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Icosium (Punic language: , "Island of the Owls"; , Ikósion) was a city of Berbers origin and a Punic people settlement, founded by Heracles and his companions in present-day Algeria. It was part of Numidia and later became an important Roman Empire colony and an early medieval bishopric (now a Latin titular see) in the casbah area of modern Algiers. Detailed map of Mauretania Caesariensis Roots of Algiers (in French)
However, the berber settlement was also occupied by some Punic settlers from at least as early as the 3rd century BC. They called it or , which is believed to have meant "seagull's island", and which was eventually transcribed as Icosium in Latin. The original Punic name is reflected in the modern Arabic name for Algiers (, pronounced ), which means "the islands".al-Idrisi, Muhammad (12th century) Nuzhat al-Mushtaq
Many Roman colonists settled in Icosium under Augustus and were later promoted to Roman colonia by Vespasian. latin language was the language spoken in the city in the first century AD. The city of nearly 15000 inhabitants, according to historian Theodore Mommsen was given full Latin rights by Roman emperor Vespasian.
By the 2nd century, an influx of Berbers from the countryside changed the settlement's demographics, so that Latin-speakers became a minority elite.
Christianity started to be practiced in the late 2nd century and, in the early 4th century, was the main religion of the local Romanised Berbers in the city. The bishops of Icosium are mentioned as late as the 5th century. Diocese of Icosium At the Christian council of Carthage in AD419 (promoted by Saint Aurelius) went the bishop Laurentius "Icositanus", as representative of Mauretania Caesariensis; Saint Augustine wrote about him in a letter to Pope CelestineI. Lettera 209, 8 (in Italian)
Icosium was then destroyed by the Arabs and reduced to a very small village in the 8th century. Most of the Romanized inhabitants were killed or sent as slaves to Damascus. However, this claim is not supported by strong historical evidence. Until 950, only ruins remained of the Roman Icosium.
Only in the 10th century started to be again developed by Buluggin ibn Ziri, a Berbers who founded Algiers under the Zirid dynasty, to what is now the capital of modern Algeria. Indeed, the Casbah of Algiers (a UNESCO world heritage site) is founded mainly on the ruins of old Icosium. It is a mid-sized city which, built on a hill, goes down towards the sea and is divided in two: the High city and the Low city, that now are dangerously crumbling Smithsonian: Save the Casbah
The titular bishops, all of the episcopal (lowest) rank, were:
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