Le quartier de l’AGHA à Alger

Abstract

At the heart of modern Algiers, neighborhood of AGHA offers with its western boundary, a wall to the current Didouche Mourad Street −the main thoroughfare of the capital− and the Place Maurice Audin. Tafūra, locality of fahs Bāb 'Azzun, was the name of this place before it was substitued by the one of the large estates called Djnān al-Āghā, who sat on the crossroads of the only two provincial roads of the country, original nucleus of the city that has developed there since 1830. Apart from a marabout, this large residence owned Āghā, Grand Chief of the military hierarchy Ottoman, Tafūra become AGHA under French occupation, housed mainly military structures battery n° 4 and fort Ra's Burdj Tafūra in case. Invested by the French army, AGHA neighboring the new walls of Algiers, began its development to become the largest town in the southern suburb, replacement suburb Bāb 'Azzun who was included in the new city walls, where's edified European city. If existing structures, built and viaire, constituted the support of the first settlements of the agglomeration, in the second half of the century, under the Second Empire, a new trace lanes will appear, with a certain hierarchy, which will be the basis of future development of the suburb. At the end of the nineteenth century, in fact, with the removal of the fortifications of the city, the center of Algiers moving above the AGHA, will do mutate district of the city. It was during the Second Empire that appears, too, the first subdivision in Algiers fahs, operated on Djnān al-Āghā, which had been divided between the heirs of Marshal Clauzel, who had acquired it from the descendants of Āghā 'Alī ben-Sulaymān. If Āghā gave its name to the town, the toponym Clauzel be used by people, to refer to the Algiers neighborhood born in the former residence of the first Ottoman dignitary and market located at the crossroads of main roads, which is the heart of district of AGHA. Essentially based on a philological study, by drawing and by the text, this work has highlighted the stratification of the urban agglomeration since the Ottoman period until the reign of the Second Empire, by identifying patterns and locations, their superpositions, laying tracks at the base of the current configuration of the center of Algiers. It also provides the knowledge necessary to identify the function of the urban structure of the city at different stages of its development and aid understanding of the dialectic-City Neighborhood.