The Probert Encyclopaedia of Places of the World

ALGERIA

Algeria (formerly known as Tougourt) is a republic in north Africa. It has a total area of 2,381,740 km2. The climate varies considerably according to elevation and local peculiarities. There are three seasons: winter from November to February, spring from March to June, and summer from July to October. The summer is very hot and dry. In many parts of the coast the temperature is moderate and the climate so healthy that Algeria became a winter resort for European invalids. The terrain is mostly high plateau and desert; some mountains; and a narrow, discontinuous coastal plain. Natural resources are crude oil, natural gas, iron ore, phosphates, uranium, lead, zinc. The religion is 99% Sunni Muslim (the state religion), 1% Christian and Jewish. The official language is Arabic with French, and Berber dialects also spoken.

Algeria was known to the Romans as Numidia. It flourished greatly under their rule, and early received the Christian religion. It was conquered by the Vandals in 430-431, and recovered by Belisarius for the Byzantine Empire in 533-534. About the middle of the seventh century it was overrun by the Saracens. The town of Algiers was founded about 935 by Yussef Ibn Zeiri, and the country was subsequently ruled by his successors and the dynasties of the Almoravides and Almohades. After the overthrow of the latter, about 1269, it broke up into a number of small independent territories.

The Moors and Jews who were driven out of Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella at the end of the fifteenth century settled in large numbers in Algeria, and revenged themselves on their persecutors by the practice of piracy. On this account various expeditions were made by Spain against Algeria, and by 1510 the greater part of the country was made tributary. A few years later the Algerians invited to their assistance the Turkish pirate Horush (or Haruj) Barbarossa, who made himself Sultan of Algiers in 1516, but was not long in being taken by the Spaniards and beheaded. His brother and successor put Algiers under the protection of Turkey (about 1520), and organized the system of piracy which was long the terror of European commerce, and was never wholly suppressed until the French occupation, and it was under the pretext of protecting its shipping from these pirates that France invaded in 1830, and by 1860 Algeria was under French rule. In 1954 the F.L.N. began an uprising in Algeria which turned into a war for independence, independence being finally realised in 1962.
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