La frontière méridionale du Maghreb. Approches croisées (Antiquité-Moyen Âge)

Conflicts regarding the Sahara still arise nowadays and show how important and pressing the issue of frontiers will always be. This invites us to reflect on the processes which resulted in binding the Sahara’s history to the concept of border, between the moment a “border” on the northern edge of the Sahara was for the first time instituted by Rome, and the political, social and cultural upheavals involved in the Middle Ages regarding the construction of the Saharan space. Each shape of the border established on the northern edge of the Sahara between Antiquity and the Middle Ages induces a particular questioning, that the longue durée makes it possible to inscribe in a more general geohistorical reflection on the meditated construction of the frontier and its evolution, within a unique spatial and geographical entity.

How did the border established on the Saharan edge of the Maghreb take shape in Roman times? How did the arrival of Islam and the multiplication of powers in the Maghreb change the perception of the desert borders of the Maghreb and the frontier, and lead to move to the south, in an unprecedented movement, by original and complex processes involving political, economic and religious motivations which are not always easy to distinguish? How have the powers in place invested new forms of border representation in their quest for legitimacy? These are the questions that the studies gathered in this book propose to address, through three axes. The texts gathered in the first part invite to reflect on a Saharan tropism in the construction of a border paradigm. In a second part are considered the processes of border construction and claim by the powers in place. Finally, the third part of this book proposes a regional study on Central Algeria, from the Hodna to Biskra.