‘Argier’ through Renaissance Drama: Investigating History, Studying Etymology and Reshuffling Geography

30 Pages·2019·0.22 MB·English

by  Mohamed Salah Eddine Madiou

‘Argier’ through Renaissance Drama:
Investigating History, Studying Etymology
and Reshuffling Geography

Mohamed Salah Eddine Madiou
Department of English, The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan

Scholarly occupations most often deal with The Tempest and Tamburlaine the Great,
Part I & II, without much heed taken as to the real meaning of the recurrent syntagm
‘Argier’ and what its origins really are. This archaeological and toponymic effort runs
counter to a dynastic tradition emanating from an approximate historical evaluation
and geographic misevaluation which harbor the usual and inconsiderate thought that
‘Argier’ is “an old name for Algiers”, or even incongruously refer to it in some cases
as “Algeria”. Under the whirlwind of the Derridean concept of “deconstruction”, and
within a Saidian frame of reference, this paper subverts these centrifugal parameters
configured by editors, usually through a refractory lens and a superficial historical
trawl, and perpetuated by translators, appropriation and adaptation practitioners and
other generations of editors. An eye to Renaissance plays and their editions all the
more diverse have in fact given cause to suspect such deductions imprecise and only
partially reliable. Coming with the augurs of its time, one should confront this seem-
ingly unimportant terminology long-neglected through a painstakingly historical,
geographical and linguistic prism to theorize its origins and linguistic usage in
Europe, its development in the 16th and 17th centuries, and comprehend how it has
come to resemble today’s ‘Algiers’. Memory as safeguarded in literature, and
Renaissance drama most significantly, serves hereby as a canvas to read ‘Argier’ and
‘toponymically’ study its different name bestowals as projected in 16th and 17th c.
Europe (namely France and England) in an attempt to imagine and reconstruct its
origins, and comprehend its usage and development with a focus on its mention in
English Renaissance Drama, Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Marlowe’s Tamburlaine
the Great (Part I & II), and Renaissance French drama, with particular attention to
Philippe Quinault’s unedited version of La généreuse ingratitude and its English
translation by Sir William Lower Knight (The Noble Ingratitude).
Keywords: Algeria, Algiers, Colonialism, Origins of Argier, The Tempest,
Tamburlaine the Great, La généreuse ingratitude, Geography
Introduction: Setting the Tone
“Tis far off,
And rather like a dream than an assurance
That my remembrance warrants”
(The Tempest, Shakespeare 1623, i.ii.12).

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© 2019 Geo Publishing, Toronto Canada
‘Argier’ through Renaissance Drama 121
It is certainly a strain on one’s credulity to be asked to read the name of
‘Argier’ – henceforward put in quotation marks of chronological precaution
– beyond the easiness wherewith it is usually interpreted. Besides the easy-to-
read annotations and centered structures – to employ Derrida’s optic – such as
“old name for Algiers,” “Algeria” or else “Algiers” dismissed by editors as
lapsing into ‘obviousness’ and interchangeability, ‘Argier’ includes much
else that is revealing. The orientalist overtones usually connected to it, under-
lying travelogues in general and Renaissance drama in particular, such as
Tamburlaine the Great, Part I & II(1587-88),1The Battle of Alcazar (1594),2
The Tempest(1610-1611)3 or else La généreuse ingratitude (1656),4owe their
expression to this geographical segment, being from the 16thcentury on, a
nomenclature designating one of the most important territories of the tripartite
Maghribi province of the Ottoman Empire (to wit ‘Argier’, Tunis and Tripoli)
– in some cases quadripartite, involving Morocco – then rival of 16th and
17thc. Habsburg Spain (1516-1700).These North African states, “whose
capital was to be Algiers” (Shuval 2002, 89), defined by the Oxford-empow-
ered dictionary Lexico as “[t]he capital of Algeria and one of the leading
Mediterranean ports of North Africa”, were then, albeit autonomous, repre-
sentatives of the Ottoman potentate, or as Marlowe puts it: “contribu-
tory”(1590, iii.iii 221) “Kings of Barbary” (ibid., iii.i.218) to the “Greatest
potentate of Africa [the Ottoman Empire of the time]” (ibid. iii.iii. 221). Had
it not been due to “Argier” being strategically located as “one of the frontiers
between the Habsburgs [16th and 17thc. Spain]5 and the Ottoman Empire”
(Shuval 2002, 89) – and also a significant investment of the Ottoman strength
both in the terrestrial sphere, represented by Argier’s janissaries (called in
Turkish yeniçeri), and the naval sphere, represented by its fleet and corsairs –
the capital of the state of the same name would never have figured in
European Renaissance drama, the orientalist reference of which(along with
that of Tunis, Tripoli and Morocco6) is usually an expression of a European
“anxiety” in relation to the Ottoman rival, as asserted by Kantarbaeva-Bill
in  “Anglo-Ottoman Anxieties in The Tempest: from Displacement to
Exclusion,” also a powerful nemesis of Elizabethan England which both
Shakespeare and Marlow have tried to defeat on the stage.
