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Establishment of a court school.
Alfred established a court school for the education of his own children, those of the nobility, and "a good many of lesser birth". There they studied books in both English and Latin and "devoted themselves to writing, to such an extent… they were seen to be devoted and intelligent students of the liberal arts". He recruited scholars from the Continent and from Britain to aid in the revival of Christian learning in Wessex and to provide the king personal instruction. Grimbald and John the Saxon came from Francia; Plegmund (whom Alfred appointed archbishop of Canterbury in 890), Bishop Wærferth of Worcester, Æthelstan, and the royal chaplains Werwulf, from Mercia; and Asser, from Saint David's in southwestern Wales.
Advocacy of education in English.
Alfred's educational ambitions seem to have extended beyond the establishment of a court school. Believing that without Christian wisdom there can be neither prosperity nor success in war, Alfred aimed "to set to learning (as long as they are not useful for some other employment) all the free-born young men now in England who have the means to apply themselves to it". Conscious of the decay of Latin literacy in his realm, Alfred proposed that primary education be taught in English, with those wishing to advance to holy orders to continue their studies in Latin.
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There were few "books of wisdom" written in English. Alfred sought to remedy this through an ambitious court-centred programme of translating into English the books he deemed "most necessary for all men to know". It is unknown when Alfred launched this programme, but it may have been during the 880s when Wessex was enjoying a respite from Viking attacks. Alfred was, until recently, often considered to have been the author of many of the translations, but this is now considered doubtful in almost all cases. Scholars more often refer to translations as "Alfredian", indicating that they probably had something to do with his patronage, but are unlikely to be his own work.
Apart from the lost "Handboc" or "Encheiridio", which seems to have been a commonplace book kept by the king, the earliest work to be translated was the "Dialogues" of Gregory the Great, a book greatly popular in the Middle Ages. The translation was undertaken at Alfred's command by Wærferth, Bishop of Worcester, with the king merely furnishing a preface. Remarkably, Alfred – undoubtedly with the advice and aid of his court scholars – translated four works himself: Gregory the Great's "Pastoral Care", Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy", St. Augustine's "Soliloquies" and the first fifty psalms of the Psalter. Alfred's psalms have credibly been attested as surviving in the Paris Psalter.
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One might add to this list the translation, in Alfred's law code, of excerpts from the Vulgate Book of Exodus. The Old English versions of Orosius's "Histories against the Pagans" and Bede's "Ecclesiastical History of the English People" are no longer accepted by scholars as Alfred's own translations because of lexical and stylistic differences. Nonetheless, the consensus remains that they were part of the Alfredian programme of translation. Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge suggest this also for Bald's "Leechbook" and the anonymous "Old English Martyrology".
The preface of Alfred's translation of Pope Gregory the Great's "Pastoral Care" explained why he thought it necessary to translate works such as this from Latin into English. Although he described his method as translating "sometimes word for word, sometimes sense for sense", the translation keeps very close to the original although, through his choice of language, he blurred throughout the distinction between spiritual and secular authority. Alfred meant the translation to be used, and circulated it to all his bishops. Interest in Alfred's translation of "Pastoral Care" was so enduring that copies were still being made in the 11th century.
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Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" was the most popular philosophical handbook of the Middle Ages. Unlike the translation of the "Pastoral Care", the Alfredian text deals very freely with the original and, though the late Dr. G. Schepss showed that many of the additions to the text are to be traced not to the translator himself but to the glosses and commentaries which he used, still there is much in the work which is distinctive to the translation and has been taken to reflect philosophies of kingship in Alfred's milieu. It is in the Boethius that the oft-quoted sentence occurs: "To speak briefly: I desired to live worthily as long as I lived, and after my life to leave to them that should come after, my memory in good works." The book has come down to us in two manuscripts only. In one of these the writing is prose, in the other a combination of prose and alliterating verse. The latter manuscript was severely damaged in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The last of the Alfredian works is one which bears the name "Blostman" ("Blooms") or "Anthology". The first half is based mainly on the "Soliloquies" of St Augustine of Hippo, the remainder is drawn from various sources. The material has traditionally been thought to contain much that is Alfred's own and highly characteristic of him. The last words of it may be quoted; they form a fitting epitaph for the noblest of English kings. "Therefore, he seems to me a very foolish man, and truly wretched, who will not increase his understanding while he is in the world, and ever wish and long to reach that endless life where all shall be made clear." Alfred appears as a character in the twelfth- or 13th-century poem "The Owl and the Nightingale" where his wisdom and skill with proverbs is praised. "The Proverbs of Alfred", a 13th-century work, contains sayings that are not likely to have originated with Alfred but attest to his posthumous medieval reputation for wisdom.
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The Alfred jewel, discovered in Somerset in 1693, has long been associated with King Alfred because of its Old English inscription AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN ("Alfred ordered me to be made"). The jewel is about long, made of filigreed gold, enclosing a highly polished piece of quartz crystal beneath which is set in a cloisonné enamel plaque with an enamelled image of a man holding floriate sceptres, perhaps personifying Sight or the Wisdom of God.
It was at one time attached to a thin rod or stick based on the hollow socket at its base. The jewel certainly dates from Alfred's reign. Although its function is unknown, it has been often suggested that the jewel was one of the "æstels" – pointers for reading – that Alfred ordered sent to every bishopric accompanying a copy of his translation of the "Pastoral Care". Each "æstel" was worth the princely sum of 50 mancuses which fits in well with the quality workmanship and expensive materials of the Alfred jewel.
Historian Richard Abels sees Alfred's educational and military reforms as complementary. Restoring religion and learning in Wessex, Abels contends, was to Alfred's mind as essential to the defence of his realm as the building of the burhs. As Alfred observed in the preface to his English translation of Gregory the Great's "Pastoral Care", kings who fail to obey their divine duty to promote learning can expect earthly punishments to befall their people. The pursuit of wisdom, he assured his readers of the Boethius, was the surest path to power: "Study wisdom, then, and, when you have learned it, condemn it not, for I tell you that by its means you may without fail attain to power, yea, even though not desiring it".
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The portrayal of the West-Saxon resistance to the Vikings by Asser and the chronicler as a Christian holy war was more than mere rhetoric or propaganda. It reflected Alfred's own belief in a doctrine of divine rewards and punishments rooted in a vision of a hierarchical Christian world order in which God is the Lord to whom kings owe obedience and through whom they derive their authority over their followers. The need to persuade his nobles to undertake work for the 'common good' led Alfred and his court scholars to strengthen and deepen the conception of Christian kingship that he had inherited by building upon the legacy of earlier kings including Offa, clerical writers including Bede, and Alcuin and various participants in the Carolingian Renaissance. This was not a cynical use of religion to manipulate his subjects into obedience but an intrinsic element in Alfred's worldview. He believed, as did other kings in ninth-century England and Francia, that God had entrusted him with the spiritual as well as physical welfare of his people. If the Christian faith fell into ruin in his kingdom, if the clergy were too ignorant to understand the Latin words they butchered in their offices and liturgies, if the ancient monasteries and collegiate churches lay deserted out of indifference, he was answerable before God, as Josiah had been. Alfred's ultimate responsibility was the pastoral care of his people.
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Appearance and character.
Asser wrote of Alfred in his "Life of King Alfred":
It is also written by Asser that Alfred did not learn to read until he was 12 years old or later, which is described as "shameful negligence" of his parents and tutors. Alfred was an excellent listener and had an incredible memory and he retained poetry and psalms very well. A story is told by Asser about how his mother held up a book of Saxon poetry to him and his brothers, and said; "I shall give this book to whichever one of you can learn it the fastest." After excitedly asking, "Will you really give this book to the one of us who can understand it the soonest and recite it to you?" Alfred then took it to his teacher, learned it, and recited it back to his mother.
Alfred is noted as carrying around a small book, probably a medieval version of a small pocket notebook, that contained psalms and many prayers that he often collected. Asser writes: these "he collected in a single book, as I have seen for myself; amid all the affairs of the present life he took it around with him everywhere for the sake of prayer, and was inseparable from it." An excellent hunter in every branch of the sport, Alfred is remembered as an enthusiastic huntsman against whom nobody's skills could compare.
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He was the youngest of his brothers, and he was probably the most open-minded. He was an early advocate for education. His desire for learning could have come from his early love of English poetry and inability to read or physically record it until later in life. Asser writes that Alfred "could not satisfy his craving for what he desired the most, namely the liberal arts; for, as he used to say, there were no good scholars in the entire kingdom of the West Saxons at that time".
Family.
In 868, Alfred married Ealhswith, daughter of a Mercian nobleman, Æthelred Mucel, Ealdorman of the Gaini. The Gaini were probably one of the tribal groups of the Mercians. Ealhswith's mother, Eadburh, was a member of the Mercian royal family.
They had five or six children together, including Edward the Elder who succeeded his father as king; Æthelflæd who became lady of the Mercians; and Ælfthryth who married Baldwin II, Count of Flanders. Alfred's mother was Osburga, daughter of Oslac of the Isle of Wight, Chief Butler of England. Asser, in his "Vita Ælfredi" asserts that this shows his lineage from the Jutes of the Isle of Wight.
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Osferth was described as a relative in King Alfred's will and he attested charters in a high position until 934. A charter of King Edward's reign described him as the king's brother – mistakenly according to Keynes and Lapidge, but in the view of Janet Nelson, he probably was an illegitimate son of King Alfred.
Death and burial.
Alfred died on 26 October 899 at the age of 50 or 51. How he died is unknown, but he suffered throughout his life with a painful and unpleasant illness. His biographer Asser gave a detailed description of Alfred's symptoms, and this has allowed modern doctors to provide a possible diagnosis. It is thought that he had either Crohn's disease or haemorrhoids. His grandson King Eadred seems to have had a similar illness.
Alfred was temporarily buried at the Old Minster in Winchester with his wife Ealhswith and later, his son Edward the Elder. Before his death he had ordered the construction of the New Minster hoping that it would become a mausoleum for him and his family. Four years after his death, the bodies of Alfred and his family were exhumed and moved to their new resting place in the New Minster and remained there for 211 years. When William the Conqueror rose to the English throne after the Norman conquest in 1066, many Anglo-Saxon abbeys were demolished and replaced with Norman cathedrals. One of those unfortunate abbeys was the very New Minster abbey where Alfred was laid to rest. Before demolition, the monks at the New Minster exhumed the bodies of Alfred and his family to safely transfer them to a new location. In 1110, the New Minster monks moved to Hyde Abbey, a little north of the city, taking with them Alfred's body and those of his wife and children, which were interred before the high altar.
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Many churches were vandalised during the English Reformation, including Hyde. The Abbey was dissolved in 1538, the church and cloister were demolished and treated like a quarry, and the stones that made up the abbey were then re-used in local architecture. The stone graves housing Alfred and his family stayed underground, and the land returned to farming. These graves remained intact until 1788 when the site was acquired by the county for the construction of a town jail.
Before construction began, convicts who would later be imprisoned at the site were sent in to prepare the ground, ready for building. While digging the foundation trenches, the convicts discovered the coffins of Alfred and his family. A local Roman Catholic priest, Dr Milner recounted this event: The convicts broke the stone coffins into pieces. The lead, which lined the coffins, was sold for two guineas, and the bones within scattered around the area.
The prison was demolished between 1846 and 1850. Further excavations, in 1866 and 1897, were inconclusive. In 1866, amateur antiquarian John Mellor claimed to have recovered a number of bones from the site which he said were those of Alfred. These came into the possession of the vicar of nearby St Bartholomew's Church who reburied them in an unmarked grave in the church graveyard.
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Excavations conducted by the Winchester Museums Service of the Hyde Abbey site in 1999 located a second pit dug in front of where the high altar would have been located, which was identified as probably dating to Mellor's 1866 excavation. The 1999 archaeological excavation uncovered the foundations of the abbey buildings and some bones, suggested at the time to be those of Alfred. They proved instead to belong to an elderly woman. In March 2013, the Diocese of Winchester exhumed the bones from the unmarked grave at St Bartholomew's and placed them in secure storage. The diocese made no claim that they were the bones of Alfred, but intended to secure them for later analysis, and from the attentions of people whose interest may have been sparked by the recent identification of the remains of Richard III. The bones were radiocarbon-dated but the results showed that they were from the 1300s and therefore not of Alfred. In January 2014, a fragment of pelvis that had been unearthed in the 1999 excavation of the Hyde site, and had subsequently lain in a Winchester museum store room, was radiocarbon-dated to the correct period. It has been suggested that this bone may belong to either Alfred or his son Edward, but this remains unproven.
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Legacy.
Henry VI of England attempted unsuccessfully to have Alfred canonised by Pope Eugene IV in 1441. The current "Roman Martyrology" does not mention Alfred. The Anglican Communion venerates him as a Christian hero, with a Lesser Festival on 26 October, and he may often be found depicted in stained glass in Church of England parish churches.
In 2007, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church canonised "All Saints of the British Isles" including King Alfred. He is honoured during the Feast of all Saints of the British Isles on the third Sunday after Pentecost and on his feast day of 26 October.
Alfred commissioned Bishop Asser to write his biography, which inevitably emphasised Alfred's positive aspects. Later medieval historians such as Geoffrey of Monmouth also reinforced Alfred's favourable image. By the time of the Reformation, Alfred was seen as a pious Christian ruler who promoted the use of English rather than Latin, and so the translations that he commissioned were viewed as untainted by the later Roman Catholic influences of the Normans. Consequently, while Alfred's epithet, "the Great", was in regular use from the 13th century, it was writers of the 16th century who popularised it. There is no evidence of Alfred's contemporaries using the sobriquet. The epithet was retained by succeeding generations who admired Alfred's patriotism, success against barbarism, promotion of education, and establishment of the rule of law.
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The Royal Navy named one ship and two shore establishments HMS "King Alfred", and one of the early ships of the U.S. Navy was named USS "Alfred" in his honour. In 2002, Alfred was ranked number 14 in the BBC's list of the 100 Greatest Britons following a UK-wide vote.
Statues.
Pewsey.
A prominent statue of King Alfred the Great stands in the middle of Pewsey, where he was a landowner. It was unveiled in June 1913 to commemorate the coronation of King George V.
Southwark.
