A Survey of African Poetry in the London Times, Sunday Times, Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement 1865-1985

"Death Of A Moslem Poet: Last "Minstrel" Of North Africa", The Times, 21 Jan 1932, p. 11 The Times Digital Archive, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS186197557/GDCS?u=linc74325&sid=GDCS&xid=09193e31. Accessed 15 Dec 2016

DEATH OF A MOSLEM POET LAST "MINSTREL" OF NORTH AFRICA FROM OUR ALGIERS CORRESPONDENT Just after noon on January 12, almost at the beginning of Ramadan the famous Moslem poet Sheik Benguedda El Hadj Belarbi, died at Mazuna. He was over 80, and had been il for a long time. For may years he lived at Ain-Morane, where he was the central figure in a group of native chiefs, the descendants of those who had fought in the border battles btween Bu-Maaza, the Sultan of the Dahra and the Warsenis, and Saint-Arnaud and Pelissier. He was the living history of those stirring times. Later on he came to Mazuna and became the proprietor of a Moorish cafe, which was opened by M.Jules Cambon, then Governor-General of Algeria, and was for many years a place of pilgrimage for poets from all over North Africa. His chief delight was in long improvisations, for which he relied on his remarkable retentive memory. In his library were to be found nearly all the works of the North African Moslem poets especialy those of Morocco and Western Algeria, and he would readily recite long narrative poems of over 1,200 lines, such as the famous Moslem poems of the seventeenth century. He died poor, having spent nearly all his money in paying scribes to record the traditional Moslem poetry. Wirh him has passed probably the last of those who have long borne the banner of Moslem ministrelsy in North Africa.