Algeria is bordered by Tunisia in the northeast, Libya in the east, Niger in the southeast, Mali and Mauritania in the southwest, a few kilometers of the Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara in the southwest, Morocco in the west and northwest, and the Mediterranean Sea in the north. Its size is almost 2,400,000 km2, and it has an estimated population of about 35,700,000 as of January 2010.[8] The capital of Algeria is Algiers.
Algeria had been inhabited since prehistoric times by indigenous peoples of northern Africa, who coalesced eventually into a distinct native population, the Berbers.
After the waves of Muslim Arab armies conquered Algeria from its former Berber rulers and the Aghlabid, the rule of the Umayyad Arab Dynasty fell, numerous dynasties emerged thereafter. Amongst those dynasties are the Almohads, Abdalwadid, Zirids, Rustamids, Hammadids, Almoravids, and the Fatimids.
Having converted the Kutama of Kabylie to its cause, the Shia Fatimids overthrew the Rustamids, and conquered Egypt, leaving Algeria and Tunisia to their Zirid vassals. When the latter rebelled, the Shia Fatimids sent in the Banu Hilal, a populous Arab tribe, to weaken them.
The Spanish expansionist policy in North Africa begun with the Catholic Monarchs and the regent Cisneros, once the Reconquista in the Iberian Peninsula was finished. That way, several towns and outposts in the Algerian coast were conquered and occupied: Mers El Kébir (1505), Oran (1509), Algiers (1510) and Bugia (1510). The Spaniards left Algiers in 1529, Bujia in 1554, Mers El Kébir and Oran in 1708. The Spanish returned in 1732 when the armada of the Duke of Montemar was victorious in the Battle of Aïn-el-Turk and took again Oran and Mers El Kébir. Both cities were hold until 1792, when they were sold by the king Charles IV to the Bey of Algiers.
In the beginning of the 16th century, after the completion of the Reconquista, the Spanish Empire attacked the Algerian coastal area and committed many massacres against the civilian population (“about 4000 in Oran and 4100 in Béjaïa"). They took control of Mers El Kébir in 1505, Oran in 1509, Béjaïa in 1510, Tenes, Mostaganem, Cherchell and Dellys in 1511, and finally Algiers in 1512.
On the pretext of a slight to their consul, the French invaded and captured Algiers in 1830. The conquest of Algeria by the French was long and resulted in considerable bloodshed. A combination of violence and disease epidemics caused the indigenous Algerian population to decline by nearly one-third from 1830 to 1872
The population of Algeria is 35,190,000 (January 2009 est.), with 99% classified ethnically as Berber/Arab.[6] About 70% of Algerians live in the northern, coastal area; the minority who inhabit the Sahara are mainly concentrated in oases, although some 1.5 million remain nomadic or partly nomadic. Almost 30% of Algerians are under 15. Algeria has the fourth lowest fertility rate in the Greater Middle East, after those of Cyprus, Tunisia, and Turkey.
Algerian colloquial Arabic is spoken as a native or as a second language language by more than 83% of the population; of these, over 65% speak Algerian Arabic and around 10% Hassaniya.[51] Algerian Arabic is spoken as a second language by many Berbers. However, in the media and on official occasions the spoken language is Standard Arabic.
Islam is the predominant religion, followed by more than 99 percent of the country's population. This figure includes all these born in families considered of Muslim descent. Officially, nearly 100% of all Algerians are Muslims, but atheists and other kinds of non-believers are not counted in the statistics. Nearly all Algerians follow Sunni Islam, with the exception of some 200,000 ibadis in the M'zab Valley in the region of Ghardaia.
There are also some 150,000 Christians in the country, including about 10,000 Roman Catholics and 50,000 to 100,000 evangelical Protestants (mainly Pentecostal), according to the Protestant Church of Algeria's leader Mustapha Krim.
Algeria had an important Jewish community until the 1960s. Nearly all of this community emigrated following the country's independence, although a very small number of Jews continue to live in Algiers.
Algeria 80th country of this blog
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