571. Report on Psychiatry in the Arakan Campaigns by J. Matus, psychiatrist of the 15th Indian Corps, 1945, TNA , PRO, WO 222/1571. Captain N. Dembowitz, ‘Psychiatry amongst West African Troops’, Journal of Royal Army Medical Corps 84, no. 1 (January-June 1945): 70–4. Report on Psychiatry in the Arakan Campaigns by J. Matus.

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66 Dembowitz, ‘Psychiatry amongst West African Troops’. 67 Major A. S. Johnson, ‘Some Observations on the Psychiatric Casualties amongst I.O.Rs.’, Journal of the Indian Army Medical Corps 2, no. 2 (1946): 24. 68 Dembowitz, ‘Psychiatry amongst West African Troops’. 69 Report on psychiatry in the Arakan campaigns by J. Matus. 70 Alienist, ‘Some Recollections of Army Psychiatry’, Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps 84, no.2 (February 1945): 48. 71 On martial races in British India, see: Pradeep Barua, ‘Inventing Race: The British and India’s Martial Races’, The Historian 58 (1995): 107–16. 72 Report on psychiatry in the Arakan campaigns by J. Matus. 73 Alienist, ‘Some Recollections of Army Psychiatry’, 49. 74 Report on psychiatry in the Arakan campaigns by J. Matus. 75 Dembowitz, ‘Psychiatry amongst West African Troops’. 76 L. A. Nichols, ‘Neuroses in Native African Troops’, British Journal of Mental Science, no. 90 (1944): 863. 77 Nichols, ‘Neuroses in Native African Troops’, 868.

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‘Allah Might Provide the Fuel’: Muslim Sailors in British Colonial Navies, from the Second World War to Independence Daniel Owen Spence

While anniversaries of the First and Second World Wars have spawned greater attempts to recognize the vital contribution that colonial servicemen played in those conflicts, academic attention on imperial armed forces remains predominantly focused on the army. What is less widely understood is that around 40,000 colonial men volunteered for British naval forces during the Second World War,1 serving in major theatres stretching from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean. Muslim sailors were largely found in the Indian Ocean littoral, recruited from Britain’s colonies in East Africa, India and Southeast Asia, and thus form the focus of this chapter. British imperial and naval power relied upon the coercion and collaboration of Muslim rulers and their subjects to enforce colonial rule, defend the Empire in peace and war, and preserve post-colonial influence after the Union Jack was lowered. In Malaya and Zanzibar, Britain’s sultan allies retained authority over Islamic matters, and their position as religious leaders gave them an important role in mobilizing indigenous support for the imperial cause. After the Second World War, the 1946 mutiny of the Royal Indian Navy and the rise of Islamic pan-Arabism, allied with anti-colonial nationalist movements, challenged the fragility of British imperialism and saw colonial navies become an ideological and political battleground in the transition to independence. The Royal Indian Navy represented a microcosm for India’s partition, divided along communal lines and by religious differences that were accentuated by British ‘divide and rule’ policies, naval recruiters influenced by imperial racial ideology, and Muslim League leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s political ambitions for an independent Muslim-majority state. Whereas in Malaya the sultans became aligned with the 205

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nationalist United Malays National Organization (UMNO ), leading to an increased Islamization of the Royal Malaysian Navy and erosion of its secular British traditions, in East Africa Britain tried securing its long-term interests by indoctrinating the sultan’s heir into the Royal Navy, before he became deposed by a Christian revolutionary. For Muslim sailors, changes in political agendas, strategic priorities and cultural attitudes during decolonization altered the manner and extent to which they were expected to observe Islamic custom within the service, particularly regarding food and alcohol. This chapter consolidates ‘official’ colonial and Admiralty records with the ‘subaltern’ perspectives of Muslim servicemen, by comparing archival sources and oral histories from the United Kingdom, Africa and Asia. Examining the Royal Navy’s recruitment of Muslim sailors from the colonial to the post-colonial period through themes of ‘race and recruitment’, ‘discrimination and protest’, and ‘nationalism and decolonization’, the chapter provides a unique naval interpretation to the volume’s major questions. In particular, what was racial theory’s influence on perceptions of Muslim sailors and why they served in different parts of the British Empire? How did Islamic leaders aid colonialism and its recruitment of Muslim naval personnel? How did the navy manage Islamic observances and Muslim responses in peace and war time? And what effect did decolonization, nationalism and Islamization have on naval attitudes and British imperial influence?

Race and recruitment From April 1870, the Royal Navy recruited East Africans to help crew its vessels serving on the local station. These Muslim sailors from the Swahili coast were known as ‘seedies’, being the subjects of the Sultan of Zanzibar, or Seyyid, whose name theirs derived from. Since 1840, Zanzibaris had played an essential role in the Royal Navy’s anti-slavery campaign by acting as Swahili interpreters, and by 1881, 11.5 per cent of Royal Navy personnel in the Indian Ocean were nonwhite; most Africans were classed as ‘seedie’ and over 52 per cent possessed Muslim names.2 An ethnic division of labour existed where the navy assigned roles according to racial theory, with seedies employed as seamen while freed Africans were assigned as stokers below-deck. Most seedies were Muslim, and martial race theory evinced itself in the navy’s acknowledgement that ‘Mohammedanism is . . . the finest fighting religion in the world’, though there were concerns that these qualities were diluted when ‘within a few hours of

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one of these boys joining the Navy he has to go directly against the dictates of his religion by being given a ration of tinned beef or salt pork’.3 Commanders attempted to mitigate this by observing ‘Mohammedan feast days’ including Ramadan.4 Seedies also supposedly inherited nautical qualities from seafaring Arab ancestors, whilst formerly enslaved Africans were deemed better suited physically for heavier and hotter work shifting coal within the ship’s engineroom. Most seedies originated from Zanzibar, and though a protectorate rather than a formal colony, Britain relied on the sultan’s ‘collaboration’ and the existing power structure of local officials to recruit its naval personnel there.5 Sultan Khalifa bin Harub ruled for almost 49 years from 9 December 1911, and was himself a ‘great sailor and held the Royal Navy in the highest esteem’.6 A day after his seventeenth birthday, he had witnessed the Royal Navy’s bombardment of the Sultan’s palace on 27 August 1896, a demonstration of ‘shock and awe’ which ended the shortest war in history after just 38 minutes and put Khalifa’s fatherin-law on the throne.7 For seedie sailors, their ruler ‘came first and was the be-all and end-all of their existence’, and Royal Navy commanders manipulated this allegiance to encourage their discipline and obedience, convincing them that he sent ‘messages when he was pleased or displeased with them, rewarded them with gratuities, had heard that they were very poor and could not buy nice clothes, so gave them [a] clothing allowance’.8 After the 1902 Anglo-Japanese Alliance was cancelled in 1923, fears of Japan’s militarism escalated and stretched as far as Kenya, where the Committee of Imperial Defence declared that ‘in the event of war in the East, the risk of attack on Kilindini [harbour in Mombasa] is likely to be much greater.’9 A Kenya Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (KRNVR ) was consequently established there in March 1933 to augment the Royal Navy by carrying out local minesweeping and anti-submarine patrols.10 Just as British imperialism relied on collaborative rulers, so too the Admiralty depended upon Muslim elites, particularly when inadequate government funding meant the KRNVR had to seek alternative financial support. One of Britain and the Royal Navy’s biggest supporters in Mombasa was Sir Ali bin Salim, the Sultan of Zanzibar’s Liwali (governor) for the Coast until 1931 and representative for Arab interests on Kenya’s Legislative Council. Sir Ali funded the construction of the KRNVR’s Mombasa headquarters, and in June 1938, donated ‘his house and grounds at Peleleza on the mainland opposite to Mombasa as a gift to the Admiralty for the use of the British Navy’.11 Communal tensions within the colony influenced his actions, with Sir Ali feeling ‘frightened that eventually [the house] will fall into Indian hands and he

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considers that if it was given to the Navy . . . it would be in the best hands and safe for ever’.12 Thus the collaborative relationship between Arab Muslims and the British worked to preserve their mutual interests and privileged positions within Kenya’s colonial society at the expense of other ethnicities. It was deemed ‘important that early action should be taken to mark our appreciation of his generous gifts and loyal service’, and publicize this example of colonial acquiescence that affirmed Britain’s imperial legitimacy.13 Fearing that Sir Ali ‘has not long to live’, Admiralty and Colonial officials did not want to miss the positive propaganda offered by ‘a most loyal Arab subject who has the highest regard for the Navy and sets an example which is of real national value in East Africa’.14 Most importantly, Governor Sir Robert Brooke-Popham hoped some public recognition might prove ‘valuable in helping us to stop any anti-British movement that might arise amongst the Arab population on the Coast – a reaction of course, from Palestine’.15 Therefore, after consultation with Sultan Khalifa, the Admiralty granted Sir Ali bin Salim the honorary rank of Captain in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.16 In January 1941, the Commander-in-Chief East Indies recommended that the KRNVR be amalgamated with the neighbouring Naval Volunteer Forces in Zanzibar and Tanganyika, to increase their operational efficiency during wartime.17 There was concern, however, that the ‘esprit de corps’ of the units might suffer should they lose their individual identities,18 particularly in Zanzibar, where members felt a greater religious and political allegiance to their sultan. This was reflected in their distinctive uniforms that carried his personal cipher, which they were loath to give up for the sake of East African uniformity.19 As James Brennan has argued, the sultan’s ‘great prestige’ and ‘power lay in his symbolic appeal’ expressed through ‘his office, body, anthem, and flag’, and in this instance, his cipher.20 Furthermore, Zanzibar’s naval vessels uniquely bore the prefix ‘His Highness’ ships’,21 which would have to change to acknowledge ‘His Majesty’ King George VI as their commander-in-chief. This reluctance to relinquish their outward expressions of fealty to their sultan is indicative that in fighting for ‘King and Country’, Zanzibaris were in fact serving him and not the British monarch as wartime propaganda liked to portray, and demonstrates the empire’s continued reliance on Muslim rulers for wartime support. Muslim sailors were drawn from across the Indian Ocean. Whereas India is renowned for its military tradition, its naval heritage is less well-known, though the Bombay Marine was established in 1686 and became the Royal Indian Marine in 1892. The majority of its ratings were Ratnagiri Muslims from the Konkan coast, men with fishing backgrounds and descended from pioneering

