Pomaria, the Roman town which once occupied a site near the present city, was so named from the profusion of fruit-orchards in the neighborhood, and these still exist, the whole country-side being in the spring a sea of snowy blossoms. But here, as elsewhere, the invading Vandals justified the modern implication of their name by ruining the Roman town, and the Arabs destroyed what little the Vandals left. For the next six or seven hundred years the history of Tlemcen is little more than a recital of the various Berber dynasties by whom it was ruled and who gave to the city which they rebuilt its present name. Tlemcen reached the peak of its fame and prosperity in the thirteenth century under the Abd-el-Wahid sultans, a dynasty of Zenata Berbers which ruled the greater part of what is now Algeria and claimed descent from Goliath, king of the Philistines. At this period the city boasted 125,000 inhabitants, a thriving trade, a brilliant court, and a powerful army. The Berber rulers encouraged the settlement of Christians and Jews, as many as five thousand of the former dwelling peacefully in the city, and the sultan Yarmorasen had a Christian body-guard. Here died, in 1494, Boabdil, the last king of Granada, while fighting for his kinsman, the sultan of Fez. But the roaring trade which the Tlemcenites carried on with Pisa, Genoa, Catalonia, and Provence was wrested from them upon the Spanish conquest of Oran, to which Tlemcen became tributary for a time. Early in the sixteenth century the town was held for a few months by the corsair chieftain Arouj Barbarossa, who, with his usual ferocity, sought to wipe out the ruling dynasty by causing twenty-two of the Zenata princes to be drowned in the _sahrij_, or pool, which was built by the Moors for naval exhibitions. But Arouj met his end in a skirmish with the Spaniards near Oujda and a few years later the town was captured by Salah Reis, pasha of Algiers, and under Turkish rule it rapidly declined in importance. In 1835 the Algerian leader, Abd-el-Kader, sought to reëstablish the ancient empire of Tlemcen, and, though he was forced to evacuate it upon the advance of General Clausel, it was restored to him by the Treaty of Tafna in 1837. Upon the renewal of the war in 1842, however, it was reoccupied by the French, and there they have remained ever since. Under their rule the Meshuar, or citadel, formerly the palace of the sultans of Tlemcen, was turned into barracks for the troops; the glorious mosque of Abul Hassan became a museum; the inevitable system of boulevards was constructed; and the city was encircled by a wall, for the three ancient lines of fortification had been in great part destroyed. On a little knoll, a short distance to the west of the town, the Transat has built a small but charming hotel in the Indian bungalow style, where, particularly in the spring, when the fruit-trees are in blossom, one can spend a few days most delightfully.