Mostaganem

Mostaganem grew where the Aïn Sefra ravine meets the sea, on a shelf of land above a natural landing place. The city was founded in the 11th century as Murustage, on a site with Punic and Roman origins, and took shape under the Berber dynasties that ruled the western Maghreb, serving the grain country of the Chélif valley and the plateau behind it. Its position between Oran and the Chélif made it a place armies passed through as well as a market.

The Ottoman admiral Barbarossa took the town in 1516, and it became a corsair base, a garrison and a port of the western beylik, whose beys ruled at times from nearby Mascara. The upper quarter kept its walls and gates; the Muslim town of Tigditt spread on the far side of the ravine. French forces took Mostaganem in 1833, early in the conquest, and it became a colonial garrison town with a grid of boulevards laid between the two older quarters, a new harbour and vineyards and citrus groves planted across the surrounding plain.

Independence in 1962 emptied the European quarters and filled them with Algerians from the countryside. The vineyards were largely uprooted and replaced by cereals, citrus and market gardens, the port was enlarged for grain and general cargo, and new estates climbed the slopes east and west of the old centre. The city grew steadily through the later 20th century into a provincial capital of universities, farming and shipping, with the tourism of its beaches added in recent decades.

Mostaganem belongs to the Oranie, the west of Algeria, and shares its accent of Algerian Arabic — quick, full of Spanish and French borrowings — and its reputation for an easy-going manner. Raï, the popular music that grew out of the bars and rural poetry of the west, is heard here as it is in Oran, alongside the older bedoui sung poetry of the plateaus and the Andalusian repertoire that the coastal towns kept.

The city's strongest cultural claim is theatre. Its national festival of amateur theatre has drawn companies from across Algeria for decades and has given Mostaganem a place in the country's cultural map out of proportion to its size, with performances in the city's halls and theatres.

Religious life is Sunni Islam of the Maliki school, and Sufi brotherhoods have deep roots in the province. The 16th-century poet Sidi Lakhdar Ben Khlouf, whose verse in Algerian Arabic is still sung by chaabi singers, is one of the patron saints of the region, and his tomb, in the village of the same name in the province, is a place of pilgrimage. Family occasions — weddings with henna nights, long meals and loud music — organise the social calendar, and Friday prayer and the shared couscous that follows it mark the week.

About 406,000 people were counted in the city at the 2019 census, with more again in the province around it, the population divided between the crowded old quarters, the colonial centre and the estates that have spread inland and along the coast. The city is the capital of its province, so administration, the university and schools employ a large share of the workforce.

The rest of the economy is farming, fishing and the port. The plateau behind Mostaganem is one of Algeria's better market-gardening areas, growing citrus, potatoes, tomatoes and melons, and the harbour ships grain and general cargo and lands sardines and other fish. Small workshops, retail and construction fill in around them, and many households rely on work that is seasonal or informal.

Days begin early, with markets busiest in the morning and shops shutting for a long break in the heat before reopening in the late afternoon. Cafés fill with men after work; families come out to the seafront in the evening. Housing shortages, youth unemployment and the wish of many young people to emigrate are the recurring concerns here as across the country, and summer brings a different rhythm, with the population swollen by holidaymakers and by Algerians visiting from abroad.

Mostaganem eats the food of the western coast. Karantika, the baked chickpea-flour flan that began in Oran and is street food across western Algeria, is cut into squares, dusted with cumin and harissa and often pushed into a baguette. Sardines are the everyday fish, grilled over charcoal or stuffed with garlic, coriander and cumin, floured and fried; larger fish from the gulf appear in restaurants near the harbour.

Home cooking follows the national pattern with a coastal accent. Couscous is the Friday dish, steamed semolina under a stew of lamb or chicken with chickpeas and seasonal vegetables; chorba frik, the cracked-wheat and tomato soup, breaks the fast through Ramadan; and dolma, stuffed vegetables, bourek, fried pastry rolls of meat or cheese, and grilled merguez sausages fill out the table. The province's own citrus, tomatoes and melons give the markets their character in season.

Bread and pastry keep a French inheritance, with baguettes from neighbourhood bakeries and cakes in the town-centre patisseries, beside Algerian sweets — makroud stuffed with dates, baklawa, griwech dipped in honey — that are made in quantity for weddings and for Eid. Strong black coffee and mint tea are drunk all day, and mazagran, the cold sweetened coffee, takes its name from the village and fort just outside the city.