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This paper examines the foundations of colonial knowledge in the Maghreb countries during the colonial era, and the complications carried by its epistemological legacy in the present Maghreb and Arab- Islamic societies in general. The paper examines the French and Italian colonial cognitive experience in Libya and Tunisia, and its present influence on political thinking and defining events of which these countries are experiencing today. To test this proposition, the paper focuses critical observation on the “anthropological eyes” with which the French viewed the Fezzan in Libya between 1943 and 1947, and the complications of concepts such as tribe and farmer society with their colonial and ethnocentric cognitive content. The paper concludes with sculpting the methodological features that define the conditions for a critical cognitive position that should be taken regarding this legacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]