Culture, Society & Diaspora
Culture, Society & Diaspora
On a hilltop plateau about 70 kilometres west of Algiers, there is a circular stone tomb the size of a small stadium. It has been standing for roughly two thousand years. Scholars have argued about who built it, and who…
The Jardin d’Essai du Hamma — also known as El Hamma Botanical Garden or simply Jardin d’Essai — is one of Algiers’ most distinctive public spaces. Spread across roughly 32 hectares in the capital’s El Hamma district, it combines a…
Few public spaces in Algeria carry as much social weight as the coffee house. From the traditional café maure (a traditional North African-style café/tea room, often serving coffee, mint tea, and syrups) of the Ottoman era to the espresso bars…
If you have Algerian friends or colleagues, you may know at least one Bouali, Bouazza, or Boumaza. The prefix Bou- is one of the most recognisable features of Algerian surnames — and once you understand what it means and how…
The term pieds-noirs – often glossed as ‘black feet’, though the term’s origin is disputed – refers to the European settler population of French Algeria, a community whose 132-year presence in North Africa ended abruptly with Algerian independence in 1962.…
Mohamed Larbi Ben M’hidi was born in 1923 in the village of El Kouahi near Aïn M’lila in eastern Algeria, into a family associated with local religious scholarship (marabout tradition). From the age of four, he studied the Qur’an at…