Commander of the Faithful

GROW OR DIE. Add or subtract. Despite his sense of divine duty, the emir knew his position was inherently unstable. If he were not perceived as getting stronger, the tribes would perceive him as getting weaker. The French obsession with having their sovereignty acknowledged by the emir differed little from the emir’s need to obtain submission from all the tribes over which he claimed sovereignty. Abd el-Kader’s lofty ambitions to reform and unite the tribes made him vulnerable to the petty ambitions and jealousies of lesser men.

Sidi Mohammed el-Tidjani was a respected marabout among tribes throughout the Sahara and beyond, but especially in the south. His influential Tidjani Brotherhood was centered in a fortified oasis called Ain Mahdi, near Laghouat, on the edge of the Sahara. Tidjani’s submission would establish the emir’s authority over other tribes in the Sahara — tribes generally more enamored with hunting, trading, fighting and poetry than with their religious rectitude.

Troublemakers spread rumors that sheik Tidjani wanted to check the power of the emir and was plotting against him. Others whispered to Tidjani that the emir had eyes on his fabled treasury, a useful reserve for fighting the French or hostile tribes. Still other marabouts wanted the emir to believe that there was widespread unhappiness with Tidjani. A certain Haj Issa (or Haj Jesus), a local marabout in Laghouat, detested Tidjani and offered horses to the emir as a sign of submission, assuring him that he had thousands of men ready to join the emir were he to come south to demand Tidjani’s submission. The emir made Haj Issa his caliph of Laghouat, unaware that Haj Issa was using him to bolster his position in a power struggle against factions sympathetic to Tidjani.

Late spring, 1838, the emir set off from his new capital of Tagdempt in the blazing June heat to aid the dissidents in Laghouat, 180 miles to the south. Haj Issa had led him to believe that his small force of 400 regular cavalry, 2,000 regular infantry and 400 Kougoulis would be augmented by local Arabs unhappy with Tidjani. Fifteen hundred camels carried food and water, cannonballs, disassembled artillery pieces, wives, tents and personal baggage. The women rode in their âatatiches — small tents shaped like chestnut pods mounted on their camels that protected them from the sun as they undulated along on their “ships of the desert,” while grinding corn or sieving flour.

Marching 3000 soldiers for eight days through barren high plateaus into a waterless desert would prove to the tribes that no one who defied the emir’s claim to sovereignty would escape punishment. Neither distance, hunger, heat, thirst nor fatigue was an obstacle to his army, one that had come prepared only for a quick one-month campaign. As he neared Ain Mahdi, Abd el-Kader sent an emissary to sheik Tidjani, demanding his submission.

“Tell your master,” Tidjani replied, “I am neither an enemy nor a rebel. I am ready to recognize and have my inhabitants recognize the authority of the sultan, but that as the head of a religious brotherhood. I do not occupy myself with the things of this world and wish to avoid all contact with princes invested with temporal power. My ancestors have suffered too much from them. My intentions are peaceful, but if the sultan wants to see me, he must knock down my walls and run swords through the chest of my brothers.”

Tidjani had, indeed, bad memories of temporal power. His brother had been imprisoned by Bey Hassan of Oran and an uncle put to death thirty years earlier when he had led a revolt against Turkish misrule.

The emir knew nothing about siege warfare, a form of fighting contrary to the Bedouin style of hit and run. He asked Leon Roches, the newest member of his staff of foreign advisors,13 whether a siege of Ain Mahdi could be successful. Roches was not expert in these matters. He needed to get inside the walls before he could recommend anything. Roches offered to go on a peace mission to negotiate a settlement with Tidjani that would also allow him to assess the defenses of the city.

“That will mean almost certain death,” the emir warned.

“Have you not told me that the hour of death is written in the book and man cannot advance or retard it?”

The emir continued to protest, but he finally gave in to Roches’ fearless insistence. “Omar,” as he was known to the Arabs, would ride one of the emir’s own horses and be guided by one of his most loyal men. As Roches prepared to leave that evening, the emir emerged from his tent. In a loud voice, for all to hear, Abd el-Kader implored God to cover “Omar” with the mantle of His protection.

