06/05/06

                       Zitouna    ex bessombourg   

One of the best villages in Algeria

Welcome to the savage heart of the hurdy-gurdy nimudie. come in the history of zitouna to discover our patrimony : dolmen, roman ruins and sarcophagus. 

Its 8300 inhabitants are descendent from the tribe of beni ishaq whose formation goes most probably back to the thirteenth century. 

At the eighteenth century, Mohamed El koufi, a sheik of Rahmani, came from the koufa, province of Baghdad, he founded a school which became a center of radiation for all the close tribes, there was up to 250 pupils.

The beni ishaq, by refusing the Turkish domination, they lived independent until the French occupation against what they delivered a long resistance known by its leader  MESSAOUD BEN MANSOUR. 

in 1862, Pierre Besson, began the exploitation of cork and founded the industrial village witch gets his name Bessombourg. The company of cork oaks of the hamandas and small Kabylie HPK made of bessombourg the capital of cork. It was a center of forestry development, and a significant industrial center. 

During the independency war against the French occupation, this village especially knew the centers of torture and the concentration camps that some become famous worldwide after a mediated campaign in france caused by the the publication of an article of Pierre Macaigne in El figaro Newspaper describing the life conditions in there. 

After the independence of the country, bessombourg takes again its Arab name zitouna witch gets it from the olive-tree standing for more than 15 centuries in the middle of the village.