Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri

Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri (also known by the French rendering Emir Abdelkader) was an Algerian scholar, mystic and military leader. He was born in 1808 in a hamlet near Mascara in western Algeria, into a family that led a local branch of the Qadiriyya, a Sufi order (a brotherhood of Islamic mysticism). As a young man he studied at his father's zawiya (a Sufi lodge and school) and travelled east, performing the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina and passing, by most accounts, through Damascus and Baghdad.

After France invaded Algeria, tribal leaders proclaimed him their commander in 1832. For roughly fifteen years he organised a state and resistance across the interior, negotiating the Treaty of Tafna with France in 1837 before fighting resumed. He surrendered in 1847 and was interned in France, then released by Napoleon III in 1852.

Settling in the Ottoman Empire, he lived briefly in Bursa and from 1855 in Damascus, near the tomb of the influential mystic Ibn Arabi. There he taught a circle of disciples and wrote Kitab al-Mawaqif, a Sufi commentary steeped in Ibn Arabi's thought. During sectarian violence in Damascus in July 1860, he is widely reported to have sheltered large numbers of Christians, an act that brought him international honours. He died in Damascus in 1883; his remains were moved to Algeria in 1965.