[3] According to Leo the African, the city of Béjaïa was surrounded by an ancient wall and had has colleges where law and mathematics are taught, mosques, souks, and hospitals serving a population estimated at "8000 hearths”.

[4] Towards the end of the fifteenth century, Muslims were driven out of Spain by the Catholic Monarchs and took refuge in cities on the coast of North Africa such activities Oran, Algiers and Béjaïa.

[6] In 1509, after the taking of Oran, Cardinal Cisneros commissioned Pedro Navarro, to seize several other places on the Algerian coast used by the corsairs.

Pedro Navarro landed his forces and began moving towards Gouraya mountain where Sultan Abdelaziz had taken up a position with a large number of soldiers.

The narrator Abu Mohammed ben Abd el-Hak described the sequence of events as follows:[8] “The enemy was fortified in his entrenchments in the district of Sidi Aïssa, for twenty-one days, receiving the necessary water and provisions by vessel from Oran.

[8] The next day, a great panic broke out in the city as a result of lamentations and cries of despair from the families of those who had succumbed in the attack directed from the side of the mountain.

They succeeded in forcing the Spanish positions as far as the Sidi Aïssa district but the Spaniards suddenly launched a counter-offensive from behind their fence.

He refused the proposals for aman (peace) on the advice of Andalusians who considered the word of the Spaniards unreliable, based on their own experience.

His brother the Emir Abu Bakr, Prince of Constantine, a former rival whom Abdelaziz had defeated and who had withdrawn into the Belezma region began to move forces towards Béjaïa.

The lack of coordination between the troops of Abdelaziz and Abu Bakr allowed the Spaniards to enter the streets of the city and the next day to launch a general assault.

The Emir Abou Bakr, fighting near the castle of the Star (site of the current Bordj Moussa) was forced to withdraw or fall into the hands of his enemies.

[8] The Spanish left an inscription that adorns a door of the Casbah: “FERDINANDVS V REX HISPA NIAE INCLITVS VI ARMORVM PERFIDIS AGA RENIS HANC ABSTVLIT VR BEM ANNO MDVIIII (“Ferdinand V, illustrious king of Spain, took this city by force of arms from the perfidious children of Hagar in the year 1509."