legislator, administrator, and reformer, displaying wonderful activity,
enterprise, vigor, and intellectual power as the founder of an empire
which, for the happiness of Algeria, was to be too short-lived. After
the Tafna Treaty he had received a magnificent present of arms from
Louis Philippe, King of the French, and, as a man who had subdued,
either by arms or by persuasive eloquence, the hardy, high-spirited
Kabyles he stood high in the estimation of his Moslem fellow-rulers in
Morocco and Egypt, Tripoli and Tunis, and of the _ulemas_, or bodies of
learned doctors in divinity and law, at Alexandria and Mecca, who
watched with joy, and with ardent expectation of yet higher things, the
career of one who seemed destined to revive the pristine glories of
Islam. The great Sultan, in order to consolidate his power both against
the French and over the Arabs, constructed a number of forts on the
limits of the Tell at Sebdou, on the west; at Saida, south of Tlemsen;
at Tekedemt, south of Mascara; at Boghar, south of Miliana; to the south
of Medea, and to the southeast of Algiers. Tekedemt, an old Roman town
about sixty miles southeast of Oran, was designed to be the capital, as
a great centre of commerce between the Tell and the Sahara.

The first stone of the new city and fortress had been laid by the Sultan
in May, 1836; and as the place grew, a population of settlers from
Mascara, Mostaganem, and other towns poured in. Large stores of warlike
munitions were formed, and a factory, worked by mechanics from Paris on
liberal wages, turned out eight new muskets a day. A mint of silver and
copper coins was established. The defences carried twelve cannon and six
mortars. A French observer, who was a prisoner at the time when the
Sultan was personally directing the works at Tekedemt, describes his
simple costume, like that of a laborer; his large tall hat, plaited with
palm-leaves; his "incomparable grace" and "fascinating smile" as he
saluted the man who was rather a guest than a captive.