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Shaykh Ibrâhîm b. ‘Umar Bayyûḍ of Wâdî Mzâb (1899-1981), leader of Ibâḍî reformism in Algeria after the death of Muḥammad b. Yûsuf Aṭfiyyash (1820-1914), delivered a public commentary on the Qur’an from 1935-1980, which was recorded beginning with Sûra 17:70. Shaykh Bayyûḍ claimed to follow the goals and methodology of Muḥammad ‘Abduh and Rashîd Riḍâ’s Tafsîr al-Manâr. This article analyzes Shaykh Bayyûḍ’s commentary in comparison to, on the one hand, Aṭfiyyash’s two Qur’an commentaries (Hamayân al-zâd ilâ dâr al-ma‘âd and Taysîr al-tafsîr), in order to determine its relationship to earlier modern Ibâḍî reformism, and, on the other hand, to Tafsîr al-Manâr, in order to determine its relationship to that strand of Sunni reformism. It finds that Bayyûḍ’s commentary, like Tafsîr al-Manâr, promotes Islamic unity and eschews theological dogmatism, while attacking customs deemed antithetical to Islamic teaching and making sometimes lengthy digressions on topics of contemporary social and political importance. Nonetheless, Bayyûḍ remains faithful to Ibâḍî doctrine on topics on which Ibâḍîs and Sunnis differ, and there is little evidence that he argued for Islam’s compatibility with liberal values ; on the contrary, at several points in his commentary he states that modern ideas and customs constitute a real threat to Islam.

Established as a social dynamics in the 1930s, mainly by Shaykh Bayyûḍ, the iṣlâḥ is a major element in the history and memory of the Mzab during the Contemporary period. Even if the reformist Ulama have mainly dedicated their activity to the field of education, they were also engaged in political action, at a local scale by the conquest of the « traditional » institutions of the Mzab, and at a national Algerian scale by fully participating to the colonial institutional game. This religious movement and its related political actions were also characterized by the questioning of the relations between the Ibadi madhhab and the other Islamic schools and by a reflection on the role played by Berbers in North African and Algerian history. Their political action enabled the reformist Ulama to assert themselves as the leaders of a community they were building through the reinterpretation of traditional institutions. At the same time, their historiographical production contributed to articulate Ibâḍî and Mozabî identities with the building of the Algerian nation. In this article, I intend to examine the role played by reformist Ulama in the building of a political community for the Ibâḍî and Mozabî population, a political and intellectual process that was developed along with the insertion into the Algerian frame. For this purpose, I am referring to certain texts produced by the reformist Ulema and by the iṣlâḥ historiography, as well as to the Colonial and Missionaries of Africa’s archives (ANOM, Aix-en-Provence ; White Fathers, Roma).