Just over a kilometre southeast of the centre, as the crow flies, lays one of Algeria's most attractive compounds, the Mosque and Tomb of Sidi Boumediene, renovated by craftsmen from Fes in 1986. Abu Madyan Shu'ayb ibn al-Husayn al-Ansari, to give him his complete name, was born near Seville around 1115 and studied with Islamic spiritualists in Morocco before settling in Bejaya on the north Algerian seashore and creating his own Sufi circle.

A spiritualist, poet and man of immense integrity - he was called the Sheikh of Sheikhs and the Nurturer - Abu Madyan, or Sidi Boumediene, as the Algerians call him, died in Tlemcen in 1197, on his way back to Marrakech. His burial place has become a site of pilgrimage and his religious group was still sufficiently strong for previous Algerian President Mohamed Boukharouba to have adopted the name Boumediene as his nom de guerre during the freedom struggle.