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Indian Ocean traders.22 While interwar imperial and economic pressures saw indigenous naval forces established in colonies such as Kenya, the auxiliary Royal Indian Marine was given full combatant status in 1934 to become the Royal Indian Navy (RIN ). From this point, martial aptitude superseded seafaring experience as a desired attribute, reflecting the force’s new front-line role. This produced a shift in recruitment preference from Ratnagiris to Punjabi Muslims, perceived as among the higher martial races. It was stated that, ‘as a gunnery[,] signal or any other kind of specialist the Punjabi Mussalman [sic] was way ahead of the Ratnagiri’,23 and although they were undoubtedly ‘good seaman’, Ratnagiri were considered to be ‘of a low standard of education and with few natural martial qualities’.24 Instead it was ‘a better I.Q. plus guts which count[ed]’,25 and the ‘instinct for leadership which [was] implicit in the men from the Punjab’. Martial race theory strongly informed the Flag Officer Commanding Royal Indian Navy (FOCRIN ), Vice-Admiral John Godfrey. Though this ideology became synonymous with the Indian Army, Heather Streets has shown how martial race theory’s power ‘stemmed from its very flexibility and ambiguity: it was adaptable to a variety of historical and geographical situations and functioned alternatively to inspire, intimidate, exclude, and include’.26 Godfrey was particularly taken with its supposition that climate affected racial character. The enlightenment philosophers David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and the Baron de Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, thought that northern Europeans possessed greater industry, discipline and intelligence because of the ‘temperate’ climate they inhabited, in contrast to the hot and humid ‘tropics’ which sapped energy and incited uncontrollable passions. By the mid-nineteenth century, such discourses evolved to highlight the ‘inherent’ climatic suitability of different races, and emphasize the ‘superiority’ of British governance to justify colonial rule.27 Naval and military officers serving in India were influenced by this, particularly the naval surgeon James Johnson of the Caroline who published The Influence of Tropical Climates on European Constitutions in 1818, and General Sir O’Moore Creagh, Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army between 1909 and 1914, who believed that ‘where the winter is cold, the warlike minority is to be found’ among the Muslim population.28 Such sentiments were later reflected in a booklet written to prepare British naval officers for the ‘creeds and customs’ of Indian sailors: People of the North are fairer of skin than those of the South and the climate in which they live, generally speaking, is more conducive to energetic modes of living than that of the south. In South India, the majority of people are dark in countenance and inclined to be less martial.29

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Martial race theory also directed British naval recruitment in Southeast Asia where, like in Zanzibar, a collaborative relationship was forged between the Royal Navy and the local sultans. Being ‘deeply sensible of the benefits of British protection’ and desiring to ‘express their loyalty in some tangible form with a view to the strengthening of the British Empire and maintaining her naval supremacy’, the Malay Sultans in 1913 paid for the construction of a Queen Elizabeth-class battleship, fittingly named HMS Malaya to solidify this imperial bond.30 A Straits Settlements Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve was established in Singapore on 20 April 1934 (with a Malayan RNVR in 1938), manned by Malay ratings serving under European officers. Despite the island’s Chinese majority, and significant Chinese communities from across the peninsula, other ethnicities were prohibited from joining. A report on the Fighting Value of the Races of Malaya, published in 1930 by the General Officer Commanding (GOC ) Singapore, Major-General Harry Pritchard, contributed to a colonial perception that the Chinese only displayed ‘fighting value’ when it was for personal gain, such as when ‘Chinese burglars stood up well in their brushes with the police’.31 Whereas the Muslim Malays ‘could be relied on to be loyal to their Sultans’, the British had concerns about Chinese social and political affiliations which were more ambiguous and might counter colonial interests, including the Kuomintang, Malayan Communist Party, and Triad secret societies. In 1939 a full-time Royal Navy (Malay Section) was additionally formed to relieve regular British ratings aboard warships stationed to the region, becoming colloquially known as the ‘Malay Navy’ and based in HMS Pelandok at Singapore. The section was again open exclusively to Malays, aged between fifteen and twenty years of age. Like Zanzibar’s sailors, their uniform incorporated a local motif, ‘a blue and gold sarong’; Malay men normally only wore sarongs publicly when attending Friday prayers at mosque. Though this provided ‘a never-ending source of pride’ that fostered the unit’s esprit de corps, it also marked them out as culturally ‘other’ and meant they could never fully assimilate into the Royal Navy crews they served with.32 By April 1940, five Malays had passed out as Leading Seamen to become instructors and were being trained as Petty Officers. This indigenization was used to illustrate the progress made by Malays under Britain’s colonial leadership, justifying its imperial authority with the men’s endorsement; ‘Of course I’ll sign up for another year, and another, and another’, said Hashim bin Karim, while Acting-Petty Officer Haroun professed his loyalty to the Empire’s cause: ‘We in these ships are doing our best to help to win the war, and of course, we will win. We are all united, aren’t we!’33 Mohamed Haji bin Yunos, a Singapore Municipality

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clerk, was mobilized by the Straits Settlements Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and attached to a minesweeper. Despite working ‘hard and long hours . . . I and my brother are proud to be of service to our king and country’.34 This was reported as an expression of imperial patriotism, but the Malay Sultans retained a degree of local authority, especially as Islamic leaders, since the 1874 Treaty of Pangkor tied the concept of Malayness, or ‘Melayu’, to the Islamic faith.35 With several indigenous sovereigns and states, the notion of ‘king and country’ was more nuanced for Muslim ratings in Malaya (and Zanzibar), as too was their loyalty.

Discrimination and protest Like in East Africa, British imperialism in Southeast Asia relied on collaboration with the indigenous rulers, who helped control the Malay population through Islam and adat (Malay custom). Yet, some Malay sailors renounced their adat and the social hierarchies it enforced, expressing anti-establishment sentiments towards the sultans and their colonial allies. Imperial and naval allegiance was not necessarily synonymous in such instances. Rahman Abdul bin Ya’acob served in the Malayan RNVR after his Straits Company steamship was requisitioned, and so was not a volunteer in the truest sense. Educated in an English school, at around fourteen years of age, Abdul began to resent having ‘to raise two hands to pray to’ the sultans: ‘I don’t like the way they treat Asians, see, whatever they did was right, and these Asians, we had to bow to them. . . . People respect them because they think that the Sultans and the British people are divine, which I never think that [sic]. I think that only God is divine.’36 He ran away to sea from fear of being beaten by his father, and did not mind naval discipline, considering it to be a ‘free life’ by comparison; it was an escape from repression ashore, both his father’s brutality and the feudalism of the sultans. Most deckhands were Malay, with Chinese engine room (greasers), cooks, and ‘boys’ (stewards) who were ‘very co-operative’ with one another, bound together by a seafaring identity that separated them from ‘shore people’, regardless of ethnicity or religion. The men mostly ate European food, and never questioned what type of meat was being served: ‘We just say “as long as we don’t know” . . . sailors at that time we don’t care much about the food, whether halal or not, we just eat what is served [sic].’ Their observation of other Islamic customs was similarly lax: ‘I was brought up very strict so I never touched alcohol, although some sailors did

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drink when they go ashore [sic]. Sometimes when you have an opportunity you pray, if you don’t have, you don’t pray. No special time or places to pray.’37 Following the fall of Singapore to Japan in February 1942, around 300 Malay ratings were evacuated to Ceylon, where they were engaged in port duties.38 By June 1943, rumours emerged that the Malays were dissatisfied with their treatment in Ceylon, a major complaint being that the meat they received had not been ‘killed according to Mohamedan custom’, though it was explained to them that ‘owing to rinderpest in India goat was not obtainable’.39 As Rahman Abdul experienced, the navy’s respect for Islamic custom was surrendered for the sake of operational pragmatism when subjected to wartime duress. The pressures of war also forced a revision of the RIN ’s religious policies, especially since the 1935 Government of India Act decreed that the country’s armed forces should reflect all of its ethnicities. Communal politics, wartime expansion, and the requirement for a better educated technical skill-base to operate more sophisticated warships, meant the RIN had to recruit more Hindus from South India. This was also evident in the Indian Army, where technical artillery, engineer, signals and logistical corps were ethnically heterogeneous, though infantry regiments persevered with martial race recruitment until they too became affected by manpower shortages.40 Hindu naval ratings faced prejudice from British officers who questioned their willingness to fight and observe discipline and, for Godfrey, ‘it was always realized that they were Nationalist minded . . . more so than the Army on account of the higher standard of education.’41 The RIN ’s earlier preference for Muslims meant that they dominated the Petty Officer positions over Hindus which, Godfrey observed, caused ‘accusations of discriminations, and there is little doubt that these Muslim Petty officers were not really in touch with men from the South of India speaking a different language and of a different religion’.42 Yet Muslims also suffered religious prejudice from European officers higher up the RIN ’s chain of command, resulting in nine cases of protest between 1942 and 1945. The ‘ostensible reasons’ behind these ‘troubles’, according to the RIN ’s 1946 Commission of Enquiry, were the performance of menial duties, ill-treatment (amounting to physical assault) from officers, the colour bar, poor living and service conditions, pollution of rations in the galley, and the denial of the facilities and freedom to practise religious rites.43 Rapid expansion during the Second World War saw an influx of poor quality white officers, unfamiliar with and uninterested in learning the local languages and customs; some were tea or rubber plantation owners who

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Table 9.1 Royal Indian Navy – ethnic and regional composition 1939 (%)

1945 (%)

9.25 75.00 13.00 0.25 2.00 0.50

42.50 35.00 19.50 1.50 1.25 0.25

0.50 3.25 44.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 3.25 38.00 4.25 0.25 0.25 0.00 0.50 0.25 0.00 2.25

1.25 3.00 21.25 0.50 0.25 3.25 7.25 8.25 25.25 9.00 1.50 1.75 11.50 1.00 3.00 0.75

Ethnicity Hindus Muslims Christians Sikhs Anglo-Indians Misc. Region Kashmir NW Frontier Province Punjab Delhi Sind Rajputana & Central India Utar Pradesh Bombay Madras Travancore Cochin, Hydrabad, Mysore Bihar & Orissa Bengal Assam Others Goa & Portuguese India

Percentages shown to the nearest 0.25 per cent, so do not total 100 per cent. Source: British Library, India Office Records, L/MIL/17/9/379, ‘Report of The RIN Commission of Enquiry’ (1946), 8.

viewed Indians as servants, while many came from countries of strong racial prejudice like South Africa.44 This cultural ignorance manifested itself in the treatment of HMIS Hamlawar’s Leading Seamen Gul on 30 July 1944: [A] Sub-Lieutenant got in the barracks and asked me ‘where is Dil Hussain?’ I replied at the sitting position that he was on parade (because I can’t give up seat at the time of reading Quran). At this he got fired and blowed [sic] me from the back and thus insulted my religion.45

