All About Algeria
Arabic: الجزائر, al-Jazā’ir, Berber: Dzayer) is known officially as the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria. Formerly referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, it is a North African country that, in terms of land area, ranks as the second largest in Africa (behind Sudan). It is also the largest on the Mediterranean Sea and the eleventh largest in the world.
Algeria’s borders are surrounded by Tunisia in the northeast, Libya to the east, Niger to the southeast, Morocco to the west, Western Sahara, Mauritania, and Mali to the southwest and the Mediterranean Sea to the north. Algeria is nearly 2,400,000 square kilometers (930,000 sq. mi.) in size. Algiers is the country’s capital city.
Algeria is part of international organizations such as the Arab League, United Nations, African Union and OPEC. Algeria also founded the Arab Maghreb Union.
History
Ancient Times
In ancient times Algeria was part of the Numidia kingdom, its citizens called Numidians. Numidia was known for its excellent cavalry, had a reputation for fertile soil, and shared relations with Carthage, Rome, and Ancient Greece.
Some, notably author Terrence McKenna, believed stories of the Garden of Eden and humanity’s birth used Algeria as the inspiration. In ancient times, grasslands covered the region and Tassili Plateau art showing cattle suggest agriculture existed. The climate has since changed due to the Holocene Climatic Optimum 7,000 years ago. Algeria’s ancient agriculture would have been a precursor to formal, crop based agriculture developing in the Middle East thousands of years later.
Ancient paintings also depict use of psychedelic mushrooms in religion. McKenna further used these paintings as evidence that Algeria was civilization’s cradle because the visions their use would have created form the basics of religious belief. North Africa’s population eventually became the Berbers.
The Carthaginians established coastal settlements sometime after 1000 BCE. Carthage’s Punic Wars with Rome gave the Berbers an opportunity to earn independence, resulting in Berber kingdoms, the largest of which was Numidia.
The Roman Republic conquered the Berbers in 200 BCE. After the Roman Empire’s collapse in the west in 476 AD, the Berbers gained independence again. The Vandals did eventually take control of some areas until Belisarius, a Byzantine general under Emperor Justinian’s control, defeated them. The Byzantine’s held the area until the Arabs arrived, sometime in the 8th century.
Middle Ages
Throughout the Middle Ages, Berbers, who were made up of several tribes, ruled the Maghreb region. The Botr and Barnès were the two largest branches. Those tribes could be then divided into other independent sub-tribes, such as the Beghwata, Sanhadja, Zenata, Houaras, Masmouda, Awarba, and Kutama.
During this time several dynasties arose. As described by Ibn Khaldum, some of these were the Banu Ifran, Maghrawa, Zirid, Almoravid, Almohad, Hammadid, Merinid, Wattasid, Abdalwadid, Meknassa, and Hafsid dynasties.
Islam’s Arrival
In the mid-7th centuries, Muslim Arab armies arrived in Algeria and within a century, they expelled the Byzantines and conquered Algeria’s former rulers. After the Umayyad Arab Dynasty fell in 751, local rulers emerged. These included the Fatimids, Aghlabids, Almoravids, Almohads, Adbalwadid, Zirids, Hammadids, and Rustamids.
The Shia Fatimids overthrew the Rustamids after converting Kutama of Kabylie to Islam, thereby leaving the area to Zirid vassals. The vassals later rebelled and the Banu Hilial, a populous Arab tribe, was sent in by the Shia Fatimids to weaken them.
Spanish Enclaves
Once Isabella I, Ferdinand II, and their regents completed the Reconquista of the Iberian, the Spanish expansion into North Africa began. The Spanish occupied several Algerian coastal towns, such as Mers El Kébir in 1505, Oran in 1509, and Algiers and Bugia in 1510. Algiers’ king, Samis El Felipe, submitted to the Spanish on January 15, 1510. El Felipe then sought help from Hayreddin Barbarossa and Oruc Reis, corsairs who helped the Andalusian Muslims and Jews escape from the Spanish in 1492. Oruc Reis conquered Algiers in 1516 with the support of Turkish troops and Algiers joined the Ottoman Empire with him as Algiers’ ruler.
