Lalla Fatma N'Soumer (c.1830 – c. 1863) (; ) was an Algerian anti-colonial leader during 1849–1857 of the French conquest of Algeria and subsequent Pacification of Algeria. She led several battles against the French forces, until her capture in July 1857. She was imprisoned until her death six years later. She is an Algerian national hero. Name Lalla, the female equivalent of the Berber word mass, is an honorific reserved for women of high social rank or for holy women. "N'Soumer" means "of Soumer", where Soumer was the village nearest the zawiya of her lineage, the Sidahmed. She also sometimes bore the name "Lalla N'Ouerdja". Her birth name seems to have been "Fadhma Si Ahmed Ou Méziane", but she went by Fatma N'Soumer and eventually Lalla Fatma N'Soumer with time. Biography Fadhma Si Ahmed Ou Méziane was born in 1830 to her parents Sid Ahmed Mohamed and Terkia n'ath Ykhoulaf in what is now the commune of Abi Youcef, near Aïn El Hammam. As her last name suggests, she descended from the lineage of a respected marabout, Ahmed Ou Méziane, which gave her more influence than most women of Algerian society of the era. Her family would extend to 8 children: 5 brothers and 2 sisters. Fadhma's father was the head of a madrasa (Islamic school) linked to the zawiya of the Rahmaniyya order of Sufi Islam, originally founded by Sidi M'hamed Bou Qobrine in the late 1790s. As a result, Fadhma had access to more of an education than many children of the era. Around the age of 16–18 and with the approval of her older brother as head of the family after her father's death, Fadhma was put in an arranged marriage with a family cousin, Si Yahia n'ath Ikhoulaf. However, the couple quickly separated; she returned to her religious studies. Out of spite, her husband refused to grant her a divorce, making it impossible for her to remarry. The territory of her birth and life is loosely called Kabylia, the land of the Kabyle people. The French conquest of Algeria began in 1830, the same year she was born. After successfully capturing Algiers the same year, the French focused on the coastal cities at first; Kabylia is mountainous and not easily accessible, with much of the land dominated by the Tell Atlas range of the Atlas Mountains. Growing French influence from their strongholds on the coast eventually