Culture, Society & Diaspora
Culture, Society & Diaspora
Algerian society is shaped by a history of conquest and resistance, independence and reinvention. Understanding Algeria means understanding the forces—colonial, religious, economic, and social—that have moulded its people.
Here we explore the figures who defined the nation, the institutions that govern, and the questions of identity that Algerians continue to navigate.
Henna is one of the most widely recognised symbols of Algerian celebration — and one of the least understood. To see it only as body decoration is to miss most of what it does. In Algeria, the reddish-brown paste applied…
In the summer of 430, as Vandal forces laid siege to a North African port city, one of antiquity’s most influential thinkers lay dying inside its walls. Augustine, bishop of Hippo Regius for more than three decades, had spent the…
She wrote in French, the language of colonial power, to recover what colonial rule tried to erase. For six decades, Assia Djebar wove together women’s whispered testimonies, buried archives, and her own memories to build a body of work that…
A second-century writer born at Madauros — modern M’Daourouch in Souk Ahras Province — not only called himself “half Numidian, half Gaetulian” in his own defence speech, but smuggled his hometown into the closing pages of his novel when 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…