What if we wrote a book on national heritage in an original format starting from objects?
When this idea germinated within the Jazairhope team, some might have thought that it was a somewhat excessive ambition, close to a fad in the originality of its format, “Write, describe , recount known or unknown objects, material or immaterial, to unfold the thread of Our Long History”. A crazy project?
Evoking objects made transparent by use and habit with this somewhat naive assurance that they are there, that they have always been there and that they will remain there forever; but whose value, the fragility of belonging, we only realize when they are the target of an expropriation that feels like a slap in the face. And as if awakened from a secular lethargy, we exclaim, we are astonished, we are offended, marked by this feeling of injustice, to have been stripped, robbed “No, but it’s up to ME, that has always been there! “.
We realize, then, stunned, that it is urgent to preserve what belongs to us, what has built us through time immemorial, what has made us, quite simply what we are, these “common things” that mark us and stamp our identity, from the simple scarf with fringes, to the precious jewel inherited from grandmothers, to these expressions which characterize our moods and which we find nowhere else, these melodies which have rocked our hopes for millennia , with strong symbols of our history, such as these illustrious, almost legendary characters who were the first to plant the milestones of our history.
And, the idea becomes a project, we believe in it, we hold on to it, because at Jazairhope “we never sleep! sentinel of time and space. It is urgent to react, to take initiatives. The fad would have been to continue to believe that the weather is serene and that it protects us.
A real treasure hunt begins, a race against time… Hundreds of objects are collected with anecdotes and epic stories. Like the pieces of a huge puzzle that we gather, assemble, fit together, adjust and readjust. The soul of the work is emerging, gradually taking shape and taking shape…
The adventure begins and a journey through time takes place: from prehistory to the present day. The book opens a window on distant unexplored horizons, a multitude of encounters with characters who come out of oblivion, sums of knowledge wipe away our ignorance.
A year later, the book is there, a new object that we inscribe in the memory of Jazairhope, the challenge is met.
A present for the 68th anniversary of the outbreak of the war of liberation, a legacy to a youth sometimes in need of love for their country and other times losing their bearings, a patriotic gesture to express all the love that finally, we bring to Algeria a civic contribution to the preservation of our heritage.
Mrs. Gallèze Ouiza, philosopher, researcher in anthropology, expert certified by UNESCO in charge of questions of cultural and intangible heritage, will say about the book, “The History of Algeria in 54 objects” that it is the mirror “of an Algeria with hidden facets … of a plural Algeria”. This work should not be the only one, it is the beginning of a great promise, it is a “duty of memory”.
Take the part of writing a History of Algeria in an original form, obeying a particular structure which describes the object, dusts it off, contextualizes it, releases a word which crosses time and resuscitates the ancestral soul which is there. buried, all enveloped in feelings imbued with deep patriotism, is for Jazairhope a real challenge.
Mr. Ben Hounet Yazid, anthropologist and researcher at the CNRS, member of the Laboratory of Social Anthropology will qualify it as “a salutary work for several reasons: it is an endogenous look at Algeria…It does not give only to glimpse Algeria, above all he shows the love he has for it, the meaning he gives it, the joy it gives him, the hope it arouses” later he will add “that it constitutes an object that reveals the relationship to heritage that is emerging in Algeria. Heritage is not only a state or specialist affair, it is increasingly invested by civil society, associations, collectives of citizens”.
Mr. Sebaa Rabeh, professor of sociology and linguistic anthropology and essayist, discussing the selection of objects significant and telling that spans from the Neolithic to the contemporary phase, is a beautifully illustrated response to all those who strive to cast doubt on the foundations of the history of a country whose particularity is to be a civilizational intertwining. Each of the objects is an authentic compendium of history and memory… but also an object of study and research that can deliver important insights during the period of its creation or manufacture”.
Mrs BELLOULA Nassira, journalist, essayist and researcher in History will testify to the ingenuity in the design of the book in the choice of objects, in particular prehistoric, the construction of the story, ..
“The carefully chosen object with all its historical, emotional, memorable and chronicle charge is presented in a separate, airy, well-explained and easy-to-read page. It takes us on a journey through a thousand-year-old Algeria with its sites, its culture, its events, its characters and even its anecdotes”.