A statue of Alfred the Great located in Trinity Church Square, Southwark is considered to be the oldest outdoor statue in London, and part of it has been found to date to Roman times. The sculpture was thought to be medieval until 2021 conservation work. The lower half was then discovered to be Bath Stone and part of a colossal ancient sculpture dedicated to the goddess Minerva. It is typical of the 2nd Century, dating to around the reign of Hadrian. The lower older half is likely to have been carved by a continental craftsman used to working with British stone. The upper half dates to the late 18th or early 19th century, cast from artificial Coade stone to fit the lower portion.
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Wantage.
A statue of Alfred the Great, situated in the Wantage market place, was sculpted by Count Gleichen, a relative of Queen Victoria, and unveiled on 14 July 1877 by the Prince and Princess of Wales. The statue was vandalised on New Year's Eve 2007, losing part of its right arm and axe. After the arm and axe were replaced, the statue was again vandalised on Christmas Eve 2008, losing its axe.
Winchester.
A bronze statue of Alfred the Great stands at the eastern end of The Broadway, close to the site of Winchester's medieval East Gate. The statue was designed by Hamo Thornycroft, cast in bronze by Singer & Sons of Frome and erected in 1899 to mark one thousand years since Alfred's death. The statue is placed on a pedestal consisting of two immense blocks of grey Cornish granite.
Alfred University, New York.
The centerpiece of Alfred University's quad is a bronze statue of the king, created in 1990 by then-professor William Underhill. It features the king as a young man, holding a shield in his left hand and an open book in his right.
Cleveland, Ohio.
A marble statue of Alfred the Great stands on the North side of the Cuyahoga County Courthouse in Cleveland, Ohio. It was sculpted by Isidore Konti in 1910.
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Alessandro Algardi
Alessandro Algardi (July 31, 1598 – June 10, 1654) was an Italian high-Baroque sculptor active almost exclusively in Rome. In the latter decades of his life, he was, along with Francesco Borromini and Pietro da Cortona, one of the major rivals of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, in Rome. He is now most admired for his portrait busts that have great vivacity and dignity.
Early years.
Algardi was born in Bologna, where at a young age, he was apprenticed in the studio of Agostino Carracci. However, his aptitude for sculpture led him to work for Giulio Cesare Conventi (1577–1640), an artist of modest talents. His two earliest known works date back to this period: two statues of saints, made of chalk, in the Oratory of Santa Maria della Vita in Bologna. By the age of twenty, Ferdinando I, Duke of Mantua, began commissioning works from him, and he was also employed by local jewelers for figurative designs. After a short residence in Venice, he went to Rome in 1625 with an introduction from the Duke of Mantua to the late pope's nephew, Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, who employed him for a time in the restoration of ancient statues.
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Tomb of Pope Leo XI.
Propelled by the Borghese and Barberini patronage, Gian Lorenzo Bernini and his studio garnered most of the major Roman sculptural commissions. For nearly a decade, Algardi struggled for recognition. In Rome he was aided by friends that included Pietro da Cortona and his fellow Bolognese, Domenichino. His early Roman commissions included terracotta and some marble portrait busts, while he supported himself with small works like crucifixes. In the 1630s he worked on the tombs of the Mellini family in the Mellini Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo.
Algardi's first major commission came about in 1634, when Cardinal Ubaldini (Medici) contracted for a funeral monument for his great-uncle, Pope Leo XI, the third of the Medici popes, who had reigned for less than a month in 1605. The monument was started in 1640, and mostly completed by 1644. The arrangement mirrors the one designed by Bernini for the Tomb of Urban VIII (1628–47), with a central hieratic sculpture of the pope seated in full regalia and offering a hand of blessing, while at his feet, two allegorical female figures flank his sarcophagus. However, in Bernini's tomb, the vigorous upraised arm and posture of the pope is counterbalanced by an active drama below, wherein the figures of "Charity" and "Justice" are either distracted by "putti" or lost in contemplation, while skeletal "Death" actively writes the epitaph. Algardi's tomb is much less dynamic. The allegorical figures of "Magnanimity" and "Liberality" have an impassive, ethereal dignity. Some have identified the helmeted figure of "Magnanimity" with that of Athena and iconic images of "Wisdom". "Liberality" resembles Duquesnoy's famous "Santa Susanna", but rendered more elegant. The tomb is somberly monotone and lacks the polychromatic excitement that detracts from the elegiac mood of Urban VIII's tomb.
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In 1635–38, Pietro Boncompagni commissioned from Algardi a colossal statue of Philip Neri with kneeling angels for Santa Maria in Vallicella, completed in 1640. Immediately after this, Algardi produced a sculptural group of the beheading of Saint Paul with two figures: a kneeling, resigned saint and the executioner poised to strike the sword-blow, for the church of San Paolo, Bologna. These works established his reputation, alongside two reliefs of "The Martyrdom of St Paul" and "The Rest on the Flight into Egypt" (a contemporary replica of the latter is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum). Like Bernini's characteristic works, they often express the Baroque aesthetic of depicting dramatic attitudes and emotional expressions, yet Algardi's sculpture has a restraining sobriety in contrast to those of his rival.
Papal favour under Innocent X and Spanish commissions.
With the death of the Barberini Pope Urban VIII in 1644 and the accession of the Pamphilj Pope Innocent X, the Barberini family and fell into disrepute, resulting in fewer commissions for Bernini. Algardi, on the other hand, was embraced by the new pope and the pope's nephew, Camillo Pamphilj. Algardi's portraits were highly prized, and their formal severity contrasts with Bernini's more vivacious expression. A large hieratic bronze of Innocent X by Algardi is now to be found in the Capitoline Museums.
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Algardi was not renowned for his architectural abilities. Although he was in charge of the project for the papal villa, the Villa Pamphili, now Villa Doria Pamphili, outside the Porta San Pancrazio in Rome, he may have had professional guidance on the design of the casino from the architect/engineer Girolamo Rainaldi and help with supervising its construction from his assistant Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi. The casino was a showcase for the Pamphili collection of sculpture, ancient and contemporary, on which Algardi was well able to advise. In the villa grounds, Algardi and his studio executed sculpture-encrusted fountains and other garden features, where some of his free-standing sculpture and bas-reliefs remain.
In 1650 Algardi met Diego Velázquez, who obtained commissions for his work from Spain. As a consequence there are four chimney-pieces by Algardi in the Royal Palace of Aranjuez, and in the gardens, the figures on the fountain of Neptune are also by him. The Augustinian monastery at Salamanca contains the tomb of the Count and Countess de Monterey, another work by Algardi.
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Fuga d'Attila relief.
Algardi's large, dramatic, high-relief marble panel of Pope Leo and Attila, created from 1646 to 1653, is commonly referred to as "Fuga d'Attila" or "Flight of Attila". It was created for St Peter's Basilica, and it reinvigorated the use of such marble reliefs. There had been large marble reliefs used previously in Roman churches, but for most patrons, sculpted marble altarpieces were far too costly. In this relief, the two principal figures, the stern and courageous pope and the dismayed and frightened Attila, surge forward from the center into three dimensions. Only they two see the descending angelic warriors rallying to the pope's defense, while all others in the background reliefs, persist in performing their respective earthly duties.
The subject was apt for a papal state seeking to increase its power, since it depicts the historical legend wherein Saint Leo the Great, the first pope to receive the epithet, with supernatural aid, deterred the Huns from looting Rome. From a baroque standpoint, the incident is common theme: a moment of divine intervention in the affairs of man. Algardi's patron's message through the relief would be that all viewers should be sternly reminded of the papal capacity to invoke divine retribution against enemies.
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In his later years Algardi controlled a large studio and amassed a great fortune. Algardi's classicizing manner was carried on by pupils, including Ercole Ferrata and Domenico Guidi, and Antonio Raggi initially trained with him. The latter two completed his design for an altarpiece of the "Vision of Saint Nicholas" at San Nicola da Tolentino, Rome, using two separate marble pieces linked together in one event and place, yet successfully separating the divine and earthly spheres. Other lesser known assistants from his studio include Francesco Barrata, Girolamo Lucenti, and Giuseppe Peroni.
Algardi died in Rome within a year of completing his famous relief, which was admired by contemporaries.
Critical assessment and legacy.
Algardi was also known for his portraiture which shows an obsessive attention to details of psychologically revealing physiognomy in a sober but immediate naturalism, and minute attention to costume and draperies, such as in the busts of Laudivio Zacchia, Camillo Pamphilj, and of Muzio Frangipane and his two sons Lello and Roberto.
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In temperament, his style was more akin to the classicized and restrained baroque of Duquesnoy than to the emotive works of other baroque artists. From an artistic point of view, he was most successful in portrait-statues and groups of children, where he was obliged to follow nature most closely. His terracotta models, some of them finished works of art, were prized by collectors. An outstanding series of terracotta models is at the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.
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Alger of Liège
Alger of Liège (1055–1131), known also as Alger of Cluny and Algerus Magister, was a learned clergyman and canonist from Liège, author of several notable works.
Alger was first deacon and scholaster of church of St Bartholomew in his native Liège and was then appointed () as a canon in St. Lambert's Cathedral. Moreover, he acted as the personal secretary of bishop Otbert from 1103. He declined offers from German bishops and finally retired to the monastery of Cluny after 1121, where he died at a high age, leaving behind a solid reputation for piety and intelligence.
He played a leading role in the trial of Rupert of Deutz in 1116.
His "History of the Church of Liège", and many of his other works, are lost. The most important remaining are:
A biography was written by Nicholas of Liège: De Algero veterum testimonia.
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Algiers
Algiers is the capital city of Algeria as well as the capital of the Algiers Province; it extends over many communes without having its own separate governing body. With 2,988,145 residents in 2008 and over 4,510,000 in 2020 in an area of , Algiers is the largest city in Algeria, the third largest city on the Mediterranean, sixth in the Arab World, and 11th in Africa. Located in the north-central portion of the country, it extends along the Bay of Algiers surrounded by the Mitidja Plain and major mountain ranges. Its favorable location made it the center of Ottoman and French cultural, political, and architectural influences for the region, shaping it to be the diverse metropolis it is today.
Algiers was formally founded in 972 AD by Buluggin ibn Ziri, though its history goes back to around 1200-250 BC when it was a small settlement of Phoenicians that practiced trade. It was caught under control of many nations and empires such as Numidia, the Roman Empire and the Islamic caliphates, as it went on to become the capital of the Regency of Algiers from 1516 to 1830 AD, then under the control of France due to an invasion that ranked Algiers as capital of French Algeria from 1830 to 1942 AD which temporarily merged with Free France from 1942 to 1944 AD, then back again to French Algeria from 1944 to 1962 AD, and finally capital of Algeria from 1962 to present day after the Algerian Revolution.
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Algiers is the main tourist destination in Algeria due to its many museums, art galleries and cultural centers, but most notably the historic center that is classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Casbah which houses many traditional Algerian and Ottoman/Andalusian style buildings, while the French side of the city is bigger and has many distinct architectural styles that showcase trends over the decades whether they were local or international; "Al bidha" meaning « the white » is what the city's called because of its white washed buildings whether they originated from colonial powers or local populations. The Host city of the 1975 Mediterranean Games and other major African and international sports events, Algiers is also the seat of the Consultative Council of the Arab Maghreb Union. Numerous Algerian multinational companies are based in the city, such as Sonatrach Petroleum Corporation and Air Algérie.
Name origin.
The present name of the city is the Arabic name ( ()), meaning "The Islands", this name's origin is related to the 4 main islands off the western cape where people settled, looking on a map we can notice that the islands were eventually connected to the mainland in 1525 AD via a pier now named "Kheireddine pier". This name is a truncated form of the name that was used first by Buluggin ibn Ziri when he established the modern city in 972 AD which was (), meaning "islands of Mazghanna", this term was used by the Hammadid dynasty as well as early medieval geographers such as Muhammad al-Idrisi and Yaqut al-Hamawi. Before that, from French and Catalan from the Arabic name . is , used by . The name was given by Buluggin ibn Ziri after he established the city on the ruins of the Phoenician city of Icosium in 950. During Ottoman rule, the name of the capital, "al-Jazā'ir", was extended over the entire country, giving it the English name Algeria derived from the French name Algérie.
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In classical antiquity, the ancient Greeks knew the town as (), which was Latinized as Icosium under Roman rule. The Greeks explained the name as coming from their word for "twenty" (, ), supposedly because it had been founded by 20 companions of Hercules when he visited the Atlas Mountains during his labors.
Algiers is also known as (, "The Joyous") "El Mahrussa" ("the good-guarded"), or "Algiers the White" () for its whitewashed buildings.
History.
Early history.
The city's history is believed to date back to 1200 BC, but it was a small settlement without any significance until around the 3rd century BC when "Ikosim" became a small port town in Carthage where Phoenicians were trading with other Mediterranean ports. After the Battle of Cirta, Numidia got a hold of the town along with its neighboring regions at around 202 BC, after which the Punic Wars started weakening the Berber nation. On 104 BC, following the capturing of Jughurta and executing him in Rome, the western half of his nation was given to Mauretania under the rule of Bocchus I. At around 42 AD, Claudius divided Mauretania into two provinces, Mauretania Caesariensis that included Icosium as one of its towns; the second province was Mauretania Tingitana and were deemed as Roman Municipiums, additionally they were given Latin rights by the emperor Vespasian. In 371-373 AD, Mauretania revolted with the help of Firmus, in hopes of establishing an independent state. Icosium was raided and damaged. Some clues show the presence of bishops in the region at this time.
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In 435 AD, the Vandal Kingdom took control of northern Africa along the coasts of today's Tunisia and Algeria. The Western Roman Empire that was ruling the area allowed the Vandals to settle when it became clear that they could not be defeated by Roman military forces. Though the city was damaged again due to the fighting between the two armies, the town was still slowly growing in population.
Medieval history.
