Travel Guide Biskra

Biskra is a modern but pleasant city of plain, built according to a checkerboard plan. Its development into an industrial city dates from the arrival of the railroad at the beginning of the 20th century.History. The gateway to the Great South at the foot of the Aurès Mountains, the ancient Roman Vescera ("station") was first a Carthaginian city before becoming an enormous oasis with more than 150,000 date palms producing the famous deglet nour, the most appreciated date. In the 11th century, the territory of the Ziban (plural of Zab, the name of the mountains that stretch between Biskra and Bou-Saada) was Hammadite, before being invaded by the Hillalians from the east, driven out in the 12th century by the Almohads from Marrakech. In the fourteenth century, the oasis passed into the hands of the Hafsids of Tunisia followed by the Merinids of Fez. The Turks seized it in the 16th century and occupied it until the French led by the Duke of Aumale settled there in 1849, after having driven out Ahmed Bey, the former bey of Constantine.Biskra is a city that has greatly inspired artists and intellectuals. André Gide lived there for a few months during which he started Les Nourritures terrestres. The painter Henri Matisse found inspiration there as he painted his famous painting Nu bleu (souvenir de Biskra, 1906). The Hungarian composer Béla Bartók stayed in this region in June 1913 to collect Algerian folk songs in Biskra, Tolga, Sidi Okba and El-Kantara.On the occasion of the beautiful exhibition "Biskra, sortilèges d'une oasis" at the Arab World Institute in Paris in 2017, one could listen to sound extracts from Béla Bartók and reread texts by André Gide.