France-Algeria: inauguration in Amboise of a stele in tribute to the Emir Abdelkader
The stele, inaugurated in the city of Amboise, this Saturday, February 5, is one of the initiatives recommended by the report by Benjamin Stora (our photo) which seeks to reconcile France and Algeria.
AFP/BERTRAND LANGLOIS
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It is this Saturday, February 5, 2022 that a stele in tribute to the Emir Abdelkader (or Abd el-Kader) is inaugurated in the city of Amboise (Centre-Val-de-Loire region).
Born in 1807, the man stood up to the French army at the start of the 19th century for around fifteen years before laying down his arms.
He was imprisoned in France for four years, in difficult conditions.
Subsequently, he was one of the first to try to develop an interreligious dialogue.
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The stele, in homage to the Emir Abdelkader, and inaugurated in the city of Amboise, in the department of Indre-et-Loire, this Saturday February 5, is one of the initiatives recommended by the Stora report which seeks to reconcile France and Algeria, when next month we are going to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Évian agreements.
A “
visionary
”
For Florence Hudovicz, heritage curator and curator of the Abd el-Kader exhibition scheduled for April 2022 at the Mucem in Marseille, the personality of the Emir embodies dialogue: "
We realized all the same that, through his experience of life, resistance, religious, teacher, he was able to be a visionary, in any case to extract something from all this experience which was a possible dialogue between the West and the East, between the shores of the north and the southern shores of the Mediterranean and to show that despite all the hostility, the violence suffered, dialogue was still possible and that this was perhaps what was most important.
»
"
Ability to open
"
“
And that's no doubt
, says Florence Hudovicz,
the reasons why many people are still interested in Abdelkader today because of this capacity for openness against all odds.
He was a tough man, he fought.
And at the same time, he had this kind of ability to finally move forward and to say to himself, finally there is an observation to be made and this observation is that we have to think differently and this is how I, I propose to you reason differently.
It is really this ability to grasp what is happening and to try to ensure that we go beyond history as it freezes which undoubtedly makes it still present today
”.
Why Amboise?
Emir Abdelkader leads the fight against the conquest of Algeria by France in the middle of the 19th century.
But, after initial successes, Abdelkader surrendered to the French on December 21, 1847. The Emir, his family and his followers were detained in France, first at Fort Lamalgue in Toulon, then in Pau, and in November 1848, they were finally transferred to the Château d'Amboise.
On October 16, 1852, Abdelkader was released by Emperor Napoleon III.
The
Mucem,
in Marseille, is devoting an exhibition to him, scheduled from April 6 to August 22, 2022.
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