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The navy’s official account tellingly expressed no appreciation of the Islamic context, viewing the Quran as an ordinary book and mistaking the ratings’ prayers as insubordination: ‘Sitting on a charpoi [bedstead] and reading a book . . . the rating paid no attention to the officer who then slapped him across the head with a sou’wester. The rating jumped up and let fall the book.’46 Dipak Kumar Das has argued that ‘the ratings’ notion of a just order was linked up with their sense of collective honour or dignity. . . . Insult to a rating’s religion was taken by his coreligionists as an insult to their whole community.’47 While Gul submitted a formal complaint, thirteen of his fellow Muslim ratings ‘took a very serious view of the incident and were unwilling to accept meekly the insult to the holy Quran’, causing them to assault the Sub-Lieutenant as a group upon his return to shore. The officer apologized publicly for his offence to the Quran, lost three months’ seniority, was transferred and reprimanded by court martial. The ratings, in comparison, were charged with mutiny, striking a superior officer and behaving in a disorderly manner, and ten of them were sentenced to one to four years’ imprisonment.48 For some Muslim ratings, religious duty superseded naval duty, with Allah occupying a pre-eminent position in their personal chain of command. On Friday 16 March 1945, three Leading Seamen from HMIS Himalaya requested to leave the establishment to attend noon prayer. When their request was turned down, the ratings ‘broke ship to go to the mosque’. For this they were disproportionately sentenced to one year’s imprisonment and dismissed from the service on charges of joining in mutiny, wilful disobedience of lawful command and absence without leave. On 29 July 1944, seventeen Muslim ratings refused to take food from the galley of HMIS Shivaji, for fear that the mutton had been contaminated by pork and of the loss of faith they would suffer from consuming it. They were joined by two more ratings the following day, and by the third day, 26 men were refusing to eat even vegetarian dishes, despite assurances from Muslim officers about the food’s purity. Some of the ratings were summarily punished and discharged with their ‘Services No Longer Required’.49 From 17 April 1945, also aboard Shivaji, fifty ratings refused to clean the ship on religious grounds, before being disciplined. Fear that men with strong religious ties would interfere with the navy’s efficient functioning prompted further changes in recruitment policy after September 1942, when large numbers of Muslim Chittagonian ratings refused to carry out duties in HMIS Khyber that they believed violated their customs and threatened their standing within the community. The board of enquiry recommended that they be dismissed from the service and recruitment of that ethnic group be minimized. After June 1944,

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the entry of ‘unsuitable types’ of Pathans was similarly restricted because it was believed that they ‘were likely to produce impossible religious demands’. This followed a ‘religious outbreak’ in HMIS Akbar where a hundred ratings, led mostly by North-West Frontier Pathans, refused to sweep the mess decks on account that it went against their religious custom, while demanding that a mosque be constructed inside the training establishment. They were all discharged, though the naval authorities admitted that the ratings had been ‘misinformed’ about the job’s nature at enrolment, that they were ‘quite sincere’ in their religious belief, and would not have joined had it been mentioned that ‘clean-ship’ would be one of their essential duties.50 A ‘mass refusal of orders’ occurred in HMIS Clive in 1945 after an Able Seaman, allegedly a ‘religious fanatic’, ‘arranged to have himself proclaimed at a mass meeting of ratings [as] a prophet second only to Mohamed’, arousing ‘fanaticism’ and insubordination amongst the men. The lack of facilities and denial of freedom to practise their Islamic faith was a common complaint by ratings who suffered ‘for the prayers’ sake’. During the month of Ramadan in 1940, Muslim boys in the Karachi training establishment HMIS Bahadur were forbidden to leave their beds to offer night prayer (ishaqui namaz) after the 9 pm ‘pipedown’ was called. Feeling that ‘man’s command cannot have priority over God’s prayer’, they ignored their Commanding Officer’s order and went to mosque regardless, where they were afterwards arrested at gunpoint. The ratings argued that ‘Friday prayers were strictly enjoined upon them by Islam and [were] no less important to a devout Muslim than attending Sunday school was to a devout Christian’. They concluded that ‘though we belong to the Indian Navy . . . the tone of the administration is entirely foreign because those who command us are not cognizant . . . [and] ratings were punished for offences which could not have taken place but for the officers’ ignorance and perversity’. This the court martial corroborated, though it was not until the trouble in HMIS Himalaya in 1945 that naval commanding officers were ordered to provide facilities for all men to perform religious duties. By then ratings had been punished, leaving a residual bitterness and cultural tension. This boiled over on 18 February 1946, when 1,000 ratings of the signals school HMIS Talwar mutinied after suffering racial abuse from their commanding officer. Within five days, the mutiny spread to over 10,000 men, ten shore establishments, 56 ships, and rioting in Bombay and Karachi.51 Though the mutiny became politicized by the hoisting of Muslim League and Indian Congress flags in place of the Union Jack, it ended after nationalist leaders refused to support the coup for fear of compromising their own civilian authority after independence.

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During its Commission of Enquiry into the mutiny, the RIN examined the nine earlier protests to reveal prolonged problems of discrimination and dissatisfaction over food, amenities, service conditions, and cultural prejudice. Comprehensive training was inhibited by rapid wartime expansion – structural deficiencies that were exacerbated by a poor quality officer class, culturally aloof from the customs of their subordinates. While white officers included colonial tea or rubber plantation owners who viewed Indians as servants, and men from areas of strong racial prejudice, the enquiry also found that Hindu ‘South Indian ratings . . . did not have confidence in northern [Muslim] Indian chief petty officers’, because ‘a very large number of them could speak English and quite often the petty officers and chief petty officers did not understand’. One of Talwar’s mutineers attested to this social divide that was institutionalized by the RIN ’s racialized recruitment policies:52 Talwar ratings were matriculates or with a college education and came from the middle and lower middle classes. They received their training in English and that also mostly from British instructors. Most of the seamen did not speak English. They came from more or less the same social background as the sepoys of the Indian Army, the peasantry. They ran the ships and manned the guns. They were tough and far more rustic . . . Normally the communication ratings from the Talwar flaunted their social superiority by disdaining the company of the seamen ratings.53

Cultural divisions and poor leadership combined to create disrespect in the chain of command, causing naval discipline to break down under the frustrations of delayed demobilization.

Nationalism and decolonization The imperial racial theories and ethnic divisions of labour, which British officers fostered to reinforce colonial control, left problems for the impending partition of India and its naval resources: brawn may be classified as Muslim, and brain as Hindu, and consequently the composition of the service would not lend itself conveniently to any arbitrary division. In the officer class alone there would be naturally a heavy predominance of Hindus as the average modern Naval officer is required to be well-educated and intelligent . . . brawn is generally the chief requirement in the Seaman and Engine-room Branches. . . . The more continental the climate, the more brawny

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the individual, as a general rule, and in India the more continental the climate and the further north one goes, the closer one gets to Mohammedanism. The South and East are the chief homes of the Hindus, and the climate is more of a hot-house variety, which tends to produce brain at the expense of the body.54

This meant India’s new navy lacked Petty Officers, whereas Pakistan’s received more than it required, forcing many to look for alternative careers, such as the police and railway services.55 While the RIN ’s religious prejudices meant postcolonial unemployment for some, for others it offered new promotion opportunities: The cry from Pakistan is: ‘What are you going to do with the more senior ratings for whom you have no employment?’ On the other side in the Union of India the cry of relief goes up that a Mussalmani topweight has been removed and advancements are now the property of ratings who had been kept back by nationals of the Islamic faith.56

The navies’ ability to fill operational deficiencies was inhibited by the geographically based division of the RIN ’s training establishments; Pakistan was allocated the boys, gunnery and radar schools, while India received the mechanical and torpedo schools and wireless station. The new Flag Officer Commanding Royal Indian Navy, Vice Admiral Sir Geoffrey Miles, and his officers wanted the navies to retain joint training establishments. Yet communal politics hung heavily over discussions, and strategic concessions were made to placate these factions after Miles encountered strong opposition from ‘highly placed politicians’, particularly from Pakistan. The country’s Governor-General, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, fearing that a loss of naval autonomy might compromise Pakistan’s political sovereignty, told Miles bluntly that ‘Muslims and Hindus would never mix. . . . They worship the cow and we eat it’.57 After 15 August 1947, ‘complete harmony’ in the RIN ‘quickly deteriorated into open hostility, and clashes occurred in various establishments and ships where there were still mixed personnel’.58 Communal differences ruled out any form of naval cooperation, as Pakistani members of the Armed Forces Reconstitution Committee were moved from Delhi for their own safety. As Miles lamented, ‘I am afraid it is impossible to keep any sort of joint training for the two Navies. It is sad to see the way communal antagonism has crept in since August 15th.’59 Communal allegiances also developed among British officers, which Miles had to suppress by threatening to reassign them.60 The disjointed partition of resources meant neither navy at independence was in a state where it could both fully nationalize and remain operationally

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effective, prolonging their requirement for British personnel. In seeking political and religious independence from India, Pakistan’s leaders had to cede naval autonomy to Britain in the short term. This was acceptable to them as Indian not British hegemony was now more of a national threat. With a new potential enemy – Pakistan – and Prime Minister Nehru’s policy of Cold War nonalignment, India also had little choice but to continue relying upon its former imperial master for naval ships, personnel and training until the 1960s.61 Despite losing their South Asian ‘jewel’, British ‘visions of Africa’s role in a revitalized empire helped to sustain the dream of world power’,62 and they planned to preserve their influence in Zanzibar through the sultan’s heirs. Khalifa’s grandson, Seyyid Jamshid, was considered ‘a grave problem’, however; being ‘twenty-one . . . he has no profession and has been brought up in the tradition that it is unnecessary, even undignified, to take a job or earn one’s living’. The British solution was ‘an attachment to a good regiment or to the navy for a year or two’, to allow Jamshid to ‘see something of the world and mix a little with the right kind of people outside of the narrow limits of society in Zanzibar . . . above all . . . somewhere where he will be under discipline’.63 The Colonial Office suggested that Jamshid serve as an Honorary Midshipman in the Royal Navy rather than join the Arab Legion which ‘might well result in his becoming too much imbued with near-eastern politics’.64 In Zanzibar there had grown ‘a good deal of anti-European and particularly anti-British activity amongst the younger Arabs’, caused by ‘affairs in the Middle East, particularly Egypt and Persia’. The sultan was anxious ‘that Seyyid Jamshid is becoming involved in some of these activities . . . under the influence of Seif bin Hamoud and some of the lesser desirable young Arabs’, which for Britain was ‘certainly not for the good, particularly in view of events in the Middle East’.65 These local dissenters were supported by Egypt’s call for ‘Arab, African and Muslim’ unity from the 1950s, with Radio Cairo broadcasting messages of anti-colonial support to nationalists along the Swahili coast: Arab nationalism is penetrating the East African Jungle and Central Africa. The Arab League of Nationals on the one hand and the Arab Nations extending from the Atlantic to the Arabian Gulf, on the other hand should help our Brothers in Kenya and Zanzibar.66

