A Street, Sidi Okba, Algeria. Photochrom print.

"This photochrome print of a street in Sidi Okba, Algeria, is part of “Views of People and Sites in Algeria” from the catalog of the Detroit Publishing Company (1905). The small town near Biskra sits on an oasis surrounded by palm trees. It was described in the 1911 edition of Baedeker’s The Mediterranean, seaports and searoutes: Handbook for Travellers as “the religious center of the Zab” owing “its origin and its fame as a resort of pilgrims to the tomb of Sidi Okba, who ended his victorious career in the adjacent oasis of Thouda. The now poor town, with its mud-built fortifications and houses…vividly recalls a medieval Sahara town.” The mosque of Sidi Okba is the oldest in Algeria, and holds the tomb of the seventh-century religious figure, as well as a Muslim legal school."