Mohamed ben Othman Khodja

Elected Dey in 1766, Mohamed ben Othman provided unmatched administrative continuity for a quarter-century. In July 1775, when Spanish Prime Minister O'Reilly landed an armada of 400 ships and 22,000 soldiers at the Bay of Algiers, Ben Othman personally rallied 50,000 Algerian fighters to deliver an epochal defeat to the invaders.

He reformed provincial taxation, built public aqueducts and fountains, and prepared the decisive military campaign that his successor Hassan Pasha executed in 1792, ending two centuries of Spanish occupation in Oran.