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80-701: Tuat lies to the south of the Grand Erg Occidental , to the east of the Erg Chech and to the south west of the Tademaït plateau. It contains a string of small oases strung out along the eastern edge of the Wadi Messaoud, a continuation of the Wadi Saoura . The oases extend over a distance of 160 km from the district of Bouda in the north to Reggane in the south. The largest town in

160-589: A "ḥizam" (girdle), all being covered by a mantle, a burnus (also spelled burnoose ), and a large silk handkerchief, the tassels of which hang down to his feet. At an earlier stage the Algerian Jewess wore a tall cone-shaped hat resembling those used in England in the fifteenth century. The largest study to date on the Jews of North Africa has been led by Gerard Lucotte et al. in 2003. Sephardi population studied

240-580: A Muslim clientele." Moreover, conflicts between Sephardic Jewish religious law and French law produced contention within the community. They resisted changes related to domestic issues, such as marriage. After the 1882 conquest of the M'zab , the French government in Algeria legally categorized southern Algerian Jews, like the Muslims, as "indigènes", and thus subject to restricted and decreased rights under

320-583: A change in the Jewish relationship with the state. They were separated from the Muslim court system, where they had previously been classified as dhimmis , or a protected minority people. As a result, Algerian Jews resisted those French Jews attempting to settle in Algeria; in some cases, there was rioting, in others the local Jews refused to allow French Jewish burials in Algerian Jews' cemeteries. In 1865,

400-465: A description of Tuat, a place he had not visited himself, in his Kitab al-ibar : One of their homelands lies three stages to the south of Sijilmāsa and is called Tuwāt. It consists of 200 qușūr strung out from west to east, of which the most easterly is called Tamanțīt, nowadays a flourishing place and a point of departure for merchants who pass to and fro between the Maghrib and the land of Māli of

480-627: A few years. On every occasion they would affirm their independence and free themselves of any religious vassalage. In 1893, the French government authorized Jules Cambon to occupy the Gourara and the Tidikelt, letting him go so far as to gather his forces at El Golea , then only rescinded the order at the very last moment when his troops were about to depart. The actual intervention in the Gourara-Tuat-Tidikelt did not take place until

560-446: A high degree of endogamy and were part of a larger Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish group. By principal component analysis, these North African groups were orthogonal to contemporary populations from North and South Morocco, Western Sahara, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt. Thus, this study is compatible with the history of North African Jews—founding during Classical Antiquity with proselytism of local populations, followed by genetic isolation with

640-553: A lack of worshippers, all but one of the country's synagogues were closed, having been converted into mosques or libraries. Since 2005, the Algerian government has attempted to reduce discrimination against the Jewish population, by establishing a Jewish association, and passing a law that recognized freedom of religion. They also allowed a relaunching of Jewish pilgrimage, to the most holy Jewish sites in North Africa. In 2014,

720-685: A local council of notables. Prior to 1830 , the Tuat population paid tribute to the Dey of Algiers , but stopped during the Algerian wars . Prior to 1890, the Saharan oases were a part of what was known as the bled es-siba , regions that were nominally Moroccan but which had not submitted to the authority of the central government. Sultan Moulay Hassan decided to reinstate the old Moroccan administration in Gourara-Tuat-Tidikelt. The first Moroccan envoys reached

800-658: A location in Béchar Province is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . History of the Jews in Algeria The history of Jews in Algeria goes back to Antiquity , although it is not possible to trace with any certainty the time and circumstances of the arrival of the first Jews in what is now Algeria . In any case, several waves of immigration helped to increase the population. There may have been Jews in Carthage and present-day Algeria before

880-616: A similar region also containing oases with date palms irrigated by foggaras . The largest town, Timimoun , is 162 km north east of Adrar. Saad asserts that Tuat may have been founded by the Malinke of the Mali Empire , based on information from Timbuktu traditionalists and the fact that Tuat always had settlers representing him in Timbuktu. The Tuat oases were important in the trans-Saharan trade because of their location at

