Zaphira

Zaphira or Zafira (in Arabic: زفيرة) is said to have been the wife of Selim al-Toumi, the Emir of Algiers in the 16th century. In Western historiography, she is also referred to as "Princess Zaphira" or spelled incorrectly as Saphira.

Jacques Philippe Laugier de Tassy, the French Consulate Chancellor in Algiers from 1717 to 1718, was the first to report on Zaphira's life events in his History of the Kingdom of Algiers (1725). As the wife of Selim, who became the Emir of Algiers in 1510 to fight against Ferdinand the Catholic, Zaphira witnessed the corsair Aruj Barbarossa seize power in September 1516 after betraying her husband, and he was determined to marry her. Despite his advances, she refused him out of loyalty to the memory of her husband, who was killed by Aruj. After multiple rejections, he attempted to rape her, but she committed suicide.

The historicity of Zaphira has been doubted since the 18th century and has been more vigorously rejected since the 19th century, as Tassy often collected both true and false information or invented stories.