Commander of the Faithful

By: John W. Kiser;

Language: English

Quality: Like New

Genre: Autobiography - Biography, History,

ISBN: 9780979882838

SKU: BE501084889773

Pages: 400

Description: "The path to world-wide fame that turned a pious and precocious twenty-five year old Koranic scholar into a figure admired from Iowa to Moscow began with a bungled occupation of Algiers in 1830 by a French army of 30,000 soldiers. Arrogance, ignorance and broken promises spawned a resistance movement from which Abd el-Kader emerged as France's most tenacious opposition leader. His strength was rooted in his moral authority, keen intelligence, natural warrior abilities and the loyalty of his caliphs. His most lethal weapons were his diplomatic astuteness, desert hardened horses and his Jewish intelligence network." "Seventeen years later, the emir voluntarily surrendered to French generals, one of whom was the crown prince, in exchange for exile in the Middle East and his promise to never return to Algeria. His lively intellect, sincere piety and dignified stoicism gained him new admirers while imprisoned in a France that disavowed the word of its generals. Freed in 1852, he lived out his remaining years in Damascus where his fame grew to outshine his past adversaries. Abd el-Kader intervened to save thousands of Christian lives threatened by a Turkish instigated pogrom in 1860. Following the dictates of Divine Law to protect minorities and to resist evil, the emir converted his ample residence into a safe house for European diplomats and thousands of residents of the neighboring Christian quarter. Upon his death in 1883, The New York Times hailed him as "one of the few great men of the century.""--BOOK JACKET.