Algeria

• 1. Introduction

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  Algeria spans over 2,381,741 square kilometres, making it the largest country in Africa and the tenth largest on Earth. Most of that vast surface is the Sahara desert. Yet nearly all of its 47 million people crowd into the fertile, mountainous north along the Mediterranean coast. The country borders seven neighbors and one sea. Its capital and largest city is Algiers, whose name carries a hidden meaning that reaches back more than a thousand years. How does a land mostly made of desert become a regional power with the largest military budget in Africa? Why do its people speak Arabic, Tamazight, and French all at once, when only two of those tongues are official? And how did a place once ruled by corsairs and Ottoman deys end up fighting one of the most important anti-colonial wars of the twentieth century? The answers run through Phoenician traders, a Berber queen, a fly whisk, and 132 years of French rule.

• 2. Islands That Became A Nation

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  The name Algeria derives from Algiers, whose Arabic name al-Jazair means "the islands." It once referred to small islands off the city's coast. That term was itself a shortened form of Jazair Bani Mazghanna, the islands of the Bani Mazghanna, named after a local Berber tribe. The city was founded in 950 by the Sanhaja Berber Emir Buluggin ibn Ziri on the site of the ancient city of Icosium. Its name later surfaced in the writings of medieval Muslim geographers such as Al-Bakri. The modern state borrowed its name from the Regency of Algiers, the Ottoman polity built in the central Maghreb in the early sixteenth century. Contemporary sources called the land Watan al-Jazair, the country of Algiers. The Ottoman Turkish aristocracy who settled there identified both themselves and the local people as Algerians, an early seed of the identity that would eventually define a nation.

• 3. Crossroads Of Empires

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  Around 1.9 million years ago, ancestral hominins were already chipping stone tools at Ain Boucherit, where some artifacts may reach 2.4 million years in age. That evidence shows early humans inhabited the Mediterranean fringe of northern Africa far earlier than once believed. By 600 BC a Phoenician presence existed along the Algerian coast, at sites like Icosium and Hippo Regius, modern Annaba. The Carthaginians avoided conquering the strong Berber tribes inland, choosing tribute and trade instead. In 203 to 202 BC, Masinissa of the Massyli unified rival territories into the Kingdom of Numidia, with its capital at Cirta, modern Constantine. His grandson Jugurtha reunified Numidia through ruthless means before Rome captured him in 106 BC. Christianity later spread in the third and fourth centuries, and its most prominent Berber figure was Saint Augustine, bishop of Hippo Regius. The Vandals ended Roman control in 429 AD. In 533, the Byzantine general Belisarius sailed from Constantinople, defeated the Vandals, and captured their king Gelimer, who was exiled to Anatolia.

• 4. The Coming Of Islam

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  The Muslim conquest of the Maghreb unfolded between 647 and 709. In 670, Oqba ibn Nafi founded Kairouan, which became a major Islamic base, but a coalition led by the Berber leader Kusayla ambushed and killed him at the Battle of Tahouda in 683. A legendary queen named Kahina, also called Dihya, then rallied Berber resistance and first defeated the Arabs in the Aures Mountains. Hassan ibn al-Numan returned with fresh troops and defeated and killed her around 697. By 709 the entire Maghreb was under Umayyad control. Berber converts were still treated as second-class non-Arabs, which pushed many toward Kharijite movements and frequent revolts. In 778, Abdel Rahman Ibn Rustam established a Kharijite emirate at Tahert, the Rustamid imamate, the first independent Muslim state in the Maghrib. The Fatimids defeated the Rustamids in 909. From there, a succession of powers rose and fell: the Zirid and Hammadid dynasties, the Almoravids who took Algiers in 1082, and the Almohads, who unified the region for the first time by 1147.

