Culture, Society & Diaspora
Culture, Society & Diaspora
Assegas Ameggaz! On 12 January, as the Gregorian calendar’s new year settles in, Algerian families across diverse regions prepare to celebrate Yennayer, the Amazigh (often called ‘Berber’ in older European sources) New Year. This ancient festival marks the first day…
On 13 February 1960, a blue-tinged fireball erupted over the Algerian Sahara, marking France’s entry into the nuclear age. Code-named Gerboise Bleue after the desert jerboa (a desert rodent), this first French atomic bomb was detonated at a remote site…
Mohammed Dib spent over five decades crafting novels, poetry, and stories that traced the arc of Algeria’s 20th-century experience—from colonial hardship to independence, from exile to global literary recognition. His work, written entirely in French yet unmistakably Algerian in spirit,…
The question of whether Algerians are Arab is deceptively simple, yet it touches on centuries of history, waves of migration, colonial legacies, and ongoing debates about national identity. The short answer is that most Algerians today identify with Arab-Islamic culture…
In the heart of Soho, at 52 Old Compton Street, a crimson-red shopfront has stood for nearly 140 years. Behind its original 19th-century wooden fascia lies Algerian Coffee Stores, founded in 1887 by an Algerian immigrant known as Mr Hassan.…
For thousands of years, communities in the Algerian Sahara have relied on an ingenious underground irrigation system known as the foggara (الفقَّارة) to transform some of the Earth’s harshest landscapes into flourishing oases. These gently sloping tunnels tap groundwater and…