Who was this “Omar” so dear to the Commander of the Faithful? Six months after Tafna, this twenty-eight-year-old Frenchman had entered the emir’s camp professing to be a convert to Islam. In fact, he was a quixotic, adventurer in pursuit of an imagined true love.

Leon Roches had experimented with the law and commerce in France when, in 1832, he decided instead to seek adventure. He joined his father, who had purchased a farm near Algiers. But Roches soon became bored and depressed, and sensed that the farm was failing. His father offered him the distractions of the local social circuit, but the banality and parochialism of “Algiers society” depressed Roches even more. That is, until one day he was invited to the house of a former minister of Dey Hussein where he met a shy and beautiful fourteen-year-old girl. He was instantly smitten by the young Khadijah, as was she by the swarthy, handsome Frenchman who was the first Christian she had ever met.

Roches couldn’t get her out of his mind. He sought her out at social gatherings, yet they never found an opportune moment to speak openly of their emotions. Roches convinced himself that he had fallen hopelessly in love, a love undoubtedly inflamed by Khadijah’s inaccessibility. Then, Roches fell seriously ill. One is tempted to conjecture lovesickness, but it seems to have been malaria, common among the colonists. He recovered only to learn that Khadijah was no longer circulating in society circles. From a chance conversation at a dinner party, he discovered she had married unwillingly an older man, but she was rumored to be in love with a young Frenchman.

Encouraged by this scanty report, Roches began to study Arabic. He tracked down Khadijah’s former nanny, a Negress named Messaouda who, with the help of a few francs, became Roches’s intermediary for carrying on a clandestine relationship. Khadijah’s suspicious husband, however, moved her to Miliana, the capital of one of the emir’s caliphates in Tittery. The Frenchman’s quest was temporarily stymied.

Roches’s love-inflamed interest in Arabic got him employment as an interpreter in the French army. When the Tafna Treaty was signed, our Gallic young Werther acquired new hope of obtaining the object of his desires. He resigned from the army to put into play a wild scheme to win his true love.

By the fall of 1837, Roches had become fluent in Arabic, had studied the Koran and knew enough about Islamic rituals to pass for a Muslim. The peace would now make it possible, he believed, to present himself as a convert to Islam. He could offer to help the emir build his new Islamic state. Once he gained the emir’s confidence, he would ask him to use his influence to arrange a divorce for his true love, Khadijah.

Armed with his fanciful plan, Roches set off to find the emir, said to be camped near Miliana, along the Chlef River. Along the way, he told the local chieftains he had converted to Islam and wanted to meet the emir.

“He was alone at the end of his tent,” Roches wrote later of their first meeting. “I approached slowly, keeping my eyes lowered, knelt before him and took his hand to kiss as was the custom. It was the first time I made an act of submission to a Muslim and it was repugnant.”

“You are welcome here,” the emir greeted him, “for every good Muslim must rejoice when he sees the numbers of true believers grow. Our holy Prophet has said, ‘It will be more profitable to you at the great Judgment Day to boast of one Christian won for Islam than of one thousand slain in battle.’ God has sent you to us and we must keep you, teach you and love you more than our other brothers.”

Roches, who had adopted the name Omar, offered to the emir gifts of a new Lepage rifled musket and a French-Arabic dictionary.

“We should give presents to you, not you to us, but I appreciate your kindness and accept them. I never accept presents except from those I mean to like.”

Roches approached the emir, but the emir withdrew and kissed the Frenchman on the shoulder, an honor reserved for persons of distinction.

Abd el-Kader’s first concern was furthering the Frenchman’s religious education. “It is not enough to say, ‘I am a Muslim,’” the emir told him after a few days. “You must understand what that means. Do not follow the example of most of the Arabs in my camp. God had chosen me to regenerate them and to rekindle the flame in their stony hearts. They have been governed for centuries by ignorant soldiers who were Muslims in name only, and are used to cringing before cruel and unjust tyrants. But God in his mercy has driven out the tyrants whom our law forbids us to rise against, and has given us these Christians whom our ancestors attacked even in their own lands. God has now brought them here and forced us to make war to defend our homes, our women and children, and above all, our religion…”

The emir had a low opinion of the French. He thought they would be like the crusaders of yesteryear whom he admired — believers known for their bravery, generosity, and strict observance of their religious customs. He had been told that some of the French who had conquered Algiers didn’t believe in God and that they built no churches, did not respect their ministers, didn’t pray, broke their word and betrayed their own allies. “God will abandon them because they have abandoned Him.”