In 534 AD, the Vandal kingdom was subjugated by the general Belisarius of the Eastern Roman Empire, making Icosium a part of the empire. In the early 7th century, "Beni Mezghenna" who are a Berber tribe belonging to the Sanhaja as cited by Ibn Khaldoun, settled on the plains of Icosium and the surrounding areas. Shortly after, in the late 7th century, the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb brought the Umayyad Caliphate into the region, but were faced with resistance from Berber forces led by Kahina and Kusaila in the 680s, who opposed the advancing Islamic armies. However, Hassan ibn al-Nu'man and Musa ibn Nusayr later defeated both Berber leaders, killing Kusaila at the Battle of Mamma (688) and killing Dihya at the Battle of Tabarka (702), leading to the subjugation of the Berber tribes, bringing Islamic rule into North Africa. The Abbasid Caliphate succeeded Umayyad Caliphate at around 750 AD. Independence movements across the Maghreb resulted in the breaking of two nations, the Idrisid dynasty and the Aghlabid Emirate but acted as agents of the Abbasids in Baghdad. Icosium fell into the hands of Aghlabids and abandoned the town. They were then overthrown by the Fatimids in 909 AD, who went on to control all of Ifriqiya by 969 AD.
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The present city was re-founded in 972 AD by Buluggin ibn Ziri, who was appointed by the Faṭimid caliph al-Muʿizz as governor of al-Qayrawān and any other territory his nation, the Zirid Dynasty might reclaim from its enemies, the Zenata tribesmen. His state accordingly expanded its boundaries westward. In approximately 1014 AD, under the reign of Badis ibn al-Mansur, the dynasty was divided between the Zirids at al-Qayrawan in the east, and the Hammadid dynasty at Qal'at Bani Hammad; "Jazaʾir Banī Mazghanna", commonly known as "Algiers" as the new name of Icosium was absorbed into the Hammadid dynasty who in 1067 AD relocated to Béjaïa and carried on a lively trade while most of North Africa was under a state of anarchy.
In 1079 AD, Ibn Tashfin, a Sanhaja leader of the Almoravid Empire sent an army of 20,000 men from Marrakesh to push towards what is now Tlemcen to attack the "Banu Ya'la", the Zenata tribe occupying the area. Led by Mazdali ibn Tilankan, the army defeated the Banu Ya'la in battle near the valley of the Moulouya River and executed their commander, the son of Tlemcen's ruler. However, Mazdali ibn Tilankan did not push to Tlemcen right away as the city of Oujda was too strong to capture. Instead, Ibn Tashfin himself returned with an army in 1081 AD that captured Oujda and then conquered Tlemcen, massacring the Maghrawa forces there and their leader; He pressed on and by 1082 AD he had captured "Jazaʾir Banī Mazghanna".
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In 1151 AD, Abd al-Mu'min launched an expedition to the east, conquering Béjaïa in August 1152, the capital of the Hammadids; on their way, Beni Mezghanna did not succumb and was now under the Almohad Caliphate's control. The caliphate suffered from states breaking out of its rule, most notably, the Kingdom of Tlemcen in 1235 AD. The town once again came under the dominion of the Ziyanid sultans of the Kingdom but experienced a large measure of independence under Thaaliba amirs who settled the Mitidja plain at around 1200 AD.
Early modern history.
The Kingdom of Tlemcen was the target of the Spanish Empire's and the Portuguese Empire's campaigns and conquests against its coasts, beginning in 1501 AD. However, Algiers continued to be of comparatively little importance until after the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, many of whom sought asylum in the city, after which the Spanish led by Pedro Navarro established a fortified base and garrison on one of the islets off the coast of Algiers, and named it "Peñón de Argel" or Peñón of Algiers, . By that time, Algiers had an emir, Salim al-Thumi who had to "swear obedience and loyalty" to Ferdinand II of Aragon who also imposed a levy intended to suppress the Barbary pirates.
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Ottoman rule.
In 1516, the amir of Algiers, Selim b. Teumi, invited the corsair brothers Oruç Reis and Hayreddin Barbarossa to expel the Spaniards. Oruç Reis came to Algiers, ordered the assassination of Selim, and seized the town and ousted the Spanish in the Capture of Algiers (1516). Hayreddin, succeeding Oruç after the latter was killed in battle against the Spaniards in the 1518 fall of Tlemcen, was the founder of the "pashaluk", which subsequently became the "beylik", of Algeria. Barbarossa lost Algiers in 1524 but regained it with the 1529 Capture of Peñón of Algiers, and then formally invited the Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent to accept sovereignty over the territory and to annex Algiers to the Ottoman Empire.
Algiers from this time became the chief seat of the Barbary pirates. In October 1541 in the Algiers expedition, the King of Spain and Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor sought to capture the city, but a storm destroyed a great number of his ships, and his army of some 30,000, chiefly made up of Spaniards, was defeated by the Algerians under their pasha, Hassan.
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Formally part of the Ottoman Empire but essentially free from Ottoman control, starting in the 16th century Algiers turned to piracy and ransoming. Due to its location on the periphery of both the Ottoman and European economic spheres, and depending for its existence on a Mediterranean that was increasingly controlled by European shipping, backed by European navies, piracy became the primary economic activity. Repeated attempts were made by various nations to subdue the pirates that disturbed shipping in the western Mediterranean and engaged in slave raids as far north as Iceland. By the 17th century, up to 40% of the city's 100,000 inhabitants were enslaved Europeans. The United States fought two wars (the First and Second Barbary Wars) over Algiers' attacks on shipping.
Among the notable people held for ransom was the future Spanish novelist, Miguel de Cervantes, who was held captive in Algiers for almost five years, and wrote two plays set in Algiers of the period. The primary source for knowledge of Algiers of this period, since there are no contemporary local sources, is the "Topografía e historia general de Argel" (1612, but written earlier), published by Diego de Haedo, but whose authorship is disputed. This work describes in detail the city, the behavior of its inhabitants, and its military defenses, with the unsuccessful hope of facilitating an attack by Spain so as to end the piracy.
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A significant number of renegades lived in Algiers at the time, Christians converted voluntarily to Islam, many fleeing the law or other problems at home. Once converted to Islam, they were safe in Algiers. Many occupied positions of authority, such as Samson Rowlie, an Englishman who became Treasurer of Algiers.
The city under Ottoman control was enclosed by a wall on all sides, including along the seafront. In this wall, five gates allowed access to the city, with five roads from each gate dividing the city and meeting in front of the Ketchaoua Mosque. In 1556, a citadel, Palace of the Dey was constructed at the highest point in the wall. A major road running north to south divided the city in two: The upper city (al-Gabal, or 'the mountain') which consisted of about fifty small quarters of Andalusian, Jewish, Moorish and Kabyle communities, and the lower city (al-Wata, or 'the plains') which was the administrative, military and commercial centre of the city, mostly inhabited by Ottoman Turkish dignitaries and other upper-class families.
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On August 27, 1816, the Bombardment of Algiers took place city by a British squadron under Lord Exmouth (a descendant of Thomas Pellew, taken in an Algerian slave raid in 1715), assisted by men-of-war from the Kingdom of the Netherlands, destroying the corsair fleet harboured in Algiers.
France and the Regency of Algiers had a commercial–political conflict called the Bakri-Busnach affair which has been bothering both nations in the 19th century.
On April 29, 1827, foreign consuls and diplomatic agents gathered in the Palace of the Dey for a conference with the Regency of Algiers ruler Hussein Dey. Tensions were high because of France's failure to pay outstanding debts. In a heated moment later referred to as "fly-whisk incident", the Dey struck the French consul in the face with the handle of a fly-whisk.
In an attempt by Charles X of France to increase his popularity amongst the French, he sought to bolster patriotic sentiment, and turn eyes away from his domestic policies, by treating the incident as a public insult and demanded an apology. Failure to respond was met by operations against the dey. A naval siege on the port of Algiers by the French Navy began the following days which lasted 3 years and impacted the French and Algerian economies due to their former extensive trade treaties.
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Tensions only continued rising while the French Armed Forces were preparing for the 1830 invasion of Algiers. The naval fleet departed from Toulon on May 25, 1830, and successfully reached the western coast of the Regency near what is today Sidi Fredj on June 14, 1830. The Algerian forces met their French opponents in the Battle of Staouéli on June 19, 1830, to which the Dey's forces were defeated, this enabled the colonial army to advance into the city and made Hussein Dey surrender to French General de Bourmont on 5 July 1830.
French rule.
Under French rule, Algiers became the capital of French Algeria, "an integral part of the French Republic" according to a formal annexation declared on June 22, 1834. Following this, interest turned into the completion of the French conquest of Algeria that shared goals with its pacification efforts; Establishing a European cultural, economic and political presence in Africa without considering the indigenous population's lifestyle or connection to their land. Plans to transform the face of the city to match French standards and architectural trends began shortly after obtaining the city. Originally, the Casbah extended to the sea, but it was pushed back to the hills above after demolishing the walls and lower half of the old city and erecting the current "Place des Martyrs", constructing promenades and boulevards that circle the city or face the Mediterranean, tracing new streets and building apartments that are characterized by their "Haussmanian" Style.
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Settlers of European descent marked a majority of the city's population, some constituted a minority of "Pieds-noirs" who were granted French citizenship and rights under the Crémieux Decree. On the other hand, Code de l'indigénat enforced inferiority of the "Arabs" and "Muslims" which were getting forcibly removed from their homes and were banned from entering various parts of "Alger" to segregate by race, religion and language. Added to that, mosques were repurposed to churches, stables, or demolished/closed permanently, examples of this are Ketchoua Mosque and Ali Bitchin Mosque.
During the 1930s, the architect Le Corbusier drew up plans for a complete redesign of the colonial city. Le Corbusier was highly critical of the urban style of Algiers, describing the European district as "nothing but crumbling walls and devastated nature, the whole a sullied blot". He also criticised the difference in living standards he perceived between the European and African residents of the city, describing a situation in which "the 'civilised' live like rats in holes" whereas "the 'barbarians' live in solitude, in well-being". However, these plans were ultimately ignored by the French administration.
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During World War II, Algiers was the first city to be seized from the Axis by the Allies in Operation Terminal, a part of Operation Torch.
Algerian War.
Algiers also played a pivotal role in the Algerian War (1954–1962), a bloody independence struggle in which hundreds of thousands (estimates range between 350,000 and 1,500,000) died (mostly Algerians but also French and pieds-noirs). In particular, it saw the Battle of Algiers when the 10th Parachute Division of the French Army, starting on January 7, 1957, and on the orders of the French Minister of Justice François Mitterrand (who authorized any means "to eliminate the insurrectionists"), led attacks against the Algerian fighters for independence. Algiers remains marked by this battle, which was characterized by merciless fighting between FLN forces which carried out a guerrilla campaign against the French military and police and pro-French Algerian soldiers, and the French Army which responded with a bloody repression, torture and blanket terrorism against the native population. The demonstrations of May 13 during the crisis of 1958 provoked the fall of the Fourth Republic in France, as well as the return of General de Gaulle to power.
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Independence.
Algeria achieved independence on July 5, 1962, with Algiers as its capital. Since then, despite losing its entire "pied-noir" population, the city has expanded massively. It now has about five million inhabitants, or 10 percent of Algeria's population—and its suburbs now cover most of the surrounding Mitidja plain. Run by the FLN that had secured independence, Algiers became a member of Non-Aligned Movement during the Cold War. In October 1988, one year before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Algiers was the site of demonstrations demanding the end of the single-party system and the creation of a "real" democracy baptized the "Spring of Algiers". The demonstrators were repressed by the authorities (more than 300 dead), but the movement constituted a turning point in the political history of modern Algeria. The 1989 Algerian constitutional referendum took place and a new constitution was adopted that put an end to the one-party rule and saw the creation of more than fifty political parties, as well as official freedom of the press.
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Crisis of the 1990s.
The city became the theatre of many political demonstrations of all descriptions until 1993. In 1991, a political entity dominated by religious conservatives called the Islamic Salvation Front engaged in a political test of wills with the authorities. In the 1992 elections for the Algerian National Assembly, the Islamists garnered a large amount of support in the first round. Fearing an eventual win by the Islamists, the army canceled the election process, setting off the civil war between the State and armed religious conservatives which would last for a decade.
On December 11, 2007, two car bombs exploded in Algiers. One bomb targeted two United Nations office buildings and the other targeted a government building housing the Supreme Court of Algeria. The death toll was at least 62, with over two hundred injured in the attacks. However, only 26 remained hospitalized the following day. , it is speculated that the attack was carried out by the Al Qaeda cell within the city.
Indigenous terrorist groups have been actively operating in Algeria since around 2002.
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Geography.
Location.
Algiers is located in the north-central part of Algeria, extending along the Bay of Algiers and into the Mitidja plain and on top of and around the "Sahel of Algiers" and the Bouzaréah massif. It sits at roughly 2 m above sea level, while the highest point is at 407 m. The Oued El Harrach meets the sea while crossing near El Harrach, a neighbourhood of the city hence the name, while Mazafran River ends near the far western suburbs dividing Algiers Province and Tipaza Province; Both of these are called "Widan" which help in supplying agricultural needs in "Mitidja" which borders the Tell Atlas mountain range which could be spotted from the city.
Climate.
Algiers has a Mediterranean climate (Köppen climate classification "Csa"). Its proximity to the Mediterranean aids in moderating the city's temperatures. As a result, Algiers usually does not see the extreme temperatures that are experienced in the adjacent interior. Algiers on average receives roughly of rain per year, the bulk of which is seen between October and April. The precipitation is higher than in most of coastal Mediterranean Spain, and similar to most of coastal Mediterranean France, as opposed to the interior North African semi-arid or arid climate.
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Snow is very rare; in 2012, the city received of snowfall, its first snowfall in eight years.
Climate change.
A 2019 paper published in PLOS One estimated that under Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5, a "moderate" scenario of climate change where global warming reaches ~ by 2100, the climate of Algiers in the year 2050 would most closely resemble the current climate of Perth in Australia. The annual temperature would increase by , and the temperature of the warmest month by , while the temperature of the coldest month would be higher. According to Climate Action Tracker, the current warming trajectory appears consistent with , which closely matches Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5.
