BISKRA, a town of Algeria, arrondissement of Batna, de partment of Constantine, 15o m. S.W. of the city of Con stantine and connected with it and with Philippeville by rail, the rail-head for the desert. It lies in the Sahara 36o ft. above the sea at the exit from the gorges of El-Kantara on the right bank of the Wad Biskra, nearly dry for many months but a mighty tor rent after one or two days' rain in winter. Five or six villages of the usual Saharan type are scattered through an oasis 3 m. in length by less than m. broad, and separated by huge gardens full of palm and olive trees. The houses are built of hardened mud, with doors and roof of palm wood. The foreign settlement is on the north of the oasis. The main street is lined with Euro pean houses, the whole in the style of a typical French winter resort. East of the public garden is Fort St. Germain, named after ,an officer killed in the insurrec tion of the Zaatcha in 1849, in which the whole of the civil popu lation took refuge during the rebellion of 1871. It contains barracks, hospital and government offices and commands the water supply. To the south-east lies the Villa Landon with magnificent gardens filled with tropical plants. The population (1931) of the chief settlement was io,65o, of the whole oasis 18,115.
The delightful climate with genial temperature and clear skies has made Biskra a famous winter resort, and while in summer the thermometer often registers iio° in the shade, and 9o° at night, the pure dryness of the air in this practically rainless region makes the heat endurable. The rainfall is not above 7 inches. High cold winds in winter cause temperatures as low as 36°, but the main reading, on an average of ten years, is 73°.
In the oasis are some 200,000 fruit trees, of which about 15o, 000 are date-palms, the rest being olives, pomegranates and apri cots. In the centre of the oasis is the old kasbah or citadel.
In 1844 the duc d'Aumale occupied this fort, and here, on the night of May 2 of that year, the French garrison was massacred by Arabs. In the fort are a few fragments of Roman work— all that remains of the Roman post Ad Piscinam (Thermal estab lishment of Hamman Sahaline).
Biskra is the capital of the Ziban (plural of Zab), of mixed Berber and Arab origin, whose villages extend from the southern Aures to the Shat Melrir. These villages, in oases, nestle in groves of date-palms and fruit trees and waving fields of barley; the most interesting is Sidi Okba, 12 m. south-east of Biskra, built of houses of one storey made of sun-dried bricks. In the north-west corner of the mosque is the tomb of Sidi Okba, the leader of the Arabs who in the ist century of the Hegira con quered Africa for Islam from Egypt to Tangier. Sidi Okba was killed by the Berbers near this place in A.D. 682. On his tomb is the inscription in Cufic characters, "This is the tomb of Okba, son of Nafi. May God have mercy upon him." No older Arabic inscription is known to exist in Africa.