Emir Abd el-Kader (1807/8 - 1883), Algerian warrior and Sufi saint, was named as 'one of the few great men of the century' by The New York Times. This exceptional and fascinating biography of the great Arab hero, by Abd el-Kader specialist Ahmed Bouyerdene, examines the spiritual life of the Emir from his idyllic early years in the almost biblical ambience of the desert, to his battles against the colonizing French Africa Army, ending at last with his exile in Syria.