Algeria retrieves 1659 manuscript taken during French colonial period
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This comes as Algeria is attempting to rid itself of the remnants of French colonial roots in the country.
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The manuscript is believed to have been taken by the French army after an attack on Sufi Islamic scholar and resistance leader Emir Abdelkader El Hassani. (Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
The Abdelkader manuscript, a rare book from the seventeenth century taken by the French during colonization, has been retrieved by Algeria, according to the country's Foreign Ministry.
The Islamic manuscript was written in Arabic in 1659, and during a raid, it was taken by a follower of independence leader Emir Abdelkader in 1842 and brought to France by Lieutenant Blanry in the African army.
Before it was auctioned in France, the mobilization of authorities and the Algerian diaspora in the country helped stop the auction.
The Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated, "The Algerian authorities highly appreciate this patriotic move honoring the members of our community abroad. [...] The recovery of this manuscript and its repatriation are part of the tireless efforts that the highest authorities of the country have not ceased to deploy, in order to recover all the Algerian heritage looted, for the sake of preserving and safeguarding the national memory," said the ministry.
Algeria has been attempting to rid itself of the remnants of French colonial roots in the country.
Algiers decided in October to begin the introduction of English lessons into primary schools as a checkmate against the decades-long prevailing language of former occupier France.
Language has for decades been a hotly contested issue in the North African country whose official languages are Arabic and the Berbers' Tamazight, as French is still widely spoken in Algeria 60 years after independence from 132 years of colonial occupation and a brutal eight-year war at the hands of the French. France still refuses to apologize for its colonial brutality and its past as a former occupier in the Middle East and Africa.
Read next: Algeria's Tebboune: France must free itself from 'colonizer complex'
Even French president Emmanuel Macron still refuses to apologize for the past. More to the point, Macron said in an interview with French weekly Le Point in January, "I do not have to ask for forgiveness, that is not the matter, the word would break all ties," adding that his only apology was toward the "harkis," meaning Algerians who collaborated with the French army and were not given protection by Paris later on.
Macron attempted to rebuild ties with Algeria in August last year during a three-day trip he made to the country and after Algeria's president Tebboune withdrew the country's ambassador and banned French military aircraft from its airspace.
