Pashas and Saints

Constantine to Annaba, Algeria

Constantine is a conservative city – almost all the women were wearing headscarves of one sort or another in contrast to other cities, and as I strolled the town one Friday evening I saw only two other women. It is during such moments that one is reminded of just how relentlessly male the public face of much of the Middle East is, in case you had forgotten. My night ended with the first call to prayer of the day at 0250 – the mosque was so close to my windows which had been flung open to catch the slightest breath of wind, that I could hear the microphone being switched on and off.

Bridge over the stunning Gorges du Rhumel

The city owes its name to the Emperor Constantine who founded it in 313AD. but its history goes back more than 2500 years. A Numidian capital under Massinissa in the 2^nd century BC, it became Sirta under the Romans and thereafter subject to the same host of invaders as the rest of the country; Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs, Spanish, Turks, French. Little survives of its illustrious past today, but the ongoing renovation of the Palais Ahmed Bey will change this.

Algiers

In this post: The Casbah :: UNESCO World Heritage site, Getting robbed, then getting saved in the Casbah! Ibn Battuta wrote next to nothing about Algiers:

On reaching the town of al-Jazair (Algiers) we camped outside it for some days, until the shaikh Abu Abdullah and the son of the qadi arrived, when we went together through the Mitija to the mountain of the Oaks…..

The End. His dismissal of this beautiful city of approximately 5 million people, would be surprising were it not for the fact that in the 14th century, there was no ‘Algeria’; there were sultanates and regional power centers in what is today Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia (the Maghreb), and Algiers itself was rather unimportant. It came into its own when it came under the control of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century, and while Algiers still has several mosques and large courtyard houses typical of that period as well as a casbah like no other, it is the city built by the French that makes it the impressive capital city that exists today. Algiers sits on a magnificent Mediterranean bay ringed by hills and in the 132 years of French rule from 1830-1962, they built a showcase city of broad boulevards flanked by imposing, Beaux-Arts arcaded buildings, and brilliant white apartment buildings with blue-shutters and iron-railed balconies. THE CASBAH :: UNESCO World Heritage site. But back to the Casbah. It would not have been built when Ibn Battuta visited although if he did go inside the city gates he would have found a couple of mosques including the 12th century Sidi Ramdan, currently under renovation, and the 11th century Great Mosque where he would have prayed. Casbah means ‘fortified place’, and when the Ottomans built it, they used the natural defensive capability of the hills to create a labyrinthine world of houses one seemingly on top of the other. Narrow alleys and steps separated the levels. It is this aspect that makes it so unusual – the Casbahs of Tunisia and Morocco are on flat ground. At the top of the Casbah is the citadel or palace of the dey, also under renovation. The audience room here became the center of a political storm called the “coup d’eventail” in 1827 when the dey slapped the French Consul with his fan during an official visit. It was a costly mistake as it set the stage for the French invasion of the country three years later. This picture shows how the Casbah needs help. This is an old courtyard house which has completely collapsed. It is one of many.