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960-563: A village of the Bouda region has an inscription in Hebrew with a date of 1329. The earliest written reference to Tuat is by Ibn Battuta . He visited Bouda in 1353 after crossing the Sahara from Takedda in present-day Niger , a distance of 1390 km. He travelled with a large caravan that included 600 slave girls. He wrote: "Then we arrived at Būda, which is one of the biggest villages of

1040-612: Is 540 km southeast of Sijilmasa, considerably more than the three stages mentioned by Ibn Khaldun. Also, the oases are strung out from north-northwest to south-southeast rather than from west to east. We learn more about Tuat from a letter written in Latin in 1447 by the Italian Antonio Malfante from 'Tueto' to a merchant in Genoa . Malfante describes a village which is believed to have been Tamentit : "This locality

1120-649: Is a desert natural region that receives less than 50 mm (1,96 in) of rainfall per year. The mean elevation of the Grand Erg Occidental is about 500 m, on average higher than the elevation of the Grand Erg Oriental, but not as high as the neighboring Tademaït to the southwest. This desolate region is a practically uninhabited area; there are no permanent villages. 30°40′N 0°00′E  /  30.667°N 0.000°E  / 30.667; 0.000 This article about

1200-509: Is a mart of the country of the Moors, to which merchants come to sell their goods: gold is carried hither, and bought by those who come up from the coast. This place is De Amament [Tamentit], and there are many rich men here. The generality, however, are very poor, for they do not sow, nor do they harvest anything, save the dates upon which they subsist. They eat no meat but that of castrated camels, which are scarce and very dear." He also comments on

1280-770: Is as follows: 58 Jews from Algeria, 190 from Morocco, 64 from Tunisia, 49 from the island of Djerba , 9 and 11 from Libya and Egypt, respectively, which makes 381 people. This study showed that the Jews of North Africa showed frequencies of their paternal haplotypes almost equal to those of the Lebanese and Palestinian non-Jews when compared to European non-Jews. The Moroccan/Algerian, Djerban/Tunisian and Libyan subgroups of North African Jewry were found to demonstrate varying levels of Middle Eastern (40-42%), European (37-39%) and North African ancestry (20-21%), with Moroccan and Algerian Jews tending to be genetically closer to each other than to Djerban Jews and Libyan Jews. According to

1360-410: Is obtained from vertical wells and electric pumps allowing grain to be grown using a center pivot irrigation system. A single well can provide 30 L/s to 50 L/s of water. In addition to water, the rock beneath Tuat contains pockets of natural gas. Sonatrach , the Algeria state-owned oil company, collaborates with foreign companies in joint ventures to exploit these gas reserves. Sonatrach and

1440-774: The Continental intercalaire , a layer of porous sandstone deposited between the Moscovian and the Cenomanian periods that extends over 600,000 km, an area that includes parts of Algeria, Libya and Tunisia. It forms the deeper of the two aquifers of the North Western Sahara Aquifer System (NWSAS). Tuat is situated at the southwestern boundary of the Continental Intercalary where the aquifer lies only 2–6 m below

1520-674: The Ottoman millet system . At the time, the French government distinguished French citizens (who had national voting rights and were subject to French laws and conscription ) from Jewish and Muslim "indigenous" peoples, who each were allowed to keep their own laws and courts. By 1841, the Jewish batei din "religious courts" were placed under French jurisdiction, linked to the Israelite Central Consistory of France . Regional Algerian courts or consistoires were put in place, operating under French oversight. In 1845,

1600-477: The China National Oil & Gas Exploration & Development Corporation (CNODC) have constructed a refinery near the village of Sbaa, 40 km north of Adrar. This refinery began operating in 2006. Separate projects led by Gaz de France (GDF Suez) and Total are both scheduled to start supplying gas in 2013. A pipeline is being built to connect to Hassi R'Mel . To the north of Tuat is Gourara,

