Béjaïa was first inhabited by Numidian Berbers. A minor port in Carthaginian and Romantimes, Béjaïa was the Roman Saldae, a veteran colony founded by emperor Vespasianof great importance in the province of Mauretania Caesariensis, later in the fraction Sitifensis.
In the second or third century AD, Gaius Cornelius Peregrinus, a decurion (town councillor) from Saldae was a tribunus (military commander) of the auxiliary garrison at Alauna Carvetiorum in northern Britain. An altar dedicated to him was discovered shortly before 1587 in the north-west corner of the fort, where it had probably been re-used in a late-Roman building (source).
Coin of the Hafsids, with ornamentalKufic script, from Béjaïa, 1249-1276.
It became the capital of the short-lived African kingdom of the Germanic Vandals(founded in 429-430), which was wiped out circa 533 by the Byzantines who established the African prefecture and later the Exarchate of Carthage. It had disappeared but was refounded by the Berber Hammadid dynasty (whose capital it became) in the 11th century, and became an important port and cultural center. As a principal town of the Hammadid leader, Emir En Nasser, Béjaïa flourished and was renamed En Nassria. En Nasser's son, el Mansour, built an impressive palace inside the fortifications constructed by his father. The Hammadid Empire fell in 1152, when the Almohad ruler, Abd al-Mu'min, invaded central Maghreb from Morocco. The son of a Pisan merchant (and probably consul), posthumously known as Fibonacci, there learned under the Almohad dynasty about Arabic numerals, and introduced them and modern mathematics into feudal Europe.
Historic map of Algiers and Béjaïa byPiri Reis
In the 13th century Béjaïa was acquired by the Hafsid Empire when the dynasty took control ofTunis. Pirates were active along the Barbary Coast starting in the 16th century.
After a Spanish occupation (1510–55), the city was taken by the Ottoman Turks
