I was just browsing through the statistical yearbooks and bulletins of the Maghreb countries (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Mauritania) – without success – in the hope of finding some interesting graphics in them, when, after a few clicks, I ended up on the website of the Library of the Centre d’Étude Diocésain – Les Glycines in Algeria.
In the header of the page, there is a dot map, which is of rather poor quality but still somewhat legible. It was this that eventually led me to the magnificent religious map by Louis Rinn (1838–1905), the French battalion commander and later head of Indigenous Affairs in Algeria. This map is a simplified, yet still attractive, hand drawn copy of the original from 1884, created sometime in the early 20th century.
The truly remarkable map, however, is the original, designed by Louis Rinn and drawn by captain Henri Bissuel. The map was published in 1884 as an illustration accompanying Rinn’s book Marabouts et Khouan. Étude sur l’Islam en Algérie (Marabouts and khouan1. A study of Islam in Algeria). Both the book and the map was published by Adolphe Jourdan in Algiers.
Although the map’s title reveals its subject matter, it is only upon closer inspection that it becomes clear that its leaf-like style of representation is unconventional, and that it aims not merely to illustrate the spatial distribution and size (see the legend) of these Muslim brotherhoods, but also their genealogies and the relationships between them.
It is also worth noting the trees drawn along the edges and at the bottom of the map, from whose trunks the various brotherhoods have spread out across Algeria. In this sense, the tree – from its roots right through to its fruit – can also symbolize the lineage stretching from the founders to the later Sufi orders.
Although the depiction of the plants on the map is almost certainly inspired by the often highly stylised illustrations found in Arabic botanical manuscripts, it is nevertheless unlikely that it could be identified as one of the sacred plants of the Arab/Berber/Islamic world (pomegranate, olive, fig, argan, etc.).
The map also includes a smaller map showing the migrations of the four largest brotherhoods in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as a table listing the founders of the various brotherhoods, along with their places of birth and burial.
If anyone knows French and has access to Bernadette Saou-Dufréne’s book chapter (unfortunately, I don’t have), they will no doubt be able to find out much more about how the map came about.
This map, too, is a product of French colonial cartography, just like the Atlas of the Upper Mekong and its superb, unconventional legend. There is also another interesting French colonial economic atlas, I shall be writing about that soon as well. It is as though, far from Paris, these local administrators were able to adopt a bolder or less conventional visual language.
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Some news
Paul Kahn’s wonderful new book, Mapping Knowledge Across Time. Seven Books that Visualized the World is finally published by Routledge/CRC Press. I was fortunate enough to read it before its publication and wrote a short review to it, and I can say that it is a marvellous book. It is a thoroughly researched and insightful work on the ideologically, politically and culturally defined visual and information design systems of various eras and cultures, amongst which numerous similarities can nevertheless be identified.
From 21 August, the exhibition On Display: How Design Shapes Us is on view at the Museum of Applied Arts in Frankfurt; its ‘Design, Power(s), Knowledge’ section was designed by Robin Coenen and Danielle Rosales (Visual Intelligence, Berlin). Coenen and Rosales’s enormous panels, modelled on Aby Warburg’s legendary Mnemosyne Atlas, explore when and with what information design tools humanity has depicted such diverse concepts as history, people, society and systems, and how these have represented power structures and contradictions. I also made a small contribution to this project: for the section on economic systems, I provided György Markos’s anti-capitalist system diagrams, and I also wrote the accompanying text for the catalogue. If you happen to be in Frankfurt, do pop in and have a look!
The full line-up for the Information Design Conference is gradually taking shape. I’ll also be giving a talk on the Cabinet of Infographic Curiosities at the conference, which takes place on 30 October in Hilversum, the Netherlands, but of course people will be coming to see such heavyweight stars as Nadieh Bremer, Jen Christiansen, Julie Brunet, Jan Schwochow, James Cheshire and many other brilliant names.
Marabout is an Islamic holy man in the Maghreb region and West Africa. Khouan is a French collective term for Muslim brotherhoods.
Clearly a lot of creator's vision and effort went into this map - but I'm struggling to imagine what practical applications it would have had! Have you learned anything about that aspect?
That's a spectacular, evocative map.