1680-514: The Crémieux Decree , while maintaining an inferior status for Muslims who, though technically French nationals, were required to apply for French citizenship and undergo a naturalization process. For this reason, they are sometimes incorrectly categorized as pieds-noirs . The decision to extend citizenship to Algerian Jews was a result of pressures from prominent members of the liberal, intellectual French Jewish community, which considered

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1760-596: The FLN fighting for independence, but a larger group made common cause with the OAS, secret paramilitary group . The FLN published declarations guaranteeing a place in Algeria for Jews as an integral constituent of the Algerian people, hoping to attract their support. Algerian Muslims had assisted Jews during their trials under the Vichy régime in WW2, when their citizenship rights under

1840-755: The Gourara region where he was well received. The sultan stayed there a while before reconquering Tlemcen from the Merinids in a ksar near a sebkha in Timimoun (dubbed «Capital of the Gourara»). The ksar in question still bears the sultan's name, Tal n Hammu. Through tribal alliances, the Ziyyanids had a certain influence over the Touat. From the start of the 15th century , political relations between

1920-502: The Jewish Encyclopedia , A contemporary [1906] Jewess of Algiers wears on her head a "takrita" (handkerchief), is dressed in a "bedenor" (gown with a bodice trimmed with lace) and a striped vest with long sleeves coming to the waist. The "mosse" (girdle) is of silk. The native Algerian Jew wears a "ṭarbush" or oblong turban with silken tassel, a "ṣadriyyah" or vest with large sleeves, and "sarwal" or pantaloons fastened by

2000-532: The Spanish Inquisition in 1492. Together with the Moriscos , they thronged to the ports of North Africa, and mingled with native Jewish people. In the 16th century there were large Jewish communities in places such as Oran , Bejaïa and Algiers . Jews were also present in the cities of the interior such as Tlemcen and Constantine and as far spread as Touggourt and M'zab in the south, with

2080-695: The Spanish Reconquista of the 14th and 16th centuries. Many Jews from the Iberian Peninsula settled in Algeria, mixing with the local Jewish population and influencing its traditions. In the 18th century, other Jews, the Granas of Livorno , were few in number, but played a role as commercial intermediaries between Europe and the Ottoman Empire . Later in the 19th century, many Jews from Tetouan arrived in Algeria, strengthening

2160-404: The Vichy regime set strict limitations on Jewish people working as doctors or lawyers. The Vichy regime also limited the number of Jewish children in Algeria's public school system, and eventually terminated all Jewish enrollment in public schools. In response, Jewish professors who had been forced from their jobs set up a Jewish university in 1941, only for its forced dissolution to occur at

2240-799: The indigénat compared to their northern Jewish counterparts, who were still French citizens under the Crémieux Decree of 1870. In 1881, there were only about 30,000 Mozabite Jews in Southern Algeria. They established, in Southern Algeria, “local civil status” laws, with rabbis overseeing legal issues. The French government recognized Jewish laws pertaining to domestic issues, such as marriage and inheritance. While these laws allowed for Jews to be structured under halakha , it prevented southern Jews from accessing “elite” opportunities, as their indigenous status established them as lesser citizens. French antisemitism set down strong roots among

2320-620: The "Jewish Work Group," and worked on a Vichy plan for a trans-Saharan railroad; many died from hunger, exhaustion, disease, or beatings. During the Algerian War , most Algerian Jews took sides with France, out of loyalty to the Republic which gave them French citizenship , against the Arab Independence movement, though they rejected that part of the official policy which proposed independence for Algeria. Some Jews did join

2400-718: The Algerian Jewish population was between 15,000 and 17,000, mostly congregated in the coastal area. Some 6,500 Jews lived in Algiers , where they made up 20% of the population; 2,000 in Oran ; 3,000 in Constantine ; and 1000 in Tlemcen . While Muslims resisted the French occupation, some Algerian Jews aided in the conquest, serving as interpreters or suppliers. After their conquest, the French government rapidly restructured

