Brahim Boushaki

Imam Brahim Boushaki died during the year 1997 in the family home of his relatives in the commune of Kouba in the Algérois at the age of 85.

With the accentuation of the terrorist threats of death which fell on him in Thénia, he, who had assumed all the prayers of Salat Fadjr until Salat Isha, Imam Brahim had to leave the city of Thenia and go into exile in the heights of Kouba in the city of Algiers in April 1993.

He was replaced in the mosque of Thénia by Imam Omar Arar, a native of the village Soumâa, in a climate of terror and recurring assassinations, and he was fatally murdered in front of his home on 13 October 1993 after Salat Icha.

His function as inspector of religious affairs helped him in his mission to build mosques throughout the new Boumerdès Province created in 1984, and this is how he was at the origin of the construction of the first mosque of the administrative city of Boumerdès, which was then baptized Jabir ibn Hayyan Mosque.

Before the end of 1982, the area of the mosque was tripled and a first floor was built, as well as an ablution room in the basement, and the place of prayer was handed over to Muslim believers and practitioners.

After the death of Ahmed Saad Chaouch in 1978, who had been Imam Khatib of the Al Fath Mosque in Thénia since 1962, Sheikh Brahim Boushaki replaced him in this religious post when he was 66 years old.

In the meantime, Imam Brahim became a religious inspector affiliated with the Ministry of Religious Affairs in 1976 and his mission was to raise the professional and ethical level of Imams working in the Algérois region.

After Algeria's independence in 1962, Imam Brahim Boushaki was rehabilitated in his religious functions in the Safir mosque along with the other Imams who had survived imprisonment and torture during the Algerian revolution which lasted almost eight years since 1954.

During the two years preceding the great battle of Algiers in 1957, Imam Brahim Boushaki participated in the propaganda to support popular activism in Algiers in the company of two Imams who were close to him, Mohamed Salah Seddik [ar] and Mohamed Kettou [ar].

But after the eight-day strike in 1957, the French response was very violent and the imams of Algiers mosques were imprisoned in the Villa Susini and in other torture centers.

When Brahim was Hezzab in this mosque, his nephews Yahia Boushaki, Boualem Boushaki and Bouzid Boushaki periodically visited him to inquire about his situation and his needs, and they were then integrated into the revolutionary independentist networks before the outbreak of the uprising of 1 November 1954.

This is how Imam Brahim Boushaki was recruited in 1947 as Hezzab in the Safir Mosque within the Casbah of Algiers under the authority of the then Maliki mufti Mohamed Baba Ameur [ar].

When Brahim obtained all the didactic skills to fully assume his obligations as Imam, he joined his father Ali who had then been appointed mufti in the Al-Fath mosque which was erected in the center of the city of Thénia in 1926.

Brahim Boushaki (Arabic: إبراهيم بن علي بوسحاقي Ibrahim ibn Ali al-Boushaki) (1912 CE/1330 AH – 1997 CE/1418 AH), was an Algerian Scholar, Imam and Sufi Sheikh. He was born in the village of Soumâa near the town of Thénia 53 km east of Algiers. He was raised in a very spiritual environment within Zawiyet Sidi Boushaki with high Islamic values and ethics. He had great interpersonal skills and devoted his entire life in service of Islam and Algeria according to the Algerian Islamic reference.

Brahim Boushaki was born in 1912 in the historic village of Soumâa perched at the top of the Col des Beni Aïcha in Lower Kabylia.

Indeed, the Algerian soldiers who came back alive from the Great War asked to have access to public service employment positions and to be able to have Muslim places of worship (Ibadah) built in the French colonies erected after 1871, especially in Lower Kabylia.

His paternal uncle Mohamed Seghir Boushaki (1869-1959), who had been elected in the meantime as a municipal councilor to represent the dozens of villages of the Col des Beni Aïcha in administrative institutions, worked for the introduction of his scholar nephew, Brahim in the large mosques of the city from Algiers.

His father, Ali Boushaki (1855-1965) was the muqaddam of the Rahmaniyya Sufi order east of Algiers, and the Sufism of Zawiyet Sidi Boushaki south of Thénia.

His grandfather, Cheikh Mohamed Boushaki (1834-1887) was one of the leaders of the Mokrani Revolt in 1871 with the marabout Cheikh Boumerdassi of Zawiyet Sidi Boumerdassi and the Cheikh Cherifi of Zawiyet Sidi Amar Cherif as well as the other zawiyas of Kabylia under the leadership of Cheikh Mokrani.

His great-grandfather Cheikh Ali Boushaki (1795-1846) was also one of the resistance fighters against the French conquest of Algeria during his campaign against Kabylia which began in 1837, and he was an ally of Cheikh Mohamed ben Zamoum as well as of Emir Abdelkader in the region of the Khachna massif.