At a glance
Era 11- Dates
- 1808-1883 CE
- Who
- Sufi scholar who led the resistance to the French conquest of Algeria
- Era
- Colonialism & Renewal
ProfileEmir Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri
Abd al-Qadir was born in 1808 near Mascara in western Algeria, the son of a respected shaykh of the Qadiri Sufi order. He was learned in the Quran and law and had made the Hajj as a young man.
After France took Algiers in 1830, the tribes of the west chose him as their emir in the early 1830s. For fifteen years he led the resistance, building a state with its own army, courts and taxes in the interior. In 1847, worn down by a far stronger enemy, he surrendered on the promise of safe passage to the Muslim east. France held him prisoner for five years instead.
He settled at last in Damascus, where he taught and wrote. In 1860, during a riot against the city's Christians, he and his men protected thousands of them. He met Imam Shamil in Makkah, and he died in Damascus in 1883.
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