After a few months with the emir, Roches wrote to a friend his impressions:

His physiognomy is fluid and, despite his famous self-control, his face reflects the emotions that are stirring within. When he prays he is an ascetic; when he commands, he is a sovereign; when he talks of war, he is a soldier. When he talks with his friends about matters other than statecraft or religion, he is good humored and open, with an inclination toward self-deprecation. When he talks of his father, it is never without tears in his beautiful eyes.

Roches, now “Omar” to the Arabs, had become a confident of the emir, sharing privileges enjoyed only by Abd el-Kader’s most-trusted servants. Roches often ate with the emir and had the honor of sleeping under his tent in the area provided for his Negro bodyguards — muscular former slaves, well-trained in the martial arts. Abd el-Kader frequently invited Roches to pray with him and used these occasions to further instruct him in the faith.

Roches had been in camp for a short time when the emir set out to do what certain tribes feared when the proposed treaty had been hotly debated at Habra: consolidate his power over the new territory he claimed for his rule. This required showing what was in store for a tribe that had collaborated with the French. The Zouatna were Kougoulis, Turkish half-breeds who had been living in the Djurdjura mountains of Kabylia for 300 hundred years. They had sided with the invader by accepting the caid appointed by the former governor-general, Clauzel. Their mixed origins would allow Abd el-Kader to attack them with less risk of stirring up a fraternal hornet’s nest among other native Berbers in Kabylia.

At first, the caid of the Zouatna offered gifts as a sign of submission, but Abd el-Kader demanded more than gifts for the atonement of their sins. The emir imposed a war tax that exceeded the tribe’s ability to pay, providing the justification he needed to attack.

“The time for leniency is past,” the emir declared to his questioning troops as they prepared to kill fellow Muslims. “The Zouatna allied themselves with the Christians when Arabs were shedding blood in jihad,” he explained to his men. “They refused to pay the taxes prescribed by the Koran.” The day of punishment had come.

Roches later witnessed the fate of eighteen prisoners. Abd el-Kader sat on the ground, eyes down as he rapidly worked his beads, silently pronouncing God’s ninety-nine names. The only sound was the chattering teeth of a shivering old man.

“You have revolted against God’s law,” the emir announced in a leaden voice. “You were taken prisoner with arms in your hands; God’s law condemns you to die.”

“Do not profane the name of God,” cried out one of the prisoners. “You did not consult God’s law when you despoiled and imprisoned our brothers in the west. You did not consult God’s law when, having given yesterday your aman to a handful of Muslims, you today hurl thousands of soldiers against them… Order your executioners to strike. Death is a hundred times preferable to having submitted to you. We shall be awaiting you on that great day when God shall judge the victim and the executioner.”

Some of the emir’s sheiks tried to silence the man. Momentarily, he dominated the assembly with his loud brave voice, erect bearing and fierce eyes. The man berating Abd el-Kader was the French appointed caid of the Zouatna.

The emir looked up at the insolent prisoner with stony, angry eyes. The sheiks led the caid two steps forward and made him kneel. His head fell as his lips were reciting the act of faith. Abd el-Kader’s hand sliced sideways a second and third time. The shivering old man’s turn came. The executioner was about to strike the kneeling figure, when several children broke into the tent. They threw themselves at the emir’s feet. A pretty little girl grabbed Abd el-Kader’s hands and started kissing them.

“In the name of your mother, of your father’s memory, of your children, in the name of God, please forgive my father,” she cried out, clasping his neck.

The pall of horror that hung in the air a moment before, was instantly transformed. Eyes welled with tears that seconds earlier had been filled with bloodlust. The emir’s expression became gentle. He kissed the girl’s forehead and made a sign for the other prisoners to be taken away and to remove the grisly evidence of the executions.

A shaken Roches found out the next day that the rescue of the old man had been organized by the emir’s personal attendant, Ben Fakha, a former slave. He was in charge of the emir’s tent, and been his trusted servant for years. He had given Abd el-Kader some of his first riding lessons as a boy, accompanied him on all his expeditions and was treated as a confidant. Ben Fakha was known to have a rough sense of humor, but a heart of gold. On more than one occasion he had tempered the emir’s strict sense of justice with mercy.

