Elkader, Iowa, is a sleepy town of only a square mile with roughly 1,200 people. Its Main Street looks much like other small Midwestern towns with a grocery store that has been around since the 19th century, a handful of businesses and law offices with American flags hanging from their facades, and, farther down, houses, a playground, and a former livestock pavilion repurposed as a heritage center. Everything about this community of overwhelmingly white residents is perfectly ordinary except for its Arabic name: Elkader. It is short for Abdelkader, the Algerian emir who fought the French occupation of his country.
Unlike so many things lost to history, Elkaderians have not forgotten the origins of their town’s unusual name. More than 175 years after the town’s founding, the residents still celebrate their connection to the emir. They have dedicated a room in the local museum called the Algerian Room, built a park they have named after Mascara, their sister city in Algeria, and run a guided tour that traces their connection to him. And yet, there is more to this name than a park, a room in a museum, or a walking tour can fully capture. The true breadth of the story of Elkader stretches from the American frontier to Algeria and, eventually, to Damascus. That is where Abdelkader would become known and admired around the world not for fighting against European occupiers of his native land, but for fighting against angry mobs of Arab Muslims to protect the besieged Christians of Damascus.
Monday, July 9, 1860, is one of the darkest days in the history of Damascus. A mob of heavily armed men poured into the city’s Christian quarter. In the neighborhood’s narrow streets, residents began shutting themselves inside their homes. They hid wherever they could – on rooftops, in cellars, even in wells. Others took refuge in churches and convents only to be attacked and burned. Diplomatic consulates, America’s included, were threatened or attacked. Druze fighters, too, joined the fray. They were followed by an unarmed mob who shouted for Christians to be killed, robbed and their houses burned. And burn they did, after they had plundered and looted the houses with abandon.
The trouble began the day before, when a group of Muslim boys entered the quarter. They drew crosses on the ground and spat on them, or tied crosses to dogs and paraded them around. The Ottoman authorities arrested the young looters and, the next morning, brought them back in chains to sweep the streets. The spectacle of the shackled boys further angered the local Muslims. By that afternoon, rage was consuming the city. Officials struggled to restore order, but could not. Whether this was incompetence, indifference, or complicity no one can say for sure. But the result was the same: for several crucial days, the city’s Christians were under siege.
The violence had not come out of nowhere. Anger had been percolating among the public since the moment four years earlier when the Sultan issued an edict ordering reforms and modernization. What had inflamed many had been the promise of equal rights to all imperial subjects regardless of religion. For centuries, Christians and Jews had lived under Ottoman rule without the same legal and political status as Muslims. The reforms, the “Tanzimat,” meaning “reordering,” began to alter that hierarchy, opening government employment and state schools to non-Muslims and granting them greater equality before the law.
These changes upset the fragile social order. In nearby Mount Lebanon, tensions grew between Maronite Christians and Druze communities over land, taxes, and political power. France backed the Maronites, while Britain supported the Druze. The tensions eventually led to riots. Thousands were killed, and thousands more were driven out of their homes. Many survivors sought refuge in Damascus. It was there, in the city where they had hoped to find safety, that the violence came for them.
Just as the Christian quarter was burning, one man stepped forth to defend the besieged community. For months, he had seen signs of trouble brewing. He had even warned the French consul and local authorities of a looming danger, but to no avail. So he took matters into his own hands. He prepared a small band of fighters. By the time the killing began, he was ready.
His name was Abdelkader.
He wasn’t Syrian. He wasn’t Christian, nor did he hold any official position in Damascus. He was only an Algerian exile, a Sufi Muslim who had once commanded an army against the French conquest of his homeland.
For a scholar, Abdelkader was surprisingly tall and well-built; for a revolutionary, he was exceptionally well-read. A formidable horseman, he appears in white robes and with a solemn expression in the portraits that remain of him. He was raised in a learned family. By age fourteen, he had memorized the Quran and was expected to become a spiritual leader of the Algerian people. But France’s invasion of Algiers in 1830 upended that future. Still in his twenties, Abdelkader emerged as the chief commander of the resistance against the colonial conquest. He united his nation’s many tribes, organized an army, and together, they waged a long campaign against the occupation. The resistance was so remarkable that the French were eventually forced to negotiate with him and recognize his authority over large parts of Algeria. In that territory, he built institutions, established an administration, collected taxes, and organized a military force.
Across the Atlantic, Americans closely followed Abdelkader’s campaign. Newspapers carried accounts of the “Algerian emir” taking on one of Europe’s great powers. In 1846, one English-language publication praised his “military genius and heroism.” Among those reading about him was Timothy Davis, a lawyer on the American frontier. Davis admired Abdelkader so much that when he and two partners founded a small settlement along Iowa’s Turkey River that same year, he proposed naming it after the Algerian leader.
And so Elkader, Iowa, got its name.
Back in Algeria, however, the war was turning against the emir. France intensified its campaign. His forces began to weaken, and allies slowly abandoned him. In the end, he had little choice but to surrender.
For years, Abdelkader remained in French captivity. Then, in 1852, Napoleon Bonaparte personally announced his release. He moved to Damascus where he hoped to live quietly as just another citizen.
But once again, history upended his plans.
When violence spread from Mount Lebanon toward Damascus, Abdelkader appealed for calm. He and his Algerian followers moved through Damascus rescuing Christians, bringing them first to his own house, and then to the homes of other Algerian exiles. As their numbers grew, thousands were escorted to the Citadel of Damascus, where they remained under his protection.
The mobs followed the refugees to the citadel, where they came face to face with Abdelkader. He condemned the killings as a violation of Islam. How, he demanded, could any Muslim shed the blood of women and children? Then he drew a line around those who had taken refuge with him and declared them his guests. No one, he warned the attackers, would touch them while his Algerian soldiers were there to defend them.
Some in the crowd challenged Abdelkader, reminding him that he, himself, had killed countless Christians in the war in Algeria. But Abdelkader explained that those he had killed had been armed invaders, unlike the ordinary unarmed fellow citizens of their city.
News of what Abdelkader had done traveled quickly across Europe and beyond. In America, his name was reappearing — but in a new context. Fourteen years earlier, Americans came to know him as a warrior against French colonial conquest. Now they were reading about the same man as the protector of Christians in distant lands.
In October 1860, the New York Times published an article headlined “Abd-el-Kader and the United States,” reporting that the US administration intended to send him a token of respect for his actions in Damascus. “For Abd-El-Kader,” the paper declared, “this is indeed a chapter of glory, and of the truest glory.” The token, sent by President James Buchanan, was a pair of silver-mounted Colt pistols in an ornate case inscribed: “From the President of the United States of America to his Excellency Said Abd el-Kader, 1860.” France, his former nemesis, decorated him with the Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honor.
His legacy lives on in Elkader to this day. Two nations, separated by an ocean, formed a bond forged by one’s valour and the other’s esteem. Elkaderians still honor the Algerian warrior who stood against the people of his own faith to defend the people of another.
