In Algeria, questions of property are unsettled. While legal titles exist and courts adjudicate disputes, conflicting notions of citizen rights and state obligations continue to blur two analytically distinct concepts – possession and ownership – each tied to questions of individual, collective, or state claims. Absent widespread agreement on who owns what, who has the right to own what, and who should own what, land, real-estate, and public space in Algeria are sites of loud and silent claim-making, as well as abandonment and appropriation. This paper explores the link between land/real-estate, public space, the state, and citizen in contemporary Algeria through the lens of the very polyvalent term beylik. The term beylik is used as a general substitute for dawla (state), kita’a ‘am (public sector), or hukuma (government) – all denoting sovereign authority and power. Linked, the term is too used for property, though in distinct (if not conflicting) ways, revealing much about how many Algerians view the state and property, as well as the intersection between the two. In its first sense, the term refers to the public domain land, and is derived from the Ottoman-era land category ardh el-bey. The term has alternative meanings too linked with property. It can be applied to any property owned by the state, including land, buildings, bus-stops, and park benches. While in this sense, the term too has a link with the state, in the final, and equally common usage of the term, beylik is used to describe any property in which the ownership is unclear, including abandoned apartments and properties, industrial sites, or public spaces that are no longer widely used or frequented by citizens. This form of beylik can be appropriated for personal use, and so in this sense of the term, beylik means not just absence of an owner, but too absence of the state. This paper examines the appropriation of citizen-ascribed beylik property in order to tease out the links between state, individual, public space, and private property in contemporary Algeria. Looking at a number of cases of citizen appropriation of public space in Oran, Algeria, the paper seeks explore larger (though often silent) debates on citizen rights and state obligations and how the palimpsest of property reforms over the past fifty years have shaped public conceptions of public and private.