Algeriaالجزائر

Long before the desert, the central Sahara was grassland with lakes. The paintings and engravings of Tassili n'Ajjer, some possibly 10,000 years old, show giraffes, cattle herds, hunters and later horses and camels, a record of the drying that turned the region into desert.

In the north, Amazigh kingdoms emerged. Massinissa united Numidia in the second century BCE, allied with Rome against Carthage, and ruled from Cirta, today's Constantine. His grandson Jugurtha fought Rome and lost; Numidia and neighbouring Mauretania became Roman provinces.

Roman Africa was rich in grain and olive oil. Timgad was founded by Trajan in 100 CE as a veterans' colony with a perfect grid; Djemila (Cuicul) spreads along a mountain ridge; Tipasa sits on the sea. Augustine, born at Thagaste (Souk Ahras) and bishop of Hippo (Annaba), became one of the most influential Christian thinkers.

Arab armies reached the region in the late seventh century, and Islam spread among the Amazigh over the following centuries. Local dynasties rose and fell: the Rustamids at Tahert, whose Ibadi faith survives in the M'zab valley; the Hammadids at Béjaïa; the Zayyanids at Tlemcen, whose mosques show Andalusian craft.

In the 16th century the corsair brothers Aruj and Hayreddin Barbarossa took Algiers and placed it under the Ottoman sultan. The Regency of Algiers became a semi-independent state ruled by deys, living partly on corsair raids and ransom. The Casbah, the hillside old town of palaces, mosques and narrow lanes, dates largely from this period.

The Mozabites of the M'zab valley built five fortified towns around Ghardaïa from the 11th century, with mosques whose minarets and bare geometry later influenced modernist architects such as Le Corbusier.

France invaded in 1830 and, after decades of war against resistance led by Emir Abdelkader, made northern Algeria part of France itself, divided into départements. European settlers, the pieds-noirs, reached about a million by the 1950s and held the best land; Muslim Algerians had few rights. Colonial Algiers, Oran and Constantine got boulevards, arcades and apartment blocks that still shape their centres.

The National Liberation Front (FLN) began the armed struggle on 1 November 1954. The war lasted eight years and was fought with guerrilla attacks, bombings in cities, mass internment and systematic torture by French forces; the Battle of Algiers in 1957 became its symbol. Estimates of Algerian deaths range from several hundred thousand to over a million. Independence came on 5 July 1962, and almost all Europeans left within months.

The war's memory is central to Algerian identity and to strained relations with France; the Maqam Echahid monument above Algiers and museums of the mujahideen present the official story.

Ahmed Ben Bella led the new state until Houari Boumediene took over in 1965 and built a socialist, oil-funded economy. Algeria became a leader of the non-aligned movement; Algiers hosted liberation movements from across Africa. Oil revenues paid for schools and housing, but the one-party FLN state left a young population without jobs.

Riots in 1988 led to multiparty elections. When the Islamic Salvation Front was about to win in 1991–92, the army cancelled the vote, and a civil war followed through the 1990s between the state and armed Islamist groups, with massacres of villagers; perhaps 150,000–200,000 people died. Abdelaziz Bouteflika, president from 1999, offered amnesties and ruled for twenty years.

When the ailing Bouteflika sought a fifth term in 2019, weekly peaceful marches known as the Hirak forced him out. Abdelmadjid Tebboune was elected that year and re-elected in 2024; the army remains central, the Hirak was stopped during the pandemic, and critics have been prosecuted. Gas sales to Europe rose after 2022, giving the state more room.

Most Algerians are of mixed Arab and Amazigh descent. Amazigh languages are strongest in Kabylie (Kabyle), the Aurès (Chaoui), the M'zab (Mozabite) and among the Tuareg of the far south (Tamasheq). Tamazight became a national language in 2002 and official in 2016; Yennayer has been a holiday since 2018. Arabic and French remain the languages of state and business.

The Sahara covers more than four-fifths of the country. The Hoggar mountains around Tamanrasset rise to Mount Tahat (2,908 m); the Assekrem plateau holds the hermitage of Charles de Foucauld. The Tassili n'Ajjer near Djanet is a sandstone plateau of rock forests and arches. The great ergs, sand seas such as the Grand Erg Occidental near Timimoun and Taghit, are the classic dune landscapes.

The Tuareg, the Kel Ahaggar and Kel Ajjer, were camel-herding nomads who controlled caravan routes; many are now settled in Djanet and Tamanrasset and run the tourism that the state has encouraged since the 2023 visa on arrival for Saharan tours. Oil and gas fields at Hassi Messaoud and In Amenas are also in the desert; the In Amenas gas plant was attacked in 2013.

The weekend is Friday and Saturday. Cafés, mostly male, fill with talk of football — the national team won the Africa Cup of Nations in 1990 and 2019 — and of papers and permits. Young Algerians follow French and Arab media closely, and many dream of emigrating; the diaspora in France numbers in the millions.

Raï, born in Oran's bars and weddings, mixed Bedouin song with electric instruments and became a global sound through Cheb Khaled and Cheb Mami. Chaâbi is the popular music of the Algiers Casbah; Kabyle song carried Amazigh identity politics.

Food is home-centred; couscous is the national dish, and Ramadan evenings bring chorba frik and bourek. The economy runs on subsidies for bread, fuel and housing funded by gas; queues and shortages come and go with world prices.