In the spring of 1861, a special envoy for Abraham Lincoln, the newly elected president of the United States, came to Damascus. He was carrying two revolvers as a present to the guest of honour—Emir Abdelkader, the Algerian religious and military leader—who had protected the lives of thousands of Christians during bloody sectarian violence in 1860.
Lincoln's gift wasn't the only one presented to Abdelkader that day. Other diplomats had preceded Lincoln to the mansion, perched behind the city’s historic Umayyad Mosque. A representative of Queen Victoria presented him with a priceless sword, and an envoy of the pope decorated him with the Vatican medal.
The honours he received continued well after his death. Many years after his passing, a city in Clayton County, Iowa, was named after him. A grant in Emir Abdelkader’s name was also launched at the University of Virginia, and his bust was erected at the United Nations, making him a timeless emblem of peace and co-existence.
He passed away on 26 May 1883, making this year the 141st anniversary of his death. Al Majalla now commemorates the life and times of the important historical figure.
From prison to Damascus
Emir Abdelkader was born in the town of Mascara in western Algeria in September 1808. He went on to take up arms to fight the invading French army, a long fight that would eventually establish the first Algerian state.
But for 17 years, his insurgency was an uphill battle. It led to his arrest in 1847 after a 17-year campaign of resistance. He was jailed at an infamous chateau in Amboise, central France, once home of the French royal court. Members of the emir’s family were subjected to severe torture. Many died and were buried in their prison cells before President Louis Napoleon, later Emperor Napoleon III, ordered his release in October 1852.
Napoleon was then a relatively new president, having come to power with the revolution of 1848 during the emir’s imprisonment. Keen on breaking with the old regime, he personally set him free and treated him with respect, offering him an open exile with members of his family.
The emir chose Damascus as his new home, a city he had once visited with his father during his early teens when performing the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. He was given an annual stipend of 6,000 francs—an enormous amount for the nineteenth century—and settled in Damascus in 1855.
With him came hundreds of soldiers, servants, scribes, cooks, and accountants, who would all be called al-Jaza'iri (Algerian), although they were unrelated to the Emir Abdelkader, who was from the Jaza'iri family.
Warm welcome
In Damascus, Emir Abdelkader was welcomed by one of the city’s ranking clerics, Sheikh Mahmud al-Hamzawi, who sold him a string of homes near Bab al-Faradis, one of the city’s ancient gates, right behind the Umayyad Mosque.
The people of Damascus were in desperate need of a leader to elevate their dire economic conditions and help ward off local thugs who held them by the throat. They found what they were looking for in Emir Abdelkader, who distributed funds generously to the city's poor, hired hundreds to his encouragement for good money, and clipped the wings of the city’s armed militias.
The people of Damascus had followed his career with admiration from the early days of his uprising, which had inspired many, not only in Syria but throughout the Ottoman Empire.
He was rich, well-groomed, and commanded an exceptional presence due to his mastery of religion, poetry, and the Sufi order of Islam. He was also a direct descendant of the prophet Mohammad, which touched a raw nerve in the conservative city of Damascus. Some called him the emir of ulema or religious scholars; others called him the “protector of the poor and weak.”
Maronite-Druze war erupts
Four years into his Damascus residency, a sectarian conflict erupted in Mount Lebanon between Maronite Christians and Druze, which, by the summer of 1860, had spilt into Damascus.
Lebanese Christians had fled their villages from Mount Lebanon to the Bekka Valley, where they were further persecuted and killed, rushing to Damascus for sanctuary. They were housed in the old homes and churches of Bab Tuma and the crooked alleys of al-Qaymariyya before a mob attacked them on 9 July 1860, torching homes and churches.
Approximately 5,000 Christians were killed, and the murder spree would last for an entire week, during which Ottoman authorities stood by and watched, either unwilling or unable to stop the bloodbath. Emir Abdelkader was travelling, and when hearing the news, he headed straight back to Damascus, taking the keys to the city’s citadels to house Christian refugees.
He also opened the doors of his family mansion with the help of his old friend Mahmud al-Hamzawi and a handful of Muslim notables. Thousands were brought in under the protection of his men, where they were housed and fed, with assurances that they would be saved with the Jaza'iri family.
The first to arrive were employees at the French consulate, followed by other European missions, along with monks, priests, ordinary Christians and students of the al-Asiyya Patriarchal School. Their teachers were slaughtered before making it to the emir’s home, and only one of them survived.
