الجزائر (al-Jazā'īr)--the city

The city of الجزائر (al-Jazā'īr)¹ is located in its eponymous province, on the west side of a bay along the north coast of the nation of الجزائر (al-Jazā'īr).² It has a population of 3.416 million³ in the city, 7.081 million in the metropolis.⁴ Its casbah, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, its known for its 18th century Ketchaoua and 17th century Djedid mosques. Its tallest building is the 21st century Tours Mohammedia at 230 feet (2003).⁵ The city came into prominence as the head of the Eyalet-i Cezayiri-i Garb (Regency of Algiers), a commercial/ piratic state of the late 16th through the early 19th century under the nominal umbrella of the Ottoman Empire. It retained its importance when France conquered the area, and became a capital when the nation became independent of France. One of the nation's busiest airports⁶ is in the suburb of Dar-el-Beïda, which had a population of 45 thousand in 1998.⁷ The casbah and other Islamic cultural sites are an important tourist destination.⁸

External references

skyview of al-Jazā'īr

Historical maps

Footnotes

1. Called Algers in French and Algiers in English.
2. Called Algerie in French and Algeria in English.
3. 2011 figure from the side bar of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algiers, accessed September 24, 2017.
4. 2012 figure from world-gazetteer.com, accessed February 6, 2013. It is the largest metropolitan area in the nation of الجزائر (al-Jazā'īr).
5. Emporis.com, accessed September 24, 2017.
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_busiest_airports_in_Algeria, accessed February 13, 2017; my criterion for importance was more than 100,000 annual passengers. The table covered 2008.
7. According to the main body of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dar_El_Be%c3%AFda, accessed February 13, 2017.
8. The city's Islamic sites comprised one of the first ten attractions listed in https://www.thecrazytourist.com/15-best-places-to-visit-in-algeria/, accessed February, 2017.
9. Tertius Chandler, Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth, 2nd ed. (The Edwin Mellen Press, 1987), "Tables of the World's Largest Cities." In 1600, 1700, 1800 and 1900 it was the largest city in what is now the nation of الجزائر (al-Jazā'īr).
10. The eyalet owed nominal allegiance to the Ottoman Empire.