Islam in Algeria: history and Muslim population data

History of Islam in Algeria

The People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria has a total area of 2,381,741sq km, and is the tenth largest country in the world, and the largest inAfrica. The map of Algeria is presented in Figure 3.1.1. It was taken byFrance from the Ottoman Empire in 1830 and gained its independencefrom France in 1962. The French conquest expanded gradually by takingAlgiers in 1830 and by 1844 the northern one-sixth or 390,000 sq km wasoccupied when the French conquered Biskra. The area doubled when theFrench seized Ouargla in 1853. Another sixth was gained with thecapture of El Menia in 1873. The rest or about two-third was seized by1901 from Morocco, which included the areas of Touat, Gourara, Tidikeltand Hoggar.

Islam entered Algeria between 51H and 61H, or 671AD and 680ADduring the reign of the founder of the Umayyad Dynasty Muawiya bnuAbi Sufyan. The Muslim troops were under the leadership of AbulMohajir Dinar. According to census data and as shown in Table 3.1.1, theMuslim population changed from 2.0 million or 95% in 1845, to 2.3million or 94% in 1851, to 2.3 million or 93% in 1856, to 2.7 million or 93%in 1861, to 2.7 million or 91% in 1866, to 2.1 million or 88% in 1872, to 2.5million or 88% in 1876, to 2.8 million or 87% in 1881, to 3.3 million or 88%in 1886, to 3.6 million or 87% in 1891, to 3.8 million 87% in 1896, to 4.1million or 87% in 1901, to 4.5 million or 87% in 1906, to 4.7 million or 86%in 1911, to 4.9 million or 86% in 1921, to 5.2 million or 86% in 1926, to 5.6million or 86% in 1931, to 6.2 million or 87% in 1936, to 7.7 million or 89%in 1948, to 8.4 million or 90% in 1954, to 12.0 million or 99% in 1966. Thepost-independence’s increase in percentage is due to the migration of theJewish population and European colonizers. According to the WorldValues Survey (WVS), the percentage of Muslims was 100.00% in 2002and 99.50% in 2014.

Thus, assuming that the percentage of Muslims remains fixed; thenthe Muslim population is expected to reach sixty million by 2050 andclose to seventy million by 2100.

Historical Muslim population dataset for Algeria

The figures below are from the CoMPS historical dataset. Population values are expressed in thousands; 2100 is a modelled projection, not a present-day count.

For the full time series and visualisation, use the interactive map above.