Thy thick hair is like the ostrich's plumes, the male ostrich, feeding in the depressions of the dunes; thy eyebrows are like two nouns [Arab letters] of a Tlemcen writing.

" "Tlemcen: Glory of the chevaliers; Her water, her air, And the way her women veil themselves Are found in no other land.

This elegy is the work of a celebrated sheik of Tlemcen, Mahomet-Ben-Sahla, whose period was the first half of the eighteenth century.

He left a son, Ben Medien, a poet, too, and his descendants still live, near Tlemcen, in a village called Feddan-es-Seba.

I kept the little one, notwithstanding the five months of march we must make, before returning to Tlemcen.

The power of these rulers also was in perpetual flux, they were always at war with the Sultans of Tlemcen, the Christians of Spain, the princes of northern Algeria and Tunis.

By 1084 he was master of Tangier and the Rif, and his rule stretched as far west as Tlemcen, Oran and finally Algiers.

He fought them not only in Morocco but in Spain, taking Cadiz, Cordova, Granada as well as Tlemcen and Fez.

The Merinids renewed the struggle with the Sultan of Tlemcen, and carried the Holy War once more into Spain.

The conflict with Tlemcen was long and unsuccessful, and one of the Merinid Sultans died assassinated under its walls.

Tlemcen was finally taken, and the whole of Algeria annexed.

Meanwhile one of his brothers had headed a revolt in Morocco, and the princes of Tlemcen won back their ancient kingdom.

But the Sultan could not help trying to profit by the general disturbance to seize Tlemcen and raise insurrections in western Algeria; and presently Morocco was engaged in a Holy War against France.

At any rate, the column on which the arcades of the vaulting rests in the earlier mosques, as at Tunis and Kairouan, and the mosque El Kairouiyin at Fez, gives way later to the use of piers, foursquare, or with flanking engaged pilasters as at Algiers and Tlemcen.