Algeria 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. It is considered part of the Maghreb region of North Africa. It has a semi-arid geography, with most of the population living in the fertile north and the Sahara dominating the geography of the south. Algeria covers an area of 2,381,741 square kilometres (919,595 sq mi), making it the world's tenth largest nation by area, and the largest nation in Africa, more than 200 times as large as the continent's smallest country, The Gambia.[10] With a population of 44 million, Algeria is the tenth-most populous country in Africa, and the 32nd-most populous country in the world. The capital and largest city is Algiers, located in the far north on the Mediterranean coast.

Algeria produced and is linked to many civilizations, empires and dynasties, including Numidians, Mauretanians, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Mauro-Romans, Byzantines, Umayyads, Ifranids, Abbasids, Rustamids, Idrisids, Sulaymanids, Aghlabids, Fatimids, Zirids, Hammadids, Almoravids, Almohads, Marinids, Hafsids and the Zayyanids.

Centuries of Arab migration to the Maghreb since the 7th century shifted the demographic scope in Algeria. The Spanish expansionism led to the establishment of Ottoman Algeria in 1516, a state that attracted people from all over the Mediterranean, making its capital Algiers one of the largest, wealthiest, and most cosmopolitan cities in the world. Its decline in the 19th century resulted in its invasion by the French in 1830. The conquest and pacification of the country that ensued lasted until 1903 and led to Algeria becoming an integral part of France in 1848 and home to over a million European settlers. The Sétif and Guelma massacre in 1945 marked a turning point in Franco-Algerian relations and sparked the Algerian War which concluded with Algeria gaining its independence on 5 July 1962 and the proclamation of the People's Democratic Republic on 25 September of that year.

The official languages of Algeria are Arabic and Berber. The majority of Algeria's population is Arab, practicing Islam.[3] The native Algerian Arabic is the main spoken language. French also serves as an administrative and educational language in some contexts, but it has no official status.

Algeria is a semi-presidential republic, with local constituencies consisting of 58 provinces and 1,541 communes. Algeria is a regional power in North Africa, and a middle power in global affairs. It has the highest Human Development Index of all continental African countries and one of the largest economies on the continent, based largely on energy exports. Algeria has the world's sixteenth-largest oil reserves and the ninth-largest reserves of natural gas. Sonatrach, the national oil company, is the largest company in Africa, supplying large amounts of natural gas to Europe. Algeria's military is one of the largest in Africa, and has the largest defence budget on the continent. It 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

Other forms of the name are: Arabic: ???????, romanized: al-Jaz??ir, Algerian Arabic: ???????, romanized: al-dz?y?r; Berber languages: dzayer, ??????,[nb 1] ?????[nb 2][citation needed]; French: Algérie. It is officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria[12] (Arabic: ????????? ????????? ??????????? ???????, romanized: al-Jumh?riyya al-Jaz??iriyya ad-D?muqr??iyya aš-Ša?biyya; French: République algérienne démocratique et populaire, abbreviated as RADP).

Etymology

Algeria's name derives from the city of Algiers which in turn derives from the Arabic al-Jaz??ir (???????, "the islands") in reference to four small islands off its coast,[13] a truncated form of the older Jaz??ir Ban? Mazghanna (????? ??? ?????, "islands of Bani Mazghanna").[14][15][page needed][16][page needed] The name was given by Buluggin ibn Ziri after he established the city on the ruins of the Phoenician city of Icosium in 950.[17] It was employed by medieval geographers such as Muhammad al-Idrisi and Yaqut al-Hamawi. The Ottoman Empire extended the name of al-Jaz?'ir over the entire country, deriving it from the name of the capital city.[18]

Thus, it shares its etymology with numerous other places, such as Alzira in Valencia, Algeciras in Andalusia, Lezíria in Portugal, Cizre in Turkey, G?ira in Malta, the Nile island of Gezira in Egypt, and the state of Gezira in Sudan.

History

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.^[19]?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.^[19]?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.