Though Khalifa was ‘delighted’ with the naval proposal,67 and Jamshid reportedly ‘extremely keen to go’,68 ‘mischief-makers got to work on his mother’, provoking ‘strong opposition’ from her ‘and a certain section of the Arabs’. Nationalist opposition was stimulated by the wartime colour ban that had

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prohibited non-Europeans from becoming officers, and ‘now, ironically enough, they object[ed] to Jamshid’s going into the Navy on the grounds that [the British] wished to make him into a “young Englishman”.’69 This was not an inaccurate accusation, with the Colonial Office admitting that, ‘it is very important that he should be got away from these bad influences and trained in an atmosphere more favourable to British interests’.70 To circumvent Arab financial opposition, the Treasury sanctioned a grant from the Colonial Development and Welfare Fund,71 allowing Jamshid to join HMS Newfoundland for training on 1 July 1953.72 By December that year, Newfoundland’s captain, M. G. Goodenough, expressed concerns about Jamshid’s ‘neglect of his religion – reading the Koran, prayers, attending mosque’, and his consumption of alcohol, though shipboard life provided ‘little privacy for a midshipman . . . and it is difficult for him also to ignore the social habit of having a drink in the mess’.73 ‘As regards drink’ the British Resident was ‘not worried. Provided he takes it in moderation’. As second heir to the Sultanate, though, ‘it would of course be very much better if he kept up his religious observances’, and Goodenough was instructed ‘to encourage him to do so’, with the caveat that Jamshid ‘is not a boy of exceptionally strong character . . . [and] only a boy of strong character could be expected in the circumstances to keep up all the requirements of a strict Muslim’.74 Jamshid ascended to the throne on 1 July 1963, and openly backed the Arab-led Zanzibar Nationalist Party, making him unpopular with the AfroShirazi Party (ASP ) supported by the islands’ African majority.75 His reign lasted barely six months, as he and his government were overthrown in a bloody revolution by the ASP and Umma Party on 12 January 1964, after just 33 days of independence. The revolutionary leader, John Okello, claimed a voice commanded him, as a Christian, to free Zanzibaris from Arab oppression.76 Jamshid fled to Britain where he remained exiled, as thousands of Arabs and Asians were slaughtered and British influence was eliminated in Zanzibar.77 Like Africa, Southeast Asia’s resources were considered crucial for Britain’s post-war reconstruction. The state of ‘emergency’ declared in the peninsula on 16 June 1948 stirred concerns at training and equipping large bodies of Chinese ground forces, meaning while the Federation of Malaya provided the army,78 Chinese-majority Singapore financed a new Malayan Naval Force (MNF ) from 24 December 1948 to combat the Communists.79 In addition to socio-political factors, there were also practical imperatives that meant the Royal Navy’s exclusionary policies were opened up to local Chinese. Most of the 350 Malay ratings who returned after the war were‘semi-trained’ seamen and communications

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ratings, with insufficient engine room personnel to operate more than two vessels.80 This operational deficiency was plugged by large numbers of Chinese mechanics working in the Singapore naval base, therefore most of the MNF ’s early chief engineers came to be Chinese, creating a racial stereotype in the minds of British officers that the ‘Chinese by and large make very good engineers’.81 Yet it was rather a social consequence of the Malays’ lower standard of colonial education that meant they generally lacked the technical knowledge and English proficiency required for the role. Prejudices also developed against their Islamic religion, considered an irrational and unreliable element in a position of responsibility, after one Malay engineer had a habit of believing ‘Allah might provide the fuel’, causing his Motor Launch to run out before reaching port.82 Five Harbour Defence Motor Launches (ML s) used during the Burma Campaign were transferred to the MNF. Basic facilities meant religious customs were not strictly observed during three-month operations and 400-mile patrols for which the ML s were not designed. Water was carefully rationed, and the men could only wash properly when in port. Though they carried two fridges and two sets of pans so that Muslim personnel could cook separately, ML P.3509’s Malay coxswain suggested it would be simpler to let one man prepare all meals and use the other fridge for drinks. During Ramadan, the crew of P.3509 were allowed to eat normally during the day by their Commanding Officer because of the strenuous tropical heat, meaning they had to pretend to look desperately hungry upon returning to port.83 Whereas it was previously accepted that Malayan sailors ate whatever rations were issued, regardless of religious custom, by 1955, as the country approached independence, this casual acceptance began to change. In March that year, the Malay-language nationalist newspaper Utusan Melayu published complaints from six Muslim Malay cooks after they were made to handle pork in the mess. Captain H. E. H. Nicholls, Commanding Officer of the Royal Malayan Navy (RMN ) – as the MNF became in August 1952 – responded by saying all cook recruits were warned beforehand that they would be required to handle items of European diet.84 Yet this vocal discontent reflected an emerging concept of ‘Malayness’ within the navy, connected to that being constructed by nationalists, which was more forcibly imposed on the service after its transfer to the newly-independent government of Malaya on 1 July 1958. The 1946 Malayan Union, which dissolved after two years, was a catalyst for Malay nationalism. The Union advocated terminating the sultans’ sovereignty and granting equal citizenship to immigrants, which threatened the Malays’ numerical status and rallied their aristocratic elite behind Malay bahasa

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(language), agama (religion), and raja (royalty).85 These were constitutionally enshrined by the UMNO -dominated post-colonial government, with agama more actively imposed on the RMN as part of ‘official government policy to “infuse Islamic values” into the administration of the country’ and daily life,86 disaffecting some non-Malay naval officers. The year 1969 was a watershed as the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party opposition (commonly known as the PAS ) split the Malay vote, prompting race riots on 13 May. This led to a transfer in power from the ‘moderate’,87 ‘Anglophile’ Tunku Abdul Rahman to Tun Abdul Razak, which expedited Malaysia’s ‘liberation from neo-colonialism’.88 Under Tun Razak’s leadership the party began its ‘retreat from the secular path’.89 His intensification of Bumiputra (Islamic Malay) economic nationalism through 1971’s New Economic Policy inspired ‘a sort of economic jihad’;90 the award of overseas scholarships to Malays saw many return from studying in Islamic states with a stronger commitment to their faith and spreading the message of Islamic revivalism,91 while pressure came from dawa (missionary) groups such as the Islamic Youth Movement,92 and the PAS who joined the ruling coalition in 1973–7. From this point, ‘everything had a religious implication’ and ‘brought down standards’ in the RMN , according to Lieutenant-Commander Selvaratnam Karu.93 Central to this issue of Islam in the navy were conflicting attitudes towards alcohol. A major motivation for Karu joining had been the navy’s camaraderie, which deteriorated after alcohol’s banning. Karu also argued that alcohol was an important facilitator for resolving professional problems. At the end of the day, he would meet his officers in a bar and resolve issues they had not had the opportunity to deal with whilst on-duty. Karu described the RMN he joined in 1960 as a ‘very good mix, brothers in arms, everybody was doing the same things, we were playing together, working together, eating together, drinking together’. He claims too much emphasis on the ‘Islamic factor’ eroded this and worried many non-Malays in the force: We lost a lot of good officers, some left and others were bypassed. I was one of them who was disillusioned with what I was watching. I said: ‘What am I doing here wasting my time, I think I’d better get out’, because I would have rotted there for another five or six years. It was a good thing I left. I sometimes regret not leaving earlier.94

Admiral Thanabalasingam Karalasingam, the first Malaysian chief of the RMN from December 1967, also recognized shifting attitudes from the navy he joined in 1955:

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Combatants of Muslim Origin in European Armies

Everyone drank at the time. It’s not so acceptable now to say Malays drank, at that point in time the culture was different. We considered them good Muslims at the time. . . . We’ve become more religious from an Islamic point of view and more sensitive to these things. We toasted the king with wine and champagne at mess dinner, that was done away with a long time ago. The official toast is now done with water. Things have changed drastically.95

Like Karu, Thanabalasingam claimed alcohol helped hone the social skills necessary for good officers, something instilled in him as a cadet at the Britannia Royal Naval College. As the RMN ’s chief, he strictly punished officers ‘who could not hold their drinks’, admitting ‘I was harsh, more so to discipline and make them credible sailors’.96 Political pressure saw grog banned by Thanabalasingam’s successor from 1976, Admiral Mohd Zain, precipitating the departure of officers like Captain Chitharanjan Kuttan: We were close buddies as cadets and shipmates. On leave we would buy a bottle of brandy or whisky and drink it on the train, straight from the bottle. For him [Zain] to agree to that policy I don’t understand. . . . It was a very big thing in the social life of the men and the officers. It affected their morale . . . the non-Malays and even some Malays themselves. Sentiments were expressed like ‘what the heck, what next am I going to be deprived of?’ On that basis some retired early.97

Conclusion The British Admiralty’s attraction to Muslim sailors lay largely in Islam’s association with martial race theory. This was seen in its recruitment of East African seedies, and when the RIN recruited rural Punjabi Muslims over coastal Ratnagiri fishermen who were the more natural sailors, as the force took on a greater combatant role after 1934. Martial race theory rose to prominence after the 1857 Indian Rebellion as a way of legitimizing the promotion of imperiallyloyal ethnic groups over those who had ‘mutinied’. For the navy, loyalty was also a key factor, with Muslim sailors in Zanzibar and Malaya offering feudal allegiance to Britain’s sultan allies as their royal and religious leaders, while suspected anti-colonial groups including Chinese and Hindus could initially be excluded on military grounds that masked racially prejudiced ideology. Problems emerged when trying to reconcile naval with religious duties. During peacetime, naval commanders in East Africa allowed Muslim ratings to observe religious holidays, fearing they might otherwise lose their martial

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attributes. These minor concessions were sacrificed as wartime pressures limited the time and facilities available for prayer, prospective recruits were not informed of menial duties that might violate religious conventions, food shortages affected rations, while professional Royal Navy officers were redeployed to European theatres and replaced by amateurs and retired officers unfamiliar with or uninterested in local Islamic customs. Discontent was exacerbated by a more favourable treatment of Christians. In 1940s India, where a coherent nationalist movement had evolved in response to more direct colonial rule, Britain lacked the collaborative indigenous structures of its protectorates in Zanzibar and Malaya, where the Sultans’ religious and symbolic status helped to recruit and maintain the imperial loyalty of their Muslim subjects. Indian naval protests were thus not replicated among Zanzibari and Malay sailors, except briefly when Malayan evacuees became physically and culturally estranged after Japan conquered their home. As Malay nationalism grew in the 1950s, Islam became politicized to protect the Malays’ privileged position within the post-colonial state. The navy’s Islamization by Malaysia’s independent government alienated non-Muslim personnel and expedited the promotion of the UMNO’s Muslim Malay supporters. Religiously defined divide-and-rule policies also affected India’s naval autonomy, as communal politics determined that warships, establishments and personnel were split between India and Pakistan, leaving post-colonial deficiencies for both countries that perpetuated their strategic dependency on Britain. British hegemony in Zanzibar and Kenya still relied on Sultanate support, but was threatened when pan-Arab nationalism provided a rival, distinctly anticolonial Islamic discourse. To ensure the sultan’s heir remained favourably inclined towards British interests they attempted to indoctrinate him through naval training, but by associating themselves too closely, Britain alienated the African revolutionaries who ultimately overthrew the sultan.

