Sétif
Sétif is the capital city of the Sétif Province and the 5th most populous city of Algeria, with an estimated population of 1,866,845 in 2017). It is one of the most important cities of eastern Algeria and the country as a whole, since it is considered the trade capital of the country and an industrial pole with three industrial zones within the borders of the city.
It is an inner city, situated in the eastern side of Algeria, east of Algiers, west of Constantine, in the Hautes Plaines region south of Béjaia and Jijel. The city is at an altitude of.
The city was part of the Phoenician Empire then it became part of the ancient Berber kingdom of Numidia, the capital of Mauretania Sitifensis under the rule of the Roman Empire. It was destroyed during the Arab invasion of North Africa. In 1839 when France occupied the site, they found it in ruins apart from Roman ruins of the Byzantine fortress of Setif, and the ruined civilian housing from Roman and Byzantine periods. Reconstruction of a civilian part of the city began with the construction of a Catholic Church of Setif which is the first building established by the colonial French.
The city was the starting point of the 8 May 1945 protests and massacre, which was a crucial factor to the start of the Algerian War.
Etymology
Sétif was numidan before undergoing Roman rule. The name of Sétif comes from Latin "Sitifis", that is drawn from a Berber word "Zdif" which means "black lands" referring to the fertility of its lands.History
Prehistory
The prehistory of Setif begins with the first traces of human occupation, about 2.4 million years ago, and ends with the first Carthaginian texts, in the first millennium BC.The site of Aïn El Ahnech, in Guelta Zerka, includes several sites without associated human fossils that have yielded very ancient lithic remains of the Oldowan type, first discovered in the Olduvai Gorge by the archaeologist Louis Leakey in the 1930s. The Aïn Boucherit site delivered in 2018 lithic industry remains, dated between 1.9 and 2.4 million years ago. On November 29, 2018, the journal Science announced the dating of the site by four corroborating methods: negative geomagnetic polarity reported to the Matuyama chron, ESR dating, biochronology and sedimentation rate. Aïn Boucherit could be the third oldest African site after Lomekwi 3 in Kenya, and Kada Gona in Ethiopia. The prehistoric site of Ain El Ahnech is located a few kilometers east of the city, and the age of the lithic remains is estimated by archaeomagnetism to be about 2.4 million years old. It is an ancient lake, located in the commune of Guelta Zerka. The site was discovered in 1947 by the French paleoanthropologist Camille Arambourg, during his paleontological research of continental deposits in the Setif region. On November 29, 2018, a discovery of tools dating back 2.4 million years was published, making this site, at the time of its discovery, the cradle of Humanity before that of Tanzania. Professor Mohamed Sahnouni confirms this discovery.
Ancient history
Numidia
The city, of Numidian origin, was part of the kingdom of Massaesyli in the year 225 BC. It was also considered as a capital before Juba II preferred Cherchell.It was near Sétif that Jugurtha campaigned and lost against Marius in 105 BC. Overcome by Marius, he was taken to Rome where was executed in the prison of Tullianum. No remains of this period have been found. The city was small under the Numidian kings.
Roman Era
It was an integral part of the Roman province of Caesarian Mauritania which became Setifian Mauritania. When Jugurtha was delivered, Sitifis became part of the kingdom of Mauretania, successively attributed to Bocchus then Boccuris, Juba II and finally to Ptolemy of Mauretania, assassinated at Lugdunum at the instigation of Caligula.For its strategic situation, Sitifis interested Nerva who installed there from 96 AD a colony for veterans the Colonia Nerviana Augusta Martialis Veteranorum Sitifensium. Although no buildings of this period are known, a cemetery excavated in the 1960s seems to have contained tombs from the early colony. Claudius reduced Mauritania into a Roman province, divided it in two, and attached Setif to the new Caesarian Mauritania, capital Caesarea. In 290, Setif became the capital of Mauretania Sitifensis, detached from Mauretania Caesariensis. The new province was then under the diocese of Africa, itself under the prefecture of Italy.