Moreover, according to the 2022 IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Algiers is one of 12 major African cities (Abidjan, Alexandria, Algiers, Cape Town, Casablanca, Dakar, Dar es Salaam, Durban, Lagos, Lomé, Luanda and Maputo) which would be the most severely affected by the future sea level rise. It estimates that they would collectively sustain cumulative damages of U$65 billion under RCP 4.5 and US$86.5 billion for the high-emission scenario RCP 8.5 by the year 2050. Additionally, RCP 8.5 combined with the hypothetical impact from marine ice sheet instability at high levels of warming would involve up to US$137.5 billion in damages, while the additional accounting for the "low-probability, high-damage events" may increase aggregate risks to $187 billion for the "moderate" RCP 4.5, $206 billion for RCP 8.5 and $397 billion under the high-end ice sheet instability scenario. Since sea level rise would continue for about 10,000 years under every scenario of climate change, future costs of sea level rise would only increase, especially without adaptation measures. The Casbah is on a list of 10 African World Heritage Site most threatened by sea level rise.
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Government.
The city (and province) of Algiers is composed of 13 administrative districts, sub-divided into 57 "communes" listed below with their populations at the 1998 and 2008 Censuses:
Local architecture.
There are many public buildings of interest, including the whole Kasbah quarter, Martyrs Square ("Sahat ech-Chouhada" ساحة الشهداء), the government offices (formerly the British consulate), the "Grand", "New", and Ketchaoua Mosques, the Roman Catholic cathedral of Notre Dame d'Afrique, the Bardo Museum, the old "Bibliothèque Nationale d'Alger"—a moorish palace built in 1799–1800 and the new National Library, built in a style reminiscent of the British Library.
The main building in the Kasbah was begun in 1516 on the site of an older building, and served as the palace of the deys until the French conquest. A road has been cut through the centre of the building, the mosque turned into barracks, and the hall of audience allowed to fall into ruin. There still remain a minaret and some marble arches and columns. Traces exist of the vaults in which were stored the treasures of the dey.
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Djamaa el Kebir ("Jamaa-el-Kebir" الجامع الكبير) is the oldest mosque in Algiers. It was first built by Yusuf ibn Tashfin, but reconstructed many times. The pulpit ("minbar" منبر) bears an inscription showing that the building existed in 1097. The minaret was built by the sultan of Tlemcen, in 1324. The interior of the mosque is square and is divided into aisles by columns joined by Moorish arches.
The New Mosque ("Jamaa-el-Jedid" الجامع الجديد), dating from the 17th century, is in the form of a Greek cross, surmounted by a large white cupola, with four small cupolas at the corners. The minaret is high. The interior resembles that of the Grand Mosque.
The church of the Holy Trinity (built in 1870) stands at the southern end of the "rue d'Isly" near the site of the demolished Fort Bab Azoun باب عزون. The interior is richly decorated with various coloured marbles. Many of these marbles contain memorial inscriptions relating to the British residents (voluntary and involuntary) of Algiers from the time of John Tipton, the first English consul, in 1580 (NB Some sources give 1585). One tablet records that in 1631 two Algerine pirate crews landed in Ireland, sacked Baltimore, and enslaved its inhabitants.
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The Ketchaoua Mosque ("Djamaa Ketchaoua" جامع كتشاوة), at the foot of the Casbah, was before independence in 1962 the cathedral of St Philippe, itself made in 1845 from a mosque dating from 1612. The principal entrance, reached by a flight of 23 steps, is ornamented with a portico supported by four black-veined marble columns. The roof of the nave is of Moorish plaster work. It rests on a series of arcades supported by white marble columns. Several of these columns belonged to the original mosque. In one of the chapels was a tomb containing the bones of Geronimo. The building seems a curious blend of Moorish and Byzantine styles.
Algiers possesses a college with schools of law, medicine, science and letters. The college buildings are large and handsome. The Bardo Museum holds some of the ancient sculptures and mosaics discovered in Algeria, together with medals and Algerian money.
The port of Algiers is sheltered from all winds. There are two harbours, both artificial—the old or northern harbour and the southern or Agha harbour. The northern harbour covers an area of . An opening in the south jetty affords an entrance into Agha harbour, constructed in Agha Bay. Agha harbour has also an independent entrance on its southern side. The inner harbour was begun in 1518 by Khair-ad-Din Barbarossa (see History, below), who, to accommodated his pirate vessels, caused the island on which was Fort Penon to be connected with the mainland by a mole. The lighthouse which occupies the site of Fort Penon was built in 1544.
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Algiers was a walled city from the time of the deys until the close of the 19th century. The French, after their occupation of the city (1830), built a rampart, parapet and ditch, with two terminal forts, Bab Azoun باب عزون to the south and Bab-el-Oued اد to the north. The forts and part of the ramparts were demolished at the beginning of the 20th century, when a line of forts occupying the heights of Bouzaréah بوزريعة (at an elevation of above the sea) took their place.
Notre Dame d'Afrique, a church built (1858–1872) in a mixture of the Roman and Byzantine styles, is conspicuously situated overlooking the sea, on the shoulder of the Bouzaréah hills,
to the north of the city. Above the altar is a statue of the Virgin depicted as a black woman. The church also contains a solid silver statue of the archangel Michael, belonging to the confraternity of Neapolitan fishermen.
Villa Abd-el-Tif, former residence of the dey, was used during the French period, to accommodate French artists, chiefly painters, and winners of the Abd-el-Tif prize, among whom Maurice Boitel, for a while of two years. Nowadays, Algerian artists are back in the villa's studios.
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Demographics.
As of 2012, Algiers has a population of about 3,335,418.
The ethnic distribution is 53% from an Arabic-speaking background, 44% from a Berber-speaking background and 3% foreign-born.
Economy.
Algiers is an important economic, commercial and financial center, with a stock exchange capitalized at 60 million euros. Algiers contributes to 20% of Algeria's GDP (51 Billions $ in 2024.) The city has the highest cost of living of any city in North Africa, as well as the 50th highest worldwide, as of March 2007, having gained one position compared to the previous year.
Mohamed Ben Ali El Abbar, president of the Council of Administration of the Emirate Group EMAAR, presented five "megaprojects" to Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, during a ceremony which took place Saturday, July 15, in the People's Palace of Algiers. These projects will transform the city of Algiers and its surroundings by equipping them with a retail area and restoration and leisure facilities.
The first project will concentrate on the reorganization and the development of the infrastructures of the railway station "Aga" located in the downtown area. The ultramodern station intended to accommodate more than 80.000 passengers per day, will become a centre of circulation in the heart of the grid system, surrounded by commercial offices and buildings and hotels intended for travellers in transit. A shopping centre and three high-rise office buildings rising with the top of the commercial zone will accompany the project.
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The second project will not relate to the bay of Algiers and aims to revitalize the sea front. The development of the sea front will include marinas, channels, luxury hotels, offices, apartments of great standing, luxury stores and leisure amenities. A crescent-shaped peninsula will be set up on the open sea. The project of the bay of Algiers will also comprise six small islands, of which four of round form, connected to each other by bridges and marinas and will include tourist and residential complexes.
The third project will relate to restructuring an area of Algiers, qualified by the originators of the project of "city of wellness". El Abbar indicated to the journalists that the complex would be "agreeable for all those which will want to combine tourism and well-being or tourism and relaxation". The complex will include a university, a research center and a medical centre. It should also include a hospital complex, a care centre, a hotel zone, an urban centre and a thermal spa with villas and apartments. The university will include a medical school and a school for care male nurses which will be able to accommodate 500 students. The university campus will have the possibility of seeing setting up broad ranges of buildings of research laboratories and residences.
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Another project relates to technological implantation of a campus in Sidi Abdellah, south-east from Algiers. This site will include shopping centres, residential zones with high standard apartments and a golf course surrounded by villas and hotels. Two other residential zones, including 1.800 apartments and 40 high standard villas, will be built on the surrounding hills.
The fifth project is that of the tourist complex Colonel Abbès, which will be located west from Algiers. This complex will include several retail zones, meeting places, and residential zones composed of apartments and villas with views of the sea.
There is another project under construction, by the name of Algiers Medina. The first step of the project is nearly complete.
A Hewlett-Packard office for French-speaking countries in Africa is in Algiers.
Tourist attractions.
the most notable of which are Algiers Opera House, the Algerian National Theater Mahieddine Bachtarzi, Bardo National Museum (Algiers), the National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers, The National Museum of Antiquities and Islamic Art; the "National Museum of Miniatures, Illumination and Calligraphy" located inside of Dar Mustapha Pacha; "Palais des Rais"; Algerian Admiralty Museum; the Central Military Museum adjacent to Maqam Echahid (Martyrs Memorial), a breathtaking monument that sits above the Martyrs National Museum. Other landmarks include Djamaa el Djazaïr, the 3rd biggest mosque in the world; Botanical Garden Hamma; Culture Palace Moufdi Zakaria; Grande Poste d'Alger, located adjacent to Kilometre zero; Ketchaoua Mosque; Notre-Dame d'Afrique; Emir Abdelkader Square as well as Martyr's Square. The city also contains a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Casbah or citadel, that is a prominent example of Casbah and Medina.
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Some to the west of Algiers are such seaside resorts as Sidi Fredj (ex-Sidi Ferruch), Palm Beach, Douaouda, Zéralda, and the "Club of the Pines" (residence of State); there are tourist complexes, Algerian and other restaurants, souvenir shops, supervised beaches, and other amenities. The city is also equipped with important hotel complexes such as the hotel Hilton, El-Aurassi or El Djazair. Algiers also has the first water park in the country. The tourism of Algiers is growing but is not as developed as that of the larger cities in Morocco or Tunisia.
Education.
The presence of a large diplomatic community in Algiers prompted the creation of multiple international educational institutions. These schools include :
There was formerly the École japonaise d'Alger (アルジェ日本人学校 "Aruje Nihonjin Gakkō"), a school for Japanese children.
Public transport.
4 urban beltways:
Sports.
Algiers is the sporting centre of Algeria. The city has a number of professional clubs in the variety of sports, which have won national and international titles. Among the sports facilities within the city, there is an enormous sporting complex – Complex of OCO – Mohamed Boudiaf. This includes the Stade 5 Juillet 1962 (capacity ), a venue for athletics, an Olympic swimming pool, a multisports room (the Cupola), an 18-hole golf course, and several tennis courts.
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The following major sporting events have been held in Algiers (not-exhaustive list):
Football clubs.
Major association football club based in Algiers include:
International relations.
Twin towns – sister cities.
Algiers is twinned with:
In addition, many of the wards and cities within Algiers maintain sister-city relationships with other foreign cities.
Cooperation agreements.
Algiers has cooperation agreements with:
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Ibn al-Haytham
Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham (Latinized as Alhazen; ; full name ; ) was a medieval mathematician, astronomer, and physicist of the Islamic Golden Age from present-day Iraq. Referred to as "the father of modern optics", he made significant contributions to the principles of optics and visual perception in particular. His most influential work is titled "Kitāb al-Manāẓir" (Arabic: , "Book of Optics"), written during 1011–1021, which survived in a Latin edition. The works of Alhazen were frequently cited during the scientific revolution by Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Christiaan Huygens, and Galileo Galilei.
Ibn al-Haytham was the first to correctly explain the theory of vision, and to argue that vision occurs in the brain, pointing to observations that it is subjective and affected by personal experience. He also stated the principle of least time for refraction which would later become Fermat's principle. He made major contributions to catoptrics and dioptrics by studying reflection, refraction and nature of images formed by light rays. Ibn al-Haytham was an early proponent of the concept that a hypothesis must be supported by experiments based on confirmable procedures or mathematical reasoningan early pioneer in the scientific method five centuries before Renaissance scientists, he is sometimes described as the world's "first true scientist". He was also a polymath, writing on philosophy, theology and medicine.
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Born in Basra, he spent most of his productive period in the Fatimid capital of Cairo and earned his living authoring various treatises and tutoring members of the nobilities. Ibn al-Haytham is sometimes given the byname "al-Baṣrī" after his birthplace, or "al-Miṣrī" ("the Egyptian"). Al-Haytham was dubbed the "Second Ptolemy" by Abu'l-Hasan Bayhaqi and "The Physicist" by John Peckham. Ibn al-Haytham paved the way for the modern science of physical optics.
Biography.
Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) was born c. 965 to a family of Arab or Persian origin in Basra, Iraq, which was at the time part of the Buyid emirate. His initial influences were in the study of religion and service to the community. At the time, society had a number of conflicting views of religion that he ultimately sought to step aside from religion. This led to him delving into the study of mathematics and science. He held a position with the title of "vizier" in his native Basra, and became famous for his knowledge of applied mathematics, as evidenced by his attempt to regulate the flooding of the Nile.
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Upon his return to Cairo, he was given an administrative post. After he proved unable to fulfill this task as well, he contracted the ire of the caliph Al-Hakim, and is said to have been forced into hiding until the caliph's death in 1021, after which his confiscated possessions were returned to him.
Legend has it that Alhazen feigned madness and was kept under house arrest during this period. During this time, he wrote his influential "Book of Optics". Alhazen continued to live in Cairo, in the neighborhood of the famous University of al-Azhar, and lived from the proceeds of his literary production until his death in c. 1040. (A copy of Apollonius' "Conics", written in Ibn al-Haytham's own handwriting exists in Aya Sofya: (MS Aya Sofya 2762, 307 fob., dated Safar 415 A.H. [1024]).)
Among his students were Sorkhab (Sohrab), a Persian from Semnan, and Abu al-Wafa Mubashir ibn Fatek, an Egyptian prince.
"Book of Optics".
Alhazen's most famous work is his seven-volume treatise on optics "Kitab al-Manazir" ("Book of Optics"), written from 1011 to 1021. In it, Ibn al-Haytham was the first to explain that vision occurs when light reflects from an object and then passes to one's eyes, and to argue that vision occurs in the brain, pointing to observations that it is subjective and affected by personal experience.
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"Optics" was translated into Latin by an unknown scholar at the end of the 12th century or the beginning of the 13th century.
This work enjoyed a great reputation during the Middle Ages. The Latin version of "De aspectibus" was translated at the end of the 14th century into Italian vernacular, under the title "De li aspecti".
It was printed by Friedrich Risner in 1572, with the title "Opticae thesaurus: Alhazeni Arabis libri septem, nuncprimum editi; Eiusdem liber De Crepusculis et nubium ascensionibus" (English: Treasury of Optics: seven books by the Arab Alhazen, first edition; by the same, on twilight and the height of clouds).
Risner is also the author of the name variant "Alhazen"; before Risner he was known in the west as Alhacen.