For two years, “Omar” would be both a friend and secretary to the emir, enjoying a relationship shared by no other European in Abd el-Kader’s entourage.

As Roches and his guide approached the north gate on the morning of June 2, 1838, only the jutting towers and high terraces of Ain Mahdi were visible through the lush gardens and palm trees that ringed its thirty-foot-high walls. Inside were 2,000 inhabitants, including deserters from the French army, three Jewish families, various Arab refugees and students attending the zawiya.

A guard hailed him from the rampart. What was his business? He had a letter from his sultan for their marabout. It would be given to their master. Strangers were not permitted within the walls. No, it had to be personally delivered. Roches turned to leave when a voice called out in French.

“Wait, sir. I will get the marabout to let you enter.”

A rope was dropped from the wall. Roches pulled himself up to come face-to-face with a French military engineer who had deserted the emir’s camp. He supposed that the Frenchman had persuaded his new masters that, like himself, Roches had been recruited by Tidjani’s spies and abandoned the emir.

Roches found himself inside a small courtyard surrounded by ribbed, gothic-style arches supporting tiled walls punctuated with small windows protected by intricately wrought iron grills. He could make out the shapes of women behind them, but before he had time to think about their lot, a young boy appeared with a gentle expression.

“Are you Omar, the son of Roches,” he asked.

“Yes, but who are you? Why do you know my name?”

“That doesn’t matter, but listen. The people of the town want my father to take your head. He will find it hard to refuse them, for they think you are a spy. The Negress, Messaouda, recognized you from the window and sent me to save your life. Here, take this rosary. It belongs to my father. He gives it to those to whom he wants to give his aman. May God be with you.”

When the boy disappeared, a dozen Negro guards arrived and roughly grabbed Roches and hustled him to their master’s ornate receiving hall. Roches found a huge man of bronze complexion who looked to be in his forties, seated on a platform covered with cushions. He had a thin beard and was obese, though his smooth face was “not without dignity or distinction.” Sidi Mohammed el-Tidjani looked at Roches with an expression of curiosity and benevolence before turning severe.

“You serve an ungrateful master and a poor servant of God who knows you are devoted enough to go on a death mission for him. You have come to look at the town and examine its walls, but you know the fate of spies. Prepare to die, unless you are willing to leave your master to serve me. In that case, I will reward you with great riches.”

“Matters of life and death are in God’s hands. Neither your threats nor your promises tempt me. You don’t know my lineage if you think me capable of betraying my master. Go ahead and have your men slit the throat of a person who came to you in a spirit of trust and who has in his hands a sign of your aman,” Roches replied, as he raised Tidjani’s rosary above his head for all to see.

“Who gave that to you?”

“I asked your son for it. The poor boy didn’t dare refuse me.”

“God wanted you to have it. You are also a faithful servant. Go tell your master what you have seen here and maybe your report will cause him to reconsider this aggression against me. It has no justification and is bound to fail. Tell him I bear no ill will toward him and I desire only peace and tranquility between God’s creatures.”

Tidjani summoned his chief of the guards to show Roches whatever he wanted to see. He saw twelve-foot-thick and thirty-foot-high walls, ample supplies of food, firewood, ammunition and the five wells that would supply the inhabitants with water. The defenders were few, 800 he estimated, but they seemed tough and determined. After the tour, Tidjani asked the Frenchman if he still believed Abd el-Kader could take his town.

“He will, if it takes him ten years. His will is unshakeable, no matter how great the obstacles. I beg you to surrender and avoid the useless shedding of blood.” Roches started to hand back the rosary. Tidjani told him to keep it.

Roches was touched by the emir’s look of relief when he returned to camp. The rumor had been circulating that “Omar” was dead. Abd el-Kader listened to the Frenchman’s frank assessment of the difficulty of taking the town, then wrote messages to all his caliphs ordering them to send artillery and more supplies. He also sent Sheik Tidjani another ultimatum. But this time, Tidjani’s reply was laced with contempt. “I was a chief when you were still a child. I don’t understand what you seek to accomplish here. Perhaps you are used to dealing with women, but I will show you true lions. You will never set foot in my town.”