Mauretania Sitifensis
In the later division of the Roman Empire under the Emperor Diocletian, the eastern part of Mauretania Caesariensis, from Saldae to the river Ampsaga, was split into a new province, and called Mauretania Sitifensis named after the inland town of Setifis.At the time of Constantine the Great, Mauretania Sitifensis was assigned to the administrative Diocese of Africa, under the Praetorian prefecture of Italy. The new province had a huge economic development in the 4th century, until the conquest by the Vandals. In this province, the Christian denomination known as Donatism challenged the Roman Church, while Setifis was a center of Mithraism.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, certain areas of Mauretania Sitifensis were under Vandal and later Byzantine control, but most of the province was ruled by Berber kingdoms like the Kingdom of Altava. Only the coastal area around Saldae and Setifis remained fully Romanized.
Byzantine emperor Maurice in 585 AD created the province of Mauretania Prima and erased the old Mauretania Sitifensis. Indeed, the emperor Maurice in that year created the office of "Exarch", which combined the supreme civil authority of a praetorian prefect and the military authority of a magister militum, and enjoyed considerable autonomy from Constantinople. Two exarchates were established, one in Italy, with seat at Ravenna, and one in Africa, based at Carthage and including all imperial possessions in the Western Mediterranean. The first African exarch was the Patricius Gennadius: he was appointed as magister militum ''Africae'' in 578 AD, and quickly defeated the Romano-Moorish kingdom of Garmul in Mauretania extending the territory of the Mauretania Sitifensis. Among the provincial changes done by emperor Maurice, Mauretania Caesariensis and Mauretania Sitifensis were re-merged as a province of Mauretania Prima.
Mauretania Sitifensis initially had an area of 17800 square miles and had a good agriculture, that was exported through the port of Saldae. But under Byzantine control the province was reduced to only the coastal section, with one third of the original area.
In the newly prosperous town a bath building was built, decorated with fine mosaics: its restoration in the fifth century had a cold room paved with a large mosaic showing the birth of Venus. On the northwest edge of the town two great Christian basilicas were built at the end of the fourth century, decorated, again, with splendid mosaics, and a Bishopric was founded at this time.
There was a Jewish community in the area. The Romans built a circus at Sitifis, which aerial photographs show survived substantially intact until the 20th century; today only a small part of the curved end continues visible; the remainder has been destroyed or built over. In the 5th century it suffered from a violent earthquake.
The region of Sétif was one of the granaries of ancient Rome: Caput Saltus Horreorum was its seat.
The city has preserved vestiges from the 2nd and 4th centuries: ramparts, a temple, a circus, a mausoleum known as "Scipio's", etc. The product of the archaeological excavations is preserved and exhibited in the city's Archaeological Museum, and various steles in the Abd el-Kader garden. It is to put in relation with the site of Cuicul.
Bishopric
The city was the base of a Bishopric. Augustine, who had frequent relations with Sitifis, tells us that in his day the Bishopric had a monastery and an episcopal school. Several Christian inscriptions have been found there, one of 452 mentioning the relics of Saint Lawrence, another naming two martyrs of Sitifis, Justus and Decurius.;
Known Bishops
;*Servus, mentioned in a letter of St. Augustine in 409
;*Novatus present at the Council of Carthage, and exiled by Huneric
;*Optatus, at the Council of Carthage.
;*Alexis Lemaître, M. Afr.
;*André-Maurice Parenty
;*Armando Xavier Ochoa
;*Manuel Felipe Díaz Sánchez
;*John Choi Young-su
;*Broderick Soncuaco Pabillo
Vandal Era
Preluding the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, the Germanic people of the Vandals, led by their king Genseric, crossed from Spain to Africa in 429 at the request of the Roman governor Bonifatius, who was in revolt against the Emperor Valentinian III. The route of the Vandals in Africa, from Tingi to Carthage, passed through Setifis, which was probably reached in 430. Bonifatius defeated, Genseric established the seat of his kingdom in Carthage in 439, forcing the emperor to recognize him as master of Roman Africa.Under the Vandals it was the chief town of a district called Zaba.
