Culture, Society & Diaspora
Culture, Society & Diaspora
The relationship between Algeria and China is older than many people realise. It predates Algerian independence itself: Beijing recognised the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic in 1958, during the war of liberation, becoming the first non-Arab country to recognise…
In the 1790s, the United States did not defeat Algiers. It paid Algiers — handsomely, repeatedly, and with a warship added to the bargain. Long before America became a global power, it was a cash-strapped young republic negotiating from weakness…
In Algeria, navigating employment, healthcare or administrative procedures can sometimes involve a familiar question: ʿandek maârifa? — “Do you have connections?” The concept that captures this reality is maârifa (also rendered el-maârifa), loosely translated as “knowing someone,” and it is…
High in the Saharan Atlas of north-eastern Algeria, where rugged cliffs give way to the fertile valleys of the Oued Abiod and Oued Abdi, a musical tradition has been carrying the voice of a people for well over a century.…
Few national sporting cultures are as musically layered as Algeria’s. The songs that accompany Les Verts — Algeria’s men’s national football team — are not the disposable anthems that many countries commission before a tournament and forget the moment the…
The Algerian community in the United States is one of the more understated presences within the wider Arab, Amazigh, North African, and Muslim-American landscape — small enough to escape routine headlines, yet meaningful enough to have carved out a recognisable…