Algiers

Algiers (Arabic: الجزائر‎, al-Jazā’ir; Algerian Arabic: دزاير, Berber: Dzayer) is the capital and largest city of Algeria. According to the 1998 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570 and that of the urban agglomeration was 2,135,630.  In 2009, the population was about 3,500,000. An estimate puts the population at about 3,574,000 as of 2010. 

Called El-Behdja (البهجة) or alternatively Alger la Blanche ("Algiers the White") for the glistening white of its buildings as seen rising up from the sea, Algiers is situated on the west side of a bay of the Mediterranean Sea. The modern part of the city is built on the level ground by the seashore; the old part, the ancient city of the deys, climbs the steep hill behind the modern town and is crowned by the casbah or citadel, 400 feet (122 m) above the sea. The casbah and the two quays form a triangle. 

The city name is derived (via French Alger and Catalan Alguère) from the Arabic name الجزائر al-Jazā’ir, which translates as "The Islands", referring to the four islands which lay off the city's coast until becoming part of the mainland in 1525. Al-Jazā’ir is itself a truncated form of the city's older name جزائر بني مازغان Jazā’ir Banī Mazghannā, "The Islands of the Sons of Mazghanna", used by early medieval geographers such asal-Idrisi and Yaqut al-Hamawi.

A Phoenician commercial outpost called Ikosim which later developed into a small Roman town called Icosium existed on what is now the marine quarter of the city. The rue de la Marine follows the lines of what used to be a Roman street. Roman cemeteries existed near Bab-el-Oued and Bab Azoun. The city was given Latin rights by Vespasian. The bishops of Icosium are mentioned as late as the 5th century.

The present-day city was founded in 944 by Bologhine ibn Ziri, the founder of the BerberZirid–Sanhaja dynasty, which was overthrown by Roger II of Sicily in 1148, although the Zirids had already lost control of Algiers before the final fall of the dynasty. The city was occupied by theAlmohades in 1159, and in the 13th century came under the dominion of the Abd-el-Wadid sultans of Tlemcen. Nominally part of the sultanate of Tlemcen, Algiers had a large measure of independence under amirs of its own due to Oran being the chief seaport and center of power of the Abd-el-Wahid.

As early as 1302 the islet of Peñón in front of Algiers harbour had been occupied by Spaniards. Thereafter, a considerable amount of trade began to flow between Algiers and Spain. However, Algiers continued to be of comparatively little importance until after the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, many of whom sought asylum in the city. In 1510, following their occupation of Oran and other towns on the coast of Africa, the Spaniards fortified the islet of Peñon and imposed a levy intended to suppress corsair activity.

In 1516, the amir of Algiers, Selim b. Teumi, invited the corsair brothers Oruc and Hayreddin Barbarossa to expel the Spaniards. Oruc came to Algiers, ordered the assassination of Selim, and seized the town and ousted the Spanish in the Capture of Algiers (1516). Hayreddin, succeeding Oruc after the latter was killed in battle against the Spaniards in the Fall of Tlemcen (1517), was the founder of the pashaluk, which subsequently became the beylik, of Algeria. Barbarossa lost Algiers in 1524 but regained it with Capture of Algiers (1529), and then formally invited the Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent to accept sovereignty over the territory and to annex Algiers to the Ottoman Empire.

Algiers from this time became the chief seat of the Barbary pirates. In October 1541 in the Algiers expedition, the King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V sought to capture the city, but a storm destroyed a great number of his ships, and his army of some 30,000, chiefly made up of Spaniards, was defeated by the Algerians under their Pasha, Hassan. 

Formally part of the Ottoman Empire but essentially free from Ottoman control, starting in the 17th century Algiers turned to piracy and ransoming. Due to its location on the periphery of both the Ottoman and European economic spheres, and depending for its existence on a Mediterranean that was increasingly controlled by European shipping, backed by European navies, piracy became the primary economic activity. Repeated attempts were made by various nations to subdue the pirates that disturbed shipping in the western Mediterranean and engaged in slave raids as far north as Iceland.  The United States fought two wars (the First and Second Barbary Wars) over Algiers' attacks on shipping.

