Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. Spanning over , it is the largest country in Africa and the tenth largest in the world. It is bordered to the northeast by Tunisia; to the east by Libya; to the southeast by Niger; to the southwest by Mali, Mauritania, and Western Sahara; to the west by Morocco; and to the north by the Mediterranean Sea. With a population of over 47 million, Algeria is the tenth-most populous country in Africa. Its capital and largest city is Algiers.
Algeria's territory has been a crossroads of cultures and civilizations for millennia, shaped first by indigenous Amazigh societies, including the Numidians, whose kingdom became one of the earliest major states in the region, as well as by Phoenician, Roman, Vandal, and Byzantine influences. From the 7th century onward, the spread of Islam and the arrival of Arab tribes gradually transformed the region's linguistic, religious, and cultural landscape, contributing to the development of a distinct Algerian identity rooted in both Arab-Islamic and Amazigh heritage. Between the 8th and 15th centuries, Algeria was ruled by a succession of local Islamic dynasties including Rustamids, Fatimids, Zirids, Hammadids, Almohads and Zayyanids. In 1516, the Regency of Algiers was established, gradually emerging as a largely autonomous state owing nominal allegiance to the Ottoman Empire. After nearly three centuries as a major power in the Mediterranean, the country was invaded by France in 1830 and formally annexed in 1848, though it was not fully conquered and pacified until 1903. French rule brought mass European settlement that displaced the local population; by mid-1870, indigenous Algerians declined by up to a third due to warfare, disease, and starvation. French colonization faced continuous Algerian resistance, from Emir Abdelkader's campaigns and the Mokrani Revolt to the rise of nationalist movements in the 20th century. The Sétif and Guelma massacre in 1945 catalysed local resistance that culminated in the outbreak of the Algerian War in 1954. Algeria gained independence in 1962. It descended into a bloody civil war from 1992 to 2002, remaining in an official state of emergency until the 2010–2012 Algerian protests during the Arab Spring.
Algeria has a semi-arid climate, with the Sahara desert dominating most of the territory except for its fertile and mountainous north, where most of the population is concentrated. Its official languages are Arabic and Amazigh, while the vast majority of the population speak the Algerian dialect of Arabic. The usage of French persists, especially in media, education, and certain administrative matters, but has no official status. Most Algerians identify as Arabs, while Berbers form a sizeable minority. Sunni Islam is the official religion and practiced by 99% of the population.
Algeria is a semi-presidential republic composed of 69 provinces (wilayas) and 1,541 communes. It is a regional power in North Africa and a middle power in global affairs, with the largest military budget in Africa. As of 2025, Algeria has the highest Human Development Index in continental Africa, and the third largest economy in Africa, due mostly to its large petroleum and natural gas reserves, which are the sixteenth and ninth largest in the world, respectively. Sonatrach, the national oil company, is the largest company in Africa and a major supplier of natural gas to Europe. Algeria is a member of the African Union, the Arab League, the OIC, OPEC, the United Nations, and the Arab Maghreb Union, of which it is a founding member.
Name
Different forms of the name Algeria include: , , . The country's full name is officially the People's Democratic Republic of AlgeriaProclamación de la República argelina , Journal officiel de la republique algerienne, 1st year, 1st issue, 1962, páge 5. (; , RADP; ).
Etymology The name Algeria ultimately derives from the city of Algiers, whose Arabic name, al-Jazāʾir (الجزائر, meaning "the islands"), referred to the small islands once located off the city's coast. The term itself was a shortened form of Jazāʾir Banī Mazghanna (جزائر بني مزغنة, "the islands of the Bani Mazghanna"), named after a local Berber tribe. The city was founded in 950 by the Sanhaja Berber Emir Buluggin ibn Ziri on the site of the ancient city of Icosium, and its name later appeared in the writings of medieval Muslim geographers such as Al-Bakri.
The modern state took its name from the Regency of Algiers, the Ottoman polity established in the central Maghreb during the early 16th century. Under Ottoman rule, a political and administrative structure gradually emerged that helped define the territory and borders of what would become Algeria. Contemporary sources referred to the land as Watan al-Jazāʾir (وطن الجزائر, "the country of Algiers"), while the Ottoman Turkish aristocracy settled in the region identified both itself and the local population as "Algerians."
