Visages de l'Islam (1946) is Haïdar Bammate's classic survey of Islamic civilisation — a sweeping, sympathetic portrait of Islam's spiritual, intellectual and artistic contribution to humanity, written for a Western readership by a Caucasian statesman in exile. This page explains what the book is, who its author was, and where you can read it online in French and English.
The full text can be read online: French original · English translation.
What is Visages de l'Islam?
Visages de l'Islam ("Faces of Islam") is a synthetic survey and defence of Islamic civilisation, first published by Librairie Payot in Lausanne in 1946. Its author, Haïdar Bammate, set out — in his own words — "to present to the Western general public a broad overview of civilisation in Islam." Written during and just after the Second World War, the book treats Islam not as the property of any one people but as a single, universal civilisation enriched by Arab, Persian, Turkish, African and Asian contributions, and bound to the West by a shared Mediterranean and spiritual heritage.
The book moves from an overview of the Muslim world and a concise exposition of Islamic teaching, through the spread of Islam and the rise, apogee and decline of Muslim civilisation, to the transmission of its science and philosophy to medieval Europe and, finally, to the modern movement of renewal. It is a work of cultural advocacy as much as history: Bammate wanted Western readers to recognise Islam as a living partner in world culture rather than an exotic "other."
Contemporary critics received it warmly. Edmond Delage reviewed it favourably in the Revue de Défense Nationale in November 1946; the academician Émile Henriot, writing in Le Monde, called its appeal to spiritual community "truly stirring." The work was reviewed again on the appearance of the second edition in the orientalist journal Die Welt des Islams (1959).
Read Visages de l'Islam online
The complete text is available free on Tilim, transcribed from the Payot edition:
- French (original language): Read Visages de l'Islam
- English translation: Read Faces of Islam
The English translation was prepared by Arslan Ibragimov for Tilim (2026). © Arslan Ibragimov — all rights reserved.
Who was Haïdar Bammate?
Haïdar Bammate (also spelled Gaïdar or Heïdar Bammate; Russian Гайдар Бамматов) was a Kumyk statesman, diplomat and writer, born in 1889/1890 in the Temir-Khan-Shura district of Dagestan (the village of Kafyr-Kumukh), then part of the Russian Empire, and died on 31 March 1965 in Paris, where he is buried in the Muslim cemetery of Bobigny.
He came from the Kumyk noble Bammatov family; his father, Najmutdin Bammatov, was an officer in the Russian Imperial Army. Bammate studied at the Stavropol classical gymnasium and entered the Law Faculty of St Petersburg University in 1907, mastering several European languages, French among them. Before the Revolution he served as an official in the chancellery of the Caucasus Viceroy in Tiflis.
In 1918 he became Foreign Minister of the Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus (the Union of Mountaineers of the North Caucasus and Dagestan), under Prime Minister Abdul-Madjid "Tapa" Tchermoeff — whose niece, Zeynab Tchermoeff, Bammate married. He took part in the Trebizond and Batumi peace conferences and signed the republic's declaration of independence of 11 May 1918. After the Bolshevik conquest, he represented the North Caucasus at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, sending memoranda to the Entente powers; his lobbying prompted Senator Anatole de Monzie to raise the question of North Caucasian recognition in the French Senate in February 1920.
Settling permanently in Paris in 1921, Bammate became a central figure of the Caucasian emigration. He represented the North Caucasus in the Promethean movement, the inter-war network of émigrés from the non-Russian peoples of the Soviet Union — the inaugural issue of its journal Le Prométhée (1926) is said to have been assembled in his Paris apartment. From January 1934 he founded and directed the émigré review Kavkaz / Le Caucase, "organ of independent national thought," which at its height appeared in as many as seven languages from a single Paris address. He also signed some of his French writings under the pen name Georges Rivoire.
Bammate's was a remarkable family. One son, Najm oud-Dine Bammate (1922–1985), became a noted Franco-Afghan islamologist and a figure in UNESCO's "Orient–Occident" dialogue; another, Temour Bammate, became a French aeronautical engineer who worked on the Airbus. Bammate's personal archive — some 3,400 documents and 1,600 printed items — was bequeathed to IRCICA in Istanbul and opened to digital access only in 2026, where it now anchors modern scholarship on him, notably the work of historians Georges Mamoulia and Hadji Murad Donogo.
Bammate and the Algerian awakening
In his later years Bammate devoted himself to what he called the cause of Islam and the "dialogue of civilisations," and it was in the Arab world — above all in Algeria — that Visages de l'Islam found one of its most devoted readerships.
According to his son Najm oud-Dine, who prepared the book's posthumous Algerian edition, Visages de l'Islam "circulated clandestinely, and sometimes in the maquis," among young Tunisians, Moroccans and Algerians during the struggle for independence — readers whose colonial schooling had left them more fluent in French than in literary Arabic, and who reached "their own sources" through Bammate's French-language work. The book's pull on that generation is corroborated independently: an obituary of the Algerian islamologist Ali Mérad recalls Visages de l'Islam as the book "that had thrilled francophone Algerian youth." An admiring review is reported to have appeared in the Algiers journal As-Salam as early as 1947.