2480-595: The Algerian resistance to the Vichy government took part in the takeover of Algiers in preparation for the Allied liberation of North Africa, known as " Operation Torch ." Of the 377 resistance members who took Algiers, 315 were Jewish. In November 1942, Allied forces landed and took control of Algiers and the rest of Algeria. However, Jews were not returned all of their former civil rights and liberties, nor their French citizenships until 1943. This can partially be explained by

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2560-732: The Batna and Orleanville synagogues, played a role in their decisions to turn down the offer. In 1961, with the French National Assembly Law 61-805, the Mozabite Jews, who had been excluded from the Cremieux Decree, were also given French citizenship. Between late 1961 and late summer 1962, 130,000 of Algeria's approximately 140,000 Jews left for France, while about 10,000 of them emigrated to Israel. Moroccan Jews who were living in Algeria and Jews from

2640-647: The Berber population, making converts among them. In that century, Islamic armies conquered the whole Maghreb and most of the Iberian peninsula. The Jewish population was placed under Muslim domination in constant cultural exchanges with Al Andalus and the Near East . Later many Sephardic Jews were forced to take refuge in Algeria from the persecutions in Spain of Catalonia , Valencia and Balearic Islands in 1391 and

2720-549: The Crémieux Degree had been revoked. Some Algerian Jews responded positively to the call from the FLN, joining with local militias or making financial contributions. For these Jews, they recognized a common attachment to Algeria and the antisemitism prevalent among the French. For others, memories of the 1934 pogrom , and incidents of violent Muslim assault on Jews in Constantine and Batna , together with arson attacks on

2800-514: The French colonial government reorganized communal structure, appointing French Jews, who were Ashkenazi Jews , as chief rabbis for each region, with the duty "to inculcate unconditional obedience to the laws, loyalty to France, and the obligation to defend it". Such oversight was an example of the French Jews' attempt to "civilize" Jewish Algerians, as they believed their European traditions were superior to Sephardic practices. This marked

2880-582: The French military in North Africa, the antisemitic legislation was applied more severely in Algeria than France itself, under the pretext that it enabled greater equality between Muslims and Jews and considered racial laws a condition sine qua non of the armistice . Under the Vichy regime in Algeria, an office called the "Special Department for the Control of the Jewish Problem" handled the execution of laws applying to Algeria's Jewish population. This

2960-539: The Gourara-Tuat-Tidikelt. In the 1890s, the French administration and military called for the annexation of the Tuat, the Gourara and the Tidikelt, a complex that had been part of the Moroccan Empire for many centuries prior to the arrival of the French in Algeria. According to Alfred Le Chatelier , French soldier, ceramicist and Islamologist, Tuat, at any moment of history, had not been an integral part of Morocco. The inhabitants never depended from them more than

3040-454: The Jewish population: "There are many Jews, who lead a good life here, for they are under the protection of the several rulers, each of whom defends his own clients. Thus they enjoy very secure social standing. Trade is in their hands, and many of them are to be trusted with the greatest confidence." The Sultan of the Ziyyanid dynasty of Tlemcen , Abu Hammu II (1359-1389) took refuge in

3120-800: The M'zab Valley in the Algerian Sahara, who did not have French citizenship, as well as a small number of Algerian Jews from Constantine, also emigrated to Israel at that time. Following a 1961 referendum , the 1962 Évian Accords secured Algerian independence. Some Algerian Jews had joined the Organisation armée secrète , which aimed to disrupt the process of independence with bombings and assassination attempts, targets including Charles de Gaulle and Jean-Paul Sartre . Almost all Jews of Algeria left upon independence in 1962 for France, although some went to Israel. By 1969, fewer than 1,000 Jews were still living in Algeria. By 1975, because of

3200-514: The Minister of Religious Affairs Mohammed Eissa announced that the Algerian government would foster the reopening of Jewish synagogues. However, this never came to fruition, with Eissa stating that it was no longer the interest of Algerian Jews. In 2017, there were an estimated 50 Jews remaining in Algeria, mostly in Algiers. As of 2020, there were an estimated 200 Jews in Algeria. According to

