Not a definitive history

Algeria

Jewish settlement in Algeria can be traced back to the first centuries of the Common Era.

Before the Roman Empire took over these remote coasts of northern Africa, descendants of Jews who had fled Palestine after the destruction of the first and second temples of Jerusalem had settled among the Berber tribes of central Maghreb.

Most Berbers were converted to Islam a few decades later, and the Jews of Algeria started their cultural and linguistic assimilation into the Arab world. Despite this deep penetration of the Arabic culture into Jewish habits, the Jews of Algeria remained committed to their religious tradition, and some of their rabbis became widely noted for their Talmudic commentaries and the contacts they had with Palestinian and Babylonian sages.

After 1391, refugees fleeing Catholic Spain arrived en masse into North Africa. They were rapidly integrated into the local Jewish leadership. Finally, more European Jews immigrated to Algeria in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, coming from Italy…