Constantine, which celebrated in 2000 its two thousand five hundred years of history, is really one of the most beautiful cities of Algeria and one of the most endearing too. With an agglomeration of nearly one million inhabitants, it is, after Algiers and Oran, the third largest city in Algeria.It is the city of origin of Abdelhamid Ben Badis, nationalist theologian and founder of the Association of Ulemas of Algeria ("Algeria is our homeland, Islam is our religion, Arabic is our language"), writers Kateb Yacine and Malek Haddad, historian Benjamin Stora, Enrico Macias, journalist Paul Amar or Smaïn. Marshal Juin, or the writer Rachid Boudjedra who often evokes it in his novels, spent their youth there.Constantine has preserved many of its craft activities, the most important of which are velvet embroidery, which can be found on beautiful but expensive wedding dresses, brassware, woodcarving and pottery. Another particularity of Constantine is its music. It used to be played in the fondouks, and is best known for the malouf, a music of Arab-Andalusian origin, which differs from that of Tlemcen or Algiers in the rhythm and structure of its noubas. Other musical styles are theouasfane and the z'jel (sacred music of religious brotherhoods), the f'kiret or the benoutat (women), the hawzi which comes from the West or the mahdjouz (literary, daring).Constantine was capital of Islamic culture from April 5, 2015 to April 5, 2016. Thanks to this event, which attracted thousands of visitors, many renovations and worksites were undertaken in the city center. The kasbah has undergone architectural improvements and a new bridge very design with a length of 756 m, the Salah Bey Bridge, was inaugurated in July 2014; it connects the urban areas of the city separated by the Rhumel Gorge.A tramway was also inaugurated in July 2013 to relieve traffic in the center, so many renovations that now make Constantine one of the most beautiful cities in Algeria, where life is really good.History. " Constantine's atmosphere of drama and passion is probably not due to its eventful past. I believe rather responsible for this Rhumel that has given rise to the most hyperbolic epithets: striking, fantastic, formidable, dizzying, Dantesque, and I pass! " North Africa, Gabriel Audisio.Built on a rocky plateau scarified by deep and narrow gorges dug by rivers, including the tumultuous oued Rhumel, Constantine benefits from a remarkable situation that has earned it the right to take part in all battles - it would have supported eighty-two sieges.At the time when the main rock of Constantine was one with that of Sidi M'Cid, where the war memorial stands, the Rhumel was only a surface torrent flowing west of the city center. By dint of hitting the southern cliff, it forced itself into an underground passage. Over the millennia, the resulting gallery collapsed, leaving only a few stone arches still visible. Today, the gorge is 1.8 km long and 135 to 200 m deep, to the east of the main rock whose summit rises to 650 m above sea level.One cannot remain indifferent to this " fantastic city, something like Gulliver's flying island" (Alexandre Dumas, Le Véloce, 1847), where men can " watch the eagles fly from behind"... According to a legend, Constantine is the egg of a formidable vulture. according to a legend, Constantine is the egg of a formidable vulture. " The indomitable " of Kateb Yacine, but also " the city where crows fly on the back not to see it ", was very early occupied by australopithecines who have left some tools on the plateau of Mansourah.During the Paleolithic period, men built caves like those that can still be seen near the Sidi M'Cid bridge or the cave of the hermit Ben Makhlouf.Much later, around the fourth century BC, the Numidians lived in a city they called Sarim Batim and then Kirtha, "city" or "carved" in Phoenician." To the east of the river Triton, live the Maxies, people of sedentary ploughmen with houses. According to tradition, one half of their head is shaved, the other half has a long hair. They dye their bodies with henna. They claim to be descended from the Trojans. The region where they live, mountainous, more wooded than the territory of the nomads, flat and sandy, like the rest of Libya towards the sunset, abounds in wild animals of great size: lions, elephants, bears, horned donkeys, bracochères, cynocephalus, snakes...", reports Herodotus about the Numidian people of thefifth century BC. According to Polybius, Greek historian, the first king of this people was Navarase.The second Punic war (218-202 BC) during which the troops of Masinissa, a Numidian warrior and son of king Gaia, fought alongside Scipio, saw the defeat of Carthage. The latter was forced to recognize Masinissa as king of Numidia. He then recovered his father's kingdom and made Cirta his capital, which would federate part of North Africa. Masinissa reigned from 202 to 148 BC.When Masinissa died in 148, the kingdom was divided between