Before launching his first attack on the outer wall, Roches heard Abd el-Kader explain to his uncertain, questioning soldiers why they were fighting a fellow Muslim and venerable marabout.

“Every Muslim who revolts against the authority invested in me, who does not accept my stature as sultan in order to repel the invaders from the land of the faithful, by the fact of his rebellion, provides assistance to our enemies, and thus should be considered an enemy of Islam. You who may die fighting those inside these walls will receive the same eternal compensation reserved for dying in combat against infidels.”

Roches was put in charge of mining the walls after two failed attempts to breach them. Abd el-Kader told him to draft the services of a Polish deserter from the Foreign Legion — an artilleryman who went by the name of Hassan. Hassan spoke no French and little Arabic, but Roches discovered they could communicate with the help of their common classical education: Latin. So they tunneled together by speaking the language of Cicero. Roches soon discovered that the townsmen had built counter-mines that became arenas of grim hand-to-hand combat in the Stygian darkness. Informants for Tidjani had revealed the location of the tunnels.

In October more siege equipment arrived. From Morocco came four cannons and from Valée in Algiers, a goodwill gesture of four hundred artillery shells and special fuses, a compass and a theodolite. Ain Mahdi was bombarded for three days without effect. Many of the shells didn’t explode and the defenders, with mock courtesy, threw them back over the walls.

Bad food and exhaustion took its toll on Roches, who had undertaken new, camouflaged mining activity that he had kept secret even from the emir. In late October, Roches stumbled into the emir’s tent with a raging fever and suffering from dysentery. He pleaded for help; otherwise, he was ready to die.

Abd el-Kader first calmed him with schieh, a desert version of absinthe derived from the mugwart family of plants. Roches lay with his head resting against the emir’s knees. He removed “Omar’s” turban and gently massaged his head until he feel asleep. Roches woke up later that night feeling refreshed, only to witness a scene he would never forget.

“The smoking wick of a lamp dimly lit the emir’s tent. Barely three paces from me, the emir was standing with his arms raised over his head. He was gazing upwards. His lips were slightly parted, he seemed to be uttering a prayer, yet they didn’t move. He had reached a state of ecstacy. His spirit was so intent upon reaching heaven that he seemed to be levitating. I had observed his prayers and his mystical élan before, but that night he presented an extraordinarily gripping image of faith. Thus so, must the great saints of Christianity also have prayed.”

Roches wondered afterwards whether he owed his recovery to the magnetic powers of Abd el-Kader’s hands, or to the emir’s prayers. One thing was certain. Throughout the camp, all the Arabs believed Omar’s life was saved thanks to the emir’s intercession with the powers above.

The siege dragged on into November 1938. Valée’s cannonballs had bounced off the thick city walls. Abd el-Kader’s new caliph, Haj Issa, turned out to be a duplicitous nobody. The thousands of horsemen he promised would join the emir’s jihad never materialized, nor did they even protect the supply caravans that came down from Mascara and Oran with much needed supplies.

Roches continued his secret mining project. They dug at a depth of fifteen feet, in order to pass below a moat and to place explosives under Tidjani’s palace. The tunneling had just been completed when a supply caravan arrived at the emir’s camp.

The caravan brought two mediators — the emir’s respected older brother, Mohammed Said, and Mustafa Ben Thami, his stern but scholarly brother-in-law. Both men were disturbed by this battle of marabouts. Abd el-Kader’s prolonged absence was causing trouble at home. His tribal allies were restless and Tidjani’s stubborn resistance was turning him into a hero. The two men had come to counsel the emir in moderation and prudence. Roches requested a meeting with Mohammed Said. He didn’t want to blow up the town either and risk harming his beloved Khadijah, if she were indeed there. The two agreed to work in concert. Roches asked him to be present when he briefed the emir on the progress of the siege.

The next day, Roches told the emir he had important details to explain to him alone. When Abd el-Kader dismissed the functionaries in his tent, leaving only his brother, Roches pretended to hesitate, and looked skeptically at Sidi Mohammed.

