Relizane Province
From Roman Castellum de Mina to French cotton farms decimated by malaria. The Bakhadda Dam saved what colonialism started—irrigation on the burnt hill.
Relizane sits on the Wadi Mîna, a tributary of Algeria's longest river, the Chelif (600 km). The Romans knew this spot as Castellum de Mina. The Berbers called the surrounding hill Iɣil Izzan—"burnt hill"—and the name stuck in Arabic as Relizane. The Turks built a bordj here to control the road to Oran.
French troops arrived in 1852. Engineers repaired the old dam in 1844. By 1853, the first Europeans were growing wheat, barley, and tobacco in the plain—and dying of malaria in numbers that decimated entire settlements. The survivors pivoted. About twenty farms converted to cotton cultivation. Cereals, grapes, and irrigated crops followed as the Bakhadda Dam regulated Wadi Mîna's flow.
The province was carved from Mostaganem in 1984. Today Relizane is a typical French-style town of wide streets and parks, surrounded by orchards and gardens. Trade centers on livestock and wool alongside irrigated agriculture. The cotton farms are mostly gone—disease, drought, and insufficient harvests ended that experiment. What remains is the irrigation infrastructure, the Roman foundations, and the geographic logic: if you control Wadi Mîna, you control agriculture for miles in every direction.