his three sons. In 112, the youngest son, Jugurtha, made the Romans steal this pact and started the reunification of Numidia. The rock was then besieged by the troops of Jugurtha who had isolated his brother Adherbal who was supported by the Romans. In 109, the war against Jugurtha broke out. Betrayed by Bocchus, the king of the Moors, he was captured on the plain of Chullu, now Collo, and handed over to his enemy Sylla. He died in prison in Rome in 104 BC.Cirta is then under Roman domination. In the 3rd century, it was the capital of the Cirta confederation which included Milev (Mila), Chullu (Collo), Rusicada (Skikda) and Cuicul (Djemila).Cirta turned against Rome in 311 AD, but it was severely punished by Maxentius who destroyed it. The Roman emperor Constantine rebuilt it in 313 and gave it its name. In the5th century, the troops of Genseric the Vandal passed through Ksentina then the Byzantines occupied the region until the arrival, in the 7th century, of the Arabs led by Abdul Muhajir who arrived from Kairouan. From the tenth to the twelfth century, Constantine depended on the Fatimid and then Hammadite kingdom of Bejaia. At that time, the city already had a strong Jewish community, composed of Berberized Jews, Jews expelled from Spain and Livornese Jews who were grouped together in the Charra district in the 18th century. In the 15th century, Genoese merchants settled in the fondouk. At the end of the same century, the Turks were opposed by the Hafsides but won in the sixteenth century and chose Qasentina as the seat of the beylicat of the East. At the end of the 18th century, Salah Bey (1725 in Turkey, assassinated by Hassan Pacha in 1792) transformed the city into a real capital and built the medersas of Sidi El-Kettani, El-Kettania and Sidi El-Akhdar.In 1830, the Constantinians decided to oppose the French who had just landed at Sidi-Fredj and placed themselves under the command of Hadj Ahmed Bey (around 1784 in Constantine-1850), the builder of the bey's palace. In 1836, Clauzel tried twice to force the door of El-Kantara but his troops were pushed back until October 12, 1837, when a cannonade commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Lamoricière pierced the breach, where the1st November and Martyrs squares are now. During the street battle that followed, the inhabitants of Constantine tried to flee, some of them dying in the void. General Count Damrémont was killed by a cannonball in front of the city he was supposed to take. General Valée, the great winner of Ahmed Bey, was governor general until 1840. By an ordinance of June 1844, Constantine was separated into a European city to the west, where everything was rebuilt, and a Muslim city that went up towards the Jewish quarter near the Kasbah. In 1870, the application of the Crémieux decree marked the beginning of sporadic outbreaks of anti-Semitism, the last of which, which opposed the Muslim and Jewish communities in August 1934 under the almost indifferent gaze of the Europeans, deeply marked the city.At the beginning of the 20th century, Emile Morinaud, deputy mayor of Constantine until the 1930s, undertook major works including the large Sidi Rached and Sidi M'Cid bridges and the elevators, the widening of the streets in the European quarter and the creation of the Boulevard de l'Abîme, the design of the Panis and El-Kantara squares, the construction of public buildings, etc., which forever changed the face of the city center perched in an eagle's nest.After the Second World War, the Algerian uprising began in Constantinois with the riots of Sétif and Guelma on May 8, 1945. The events of the summer of 1955 consummated the rupture between the Muslim populations and the Europeans.On October 3, 1958, the "Constantine Plan" defined by General de Gaulle provided for the belated improvement of living conditions for Muslims with the distribution of land to fellahs, the construction of numerous housing units, and the enrolment of children, only 10% of whom were then attending a kind of sub-school intended for themUntil 1962, the city and its region were in the middle of "events".On June 22, 1961, Cheikh Raymond (Leyris) was assassinated in his home. The death of the Constantinian master of malouf, a music from the Arab-Andalusian heritage, marked the rupture between Europeans and Jews on the one hand and Muslims on the other.During the summer of 1962, the new Algerian state was shaken by a power crisis, the conflict between the wilayas and the border army. The capture of Constantine consummated the dominance of the eastern base forces over the wilayas.

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Pictures and images Constantine

Pont suspendu de Sidi M'Cid. Sébastien CAILLEUX
La ville de Constantine surplombe les gorges de Rhumel. Sébastien CAILLEUX
Un des six ponts de Constantine. Nour EL REFAI- iStockphoto
Université des Frères Mentouri. Sébastien CAILLEUX
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