Mers El Kebir

Mers El Kebir is a port at the Mediterranean Sea, close to Oran in Oran Province, northwest Algeria. It is famous for the assault at the French fleet in 1940, in the Second World War. Originally a Roman port known as Portus Divinus, Mers-el-Kebir became an Almohad naval arsenal inside the twelfth century, fell under the rulers of the Kingdom of Tlemcen in the fifteenth century, and eventually have become a center of pirate interest around 1492. It turned into occupied variously by using the Ottoman Turks, Portuguese and Spanish, with the Spanish shooting it in 1505 underneath Cardinal Cisneros.

Mazalquivir changed into the base used to seize neighbouring Oran in 1509. The Spanish held both towns till 1708, when they were pushed out by way of Turkish Bey Mustapha Ben Youssef. The Spanish lower back in 1732 when the armada of the Duke of Montemar became successful in the Battle of Aïn-el-Turk and again took Oran and Mazalquivir. Both cities had been held till 1792, when they had been bought via King Carlos IV to the Dey of Algiers.