A contextual tone need be set. 16th c. Ottoman Empire has in fact “shared
the world stage with a cluster of other and wealthy states. To their far west lay
distant Elizabethan England, Habsburg Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire
[Habsburg Austria] as well as Valois France and the Dutch Republic”
(Quataert 2005, 3). These anxieties generally include oppositions, such as
‘Anglo-Ottoman’, ‘French-Ottoman’, ‘Persian-Ottoman’,7 or else
‘Habsburg- Ottoman’ (first Spain then Austria), which feature the Ottomans
prominently on the stage from the Renaissance period onwards as, first, a rival
of Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries (then the most powerful among its
European counterparts); and second, a rival of Europe in general as many
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122 Mohamed Salah Eddine Madiou
powers emerged back then – to wit Austria emerging as a global power after
its victorious 1683 confrontation with the Ottoman Empire – until its decline
in the near mid-20thcentury,designated in consequence as “a Sick Man”, a
topic which has so far enjoyed an elevation in critical esteem and historicist
efforts. The long-term orthodoxy, however, which has for its substance
‘Argier’ being the “old name for Algiers”, “Algeria” or else “Algiers”, has all
the more successfully stood the test of time with little serious attention paid to
it, and this may be taken as symptomatic of a sort of lethargy on the part of
historians and critics who have thus far given an acquiescent nod to the edito-
rial definitions of the toponym. There is in fact scant knowledge as to 16th and
17th c. Algeria, and the etymological study of the names of ‘Algiers’ is of no
less undervaluation, being laconically diagnosed and oftentimes allotted few
lines of succinctness, nourishing even on some occasions cases of impreci-
sion left as such. This study makes use of literature as a memory discourse and
a necessary channel to the past, and provides an anti-amnesiac and history-
specific testimony to the toponym ‘Argier’ to remember and narrativize its
forgotten, untold past. It seeks to analyze the name of ‘Argier’ and its origins,
theorize its usage in 16th and 17thc. Europe, and comprehend how it has come
to resemble today’s still used exonyms in the popular parlance, namely
‘Argel’, ‘Alger’ and ‘Algiers’, to cite but the most well-known. The ‘Argier’
terminology has in fact to be studied within the confines of its time, and The
Tempest, Tamburlaine the Great, The Battle of Alcazar and La généreuse
ingratitude are instances among others of highly rhetorical structures success-
fully expressing truths of their times, mainly the 16th and 17th centuries. The
approach hereby taken – a bricolage sort of technique in the shape of anthro-
pologist Claude Lévi-Strauss – proves of great aptness in providing an insight
into the history of the toponym; it does so by gathering fragments from here
and there in the world of literature and proceeds in gluing them together, since
literature is a repository of a residual past which can contribute to mending
loss, as has wittily been suggested by Shakespeare’s The Tempest. It eupho-
niously states: “Irreparable is the loss; and patience/Says it is past her cure”
(Shakespeare 1623, v.i.121).