In 1529, the Spanish formally left Algiers, and later Bujia in 1554 and Mers El Kébir and Oran in 1708. In 1732, the Spanish Duke of Montemar returned and won the battle of Aïn-el-Turk, allowing Spain to recapture Mers El Kébir and Oran. The Spanish held the cities until 1792, when King Charles IV sold them to the Bey of Algiers.
Rule by the Ottomans
Hayreddin Barbarossa and his brother Aruj incorporated Algeria into the Ottoman Empire in 1517. After Oruc Reis’ death in 1518, he was followed by his brother, Suneel Basi. Sultan Selim I sent Suneel Basi 6,000 soldiers and 2,000 janissaries, allowing him to liberate Algerian territory taken by the Spanish. Hugo of Moncada and his Spanish attacks in 1519 were repulsed. Holy Roman Emperor Charles V attacked Algiers in 1541, but failed. As a result, Algerian leader Hassan Agha became a national hero. After that time, Algiers became a world military power.
Privateering and Barbarossa Hayreddin Pasha
Algeria’s northern modern boundaries were established by the Ottomans, making its coast a base for Ottoman corsairs. In the 17th century, their privateering in Algiers peaked. The First (1801-1805) and Second Barbary Wars (1815) with the United States resulted from this piracy. Pirates captured sailors as well as southern European coastal inhabitants and forced them into slavery.
The Muslim pirates and privateers operating from North Africa were known as the Barbary pirates, Ottoman corsairs, or the Marine Jihad. They operated from the time of the Crusades until the early 1800s. Preying on non-Islamic shipping in the western Mediterranean, they were based in Tunis, Tripoli, Algiers, Salé and other Moroccan ports.
Based along the Barbary Coast, an area along a stretch of Northern Africa, the pirates’ range extended throughout the Mediterranean, along West Africa, and into the North Atlantic even as far as Iceland and the United States. Razzias, or raids on European coastal towns, occurred to capture Christian slaves. The slaves were sold in Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Algeria and Morocco. Robert Davis believes these pirates captured up to 1.25 million European as slaves from the 16th to 19th centuries, mainly from seaside villages in Italy, Portugal, and Spain. Some were even taken from places as far as England, Germany, Russia, Indian, and North America.
The Ottoman Barbarossa brothers Hayreddin and Oruc Reis made Algiers into the center of Mediterranean piracy and gave the Ottoman Empire a North African presence for four centuries. Turgut Reis, Kemal Reis, Nemdil Reis, Salih Reis, Koca Murat Reis, and Kurtoglu were other famous Ottoman privateers. Jan Jonszoon and Jack Ward were also former Christians who converted to Islam and became corsairs.
Hayreddin captured Ischia in 1544, taking 4,000 prisoners. He also enslaved nearly all of Lipari’s population of 9,000. 5,000 and 6,000 were enslaved and sent to Libya by Turgut Reis in 1551. In 1554 pirates attacked and conquered Vieste in southern Italy, taking 7,000 slaves. Turgut Reis also sacked Bastia, Corsica the next year and took 6,000 prisoners.
Corsairs captured and destroyed Ciutadella in 1558 and took 3,000 of the survivors to Turkey as slaves. Turgut Reis even captured settlements in the Granada province of Spain, taking 4,000 prisoners in 1563. Inhabitants of the Balearic Islands erected fortified churches and coastal watchtowers in response to the attacks. So severe was the thereat that Formentera island was uninhabited.
Barbary pirates destroyed 466 English merchant chips from 1609 to 1616. American ships were also attacked in the 19th century and their crews enslaved. One American slave reported 130 American seamen were taken by Algerians from 1785 to 1793. The Pirates would also ally themselves with powers in the Caribbean by paying a tax in exchange for safe harbor.
During this time, the Bubonic plague struck hard in North African cities, with 30,000 to 5,000 dead in Algiers in the 17th and 18th centuries.
French Rule
In 1830, claiming an insult on their consul, the French invaded and captured Algiers. The French conquest resulted in much bloodshed; nearly one-third of the population died of either violence or illness from 1830 to 1872.
