Béjaïa

The bay was settled in antiquity as Saldae, a Carthaginian and then Roman port, supplied with water by an aqueduct from the springs at Toudja. Its great period began in 1067, when the Hammadid ruler an-Nasir moved his capital here from the Qal'a in the mountains and built a walled city of palaces and mosques along the shore. For two centuries Béjaïa was one of the busiest ports of the western Mediterranean, trading wax, olive oil, leather and grain with Pisa, Genoa and Marseille, and a centre of learning where scholars from across the Maghreb taught. The young Leonardo Fibonacci learned Hindu–Arabic numerals in the city while his father worked there as a merchant, and the wax trade gave French its word for a candle, bougie, from the city's French name.

Spain took the town in 1510 and held it until the Ottomans drove them out in 1555, after which it became a provincial port of the Regency of Algiers rather than a capital. French forces captured it in 1833, and colonial Béjaïa grew modestly around the harbour while the Kabyle hills behind it resisted until 1857 and rose again in 1871.

In 1956 the Congress of Soummam met at Ifri, in the valley inland, and set out the political organisation of the independence movement. Saharan oil made the port a pipeline terminal, and after independence the city expanded with refineries, food industries and a university. It has also been a centre of the Berber cultural movement, from the protests of 1980 to those of 2001.

Béjaïa is one of the two main cities of Kabylie, and Kabyle culture shapes daily life. The Kabyle language is heard everywhere, Tifinagh letters and the Amazigh flag appear on walls and shopfronts, and Yennayer, the Amazigh new year in January, is a family occasion as much as a public holiday. Village life in the hills behind the city still keeps collective institutions, including the assembly known as the tajmaât and shared work at harvest.

Music is central. The Kabyle song tradition of Idir, Lounis Aït Menguellet, Matoub Lounès and the many groups that followed them mixes poetry, the mandole and the bendir, and it carries a long-running argument about language, memory and identity. Concerts, poetry evenings and theatre in Kabyle draw large audiences, and the university gives the city a young and politically engaged population.

Crafts survive in the surrounding villages: hand-formed pottery painted with geometric patterns, silver and enamel jewellery from the Ath Yenni area, and woven blankets. Religion is mostly Sunni Islam, observed in a comparatively relaxed public style, and small Christian congregations exist in the region. Hospitality is emphatic — refusing a second helping takes persistence — and family occasions, above all weddings, bring emigrant relatives home from France each summer.

The city counted about 178,000 people at the 2008 census, with many more in the towns and villages along the bay and up the Soummam valley. The port, an oil terminal, food and plastics industries, and the University of Béjaïa are the main employers, alongside the summer tourist trade on the corniche. Several well-known Algerian food companies are based in the area, which has given the city a reputation for private enterprise.

People live mostly in apartment blocks spreading up the slopes and along the valley, with the older quarters near the harbour more crowded and harder to maintain. Many households depend partly on money sent from relatives in France, where the Kabyle diaspora is large, and on olives and figs from family land in the hills. Young people leave for Algiers or abroad, and the villages refill in summer and at Yennayer.

The rhythm is provincial: early mornings, a long afternoon, and a slow evening walk along the seafront when the heat eases. Water shortages in dry summers, traffic on the single coastal road, housing and unemployment are the everyday complaints, and the state of the road and rail links to Algiers is a standing local grievance.

Béjaïa eats Kabyle mountain food with a coastal edge. Olive oil is the base of almost everything, pressed in village mills after the winter harvest and poured over bread, salads and vegetables. Aghrum, a flat wheat or semolina bread baked on a clay griddle, accompanies stews; berkoukes, a large hand-rolled pasta grain, is simmered in a broth of vegetables and meat; and couscous appears in many forms, including a plain version with buttermilk.

From the sea come sardines, anchovies and bream, grilled over charcoal or fried whole, and stalls near the harbour sell them with bread and harissa. The market is full of the products of the hills: dried figs, carob, honey, wild herbs, peppers and the year's olives in barrels of brine. Seksu s bzar, couscous with pulses and seasonal vegetables, is the ordinary family meal rather than a feast dish.

Sweets lean on semolina, dates and honey: makroud, griwech and the syrup-soaked cakes made for Ramadan. Coffee is drunk short and strong, mint tea is offered to guests, and the region bottles mineral water from mountain springs. Figs and fresh oranges from the Soummam valley are sold from the back of vans at the roadside in season.