of Fez and banned Abd-Elouadi and the Znatiyin of Tlemcen. The conquest of the city by the Turks in 1541 In 1541, the Turks began their conquest of the city under the direction of Hocine Agha who defended the city of Algiers at the time and brought out the strength of Charles Compte of the latter. The Ottoman Empire remained in the city for three centuries until the French colonized it. French colonization from 1844 After the French conquest of Biskra in 1844, the site was fortified to secure the area against uprisings. El-hadj Mohammed Esaghire Elokbi, as the successor to El-Emir Abdelkader, waged continued war against the French, attacking the French forces under Lamoriciere on 23 December 1847. Elokbi also opposed the Ben Ghana clan as well as Ahmed Bey's claim as ruler of Constantine. Resistance continued in the Ziban and Aurès Mountains. In Biskra the local chief Bou Zian rallied the people against the palm tax, seizing the moated fortification of Zaatcha 20 km from Biskra. The French marched on Zaatcha, laying siege for months. It finally fell after 53 days of attacks by a French force of 7,000 troops. Bou Zian was killed. The French counted the loss of 2130. French control nonetheless remained tenuous when attacks were mounted again in 1879 at El-kamri. Some 100 years after the battle of Zaatcha, in 1954 Biskra was again the scene of anti-French assaults during the Algerian War of Independence where house-to-house battles costed many lives. In culture At the end of the 19th century Biskra, a popular spa town and gateway to the Sahara, became a center for artists and photographers such as Émile Frechon, Alexandre Bougault and Rudolf Lehnert. From 1872 to 1920 the French Count Albert Landon de Longueville hosted in his villa-cum-chateau at Biskra (today Villa Bénévent), nobility, artists and writers, including Béla Bartok, Oscar Wilde, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, André Gide, Nasreddine Dinet, Eugène Fromentin, Karl Marx, Anatole France, Francis James and Henri Matisse. Biskra is the setting of key sections of André Gide's 1902 novel The Immoralist and lesser known 1897 prose-poem Les nourritures terrestres (The Fruits of the Earth), and he visited the town in 1895 (for a fortnight from 31 January) with Lord Alfred Douglas, following a meeting with Oscar Wilde in Blida and Algiers. The French artist Henri Matisse has a work titled Blue Nude (Souvenir de Biskra) an oil