Byzantine Era
In 531, the king of the Vandals, Hilderic, was overthrown by the usurper Gelimer, giving the Roman emperor of the East Justinian, anxious to restore the Roman Empire, a pretext for intervention. After his departure from Byzantium, General Belisarius took advantage of uprisings in Tripolitania and the Moors, which enabled him to take Carthage and then Gelimer himself.The Byzantines found in Sitifis, a small population, because of the vandal predations. In 539, Sitifis again became the capital of a Byzantine "Roman" province: Mauritania Sitifensis. At that time, Solomon built the Byzantine fortress walls, whose west and south walls are still visible.
Islamic Era
In 647 AD, the first Muslim expedition to Africa took place. By 700 AD, the area had been conquered and converted to the Islamic faith. We know little of the early Islamic town, but by the tenth century the area outside of the fortress was once more filled with houses: on the site of the Roman baths over twelve of these were excavated, with large courtyards surrounded by long, thin, rooms.Setif according to the geographer and historian Al-Bakri:
"The city of Sétif is two days from El-Mecila one arrives at Sétif, a large and important city, whose origin dates back to ancient times.' The wall that surrounded it was destroyed by the Ketama, followers of Abu Abd'Allah ash-Shi'i, because the Arabs had taken it away from them and had forced them to pay a tithe every time they wanted to enter it. It is now without walls, but it is nevertheless well populated and very flourishing. The bazaars are in great number, and all the commodities are in great number, Sétif is ten days from Kairouan, ten days from Gazrouna and one day from Tanaguelalt located in the neighborhood of Mila. ".
The city was successively administered by the Muslim dynasties that ruled North Africa: Umayyads, Abbasids, Aghlabids, Fatimids, Zirids, Almohads, Hafsids, Ottomans. According to the historian Al-Yaqubi in the Kitab al-Buldan, taken up by A.Duri, a fraction of the Arabs Banu Assad ibn Khuzaima called Banu Usluja originating from Iraq settled in Setif at the time of the Aghlabids with non-Arabs from Khorasan.
In 903, following the death of the Aghlabid emir Ibrahim II of Ifriqiya, Sétif briefly served as the headquarters of his son Muhammad. Muhammad intended to lead a military campaign against the Isma'ili leader Abu Abdallah al-Shi'i, who had gained a following among the Kutama Berbers, but he aborted it before any battles were fought because his brother Abdallah had been murdered. Intending to seize the throne, Muhammad left Sétif for the capital of Tunis, but he was arrested in Baghaya and then executed by the new emir, Ziyadat Allah III, alongside all of Ziyadat Allah's brothers and uncles, in August 903.
This internal power struggle enabled Abu Abdallah al-Shi'i to go on the offensive and capture Sétif from the Aghlabids. He had already tried to besiege the strongly fortified city twice, but to no avail. However, in probably October or November of 904, after the city's Arab ruler died, a Berber from the Lahisa tribe surrendered the city to Abu Abdallah, who then demolished part of the fortifications to prevent them from being used against him and his Kutama allies. Then, possibly encouraged by Abu Abdallah's military success, the Isma'ili imam Abdallah al-Mahdi Billah left Egypt to go to the Maghreb.
After conquering Cairo, the Fatimids abandoned Tunisia and parts of eastern Algeria to the local Zirids. The invasion of Ifriqiya by the Banu Hilal, a warlike Arab tribes encouraged by the Fatimids of Egypt to seize North Africa.
It was in Sétif that the battle of Sétif took place between the Hilalian Arabs and the Almohad Berbers, which resulted in the victory of the Almohads.
Remains of this Arab-Muslim period were unearthed in the early 1980s. According to Khelifa Abderrahmane, the results of these excavations are very interesting: "The city was not totally abandoned and the remains of the baths served as occasional shelter for men and livestock. The development of the Muslim city would have taken place first to the north of the Byzantine fortress."
This excavation demonstrated that the first Islamic houses were built with reused ashlars reinforced on their inner side with pebbles bound with adobe. Carbon 14 dating refers to a period between 655 and 970. The excavation brought to light nine buildings that were dated between the year 810 and 974. A coin of the Fatimid caliph Al Mu'izz with a figurative ceramic shard was found in the third floor. According to Khelifa Abderahmane, the important thing is that the excavation was able to identify a typology of the tenth and eleventh century habitat for this region, with pieces that are longer than they are wide.19 The Arab tribe of Bani Hil'izz was the first to be found in the area.