A Critical Reflection on the Current State of the Art
The oddity of Argier’s structural and linguistic composition has been scarcely
remarked upon. There is in fact considerable paucity as to the origins of this
terminology, which is generally not entertained in discussion, and when it is,
it appears remarkably brief. In her insightful article, Kantarbaeva-Bill argues
for a keen measure of topical investment in The Tempest on Shakespeare’s
part. The Tempest is the story of a one-time duke of Milan and knowledgeable
man, Prospero, whose dukedom has been usurped by his brother Antonio.
Prospero is forced to flee Milan with his beautiful daughter Miranda, and with
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‘Argier’ through Renaissance Drama 123
the assistance of Gonzalo, on a barely seaworthy raft, stranding both on a
mysterious island – generally interpreted to be Malta – implied to be located
not far from Carthage and also said to belong already to a Wildman who goes
by the name of Caliban. The island is a land bequeathed to him by the unseen
witch Sycorax, Caliban’s mother, who is said to have lived there after being
banished from ‘Argier’. But there is much more to the story. Kantarbaeva-
Bill’s essay weighs the case for Anglo-Ottoman anxieties, grounding its asser-
tions on the allegorical potential of Shakespeare’s late play reflective of the
once has-been tensions between the English and the Ottomans. Besides The
Tempest, the author also darts an attentive look at Tamburlaine the Great,
which, albeit inaccurate a historical play, with its freight of prejudice to be
treated with the greatest of skepticism and historical conscientiousness, “held
true for most of the sixteenth century” spirit of the age. That is summed up
with large strokes by Marlow in his play whose allegorical energy is, like The
Tempest, referential to anxieties: the Persian-Ottoman (also known as
Safavid-Ottoman) tensions of the time. Ottomans investing their strength on
what is considered commonly as the Capital of the Maghribi province, the
then ‘Algiers’ finds also its expression, which Kantarbaeva-Bill caps in a
quote, stating: “The Ottoman Empire is reduced to Algiers, whose name was
indifferently used for the city and the State itself, synonymous with Muslim
piracy and enslavement to the Turks, causing fear and loathing in Europe.”
(2015, para. 5) The statement bears its veracity, but an amount of inaccuracy
nevertheless. The claim which has it that ‘Algiers’ has lived on piracy finds
its satisfaction, an initiative on the part of the Ottomans to counter a financial
crisis befalling one of its most important Mediterranean provinces which has
been, for them, fair game. Piracy was then indeed resorted to in the
Mediterranean basin on the ground that “the increase in population was not
accompanied by comparable growth in agriculture” (Goldstone, qtd. in
Shuval 2002, 91). This was a maneuver which then profited to both Muslims
and Christians living in and working willingly for both the state of ‘Algiers’
and the Ottoman Empire as ‘janissaries’, earning salaries for their military
service. But the religious dimension of Kantarbaeva-Bill’s claim has been
immediately dismissed after its mention. Categorizing piracy to the Muslim
compartment is in itself a claim incautiously staked, for, as Donald Quataert
assiduously remarks, the “Ottoman enterprise was not a religious state in the
making but rather a pragmatic, dynastic one” (2005, 19). This suggests that
contrary to the Arab conquest which followed Islam to the word, the Ottoman
Empire’s view on Islam has been quite loose and paradoxical, and its “law
was for many years described as not quite Islamic law and/or not quite
European law” (Miller 2008, 286) but “an effective model of a multi-religious
political system” (Quataert, 6). From approximately the 13th c. onwards, after
the Arab conquest and the Crusades, religion and empire existed more obvi-
ously on a paradoxical, if not hypocritical scale. Imperialism then was not
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124 Mohamed Salah Eddine Madiou
mainly about religion-spreading, but about empire-building, concerned with
territorial accretion, though the acquisition of territories has often, and para-
doxically, been taken advantage of to spread religion. In spite of the Ottoman
Empire having often an appeal to Islamic law, which the Ottomans have used
in a rather slack, yet radical and instrumental manner when planning a
conquest, it is, as Quataert puts it, mainly “dynastic” (2005, 25), as “many
Christians as well as Muslims followed the Ottomans not for God but for gold
and glory – for the riches to be gained, the positions and power to be won”
(ibid., 2005, 18).The Ottoman conquest in this way is not as religious as the
Arab conquest – although even the Arabs sought to a certain extent to build a
sort of dynastic state based on religion called Ummah.