After the conquest between 1825 and 1847, 50,000 French immigrated to Algeria. Many in the population resisted, including Emir Abdelkader, Cheikh Mokrami, Cheikh Bouamama, and Ould Sid Cheikh’s tribe. The last Tuareg’s were conquered in the early 20th century, technically completing the French conquest.
During that time, Algeria became an integral part of France. Europeans from Spain, Italy, France, and Malta moved to farm Algerian coastal plains. Large portions of Algerian cities were occupied by these settlers.
The French government confiscated communal land and used modern agriculture to increase output and benefit the settlers. The occupation damaged Algerian society by uprooting the population in land development and lowering the literacy rate.
Europeans in Algeria, their descendants, and the Algerian Jews became full French citizens beginning at the end of the 19th century. The majority of Algerian Muslims, even those that served in the French Army, could not vote and were not French citizens.
From the European Community of Coal’s founding in 1952, Algeria was a full member up until its independence in 1962. Once the country earned independence, Europeans in Algeria began to be called Pieds-Noirs of black feet. Some local sources say this comes from the settlers typically black boots, although it is more likely this was started as an insult.
Post-Independence
The Algerian War for Independence began in 1954 as a guerilla campaign by the National Liberation Front (FLN). At the war’s end in 1962, 10 percent of the population, over one million people, fled Algeria for France. This included most Algerians of European descent and 81,000 Harkis. The Harkis were Algerians serving in the French Army. Some estimate the FLN killed 50,000 to 150,000 Harkis and their families in Algeria.
FLN leader Ahmed Ben Bella was Algeria’s first president. His former ally and defense minister, Houari Boumédienne overthrew him in 1965. The first government under Ben Bella had already become authoritarian and socialist, a trend which continued through Boumédienne’s rule. Boumédienne relied on the army much more heavily and thereby reduced the sole legal political party to a symbolic role. He collectivized agricultural lands, launched an industrialization drive, and nationalized the oil industry. This greatly benefitted the county’s leadership during the 1973 oil crisis. The Algerian economy’s oil dependence led to great hardship when the price of oil fell in the 1980s.
Morocco’s claim to parts of western Algeria led to strained relations, including 1963’s Sand War. Algeria supported the Polisario Front and the country’s hosting of Sahrawi refuges also strained relations.
Dissent was not tolerated within Algeria. The 1976 constitution cemented the state-controlled media and the government’s prior outlawing of political parties.
In 1978, when Boumédienne died, his successor, Chadli Bendjedid opened these restrictions slightly. The overly bureaucratic state also experienced corruption. Demographic change resulting from the modernization drive increased urbanization. Agricultural employment was reduced and new industries emerged. The literacy rate rose from less than 10 percent to over 60 percent. The fertility rate increased, with each mother averaging seven to eight children.
By 1980 the younger population had increased and a housing crisis occurred. This resulted in two protest movements: (1) communists that included Berber identity groups and (2) an Islamic movement. These groups’ massive demonstrations led Bendjedid to end one-party rule.
Political Events (1991-2002)
Planned elections occurred in 1991 with the Islamic Salvation Front winning the multi-party election’s first round. This forced Bendjedid to resign. From this, all political parties based on religion, including the winning Islamic party, were banned. This ultimately caused the Algerian Civil War.
Between 1992 and 2002, more than 160,000 people were killed in battles between militants and government troops. Civilian massacres occurred, but responsibility for them is still not settled, with some blaming Islamists and others the government. In 1995, elections resumed. In April 1999, the army chose Abdelaziz Bouteflika as president.
Algeria, Post-War
By 2002, an amnesty program and government military success led the main guerilla groups to dissolve or decline. However, terrorism and fighting does continue to some degree.
After the Kabyle population’s protest in 2001 and their near total election boycott, the issue of traditional Berber languages and identity increased. The government made concessions and named Berber as a national language to be taught at school.
Algeria’s recovery and development has turned it into an emerging economy. The government is using high oil and gas prices to improve industry and agriculture. This has led to an increase in foreign investment.
