Dr. Abou El Kacem Saâdallah

Abou El Kacem Saâdallah was born in Guemar in the oasis region of Oued Souf. Educated at the Zitouna University in Tunis and the University of Minnesota (where he earned his PhD in history in 1965), he became the foremost academic historian of Algeria's intellectual and cultural heritage.

Dr. Saâdallah authored over fifty foundational books, foremost among them his monumental 10-volume 'Tarikh al-Jaza'ir al-Thaqafi' (History of Cultural Movement in Algeria), which dismantled colonial myths that Algeria had no cultural or literary existence prior to 1830. He served as professor at the University of Algiers for over thirty years.