Our collaborative project originates in an attempt to articulate the intrinsic specificity of cases and contexts within a resolutely comparative approach. We focus particularly on what we believe to be the major limitation of comparison, namely the supposed need to rigidify the objects of comparison, to detach them from their contingent specificities and reduce cases to a set of data homogeneous enough to be compared. Our intent is to start a critical discussion regarding the hypothetical need to let go of specificity as the condition of comparison. With this in mind, we propose a comparative approach focused on sources rather than objects, and we consider them in terms of actions endowed with intentionality. The present study compares two institutions: the droit d'aubaine, and the Bayt al-mâl or Treasury, a traditional Islamic fiscal institution found in a number of Ottoman-era governments, whose prerogatives have typically been reduced to managing heirless estates and burying the poor. In theory, the aubaine and the Bayt al-mâl belong to distinct cultural and historical realms. Yet, as we demonstrate here, a careful analysis of the sources produced by each institution helps unpack these “cultural” constructions, produces new contexts in which both can be situated, and sheds light on the process of their construction and their amenability to comparison.
À propos des archives de l’Algérie ottomane : notes sur le rapport entre conditions de production et nature et usages des sources historiques. La documentation archivistique de l’Algérie ottomane est globalement peu fournie, ce qui amène à réfléchir sur la pratique historienne dans ces conditions. Non pas en cherchant ailleurs ce que ces archives ne fourniraient pas, mais plutôt en interrogeant plus précisément le sens et les usages sociaux de leur matérialité. Il s’agit dès lors d’en saisir les conditions de production au regard de leur contenu, et de les interpeller comme autant de contextes ponctuels au sein et à l’articulation desquels se déploient et s’affirment des actions. Derrière cette approche se profilent les questions de savoir en quoi peut bien vouloir consister de produire des documents et d’archiver des documents, autant d’opérations à l’issue desquelles les historiens opèrent, et qui cependant ne s’imposent pas d’emblée. À l’analyse de la configuration archivistique de l’Algérie ottomane, j’explorerai ces questions en présentant deux axes de recherches qui m’ont mobilisée. D’une part en interrogeant les effets de l’histoire (coloniale) de ces archives sur le sens de leur contenu. D’autre part en présentant les résultats d’une recherche collective autour des conditions de production d’un type de source classique pour les ottomanistes, les registres de cadis. On the Archives of Ottoman Algeria. Archival documentation of Ottoman Algeria is, in general, somewhat scarce, which leads one to reflect upon historians’ practice in such conditions – not by seeking elsewhere what is not supplied in these archives, but rather by examining more closely the sense and social uses of that which does exist. It is henceforth a question of understanding production conditions with regard to their contents and to interpellate them as so many isolated contexts and articulations from which actions unfurl and are declared. Questions emerge from behind this approach regarding the exact reasons for wanting to produce and archive these documents - so many operations from which historians work - but which, however, are not obvious from the outset. By analysing the archival configuration of Ottoman Algeria, I shall be exploring these questions and presenting two lines of research which motivated me; one by examining the effects of the (colonial) history of these archives on the meaning of their contents, and the other by presenting the results of collective research into the production conditions of a classic type of source for Ottomanists – Islamic judicial records
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