In 1901, the French administration ordered her to leave Algeria, but she was allowed to return the following year after marrying her partner, the Algerian soldier Slimane Ehnni.

Trophimowsky was an Armenian anarchist, tutor, and former Orthodox priest-turned-atheist,[1][2] and Nathalie was the illegitimate daughter of a middle-class Lutheran German and a Russian Jew.

[2] She married widower Pavel de Moerder, a Russian general forty years her senior, who hired Trophimowsky to tutor their children Nicolas, Nathalie, and Vladimir.

General de Moerder died several months later,[5] and despite their separation had arranged for his estate to pay Nathalie a considerable regular income.

[5] Biographer Cecily Mackworth speculated that Eberhardt's illegitimacy was due to Trophimowsky's nihilist beliefs, which rejected traditional concepts of family.

She studied philosophy, metaphysics, chemistry,[10] history, and geography, though she was most passionate about literature, reading the works of authors including Pierre Loti, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Leo Tolstoy, Voltaire and Émile Zola while she was a teenager,[5] and was also an admirer of the poets Semyon Nadson and Charles Baudelaire.

[12] The children of de Moerder resented their stepfather, who forbade them from obtaining professions or leaving the home, and effectively used them as slaves to tend to his extensive gardens.

Nathalie's departure had a profound effect on Eberhardt's childhood, as she had been responsible for most of the home duties; the household subsequently suffered from a lack of hygiene and regular meals.

[10] Sometime prior to 1894, Eberhardt began corresponding with Eugène Letord, a French officer stationed in the Sahara who had placed a newspaper advertisement for a pen pal.

[14][15] Eberhardt asked him for every detail he could give her about life in the Sahara, also informing him of her dreams of escaping Geneva alongside her favourite sibling, Augustin.

[16] In a series of circumstances that remain unclear though involving financial debts and ties to Russian revolutionist groups with which he was affiliated, Augustin fled Geneva in 1894.

[5][15] Eberhardt had "remarkable insight and knowledge" of North Africa[15] for someone acquainted with the region only through correspondence, and her writing had a strong anti-colonial theme.

Mackworth writes that while Eberhardt was a "natural mystic", her conversion appeared to be largely for practical reasons, as it gave her greater acceptance among the Arabs.

[33] Seeing no reason why a woman would choose the company of impoverished Arabs over her fellow Europeans, they eventually concluded she must be an English agent, sent to stir up resentment towards the French.

[35][37] Eberhardt spent her money recklessly in Algiers, and quickly exhausted the funds left to her by her mother;[38] she would often spend several days at a time in kief dens.

They found Trophimowsky in poor health, suffering from throat cancer and traumatised by the loss of Eberhardt's mother and Vladimir, who had committed suicide the previous year.

The order was led by Hussein ben Brahim, who was so impressed with Eberhardt's knowledge of (and passion for) Islam that he initiated her into his zawiya without the usual formal examination.

[52] Too poor to accompany him to Batna, Eberhardt traveled to a Qadiriyya meeting in Behima in late January 1901 where she hoped to ask Si Lachmi, a marabout, for financial assistance.

While waiting for the meeting to begin she was attacked by a man with a sabre, receiving a superficial wound to her head and a deep cut to her left arm.

After Eberhardt recovered in late February,[56] she joined Ehnni with funds from members of the Qadiriyya who regarded her survival as a miracle.

[57] After spending two months in Batna with Ehnni,[58] the French ordered her to leave North Africa without explanation; as an immigrant, she had no choice but to comply.

In mid-June she was summoned back to Constantine to give evidence at the trial of her attacker, who maintained his statement that God had ordered him to kill Eberhardt, though expressed remorse towards her.

[63] A friend of Eberhardt's gave her a letter of introduction to playwright Eugène Brieux,[64] who opposed French rule in North Africa and supported Arab emancipation.

Eberhardt, unfazed, continued writing; her morale lifted when Ehnni was transferred to a spahi regiment near Marseille in late August to complete his final months of service.

[5] Shortly before the wedding, Eberhardt and Augustin received the news that Trophimowsky's estate had finally been sold, though due to the mounting legal costs there was no money left for them to inherit.

Eberhardt became disappointed with Ehnni, whose only ambition after leaving the army appeared to be finding an unskilled job that would allow him to live relatively comfortably.

[5] While Eberhardt never ceased protesting against any repressive actions undertaken by the French administration, she believed that Lyautey's approach, which focused on diplomacy rather than military force, would bring peace to the region.

Based on this information, Lyautey and his men searched the surrounding area for several days before deciding to explore the ruins of the house where the couple had stayed.

[89][90] The first posthumous story, "Dans l'Ombre Chaude de l'Islam" (In the Warm Shadow of Islam) received critical acclaim when it was published in 1906.

[86] The book's success drew great attention to Eberhardt's writing and established her as among the best writers of literature inspired by Africa.