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Short History Of Tunisia and Culture
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Originally Tunis was a satellite town of Carthage, located about 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) inland from the Mediterranean Sea. Carthage with its port was the historic urban center in the region from the ninth century B.C.E. through the eighth century C.E. Since Carthaginian times the rural hinterland around Carthage, later Tunis, has approximately corresponded to the contemporary boundaries of Tunisia. It has sometimes been part of a larger empire, as when it was the Roman province of Africa, sometimes an independent unit, as under the medieval Hafsid dynasty, but always distinct. Today Tunisia is part of the larger Arab world, with which it shares a language and many cultural elements, including a political identification. Within this broader identity, the sense of Tunisian uniqueness remains strong.
Location and Geography. Tunisia is located in north-central Africa, between Algeria and Libya, with an area of 63,200 square miles (164,000 square kilometers). It has a lengthy Mediterranean coast and is very open to Mediterranean influences. Tunisians are a maritime people and have always maintained extensive contacts by sea with other Mediterranean countries. The main cities are all on the coast, and contemporary development, including tourism, is also concentrated on the coast. Some ecologically significant wetlands are found along the coast. From a physical and economic point of view, there is considerable variety in the country, from cork oak forests in the north to open desert in the south, but this physical variety has not produced cultural variety.
Mountains play a role in Tunisia as determiners of climatic variation and refuge for political outsiders. A chain of mountains separates the grain-producing areas of northern Tunisia from the high, dry plateau to the south, where animal husbandry dominates, and the semiarid coastal plains where olive cultivation is common. The highest point is Mount Ash-Sha'nabi, near Al-Qasrayn (Kasserine), at 5,050 feet (1,544 meters). The country is heavily dependent on rainfall, which falls mostly between September and May, and in northern Tunisia averages around 20 inches (50 centimeters) a year. The mountains in the northwest attract heavier rain and even snow in the winter. The longest river in the country is the Medjerda, which rises in Algeria and flows through Tunisia to the sea. Many drainage systems end in saline lakes. Southern Tunisia extends into the Saharan desert, and includes some notable oases; people live wherever there is water.
Tunisia has been the subject of a remarkably colourful history, its current role as North Africa’s most progressive face the product of millennia spent being handed (or grabbed) from ruling power to ruling power.
Its timeline is a story of successive upheavals. The Phoenicians settled in Tunisia in around 1100BC, founding the city of Carthage some 200 years later. By 500BC, the city had become a commanding force in its own right.
When Rome waned, Tunisia fell first into the hands of the Byzantine Empire and then the Arabs, who in turn were conquered by Ottoman Turks in the 16th century. They held sway until being ousted by European powers. Italian influence was initially most prominent, before French troops invaded from Algeria in the 1860s and Tunisia became a French protectorate.
Independence from France was granted in 1956, and the still-respected Habib Bourguiba became the country’s first president. His government was responsible for many of the facets that still shape Tunisia today, from widespread public education to female emancipation.
There were intense and large-scale public protests over unemployment and freedom of speech in late 2010 and early 2011, which saw a number of fatalities. President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali – who had succeeded Bourguiba and been in power since 1987 – was forced to stand down.