3280-461: The Muslim law that governed the country put the former at a distinct disadvantage to the latter, especially in the legal sphere and their treatment as inhabitants of the country. Having become French citizens following the Crémieux Decree of 1870, the Algerian Jews increasingly identified with metropolitan France , and despite their forced return to second-class indigenous status during World War II , they opted en masse to be repatriated to France on

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3360-585: The North African Jews to be "backward" and wanted to bring them into modernity. Within a generation, despite initial resistance, most Algerian Jews came to speak French rather than Arabic or Judaeo-Spanish , and they embraced many aspects of French culture. In embracing "Frenchness," the Algerian Jews joined the colonizers, although they were still considered "other" to the French. Although some took on more typically European occupations, "the majority of Jews were poor artisans and shopkeepers catering to

3440-566: The Roman conquest, but the development of Jewish communities is linked to the Roman presence . Jewish revolts in Israel and Cyrenaica in the 1st and 2nd centuries certainly led to the arrival of Jewish immigrants from these regions. The vast majority of scholarly sources reject the notion that there were any large-scale conversions of Berbers to Judaism. The Muslim conquest of North Africa , which

3520-418: The Saharan oases in 1889 and in 1890. In 1891 Moulay Hassan called on the oasis peoples to begin paying taxes, thus formalizing the recognition of his suzerainty. That same year the Tuat and the oases which lay along the Oued Saoura were placed under the authority of the son of the Moroccan khalifa , who resided in the Tafilalt . Then, in 1892, a complete administrative organization was established in all of

3600-419: The Senatus-Consulte liberalized rules of citizenship, to allow Jewish and Muslim "indigenous" peoples in Algeria to become French citizens if they requested it. Few did so, however, because French citizenship required renouncing certain traditional mores. The Algerians considered that a kind of apostasy . The French government granted the Jews, who by then numbered some 33,000, French citizenship in 1870 under

3680-407: The Sūdān. ... The town of Būdā, the most westerly of these qușūr , used to be the point of departure for Wālātan, the outpost of the Mālī territory, but it was abandoned when the bedouin Arabs from the desert of the Sūs took to acts of brigandry on the highway and molesting the caravans. They left that place and followed the route to the land of the Sudān by way of Tamanțīt. Note that in reality Adrar

3760-573: The Tuat and the Gourara oases. The Moroccan conquest of Tuat stopped Ottoman expansion into the Sahara, which had started with the occupation of the oasis of Ouargla in 1552 and the Fezzan in 1577, and secured the Moroccan advance toward the south. The area remained politically dependent upon Morocco but the sovereignty of the Alawite sultans became almost nominal. The Alawite Sultan of Tafilalt, Sidi Muhammed ibn Sharif embarked on an eastern Saharan expedition and conquered Tuat first in 1645 and again in 1652, at which point he assigned his qaids to

3840-472: The Tuwāt. Its land consists of sand and salt pans. It has many dates which are not good, but its people prefer them to the dates of Sijilmāsa. There is no cultivation there nor butter nor oil. Oil is only imported to it from the land of the Maghrib. The food of its people is dates and locusts. These are abundant with them; they store them as dates are stored and use them for food. They go out to hunt them before sunrise, for at that time they do not fly on account of

3920-452: The Western Sand Sea) is the second largest erg in northern Algeria after the Grand Erg Oriental . It covers an area of approximately 78,000 square kilometres (30,000 sq mi). The sand dunes in the erg are formed by the wind, and can be up to 120 metres (390 ft) high. Certain crescent-shaped dunes, known as barchans , are actually mobile; the wind can push these dunes as much as 20 to 30 m (65–100 ft) in one year. It

4000-407: The area was known as the " Territoire des oasis sahariennes ". During 1903, attacks on the lines of communication by local tribes caused the French troops to suffer serious losses. To punish the tribes the town of Figuig was bombarded by the French on 8 June. On the following 2 September a band of nomads attacked the escort of a convoy going to Taghit at a place called El Mungar . After maintaining

