Prostitution in Algeria is legal but most related activities such as brothel -keeping and solicitation are criminalised. Algeria's Criminal Code prohibits soliciting in a public place, assisting or profiting from the prostitution of others, living with a person engaged in prostitution and procuring for the purpose of prostitution.
During Ottoman rule , prostitution was tolerated and regulated. The women were Moorish , Arab , and sub-Saharan Africans. Jews were not permitted to become prostitutes. An official called the Mezouar was in charge of regulating prostitution. This official was always a Moor. The position was lucrative as he collected a monthly levy per prostitute. He kept a register of prostitutes and the women were not allowed to leave the brothels and public baths they worked in.
After French colonization in , the French authorities regulated prostitution to try and prevent the spread of STIs. The regulation system was based on the Ottoman regulations that were previously in force, [4] [6] and the Mezouar was retained, although he had to pay an annual fee of 2, francs. The main articles of the decree read: [5]. In spite of the regulations, there were women who worked on the streets illegally. Brothels were established in all the main garrison towns, generally in the Muslim quarters so as not to offend the European residents.
In , the morality police recorded 46 brothels, 79 hotels, furnished and a hundred clandestine houses used for prostitution in Algiers alone. These numbers remained about the same until independence in They had a tradition of the younger, single women coming down from the mountains to work in the cities as dancers and prostitutes. Once they had saved enough money for a dowry or to buy property, they would return to the mountains.
Originally their dancing was fully clothed in their traditional clothing. Later it became topless and then fully nude. American dancer Ted Shawn saw them in and said that the dancing wasn't sexy as it left nothing to the imagination.
