Miliana

Miliana is a town of Algérie, in North Africa.

Chief town of commune and Daïra of the wilaya of Ain-Defla. It forms one will daïra with the town of Ben Allel. Set up in commune of full exercise by the imperial decree of June 17th, 1854 (before Chlef and Ain Defla even).

Surface: 55 km ².

Inhabitants: 39.662 (1998), 45.318 (2004).

2nd more important agglomeration of the wilaya.

Geography

Located at 119 km in the western south of Algiers on the septentrional reverse of the small Atlas, Miliana is presented in the form of a city to the multiple natural wealths. Suspended with leaning Mount Zaccar which covers it entirely in north, the city is built on an enormous abrupt travertine rock to contours. In the east, it dominates with peak a ravine, in the south, the valley of the Chélif, and with the west a sprinkled water plate to the chain of the Ouarsenis.

Roman period

The former historians like Pline, Ptolémée and Antonin had divergences as for the origin of the toponym of this locality.

Several names were quoted such as: Manliana or Malliana and Zucchabar or Sugabar .

Some tracks:

The name of Manliana or Malliana drift of patronym MANLAE. This name of Latin origin is allotted to a girl of Roman patrician family (MANLIAE) owner of great fields (FUNDI) in this agricultural area of the valley of the Chélif.

The second toponym " Zucchabar" or " Sugabar" was mentioned in the monuments epigraphic indicating the site of the City. This name would be of importation meaning Phénicienne “gone of corn” or of Berber origin Libyco-: Izeikir Abadir “the mountain of the Abadir god” characterizing the mountainous solid mass of the Zaccar. Pline, as for him, qualifies this city of “Cologne Augusta”.

With the Arab conquest, the toponym Manliana was arabisé to become MEL-ANA (full, filled, rich), then MILYANA. This name is undoubtedly due to the abundance of water and the richness of the orchards which characterize the area. Miliana was a long time capital-refuge of the Kings Numides. It was one of the large cities of the province of Maurétanie Césarienne and sits of one évêché. Several ways relay it at the other neighbouring cities.

The Romaine city was rested by the emperor Octave between 27 and 25 av.JC. Its antiquities were quoted in many works of authors “The Roman city is located on the mountainside Zaccar which rises with 4000 feet of altitude. Remainders of architecture and sculpture discovered in these places and re-used later by the Turks for the construction of the ramparts of the city show the importance of this city in Antiquity”.

Among the found Roman archaeological documents with Miliana, one announces the existence of a Cippe carrying an inscription mentioning that the small son and the back small son of Pompée are buried in Miliana.

Here this inscription:

' Q-POMPEIO CN.F QVRIT CIEMENTI Pa…. DURV EX TESTAMENTO Q.POMPEIO F.QVIR ROGATI FRATRIS SVI MARRA POSUIT'

Thanks to his site strengthened in 375 the Roman general Théodose evacuating Césarée came to occupy " Sugabar " at semi-side of the Mount Transcellens to repress the insurrection of the Berber chief Firmus.

With the Ve century, with the surge of the Vandals, the Roman city was erased with the majority of its ancient monuments.

Period arabo-Moslem woman

Between 972 - 980 after J.C, Abou El Feth Bologhine Ibn Ziri Essanhadji, vassal of Al Moez it DIN Allah of the dynasty of the Fatimides restored and rebuilt the medieval city on the ruins of antique ZUCCHABAR. Bologhine ibn Ziri became the uncontested Master of Ifriqya. During a certain time, Miliana was the capital of most of the Maghreb. During this period the city reappears and knew a great prosperity.

At the 10th century, Ibn Hawqal was the first Arab Géographe to quote the name of Miliana in its writings. It locates it at a stage of El-Khadra and describes it as “ancient city, equipped with mills which makes turn its river and having a great number of irrigation canals”.

At the 11th century, El Bakri notes that the city is Roman and contains many antiquities.

Arab travellers passed to Miliana such as Ibn Maâchara, El Abdari which dedicates some poems to him and Ibn Batouta quotes it regularly.

In 1372, Ibn Khaldoun describes the city:

“It is a city belonging to the field Maghrawa Beni Warsifen in the plain of Chélif… and which Bolugginea traced the plan of El Djezaïr, Melyana and Lemdiya”.

During this period, Miliana was a hearth of culture. It sheltered a great number of scholars in various disciplines, scientists in particular, who were very famous on the level of the Maghreb and Moslem Machrek.

Such as for example, Ahmed Ben Otmane El Meliani, poet and writer of the 13th century and Ali Ben Omrane Ben Foamed El Miliani, theologist or Ali Ben Meki El Miliani, theologist and lawyer of the 14th century.