Notes 1 Daniel Owen Spence, Colonial Naval Culture and British Imperialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015). 2 Clifford Pereira, ‘Black Liberators: The Role of African & Arab Sailors in the Royal Navy within the Indian Ocean 1841–1941’, UNESCO symposium on ‘The Cultural Interactions Resulting from the Slave Trade and Slavery in the Arab-Islamic World’, Rabat (May 2007).

224 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27

28 29

Combatants of Muslim Origin in European Armies

Commander C.D.O. Shakespear, ‘African Natives in the Navy’, Naval Review (1922): 602. Shakespear, ‘African Natives in the Navy’, 608. Shakespear, ‘African Natives in the Navy’, 606. The (UK ) National Archives (hereafter TNA ), CO 822/1884, The Times, 10 October 1960. TNA , CO 822/1884, Daily Express, 10 October 1960. Shakespear, ‘African Natives in the Navy’, 608–9. TNA , CO 533/684, Charles Walker to Under Secretary of State, Colonial Office, 16 December 1926, 2. TNA , CO 968/80/4, ‘Colonial Naval Forces’, July 1943. TNA , ADM 1/9669, Governor Brooke-Popham to Malcolm MacDonald, 7 July 1938. TNA , ADM 1/9669, Commander D.R. Blunt, CO, KRNVR , to Second Sea Lord, 16 July 1938. TNA , ADM 1/9669, M.4013/38, 28 July 1938. TNA , ADM 1/9669, M.4013/38, 28 July 1938. TNA , ADM 1/9669, Brooke-Popham to MacDonald, 22 August 1938. TNA , ADM 1/9669, Secretary of State for the Colonies to Governor of Kenya, 11 August 1938. TNA , ADM 1/16071, C. in C. Eastern Fleet to Admiralty, 30 June 1943. TNA , CO 968/80/8, Military Branch to Sabben-Clare, 2 September 1943. TNA , CO 968/80/8, A. R. Thomas, 10 March 1943. James R. Brennan, ‘Lowering the Sultan’s Flag: Sovereignty and Decolonization in Coastal Kenya’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 50, no. 4 (2008): 838. TNA , CO 968/80/8, E. L. Scott, 10 March 1943. TNA , ADM 205/88, ‘India and the Sea’, 1953, 1. National Maritime Museum (hereafter NMM ), GOD /34, MS 80/073, Jefford, para.34. Godfrey cited in Patrick Beesley, Very Special Admiral: The Life of Admiral J. H. Godfrey (London: Hamilton, 1980), 266. NMM , GOD /34, MS 80/073, Jefford, para.34. Heather Streets, Martial Races: The Military, Race and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 4. George C. D. Adamson, ‘ “The Languor of the Hot Weather”: Everyday Perspectives on Weather and Climate in Colonial Bombay, 1819–1828’, Journal of Historical Geography 38 (2012): 144–5. Chris Smith, India’s Ad Hoc Arsenal: Direction or Drift in Defence Policy? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 46. NMM , RIN /74, MS 81/006, Creeds and Customs in the RIN , 1 January 1945, 6–7.

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30 H. C. Ferraby, The Imperial British Navy: How the Colonies Began to Think Imperially Upon the Future of the Navy (London: Jenkins, 1918), 91. 31 Quoted in W. David McIntyre, The Rise and Fall of the Singapore Naval Base, 1919–1942 (London: Macmillan, 1979), 225. 32 The Straits Times, 28 September 1940, 11. 33 The Straits Times, 21 February 1940, 10. 34 The Straits Times, 28 December 1939, 10. 35 Geoffrey Benjamin, ‘On Being Tribal in the Malay World’, in Geoffrey Benjamin and Cynthia Chou (eds), Tribal Communities in the Malay World: Historical, Cultural and Social Perspectives (Singapore: International Institute of Asian Studies, 2002), 43–4. 36 National Archives of Singapore, Interview with Rahman Abdul bin Ya’acob, by Daniel Chew, 5 July 1994, 001527, reel 1. 37 National Archives of Singapore, Interview with Rahman Abdul bin Ya’acob, by Daniel Chew, 5 July 1994, 001527, reel 1. 38 TNA , ADM 1/12995, 1 September 1943. 39 TNA , CO 968/145/5, ‘Notes on visit to Ceylon’, item 52. 40 Omar Khalidi, ‘Ethnic Group Recruitment in the Indian Army: The Contrasting Cases of Sikhs, Muslims, Gurkhas and Others’, Pacific Affairs 74, no. 4 (2001–2002): 531. 41 NMM , GOD /43, Vol. III ., Godfrey, ‘Future of the RIN : First Impressions’, 8 March 1946, 2. 42 NMM , GOD /43, Vol. III ., Godfrey, ‘Future of the RIN : First Impressions’, 8 March 1946, 1. 43 Dipak Kumar Das, Revisiting Talwar: A Study in the Royal Indian Navy Uprising of February 1946 (Delhi: Ajanta, 1994), 49. 44 India Office Records, L/MIL /17/9/379, ‘Report of The RIN Commission of Enquiry’, 1946, 297. 45 Quoted in Das, Revisiting Talwar, 49. 46 Quoted in Das, Revisiting Talwar, 49. 47 Quoted in Das, Revisiting Talwar, 49. 48 Quoted in Das, Revisiting Talwar, 50. 49 Quoted in Das, Revisiting Talwar, 50–1. 50 Quoted in Das, Revisiting Talwar, 51–2, 57. 51 Quoted in Das, Revisiting Talwar, 52, 57–8; Daniel Owen Spence, ‘Beyond Talwar: A Cultural Reappraisal of the 1946 Royal Indian Navy Mutiny’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 43, no. 3 (2015): 489–508. 52 NMM , RIN /5/3, MS 88/043, Times of India,19 April 1946. 53 B. C. Dutt, Mutiny of Innocents (Bombay: Singhu Publications, 1971), 122–3. 54 E. C. Streatfield-James, In the Wake: The Birth of the Indian and Pakistani Navies (Edinburgh: Skilton, 1983), 217.

226 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85

Combatants of Muslim Origin in European Armies

TNA , ADM 1/21104, Miles to Admiralty, 14 January 1948, 5. NMM , RIN /3/7 (1a), MS 88–043, Letter to Miles, 24 August 1947. TNA , ADM 1/21104, Miles to Admiralty, 14 January 1948, 5. TNA , ADM 1/21104, Miles to Admiralty, 14 January 1948, 5. NMM , RIN /3/7 (3), MS 88/043, Miles to Streatfield-James, 4 September 1947. TNA , ADM 1/21104, Miles to Admiralty, 14 January 1948, 5. Daniel Owen Spence, ‘Imperial Transition, Indianisation and Race: Developing National Navies in the Subcontinent, 1947–1964’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 37, no. 2 (2014): 323–38. Hilda Nissimi, ‘Illusions of World Power in Kenya: Strategy, Decolonization, and the British Base, 1946–1961’, International History Review 23, no. 4 (2001): 824–46. TNA , CO 822/562, J. D. Rankine to Sir Thomas Lloyd, 15 April 1952. TNA , CO 822/562, Lloyd to Rankine, 26 June 1952. TNA , CO 822/562, Rankine to Lloyd, 18 August 1952. Quoted in Brennan, ‘Lowering the Sultan’s Flag’, 847. TNA , CO 822/562, Rankine to Lloyd, 20 June 1952. TNA , CO 822/562, Rankine to P. Rogers, 9 March 1953. TNA , CO 822/562, Rankine to P. Rogers, 9 March 1953. TNA , CO 822/562, E.N. Fitzgerald, Colonial Office, to S. T. Charles, Treasury, 11 May 1953. TNA , CO 822/562, S. T. Charles to E. N. Fitzgerald, 10 June 1953. TNA , CO 822/562, Rankine to E. B. David, 8 July 1953. TNA , CO 822/759, Captain Michael Goodenough, to Rankine, 16 December 1953. TNA , CO 822/759, Rankine to E. B. David, 9 January 1954. TNA , CO 822/1884, Sir John Martin, Secretary of State, 5 January 1961. Kevin Shillington (ed.), Encyclopedia of African History (New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2005), 1716. Ian Speller, ‘An African Cuba? Britain and the Zanzibar Revolution, 1964’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 35, no. 2 (2007): 283–302. James Goldrick and Jack McCaffrie, Navies of South-East Asia: A Comparative Study (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), 136–7. TNA , ADM 1/21112, ‘Formation of Malayan Naval Force’, appendix. TNA , CO 537/2534, ‘The Malayan Local Forces’, 1946, 3. Interview by author with Lieutenant Peter Fosten, 14 August 2009, Newton Abbot. Interview by author with Lieutenant Peter Fosten, 14 August 2009, Newton Abbot. Interview by author with Lieutenant Peter Fosten, 14 August 2009, Newton Abbot. Straits Times, 5 March 1955, 7. Lily Zubaidah Rahim, ‘Whose Imagined Community?: The Nation-State, Ethnicity and Indigenous Minorities in Southeast Asia’, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development Conference on ‘Racism and Public Policy’, Durban (September 2001): 8.

