BOUGIE, a seaport of Algeria, chief town of an arrondisse ment in the department of Constantine, 120 m. E. of Algiers. The town, fortified afresh since the French occupation, is beautifully situated on Mount Guraya amid rich vegetation (rainfall metres). Behind are Mounts Babor and Tababort, rising some 6,400 ft., crowned with pinsapo fir and cedar. The most interesting buildings in the town are the ancient forts, Borj-el-Ahmer and Abd-el-Kader, and the kasbah or citadel, bearing inscriptions stat ing that it was built by the Spaniards in 1545. Parts of the Roman wall exist, and considerable portions of that built by the Hammadites in the II th century. The streets are steep, and many are ascended by stairs. The harbour, sheltered from the west by the Cape Carbon and from the east by a breakwater, was enlarged in 1897-1902. It covers 63 acres and has a depth of water of 23 to 3o feet. Bougie is the natural port of Kabylia, and its com merce—chiefly in oils, wools, hides and minerals—has greatly developed; a branch railway runs to Beni Mansur on the main line from Constantine to Oran. Pop. 16,637.
Bougie, if correctly identified, is the Saldae of the Romans. Early in the 5th century Genseric the Vandal built walls and for some time made it his capital. En-Nasr (1062-1088), the most powerful of the Berber dynasty of Hammad, made Bougie the seat of his government, and it became the greatest commercial centre of the North African coast, attaining a high degree of civilization. Italian merchants of the 12th and 13th centuries had warehouses, baths and churches in the city. At the end of the 13th century Bougie passed under the Hafsides, and in the 15th century it be came a stronghold of the Barbary pirates. The Spaniards under Pedro Navarro captured it in 1510, fortified it and held it against two attacks by the corsair Barbarossa, but Salah Rais, pasha of Algiers, took it in 1555. Leo Africanus, in his A f ricae descriptio, speaks of the "magnificence" of the city (c. 1525), but it appears to have fallen into decay not long afterwards. When the French took the town in 1833 it consisted of a few fortifications and ruins.