Algeria, the second cradle of humanity by the discovery of bones at Tighennif dating back 2.4 million years, of the first men who set foot on our territory, the rock engravings of Tassili which open up to us a way of life and an environment that have now disappeared, the fresco of the great god who for a long time suggested that our desert could have been visited by extraterrestrials… Then, according to the peregrinations, this beautiful encounter, with Jebrine Ag Mohamed Mechar, the true discoverer of the prehistoric remains of Sefar, the one who guided and accompanied the scientists in the exploration of the Tassili and whose contribution has never been recognized, makes us begin a journey in time that goes back far into prehistory.
A beautiful trilogy takes us to Numidia: three works written by Saint-Augustin, Apuleius and Capella, great thinkers of antiquity, which introduce us to the University of Madaure, the oldest in Africa and one of the most old in the world. They taught grammar, rhetoric, mathematics, astronomy, … Fibonacci, this great mathematician of antiquity, famous for his famous suite, will discover Arabic numerals in Bejaïa, and make them known to the West. Béjaïa, the city of light, famous for the manufacture of candle wax and its candlesticks with Berber geometric patterns that refer to a strong symbolism. One cannot fly over antiquity without mentioning the Gorgon of Bône, guardian of the city of Annaba, who disappeared one evening in 1996 to be found ten years later in the garden of the Ben Ali family in Tunis…
From Tin Hinan’s jewelry to the Claddagh ring, which has become traditional Irish jewelry at the Algerian Love Knot made famous by James Bond films, to our famous traditional jewelry such as Khit Errouh and Krafach Boulahya, or the Berber Koran holder… which testify to the great artistic creativity of the populations of the time and their expertise in crafts and goldsmithing.
From the primitive Tuareg musical instruments to those more elaborate from the Ottoman period, to the Algerian musical note characteristic of oriental music, we discover a civilized society where music with its multiple Berber and Andalusian influences takes an important place and makes us discover a typical and refined way of life; the journey continues towards Algiers, this already highly coveted city, the target of various attacks, famous for its gates and its coat of arms and which will build around it forts, bastions protected by “sanctified” cannons such as Baba Merzoug who sits today, sadly, in the center of a public square exposed to the ravages of time, in Brest…
The illustrious Emir Abdelakader will mark the history of our country as a great war strategist against the colonial armed forces with his “smala”, but also for his great humanist ideas, his code of honor and his literary writings praising the nomadic life.
A break in the colonial era is necessary to pay homage to our guillotined martyrs, those who fell on the field of honor in the battle of Algiers, those at the origin of the declaration of November 54. A magnificent photo of the brave team of FLN football with General Giap in Viet-Nam, will recall that the fight was not only armed, the FLN team carried high the colors of the flag and its national anthem to attest to the aspiration of the Algerian people to a dignified existence and its firm will to found a free and independent Algerian state. The statue of the docker will recall the painful memory of hundreds of workers in the port of Algiers targeted by an assassination bomb of the OAS, and the burning perpetrated by this same organization of the university library of Algiers which will reduce to ashes thousands valuable works.
Graphic art will be honored through the canvases of Baya which inspired the greatest painters of the century such as Picasso, Matisse, the miniatures and the illuminations of Omar Racim on the first Koran of Thaalibia.
The trip comes to an end at the mosque of El-Djazaïr, one can only bow before this grandiose carpet, the largest in the world, and ends with the traditional and ancestral game of Bouqala and a mysterious object which constitutes the 54th object, a challenge to readers to associate them with the initiative…
“I am closing this priceless work that does justice to the Algerian heritage and culture … It does not belong to us, it belongs to our children and they too must pass it on to their children, the chain must never stop; This first series of 54 objects should not stop there since other books will follow in the same wake as the first” concludes Nassira Belloula.
And the adventure continues…
Translated from : https://jazairhope.org/54-objets-pour-raconter-lalgerie-une-chasse-au-tresor-dans-le-patrimoine-national/
P.S: You can buy the digital book in french here: https://jazairhope.org/ebook/
Proceeds from the sale of the book will be used exclusively to translate it into Arabic and English and to produce the printed version in Algeria.