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86 Geoff Wade, ‘The Origins and Evolution of Ethnocracy in Malaysia’, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Working Paper no. 112 (2009): 25–6. 87 Judith Nagata, ‘Religious Ideology and Social Change: The Islamic Revival in Malaysia’, Pacific Affairs 53, no. 3 (1980): 407. 88 A.J. Stockwell, ‘Malaysia: The Making of a Neo-Colony?’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 26, no. 2 (1998): 143. 89 Lukman Thaib, ‘Muslim Politics in Malaysia and the Democratization Process’, European Social Sciences Research Journal 1, no. 1 (2013): 73. 90 Nagata, ‘Religious Ideology and Social Change’, 420. 91 Nagata, ‘Religious Ideology and Social Change’, 411. 92 Nagata, ‘Religious Ideology and Social Change’, 410–17. 93 Interview conducted by author with Karu Selvaratnam, 30 June 2009, Kuala Lumpur. 94 Interview conducted by author with Karu Selvaratnam, 30 June 2009, Kuala Lumpur. 95 Interview conducted by author with Tan Sri Thanabalasingam, 25 June 2009, Kuala Lumpur. 96 Adrian David, ‘ “Old horse” Thanabalasingam touched by award from King’, 21 June 2007, available online at http://poobalan.com/blog/indian/2007/06/21/old-horsethanabalasingam-touched-by-award-from-king/ (accessed 15 March 2012). 97 Interview conducted by author with Chitharanjan Kuttan, 17 July 2009, Singapore.

Bibliography Adamson, George C. D. ‘ “The Languor of the Hot Weather”: Everyday Perspectives on Weather and Climate in Colonial Bombay, 1819–1828’. Journal of Historical Geography 38 (2012): 143–54. Beesley, Patrick. Very Special Admiral: The Life of Admiral J. H. Godfrey. London: Hamilton, 1980. Benjamin, Geoffrey. ‘On Being Tribal in the Malay World’. In Geoffrey Benjamin and Cynthia Chou (eds), Tribal Communities in the Malay World: Historical, Cultural and Social Perspectives, 7–75. Singapore: International Institute of Asian Studies, 2002. Brennan, James R. ‘Lowering the Sultan’s Flag: Sovereignty and Decolonization in Coastal Kenya’. Comparative Studies in Society and History 50, no. 4 (2008): 831–61. Das, Dipak Kumar. Revisiting Talwar: A Study in the Royal Indian Navy Uprising of February 1946. Delhi: Ajanta, 1994. Dutt, B. C. Mutiny of Innocents. Bombay : Singhu Publications, 1971. Ferraby, H. C. The Imperial British Navy: How the Colonies Began to Think Imperially Upon the Future of the Navy. London: Jenkins, 1918. Goldrick, James and Jack McCaffrie. Navies of South-East Asia: A Comparative Study. Abingdon: Routledge, 2013.

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Khalidi, Omar. ‘Ethnic Group Recruitment in the Indian Army: The Contrasting Cases of Sikhs, Muslims, Gurkhas and Others’. Pacific Affairs 74, no. 4 (2001–2002): 529–52. McIntyre, W. David. The Rise and Fall of the Singapore Naval Base, 1919–1942. London: Macmillan, 1979. Nagata, Judith. ‘Religious Ideology and Social Change: The Islamic Revival in Malaysia’. Pacific Affairs 53, no. 3 (1980): 405–39. Nissimi, Hilda. ‘Illusions of World Power in Kenya: Strategy, Decolonization, and the British Base, 1946–1961’. International History Review 23, no. 4 (2001): 824–46. Pereira, Clifford. ‘Black Liberators: The Role of African & Arab Sailors in the Royal Navy within the Indian Ocean 1841–1941’. UNESCO Symposium on ‘The Cultural Interactions Resulting from the Slave Trade and Slavery in the Arab-Islamic World’, Rabat (May 2007). Rahim, Lily Zubaidah. ‘Whose Imagined Community? The Nation-State, Ethnicity and Indigenous Minorities in Southeast Asia’. United Nations Research Institute for Social Development Conference on ‘Racism and Public Policy,’ Durban (September 2001). Shakespear, Commander C. D. O. ‘African Natives in the Navy’. Naval Review (1922): 598–610. Shillington, Kevin, ed. Encyclopedia of African History. New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2005. Smith, Chris. India’s Ad Hoc Arsenal: Direction or Drift in Defence Policy? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Speller, Ian. ‘An African Cuba? Britain and the Zanzibar Revolution, 1964’. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 35, no. 2 (2007): 283–302. Spence, Daniel Owen. Colonial Naval Culture and British Imperialism. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015. Spence, Daniel Owen. ‘Beyond Talwar: A Cultural Reappraisal of the 1946 Royal Indian Navy Mutiny’. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 43, no. 3 (2015): 489–508. Spence, Daniel Owen. ‘Imperial Transition, Indianisation and Race: Developing National Navies in the Subcontinent, 1947–1964’. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 37, no. 2 (2014): 323–38. Stockwell, A. J. ‘Malaysia: The Making of a Neo-Colony?’ Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 26, no. 2 (1998): 138–56. Streatfield-James, E. C. In the Wake: The Birth of the Indian and Pakistani Navies. Edinburgh: Skilton, 1983. Streets, Heather. Martial Races: The Military, Race and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857–1914. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004. Thaib, Lukman. ‘Muslim Politics in Malaysia and the Democratization Process’. European Social Sciences Research Journal 1, no. 1 (2013): 66–82. Wade, Geoff. ‘The Origins and Evolution of Ethnocracy in Malaysia’. Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Working Paper no. 112 (2009).

Glossary adat akhun amulet askari atta chapatti dawa dal effendi Eid al-Fitr Eid al-Kabir faqir fatwa fez ghee giaur goumier (also goum) gur hadith Hajj halal haram ijtihad jihad jinn jumah khutba madrasa mahdi marabout mawlid mufti mujtahed mullah munajat

local custom senior mullah in a military district (Russia) object worn to protect from harm or bring good fortune native soldier (East Africa) whole-wheat flour (India) flat bread (India) preaching of Islam, proselytism lentils (India) title of respect (‘Sir’ in Arabic) festival marking the end of Ramadan festival commemorating Abraham’s sacrifice Muslim Sufi ascetic (India) legal opinion issued by a mufti brimless conical hat clarified butter (India) infidel Moroccan soldier in the French Army half-refined sugar (India) statement or action attributed to the Prophet Muhammad pilgrimage to Mecca lawful unlawful reasoned interpretation of the Islamic sources holy war, also inner spiritual struggle genie, malevolent mythical creature Friday prayer Friday sermon religious secondary school redeemer of Islam, whose coming will herald the end of times holy man and healer (West and North Africa) festival commemorating the Prophet’s birthday expert in Islamic law ulama entitled to engage in ijtihad Islamic scholar holding an official post prayer for the Tsar (Russia)

229

230 namaz nif qadi Qadiriyya qibla Quran Ramadan Reis-ul-ulema Salihiyya seedy sepoy shahada shaheed Sharia Shaykh al-Islam shura spahi sura tabor taleb tirailleur ulama ulema-medžlis umma Uraza-Bairam waqf watan zouave

Combatants of Muslim Origin in European Armies prayer honour (North Africa) Islamic judge Sufi order founded in Baghdad in the twelfth century the direction of Mecca, which Muslims turn towards when they pray central holy text of Islam revealed by God to Muhammad ninth month of the Islamic calendar, period of fasting commemorating the revelation of the Quran ‘chief of the ulama’, heading the Islamic religious hierarchy of Bosnia-Herzegovina Sufi order founded in Sudan in the nineteenth century Muslim sailor of the Swahili coast (East Africa) native soldier (India) testimony of faith martyr of the faith Islamic law based on the Quran and the hadith ‘head of Islam’, the mufti of Istanbul and head of the Islamic religious hierarchy of the Ottoman Empire assembly native cavalry soldier in the French Army chapter of the Quran Moroccan soldier in the French Army student in a madrasa native infantry soldier in the French Army Islamic scholar ‘council of the ulama’, executive body assisting the Reis-ul-ulema in Bosnia-Herzegovina community of the faithful Eid al-Fitr (Russia, Central Asia) Islamic pious foundation homeland, fatherland European recruit from Algeria serving in a separate military corps

Index Abd el-Kader Ben Muhieddine (emir Abd el-Kader) 6, 30 Abd-el-Malek (son of Abd el-Kader) 30 Abdul Rahman, Tunku 221 Abruzzo 187 Adat 211 Afghanistan 101 Aix-en-Provence 26, 28, 184 al-Husayni, Amin 1, 12, 13, 137, 138, 140, 141, 143, 144, 150, 153 al-Qaeda 138 Alès 26, 28 Algeria 6, 12, 13, 25–8, 31, 34, 35, 37, 39–43, 52, 161, 162, 164, 165, 167–9, 172, 174, 183, 184, 193, 230 Algerian tirailleurs 29 Algiers 40, 41, 164, 165, 169, 173, 183–8, 190, 193–5, 198 All-Russian Muslim Military Shura 110 All-Russian Muslim Soviet 110 Alps 173 Alsace 161, 192 Amiens 60 Amulets 185 Anglo-Egyptian regiments 74, 75, 86, 87 Appel, John 183 ‘Arab Revolt’ 72, 74, 83 Arabian Gulf 218 Arabs 40, 72–4, 80, 83, 86, 101, 218–19 Arles 26 Armée d’Afrique 162, 165 Arsk 105 Ashmarin, Nikolai 103, 104 askaris 11, 16, 71, 74–81, 83–7, 229 Aubin, Henri 194 Aurès Mountains 35, 191 Australian and New Zealand Army Corps 7 Austro-Hungarian Army (and AustroHungary) 2, 9, 14, 137, 144, 146 Babelsberg 150, 151 Babinski, Joseph 188

Baden-Württemberg 161 Baiazitov, Muhammed-Safa 99, 102, 103 Bajraktarević, Hasan 142, 144, 151, 153, 154 Baku 99 Balkans 56, 138, 139 Baltic Fleet 96 Baltic republics 123 Banja Luka 140, 141 Bardenat, Charles 187, 190 Barkawi, Tarak 16 Barwani clan 80 Bashkirs 2, 8, 10, 12, 96, 97, 110 Bašić, Salih 144 Basra 58 Basuto (tribe) 197 Bazelaire, Georges de 27 Beauce 28 Becker, Felicitas 77 Belebei 97 Belgium 47, 51 Berger, Gottlob 140, 142, 144, 150 Berlin 14, 30, 53, 54, 100, 137, 140, 141, 150, 153 Bernwald, Zvonimir 150 Bidault, Battalion Chief 32 Bijeljina 149 bin ‘Abd el-Rahman, Muhammad 80 bin ‘Ali, Hussayn 13 bin el-Hadj Mohammed, Si Ibrahim 5 bin Hamoud, Seif 218 bin Karim, Hashim 210 bin Laden, Osama 138 bin Muhammad, Sharif 80 bin Nasr el-Lemki, Sulayman 80 bin Salim, Ali 207, 208 bin Yunos, Mohamed Haji 210 Birsk 97 Bismarck, Otto von 74 Blida 34 Blondel, Charles 185 Blondlat, Ernest Joseph 37 Bombay 208, 215