• 5. Corsairs And The Regency

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  The Regency of Algiers was founded in 1516 by the corsair brothers Aruj Barbarossa and Hayreddin Barbarossa, who seized Algiers with local support against Spanish expansion. Though nominally loyal to the Ottoman sultan, the Regency became a highly autonomous state dominated by janissaries and corsair captains. Historians have described it as a military republic. The era of the deys began in 1671. Corsair fleets sailing from Algiers attacked European shipping across the Mediterranean and into the Atlantic. They forced states including Britain, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the young United States to pay tribute or negotiate treaties directly with Algiers. The city grew wealthy and heavily fortified, especially after the failed attack of Emperor Charles V in 1541. The Casbah was built during this period. Relations with France soured after the 1827 Fly Whisk Incident, when Dey Hussein struck the French consul during a dispute over debts and grain payments. France used the episode as a pretext to invade in 1830, ending the Regency after more than three centuries. Historian Ahmad Tawfiq al-Madani would later call the Regency the first Algerian state.

• 6. A War For Independence

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  France invaded in 1830 and formally annexed Algeria in 1848, though it was not fully pacified until 1903. In western Algeria, Emir Abdelkader built a real state and led fierce resistance, surrendering in 1847 after years of war. He remains Algeria's greatest national hero. The conquest carried a staggering human cost. Historian Ben Kiernan wrote that by 1875 the war had killed approximately 825,000 indigenous Algerians since 1830. Mass European settlement followed, and the settlers became known as colons and later Pied-Noirs. The Setif and Guelma massacre in May 1945 convinced many that armed struggle was the only path. A group of militants formed the CRUA in 1953, which became the Front de Liberation Nationale in 1954. The war began with coordinated FLN attacks on the 31st of October to the 1st of November 1954. The French destroyed over 8,000 villages and relocated more than 2 million Algerians to concentration camps. After the Evian Accords of March 1962, Algerians voted overwhelmingly for independence. Algeria became independent on the 5th of July 1962, ending 132 years of French rule. Historian Alistair Horne estimated Algerian casualties at around 700,000.

• 7. Oil, Power, And Upheaval

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  Ahmed Ben Bella became independent Algeria's first president in September 1962, supported by Houari Boumedienne, who overthrew him in 1965. Boumedienne collectivised agriculture, launched a massive industrialisation drive, and nationalised oil extraction facilities, which proved especially beneficial after the 1973 oil crisis. His successor Chadli Bendjedid introduced liberal economic reforms and promoted Arabisation in schools and public life. When world oil prices crashed during the 1980s glut, economic recession bred social unrest. By the end of the decade Bendjedid introduced a multi-party system, and the Islamic Salvation Front emerged. The Front dominated the first round of legislative elections in December 1991. Fearing an Islamist government, the authorities cancelled the elections on the 11th of January 1992. The banning of the FIS triggered a civil war in which more than 100,000 people are thought to have died. The Armed Islamic Group declared a ceasefire in October 1997. Abdelaziz Bouteflika won the 1999 election and pursued a Civil Concord initiative. He was brought down in 2019 during mass protests against his bid for a fifth term. In December 2019, Abdelmadjid Tebboune became president, and he won a second term in September 2024 with 84.3 percent of the vote.

• 8. Desert, Gas, And Modern Algeria

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  Mount Tahat rises to 3,003 metres, the highest point in a country where the Sahara dominates most of the territory. To the north, the Tell Atlas and the Saharan Atlas form two parallel sets of reliefs enclosing vast plains and highlands. Rainfall along the coastal Tell Atlas ranges from 400 to 670 millimetres a year, while desert midday heat can reach 110 degrees Fahrenheit in summer. The fennec fox is the national animal, and Barbary macaques are the sole native monkey, though Barbary lions, Atlas bears, and crocodiles are now extinct here. Algeria's economy rests on hydrocarbons, which account for roughly 60 percent of budget revenues and 87.7 percent of export earnings. The country holds the tenth-largest natural gas reserves in the world and ranks sixteenth in oil reserves. Sonatrach, the national oil company, is the largest company in Africa and a major supplier of natural gas to Europe. As of 2025, Algeria has the highest Human Development Index in continental Africa. Among the figures it has given the Muslim world is Mohamed Arkoun, one of several prominent thinkers born of a land that was, for millennia, a crossroads of cultures.