Commander of the Faithful,The life and times of Emir abd el-kader is both a biography of its main character and a history of the resistance he led to the French colonization of Algeria in the mid 1800s. When Abd el-Kader died in 1883, The New York Times hailed him as ‘one of the few great men of the century’. The warrior/saint had won the heart of the French nation, his sworn enemy and the invader of his Algerian homeland. He reached the summit of his fame after he saved the lives of thousands of Christians during a Turkish campaign in Damascus. Elkader, a town in Iowa, is named after the emir. Perhaps most importantly this book may be seen to throw light upon the concept of Jihad by showing it in action in traditional Islamic thought and practice.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
John Kiser is the author of the award-winning (French Siloe Prize) The Monks of Tibhirine: Faith, Love and Terror in Algeria (2003); Communist Entrepreneurs, Unknown Innovators in the Global Economy; and Stefan Zweig: Death of a Modern Man.
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