History
According to tradition the Ibadites, after their overthrow at Tiaret by the Fatimites, took refuge during the 10th century in the country to the southwest of Ouargla, where they founded an independent state.
In 1012, owing to further persecutions, they fled to their present location, where they long remained invulnerable.
After the French capture of Laghouat, the Mozabites concluded a convention with them in 1853, whereby they accepted to pay an annual contribution of 1,800 francs in return for their independence. In November 1882 the Mzab country was definitely annexed to French Algeria.
Ghardaia (pop. 104.645) is the capital of the confederacy, followed in importance by Beni-Isguen (4916), the chief commercial centre.
Since the establishment of French control, Beni-Isguen has become the depot for the sale of European goods. The Mozabite engineers built a system of irrigation works that made the oases much more fertile than they used to be.
Read more about this topic: Mozabite People
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.”
—Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971)
“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)