Lieutenant-Colonel Hadj Cherif Cadi

Lieutenant-Colonel Hadj Cherif Cadi

Terre d'Islam, Preface by Colonel Paul Azan, Charles- Lavauzelle&Cie, éditeurs militaires, Paris, Boulevard Saint-Germain, 124, Imprimerie Heintz Frères, Oran, 1925.

In-8, full modern cloth binding, covers preserved, title page, 164 pages, plates, illustrations (portraits, maps, fold-out maps). Relation of the pilgrimage of Lieutenant-Colonel Cherif Cadi in 1916. The book consists of 3 parts. In Part 1, entitled "The Journey", the author describes his pilgrimage to Mecca, from his departure from Algiers to his arrival in Hedjaz. In the second part, "Sociology", he examines the anthropology of the Bedouins of the Hedjaz, notably through Bedouin poetry, Bedouin literature, Muslim astronomy... In the third part, which is a conclusion, he raises the challenges that these populations will have to face in the future (administrative reforms, the role of women...). In the appendices, he includes interesting notes on the Hedjaz and Nejd and their main communications routes, based on his military training. Lieutenant-Colonel Hadj Cherif Cadi (1867-1939), born into a modest family of Algerian cadis, the young Cherif Cadi entered the Ecole Polytechnique in France, becoming the first Algerian polytechnician. A career soldier, he was entrusted with a military and diplomatic mission in 1916, during which he completed his pilgrimage. He was in charge of the transport and security of North African pilgrims, and of sounding out the Sheriff of Mecca on his military needs in the context of the First World War, with Ottoman troops present in the Hedjaz. This story is similar to that of his fellow citizen and co-religionist Caid Ben Cherif, who, like him, was an officer with a mastery of Arabic and French cultures, and author of "Aux villes saintes de l'Islam" (To the Holy Cities of Islam), an account of the 1913 pilgrimage, on the eve of the 14-18 war.