Works by Alhazen on geometric subjects were discovered in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris in 1834 by E. A. Sedillot. In all, A. Mark Smith has accounted for 18 full or near-complete manuscripts, and five fragments, which are preserved in 14 locations, including one in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and one in the library of Bruges.
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Theory of optics.
Two major theories on vision prevailed in classical antiquity. The first theory, the emission theory, was supported by such thinkers as Euclid and Ptolemy, who believed that sight worked by the eye emitting rays of light. The second theory, the intromission theory supported by Aristotle and his followers, had physical forms entering the eye from an object. Previous Islamic writers (such as al-Kindi) had argued essentially on Euclidean, Galenist, or Aristotelian lines. The strongest influence on the "Book of Optics" was from Ptolemy's "Optics", while the description of the anatomy and physiology of the eye was based on Galen's account. Alhazen's achievement was to come up with a theory that successfully combined parts of the mathematical ray arguments of Euclid, the medical tradition of Galen, and the intromission theories of Aristotle. Alhazen's intromission theory followed al-Kindi (and broke with Aristotle) in asserting that "from each point of every colored body, illuminated by any light, issue light and color along every straight line that can be drawn from that point". This left him with the problem of explaining how a coherent image was formed from many independent sources of radiation; in particular, every point of an object would send rays to every point on the eye.
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What Alhazen needed was for each point on an object to correspond to one point only on the eye. He attempted to resolve this by asserting that the eye would only perceive perpendicular rays from the objectfor any one point on the eye, only the ray that reached it directly, without being refracted by any other part of the eye, would be perceived. He argued, using a physical analogy, that perpendicular rays were stronger than oblique rays: in the same way that a ball thrown directly at a board might break the board, whereas a ball thrown obliquely at the board would glance off, perpendicular rays were stronger than refracted rays, and it was only perpendicular rays which were perceived by the eye. As there was only one perpendicular ray that would enter the eye at any one point, and all these rays would converge on the centre of the eye in a cone, this allowed him to resolve the problem of each point on an object sending many rays to the eye; if only the perpendicular ray mattered, then he had a one-to-one correspondence and the confusion could be resolved. He later asserted (in book seven of the "Optics") that other rays would be refracted through the eye and perceived "as if" perpendicular. His arguments regarding perpendicular rays do not clearly explain why "only" perpendicular rays were perceived; why would the weaker oblique rays not be perceived more weakly? His later argument that refracted rays would be perceived as if perpendicular does not seem persuasive. However, despite its weaknesses, no other theory of the time was so comprehensive, and it was enormously influential, particularly in Western Europe. Directly or indirectly, his "De Aspectibus" (Book of Optics) inspired much activity in optics between the 13th and 17th centuries. Kepler's later theory of the retinal image (which resolved the problem of the correspondence of points on an object and points in the eye) built directly on the conceptual framework of Alhazen.
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Alhazen showed through experiment that light travels in straight lines, and carried out various experiments with lenses, mirrors, refraction, and reflection. His analyses of reflection and refraction considered the vertical and horizontal components of light rays separately.
Alhazen studied the process of sight, the structure of the eye, image formation in the eye, and the visual system. Ian P. Howard argued in a 1996 "Perception" article that Alhazen should be credited with many discoveries and theories previously attributed to Western Europeans writing centuries later. For example, he described what became in the 19th century Hering's law of equal innervation. He wrote a description of vertical horopters 600 years before Aguilonius that is actually closer to the modern definition than Aguilonius'sand his work on binocular disparity was repeated by Panum in 1858. Craig Aaen-Stockdale, while agreeing that Alhazen should be credited with many advances, has expressed some caution, especially when considering Alhazen in isolation from Ptolemy, with whom Alhazen was extremely familiar. Alhazen corrected a significant error of Ptolemy regarding binocular vision, but otherwise his account is very similar; Ptolemy also attempted to explain what is now called Hering's law. In general, Alhazen built on and expanded the optics of Ptolemy.
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In a more detailed account of Ibn al-Haytham's contribution to the study of binocular vision based on Lejeune and Sabra, Raynaud showed that the concepts of correspondence, homonymous and crossed diplopia were in place in Ibn al-Haytham's optics. But contrary to Howard, he explained why Ibn al-Haytham did not give the circular figure of the horopter and why, by reasoning experimentally, he was in fact closer to the discovery of Panum's fusional area than that of the Vieth-Müller circle. In this regard, Ibn al-Haytham's theory of binocular vision faced two main limits: the lack of recognition of the role of the retina, and obviously the lack of an experimental investigation of ocular tracts.
Alhazen's most original contribution was that, after describing how he thought the eye was anatomically constructed, he went on to consider how this anatomy would behave functionally as an optical system. His understanding of pinhole projection from his experiments appears to have influenced his consideration of image inversion in the eye, which he sought to avoid. He maintained that the rays that fell perpendicularly on the lens (or glacial humor as he called it) were further refracted outward as they left the glacial humor and the resulting image thus passed upright into the optic nerve at the back of the eye. He followed Galen in believing that the lens was the receptive organ of sight, although some of his work hints that he thought the retina was also involved.
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Alhazen's synthesis of light and vision adhered to the Aristotelian scheme, exhaustively describing the process of vision in a logical, complete fashion.
His research in catoptrics (the study of optical systems using mirrors) was centred on spherical and parabolic mirrors and spherical aberration. He made the observation that the ratio between the angle of incidence and refraction does not remain constant, and investigated the magnifying power of a lens.
Law of reflection.
Alhazen was the first physicist to give complete statement of the law of reflection. He was first to state that the incident ray, the reflected ray, and the normal to the surface all lie in a same plane perpendicular to reflecting plane.
Alhazen's problem.
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Later mathematicians used Descartes' analytical methods to analyse the problem. An algebraic solution to the problem was finally found in 1965 by Jack M. Elkin, an actuarian. Other solutions were discovered in 1989, by Harald Riede and in 1997 by the Oxford mathematician Peter M. Neumann.
Recently, Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) researchers solved the extension of Alhazen's problem to general rotationally symmetric quadric mirrors including hyperbolic, parabolic and elliptical mirrors.
Camera Obscura.
The camera obscura was known to the ancient Chinese, and was described by the Han Chinese polymath Shen Kuo in his scientific book "Dream Pool Essays", published in the year 1088 C.E. Aristotle had discussed the basic principle behind it in his "Problems", but Alhazen's work contained the first clear description of camera obscura. and early analysis of the device.
Ibn al-Haytham used a camera obscura mainly to observe a partial solar eclipse.
In his essay, Ibn al-Haytham writes that he observed the sickle-like shape of the sun at the time of an eclipse. The introduction reads as follows: "The image of the sun at the time of the eclipse, unless it is total, demonstrates that when its light passes through a narrow, round hole and is cast on a plane opposite to the hole it takes on the form of a moonsickle."
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It is admitted that his findings solidified the importance in the history of the camera obscura but this treatise is important in many other respects.
Ancient optics and medieval optics were divided into optics and burning mirrors. Optics proper mainly focused on the study of vision, while burning mirrors focused on the properties of light and luminous rays. "On the shape of the eclipse" is probably one of the first attempts made by Ibn al-Haytham to articulate these two sciences.
Very often Ibn al-Haytham's discoveries benefited from the intersection of mathematical and experimental contributions. This is the case with "On the shape of the eclipse". Besides the fact that this treatise allowed more people to study partial eclipses of the sun, it especially allowed to better understand how the camera obscura works. This treatise is a physico-mathematical study of image formation inside the camera obscura. Ibn al-Haytham takes an experimental approach, and determines the result by varying the size and the shape of the aperture, the focal length of the camera, the shape and intensity of the light source.
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In his work he explains the inversion of the image in the camera obscura, the fact that the image is similar to the source when the hole is small, but also the fact that the image can differ from the source when the hole is large. All these results are produced by using a point analysis of the image.
Refractometer.
In the seventh tract of his book of optics, Alhazen described an apparatus for experimenting with various cases of refraction, in order to investigate the relations between the angle of incidence, the angle of refraction and the angle of deflection. This apparatus was a modified version of an apparatus used by Ptolemy for similar purpose.
Unconscious inference.
Alhazen basically states the concept of unconscious inference in his discussion of colour before adding that the inferential step between sensing colour and differentiating it is shorter than the time taken between sensing and any other visible characteristic (aside from light), and that "time is so short as not to be clearly apparent to the beholder." Naturally, this suggests that the colour and form are perceived elsewhere. Alhazen goes on to say that information must travel to the central nerve cavity for processing and:the sentient organ does not sense the forms that reach it from the visible objects until
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after it has been affected by these forms; thus it does not sense color as color or light as light until after it has been affected by the form of color or light. Now the affectation received by the sentient organ from the form of color or of light is a certain change; and change must take place in time; ...and it is in the time during which the form extends from the sentient organ's surface to the cavity of the common nerve, and in (the time) following that, that the sensitive faculty, which exists in the whole of the sentient body will perceive color as color...Thus the last sentient's perception of color as such and of light as such takes place at a time following that in which the form arrives from the surface of the sentient organ to the cavity of the common nerve.
Color constancy.
Alhazen explained color constancy by observing that the light reflected from an object is modified by the object's color. He explained that the quality of the light and the color of the object are mixed, and the visual system separates light and color. In Book II, Chapter 3 he writes:Again the light does not travel from the colored object to the eye unaccompanied by the color, nor does the form of the color pass from the colored object to the eye unaccompanied by the light. Neither the form of the light nor that of the color existing in the colored object can pass except as mingled together and the last sentient can only
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perceive them as mingled together. Nevertheless, the sentient perceives that the visible object is luminous and that the light seen in the object is other than the color and that these are two properties.
Other contributions.
The "Kitab al-Manazir" (Book of Optics) describes several experimental observations that Alhazen made and how he used his results to explain certain optical phenomena using mechanical analogies. He conducted experiments with projectiles and concluded that only the impact of perpendicular projectiles on surfaces was forceful enough to make them penetrate, whereas surfaces tended to deflect oblique projectile strikes. For example, to explain refraction from a rare to a dense medium, he used the mechanical analogy of an iron ball thrown at a thin slate covering a wide hole in a metal sheet. A perpendicular throw breaks the slate and passes through, whereas an oblique one with equal force and from an equal distance does not. He also used this result to explain how intense, direct light hurts the eye, using a mechanical analogy: Alhazen associated 'strong' lights with perpendicular rays and 'weak' lights with oblique ones. The obvious answer to the problem of multiple rays and the eye was in the choice of the perpendicular ray, since only one such ray from each point on the surface of the object could penetrate the eye.
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Sudanese psychologist Omar Khaleefa has argued that Alhazen should be considered the founder of experimental psychology, for his pioneering work on the psychology of visual perception and optical illusions. Khaleefa has also argued that Alhazen should also be considered the "founder of psychophysics", a sub-discipline and precursor to modern psychology. Although Alhazen made many subjective reports regarding vision, there is no evidence that he used quantitative psychophysical techniques and the claim has been rebuffed.
Alhazen offered an explanation of the Moon illusion, an illusion that played an important role in the scientific tradition of medieval Europe. Many authors repeated explanations that attempted to solve the problem of the Moon appearing larger near the horizon than it does when higher up in the sky. Alhazen argued against Ptolemy's refraction theory, and defined the problem in terms of perceived, rather than real, enlargement. He said that judging the distance of an object depends on there being an uninterrupted sequence of intervening bodies between the object and the observer.
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He said that judging the distance of an object depends on there being an uninterrupted sequence of intervening bodies between the object and the observer. When the Moon is high in the sky there are no intervening objects, so the Moon appears close. The perceived size of an object of constant angular size varies with its perceived distance. Therefore, the Moon appears closer and smaller high in the sky, and further and larger on the horizon. Through works by Roger Bacon, John Pecham and Witelo based on Alhazen's explanation, the Moon illusion gradually came to be accepted as a psychological phenomenon, with the refraction theory being rejected in the 17th century. Although Alhazen is often credited with the perceived distance explanation, he was not the first author to offer it. Cleomedes ( 2nd century) gave this account (in addition to refraction), and he credited it to Posidonius ( 135–50 BCE). Ptolemy may also have offered this explanation in his "Optics", but the text is obscure. Alhazen's writings were more widely available in the Middle Ages than those of these earlier authors, and that probably explains why Alhazen received the credit.
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Scientific method.
An aspect associated with Alhazen's optical research is related to systemic and methodological reliance on experimentation ("i'tibar")(Arabic: اختبار) and controlled testing in his scientific inquiries. Moreover, his experimental directives rested on combining classical physics ("ilm tabi'i") with mathematics ("ta'alim"; geometry in particular). This mathematical-physical approach to experimental science supported most of his propositions in "Kitab al-Manazir" ("The Optics"; "De aspectibus" or "Perspectivae") and grounded his theories of vision, light and colour, as well as his research in catoptrics and dioptrics (the study of the reflection and refraction of light, respectively).
According to Matthias Schramm, Alhazen "was the first to make a systematic use of the method of varying the experimental conditions in a constant and uniform manner, in an experiment showing that the intensity of the light-spot formed by the projection of the moonlight through two small apertures onto a screen diminishes constantly as one of the apertures is gradually blocked up." G. J. Toomer expressed some skepticism regarding Schramm's view, partly because at the time (1964) the "Book of Optics" had not yet been fully translated from Arabic, and Toomer was concerned that without context, specific passages might be read anachronistically. While acknowledging Alhazen's importance in developing experimental techniques, Toomer argued that Alhazen should not be considered in isolation from other Islamic and ancient thinkers. Toomer concluded his review by saying that it would not be possible to assess Schramm's claim that Ibn al-Haytham was the true founder of modern physics without translating more of Alhazen's work and fully investigating his influence on later medieval writers.
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Other works on physics.
Optical treatises.
Besides the "Book of Optics", Alhazen wrote several other treatises on the same subject, including his "Risala fi l-Daw"' ("Treatise on Light"). He investigated the properties of luminance, the rainbow, eclipses, twilight, and moonlight. Experiments with mirrors and the refractive interfaces between air, water, and glass cubes, hemispheres, and quarter-spheres provided the foundation for his theories on catoptrics.
Celestial physics.
