Bou Saada
Bou-Saâda was founded in the sixteenth century by two Saints from the Sahara. Westerner. Near Algiers, this oasis is an essential step before the great shock of the desert.
Today capital of the sub-prefecture of Daïra, « the oasis of happiness » has grown. Nevertheless, there are all the elements that have made its charm of yesteryear: its medina, its large square, its many craftsmen, its market, its mosques, etc. The orientalist painter Etienne Dinet, as much inspired by the charm of the city as by the beauty of the Ouled Naïl ( very fashionable dancers during the nineteenth century), chose to live there until the end of his life.
Laghouat:
Founded by the Hilaliens Berber tribe Zénète, the oasis of Laghouat, 400 km from Algiers, is today an important modern city. After experiencing the successive influence of the Berbers, Arabs, Turkish and French, a new city was built from 1962.
If the first testimonies of this city go back to the eleventh century, the city took a remarkable rise in the sixteenth century, when Si Hadj Aïssa became the patron saint and sheltered the population of neighboring villages inside a fortified enclosure. A period described in the poems of Ben Keriou, cantor of melhoum, a rural poetry that still very popular today. Much later, it was the painter-writer Eugène Fromentin who gave it the nickname that is still used « city of gardens ».
