| Summary: | Legal Anthropology, Islamic Law, Muslim Societies, Custom. - The present thesis aims to analyze the pre-colonial customary law of a North African tribal region, Grand Kabylia. "Law" is not considered in this context as a mere set of norms and rules, but rather emerges throughout a discursive process establishing and shaping social identities. The analysis proceeds in four distinctive steps: After evaluating the classical anthropological theories as well as the colonial images on Kabylia (chap. 2-4), an alternative reading of the sources is suggested, which takes the scriptural culture and the communicative context of Kabyle village assemblies into account (chap. 5).Than, the results are evaluated in the light of recent research on Islamic law (chap. 6). These approaches become unified in the examination of regional discurses on the legitimacy of the customary law (chap. 7). In a final synthesis, the relations between moral demands, religious reformism, and the public sphere of Kabyle villages are discussed (chap. 8). Some examples of the subjects discussed in detail are the re-invention of Kabyle customary law by the French colonial power, the question of female disinheritance among North-African Berbers, the ...
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