الجزائر

The broken plural of جَزِيرَة (jazīra, “island”) has come to be the proper name for Algeria, its capital, and the islands in its bay, as there were once several small islands in the Bay of Algiers. Most of these islands are now connected to the shore or have been removed. الْجَزَائِر (al-jazāʔir) is itself a truncated form of the city's older name of جَزَائِر بَنِي مَزْغَنَّى (jazāʔir banī mazḡannā, “the islands of (the tribe) Ait Mazghanna”), which was used by early medieval geographers such as