Algeria
Capital: Algiers · North Africa
Africa's largest country by area, where Amazigh (Berber) civilization, Roman ruins, Islamic scholarship and Saharan Tuareg culture meet.
Ethnic communities
- KabyleLargest Amazigh group, Kabylie mountains; rich oral poetry tradition
- ChaouiAmazigh people of the Aurès Mountains
- TuaregSaharan nomads famed for indigo veils and Tifinagh script
- MozabiteIbadi Muslim Amazigh of the M'zab Valley's fortified towns
More communities of Algeria
- Shawiya (Chaoui) — Aurès mountain Amazigh — Dihya's homeland of fortified granaries
- Mozabites — Ibadi Muslim builders of the M'zab's five white hill-cities
- Tuareg (Kel Ahaggar) — Ahaggar confederation of the deep Sahara; Tin Hinan's heirs
- Tuareg (Kel Ajjer) — Tassili n'Ajjer nomads amid the world's great rock-art gallery
- Chenoua — Coastal Amazigh of the Dahra hills west of Algiers
- Zenata Berbers — Historic camel-nomad Amazigh branch of the high plateaus
- Ouled Naïl — Steppe confederations famed for dance and silver jewelry
- Chaamba Arabs — Saharan Arab nomads of the northern desert oases
- Reguibat — Great camel-herding tribe of the western Sahara
- Gourara Zenete — Oasis communities keeping the UNESCO-listed Ahellil chant
- Souafa — Date-grove people of the Souf's sunken palm gardens
- Beni Snous — Tlemcen-region Amazigh with masked Ayred winter festival
- Tidikelt & In Salah oasis folk — Foggara-irrigation specialists of the central Sahara
- Dawi Menia & Beni Guil — Pastoral Arab tribes of the Moroccan-Algerian marches
Languages
Major languages: Arabic, Tamazight (Berber), French
Language families: Afro-Asiatic (Semitic, Berber)
Historical kingdoms & states
- • Numidia
- • Kingdom of Tlemcen (Zayyanid)
- • Regency of Algiers
Heritage sites
- • Casbah of Algiers
- • M'Zab Valley
- • Tassili n'Ajjer rock art
- • Timgad
- • Djémila
Cultural highlights
Deep-dive community profiles
Amazigh (Berber)
The indigenous peoples of North Africa — 'Imazighen', the free people — whose Tifinagh script, mountain and desert civilizations, and millennia of continuous culture long predate the Arab arrival, stretching from the Canary Islands to the Siwa oasis.
Open deep profile →Kabyle (Iqbayliyen)
The mountain Amazigh of northern Algeria — whose village assemblies wrote their own constitutions, whose silver-and-coral jewellery and pottery are famous, and whose Amazigh Spring forced a state to recognise a language it had denied.
Open deep profile →Tuareg (Kel Tamasheq)
The veiled lords of the central Sahara — matrilineal confederations who ran the desert's caravans for a millennium, write in ancient Tifinagh, and whose women own the tents, the poetry and the one-string imzad that carries the nomad soul.
Open deep profile →