The Casbah was classified a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1992, but it needs funds to renovate its 50 hectares. From the 1950s on, many houses were abandoned due to their owners being either unwilling or financially unable to renovate them, or in some cases because they were already in too advanced a state of delapidation. But during the1990s when a bloody civil war tore the country apart, many villagers fleeing the countryside took over the abandoned houses where they still remain as squatters. Funds are needed to re-house such families and to assist the owners of the houses to repair and restore the existing structures. An organization called Fondation Casbah has been set up and is working with local specialists such as Mr. Omar Hachi to formulate a working plan to “save the casbah”. (Mr. Hachi mentioned that Algiers experienced an earthquake in 1325 – since this is the year Ibn B. visited, it may explain why he does not mention coming into the city.) If you would like to know more about the work of the Foundation, the casbah, or how you can help in its restoration, contact Abdelhakim Mezianisecretary general of the Foundation who can be reached at zianide2@gmail.com or +213 71 30 19 19. I visited the casbah twice – once by myself, and the other with Noureddine Saudi, whose family had a house in the ‘Basse Casbah’ – the lower part which was razed by the French to build the modern city of Algiers. He went to school here and his grandfather was buried in the little cemetery next to the Mausoleum of Sidi Abderrahman. The mausoleum has become something of a destination for local women who come to ask for ‘favors’ and who promise to do something, or give something up, in return for their wish being granted. It is a tiny place, a little haven of calm with blue and white tiles of calligraphy, Venetian glass chandeliers and bronze and copper Mosque lamps. Outside in the walled cemetery however that calm had been disturbed; many of the tombstones were in pieces, smashed by “integristes”, or Islamic fundamentalists, during the civil war. One of those smashed was that of Noureddine’s grandfather. GETTING ROBBED, THEN GETTING SAVED IN THE CASBAH! On my earlier visit to the Casbah I walked for a couple of hours through tiny alleys where the buildings on either side almost touched in the middle (the result more of earthquake than design). I was looking at doorways when two youths of about 15 or 16 years old brushed past me on some steps then continued down through a covered alley. I was about to continue down the steps when I saw the boys stop and look back in my direction and I hesitated. I only kept going because other people were around. It was of course stupid, and to add insult to injury, I fell for the oldest trick in the book - “what time is it?” As the first boy looked at my watch the other boy who had been around the corner began to rifle through my backpack, which I felt immediately. I swung round and saw him take something black before he fled – I started to run after him, and promptly fell flat on my face in the dirt, not a shred of dignity involved – spread-eagled, face down in the Casbah. I was fouled - tripped from behind. I relate the story because of what happened next. I picked myself up and continued to run after the boy, shrieking in French - “stop him, stop him, he robbed me” – (it sounds better in French). Common sense returning however, I realized I should forget about catching him and had better see what was missing. As people gathered round to commiserate, a young man came towards me holding out what had been taken – my black headscarf to visit mosques, and a flashlight. I felt grateful, stupid and embarrassed in equal measure; grateful that someone had bothered to run after a petty thief – and for a stranger, stupid because it is foolish to walk in disadvantaged areas alone since being a foreigner you are automatically considered to be wealthy (if only they knew…), and embarrassed because I am sure most of them thought I must be completely insane. The only reason I can come up with for my madness since I would not have walked alone in such an area in my own country, is simply that it never occurs to me in the Arab world that I will be robbed, and in over 30 years of traveling, I haven’t been. I also cannot imagine anywhere else where someone would run after a thief and give you your things back ……..

Picture of the Day

The Algerian Flag

Painted on a wall - this is the national flag. I am told that green is the color of Islam and paradise, white is for peace, red is for blood (shed in the fight for independence), and is in the form of the crescent moon, another symbol of Islam and the star denoting the revolution.

The First days

In this post: Tlemcen, Algerian Wine, Miliana, Mascara. June 6, 2006 680 years, 11 months and 3 weeks after Ibn Battuta set out from his hometown of Tangier Morocco, on his epic journey, I have arrived in Algiers, capital city of Algeria to re-create his journey. Since one of the goals of my trip is to re-create the journey as closely to the original as possible, you might well ask why I am not en route to Tangier. And the answer is that the land border between Morocco and Algeria is currently closed. In 1325 Ibn Battuta got as far as the Red Sea before facing his first obstacle, in 2006 I could not have left his homeland without some major route deviation. I console myself with the knowledge that in one sense, Algeria is where it all began – this is where a manuscript of IB’s travels was found in 1839 having languished since it was written in 1354, the discovery and translation of which was to put the “Prince of Travelers” on the map, so to speak. TLEMCEN And so I backtrack to Tlemcen, an Algerian city near the Moroccan border, and the first place mentioned by IB after leaving Tangier.

I then came to the city of Tilimsan (Tlemcen)...........and after a stay of three nights in Tilimsan to procure what I needed I left.....

