The culture of North Africa encompasses the customs and traditions of art, architecture, music, literature, lifestyle, philosophy, food, politics and religion that have been practiced and maintained by the numerous ethnic groups of North Africa. North Africa encompasses the northern portion of Africa, including a large portion of the Sahara Desert. The region's commonly defined boundaries include Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, and Western Sahara, stretching from the Atlantic shores of the Western Sahara in the west, to Egypt's Red Sea coast in the east. The United Nations' definition additionally includes Sudan in the region. The inhabitants of North Africa are roughly divided in a manner corresponding to the principal geographic regions of North Africa: the Maghreb, the Nile valley, and the Sahel.
The countries of North Africa all have Modern Standard Arabic as their official language, and almost all their inhabitants follow Islam. The most spoken dialects are Maghrebi Arabic, a form of Classical Arabic dating back from the 8th century AD, and Egyptian Arabic. The largest and most numerous ethnic group in North Africa are the Arabs. In Algeria and Morocco, Berbers are the second largest ethnic group after the Arab majority. Arabs constitute 70% to 80% of the population of Algeria, 92%97% of Libya, 67% to 70% of Morocco and 98% of Tunisia's population. The Berbers comprise 20% of Algeria, 10% of Libya, 35% of Morocco and 1% of Tunisia's population.
The region is predominantly Muslim with a Jewish minority in Morocco and Tunisia, and significant Christian minority—the Copts—in Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, and Tunisia. In 2001, the number of Christians in North Africa was estimated at 9 million, the majority of whom live in Egypt, with the remainder live in Maghreb countries. North Africa formerly had a large Jewish population, almost all of whom emigrated to France or Israel when the North African nations gained independence. Prior to the modern establishment of Israel, there were about 600,000-700,000 Jews in Northern Africa, including both Sephardi Jews (refugees from France, Spain and Portugal from the Renaissance era) as well as indigenous Mizrahi Jews. Today, fewer than fifteen thousand remain in the region—almost all in Morocco and Tunisia—and are mostly part of a French speaking urban elite. (See Jewish exodus from Arab lands.)
North Africans share a large amount of their genetic, ethnic, cultural and linguistic identity and influence with the Middle East, a process that began with the Neolithic Revolution and pre Dynastic Egypt. The countries of North Africa are also a major part of the Arab world. The Islamic influence in North Africa is significant, with the region being major part of the Muslim world. North Africa is associated with the Middle East in the realm of geopolitics to form the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) region.
Algeria
Modern Algerian literature has been strongly influenced by the country's recent history. Famous novelists of the 20th century include Mohammed Dib, Albert Camus, and Kateb Yacine, while Assia Djebar is widely translated. Important novelists of the 1980s included Rachid Mimouni, later vice-president of Amnesty International, and Tahar Djaout, murdered by an Islamist group in 1993 for his secularist views. As early as Roman times, Apuleius, in M'Daourouch, was native to what would become Algeria.
In philosophy and the humanities, Malek Bennabi and Frantz Fanon are noted for their thoughts on decolonization, while Augustine of Hippo was born in Tagaste (about 60 miles from the present day city of Annaba), and Ibn Khaldun, though born in Tunis, wrote the Muqaddima while staying in Algeria.
Algerian culture has been strongly influenced by Islam, the main religion. The works of the Sanusi family in pre-colonial times, and of Emir Abdelkader and Sheikh Ben Badis in colonial times, are widely noted.
The Algerian musical genre best known abroad is raï, a pop-flavored, opinionated take on folk music, featuring international stars such as Khaled and Cheb Mami. However, in Algeria itself the older, highly verbal chaabi style remains more popular, with such stars as El Hadj El Anka or Dahmane El Harrachi. The tradition of raï emerged in the city of Oran by the end of the 20th century as a combination of popular music and traditional Bedouin desert music. For more classical tastes, Andalusi music, brought from Al-Andalus by Morisco refugees, is preserved in many older coastal towns.