Si El Mokhtar Ben Cheikh

Si El Mokhtar Ben Cheikh was a senior leader of the Ouled Sidi Cheikh confederation based at the sacred desert center of El Abiodh Sidi Cheikh. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, he led mobile cavalry columns that refused colonial domination over the vast steppes of southern Oran.

Forming an unbreakable alliance with Cheikh Bouamama, El Mokhtar took part in the famous victory at the Battle of Tazina in May 1881, where Algerian fighters wiped out a major French colonial column. His relentless courage and mastery of desert mobility inspired generations of steppe nomads.