Illusions of Tradition

December 8, 2008

The Battle of Algiers provides a series of images of life in the Casbah. The Casbah is the old city and contains the narrow, winding paths so easy to get lost in. Watching the film we learn that it is home to a large population of Algerians.. and this "Islamic" part of the city is contrasted with French colonial space.

It's easy to fall into thinking of life in the Casbah as "traditional".. since we see the clothing elements commonly associated with traditional Islam. Director Gillo Pontecorvo was interested in capturing contemporary life, and consequently did not explain the historical background to the crowded Casbah. But it is an important story, one of displacement of the rural poor by the colonizers and the clustering of Algerians in and around cities like Algiers. During this shift "traditional" residential areas like the Casbah were transformed into slums.

I went through and chose some pictures that give a sense of residential space inside the Casbah:

Above is a scene that comes and goes pretty quickly. Jafar and Ali are running from the French and they duck into a house off an alley.. and they are safe there from the pursuing French. The interior of the house is not the focus, but note the tiles wasting away and a slender column next to them. The house still contains signs of a past when it was a beautiful.. even luxurious.. place to live.

The structure of houses is never explained in the film. The few images we get might even seem bewildering. There is a central courtyard and then a number of living spaces ranged around it. In effect this home has become a multi-unit residence.. an apartment complex. As people move about you see how much is going on in a tight space. There are multiple families and individuals crowded in here.

At one point Ali looks up from within this house and this is what he sees:

It is possible in the image above to see the central opening of the courtyard and then note the top stories of the house. During my summer in Morocco I saw many houses like this. These once expansive homes get subdivided so that individual families inhabit bedrooms or floors. And the house falls into disrepair. But this "slum" is hardly traditional. What is traditional is the rich and luxurious way of living that these houses once represented.

In various places these homes have been lovingly restored.. and begin to regain something of their elegance. Below is a contemporary picture of an interior from a home in the Casbah of Algiers:

photo from Flickr user Millie J, photo here

That is a more traditional view of Islamic urban life. You can see how this is not a home that serves as an apartment complex.

Many old cities in the Islamic world look and feel run down.. homes to dense poverty. It is this way in Cairo, Damascus, and Fez. Areas of the city that were once where the elite lived have been abandoned by that elite, who now live in the Westernized sections of the city. The old section falls into disrepair and comes to be the poor section of town. And then we serve it the final insult by calling it "traditional."