The reforms of Abd-el-Kader included a regular police, schools, and
local tribunals of justice. All the chief towns had factories conducted
by Europeans, working in brass and iron, cotton and wool. The army
contained the finest irregular cavalry in the world, amounting, with all
the contingents from the tribes, to about sixty thousand men, only a
third of whom, however, were ever assembled for any single military
operation. His regular force comprised eight thousand infantry, two
thousand cavalry, twenty field-guns, and two hundred forty artillerymen.
His great ideal embraced the making the Arabs into one nation; the
recall of the whole people to a strict observance of religious duties;
the inspiring them with true patriotism; the calling forth of all their
capabilities for war, for commerce, for agriculture, and for mental
improvement; and the crowning of the whole by the impress of European
civilization. In laying the foundation for this mighty work, he had
already overcome vast difficulties by means of wonderful enterprise,
activity, and vigor. His intellectual greatness had caused him to shine
as a warrior, diplomatist, orator, and statesman. The Provinces of Oran
and Tittery and the plains of the Northern Sahara had been won by his
military prowess.

A still nobler triumph in the exhibition of moral power was beheld in
his dealings with the region called Great Kabylia, the superb range of
the Djurjura Mountains extending eastward from Algiers. The hardy
Kabyles of that territory had remained unsubdued amid the changing
governments which had risen and fallen around them. As independent
little republics, bound together by the most exalted spirit of freedom,
they had ever preserved their usages, customs, and laws. In September,
1839, Abd-el-Kader, attended by only fifty horsemen, suddenly appeared
among them. Thousands gathered around his tent from the valleys and