Portal:Algeria

Topics Culture Geography Health History Mathematics Nature People Philosophy Religion Society Technology File:GM AlgeriaPortal02v02.jpg Location on the world map Algeria (Formal Arabic: الجزائر, al-Jazā’ir; in Tamazight: Dzayer; French: Algérie), officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country located in North Africa. In terms of land area, it is the largest country on the Mediterranean Sea, the largest on the African continent, and the tenth-largest in the world. 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. The capital of Algeria is Algiers. Algeria is a member of the United Nations, African Union, and OPEC. It also contributed towards the creation of the Maghreb Union. Selected article A Berber woman Berbers, also called Imazighen (in antiquity known as Libyans by the Greek), are the indigenous peoples of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are discontinuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River. Historically they spoke various Berber languages, which together form a branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Today many of them speak Arabic and also French in the Maghreb, due to the French colonization of the Maghreb, and especially Spanish in Morocco. Today most Berber-speaking people live in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. Many Berbers call themselves some variant of the word Imazighen (singular: Amazigh), possibly meaning "free people" or "free and noble men" (the word has probably an ancient parallel in the Roman name for some of the Berbers, "Mazices"). The best known of the ancient Berbers were the Roman author Apuleius, Saint Augustine of Hippo, and the Roman general Lusius Quietus, who was instrumental in defeating the major Jewish revolt of 115–117. Famous Berbers of the Middle Ages included Tariq ibn Ziyad, a general who conquered Hispania; Abd ar-Rahman I, the founder of the Caliphate of Córdoba and Abbas Ibn Firnas, a prolific inventor and early pioneer in aviation. Read more... Selected picture 300px Credit: PhR61 A building in Algiers, Algeria. WikiProject Algeria WikiProject Africa 18px WikiProject Islam Selected biography 120px Adel Abdessemed', (born 1971 in Constantine, Algeria) is a conceptual artist who lives and works in Paris, France. He is represented by David Zwirner, New York, Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv and Christine König Galerie, Vienna. Abdessemed attended the École des Beaux-Arts de Batna, and Algiers, Algeria from 1987 to 1994. Due to political unrest in Algeria, he moved to Lyon, France in 1994. He continued his fine arts education at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, before completing his studies in Paris, France in 2000. The following year, he enrolled at the International Studio Program at the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York. (Read more...) Template:/box-header Template:/Related portals Template:/box-footer The following Wikimedia sister projects provide more on this subject: What are portals? List of portals Featured portals