4080-500: The arrival of Charles De Gaulle in October 1943 that Jewish Algerians finally regained their French citizenship with the reinstatement of the Crémieux Decree . In addition to the discriminatory and antisemitic laws faced by Jews all over Algeria, some 2,000 Jews were placed in concentration camps at Bedeau and Djelfa . The camp at Bedeau, near Sidi-bel-Abbes , became a place for the concentration of Jewish Algerian soldiers, who were forced to perform hard labor. These prisoners formed

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4160-474: The cold." Ibn Battuta stayed in Bouda for a few days and then continued on to Sijilmasa with a caravan. Bouda, as well as Sijilmasa, Timbuktu and Gao, are marked on the 1375 Catalan Atlas of Abraham Cresques . At some point Bouda was abandoned and replaced by Tamentit as the main ksour of the region. Tamentit was more centrally situated and perhaps easier to defend. The Arabic geographer and historian Ibn Khaldun (born Tunis 1332, died Egypt 1406) provides

4240-437: The creation of a local Jewish government called the Union Générale des Israélites d’Algérie (UGIA). The UGIA was intended to be a body of Jews that would execute the Vichy regulations within Jewish communities, and was seen by much of the Jewish population as collaboration with the government. In response, many young Jews joined the Algerian resistance movement, which itself had been founded by Jews in 1940. On November 8, 1942,

4320-432: The dignitaries of the oasis implored the intervention of the Beylerbey of Algiers. The Tuat-Gourara called upon the Beylerbey of Algiers since Tlemcen had been annexed by the Regency of Algiers . Ottoman efforts to gain control over Tuat misfired in 1578, by the Turks of Algiers, and 1582, by the Turks of Tripoli . Sometime between 1583 and 1588 the forces of the Moroccan Saadi Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur took control of

4400-507: The end of that same year. The Jewish communities of Algeria also set up a system of Jewish primary schools for children, and by 1942 some 20,000 Jewish children were enrolled in 70 elementary and 5 secondary schools all over Algeria. The Vichy government eventually created legislation allowing the government to control school curriculum, and schedules, which helped dampen efforts to educate young Jews in Algeria. Under Admiral Darlan and General Giraud , two French officials who administered

4480-408: The eve of Algerian Independence , with a minority choosing Israel . This exile virtually put an end to more than 2,000 years of presence on Algerian soil. A few dozen very discreet Jews still live in Algeria. There is evidence of Jewish settlements in Algeria since at least the Roman period ( Mauretania Caesariensis ). Epitaphs have been found in archaeological excavations that attest to Jews in

4560-455: The expatriate French community in Algeria, where every municipal council was controlled by anti-Semites, and newspapers were rife with xenophobic attacks on the local Jewish communities. Much of this was encouraged by the French colonial administration, in particular by the militant antisemitic Max Régis . In Algiers when Émile Zola was brought to trial for his defense in an 1898 open letter, J'Accuse…! , of Alfred Dreyfus , sympathy for whom

4640-402: The fact that Giraud himself, along with the Governor-General Marcel Peyrouton , in promulgating the cancellation of Vichy statutes on March 14, 1943, after the allies landed in North Africa, retained exceptionally the decree abolishing citizenship rights for Algerian Jews, claiming that they did not wish to incite violence between the Jewish and Muslim communities in Algiers. It was not until

4720-549: The fight for over seven hours the French were reinforced and their attackers drew off. Out of 115 combatants the French lost 38 killed and 47 wounded. To consolidate their position the French authorities determined to connect the oases with the Algerian Sahara proper by carriage roads and railways. 27°20′00″N 0°13′00″W  /  27.33333°N 0.21667°W  / 27.33333; -0.21667 Grand Erg Occidental The Grand Erg Occidental ( Arabic : العرق الغربي الكبير , al-ʿIrq al-Gharbī al-Kabīr), (also known as

4800-471: The first centuries CE. Berber lands were said to welcome Christians and Jews very early from the Roman Empire . The destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by Titus in 70 CE, and thereafter by the Kitos War in 117, reinforced Jewish settlement in North Africa and the Mediterranean. Early descriptions of the Rustamid capital, Tahert , note that Jews were found there, as they would be in any other major Muslim city of North Africa. Centuries later,

