1865 photograph by Etienne Carjat above
1870s engraving by Albert Leighton Rawson published in The Masters Revealed below (first published in Freemasonry in the Holy Land by Rob Morris, 1879)
North Africa was the legendary source of the teachings of many occult orders led by Europeans claiming encounters with “Oriental Rosicrucians” and “Egyptian Freemasonry.” But it was also the genuine historical source of many encounters among spiritual seekers of multiple cultural backgrounds.
Abdelkader, exiled from his homeland, was visited in Syria by Albert Leighton Rawson, Richard Francis Burton and James Martin Peebles. Max Theon is yet another occult explorer of the region, resident in Algeria for decades. (edited for clarity) All five are featured in short chapters of The Masters Revealed. The sequel Initiates of Theosophical Masters profiles five women with parallel travel adventures: Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Lady Hester Stanhope, Isabelle Eberhardt, Mirra Alfassa, and Alexandra David-Neel. This chapter from The Masters Revealed gives a biographical profile of the Emir, whose Wikipedia entry corrects his birth date to September 6, 1808 from the May 1807 date in earlier sources.
This is recent news about Abdelkader’s legacy being celebrated in France.