Alhazen discussed the physics of the celestial region in his "Epitome of Astronomy", arguing that Ptolemaic models must be understood in terms of physical objects rather than abstract hypothesesin other words that it should be possible to create physical models where (for example) none of the celestial bodies would collide with each other. The suggestion of mechanical models for the Earth centred Ptolemaic model "greatly contributed to the eventual triumph of the Ptolemaic system among the Christians of the West". Alhazen's determination to root astronomy in the realm of physical objects was important, however, because it meant astronomical hypotheses "were accountable to the laws of physics", and could be criticised and improved upon in those terms.
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He also wrote "Maqala fi daw al-qamar" ("On the Light of the Moon").
Mechanics.
In his work, Alhazen discussed theories on the motion of a body.
Astronomical works.
"On the Configuration of the World".
In his "On the Configuration of the World" Alhazen presented a detailed description of the physical structure of the earth:
The book is a non-technical explanation of Ptolemy's "Almagest", which was eventually translated into Hebrew and Latin in the 13th and 14th centuries and subsequently had an influence on astronomers such as Georg von Peuerbach during the European Middle Ages and Renaissance.
"Doubts Concerning Ptolemy".
In his "Al-Shukūk ‛alā Batlamyūs", variously translated as "Doubts Concerning Ptolemy" or "Aporias against Ptolemy", published at some time between 1025 and 1028, Alhazen criticized Ptolemy's "Almagest", "Planetary Hypotheses", and "Optics", pointing out various contradictions he found in these works, particularly in astronomy. Ptolemy's "Almagest" concerned mathematical theories regarding the motion of the planets, whereas the "Hypotheses" concerned what Ptolemy thought was the actual configuration of the planets. Ptolemy himself acknowledged that his theories and configurations did not always agree with each other, arguing that this was not a problem provided it did not result in noticeable error, but Alhazen was particularly scathing in his criticism of the inherent contradictions in Ptolemy's works. He considered that some of the mathematical devices Ptolemy introduced into astronomy, especially the equant, failed to satisfy the physical requirement of uniform circular motion, and noted the absurdity of relating actual physical motions to imaginary mathematical points, lines and circles:
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Having pointed out the problems, Alhazen appears to have intended to resolve the contradictions he pointed out in Ptolemy in a later work. Alhazen believed there was a "true configuration" of the planets that Ptolemy had failed to grasp. He intended to complete and repair Ptolemy's system, not to replace it completely. In the "Doubts Concerning Ptolemy" Alhazen set out his views on the difficulty of attaining scientific knowledge and the need to question existing authorities and theories:
He held that the criticism of existing theorieswhich dominated this bookholds a special place in the growth of scientific knowledge.
"Model of the Motions of Each of the Seven Planets".
Alhazen's "The Model of the Motions of Each of the Seven Planets" was written 1038. Only one damaged manuscript has been found, with only the introduction and the first section, on the theory of planetary motion, surviving. (There was also a second section on astronomical calculation, and a third section, on astronomical instruments.) Following on from his "Doubts on Ptolemy", Alhazen described a new, geometry-based planetary model, describing the motions of the planets in terms of spherical geometry, infinitesimal geometry and trigonometry. He kept a geocentric universe and assumed that celestial motions are uniformly circular, which required the inclusion of epicycles to explain observed motion, but he managed to eliminate Ptolemy's equant. In general, his model didn't try to provide a causal explanation of the motions, but concentrated on providing a complete, geometric description that could explain observed motions without the contradictions inherent in Ptolemy's model.
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Other astronomical works.
Alhazen wrote a total of twenty-five astronomical works, some concerning technical issues such as "Exact Determination of the Meridian", a second group concerning accurate astronomical observation, a third group concerning various astronomical problems and questions such as the location of the Milky Way; Alhazen made the first systematic effort of evaluating the Milky Way's parallax, combining Ptolemy's data and his own. He concluded that the parallax is (probably very much) smaller than Lunar parallax, and the Milky way should be a celestial object. Though he was not the first who argued that the Milky Way does not belong to the atmosphere, he is the first who did quantitative analysis for the claim.
The fourth group consists of ten works on astronomical theory, including the "Doubts" and "Model of the Motions" discussed above.
Mathematical works.
In mathematics, Alhazen built on the mathematical works of Euclid and Thabit ibn Qurra and worked on "the beginnings of the link between algebra and geometry". Alhazen made developments in conic sections and number theory.
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He developed a formula for summing the first 100 natural numbers, using a geometric proof to prove the formula.
Geometry.
Alhazen explored what is now known as the Euclidean parallel postulate, the fifth postulate in Euclid's "Elements", using a proof by contradiction, and in effect introducing the concept of motion into geometry. He formulated the Lambert quadrilateral, which Boris Abramovich Rozenfeld names the "Ibn al-Haytham–Lambert quadrilateral". He was criticised by Omar Khayyam who pointed that Aristotle had condemned the use of motion in geometry.
In elementary geometry, Alhazen attempted to solve the problem of squaring the circle using the area of lunes (crescent shapes), but later gave up on the impossible task. The two lunes formed from a right triangle by erecting a semicircle on each of the triangle's sides, inward for the hypotenuse and outward for the other two sides, are known as the lunes of Alhazen; they have the same total area as the triangle itself.
Number theory.
Alhazen's contributions to number theory include his work on perfect numbers. In his "Analysis and Synthesis", he may have been the first to state that every even perfect number is of the form 2"n"−1(2"n" − 1) where 2"n" − 1 is prime, but he was not able to prove this result; Euler later proved it in the 18th century, and it is now called the Euclid–Euler theorem.
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Alhazen solved problems involving congruences using what is now called Wilson's theorem. In his "Opuscula", Alhazen considers the solution of a system of congruences, and gives two general methods of solution. His first method, the canonical method, involved Wilson's theorem, while his second method involved a version of the Chinese remainder theorem.
Calculus.
Alhazen discovered the sum formula for the fourth power, using a method that could be generally used to determine the sum for any integral power. He used this to find the volume of a paraboloid. He could find the integral formula for any polynomial without having developed a general formula.
Other works.
"Influence of Melodies on the Souls of Animals".
Alhazen also wrote a "Treatise on the Influence of Melodies on the Souls of Animals", although no copies have survived. It appears to have been concerned with the question of whether animals could react to music, for example whether a camel would increase or decrease its pace.
Engineering.
In engineering, one account of his career as a civil engineer has him summoned to Egypt by the Fatimid Caliph, Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, to regulate the flooding of the Nile River. He carried out a detailed scientific study of the annual inundation of the Nile River, and he drew plans for building a dam, at the site of the modern-day Aswan Dam. His field work, however, later made him aware of the impracticality of this scheme, and he soon feigned madness so he could avoid punishment from the Caliph.
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Philosophy.
In his "Treatise on Place", Alhazen disagreed with Aristotle's view that nature abhors a void, and he used geometry in an attempt to demonstrate that place ("al-makan") is the imagined three-dimensional void between the inner surfaces of a containing body. Abd-el-latif, a supporter of Aristotle's philosophical view of place, later criticized the work in "Fi al-Radd 'ala Ibn al-Haytham fi al-makan" ("A refutation of Ibn al-Haytham's place") for its geometrization of place.
Alhazen also discussed space perception and its epistemological implications in his "Book of Optics". In "tying the visual perception of space to prior bodily experience, Alhazen unequivocally rejected the intuitiveness of spatial perception and, therefore, the autonomy of vision. Without tangible notions of distance and size for
correlation, sight can tell us next to nothing about such things."
Theology.
Alhazen was a Muslim and most sources report that he was a Sunni and a follower of the Ash'ari school. Ziauddin Sardar says that some of the greatest Muslim scientists, such as Ibn al-Haytham and Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī, who were pioneers of the scientific method, were themselves followers of the Ashʿari school of Islamic theology. Like other Ashʿarites who believed that faith or "taqlid" should apply only to Islam and not to any ancient Hellenistic authorities, Ibn al-Haytham's view that "taqlid" should apply only to prophets of Islam and not to any other authorities formed the basis for much of his scientific skepticism and criticism against Ptolemy and other ancient authorities in his "Doubts Concerning Ptolemy" and "Book of Optics".
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Alhazen wrote a work on Islamic theology in which he discussed prophethood and developed a system of philosophical criteria to discern its false claimants in his time.
He also wrote a treatise entitled "Finding the Direction of Qibla by Calculation" in which he discussed finding the Qibla, where prayers (salat) are directed towards, mathematically.
There are occasional references to theology or religious sentiment in his technical works, e.g.
in "Doubts Concerning Ptolemy":
In "The Winding Motion":
Regarding the relation of objective truth and God:
Legacy.
Alhazen made significant contributions to optics, number theory, geometry, astronomy and natural philosophy. Alhazen's work on optics is credited with contributing a new emphasis on experiment.
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H. J. J. Winter, a British historian of science, summing up the importance of Ibn al-Haytham in the history of physics wrote:
After the death of Archimedes no really great physicist appeared until Ibn al-Haytham. If, therefore, we confine our interest only to the history of physics, there is a long period of over twelve hundred years during which the Golden Age of Greece gave way to the era of Muslim Scholasticism, and the experimental spirit of the noblest physicist of Antiquity lived again in the Arab Scholar from Basra.
Although only one commentary on Alhazen's optics has survived the Islamic Middle Ages, Geoffrey Chaucer mentions the work in "The Canterbury Tales":
<poem>"They spoke of Alhazen and Vitello,
And Aristotle, who wrote, in their lives,
On strange mirrors and optical instruments."</poem>
The impact crater Alhazen on the Moon is named in his honour, as was the asteroid 59239 Alhazen. In honour of Alhazen, the Aga Khan University (Pakistan) named its Ophthalmology endowed chair as "The Ibn-e-Haitham Associate Professor and Chief of Ophthalmology".
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The 2015 International Year of Light celebrated the 1000th anniversary of the works on optics by Ibn Al-Haytham.
In 2014, the "Hiding in the Light" episode of "", presented by Neil deGrasse Tyson, focused on the accomplishments of Ibn al-Haytham. He was voiced by Alfred Molina in the episode.
Over forty years previously, Jacob Bronowski presented Alhazen's work in a similar television documentary (and the corresponding book), "The Ascent of Man". In episode 5 ("The Music of the Spheres"), Bronowski remarked that in his view, Alhazen was "the one really original scientific mind that Arab culture produced", whose theory of optics was not improved on till the time of Newton and Leibniz.
UNESCO declared 2015 the International Year of Light and its Director-General Irina Bokova dubbed Ibn al-Haytham 'the father of optics'. Amongst others, this was to celebrate Ibn Al-Haytham's achievements in optics, mathematics and astronomy. An international campaign, created by the 1001 Inventions organisation, titled "1001 Inventions and the World of Ibn Al-Haytham" featuring a series of interactive exhibits, workshops and live shows about his work, partnering with science centers, science festivals, museums, and educational institutions, as well as digital and social media platforms. The campaign also produced and released the short educational film 1001 Inventions and the World of Ibn Al-Haytham.
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Ibn al-Haytham appears on the 10,000 dinar banknote of the Iraqi dinar, series 2003.
List of works.
According to medieval biographers, Alhazen wrote more than 200 works on a wide range of subjects, of which at least 96 of his scientific works are known. Most of his works are now lost, but more than 50 of them have survived to some extent. Nearly half of his surviving works are on mathematics, 23 of them are on astronomy, and 14 of them are on optics, with a few on other subjects. Not all his surviving works have yet been studied, but some of the ones that have are given below.
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Alessandro Allori
Alessandro di Cristofano di Lorenzo del Bronzino Allori (Florence, 31 May 153522 September 1607) was an Italian painter of the late Mannerist Florentine school.
Biography.
After the death of his father in 1541, Allori was brought up and trained in art by the mannerist painter Agnolo Bronzino, a close friend of the family. Both Alessandro and his son Cristofano sometimes used the name "Bronzino" in adulthood. Allori supplemented his training with a study trip to Rome, between 1554 and 1560, and with anatomical research which included the dissection of human corpses, provided by the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova.
In the prime of his career, Allori headed one of the "two most important workshops in Florence in the second half of the 16th century" (the other was led by Santi di Tito). He served as First Consul of the Accademia del Disegno in 1573, and was made head of the "Arazzeria Medicea", Florence's state-owned tapestry workshop, in 1581. Allori also worked, under the guidance of Giorgio Vasari, among the team of artists who decorated the Studiolo of Francesco I. He contributed four painted panels: a "Banquet of Cleopatra", a landscape with figures diving for pearls, and portraits of Cosimo I de' Medici and Eleanor of Toledo, the parents of Francesco I. Between 1578 and 1582 he worked in the Medici Villa di Poggio a Caiano, expanding a fresco of "Tribute to Caesar" which Andrea del Sarto had painted in the 1520s. Allori modified his style and copied figures to harmonize with the work of del Sarto, who was revered by the artists of Florence. In the same way, Allori expanded Franciabigio's fresco "Triumph of Cicero" in the same hall with figures copied from his frescoes in the Chiostro dello Scalzo, Florence.
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S. J. Freedberg derides Allori as derivative, claiming he illustrates "the ideal of Maniera by which art (and style) are generated out of pre-existing art." The cold and polished appearance of his painted figures makes them resemble statues as much as living beings. The art historian Simona Lecchini Giovannoni is more positive, remarking that Allori gives life to these "grandiose, introverted figures" by surrounding them with realistic depictions of plants and flowers, household furniture, and textiles; the paintings "approach the spectator, not with dialogue and sentiment, but through the tangible evidence of objects and details".
Among his collaborators was Giovanni Maria Butteri and his main pupil was Giovanni Bizzelli. Cristofano dell'Altissimo, Cesare Dandini, Aurelio Lomi, John Mosnier, Alessandro Pieroni, Giovanni Battista Vanni, and Monanni also were his pupils. He was the father of the painter Cristofano Allori (1577–1621).
In his "Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects", Vasari says that the relationships between Jacopo Pontormo and his pupil Bronzino, and between Bronzino and Allori, resembled those between fathers and sons; he consequently describes the three as a kind of artistic dynasty, despite the lack of literal family ties. In some ways, Allori is the last of the line of prominent Florentine painters, of generally undiluted Tuscan artistic heritage: Andrea del Sarto worked with Fra Bartolomeo (as well as Leonardo da Vinci), Pontormo briefly worked under Andrea, and trained Bronzino, who trained Allori. Subsequent generations in the city would be strongly influenced by the tide of Baroque styles pre-eminent in other parts of Italy.