Another essential footing of Kantarbaeva-Bill’s essay is her definition of
‘Argier’. Bill defines the ‘Argier’ terminology, saying that “The term ‘Argier’
or ‘Algiers,’ a Western province of the Ottoman Empire, had become synony-
mous with a piratical state living off its raids against Christian shipping.”
(2015, para. 7) Fairness enjoins one to note that the critic’s essay offers a
glow-in-the-dark definition of the term ‘Argier’. Although her definition
seems somehow to devolve into an inchoate observation and a simplistic
reductiveness of the toponym – certainly due to lip service paid to it in the crit-
ical community – it is remarkable how much historical, linguistic and
geographical complexity the critic has shrewdly conveyed in so short a space,
giving an insight into a syntagm generally put into quarantine. Despite the
toponym’s rather arid state of affairs, her essayistic attempt in fact accommo-
dates an intrepid move to engaging a lonely enterprise, a dark arena where
criticism mostly appears to come up short. Yet the definition, with its concise-
ness and religious compartmentalization, is lost somewhere and appears at
last under reserved exterior, mostly when ‘Argier’ and ‘Algiers’ are put
together on an interchangeable scale within a Renaissance purview (16th and
17th centuries), which bears in itself an etymological incongruity and
anachronistic positioning. The name ‘Algiers’ is then a synecdoche for a fact,
used at once for the capital and the state itself, as shall be discussed later on,
and the choice of it is certainly not “indifferent”. The ‘Argier/Argier’ synec-
doche bears historical valence with a potential to give an insight into how the
capital and the state were then called before it has become today’s
‘Algiers/Algeria’. Kantarbaeva-Bill’s definition suffers in effect from the
regrettable confusion emanating from the positioning of ‘Argier’ and
‘Algiers’ on an equal scale, a formulation which is discordant with the
Renaissance usage, and the Christian/Muslim partitioning, a division which
runs counter to ‘Argier’ and the Ottoman Empire being then multicultural and
“heterogeneous zone[s]” (Quataert 2005, 18). And it is precisely in this way
that the modern audience deals with ‘Argier’, often confused with other
appellations, and improperly put together. A more cautious approach is in
order to build a plausible, more specific case study on the usage of ‘Argier’ in
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‘Argier’ through Renaissance Drama 125
16th and 17thc.Europe and its origins, on how it has developed and how it is
geographically, historically and linguistically different from ‘Algiers’ and
other precedents – a delicate issue which demands elaborate treatment.
The Question of ‘Center’: Towards Deconstruction and Reconstruction
Of those very succinct toponymic analyses of the name ‘Argier’ which have
been developed, all show inconsistencies geographical, historical and
linguistic. It is admittedly difficult to trace back the origins of ‘Argier’ when
a burdensome inheritance of editorial epidemic has generously bequeathed
itself through centuries, and the instability characterizing the insecure prac-
tice of translation and its mode of operation goes without saying.
Communicating with the speculative strain of the Derridean staple “decon-
struction”, this study suggests a critique of textual criticism, disturbing the
prerogatives of editorial discourse (pace Frank Kermode, and Russell A.
