Tlemcen Province
"The African Granada": Zayyanid capital (1235-1557) where 12,000 Jewish refugees arrived after 1492. 60% of Algeria's Arab-Islamic architectural heritage survives here.
Tlemcen is called "the African Granada" and "the most Andalusian city in the Maghreb"—titles earned through history, not sentiment. When the Reconquista expelled Muslims and Jews from Spain, Tlemcen opened its gates. In 1492, approximately 12,000 Jewish refugees arrived. The ruler's Jewish viceroy Abraham is said to have supported them with his own money.
The city had already been a capital for 250 years. The Zayyanid dynasty (1235-1557) made Tlemcen their seat, positioned strategically between Morocco's Marinids and Tunisia's Hafsids. Control of the east-west coastal route and the north-south trans-Saharan trade made Tlemcen wealthy enough to maintain a European trading center (funduk) connecting African and Mediterranean merchants. Today the city contains roughly 60% of Algeria's Arab-Islamic architectural heritage.
The Ottomans conquered in 1554, and Tlemcen became a provincial town—its strategic value diminished when the trade routes shifted. But the cultural fusion persisted: Arab, Berber, Andalusian, Ottoman, and Western influences layered into mosques, madrasas, and palaces that synthesize local Berber traditions with Islamic and Iberian decorative motifs. Tlemcen became a museum of the medieval Mediterranean.