History
Profiles
Elaine Mokhtefi, at the Heart of Algiers, Capital of Revolutions
Elaine Klein Mokhtefi died in New York on Friday 11 September 2026. A few weeks earlier, Algeria had granted her citizenship. A final symbolic return to the country whose cause this American woman had embraced before ever seeing it, and where she would encounter Frantz Fanon, organise the Pan-African Festival and become one of the Black Panthers’ principal intermediaries in Algiers. Her life also tells the story of an extraordinary era: a time when African revolutionaries, Black American activists and anti-colonial fighters looked towards Algeria, a land where history could still change direction.
The Story Behind the Photograph
An Algerian Icon Coveted by Her Neighbours
Photographed around 1905 and circulated under the caption “Une Ouled Naïl”, this young Algerian woman has become Tunisian, Moroccan, Amazigh, Aïcha Kandisha or simply a “Berber beauty”. A face so magnetic that everyone has wanted to claim it.
It Had to Be Said
The Ottoman Period Was Not Colonisation
The Ottomans did not arrive in Algeria as the French did in 1830. Yet the expression “Turkish colonisation” keeps recurring in French debate and among Algeria’s detractors — even in the words of Emmanuel Macron. The facts tell a substantially different story.
On This Day
The day the Algerian Revolution formed its government
Cairo, Friday, 19 September 1958. After almost four years of war, the Algerian Revolution is no longer fighting France only by force of arms. It appoints a president and ministers and forms a government, preparing the way for a series of diplomatic victories.
THE PLACE TO SEE
The Jardin d’Essai, Algiers’ Jungle
In Hamma, a formal French garden vista opens below the Martyrs’ Memorial. Then, just a few steps to one side take you into almost tropical vegetation. A place you visit for a stroll and end up getting lost in.