231

232 Bône 41 Bosnia-Herzegovina 137–44, 150, 152–4, 230 Bosnian Guard 140 Bosnian regiments 138 Boukabouya, Rabah (pseudonym: El Hâj Abdallah) 34 Bourges 28 Brčko 147, 154 Brennan, James 208 Britannia Royal Naval College 222 British Army 15, 49, 58, 195–7 British Expeditionary Force (East Africa) 84 Brooke-Popham, Robert 208 Budimlija, Abdulah 154 Bulgarian Army 143, 147 Burma 195, 197, 220 Cairo 74, 75, 150, 218 Cannes 62 Caribbean Sea 205 Catroux, Georges 165 Caucasus 3, 8, 10, 15, 82, 114, 123, 125, 126 Central Africa 82, 218 Central Asia 3, 8–13, 15, 101, 121–5, 127 Central Powers 71, 81, 82 Cerny 26 Ceylon 212 Champagne 27 Charleroi (Battle of) 26 Chemin des Dames 27, 35, 36 Chetniks 137–9, 142, 149, 150, 152, 153 Chinese 210, 211, 219, 220, 222 Chittagonian 214 Chokaev, Mustafa 98 Clermont-Ferrand 29 Cologne 36 Committee for People’s Salvation (BosniaHerzegovina) 139, 140 Congo State 73 Constantine 34, 41, 63, 166, 172 Costedoat, André 194 Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults (USSR) 127 Council of People’s Commissars (USSR) 112, 114 Cousturier, Lucie 62

Index Crimea 108, 113, 114, 126 Crimean Cavalry Regiment 107, 108, 113 Croatia 137, 139–41, 147 Daladier, Edouard 165 Dar es Salaam 80 Dardanelles 2, 79 Darfur 75 Das, Dipak Kumar 214 Das, Santanu 18 dawa 221 Deccan 197 Delhi 217 Delić, Osman 146, 154 Dembowitz, Captain N. 196, 197 Department of Spiritual Matters in Foreign Faiths (Russia) 96 Derventa 149 Deutsch-Arabische Lehrabteilung 12 Diethelm, André 168 DOMDO (Military Regiment of Volunteers, Bosnia-Herzegovina) 139–42 Don Arrii, Côme 186 Đozo, Husein 147 Dukhonin, Nikolai 110–12 Dutueil, Captain 41 East African Schutztruppe 71, 74–6, 78, 80, 83–5, 87 Eastern Front 139 Egypt 72, 76, 82, 218 Egypt Expeditionary Force 7, 12 Eid al-Fitr 15, 54, 59, 103 Eid al-Kabir 171 El Alamein 140 el-Hassani ben el-Hachemi, Khaled (emir Khaled) 6, 30, 33, 40–2 el-Hidaje (ulama association, BosniaHerzegovina) 139, 143 El-Obeid 75 Elizabetpol 113 Estonians 108, 109 Faidherbe, Louis 7 Faqir 3, 195 Farrag, Abdulcher 75 Fatwa 99–101 Feodosiia 100

Index Ferraud, Laurent-Charles 164 Floritsch, Georg 148 Fogarty, Richard 3 France 3–5, 25, 26, 28–31, 34, 39–42, 47, 51, 55, 57, 61, 62, 100, 142, 161–3, 165, 167–9, 171–4, 187 Fréjus 51, 62 French Army 1, 2, 5–7, 12, 14–16, 25, 28, 30–1, 34, 35, 38, 52, 53, 161–3, 167, 168, 170–5, 183, 184, 187, 193, 194, 198, 229, 230 French Expeditionary Corps 3, 164, 167 French Senegalese Corps 48 French Sudan 6 French War Office 164 French West Africa 5, 12, 13, 47 Fribourg-Blanc, André 186 Gabidullin, F. 102 Gacko 152 Gadžo, Adem 148, 154 Gaese, Heinrich 146, 150 Gallipoli 56 Gatchina Regiment 105 Gaulle, Charles de 167 Gazi Husrev-beg (madrasa, BosniaHerzegovina) 150 Genova 83 George VI, King 208 Georgian 109 German East Africa 5, 11, 71, 72, 76 German East Africa Company 72 Germany 1, 4, 11, 42, 54, 65, 71, 72, 81, 85, 100, 104, 115, 123, 125, 126, 128, 129, 137, 142, 151, 153, 161, 167 Giraud, Henri 167, 174 Godfrey, John 209, 212 Goebbels, Joseph 138 Gonnel Battalion 36 Goodenough, Captain Michael Grant 219 Gordon, Charles 75 goums, goumiers 7, 56, 169, 185, 189 Gradačac 152 Great Patriotic War 123 Greece 51, 64 Green, Nile 3

233

‘Green Frame’ (Muslim militia, BosniaHerzegovina) 142 Grmek, Mirko 149 Guben, East Prussia 151–3 Gurkhas 6, 54 Habbaniyya 75 Hadžiefendić, Muhamed 139, 142 Hadžihasanović, Uzeir 140, 141 Hadžimulić, Mustafa 151, 154 Hajj 127 halal 31, 48, 58, 63–5, 211 Hamburg 36 Hampel, Desiderius 150 Handžić, Mehmed 139, 143 haram 31, 48, 63, 64 Haroun, Petty Officer 210 Harrison, Mark 58 Hesnard, Angelo 184 Hijaz 101 Himmler, Heinrich 137, 140, 144, 154 Hindus 48, 51, 56, 65, 212, 216, 217, 222 Hindustan 58 Hitler, Adolf 137, 140, 141 Hrasnica 143 Hume, David 209 Hungary 104, 143, 152, 154 Iagubov, A. 102 Iassy 111 Ibn Khaldun, Abd ar Rahmân 164 Imperial Guard (Russian Empire) 96 Independent State of Croatia see Croatia India 11, 47, 49, 50, 52, 55, 82, 197, 205, 208, 209, 212, 213, 216–18, 223 Indian Army 2, 3, 6, 7, 11, 14, 16, 18, 47–50, 52, 56–8, 195, 212, 216 Indian Ocean 205, 206, 208, 209 Indian Rebellion (1857) 14, 222 Iraq 10, 13 Iran 101 Irkutsk 96 Iskhakov, Gayaz (Ayaz) 98 Istanbul 26, 71, 81, 83, 87, 100, 101, 230 Italy 3, 137, 167, 168, 171, 187, 189–91 Jamshid, Seyyid 218 Japan 207, 212, 223 Jeantelot, Christian 169

234

Index

Jerusalem 1, 10, 12, 18, 137, 138, 140 Jeunes Algériens 6, 25, 41, 42 jihad (and jihadi) 1, 6, 9, 11–13, 15, 17, 18, 26, 33, 34, 47, 71, 74, 79, 80, 82–4, 86, 87, 100, 101, 122, 147, 221 Jinnah, Muhammad Ali 205, 217 Johnson, Major A.S. 196 Jonnart, Charles 40, 42 Julien, Charles-André 40 jumah 148 Kabylia 164 Kant, Immanuel 209 Karachi 215 Karahasilović, Fehim 148 Karalasingam, Thanabalasingam 221 Karashaisky, Adil’girei 100 Karbala 13 Karić, Safet 152 Karu, Selvaratnam 221, 222 Kasimov 96 Kazakh 98, 124 Kazan 96, 98, 99, 103–8, 110, 113, 114 Kazan Muslim Military Committee (Russian Empire) 107 Kenya 207–9, 218, 223 Kenya Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (KRNVR) 207 Keogh, Alfred 55 Kerensky, Aleksandr 108 Khâled, Emir (Khâled ibn al Hachemi Ibn Hadj Abdelkader) 6, 30, 40–2 Khalifa, bin Harub 83, 207 Khalifa, Said 83 Khartoum 75 khutba 9 Kilimanjaro 79 Kilindini 207 Klagenfurt 143, 149 Koeltz, Louis 169 Kokand Autonomy 98 Konkan coast 208 Korkut, Haris 150, 153 Kornilov, Lavr 108 Košutice 142, 153 Krylenko, Nikolai 111, 112, 114 Kut-el-Amara 58 Kuttan, Chitharanjan 222 Kyrgyz 10, 125

Lambrichs, Louise 149 Lattre de Tassigny (de), Jean 161 Latvians 108 Leclerc Battalion 36 Lepre, George 138, 147, 154 Lettow-Vorbeck, Paul von 83, 85, 86 Leue, August 75 Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien 185 Lindi 80 Lithuanians 108 Lorraine 42 Lüters, Rudolf 140 Lyon 25, 29, 30, 161 Maasai 76 Macedonia 141 Madagascar 49, 150, 175 Madrasi 197 Mahdiyya 74 Maillot Psychiatric Hospital 184 Maison Carrée 34 Maji-Maji Rebellion 72, 81 Maksudov, Khadi 101 Malaya 205, 210, 211, 219, 220, 222, 223 Malayan Naval Force 219 Malkoč, Halim 144, 148–51 Mamed, Usuf Dzhafarov 109 Mamedov-Akhliev, Asad 108 Manceaux, André 187, 190 Mangin, Charles 6 Manyema 76 marabout 185, 193 Marne region 61 Marseille 25, 51, 64, 161 Marushevsky, Vladimir 110 Mašić, Kasim 146, 148, 150, 153 Matheis, Franz 148 mawlid 15, 147, 167 Mecca 13, 31, 80, 81, 86, 87, 127 Mehanović, Fadil 152 Mehić, Mustafa 149 Mehmed V 1, 47 Meilhon, Abel-Joseph 184 Meiningen 36 Mélia, Jean 39 Menzelinsk 104 Merhamet (Muslim charity, BosniaHerzegovina) 149 Meshcheriaks 96

