The city of Béjaïa

Saldae

Béjaïa (Amazigh language: Bgayet, Bgayeth, ⴱⴳⴰⵢⴻⵜ), formerly Bougie and Bugia, is a Mediterranean port city on the Gulf of Béjaïa in Algeria. Béjaïa is the largest principally Kabyle-speaking city in the Kabylie region of Algeria.

Béjaïa stands on the site of the ancient city of Saldae, a minor port in Carthaginian and Roman times, in an area at first inhabited by Numidians and founded as a colony for old soldiers by emperor Augustus.

In the fifth century, Saldae became the capital of the short-lived Vandal Kingdom of the Germanic Vandals, which ended in about 533 with the Byzantine conquest, which established an African prefecture and later the Exarchate of Carthage.

Muslim rulers

After the 7th-century Muslim conquest, it was refounded as "Béjaïa"; the Hammadite dynasty made it their capital, and it became an important port and centre of culture.

The son of a Pisan merchant (and probably consul), posthumously known as Fibonacci (c. 1170 – c. 1250), there learned about Muslim mathematics (which he called "Modus Indorum") and Hindu-Arabic numerals. He introduced these and modern mathematics into medieval Europe.

A mathematical-historical analysis of Fibonacci's context and proximity to Béjaïa, an important exporter of wax in his time, has suggested that it was actually the bee-keepers of Béjaïa and the knowledge of the bee ancestries that truly inspired the Fibonacci sequence rather than the rabbit reproduction model as presented in his famous book Liber Abaci.

According to Muhammad al-Idrisi, the port was, in the XIth century, a market place between Mediterranean merchant ships and caravans coming from the Sahara desert. Christian merchants settled fundunqs (or Khans) in Bejaïa. The Italian city of Pisa was closely tied to Béjaïa, where it built one of its two permanent consulates in the African continent.

French colonial rule

It was captured by the French in 1833 and became a part of colonial Algeria. Most of the time it was the seat ('sous-préfecture') of an arrondissement in the Département of Constantine, until Bougie was promoted to département itself in 1957.

Under French rule, it was formerly known under various European names, such as Budschaja in German, Bugia in Italian, and Bougie in French. The French and Italian versions, due to the town's wax trade, eventually acquired the metonymicmeaning of "candle".

World War II . Operation Torch

During World War II, Operation Torch landed forces in North Africa, including a battalion of the British Royal West Kent Regiment at Béjaïa on November 11, 1942.

That same day, at 4:40 PM, a German Luftwaffe air raid struck Béjaïa with thirty Ju 88 bombers and torpedo planes. The transports Awateaand Cathay were sunk and the monitor HMS Roberts was damaged. The following day, the anti-aircraft ship SS Tynwald was torpedoed and sank, while the transport Karanja was bombed and destroyed.