Frazer and Norman Rabkin), and answering for editorial strabismus evoking
the toponym ‘Argier’ in teleological annotations claiming central, “full pres-
ence” (Derrida 1967, 353), as based on what Derrida calls “a fundamental
immobility and a reassuring certitude” (ibid. 1967, 352), which has
contributed some fraud to the toponym’s “free structure” (a signified) located
beyond the center (a pseudo-signifier although Derrida does not use the
phrase) and whose specificity cannot be captured, as to be seen as the sole
passport to etymologically comprehending the toponym. This essay is an
excuse for editorial practices (also known as textual criticism), translations or
else adaptations and appropriations which have contributed to obscuring the
origins and historical character of ‘Argier’. Having not even received due
weight in its original form, the terminology is immediately subject to the
imposition of emendations, replacements and inaccurate incorporations, a
subversive discourse giving cause for geographic, historical and linguistic
concern. It offers a counter-discursive groundwork to disenchant the
monopoly of the available paradigms of definition of the term ‘Argier’,
perform the task of constructing alternatives predicated on traces of the past
(as found mainly in Renaissance drama and other texts) and spirit easy defin-
itions away in an effort to re-establish a decent theoretical construction. It
attempts to make the definition of the toponym ‘Argier’ more precise, which
rarely and succinctly supplements the very little documentation and the
never-ending flow of editorial revisions. Arguing that the conquests befalling
‘Algeria’ over time have, among other factors, responsibly generated a variety
of name bestowals, this theoretical essay also proposes to make a carefully
developed system of taxonomy to organize the terminology in question in
accordance to how it is used in Renaissance drama (French and English) in an
attempt to fathom its usage in 16th and 17th c. Europe. Such an attempt is
buttressed by evidence of textual type (Renaissance drama) in a comparative
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126 Mohamed Salah Eddine Madiou
approach, vital to reconstructing the past albeit, and admittedly, to a certain
degree only. Studies such as the one undertaken in this theoretical essay
always run the risk of being received as arbitrary, particularly in terms of
corpus selection and methodological organization as to strike the reader as
“why this, why not that?”
This essay does not purport to be comprehensive in its corpus choice as
plays and travelogues, where the toponym ‘Argier’ turns up, are too numerous
to mention; it proceeds rather in a more piecemeal fashion focusing on a
substantial, limited corpus and broaching a topic which has not been much
discussed, yet proves on investigation to be of extreme importance. It takes
for a mission a linguistic, historical and geographical reconstruction, re-
examining the name of ‘Argier’, its history and geography editorially sabo-
taged, in an attempt to fill a gaping hole and theorize its usage through fairly
typical examples from English Renaissance Drama,8 Shakespeare’s The
Tempest and Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great (Part I & II) in this premise,
and French Renaissance drama, with particular attention to Philippe
Quinault’s unedited version of La généreuse ingratitude, to confront the issue
away from editorial contamination and inaccuracies of translations. This is to
observe the usage of the toponym ‘Argier’ in French drama (as it was origi-
nally used by the French dramatist Quinault), focusing afterwards on a near
post-restoration translation of the same text (in English The Noble
Ingratitude)9 undertaken by the English translator Sir William Lower Knight
so as to analyze in a comparative initiative how the word was retrieved by
English translator Lower in his translation to fit an English context. As trans-
lation is, after all, a cultural practice which has also strong ties to history and
society, an analysis of passages from the source text (Quinault’s) and the
translated text (Lower’s) alike can reveal two different usages of the same
name in two different contexts which can give an insight into how the termi-
nology was used in 16th and 17thc. France and England, and how it has devel-
oped to resemble today’s ‘Algiers’. Chronologically, this essay includes
Renaissance drama pieces where the toponym is broached most often. This
corpus has been chosen due to the range of diversity acting on behalf of
different locations and different times in two different languages. While this
theoretical argument rests mainly in the 16th and 17th centuries, it will, should
the occasion arise, take into account the becoming of the toponym in the 18th
and 19th centuries in a comparative procedure. This study indeed sees itself
interpolated in complex ways by passages from 19 c. Thomas Campbell’s
Letters from Algiers (1885), and 20thc. Jamal Mahjoub’s The Carrier (1998)
and the film adaptation of The Tempest (2010) to analyze how these works use
the toponym ‘Argier’.