Index Mesopotamia 2, 47, 51, 58 Meynier, Octave 31 Michel, Marc 12 Middle East 47, 51, 56, 63, 65, 79, 218 Miles, Geoffrey 217 Miliana 40 Mkwawa (full name: Mkwavinyika Munyigumba Mwamuyinga) 73 Mohamed, Adam 84 Mombasa 207 Montesquieu 209 Montpellier 28 Moreau de Tours, Jacques-Joseph 184 Morocco 7, 30, 34, 43, 49, 50, 161, 164, 168, 183 Moscow 40, 100, 113, 114 Moshi 79 Mostaganem 35 Motadel, David 3, 138 Moyd, Michelle 75 Mozambique 72, 74, 83, 85 Mufti 1, 9, 12, 18, 99, 100, 102, 107, 137, 138, 140, 141, 143, 153 Muhasilović, Abdulah 149–51, 153, 154 Mujakić, Fuad 147, 148, 153, 154 Mullah 14, 86, 96, 99, 100–2, 105–7, 122 munajats 9 Muslim Corps (Russian Empire) 111, 112, 114 Muslim League (India) 205, 215 Muslim Liberation Movement (BosniaHerzegovina) 144 Muslim Military Affairs (France) 14, 161–3, 165, 167, 169, 170–2 Muslim National Army (Russian Empire) 113 Muslim Rifle Corps (Russian Empire) 113 Muslim Spiritual Directorate of Central Asia and Kazakhstan 9, 127 Myshlaevsky, General A.Z. 108 Najaf 13 namaz 97, 215 Napoléon Bonaparte 164 Naval Volunteer Forces 208 Nehru, Jawaharlal 218 Nepal 50 Neuhammer 147 Nevesinje 143

235

Nguni 76 Nile (river) 75 Nicholas II 102 Nicholls, Harry Ernest Huston 220 Nichols, Captain L.A. 117 Nizhnii Novgorod 96, 99 Nogent-sur-Marne 14, 30 North Africa (and North African) 1–3, 6, 10, 11, 25–35, 37, 38, 47, 51–3, 55, 56, 58, 59, 62–5, 82, 101, 161, 162, 164–72, 174, 183–8, 190, 191, 193–5, 198 Novorossiisk 100 Nyamwezi 76, 77, 85 O’Moore Creagh, Garrett 209 Oise 33 Okello, John 219 Okhrana (Russian Empire) 9 Omani state 72 Omani-Arab dynasty (Zanzibar) 72 Omissi, David 18 Oran 41 Orenburg 99, 101, 102, 113 Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly 101 Orléans 64 Osijek 141 Ost-Legionen 12 Ottoman army 2, 47 Ottoman Empire 11–13, 34, 42, 71, 81, 82, 98–100, 122 Pacific Ocean 205 Pakistan 217, 218, 223 Palestine 2, 10, 101, 208 Pandža, Muhamed 139, 140, 143, 144, 150 Pangkor (Treaty of) 211 Parc Borely (Marseille) 51 Paris 14, 25, 52, 55, 64, 164, 186 Pas-de-Calais 25 Pathans 57, 63, 215 Pavelić, Ante 139, 146 Peleleza 207 Penza 96 People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (USSR) 127 People’s Commissariat of Nationalities (USSR) 112 Persia (and Persians) 13, 49, 97, 218

236 Pétain, Philippe 52 Petrograd 98, 99, 101–3, 108 Phleps, Artur 142, 144, 153 Platan, Effendi 80 Pljevlja 143 Poles 108 Polish Corps 111 Poperinge 26 Porot, Antoine 184–6, 194, 195 Portuguese East Africa 74 Pritchard, Harry 210 Provence 161 Provisional Central Muslim Committee (Russian Empire) 101 Punjab (and Punjabi) 6, 50, 57, 63, 64, 197, 209, 213, 222 qadi 99 Qadiriyya 80, 86 Quran (and Quranic)12, 33, 100, 106, 166, 173, 174, 184, 186, 189, 213, 214 Rahman Abdul bin Ya’acob 211 Rahmaniyya 6 Ramadan 15, 16, 48, 57, 97, 102, 145, 147, 149, 167, 173, 207, 215, 220 Rasulev, Abdurahman 9 Ratnagiri 208, 209, 222 Razak, Tun Abdul 221 Rechenberg, Albrecht von 80, 81 Reis-ul-Ulema (Bosnia-Herzegovina) 9, 139, 143, 144, 152 Relief Committee for POWs (France) 54 Revillaud, Captain 173 Revishin, Aleksandr 107 Riehl, Captain 173 Romanian front 111–13 Rostov 97 Rovuma (river) 72 Roy, Kaushik 3 Royal Army Medical Corps 196 Royal Indian Marine (former Bombay Marine) 208, 209 Royal Indian Navy 6, 17, 205, 209, 213, 217 Royal Malaysian Navy 206 Royal Pavilion (Brighton) 51 Rumaliza (Muhammed bin Khalfan bin Khamis al-Barwani) 73, 80, 81

Index Russian Empire 4, 9–12, 95, 97, 99, 106, 115, 122 Russo-Japanese War 98 Šabanović, Salih 154 Saint Maurice, Xavier (de Barbeyrac de) 36 Saint-Étienne 25 Saint-Raphaël 51 Saladin 1 Salihagić, Suljaga 140, 141 Sanjak region 142, 143 Sarajevo 139–41, 143, 150, 152, 153 Sauberzweig, Gustav 146, 147, 152 Sava (river) 147 Schleinitz, Kurt von 80 Schnee, Heinrich 71, 79, 81, 83, 84, 87 Scots 6 Sebastopol 100, 108 Šećerkadić, Derviš 143 Second Arakan Campaign 195 Selimbegović, Alija 146 Senegal (and Senegalese) 7, 16, 49, 51, 56, 58, 59, 61, 62, 65 Senegalese tirailleurs 47, 49, 50, 53–6, 62, 65, 194 sepoys 11, 14, 18, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 63, 64 Serbia (and Serbian) 138, 139 Sétif 172 Shagiakhmetov, Islam 109 shahada 9 shaheed 15, 147 Shangaan 74 Sharia 150, 152 Shaykh al-Islam 26, 71, 81, 83, 100, 101 Sikh(s) 6, 16, 47, 49, 51, 54, 56, 63, 64, 197, 213 Simbi, M. 191 Singapore 210, 212, 219, 220 Singh, Gajendra 18 Singh, Tara 64 Sirčo, Fadil 153 Skaka, Ahmed 153 Skopje 141 Slane, Baron de 164 Slavs (and Slavic) 8, 95, 104, 114, 115, 123–5 Society of Life-Guard Officers Professing Islam (Russian Empire) 97

Index Softić, Mustafa 140, 141 Somaliland 6, 72 Somme, Battle of the 35, 57 South Africa 197, 213, 216 South-Western front 111 Southeast Asia 205, 210, 211, 219 Soviet Army 127–9 Soviet Union (and USSR) 4, 13, 15, 115, 122, 123, 125, 126, 129 spahis 7 Spaho, Fehim 143 Special Transcaucasian Commissariat of the Provisional Government 109 St Petersburg 96 Stalin, Joseph Djugashvili 112 Sterlitamak 97 Streets, Heather 209 Sub-Saharan Africa 82, 161, 194, 195 Sudan (and Sudanese) 6, 72, 74–7, 80, 82, 84, 85, 87 Suez Canal 82 Sukuma 76, 77, 85 Sultan-Galiev, Mirsaid 97 Sultanov, Mukhamed’iar 99, 100, 102 Susini, Robert 187, 190, 192, 194 Sutter, Jean 184, 186, 187, 190–5 Swahili 11, 71, 77, 78, 206, 218 Syria 10, 79, 101 tabors 7, 80, 162, 169 Tabora 80 Taieb, Suzanne 185 Tajiks 125, 128 Tanganyika 73, 208 Tanzania 77 Tashkent 127 Tatar Regiment 107, 108, 113, 114 Taurida 100, 107 Tewfiq Pasha, Muhammed (Khedive of Egypt) 75 Thakurs 54 Tiflis 109 tirailleurs see Algerian tirailleurs; Senegalese tirailleurs Toulon 161 Tournassoud, Jean-Baptiste 55 Transcaucasian 109, 114, 118 Trémolet, Joseph 49 Treu, Rudolf 141

237

Troitsk 99 Trotsky, Leon 112 Trousseau, Colonel 40 Tunisia (and Tunisians) 7, 25, 27, 28, 32, 37, 43, 52–5, 63, 161, 164, 167, 168, 183 Tunović, Mušan 152 Turkestan (and Turkestanis) 9, 97 Turkmen(s) 106, 125 Turkoman Regiment 106, 113 Turks 37, 42, 97–9, 101, 105 Tuzla 139, 149, 152 Ufa 97, 99, 101, 102, 110, 113 Ujiji 73 Ukraine (and Ukrainian) 8, 108, 109, 111, 113 ulema-medžlis (Bosnia-Herzegovina) 139, 143, 148, 149 umma 2, 219 United Kingdom 206 United States 170 Urabi Revolt 74 Ustasha(s) 137–9, 141, 143, 144, 146, 148, 150–3 Uzbeks 125 Val-de-Grâce 186 Verbrandenmolen 32 Verdun, Battle of 6, 27, 32, 35, 36 Verkhovsky, Aleksandr 108, 109 Vichy 165–8 Villefranche-de-Rouergue 149 Vlasenica 152 Volga 108, 113 Vosges 161, 173, 187, 189 Waffen-SS 3, 14, 17, 137–46, 148–54 Wangemann, Ekkehard 146, 147 Waqf 149 Wehrmacht 3, 124, 126, 139 Weil, Patrick 161 Western front 53, 56, 58, 65 Wiegandt, Erich 146 Wiesenthal, Simon 138 Wilhelm II (Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albrecht von Hohenzollern) 29 Wissmann, Hermann 72, 74, 78, 80 World Islamic Congress (1931) 140 Wünsdorf 53

238 Yassin, Battle of 83 Young Turks 13 Yser, Battle of 33 Yugoslavia (and Yugoslavs) 137, 138, 150, 151, 154 Yugoslav Army 144, 150, 152 Žabare 148 Zagreb 141, 142 Zain, Mohd 222

Index Zanzibar (and Zanzibari) 72, 73, 77, 80, 81, 83, 86, 205–8, 210, 211, 218, 219, 222, 223 Zbor (fascist movement, Yugoslavia) 141 Zentrumspartei (Catholic Central Party, Germany) 79 Zossen (prisoner camp) 14, 30, 53, 54 zouaves 27, 35, 39, 162 Zuhrić, Omer 146 Zulus 74, 76, 87

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