4880-419: The letters found in the Cairo Geniza mention many Algerian Jewish families. In the 7th century, Jewish settlements in North Africa were reinforced by Jewish immigrants that came to North Africa after fleeing from the persecutions of the Visigothic king Sisebut and his successors. They escaped to the Maghreb , which was at the time still part of the Byzantine Empire . It is debated whether Jews influenced

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4960-433: The mayor of Algiers, Max Régis.' Under French rule, some Muslim anti-Jewish riots still occurred, as in 1897 in Oran . In 1931, Jews made up less than 2% of Algeria's total population. This population was more represented in the largest cities: Algiers , Constantine and Oran , which each had Jewish populations of over 7%. Many smaller cities such as Blida , Tlemcen and Setif also had small Jewish populations. By

5040-411: The mid-thirties, François de La Rocque 's extremist Croix-de-Feu and, later, the French Social Party movements in Algeria proved active in trying to turn Muslims against Algerian Jews by publishing tracts in Arabic, and were responsible for inciting the 1934 Constantine Pogrom , in which 25 Jews were killed and some 200 stores were pillaged. One of the first moves of the pro-German Vichy regime

5120-400: The northern end of the Tanezrouft route. Reggane is around 1150 km north of the town of Gao and a similar distance from Timbuktu . Caravans from the Sudan would continue northwards to towns such as Sijilmasa or Tlemcen . The oases are not mentioned by any of the early Arabic geographers, but it appears that Jews lived in the oases at an early date as a tombstone discovered in

5200-432: The oasis, who was then accepted as suzerain as far east as Aougrout . Beginning in 1692, during the reign of Sultan Moulay Ismail , and for one hundred years after, Gourara-Tuat-Tidikelt was administered by a succession of Moroccan governors. Faced with constant rebellion throughout his empire, Sultan Moulay Slimane recalled his governor from Gourara-Tuat-Tidikelt in 1796. Following the 1579 Algerian expedition to Tuat ,

5280-433: The permission of the Muslim authorities. Some Jews in Oran preserved Ladino language —which was a uniquely conservative dialect of Spanish—until the 19th century. The fear of Spanish invasions in the 18th century caused Jews in Algeria to face potential expulsion and confiscation of property, similar to what had occurred in Spain. Jewish merchants did well financially in late Ottoman Algiers. The French attack on Algeria

5360-419: The ranks of the community. After the French colonization of Algeria in 1830, Algerian Jews, like other Algerians, faced discrimination by the colonial state. Like Muslims, they were given the status of "indigéne" ( indigenous ) and were barred from gaining French citizenship unless highly specific conditions were met. However, the dhimma was abolished, and Jews became equal to Muslims under French law. Indeed,

5440-439: The region is Adrar , 20 km southeast of Bouda . Adrar was established by the French after their conquest in 1900 and had a population of 43,903 in 2002. Associated with each oasis are small walled villages called ksour (singular ksar or gsar ). There are also some forts ( kasbahs ), most of them abandoned. There is almost no rainfall in the region and agriculture depends on groundwater from an enormous aquifer in

5520-416: The region were established with the Kingdom of Tlemcen . According to a Touati source, quoted by Alfred Georges Paul Martin, a French officer of the Legion of Honour , a text written by a certain al-Amuri recites a conflict in 1435 opposing a group of nomads (Ouled Ali Ibn Hariz) and the Jews of Tamantit . The nomads bought some dates on credit and refused to pay for them, the Jews of Tamantit called upon

5600-416: The study: "distinctive North African Jewish population clusters with proximity to other Jewish populations and variable degrees of Middle Eastern, European, and North African admixture. Two major subgroups were identified by principal component, neighbor joining tree, and identity-by-descent analysis—Moroccan/Algerian and Djerban/Libyan—that varied in their degree of European admixture. These populations showed

