When France invaded Algeria in 1830, Paris expected a quick conquest. Instead, a 24-year-old Islamic scholar with no military training held one of Europe's most powerful armies at bay for 15 years. Then, in exile, Emir Abdelkader did something even more surprising: he walked into a massacre and saved the lives of thousands of Christians. France, the country he had fought for a decade and a half, gave him its highest honour.
A scholar handed a war
Abdelkader was born in 1808 near Mascara, in western Algeria, into a family of religious scholars. He studied the Quran, travelled to Mecca, and was preparing for a life of teaching when France seized Algiers in July 1830. Two years later, the tribes of the Oran region gathered and chose the young scholar to lead their resistance. He refused the grander title of sultan and took the simpler title of emir instead.
He was no soldier, but he learned fast. He built an army, a treasury and a working state, with taxes, courts and workshops that made his own rifles and gunpowder. In 1837 France signed the Treaty of Tafna, recognising his rule over much of western Algeria. For a time, it looked as if Algeria might keep its independence after all.
Fifteen years against an empire
When France broke the treaty in 1839, the war resumed, harder than before. General Bugeaud led a scorched-earth campaign, burning crops and villages to starve the resistance out. Abdelkader fought on, moving his forces across the mountains and deserts of the west, but by 1847 he was outnumbered and out of supplies. On 21 December 1847 he surrendered, on a French promise that he would be allowed to live in the East.
France broke that promise too. Abdelkader spent nearly five years as a prisoner, first at Toulon and Pau, then at the chateau of Amboise, until Napoleon III freed him in October 1852. Even his enemies respected him. During the war he had treated French prisoners with a care that shocked his captors, once releasing 94 of them unharmed and escorting them back to their own lines.
Damascus, July 1860
Abdelkader settled in Damascus in 1855, where he taught at the Great Mosque and wrote his great work of theology. Five years later, sectarian war in Mount Lebanon spilled into the city. On 9 July 1860, mobs attacked the Christian quarter, killing thousands and burning churches and homes.
Abdelkader rushed into the quarter with his sons, gathered Christians and brought them to his house. When his home overflowed, he paid a reward for every Christian brought safely to him and had his Algerian guards escort groups of refugees to the citadel. He is credited with saving around 12,000 lives. Estimates range from 10,000 to 15,000, including the entire European diplomatic corps.
The enemy France could not hate
For saving the Christians of Damascus, France gave Abdelkader the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour and a pension. President Abraham Lincoln sent him a letter of thanks and a pair of inlaid pistols. An American town, Elkader in Iowa, had been named after him in 1846, while he was still at war with France.
Abdelkader died in Damascus on 26 May 1883. Algerians call him the founder of the modern Algerian nation. But his legacy reaches further than one country. He proved that a man can fight an empire to a standstill and still refuse to hate, and that the same faith that made him take up arms also made him risk his own life for people of another faith. That is a kind of victory no army can win.
Sources: Emir Abdelkader, Wikipedia; Abd-el-Kader, 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica; How Algerians Resisted French Colonisers, Africa Rebirth.
