Empires of the DUNES

Algeria’s litany of invaders have shaped a land where echoes of history’s greatest empires still catch in the desert winds; but visitors today will also discover a country finding its own voice

Words & photographs Mark Stratton

At the museum in Djémila I spied a sublime sight. It was a Roman mosaic depicting the licentiousness of the god Bacchus: murder, sacrifice, orgy and wine. It was quite the show. It also caused me to ponder something that, up until then, I hadn’t thought about: how might modern Algeria be represented in tesserae? After some deliberation I decided that, regardless of what was depicted, it would be an utterly mercurial sight. After all, so little is known about Africa’s largest country.

I started conjuring the Algeria mosaic in my head, piecing together bits of classical civilisations, oases bearing the sweetest dates, Mediterranean sunshine and scorching sands migrating wispily across Saharan dunes like transient djinns. It would be a bit frayed at the edges, representing the turbulent decades that saw this North African behemoth firmly off travellers’ itineraries. But Algeria has changed in recent years. With security vastly improved, its mosaic of historical and cultural wonders is once again reachable – and barely a three-hour flight from London. It is something that a new vanguard of visitors will be eager to explore, even if procuring a visa is tricky, thanks to the Socialist siege mentality of the ruling regime making it tough for those not travelling as part of an organised tour.

“Algerians are a mixture of many peoples,” said M’hamed Gueraini, a gentle giant of a guide, upon meeting our small group at Algiers airport. “We’re more Berber and Arabic than French, Roman or Ottoman, but overall, we’re unique.”

That cultural mix quickly materialised on the drive into capital Algiers. M’hamed delivered a potted summary of 3,000 years of history as the city’s denim-blue Mediterranean coastline drew near, beginning his tale in 800 BC. This was when the Phoenicians were trading with Carthage (Tunisia), he said, before Rome conquered all. In turn, the Romans were swept aside by Berber-Arab dynasties, who ushered in Islam. He scarcely need mention later occupations: downtown Algiers revealed lustrous domes dating back to Ottoman rule, while the French colonisation of 1830 was apparent in housing blocks of Neoclassical finery.

Algiers is a city of hills and café culture. Every morning, I walked from my hotel in Telemly district to grab a black coffee and a croissant, conjuring memories of Marseilles: the déshabillé architecture, the horn-blaring traffic and the busy seafront marinas all felt oddly familiar. Yet Algiers’ apogee is found in Martyrs’ Square and its kasbah. Here the Mediterranean sunshine cast shadows from the surrounding minarets and Art Deco architecture onto the city’s main plaza, which was lively in the bustle around the Friday prayer. Families browsed stalls of hanging Deglet-nour dates, Berber costumes and tagine dishes as their children excitedly chased pigeons. But it wasn’t always like this.

“In 1832, the French massacred nearly 4,000 people who were defending the kasbah’s Ketchaoua mosque from being converted into a cathedral,” said M’hamed. In his words I could almost hear the gunfire entering the kasbah, as if the higgledy-piggledy narrow lanes trapped an inescapable palimpsest of history within its labyrinth.

The kasbah was once called Icosium, a Phoenician port that acquired its current guise as a walled medina around the mid-10th century AD, under the founder of the Berber Zirid dynasty which went on to rule parts of the North African Maghreb. Elsewhere, I had seen medinas so ⊲

Unexpected histories

After a chance find made when digging the metro line in Algiers, it was recently discovered that the city’s Martyrs’ Square, in the lower kasbah, dates back to the Phoenician era. Its more recent history is what gave it its name, however, recalling when 4,000 people were killed while protesting the 1832 conversion of the Ketchaoua mosque into a cathedral; (previous spread) the oasis of Taghit sits on the edge of the Grand Erg Occidental, a vast field of dunes that receives less than 50mm of rain every year