History
Before the sixteenth century, the territory now known as Algeria was simply central North Africa; a large and dissident region organised around the family, village and tribe rather than strong central states. It lacked comparable political hubs to Tunisia and Morocco, which had developed centres of power earlier.
The Algerian physical landscape, comprising the sea, intermittent coastal plains, the Tell Atlas and Saharan Atlas ranges, the high plains and the harsh desert, shaped these social and political patterns. Unlike the healthier uplands, the coastal plain was historically marshy, flood-prone and malarial. The Tell Atlas mountains, with their Mediterranean climate and reliable rainfall, were largely self-sufficient, supporting olives, wheat, dates, livestock and dense vegetation. They functioned as isolated “island republics” between the sea and the desert, with settlement patterns dictated by rainfall rather than rivers.
This geography created a lasting cultural and political divide. The plains were zones of armies, trade and Mediterranean contact, and coastal peoples viewed the mountains as dangerous. Mountain communities, by contrast, were fiercely independent and treated their landscape as a refuge from external power. The Arabs formalised the contrast as () versus (). Greek sources already portrayed the mountain peoples as turbulent, fair-skinned speakers of a Libyc language. Under the Numidian king Masinissa, whose territory roughly matched modern Algeria, tribes paid tribute to a central authority modelled on Alexander the Great’s Hellenistic state. Below this elite, however, Berber society remained organised by clans, lineages and tribes that valued self-reliance amid weak government. Village councils of male family heads settled disputes, especially feuds, and fiercely protected local customary law and territory.
These traditions of autonomy impeded the establishment of a state with a sophisticated administrative structure, yet they fostered a strong sense of place and a culture of resistance. Intimate knowledge of the landscape’s hiding places and natural strongholds was passed down through generations and deployed against successive invaders. The mountains thus became the domain of outlaws, rebels, dissident forms of Christianity and Islam, and the —the “lions of the mountains” who resisted the French army—while remaining a distinctly masculine world centred on honour and respect for arms.
Prehistory and ancient history
Around ~1.8-million-year-old stone artifacts from Ain Hanech (Algeria) were considered to represent the oldest archaeological materials in North Africa. Stone artifacts and cut-marked bones that were excavated from two nearby deposits at Ain Boucherit are estimated to be ~1.9 million years old, and even older stone artifacts to be as old as ~2.4 million years. Hence, the Ain Boucherit evidence shows that ancestral hominins inhabited the Mediterranean fringe in northern Africa much earlier than previously thought. The evidence strongly argues for early dispersal of stone tool manufacture and use from East Africa, or a possible multiple-origin scenario of stone technology in both East and North Africa.
Neanderthal tool makers produced hand axes in the Levalloisian and Mousterian styles (43,000 BC) similar to those in the Levant. Algeria was the site of the highest state of development of Middle Paleolithic Flake tool techniques. Tools of this era, starting about 30,000 BC, are called Aterian (after the archaeological site of Bir el Ater, south of Tebessa).
The earliest blade industries in North Africa are called Iberomaurusian (located mainly in the Oran region). This industry appears to have spread throughout the coastal regions of the Maghreb between 15,000 and 10,000 BC. Neolithic civilisation (animal domestication and agriculture) developed in the Saharan and Mediterranean Maghreb perhaps as early as 11,000 BC or as late as between 6000 and 2000 BC. This life, richly depicted in the Tassili n'Ajjer paintings, predominated in Algeria until the classical period. The mixture of peoples of North Africa coalesced eventually into a distinct native population that came to be called Berbers, who are the indigenous peoples of northern Africa.
From their principal centre of power at Carthage, the Carthaginians expanded and established small settlements along the North African coast; by 600 BC, a Phoenician presence existed in the Algerian coast, such as Icosium in modern-day Algiers and Hippo Regius (modern Annaba). These settlements served as market towns as well as anchorages. The Carthaginians avoided conquering the strong Berber tribes in the interior. Instead, they collected tribute, focused on trade (especially metals), and maintained friendly relations. The Berbers supplied them with goods, slaves, and skilled cavalry through trans-Saharan networks. Carthaginian culture strongly influenced nearby Berber tribes, who adopted many of its elements. From the sixth century BC, under the Magonid dynasty, Carthage became more aggressive, partly due to rivalry with the Greeks, leading to conflict in Sicily in 580 BC.