Ahmed Tahar Benguennoun

7 Présentation Ahmed-Amine DELLAI 21 Benguennoun poète populaire de la plaine de Ghriss Ahmed TAHAR

It was while browsing the bibliography that Abdelkader Azza (1905-1967) included at the end of his bilingual anthology dedicated to the poet Mestfa Benbrahim, that we first became aware of the existence of our present work. Benguennoun, a popular poet of the Ghriss plain, is not only cited there as a reference, but is also widely used in the study and frequently appears in the critical apparatus. This proves, if any proof were needed, that Azza had worked from a copy of this manuscript in his possession. Our curiosity having been thus piqued, we never ceased, from that day on, to search for this unpublished memoir in Algeria, but without success. Many years later, it took a scientific stay in Aix-en-Provence in 2005, and research at the CAOM - Centre des Archives d’Outre-Mer – CAOM (Overseas Archives Centre), to discover it, almost by chance, among a collection of documents from the General Government