Bammate's bond with Algeria ran to the end of his life: his very last lines, his son records, were a text on a free and independent Algeria, which was inserted into the Algerian edition. Around the tenth anniversary of his death, students at the University of Algiers are said to have risen and recited the Fatiha in his memory.
It is worth being precise about the nature of this influence. Bammate held no office in the Algerian national movement and belonged to no party or religious association; his impact was that of a book and an idea, carried by readers, not of an organisation. That, in a way, is the more striking tribute — a work of cultural synthesis that helped a colonised generation reclaim pride in its own civilisation.
Bammate and Afghanistan
One of the least-known chapters of Bammate's life is his long connection with Afghanistan. Through ties to the Afghan ruling family — in particular Nadir Khan, the future King Mohammad Nadir Shah, who served as Afghan envoy in Paris in the 1920s — Bammate took Afghan nationality in the mid-1920s, granted, in the words of the Turkish İslâm Ansiklopedisi, "in appreciation of his services to Islam and his statesmanship." On principle, he declined to seek French citizenship, holding his Afghan nationality instead.
During and after the Second World War, Bammate served as Afghanistan's diplomatic representative in Switzerland, based in Bern and Lausanne — a post the historian Georges Mamoulia dates to January 1943 and which Bammate held into the 1950s. It was a singular trajectory: a Dagestani émigré who had once spoken for the North Caucasus at Versailles ended his public career representing a Central Asian kingdom in the heart of Europe.
Editions and translations
- First edition: Librairie Payot, Lausanne, 1946.
- Second edition: Payot, Lausanne, 1958 — revised and somewhat condensed for a wider readership, with a new preface by the author.
- Arabic translation: Majālī al-Islām (مجالي الإسلام), translated by the celebrated Palestinian translator Adel Zaaiter, Cairo, 1956.
- Algerian edition: published posthumously in Algeria, prepared by the author's son Najm oud-Dine Bammate, who added a foreword and incorporated corrections Bammate had drafted but never saw in print.
- Modern reprint: Éditions Al Qalam, c. 2011 (ISBN 978-2-909469-63-8).
Among Bammate's other works are Le problème du Caucase (1918), Le Caucase et la Révolution russe (1929), and a later condensation of his ideas, Apport des musulmans à la civilisation (Geneva, 1962), which also appeared in English as Muslim Contribution to Civilization.
Frequently asked questions
Who wrote Visages de l'Islam? Haïdar Bammate (1889/1890–1965), a Kumyk statesman from Dagestan who served as Foreign Minister of the Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus before emigrating to Paris. He sometimes wrote under the pen name Georges Rivoire.
What is Visages de l'Islam about? It is a broad survey and defence of Islamic civilisation — its faith, history, science, art and contribution to the West — written for a general Western readership and first published in 1946.
When was it published? The first edition appeared in Lausanne (Payot) in 1946, followed by a revised second edition in 1958, an Arabic translation in 1956, a posthumous Algerian edition, and a modern reprint by Al Qalam around 2011.
In what languages can I read it? The original is in French. On Tilim you can read both the French original and a new English translation free of charge.
Why does the book matter today? It is an early and influential attempt to present Islam to the West as a single, living world civilisation, and it played a quiet role in the cultural awakening of francophone North Africa during the era of independence.
Where to read Visages de l'Islam
The complete text is available to read in both the original French and the English translation:
References
Scholarship
- Georges Mamoulia, "L'histoire du groupe Caucase (1934–1939)," Cahiers du monde russe — Cairn · OpenEdition
- "BAMMAT, Haydar," TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı) — islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
- Review of Visages de l'Islam (Payot, 2nd ed. 1958), Die Welt des Islams 6/1 (1959), Brill — brill.com
- Edmond Delage, review in Revue de Défense Nationale (November 1946) — defnat.com
- "Promethean movement," Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine — encyclopediaofukraine.com
- "Prometheism: A Polish Covert Action Program," Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) — fpri.org
Primary sources, archives and library records
- Haidar Bammate Archive Collection (digitised 2026) — IRCICA, Istanbul — library.ircica.org
- Haïdar Bammate (1890–1965) — authority record, Bibliothèque nationale de France — data.bnf.fr
- Najm oud-Dine Bammate (1922–1985) — authority record, IdRef (ABES) — idref.fr
- Najm-oud-Dine Bammate — authority record, IDEO Cairo (Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies) — opac.ideo-cairo.org
- Kavkaz = Le Caucase (serial, 1934–) — WorldCat record — worldcat.org
- Haïdar Bammate, Le problème du Caucase (1918) — Online Books Page, University of Pennsylvania — onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu
- Haïdar Bammate, Le Caucase et la Révolution russe (1929) — HathiTrust catalogue — catalog.hathitrust.org
- Majālī al-Islām (Arabic translation, Cairo 1956) — catalogue of the Institut du monde arabe (Altaïr) — altair.imarabe.org