The city under Ottoman control was enclosed by a wall on all sides, including along the seafront. In this wall, five gates allowed access to the city, with five roads from each gate dividing the city and meeting in front of the Ketchaoua Mosque. In 1556, a citadel was constructed at the highest point in the wall. A major road running north to south divided the city in two: The upper city (al-Gabal, or 'the mountain') which consisted of about fifty small quarters of Andalusian, Jewish, Moorish and Kabyle communities, and the lower city (al-Wata, or 'the plains') which was the administrative, military and commercial centre of the city, mostly inhabited by Turkish dignitaries and other upper-class families. 

In 1817, the city was bombarded by a British squadron under Lord Exmouth (a descendant of Thomas Pellew, taken in an Algerian slave raid in 1714), assisted by Dutch men-of-war, destroying the corsair fleet harboured in Algiers. 

The history of Algiers from 1815 to 1962 is bound to the largest history of Algeria and its relationship to France. On July 4, 1830, under the pretext of an affront to the French consul—whom the dey had hit with a fly-whisk when the consul said the French government was not prepared to pay its large outstanding debts to two Algerian merchants—a French army underGeneral de Bourmont attacked the city in the 1830 invasion of Algiers. The city capitulated the following day. Algiers became the capital of French Algeria.

Many Europeans settled in Algiers, and by the early 20th century they formed a majority of the city's population.  During the 1930s, the architect Le Corbusier drew up plans for a complete redesign of the colonial city. Le Corbusier was highly critical of the urban style of Algiers, describing the European district as "nothing but crumbling walls and devastated nature, the whole a sullied blot". He also criticised the difference in living standards he perceived between the European and African residents of the city, describing a situation in which "the 'civilised' live like rats in holes" whereas "the 'barbarians' live in solitude, in well-being". However, these plans were ultimately ignored by the French administration.

During World War II, Algiers was the last city to be seized from the Germans by the Allies during Operation Torch. 

In 1962, after a bloody independence struggle in which up hundreds of thousands (estimates range between 500,000 to 1,500,000) died (mostly Algerians but also French and Pieds-Noirs) at the hands of the French Army and the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale, Algeria finally gained its independence, with Algiers as its capital. Since then, despite losing its entire pied-noir population, the city has expanded massively. It now has about five million inhabitants, or 10 percent of Algeria's population—and its suburbs now cover most of the surrounding Mitidja plain.

During the early French colonial years, a bronze cannon that weighed twelve tons and was built in 1542 was taken by the French in 1830. This canon was not any ordinary canon. This canon was the most powerful in the Mediterranean, and had defended Algiers for two centuries. The canon originally named Merzoug Baba was renamed by the French to the 'consular'. This was in reference to two French consuls, who became attached and intrigued by the muzzle of the cannon. This cannon is regarded more than just a symbol by Algerians and the state is trying to secure its return back to Algiers, in time for the fiftieth anniversary of independence, 182 years of its absence. 

Algiers was the host city for both the 1978 and 2007 All-Africa Games. The city was also designated the Arab Capital of Culture for 2007.  

Algiers also played a pivotal role in the Algerian War (1954–1962), particularly during the Battle of Algiers when the 10th Parachute Division of the French Army, starting on January 7, 1957, and on the orders of then French Minister of Justice François Mitterrand (who authorized any means "to eliminate the insurrectionists"), led attacks against the Algerian fighters for independence. Algiers remains marked by this battle, which was characterized by merciless fighting between Algerian forces who, on the one hand, resorted to attacking the French community and pro-French Algerians, and the French Army who, on the other, carried out a bloody repression including the quasi-systematic use of torture on protesters of the colonial order. Two such victims were the nationalist leader, Larbi Ben M'Hidi, and a young professor of mathematics, Maurice Audin, both of whom have since been honored by the municipality with principal arteries of the city named after them. The demonstrations of May 13 during the crisis of 1958 provoked the fall of the Fourth Republic in France, as well as the return of Generalde Gaulle to power. 