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Main works.
In 2006 the BBC foreign correspondent Sir Charles Wheeler returned an original Alessandro Allori painting to the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. He had been given it in Germany in 1952, but only recently realized its origin and that it must have been looted in the wake of World War II. The work is possibly a portrait of Eleonora (Dianora) di Toledo de' Medici, niece of Eleonora di Toledo, and measures 12 cm x 16 cm.
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Almoravid dynasty
The Almoravid dynasty () was a Berber Muslim dynasty centered in the territory of present-day Morocco. It established an empire that stretched over the western Maghreb and Al-Andalus, starting in the 1050s and lasting until its fall to the Almohads in 1147.
The Almoravids emerged from a coalition of the Lamtuna, Gudala, and Massufa, nomadic Berber tribes living in what is now Mauritania and the Western Sahara, traversing the territory between the Draa, the Niger, and the Senegal rivers. During their expansion into the Maghreb, they founded the city of Marrakesh as a capital, . Shortly after this, the empire was divided into two branches: a northern one centered in the Maghreb, led by Yusuf ibn Tashfin and his descendants, and a southern one based in the Sahara, led by Abu Bakr ibn Umar and his descendants.
The Almoravids expanded their control to al-Andalus (the Muslim territories in Iberia) and were crucial in temporarily halting the advance of the Christian kingdoms in this region, with the Battle of Sagrajas in 1086 among their signature victories. This united the Maghreb and al-Andalus politically for the first time and transformed the Almoravids into the first major Berber-led Islamic empire in the western Mediterranean. Their rulers never claimed the title of caliph and instead took on the title of "Amir al-Muslimīn" ("Prince of the Muslims") while formally acknowledging the overlordship of the Abbasid Caliphs in Baghdad. The Almoravid period also contributed significantly to the Islamization of the Sahara region and to the urbanization of the western Maghreb, while cultural developments were spurred by increased contact between Al-Andalus and Africa.
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After a short apogee, Almoravid power in al-Andalus began to decline after the loss of Zaragoza in 1118. The final cause of their downfall was the Masmuda-led Almohad rebellion initiated in the Maghreb by Ibn Tumart in the 1120s. The last Almoravid ruler, Ishaq ibn Ali, was killed when the Almohads captured Marrakesh in 1147 and established themselves as the new dominant power in both North Africa and Al-Andalus.
Name.
The term "Almoravid" comes from the Arabic " (), through the . The transformation of the ' in " to the ' in " is an example of betacism in Spanish.
In Arabic, " literally means "one who is tying" but figuratively means "one who is ready for battle at a fortress". The term is related to the notion of " , a North African frontier monastery-fortress, through the root r-b-t ( ": "to tie, to unite" or "": "to encamp").
The name "Almoravid" was tied to a school of Malikite law called "Dar al-Murabitin" founded in Sus al-Aksa, modern day Morocco, by a scholar named Waggag ibn Zallu. Ibn Zallu sent his student Abdallah ibn Yasin to preach Malikite Islam to the Sanhaja Berbers of the Adrar (present-day Mauritania). Hence, the name of the Almoravids comes from the followers of the Dar al-Murabitin, "the house of those who were bound together in the cause of God."
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It is uncertain exactly when or why the Almoravids acquired that appellation. Al-Bakri, writing in 1068, before their apex, already calls them the "al-Murabitun", but does not clarify the reasons for it. Writing three centuries later, Ibn Abi Zar suggested it was chosen early on by Abdallah ibn Yasin because, upon finding resistance among the Gudala Berbers of Adrar (Mauritania) to his teaching, he took a handful of followers to erect a makeshift "ribat" (monastery-fortress) on an offshore island (possibly Tidra island, in the Bay of Arguin). Ibn 'Idhari wrote that the name was suggested by Ibn Yasin in the "persevering in the fight" sense, to boost morale after a particularly hard-fought battle in the Draa valley , in which they had taken many losses. Whichever explanation is true, it seems certain the appellation was chosen by the Almoravids for themselves, partly with the conscious goal of forestalling any tribal or ethnic identifications.
The name might be related to the "ribat" of Waggag ibn Zallu in the village of Aglu (near present-day Tiznit), where the future Almoravid spiritual leader Abdallah ibn Yasin got his initial training. The 13th-century Moroccan biographer Ibn al-Zayyat al-Tadili, and Qadi Ayyad before him in the 12th century, note that Waggag's learning center was called "Dar al-Murabitin" (The house of the Almoravids), and that might have inspired Ibn Yasin's choice of name for the movement.
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History.
Origins.
The Almoravids, sometimes called "al-mulathamun" ("the veiled ones", from "", Arabic for "veil".) trace their origins back to several Saharan Sanhaja nomadic tribes, dwelling in an area that stretches between the Senegal River in the south and the Draa river in the north. The first and main Almoravid founding tribe was the Lamtuna. It occupied the region around Awdaghust (Aoudaghost) in the southern Sahara according to contemporary Arab chroniclers such as al-Ya'qubi, al-Bakri and Ibn Hawqal. According to French historian Charles-André Julien: "The original cell of the Almoravid empire was a powerful Sanhaja tribe of the Sahara, the Lamtuna, whose place of origin was in the Adrar in Mauritania." The Tuareg people are believed to be their descendants.
These nomads had been converted to Islam in the 9th century. They were subsequently united in the 10th century and, with the zeal of new converts, launched several campaigns against the "Sudanese" (pagan peoples of sub-Saharan Africa). Under their king Tinbarutan ibn Usfayshar, the Sanhaja Lamtuna erected (or captured) the citadel of Awdaghust, a critical stop on the trans-Saharan trade route. After the collapse of the Sanhaja union, Awdaghust passed over to the Ghana Empire; and the trans-Saharan routes were taken over by the Zenata Maghrawa of Sijilmasa. The Maghrawa also exploited this disunion to dislodge the Sanhaja Gazzula and Lamta out of their pasturelands in the Sous and Draa valleys. Around 1035, the Lamtuna chieftain Abu Abdallah Muhammad ibn Tifat (alias Tarsina), tried to reunite the Sanhaja desert tribes, but his reign lasted less than three years.
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Around 1040, Yahya ibn Ibrahim, a chieftain of the Gudala (and brother-in-law of the late Tarsina), went on pilgrimage to Mecca. On his return, he stopped by Kairouan in Ifriqiya, where he met Abu Imran al-Fasi, a native of Fez and a jurist and scholar of the Sunni Maliki school. At this time, Ifriqiya was in ferment. The Zirid ruler, al-Mu'izz ibn Badis, was openly contemplating breaking with his Shi'ite Fatimid overlords in Cairo, and the jurists of Kairouan were agitating for him to do so. Within this heady atmosphere, Yahya and Abu Imran fell into conversation on the state of the faith in their western homelands, and Yahya expressed his disappointment at the lack of religious education and negligence of Islamic law among his southern Sanhaja people. With Abu Imran's recommendation, Yahya ibn Ibrahim made his way to the "ribat" of Waggag ibn Zelu in the Sous valley of southern Morocco, to seek out a Maliki teacher for his people. Waggag assigned him one of his residents, Abdallah ibn Yasin.
Abdallah ibn Yasin was a Gazzula Berber, and probably a convert rather than a born Muslim. His name can be read as "son of Ya-Sin" (the title of the 36th "surah" of the Quran), suggesting he had obliterated his family past and was "re-born" of the Holy Book. Ibn Yasin certainly had the ardor of a puritan zealot; his creed was mainly characterized by a rigid formalism and a strict adherence to the dictates of the Quran, and the Orthodox tradition. (Chroniclers such as al-Bakri allege Ibn Yasin's learning was superficial.) Ibn Yasin's initial meetings with the Guddala people went poorly. As he had more ardor than depth, Ibn Yasin's arguments were disputed by his audience. He responded to questioning with charges of apostasy and handed out harsh punishments for the slightest deviations. The Guddala soon had enough and expelled him almost immediately after the death of his protector, Yahya ibn Ibrahim, sometime in the 1040s.
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Ibn Yasin, however, found a more favorable reception among the neighboring Lamtuna people. Probably sensing the useful organizing power of Ibn Yasin's pious fervor, the Lamtuna chieftain Yahya ibn Umar al-Lamtuni invited the man to preach to his people. The Lamtuna leaders, however, kept Ibn Yasin on a careful leash, forging a more productive partnership between them. Invoking stories of the early life of Muhammad, Ibn Yasin preached that conquest was a necessary addendum to Islamicization, that it was not enough to merely adhere to God's law, but necessary to also destroy opposition to it. In Ibn Yasin's ideology, anything and everything outside of Islamic law could be characterized as "opposition". He identified tribalism, in particular, as an obstacle. He believed it was not enough to urge his audiences to put aside their blood loyalties and ethnic differences, and embrace the equality of all Muslims under the Sacred Law, it was necessary to make them do so. For the Lamtuna leadership, this new ideology dovetailed with their long desire to refound the Sanhaja union and recover their lost dominions. In the early 1050s, the Lamtuna, under the joint leadership of Yahya ibn Umar and Abdallah ibn Yasin—soon calling themselves the "al-Murabitin" (Almoravids)—set out on a campaign to bring their neighbors over to their cause.
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Early conquests.
In the early 1050s, a kind of triumvirate emerged in leading the Almoravid movement, including Abdallah Ibn Yasin, Yahya Ibn Umar and his brother Abu Bakr Ibn Umar. The movement was now dominated by the Lamtuna rather than the Guddala. During the 1050s, the Almoravids began their expansion and their conquest of the Saharan tribes. Their first major targets were two strategic cities located at the northern and southern edges of the desert: Sijilmasa in the north and Awdaghust in the south. Control of these two cities would allow the Almoravids to effectively control the trans-Saharan trade routes. Sijilmasa was controlled by the Maghrawa, a part of the northern Zenata Berber confederation, while Awdaghust was controlled by the Soninke. Both cities were captured in 1054 or 1055. Sijilmasa was captured first and its leader, Mas'ud Ibn Wannudin, was killed, along with other Maghrawa leaders. According to historical sources, the Almoravid army rode on camels and numbered 30,000, though this number may be an exaggeration. Strengthened with the spoils of their victory, they left a garrison of Lamtuna tribesmen in the city and then turned south to capture Awdaghust, which they accomplished that same year. Although the town was mainly Muslim, the Almoravids pillaged the city and treated the population harshly on the basis that they recognized the pagan king of Ghana.
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Not long after the main Almoravid army left Sijilmasa, the city rebelled and the Maghrawa returned, slaughtering the Lamtuna garrison. Ibn Yasin responded by organizing a second expedition to recapture it, but the Guddala refused to join him and returned instead to their homelands in the desert regions along the Atlantic coast. Historian Amira Bennison suggests that some Almoravids, including the Guddala, were unwilling to be dragged into a conflict with the powerful Zanata tribes of the north and this created tension with those, like Ibn Yasin, who saw northern expansion as the next step in their fortunes. While Ibn Yasin went north, Yahya Ibn Umar remained in the south in the Adrar, the heartland of the Lamtuna, in a defensible and well-provisioned place called Jabal Lamtuna, about 10 kilometres northwest of modern Atar. His stronghold there was a fortress called Azuggi (also rendered variably as Azougui or Azukki), which had been built earlier by his brother Yannu ibn Umar al-Hajj. Some scholars, including Attilio Gaudio, Christiane Vanacker, and Brigitte Himpan and Diane Himpan-Sabatier describe Azuggi as the "first capital" of the Almoravids. Yahya ibn Umar was subsequently killed in battle against the Guddala in 1055 or 1056, or later in 1057.
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Meanwhile, in the north, Ibn Yasin had ordered Abu Bakr to take command of the Almoravid army and they soon recaptured Sijilmasa. By 1056, they had conquered Taroudant and the Sous Valley, continuing to impose Maliki Islamic law over the communities they conquered. When the campaign concluded that year, they retired to Sijilmasa and established their base there. It was around this time that Abu Bakr appointed his cousin, Yusuf ibn Tashfin, to command the garrison of the city.
In 1058, they crossed the High Atlas and conquered Aghmat, a prosperous commercial town near the foothills of the mountains, and made it their capital. They then came in contact with the Barghawata, a Berber tribal confederation who followed an Islamic "heresy" preached by Salih ibn Tarif three centuries earlier. The Barghawata occupied the region northwest of Aghmat and along the Atlantic coast. They resisted the Almoravids fiercely and the campaign against them was bloody. Abdullah ibn Yasin was killed in battle with them in 1058 or 1059, at a place called Kurīfalalt or Kurifala. By 1060, however, they were conquered by Abu Bakr ibn Umar and were forced to convert to orthodox Islam. Shortly after this, Abu Bakr had reached as far as Meknes.
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Towards 1068, Abu Bakr married a noble and wealthy Berber woman, Zaynab an-Nafzawiyyah, who would become very influential in the development of the dynasty. Zaynab was the daughter of a wealthy merchant from Kairouan who had settled in Aghmat. She had been previously married to Laqut ibn Yusuf ibn Ali al-Maghrawi, the ruler of Aghmat, until the latter was killed during the Almoravid conquest of the city.
Founding of Marrakesh and internal division.
It was around this time that Abu Bakr ibn Umar founded the new capital of Marrakesh. Historical sources cite a variety of dates for this event ranging from 1062, given by Ibn Abi Zar and Ibn Khaldun, to 1078 (470 AH), given by Muhammad al-Idrisi. The year 1070, given by Ibn Idhari, is more commonly used by modern historians, although 1062 is still cited by some writers. Shortly after founding the new city, Abu Bakr was compelled to return south to the Sahara in order to suppress a rebellion by the Guddala and their allies which threatened the desert trade routes, in either 1060 or 1071. His wife Zaynab appears to have been unwilling to follow him south and he granted her a divorce. Apparently on Abu Bakr's instructions, she was then married to Yusuf Ibn Tashfin. Before leaving, Abu Bakr appointed Ibn Tashfin as his deputy in charge of the new Almoravid territories in the north. According to Ibn Idhari, Zaynab became his most important political advisor.
