Annaba

Annaba: a city on the coast of Algeria, and it is the site of Bona in the journey of Ibn Battuta. ¹

The coordinates are taken from GeoNames for the modern city that bears the same name; matching it with the old site needs an additional source.

The Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.) entry AL-'ANNABA (by V. Minorsky) describes the present town of Bone on the Algerian coast, east of Algiers. Early Arab geographers called it Buna, from its ancient name Hippona. It was a Phoenician settlement, a Punic city, a possession of the Numidian kings and a Roman city named Hippo Regius. Saint Augustine was bishop there from 395 to 430. The Vandals took it in 430, the Byzantines retook it, and it became Muslim at the end of the seventh or the beginning of the eighth century. ²

Al-Bakri distinguishes three settlements: the old town on the hill where the basilica of Saint Augustine now stands, the town of Sibus, also called Madinat Zawi at the foot of the hill, a Muslim town of the fifth/eleventh century later abandoned to the silt of the Seybouse and to raids from the sea, and New Bone, al-Haditha, three miles away in a safer place, walled after 450/1058. The present Muslim quarter occupies the height above the port and the European city. A Great Mosque has stood there since 425/1053, with features recalling the Great Mosques of Qayrawan and Tunis; it later took the name of the holy man Sidi Abu Marwan. ³

Like al-Bidjaya, Bone was a base for piracy, and in 1034 it was attacked by the Pisans and Genoese. Roger II of Sicily took it in 1153 and installed a Hammadid prince. The Almohads took it in 1160. In the mid-thirteenth century it was annexed to the Hafsid lands, but it often acted independently of Tunis and received governors from al-Bidjaya or Constantine. In 1533 it appealed to Khayr al-Din, ruler of Algiers, and a Turkish garrison occupied it until 1830. ⁴