Culture

Algerian culture has been strongly influenced by Islam, the main religion. The works of the Sanusi family in pre-colonial times, and of Emir Abdelkader and Sheikh Ben Badis in colonial times, are widely noted.

Modern Algerian literature, split between Arabic and French, has been strongly influenced by the country's recent history. Famous novelists of the 20th century include Mohammed Dib, Albert Camus, and Kateb Yacine, while Assia Djebar is widely translated. Important novelists of the 1980s included Rachid Mimouni, later vice-president of Amnesty International, and Tahar Djaout, murdered by an Islamist group in 1993 for his secularist views.

In painting, Mohammed Khadda and M'Hamed Issiakhem are notable in recent years.

In philosophy and the humanities, Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction, was born in El-Biar near Algiers; Malek Bennabi and Frantz Fanon are noted for their thoughts on decolonisation; Augustine of Hippo was born in Tagaste (about 60 miles from the present day city of Annaba); and Ibn Khaldun, though born in Tunis, wrote the Muqaddima while staying in Algeria.

Yves Saint Laurent, the founder of the well known designer brand of the same name, is another famous Algerian. He was born in the city of Oran on 1 August 1936.

The Algerian musical genre best known abroad is raï, a pop-flavored, opinionated take on folk music, featuring international stars such as Khaled and Cheb Mami. However, in Algeria itself the older, highly verbal chaabi style remains more popular, with such stars as El Hadj El Anka or Dahmane El Harrachi, while the tuneful melodies of Kabyle music, exemplified by Idir, Ait Menguellet, or Lounès Matoub, have a wide audience. For more classical tastes, Andalusi music, brought from Al-Andalus by Morisco refugees, is preserved in many older coastal towns.