This photochrome print of an Arab juggler performing for a crowd in Algiers is part of “Views of People and Sites in Algeria” from the catalog of the Detroit Publishing Company (1905). The 1911 edition of Baedeker’s The Mediterranean, seaports and sea routes: Handbook for Travellers described the old city of Algiers as presenting “a highly attractive picture of Oriental life.” Arabs were the dominant group in the population, then as now, but many of the people were Berbers or from other Mahgribi population groups. The city had been a place of diverse inhabitants for centuries, invaded or settled by Phoenicians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs, Turks, and pirates before the French conquest. The scene depicted is an interesting study of the contrasts that characterized turn-of-the-century French Algeria, as men in European dress are seen on the edge of the crowd watching the performance.
This photochrome print of an Arab juggler performing for a crowd in Algiers is part of “Views of People and Sites in Algeria” from the catalog of the Detroit Publishing Company (1905). The 1911 edition of Baedeker’s The Mediterranean, seaports and sea routes: Handbook for Travellers described the old city of Algiers as presenting “a highly attractive picture of Oriental life.” Arabs were the dominant group in the population, then as now, but many of the people were Berbers or from other Mahgribi population groups. The city had been a place of diverse inhabitants for centuries, invaded or settled by Phoenicians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs, Turks, and pirates before the French conquest. The scene depicted is an interesting study of the contrasts that characterized turn-of-the-century French Algeria, as men in European dress are seen on the edge of the crowd watching the performance.