“Speak, Omar. My dear older brother represents for me Muhi al-Din, our beloved father. I have nothing to hide from him. He is my master.” Roches explained how his construction of a counter siege rampart for attacking the city was in reality a ruse to divert attention from a new tunnel that was being dug at night in a disguised location amid the earthworks. He talked of the effect it would produce and his plan of assault. The emir’s eyes seemed to light up. “Tomorrow,” he said in his jerky, staccato voice that signaled excitement, “I will order you to set off the charges. The day of victory is near.”

“Remember our father,” Mohammed Said injected gently, “and how he was known for his gentleness and mercy. It is God who sent me to you, to have you listen to the words that our father would say if he were alive. Think, as Muhi al-Din might have: Sidi Mohammed el-Tidjani has been a victim of Turkish tyranny and cruelty; the demons of discord have made him distrustful, and yet perhaps his motives are pure. Think of the blood that will flow if you attack the city. Think about the women and children and old people who will be massacred by your soldiers who will be overcome by their desire for revenge for the deaths of their comrades. And, Omar,” Mohammed Said looked at him intently, “are you really certain of success? And you, my brother, remember that the desert tribes in the south detest your theocratic rectitude and are waiting for the moment to attack your army.”

Sidi Mohammed asked Abd el-Kader to give him several hours to meet with Tidjani to find a solution that would avoid further bloodshed and yet safeguard the dignity of the sultan. “This is my prerogative as head of our ancester’s zawiya. This is my obligation as a Muslim, for God is with the merciful.”

The next day, accompanied by Roches, Sidi Mohammed met Tidjani and his counselors. The two marabouts embraced each other and had a long discussion alone. Mohammed Said then signaled to Roches to come over and confirm to Tidjani the information that a huge explosive charge had been buried beneath his palace and the city walls.

“And you know,” Roches added after describing the device, “Omar, never lies, even to save his life.”

“What he did not tell you,” Sidi Mohammed added, “was that before setting off the mines, he pleaded with the sultan for a chance to find a peaceful solution.” Tidjani’s face dissolved into a mixture consternation and scepticism as he looked hard at the Frenchman before joining his counselors in another room. After a lengthy discussion, one of Tidjani’s servants invited them in. Sidi Mohammed sat next to Tidjani. Roches, left standing, was asked to repeat what he had said earlier. He ended his description of the devices and the damage they would cause, vowing in a loud voice, “I swear before God that I am telling the truth and that my most sincere desire is for peace between my master and yours!”

The council voted unanimously to authorize Tidjani to negotiate a peaceful solution. Several days of discussions with Sidi Mohammed Said and Ben Thami produced a six-point agreement: Tidjani would pay a sum that would compensate for the cost of the siege; Tidjani would evacuate the city within forty days; he was free to take all his personal wealth and belongings without exception; the inhabitants were free to leave with all their weapons and belongings; Abd el-Kader would raise the siege and withdraw twenty-four miles during the forty day period; as guarantee for executing the terms, Tidjani would hand over his son to the emir. After the city had been abandoned, it would be destroyed.

On December 3, 1838, Abd el-Kader reviewed his army and praised his men for their courage and endurance. Omar received the most distinguished decoration of all — the richa, a headdress of seven ostrich plumes first used by the Prophet Mohammed to reward his fighters. But decorations were not uppermost on Roches’s mind.

Three families from Algiers living in Ain Mahdi had asked for safe conduct to Algiers. This was easily obtained with the help of Sidi Mohammed’s influence over the emir. One of the names on the list was Messaouda, Khadijah’s nanny and former co-conspirator with Roches. Suspended between fear and joy, Roches arranged a meeting with her. When Messaouda was escorted into his tent, she fell to her knees sobbing. “She is dead. She is dead!”

Khadijah had been with her husband in Ain Mahdi, where her health had been deteriorating. When she recognized Roches in the courtyard that first day, she had aroused the sympathy of other women in the harem for the Frenchman she was sure would be killed. The mother of Tidjani had sent her grandson to bring Roches the rosary that saved his life. But the shock of joy mixed with the stress of the siege had aggravated her sickness. She died, Messaouda explained, asking that God bestow his forgiveness and blessings upon her beloved “Lioune.” Khadijah’s husband also died at Ain Mahdi. He was the only person during the six-month siege to get hit by a cannonball.