From the quick searching I've done, I think that Django predates SQLAlchemy by nearly a year (July 2005 and May 2006 respectively).
Alchemy has a lot more power behind it, but the Django ORM is (arguably) easier to use for the majority of web use cases.
I had a hand in opening up the Django ORM with the introduction/formalisation of Query Expressions (https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/releases/1.8/#query-ex...), and others are doing significant work in cleaning up the ORM internals so that more complex features can be layered on in core and by users.
Comments
From the quick searching I've done, I think that Django predates SQLAlchemy by nearly a year (July 2005 and May 2006 respectively).
Alchemy has a lot more power behind it, but the Django ORM is (arguably) easier to use for the majority of web use cases.
I had a hand in opening up the Django ORM with the introduction/formalisation of Query Expressions (https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/releases/1.8/#query-ex...), and others are doing significant work in cleaning up the ORM internals so that more complex features can be layered on in core and by users.