Lalla Fatma N'Soumer (1830 – 1863) is a Kabyle woman who resisted the conquest of Algeria by France in the 1850s.
The Koranic school
Lalla Fatma N'Soumer was born in 1830 in Haute Kabylie, in the village of Werja (now Abi Youcef or At Bu Yusek in Kabyle, located in northern Algeria). She has four older brothers and her father is the head of a Koranic school. The year of his birth, three years after the start of the Algiers War, France launched a violent campaign to colonize Algeria. First directed against Algiers, it quickly spread to the rest of the country and in particular to Kabylia. Fatma grew up in this context and developed a deep aversion for the colonizers.
The stories tell that Fatma's father tries to marry her when she refuses. Finally married to her cousin, Fatma refuses him and cloisters herself in her room, devoting herself to prayer, until the family sends her back to her parents. When her father died, Fatma joined her brother Si Tayeb in Soumer, where he ran a Koranic school. She then took the name of Fatma N'Soumer and assisted her brother in the management of the school, devoting herself particularly to children and the poor and acquiring an excellent reputation. Belonging to the Rahmaniya brotherhood, a Sufi Muslim brotherhood, she seems to have been considered a kind of prophetess.
The fight against the French troops
When the French legionary troops entered the region of Djurdjura (mountain range in the north of Kabylie), Mohammed Lamjad ben Abdelmalek, known as Cherif Boubaghla, initiated a great movement of popular Kabyle revolt. Lalla Fatma N'Soumer joined them immediately, first by collecting useful foodstuffs for the insurgents, then by actively taking part in the defense of the country. Without wielding weapons herself, she exhorts, rallies and inspires the troops, whom she leads into battle. She participates in the strategy and even accesses assemblies reserved for men, earning the title of Lalla, an honorary title reserved for women because of their age or rank. In 1854, on the death of Chérif Boubaghla, she continued the fight and won several victories.
The French then asked for reinforcements and, in 1857, the Kabyle insurgents found themselves facing an army of 35,000 men. Fatma calls on her troops to fight to the end to protect the country's freedom, but loses the battle. On July 27, 1857, she was arrested and imprisoned, then placed under house arrest. The movement did not survive this capture and Djurdjura's campaign ended with the arrest of Fatma.
Lalla Fatma N'Soumer died in captivity at the age of 33, in 1863.