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A year later, after suppressing the revolt in the south, Abu Bakr returned north toward Marrakesh, expecting to resume his control of the city and of the Almoravid forces in North Africa. Ibn Tashfin, however, was now unwilling to give up his own position of leadership. While Abu Bakr was still camped near Aghmat, Ibn Tashfin sent him lavish gifts but refused to obey his summons, reportedly on the advice of Zaynab. Abu Bakr recognized that he was unable to force the issue and was unwilling to fight a battle over control of Marrakesh, so he decided to voluntarily recognize Ibn Tashfin's leadership in the Maghreb. The two men met on neutral ground between Aghmat and Marrakesh to confirm the arrangement. After a short stay in Aghmat, Abu Bakr returned south to continue his leadership of the Almoravids in the Sahara.
Following this, the Almoravid Empire was divided into two distinct but co-dependent parts: one led by Ibn Tashfin in the north, and another led by Abu Bakr in the south. Abu Bakr continued to be formally acknowledged as the supreme leader of the Almoravids until his death in 1087. Historical sources give no indication that the two leaders treated each other as enemies and Ibn Tashfin continued to mint coins in Abu Bakr's name until the latter's death. Following Abu Bakr's departure, Ibn Tashfin was largely responsible for building the Almoravid state in the Maghreb over the next two decades. One of Abu Bakr's sons, Ibrahim, who served as the Almoravid leader in Sijilmasa between 1071 and 1076 (according to the coinage minted there), did develop a rivalry with Ibn Tashfin and attempted to confront him toward 1076. He marched to Aghmat with the intention of reclaiming his father's position in the Maghreb. Another Almoravid commander, Mazdali ibn Tilankan, who was related to both men, defused the situation and convinced Ibrahim to join his father in the south rather than start a civil war.
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Further conquests in the Maghreb.
Ibn Tashfin had in the meantime helped to bring the large area of what is now Morocco, Western Sahara, and Mauritania under Almoravid control. He spent at least several years capturing each fort and settlement in the region around Fez and in northern Morocco. After most of the surrounding region was under his control, he was finally able to conquer Fez definitively. However, there is some contradiction and uncertainty among historical sources regarding the exact chronology of these conquests, with some sources dating the main conquests to the 1060s and others dating them to the 1070s. Some modern authors cite the date of the final conquest of Fez as 1069 (461 AH). Historian Ronald Messier gives the date more specifically as 18 March 1070 (462 AH). Other historians date this conquest to 1074 or 1075.
In 1079, Ibn Tashfin sent an army 20,000 strong from Marrakesh to push towards what is now Tlemcen to attack the Banu Ya'la, the Zenata tribe occupying the area. Led by Mazdali Ibn Tilankan, the army defeated the Banu Ya'la in battle near the valley of the Moulaya River and executed their commander, Mali Ibn Ya'la, the son of Tlemcen's ruler. However, Ibn Tilankan did not push to Tlemcen right away as the city of Oujda, occupied by the Bani Iznasan, was too strong to capture. Instead, Ibn Tashfin himself returned with an army in 1081 that captured Oujda and then conquered Tlemcen, massacring the Maghrawa forces there and their leader, al-Abbas Ibn Bakhti al-Maghrawi. He pressed on and by 1082 he had captured Algiers. Ibn Tashfin subsequently treated Tlemcen as his eastern base. At that time, the city had consisted of an older settlement called Agadir, but Ibn Tashfin founded a new city next to it called Takrart, which later merged with Agadir in the Almohad period to become the present city.
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The Almoravids subsequently clashed with the Hammadids to the east multiple times, but they did not make a sustained effort to conquer the central Maghrib and instead focused their efforts on other fronts. Eventually, in 1104, they signed a peace treaty with the Hammadids. Algiers became their easternmost outpost.
By the 1080s, local Muslim rulers in al-Andalus (the Iberian Peninsula) were requesting Ibn Tashfin's help against the encroaching Christian kingdoms to the north. Ibn Tashfin made the capture of Ceuta his primary objective before making any attempt to intervene there. Ceuta, controlled by Zenata forces under the command of Diya al-Dawla Yahya, was the last major city on the African side of the Strait of Gibraltar that still held out against him. In return for a promise to help him, Ibn Tashfin demanded that al-Mu'tamid ibn Abbad, the ruler of Seville, provide assistance in besieging the city. Al-Mu'tamid obliged and sent a fleet to blockade the city by sea, while Ibn Tashfin's son Tamim led the siege by land. The city finally surrendered in June–July 1083 or in August 1084.
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Ibn Tashfin also made efforts to organize the new Almoravid realm. Under his rule, the western Maghreb was divided into well-defined administrative provinces for the first time—prior to this, it had been mostly tribal territory. A developing central government was established in Marrakesh, while he entrusted key provinces to important allies and relatives. The nascent Almoravid state was funded in part by the taxes allowed under Islamic law and by the gold that came from Ghana in the south, but in practice it remained dependent on the spoils of new conquests. The majority of the Almoravid army continued to be composed of Sanhaja recruits, but Ibn Tashfin also began recruiting slaves to form a personal guard ("ḥashm"), including 5000 black soldiers ("'abid") and 500 white soldiers ("uluj", likely of European origin).
At some point, Yusuf Ibn Tashfin moved to acknowledge the Abbasids caliphs in Baghdad as overlords. While the Abbasids themselves had little direct political power by this time, the symbolism of this act was important and enhanced Ibn Tashfin's legitimacy. According to Ibn Idhari, it was at the same time as this that Ibn Tashfin also took the title of ('Commander of the Muslims'). Ibn Idhari dates this to 1073–74, but some authors, including modern historian Évariste Lévi-Provençal, have dated this political decision to later, most likely when the Almoravids were in the process of securing control of al-Andalus. According to Amira Bennison, the recognition of the Abbasid caliph must have been established by the 1090s at latest. When Abu Bakr ibn al-Arabi visited Baghdad between 1096 and 1098, possibly as part of an Almoravid embassy to Caliph al-Mustazhir, he claimed that the Friday prayers were already being given in the Abbasid caliph's name across the territories ruled by Yusuf Ibn Tashfin.
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Southern Almoravids and the Ghana Empire.
After leaving Yusuf Ibn Tashfin in the north and returning south, Abu Bakr Ibn Umar reportedly made Azuggi his base. The town acted as the capital of the southern Almoravids under him and his successors. Despite the importance of the Saharan trade routes to the Almoravids, the history of the southern wing of the empire is not well documented in Arabic historical sources and is often neglected in histories of the Maghreb and al-Andalus. This has also encouraged a division in modern studies about the Almoravids, with archeology playing a greater role in the study of the southern wing, in the absence of more textual sources. The exact nature and impact of the Almoravid presence in the Sahel is a strongly debated topic among Africanists.
According to Arab tradition, the Almoravids under Abu Bakr's leadership conquered the Ghana Empire, founded by the Soninke, sometime around 1076–77. An example of this tradition is the record of historian Ibn Khaldun, who cited Shaykh Uthman, the faqih of Ghana, writing in 1394. According to this source, the Almoravids weakened Ghana and collected tribute from the Sudan, to the extent that the authority of the rulers of Ghana dwindled away, and they were subjugated and absorbed by the Sosso, a neighboring people of the Sudan. Traditions in Mali related that the Sosso attacked and took over Mali as well, and the ruler of the Sosso, Sumaouro Kanté, took over the land.
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However, criticism from Conrad and Fisher (1982) argued that the notion of any Almoravid military conquest at its core is merely perpetuated folklore, derived from a misinterpretation or naive reliance on Arabic sources. According to Professor Timothy Insoll, the archaeology of ancient Ghana simply does not show the signs of rapid change and destruction that would be associated with any Almoravid-era military conquests.
Dierke Lange agreed with the original military incursion theory but argues that this doesn't preclude Almoravid political agitation, claiming that the main factor of the demise of the Ghana Empire owed much to the latter. According to Lange, Almoravid religious influence was gradual, rather than the result of military action; there the Almoravids gained power by marrying among the nation's nobility. Lange attributes the decline of ancient Ghana to numerous unrelated factors, one of which is likely attributable to internal dynastic struggles instigated by Almoravid influence and Islamic pressures, but devoid of military conquest.
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This interpretation of events has been disputed by later scholars like Sheryl L. Burkhalter, who argued that, whatever the nature of the "conquest" in the south of the Sahara, the influence and success of the Almoravid movement in securing west African gold and circulating it widely necessitated a high degree of political control.
The Arab geographer Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri wrote that the Almoravids ended Ibadi Islam in Tadmekka in 1084 and that Abu Bakr "arrived at the mountain of gold" in the deep south. Abu Bakr finally died in Tagant in November 1087 following an injury in battle—according to oral tradition, from an arrow—while fighting in the historic region of the Sudan.
After the death of Abu Bakr (1087), the confederation of Berber tribes in the Sahara was divided between the descendants of Abu Bakr and his brother Yahya, and would have lost control of Ghana. Sheryl Burkhalter suggests that Abu Bakr's son Yahya was the leader of the Almoravid expedition that conquered Ghana in 1076, and that the Almoravids would have survived the loss of Ghana and the defeat in the Maghreb by the Almohads, and would have ruled the Sahara until the end of the 12th century. Some local oral histories support this, describing a southern Almoravid dynasty that lasted 200 years after Abu Bakr's death. When it finally split apart in the 13th century, one branch (by now thoroughly integrated into the local culture of Takrur) may have been led by the legendary Ndiadiane Ndiaye, founder of the Jolof Empire.
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Expansion into al-Andalus.
Initially, it appears Ibn Tashfin had little interest in involving the Almoravids in the politics of al-Andalus (the Muslim territories on the Iberian Peninsula). After the collapse of the Caliphate of Córdoba in the early 11th century, al-Andalus had split into small kingdoms or city-states known as the "Taifas". These states constantly fought with each other but were unable to raise large armies of their own, so they became reliant instead on the Christian kingdoms of the north for military support. This support was secured through the regular payment of "parias" (tributes) to the Christian kings, but the payments became a fiscal burden that drained the treasuries of these local rulers. In turn, the "Taifa" rulers burdened their subjects with increased taxation, including taxes and tariffs that were not considered legal under Islamic law. As the payments of tribute began to falter, the Christian kingdoms resorted to punitive raids and eventually to conquest. The "Taifa" kings were unwilling or unable to unite to counter this threat, and even the most powerful "Taifa" kingdom, Seville, was unable to resist Christian advances.
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After the Almoravid capture of Ceuta (1083) on the southern shore of the Strait of Gibraltar, the way was now open for Ibn Tashfin to intervene in al-Andalus. It was in this same year that Alfonso VI, king of Castile and León, led a military campaign into southern al-Andalus to punish al-Mu'tamid of Seville for failing to pay him tribute. His expedition penetrated all the way to Tarifa, the southernmost point of the Iberian Peninsula. A couple of years later, in May 1085, he seized control of Toledo, previously one of the most powerful city-states in al-Andalus. Soon after, he also began a siege of Zaragoza. These dramatic events forced the "Taifa" kings to finally consider seeking an external intervention by the Almoravids. According to the most detailed Arabic source, it was al-Mu'tamid, the ruler of Seville, who convened a meeting with his neighbours, al-Mutawwakil of Badajoz and Abdallah ibn Buluggin of Granada, where they agreed to send an embassy to Ibn Tashfin to appeal for his assistance. The "Taifa" kings were aware of the risks that came with an Almoravid intervention but considered it the best choice among their bad options. Al-Mu'tamid is said to have remarked bitterly: "Better to pasture camels than to be a swineherd"—meaning that it was better to submit to another Muslim ruler than to end up as subjects of a Christian king.
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As a condition for his assistance, Ibn Tashfin demanded that Algeciras (a city on the northern shore of the Strait of Gibraltar, across from Ceuta) be surrendered to him so he could use it as a base for his troops. Al-Mu'tamid agreed. Ibn Tashfin, wary of the hesitation of the "Taifa" kings, immediately sent an advance force of 500 troops across the strait to take control of Algeciras. They did so in July 1086 without encountering resistance. The rest of the Almoravid army, numbering around 12,000, soon followed. Ibn Tashfin and his army then marched to Seville, where they met up with the forces of al-Mu'tamid, al-Mutawwakil, and Abdallah ibn Buluggin. Alfonso VI, hearing of this development, lifted his siege of Zaragoza and marched south to confront them. The two sides met at a place north of Badajoz, called Zallaqa in Arabic sources and Sagrajas in Christian sources. In the Battle of Sagrajas (or Battle of Zallaqa), on 23 October 1086, Alfonso was soundly defeated and forced to retreat north in disorder. Al-Mu'tamid recommended that they press their advantage, but Ibn Tashfin did not pursue the Christian army further, returning instead to Seville and then to North Africa. It is possible he was unwilling to be away from his home base for too long or that the death of his eldest son, Sir, encouraged him to return.
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After Ibn Tashfin's departure, Alfonso VI quickly resumed his pressure on the "Taifa" kings and forced them to send tribute payments again. He captured the fortress of Aledo, cutting off eastern al-Andalus from the other Muslim kingdoms. Meanwhile, Ibn Rashiq, the ruler of Murcia, was embroiled in a rivalry with al-Mu'tamid of Seville. As a result, this time it was the elites or notables () of al-Andalus who now called for help from the Almoravids, rather than the kings. In May–June 1088, Ibn Tashfin landed at Algeciras with another army, soon joined by al-Mu'tamid of Seville, by Abdallah ibn Buluggin of Granada, and by other troops sent by Ibn Sumadih of Almería and Ibn Rashiq of Murcia. They then set out to retake Aledo. The siege, however, was undermined by rivalries and disunity among the "Taifa" kings. News eventually reached the Muslims that Alfonso VI was bringing an army to help the Castilian garrison. In November 1088, Ibn Tashfin lifted the siege and returned to North Africa again, having achieved nothing. Alfonso VI sent his trusted commander, Alvar Fañez, to pressure the "Taifa" kings again. He succeeded in forcing Abdallah ibn Buluggin to resume tribute payments and began to pressure al-Mu'tamid in turn.
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