5680-402: The sultan of Tlemcen, Abū l-‘Abbās Aḥmad al-‘Akil ( 1430 - 1466 ), the sultan sent a small expedition to end the conflict. Around 1490, encouraged by Muhammad al-Maghili , a Maliki scholar from Tlemcen , the Moslem population of Tamentit destroyed the Jewish synagogue and forced the Jews to move elsewhere. Following the expeditions of the tribes of Tafilalt in the Tuat region in 1578,

5760-418: The surface. The oases contain 700,000-800,000 date palms ( Phoenix dactylifera ) in an area of 4,500 hectares. The palm groves are irrigated by a system of foggaras , traditional gravity catchment systems which consist of a tunnel constructed with a gentle uphill gradient from the low ground near the wadi into the aquifer under the nearby higher ground. Vertical access holes every 10–20 m along

5840-584: The tribes continued to pay tribute to Hassan Veneziano and the rest of the Algerian Deys until the fall of the Regency of Algiers in 1830. as they revolted many times against the Alawites and their nominal at best control over the Tuat region. In 1800, the Tuat population agreed to pay taxes when Moulay Slimane granted them local autonomy, preferring to entrust the administration of their territory to

5920-467: The tunnel provide ventilation and facilitate construction and maintenance. Many of the foggaras are over a kilometre in length. They typically provide flow rates of between 2 L/s and 3 L/s. In 1963 the region of Tuat contained 531 foggaras , of which only 358 were functioning. The total combined flow rate was approximately 2000 L/s. Foggaras are expensive to construct and to maintain. As they collapse they are often not repaired. Instead, water

6000-776: The very end of 1899. The military contingent escorting the mission quickly routed the Saharans and took advantage of the opportunity to occupy the oasis of In Salah . An armed conflict opposed the French 19th Corps Oran and Algiers divisions to the Aït Khabbash , a faction of the Aït Ounbgui khams of the Aït Atta confederation. The conflict ended by the annexation of the Touat-Gourara-Tidikelt complex to Algeria by France in 1901. Under French rule,

6080-480: Was completed in Algeria in the 8th century, brought North Africa into the realm of Islamic civilization and had a lasting impact on the identity of local Jewish communities, whose status was henceforth governed by the dhimma . New immigrants later strengthened the Algerian Jewish community: Jews fled Spain during the Visigothic persecutions of the 5th and 6th centuries, and again during the persecutions linked to

6160-647: Was provoked by the Dey 's demands that the French government pay its large outstanding wheat debts to two Jewish merchants. Between the 16th and 17th centuries, richer Jews from Livorno in Italy started settling in Algeria. Commercial trading and exchanges between Europe and the Ottoman Empire reinforced the Jewish community. Later again in the 19th century, many Sephardic Jews from Tetouan settled in Algeria, creating new communities, particularly in Oran. In 1830,

6240-550: Was to revoke the effects of the Crémieux Decree , on October 7, 1940, thereby abolishing French citizenship for Algerian Jews, affecting some 110,000 Algerians. Under Vichy rule in Algeria, even Karaites and Jews who had converted to another religion were subject to anti-semitic laws, known collectively as Statut des Juifs . The Vichy regime's laws ensured that Jews were forbidden from holding public office or other governmental positions, as well as from holding jobs in industries such as insurance and real estate. In addition,

6320-527: Was unique in French North Africa, and as such the laws covering the status of Jews were governed much more harshly in Algeria than in Morocco or Tunisia. A bureau for "Economic Aryanization" was also installed in order to eradicate the Jewish community's significance in the economy, mostly by taking control of Jewish businesses. On March 31, 1942, the Vichy government issued a decree demanding

6400-476: Was widespread in the Arabic press, over 158 Jewish owned shops were looted and burned and two Jews were killed, while the army stood by and refused to intervene (see 1898 Algerian riots ). Hannah Arendt was to comment later that,'that pogroms against Jews in Algeria were carried out not, as it was claimed, by “‘backward Arabs’” but by “thoroughly sophisticated officers of the French colonial administration” and by

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