Djinet was a
Phoenician and
Carthaginian colony under the name
Kissi or Kishi (, , if
Lipiński's interpretation of an inscription found there is accepted) The name was
hellenized as
Kissḗ. After the
Punic Wars, it fell under
Roman control. Its name was
Latinized as
Cissi and it was placed into the
province of
Mauretania Caesariensis. It appeared on the
Tabula Peutingeriana. The ruins of a 4th or 5th-century Christian church could still be easily distinguished at Cape Djinet up to the 19th century, but little trace now remains. It was known to medieval European geographers as
Berengereto. By the 18th century, Djinet was a small port town serving the farmers of the surrounding lowlands, described by
Thomas Shaw in the following terms: : ...we come to the little port of Jinnett, from which a great quantity of grain is shipped off yearly to Christendom. Jinnett is a small creek, with tolerably good anchoring grounds before it; and was probably Edrisi's Mers' el Dajaje, or
Port of Hens. I was told that Jinnett, or
Paradise, was given to this place, on account of a row-boat, which was once very providentially conducted within the creek, when the mariners expected every moment to have perished upon the neighbouring rocks. The area was conquered by France in 1837 in the wake of the
First Battle of the Issers, and remained under French rule until Algeria's independence in 1962. In 1986, a gas-powered thermal power plant was commissioned at Djinet, manufactured by
Siemens with a capacity of 704 MW.
Ecclesiastical history Roman Cissi was a
Christian bishopric,
suffragan to the
metropolitan of
Carthage. The names of two of its bishops are known: • At a
Conference of Carthage (411) between Catholic and schismatic
Donatist bishops, where their heresy was condemned as such, Cissi was represented only by a Donatist bishop named Flavosus. The
Latin adjective referring to Cissi,
Cissitanus, is applied to him in the account of that conference. In the 19th century, Morcelli took the adjective
Cessitanus to refer to Cissi, and supposed instead that the name of the Cissi bishop at the conference was Quodvultdeus, whom Ferron rather attributed to the see of
Cissita, The diocese was nominally restored in 1933 as the
Catholic titular bishopric of Cissi (). Its bishops have been: • Jean de Capistran Aimé Cayer,
OFM (1949.06.17 – 1978.04.13) •
Augusto Vargas Alzamora,
SJ (1978.06.08 – 1989.12.30) • Olindo Natale Spagnolo Martellozzo,
MCCJ (1990.02.02 – 2008.07.23) • Enrique Eguía Seguí (2008.09.04 to present), Auxiliary Bishop of
Archdiocese of Buenos Aires ==Transport==