🇩🇿 The colours of Algeria
2 meanings recorded and 1 colour city.
Algeria’s flag features green, white, and red. Green is widely linked with Islam, white with peace and purity, and red with the struggle for independence and faith. The crescent and star at the centre are Islamic symbols. These colours and symbols have deep roots in Algeria’s religious, political, and historical traditions.
Where no official value is given, the swatch shows the colour family, not the exact shade.
- Green on the flag is a long-standing Islamic symbol in Algeria.
- Red stands for struggle and sacrifice, linked to jihad.
- White is associated with purity and peace, with religious roots.
- The crescent and star are traditional Islamic emblems.
- Flag colours are precisely defined by wavelength.
The colours of the flag of Algeria
The Algerian flag is split vertically into green and white halves, with a red crescent and star at the centre. Green is officially and popularly seen as the colour of Islam, with roots in banners used by Muslim leaders and resistance figures. White is associated with purity and peace, and also has religious meaning, linked to early Islamic banners. Red stands for jihad, or struggle, and is tied to sacrifice and the blood of those who fought for Algeria’s freedom. The crescent and star are recognised Islamic symbols, with the star often said to represent the five pillars of Islam.
How the colours were chosen of Algeria
Algeria’s colours have evolved over centuries. In the Middle Ages, banners in the region were often black or white, depending on the ruling dynasty. In the 16th century, Aruj Barbarossa raised a flag of green, yellow, and red after liberating Algiers from Spain. Later, a plain red flag became the main emblem of the Dey’s rule, sometimes with a crescent. The current green, white, and red flag was first used by resistance movements in the 20th century and became official at independence in 1962. The crescent and star have long been used in Islamic and Ottoman banners.
Official shades and rules of Algeria
The flag’s colours are officially defined: the green is a mix of equal yellow and blue, with a wavelength of 5,411 ångströms, and the red is pure, with a wavelength of 6,562 ångströms. These specifications ensure consistency in reproducing the flag. The flag’s proportions and arrangement are also fixed by law.
The facts in this overview come from the Wikipedia article "Flag of Algeria", written by its contributors and used under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Rang rewrote the text in its own words, with AI assistance, and compares every page with the article to make sure no passage is copied. It may be reused under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 licence with a link back.
What colours mean in Algeria
Customs vary by region, faith and family; these are the meanings most often recorded.
The flag is half green and half white with a red crescent and star. The green stands for Islam and the white for peace.
Sacred and holyPolitics and protestSource: Flag of AlgeriaAlgiers is called Alger la Blanche, the white city, for its whitewashed buildings. Women there once went out wrapped in the haik, a large white cloth.
Purity and peaceSource: Haik (garment)
No colour page is tied to Algeria yet. The catalogue grows every day.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Ghardaia Dz: Camille Gillet, CC BY-SA 4.0, source