Tlemcen is a city of northwestern Algeria, set on a high inland plateau between the Mediterranean coast and the Saharan steppe, fifty kilometres from the Moroccan border. The Roman foundation Pomaria preceded the medieval Berber city; the modern toponym derives from the Berber Tilimsan, glossed by medieval geographers as "the springs."
Tlemcen was the capital of the Zenati Zayyanid (Abd al-Wadid) dynasty from 1235 to 1556 — three centuries during which it functioned as the third pole of the western Maghreb alongside Marinid Fez and Hafsid Tunis, and as a node of the trans-Saharan gold trade through Sijilmasa. Its medieval madrasas, mosques, and palaces — the Sidi Bel Hassan, the Mansoura, the El Mechouar — survive in varying states.
The city's character was further shaped by the arrival of Andalusi refugees from Córdoba, Granada, and Seville across the medieval and early modern periods, and by long Sufi traditions associated with Sidi Boumediene at El Eubbad on the southern slope. The Ottoman period attached Tlemcen to the Beylik of Oran; French annexation came in 1842 after the surrender of the Emir Abd al-Qadir.
Tlemcen is conventionally described as the western capital of Algerian Tamazight cultural memory, though the city itself is now overwhelmingly Arabic-speaking, with Tamazight retained in surrounding communes such as the Beni Snous valley.