The Ketchaoua Mosque was commissioned in 1520 by Hayreddin Barbarossa, then-Ottoman ruler of Algeria, in the famed Casbah quarter of the capital Algiers.

Algerian historical accounts show that the French ruler of Algeria in the early colonial days, Anne Jean Marie Rene Savary, the Duke of Rovigo, decided at the end of 1832 to storm the Musjid to turn it into a church.

When the city’s residents camped inside the building in protest, Rovigo demolished the mosque, massacred those inside and burned copies of the Qur’an.

The Ketchaoua Mosque on the Mediterranean coast, an important symbol of Algerian independence, was first used as a military depot during the French occupation and later as a residence for the archbishops of Algeria. After the mosque’s demolition in 1844, a large church was built, and the building remained a cathedral until Algeria gained independence in 1962. With the country’s independence, Algerians performed their first Jumuah Salaah here.

The Musjid was closed in 2008 due to damage from a 2003 earthquake.

In April 2018, the Musjid was reopened following its restoration by the Turkish International Cooperation and Development Agency (TIKA), Turkey’s state-run aid agency. The Musjid was restored in line with the original Ottoman architectural plan according to historians and researchers from both Algeria and Turkey.