The Casbah (French) or as transliterate from Arabic Qasba (from qasba, قصبة, 'citadel') is specifically the citadel of Algiers and the traditional quarter clustered round it. More generally, kasbah denotes the walled citadel of many North African cities and towns. The word made its way into English from French in the late 19th century (the Oxford English Dictionary says 1895), hence its conventional English spelling.