Algeria achieved independence on July 5, 1962. Run by the military that had liberated it, Algiers became a member of Non-Aligned Movement during the Cold War. In October 1988, one year before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Algiers was the site of demonstrations demanding the end of the single party system and the creation of a real democracy baptized the "Spring of Algiers”. The demonstrators were repressed by the authorities (more than 300 dead), but the movement constituted a turning point in the political history of modern Algeria. In 1989, a new constitution was adopted that put an end to the reign of the single party and saw the creation of more than fifty political parties, as well as official freedom of the press. 

The city became the theatre of many political demonstrations of all descriptions until 1992. In 1991, a political entity dominated by religious conservatives called the Islamic Salvation Front engaged in a political test of wills with the authorities. In the 1992 elections for the Algerian National Assembly, the Islamists garnered a large amount of support in the first round, helped by a massive abstention from disillusioned Algerian voters by the turn of events. Fearing an eventual win by the Islamists, the army cancelled the election process, setting off a civil war between the State and armed religious conservatives which would last for a decade.

On December 11, 2007, two car bombs exploded in Algiers. One bomb targeted two United Nations buildings and the other targeted a government building housing the Supreme Court. The death toll is at least 62, with over two hundred injured in the attacks.  However, only 26 remained hospitalized the following day. As of 2008, it is speculated that the attack was carried out by the Al Qaida cell within the city. 

Indigenous terrorist groups have been actively operating in Algeria since around 2002.  

• The Casbah (of Al Qasbah , "the Citadel”), Ier District of Algiers: called Al-Djazaïr Al Mahroussa ("Well Kept Algiers”), it is founded on the ruins of old Icosium. It is a small city which, built on a hill, goes down towards the sea, divided in two: the High city and the Low city. One finds there masonries and mosques of the 17th century; Ketchaoua mosque (built in 1794 by the Dey Baba Hassan) flanked by two minarets, mosque el Djedid (built in 1660, at the time of Turkish regency) with its large finished ovoid cupola points some and its four coupolettes, mosque El Kébir (oldest of the mosques, it was built byalmoravide Youssef Ibn Tachfin and rebuilt later in 1794), mosque Ali Betchnin (Raïs, 1623), Dar Aziza, palate of Jénina. In the Kasbah, there are also labyrinths of lanes and houses that are very picturesque; and if one gets lost there, it is enough to go down again towards the sea to reposition oneself.

• Bab El Oued : Literally the River's Gate, the popular district which extends from the Casbah beyond "the gate of the river". It is the capital's darling and best liked borough. Famous for its square with "the three clocks” and for its "market Triplet”, it is also a district of workshops and manufacturing plants.

• Edge of sea : from 1840, the architects Pierre-August Guiauchain and Charles Frédéric Chassériau designed new buildings apart from the Kasbah, town hall, law courts, buildings, theatre, palace of the Governor, casino ... to form an elegant walk bordered by arcades which is the boulevard today Che Guevara (ex-boulevard of Republic).

• Kouba (will daira of Hussein-dey): Kouba is an old village which was absorbed by the expansion of the town of Algiers. Of village, Kouba quickly developed under the French colonial era then continued growing due to formidable demographic expansion that Algiers knew after the independence of Algeria in 1962. It is today a district of Algiers which is largely made up of houses, villas and buildings not exceeding five stories.

• El Harrach, a suburb of Algiers, is located about 10 km to the east of the city.

• The communes of Hydra, Ben Aknoun, El-Biar and Bouzareah form what the inhabitants of Algiers call the heights of Algiers. These communes, sometimes famous knacks, shelter the majority of the foreign embassies of Algiers, of many ministries and university centers, which makes it one of the administrative and policy centers of the country.

• The street Didouche Mourade is located in the 3rd district Of Algiers. It extends from the Grande Post office to the Heights of Algiers. It crosses in particular the place Audin , the Faculty of Algiers , The Crowned Heart and the park of Galland . It is bordered by smart stores and restaurants along most of its length. It is regarded as the heart of the capital.

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