The tenor of historical, geographical and linguistic reconstruction
through literature lies pertinently in Edward Said’s essayistic troika of
“History, Literature and Geography” (2000). Said introduces the concept of
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‘Argier’ through Renaissance Drama 127
“correspondence”, an “amateurish” and interdisciplinary maneuver (as
opposed to his idea of professionalism), being a collaboration and a
rapprochement between disciplines (literature with history, geography and
linguistics in this case study) and a “congruence, continuity, and reconcilia-
tion between different areas of experience” (Said 2000, 458).The archival
energy of ‘Argier’, and paradoxically its missing past, make it mandatory to
study the term first through its manifestation in literature as an attempt to
comprehend its 16th and 17thc.historical and ideological implications, and
restore the linguistic and geographic context wherein it has been used, a philo-
logical, yet also historical mode of scavenging efficient for past retrieval. This
perspective Said calls “historicist philology” being,
“[M]uch more than studying the derivation of words – [and] is the
discipline of uncovering beneath the surface of words the life of a
society that is embedded there by the great writer’s art. You cannot
perform that act without somehow intuiting, through the use of the
historical imagination, what that life might have been like” (2000,
456). (italics in the original)
Said argues for an investment in the past through literature irrecusably
attached to history which is “transmuted into a highly idiosyncratic, irre-
ducibly concrete structure of sentences, periods, parataxes” (Said 2000, 456)
and even words, as this case study is testimony to, in view of comprehending
“historical reality”. However, the study of “the life of a society” (history)
through “the great writer’s art” (literature) should be accompanied by a
“historical imagination” (theorization) as a way of bridging a gap, a tripartite
alliance forming mainly the combination upon which this premise is mainly
grounded, but which does not exclude resorting to other disciplines to under-
take the travail of reconstructing missing origins, as literature – or any other
form of archive – proves insufficient on its own for so tenacious a loss as that
of the past. In a slightly different line, philosophic historian Foucault believes
the historian incorporates imagination in the historical approach itself, saying,
“The tools that enable historians to carry out [a] work of analysis are partly
inherited and partly of their own making” (1969, 3), meaning imagination
resides at the heart of history itself. History in Foucault’s logic does not
simply bequeath archives; it “works on [them] from within and […]
develop[s] [them]” (ibid. 1969, 7). Geography is of no less importance in
Said’s theorization of “historical imagination”, which he, in passing, draws on
Antonio Gramsci, “whose relationship between history and culture is medi-
ated by and intervened in by a very powerful geographical sense” (Said 2000,
458) (italics in the original). Gramsci’s theoretical elaboration on geography
as a generator of history is contributory to Said’s conclusion that “[h]istory
therefore derives from a discontinuous geography” (ibid. 2000, 466). Said is
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128 Mohamed Salah Eddine Madiou
however cautious to stress the transformation of a past geography, and its
existence under another form before its being reconfigured into another
geographic context through various historical experiences, a past geography
to be taken into consideration when comparing it with its present form.
Transformations in all of their manifestations thus “make it nearly impossible
to attempt reconciliations between history and literature without taking
account of the new and complex varieties of historical experiences now avail-
able to us all in the post-Eurocentric world” (Said 2000, 470). This thereby
makes geography in fact a generator of history and a new history, in the
process, a generator of a new geography in a cyclic overlap.
The study of place names (toponymy) with their geographical and histor-
ical ambitions, and with account of both their past and present forms
combined, are essential to studying and comprehending the spatial-temporal
and linguistic contexts where/when names have been used, and this is the
main focus of linguist André Basset in “La langue berbère dans les Territoires
du Sud: La Répartition, les Etudes, Remarques”. “The infinity of traces” – a
phrase first deployed by Gramsci in The Prison Notebooks prior to being
taken back and commented upon by Said in Orientalism and The Question of
Palestine – are forms of historical archives appealing to archaeological reha-
bilitation in an effort to create and “compile” an “inventory” (Gramsci qtd. in
Orientalism1978, 25). This is a reconstruction in itself only operative by
means of “consciousness” (qtd. in ibid. 1978, 25) and “historical imagina-
tion”, as suggested by Said earlier. Basset defines toponymy as a repository
of, and a form of “infinity of traces”, saying : “Ceci nous prouve, et c’est un
des merites de la toponymie, qui toujours garde sur place des traces des
formes anciennes du parler ou maintient des éléments de parlers ou de langues
anterieurs” (emphasis added).10 What goes awry in Basset’s definition is the
obdurate link he makes to linguistics in general and dialects in particular.
