Hotels. Hôtel de France (Pl. b; C, 3), Rue de Fez, R. 2½–4, B. 1¼, déj. 3. D. 4, pens. 9–12, omn. 1 fr.; Hôtel Charles (Pl. a; C, 2), Place des Victoires, R. 3, B. ¾, déj. or D. 3, pens. 7½, omn. 1 fr., good, though plain, with restaurant.—Cafés in the Place de la Mairie, Place des Victoires, etc.
Carriages (mostly with three horses, poor but not dear; fares according to bargain) in the Place des Victoires and Esplanade du Méchouar.
Post & Telegraph Office (Pl. B, 2), Boulevard National.
One Day and a Half. 1st. Forenoon, *Great Mosque (p. [189]), Museum (p. [190]), *Sidi el-Haloui Mosque (p. [191]), Agâdir (p. [196]); afternoon, *Mansura (p. [193]).—2nd. *Sidi Bou-Médine (p. [194]). Mosques open daily 8–11 a.m.; at other times a permit of the sub-prefect (see Pl. B, 2) is required (comp. also p. [174]).
Tlemcen (2658 ft.), the old capital of the central Maghreb (Maghreb el-Oust), was in the middle ages, along with Fez, one of the great trading stations between the W. Sahara and the Mediterranean, and had a factory of the Genoese and the Venetians. It is now, after Oran, the most important town in the province, with 37,300 inhab. (including 25,500 Mohammedans, chiefly Berbers and Moors, and 5000 Jews); it possesses the only Medersa (p. [228]) in the province of Oran, founded in 1904, and is the chief military post on the W. frontier of Algeria. The town is very charmingly situated on a flat hill at the base of a ridge crowned with the Kubba Lalla-Setti (3363 ft.), a spur of the Jebel Terni or Massif de Tlemcen. Beyond the extensive hilly region to the N., sloping steeply down to the valleys of the Isser and the Tafna (p. [185]), we descry the bold mountains of the Traras group (p. [198]) and of Jebel Sebaa-Chioukh (p. [185]). The nearer environs of the town, on the upper margin of the plateau, are exuberantly fertile. Luxuriant fruit-bearing hedges are interspersed with groves of gigantic olive, carob, and pistachio trees, from whose shade peep forth the white domes of numerous tombs of saints (p. [172]).
Tlemcen still contains historic memorials of its mediæval prime and a number of Moorish works of art, mostly of the Abdelwadite and Merinide periods (p. [188]). These last, like the buildings of Fez and Kairwan (p. [372]), are among the most interesting in Barbary. Their great charm consists in the fact that their native characteristics have been preserved in a picturesque environment where customs and dress differ but slightly from those of the ancient East.
Pomaria, the earliest settlement in this region, was once, like Altava (p. [186]) and Numerus Syrorum (p. [197]), a Roman camp for the defence of the most important military road in Mauretania Cæsariensis (p. [244]), but in Roman times, notwithstanding its favourable position, it was outstripped by Siga (p. [185]). On its site, by the time of Sidi Okba (p. [322]), there had already sprung up the Berber settlement of Agâdir, which, under Idris I. (p. [95]) in 790, became the fortified capital of the E. province of Morocco for defence against the Kharijite kingdom in Tiaret (p. [208]). For seven centuries from that time onwards it was involved in all the party struggles for the possession of Barbary. During the conflicts of Omaiyades (p. [69]) and Fatimites (p. [323]), the governors of Agâdir, descendants of Solaïmân ben-Abdallah, brother of Idris I., maintained their position as vassals of one or other of these dynasties, but in 973 the town was sacked by Bologgîn ez-Ziri (p. [323]) in the course of a war against the Omaiyades.
In 1081 the Almoravide Yûsuf ibn Têshufîn (p. [95]) appeared before the gates of Agâdir, and on the site of his camp (Berber ‘tagrârt’) founded the new town of Tagrârt, afterwards the Telensîn or Tlimsân of the Moors, and united W. Algeria with Morocco. In 1145 the vicinity of Tagrârt witnessed the decisive battle between Tâkhfîn ben-Ali (p. [183]) and Abd el-Mûmen (p. [95]) which sealed the fate of the Almoravide kingdom. Since then Tagrârt appears in history as the seat of Almohade governors of the family of Abd el-Wâd, settled near Tlemcen, a branch of the powerful Berber tribe of the Zenata, and also as a military camp, while the lower classes only inhabited Agâdir.
The fall of the Almohades (p. [95]) gave rise to the kingdom of Tlemcen, which was soon extended to the W. to the Mulûya (p. [124]) and to the E. to Bougie (p. [262]). The first independent monarch was Yarmorâsen ben-Zeiyân (1239–82), of the Abdelwadites, who, with the aid of Moorish artists from Andalusia, transformed Tlemcen, his capital, into a rival of Fez as one of the most brilliant art-centres in Barbary.
Embellished in legend and in poetry, and most famous among episodes in the annals or the Maghreb were the two sieges of Tlemcen by the Merinides (p. [95]). The first siege by Abû Yakûb and his grandson Abû-Tsâbit Omar (1299–1307) commenced with the foundation of the fortified town of El-Mahalla el-Mansura, which, saving the mosque, was razed to the ground by the Abdelwadites after the withdrawal of the Moroccan army, but was rebuilt by Abû’l-Hasen Ali (1335–7) on the occasion of the second, and this time successful, siege of Tlemcen.