Abd-el-Kader’s family were _sherifs_, or descendants of the Prophet, and his father was celebrated throughout North Africa for his piety and his charity. As a youth he received the best education attainable by a Moslem of princely rank, especially in theology and philosophy, in horsemanship and in other manly exercises. A born leader, a man of exceptional intelligence, a great soldier, an able administrator, a brilliant and persuasive orator, a chivalrous opponent, a skilled swordsman and a fearless horseman, Abd-el-Kader was one of the most remarkable figures which Africa, or, indeed, the whole Arab world, has ever produced. Of him, as of Bayard, it might be said with entire truth that he was _sans peur et sans reproche_. For fifteen years he held in check all the forces which France, the greatest military power of the time, could bring against him, treating on terms of equality with the French government, which maintained representatives at his court. Undisputed master of the great province of Oran, he crossed the Shelif in response to the appeal of the natives of Middle Algeria, who flocked to greet him as though he were an emperor. He defeated the French on the banks of the Macta in June, 1835, and then all western Algeria belonged to him, his possession of it being confirmed by the Treaty of Tafna, by the terms of which the French surrendered several important cities in the west while Abd-el-Kader on his part vaguely recognized French sovereignty in North Africa. This was a political as well as a military triumph for the young leader, who regarded the peace as but a truce which would give him a breathing-space in which to gain strength to renew the struggle under more favorable conditions. The capture of Constantine by the French in 1837, which, he claimed, was an infraction of the treaty, provided him with a pretext for reopening hostilities, and two years later he turned loose his hordes once more. Meanwhile his power had been steadily increasing. He was amply provided with materials of war, having magazines and arsenals scattered through the heart of the Tell. He had a regular army of ten thousand men, both horse and foot, to say nothing of the fifty thousand _goums_—irregular native cavalry—which the great chieftains brought to his standard. He was obeyed by a whole hierarchy of khalifas, aghas, and caïds. And the people, seeing in him not only a champion of their liberties but a man of transcendent piety, a soldier-saint, worshiped the ground beneath his charger’s hoofs.