While he gives his “traces of ancient forms” a linguistic dimension, they are
in reality not to be restricted to linguistics only, but extended to include
history and geography as well. Toponymy is itself an interdisciplinary study
of an “infinity of traces” respective of history, geography and linguistics alike.
“Historical imagination” and “critical consciousness” are in this way key
strategies to mending “historical reality” – or the “infinity of traces” to use
Gramsci’s phrase once again – for the sake of reconstructing and creating an
“inventory”, as making correspondence solely between literature and history
is not a full measure practice, but part of the process of reconstruction left half
way if not “mediated by critical consciousness [criticism]” (Said 2000,457),
and imagination (interpretation) being “the missing middle term[s] between
history and literature” (Ibid 2000, 457). The interdisciplinary perspectivism
adopted in the elaboration of this theoretical argument is a correspondence
between literature, linguistics, history and geography (and other
disciplines)in tandem with “historical imagination” (theorization), with a
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‘Argier’ through Renaissance Drama 129
view to comprehending its origins and theorizing the linguistic usage of the
name ‘Argier’ in 16th and 17thc. Europe, and analyzing how it has developed
to resemble today’s appellations (Argel, Alger, Algiers).
Reading and Imagining the History of ‘Argier’
The Legend that is Algiers awaits. Its strange and tenacious roots
tangle in the imagination. It is like a mysterious, unexplored body
to be unraveled layer after layer by the hands of an experienced
lover (Mahjoub 1998, 1). (emphasis added)

On parle des Algériens, mais on les connaît aussi peu que les
nations les plus éloignées de notre continent (One speaks of
Algerians, but they are as little known as the most distant nations
from our continents) (De Tassy Laugier1725) [trans. by the
author].
Everything about the past is safeguarded in tangible traces, artifacts and
objects of historical significance calling for archaeological digging for the
sake of understanding, just as everything about geography is in maps
preserving ancient geographic representations. Literature likewise is a repos-
itory of history, a means to exploring the past and studying its ragged edges,
and also furnishing a bit of history that can flesh out the bare bones of loss, in
this case study ‘Argier’ and its “mysterious, unexplored” origins whose
“strange and tenacious roots”, to borrow geologist Jamal Mahjoub’s words,
“tangle in the imagination”. Literature in general, and Renaissance drama in
particular, as traces from the past, report on the state of affairs of the toponym
at issue, and contribute to archaeologically scavenging its relatively unknown
history and approximately retrieving its origins, since one cannot but inhabit
the time span in question through reconstructive imagination. The coverage
of millennia of history cannot indeed unfurl in few pages, and this paper does
not in any way pretend to an epoch-making piling nor does it posit an allevi-
ation of a complexity. One needs indeed to complicate their reading of the
past, and engage in an archaeological analysis which goes beyond simple
commemoration to reach imagination and meaning-making, with a view to
ransoming the obdurate voids left by history. And the voids etymology posits
are no less obdurate. The etymology of words is concerned with origins enti-
tled as “divine” (xiii) and characterized by “passivity” (1975, 32) by Said in
Beginnings: Intention and Method (1975), and, like the origins of language
itself, “can only be imagined” (ibid. 1975, 43). This calls forth Derrida’s
philosophical argument that “in the absence of a center or origin, everything
becomes discourse” (1967, 354) which the uncertainty and infinity of “struc-
ture” allows ad infinitum. And its semblance in the forms of epistemological
The Arab World Geographer / Le Géographe du monde arabe Vol 22, no 1-2 (2019)