Khaled ibn Hashimi ibn Hajj Abd al Qadir (1875 – January 1936) was the grandson of the military leader Abd al Qadir and was for a time a prominent opponent of the nature of French colonial rule in

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Early years

Khaled ibn Hashimi was born in 1875 in Syria, where he grew up. He studied in Paris and went on to become an officer in the

French army The French Army, officially known as the Land Army (french: Armée de Terre, ), is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces. It is responsible to the Government of France, along with the other components of the Armed Force ...

. He served with the army in

Morocco Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria t ...

.J. Ruedy, Modern Algeria: The Origins and Development of a Nation, (Bloomington, 2005), p. 109.

Politics

Khaled ibn Hashimi was well known in Algeria thanks to his grandfather's protracted struggle with the French, and he was commonly referred to as the Emir. In 1913, he signed the program of the

Young Algerians The Young Algerians (french: Jeunes Algériens) were a political group established in French Algeria in 1907. They were assimilationists, meaning that they wanted Algerian society to integrate with French colonial society. As such, they called for ...

. He went on to help establish the Union Franco-Algérienne in 1914. Khaled continued to serve in the French army, and fought in the trenches during the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

until he was struck down with

Tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, i ...

.L. Zack, "Early origins of Islamic activism in Algeria: the case of Khaled in post-World War I Algiers", Journal of North African Studies, 11:2 (2006). After the

Jonnart Law The Jonnart Law was the culmination of Governor General Charles Jonnart's reform program for French Algeria, passed on 4 February 1919. Although it increased the number of Algerian Muslims eligible to vote for the Muslim members of municipal counc ...

was passed in 1919, Khaled split with other members of the Union Franco-Algérienne such an Benthai, on the grounds that the Jonnart Law was insufficient. In the elections that followed in the same year, Khaled won a major victory. However he was feared by the colons who got the result overturned and rigged the election that followed in 1920. By 1923, Khaled was becoming frustrated with French intransigence, and was becoming isolated from his allies who feared his personal influence. Further, he had built up considerable debts which left him vulnerable to attack. The French government offered to pay off these debts if he would go into exile. He accepted this offer, withdrew from the election he was contesting, closed down his personal publication, and went into exile in Damascus in 1924. From there and from

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

, he continued to pursue his political program, but his influence declined.J. Ruedy, Modern Algeria: The Origins and Development of a Nation, (Bloomington, 2005), p. 131. Over time, Khaled moved increasingly towards more secular and nationalist politics, appearing alongside

communists Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

and others. When Khaled died in January 1936, there was an outpouring of grief in Algeria. He became, for many, a symbol of Algerian nationalism. However, there has been some controversy over whether Khaled can be defined as a

nationalist Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: Th ...

, due to his demands for Algerians to be able to maintain their Islamic identity and his association with secular nationalists in his later years, or whether he was an assimilationist, due to his demands for reform within the French system.

References

{{Authority control 1875 births 1936 deaths French Army officers 20th-century Algerian people Syrian emigrants to Algeria French military personnel of World War I