He wrote nothing about the town itself although it was then of considerable importance having been a capital city under the Almoravid dynasty in the 11th century. All that remains of a 12th century complex built in Tlemcen. Ibn Battuta may well have stayed here. The drive to Tlemcen induces nostalgia and not a little melancholy at the sight of shuttered churches, abandoned wineries, tumbledown French provincial architecture; townhouses, farmhouses and estates as well as tree-lined streets and country roads – not to mention undulating fields with endless rows of mature vines. This scene which is replayed over and over throughout northern Algeria, could have been uprooted and transplanted whole from some French country town, and in its ochre-colored timelessness it is at once obvious that there was no thought that one day the owners would be forced to leave it all behind. But there are other images; white domed marabouts (Islamic ‘saints’ or holy men, a rich tradition in North Africa), huge stork’s nests perched precariously atop minarets, electricity pylons, and chimneys, almond and olive groves and orchards of peach, apple and pear, fields of chick peas, potatoes and beans, and straw-hatted, shepherds with flocks of shorn sheep, while in the towns and villages old men banter lazily in the shade of a plane tree or in a sidewalk café. There is a timelessness here too – one that is much older than the exodus of the French in the wake of Algerian Independence in 1962. Over the years, Tlemcen absorbed waves of immigrants, invaders and conquerors; Andalusian Muslims and Jews forced to leave Spain after the ‘Reconquista’ in 1492, the Spanish and Turkish in the early and mid 16th century respectively, and finally the French in 1830. (Led by the charismatic national hero, Emir Abdelkader, Tlemcen resisted French colonial rule until 1842.) Such an intermingling of cultures has given the city a rich history in architecture, art and music, and Tlemcen still retains a gracious quality due to a harmony of architecture, public squares, and streets lined on both sides with shade-giving plane and maple trees. (Not to mention a goodly number of fair and red headed denizens with startling blue and green eyes.) Ibn Battuta may not have said a word about the town but he would most certainly have prayed at the 12th century Grand Mosque in the town square, and so I went off to have a look. Unlike neighboring Morocco and Tunisia, non-Muslims may generally enter Mosques in Algeria, mornings only and outside the hours of prayer. This one was no exception and, loaned the ubiquitous all-enveloping cloak at the door, I went inside. Light flowed in from an open courtyard and colored glass windows, and here and there leaning against the wide white pillars on woven Persian style rugs, were dotted small groups of men of all ages who sat listening to an Islamic teacher, some sat alone deep in thought, while others prayed individually. The atmosphere was tranquil yet there was a sense of energy and purpose in the quiet discussions which were taking place around the hall. I think old Ibn Battuta would have approved. Being a man of some piety, he would also have visited the tomb of Sidi Boumedienne, a Sufi saint born in Seville in Spain in 1126. The Mosque, which has impressively enormous cedar doors which are said to have arrived spontaneously from Spain (!), was not built until 1328 - 3 years too late for Ibn B - but the tomb itself was built at the end of the 12th century. This lovely complex in the hills above Tlemcen, is the site of pilgrimage to the present day with little yellow taxis discharging carloads of pilgrims all day long. It has recently undergone renovation in the wake of insurgent attacks in the 1990s, and as Ibn B. would say, “we shall speak more of this later…..” ALGERIAN WINE As an aside - I am fairly certain Ibn B would not have sampled - Tlemcen has some very good wines – Algerians have taken over the wine business and are producing some respectable wines including the Coteaux de Tlemcen – a red wine served lightly chilled. It is however not easy to find local restaurants which serve wine or beer but Samir at the White Rose Restaurant does an excellent grilled lamb chop and serves delicious mint tea with cheerful banter. MASCARA En route to Algiers I stop at Mascara, also an important wine center - so important that nobody knows where the wineries are. Eventually a policeman (Algerian traffic policemen and women are unfailingly polite and always helpful) gives us directions and although not perfect they are enough to set us on the right path and so it is that I meet with Cherif Kaddour from ONCV Mascara who takes me through the cave and their wine making process as well as a quick tour of their vineyards. At the height of wine production in Algeria, there were some 200 ‘caves’ in Mascara, there are now 5. It is not easy being a winemaker in Algeria; it is a Muslim country and even though it is not ‘dry’ and restaurants do serve wine, it is not yet something which is freely publicized or marketed. MILIANA I continue towards Miliana the next town mentioned by Ibn B again only in passing - mainly to mention that one of his traveling companions died and his son buried him there..... It is however a charming village which sits on a hill dominating the surrounding countryside overlooking fields of olives, wheat, vines and orchards. The fruits of this abundance are sold by the side of the road and even along the autoroutes; freshly baked bread, snails, figs, peaches and plums, bags of potatoes and strings of onions. When I thought of Algeria I am not now sure what I expected, but it was not this. It remains an agricultural country and the countryside is remarkably beautiful for it. This evening I am staying in the home of an Algerian family who live in a country town outside of Algiers in a modern three-storey house. The couple has 13 year old twins and a son who as he is soon to be married will live on one entire floor with his new bride. Marriages though not arranged nowadays are still a big affair. The wedding usually takes place over three days and nine changes of dress are required for the bride (financial situation permitting) including the traditional Western white gown. Affluent families invite upwards of 150-200 guests and rent a hall or house for the occasion. Nowadays the event will usually be catered but years ago all the women in the family did all the cooking. I got this information because this family had married two daughters and I got to see the wedding album! Incidentally the bridegroom pays for it all. Tomorrow, Roman Algeria in the form of Tipaza and Cherchell. Ibn B never mentioned any pre-Islamic sites except the pyramids which he described as 'cones' suggesting he did not see them himself, although he would have come across many others on his journey. I am making a detour to see what are for me the last of the Roman ruins in Africa.

Algeria Map