Emir Abdelkader

Emir Abdelkader, born Abd al-Qadir ibn Muhyi al-Din between 1806 and 1808 and also known as Abd al-Qadir al-Hasani al-Jazairi, was an Arab Algerian religious and military leader who died on 26 May 1883. An Islamic scholar and Sufi who unexpectedly found himself leading a military campaign, he led a struggle against the French colonial invasion of Algiers from 1831 to 1847, assembling a coalition of Algerian tribes that resisted one of the most powerful armies in Europe for seventeen years; his treatment of prisoners and civilians has often been cited, particularly by his Christian opponents, as an early example of humanitarian conduct in warfare. After his surrender in 1847 he was detained in France for almost five years before Napoleon III released him and had him taken to Bursa. Two years later, in 1855, he settled in Damascus, where in 1860 his intervention to halt the massacre of the city's Christian community earned him honors and awards from several countries, and where he wrote his major work, the Kitab al-Mawaqif, the Book of Halts.