According to the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons OFPRA , until , there were 19 brothels under police control out of the that had previously existed in Algeria during the French colonial period , [ 2 ] as was the case in Tunisia. Despite the de jure prohibition by the Algerian Penal Code, clandestine prostitution exists in contemporary Algerian society.
During Ottoman rule , prostitution was tolerated and regulated. A class of prostituted women where established in order to serve the celibate corps of janissaries sent to Algeria after the Ottoman occupation in the 16th-century, mostly composed by Black usually slave women who had left their enslavers.
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. Prostitution was also connected to slavery in Algeria. The Islamic Law formally prohibited prostitution. However, since the principle of concubinage in Islam in Islamic Law allowed a man to have sexual intercourse with his female slave, prostitution in the Islamic world was commonly practiced by a pimp selling his female slave on the slave market to a client, who was then allowed to have sex with her as her new owner; the client would then cancel his purchase and return the slave to her pimp on the pretext of discontent, which was a legal and accepted method for prostitution in the Islamic world.
Prior to the French takeover in , it was estimated that there were to prostitutes in Algiers. The women were Moorish , Arab , and sub-Saharan Africans. Jews were not permitted to become prostitutes. After French colonization in , the French authorities regulated prostitution to try to prevent the spread of STIs. The regulation system was based on the Ottoman regulations that were previously in place, [ 5 ] [ 11 ] and the Mezouar was retained, although he had to pay an annual fee of 2, francs.
The main articles of the decree read: [ 7 ]. 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.