Following the example other cities of the the Maghreb, Miliana knew several conquests as well as political disturbances.

1081 : Youcef Ibn Tachfin, chief of the Almoravides occupied Algiers, Médéa and Miliana.
1159: Miliana belonged to the empire Almohade
1184: the seat of the Blessed Ghania. Great resistance of Mitidja carried out by Mendel Ibn Abderahmane El-Maghraoui but Yahia Ibn Ghania and his will end them up occupying Algiers in 1225.

1238, it is with the turn of the Hafsides of Tunis which come to support their allies the Beni Tudjin in possession of the city.
1268: Yaghmorassen tries to occupy the area of Meliana by defying the futures Mérinides it recognizes Almohades.
1270: Occupation of the town of Miliana capital of Maghraoui, unloading in Tunis of cross on July 18th which brings the plague. Serious epidemic.

1308 : The Zianides imposed their authority on Miliana and almost all the cities of the central Maghreb.
1317: Occupation of the city by Abdalwadides de Tlemcen.

1461 : Abou Abdallah Mohamed El Moutawakil, sultan of Ténès, seized Médéa and Miliana from where it formed an army to go to conquer the country of Blessed-Rached that of Hawwara and Mostaganem like Mazagran. It will seize Tlemcen the following year.

Même if starting from 1492, several Arabic quotas driven out of Spain, after the fall of Grenade, came to settle in the area; Milianais enjoyed a certain autonomy and an unquestionable peace until the arrival of the Turks.

Notes on the situation of the city

The city chokes between its old ramparts with the hollow of a luxuriant vegetation. Its gardens and its orchards cultivated in benches spread out harmoniously towards the plain. To go to Miliana, it is necessary to leave the Trunk road n°4, between Algiers and Khemis-Miliana on the level of the Col Kondek and to borrow is the road who passes close to the village of Ain-Torki (ex-Margueritte) or that of the locality Adelia (ex-Miliana - Margueritte) as the control panel indicates it. One can be also there taking another road towards north on the level of the center town of Khemis-Miliana.

With Médéa, on the North-South axis, and Miliana, with half way between the East and the West, the conquerors who are succédé in Algeria, padlocked very easily the strategic passages. That they are the Romans, the Arabs, the Turks or the French, the first concern of the occupants is to make sure of these two cities whose community of destiny is disconcerting, until the least detail. Since the most moved back times, they were known for the quality of the products of their soil, which pushed with the identical one, at a similar altitude and under a similar climate.

The moderate microclimate, “expenses and” of Miliana, clash of “the frying pan” of Chélif where it rains hardly 400 mm, per annum, on average, against 1.500 mm, at the top of Zaccar. Though vegetable cover seriously starts to be degraded. The city is planted plane trees which are its Symbol, even if on its armorial bearings one finds there “a palm tree and a lion,” remote memory of the time when this félidé infested the neighbouring mountains. This city which counted will intra muros, not more than 3000 inhabitants in has, today, ten times more. To make place, one started by putting at bottom the walls out of stones of size and the superb and imposing doors of Algiers and El Gherbi. Little by little the city under the population increase and the lack of vital space “was autodigérée”

In famous “the Blacet El Fham”, the Place with Coal, thus named because of the trade of before gas for domestic use. Kiosks, as warts disfigured it what should have remained a preserved place. With the shade of the plane trees, of one century and half of age, one serves best the of the department and one can see characters of another century there, the market day, descended from the piémonts to sell their products, in a getup of most traditional.

The French writer Alphonse Daudet reaches cardiovascular disorders, settled in this part of Zaccar. It wrote there its famous Tartarin de Tarascon , which was snuffed in the school handbooks during French colonization. He succeeds in painting much paintings of fabrics of the town of Miliana while settling the day in the coffees Moors. The shop, from where it observed town manners, of a city which impressed it at a point such, that it reserved to him a whole chapter in the Letters of my Mill (in Milianah), is still upright. But at the speed to which the old houses disappear, it is to be feared that soon, of modern and cold HLM do not replace the lifestyle “all in savor and nuances “with the profit of parallelepipeds of cold and gray breeze blocks.

Famous personalities originating in Miliana

Mohamed Benchicou, journalist.
Mustapha Ferroukhi, resistant.
Mohamed Bouras, founder of the Scouts Algerian Moslems.
Ali Ammar said Ali the Point, resistant Battle of Algiers.
Augustin Ferrando, painter orientalist.

Sidi Ahmed Benyoucef Errachidi (1435-1524) whose mausoleum was classified historic building in 1978.

External bonds

Internet site of the city
Photograph gallery

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