Tunisia
Capital: Tunis · North Africa
Ancient Carthage's homeland and a hinge of Mediterranean history, from Phoenician traders to Kairouan's early Islamic scholarship.
Ethnic communities
- Tunisian ArabsCoastal and Sahel populations with deep Punic-Berber roots
- Amazigh villagesBerber-speaking communities of Djerba and the south (e.g., Chenini)
- Jerban JewsOne of the oldest Jewish communities in the world, on Djerba
More communities of Tunisia
- Djerba Amazigh · Guellala's potters and Ibadi villages of the island
- Matmata Berbers · Troglodyte courtyard-home builders of the south
- Sahel coastal communities · Olive-belt townsfolk of Sousse–Monastir
- Jerid oasis communities · Tozeur–Nefta date farmers and Sufi shrine keepers
- Ouderna & southern Bedouin · Steppe herders of the Dahar and ksour granaries
- Andalusi-descended townspeople · Testour and Zaghouan heirs of Iberian exile
- Kroumirie mountain folk · Cork-oak highlanders of the northwest
- Sfaxi merchant families · Olive and trade dynasties of the southern port
- Cap Bon communities · Orchard peninsula's farmers and fishers
- Kairouan artisan families · Carpet-weavers of the holy city
- Zlass & Frechich tribes · Central-steppe pastoral lineages
- Hammama · Historic nomads of the Gafsa steppe
- Chott-edge communities · Salt-lake margin herders and date farmers
- Bizerte coastal folk · Northern port fishers of Andalusi-Ottoman blend
Languages
Major languages: Arabic, Tamazight (Shilha pockets), French
Language families: Afro-Asiatic
Historical kingdoms & states
- • Carthaginian Empire
- • Aghlabid Emirate
- • Hafsid Sultanate
Heritage sites
- • Carthage
- • Medina of Tunis
- • Amphitheatre of El Jem
- • Kairouan
- • Dougga
Cultural highlights
National heroes of Tunisia
See all African heroesFigures widely honoured here, across politics, sport, the arts and public life.
- Music & the arts1909–1934
Aboul-Qacem Echebbi
Poetry
Died at 25 having written the lines, on the will of the people, that close the Tunisian national anthem and were chanted through the 2011 uprising.
- Politics & liberation1903–2000
Habib Bourguiba
Independence and reform
Won Tunisian independence in 1956 and enacted the Code of Personal Status, which gave Tunisian women legal rights unmatched in the region at the time.
- Sportb. 1994
Ons Jabeur
Tennis
The first African and Arab woman to reach a Grand Slam singles final and to rank in the world top three.
- Science, business & activismb. 1961
Ouided Bouchamaoui
Business and mediation
Head of the employers' union in the National Dialogue Quartet, which was awarded the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize for pulling Tunisia back from civil conflict.
- Sportb. 1984
Oussama Mellouli
Swimming
Olympic champion in both the pool and open water, the only swimmer to have won gold in each.
Deep-dive community profiles
Amazigh (Berber)
The indigenous peoples of North Africa — 'Imazighen', the free people — whose Tifinagh script, mountain and desert civilizations, and millennia of continuous culture long predate the Arab arrival, stretching from the Canary Islands to the Siwa oasis.
Open deep profile →Andalusians of Tunisia
Descendants of the Moriscos expelled from Spain in 1609, who arrived in their tens of thousands, founded a dozen towns on the Medjerda valley, brought the chechia hat and the malouf music, and built a village with a minaret carved with the Star of David and a clock.
Open deep profile →Djerbians
The island community of southern Tunisia — Ibadi Amazigh, Sunni Arab and one of the oldest continuous Jewish communities in the world, sharing an island of underground mosques, fortified oil presses and a synagogue that has drawn pilgrims for over a thousand years.
Open deep profile →Jerid oasis communities
The date growers of Tozeur and Nefta — oasis farmers who built a three-storey agriculture of palms, fruit trees and vegetables over a thousand hand-dug springs, divided the water by the minute, and faced the Sahara from towns built of patterned brick.
Open deep profile →Kerkenniens
Islanders of a flat limestone archipelago off Sfax who fish with palm-frond fences built into the seabed, a technique older than any record of it, now UNESCO-listed and threatened by a sea that is rising over an island barely above it.
Open deep profile →Kroumirs (Khroumirie)
The forest people of Tunisia's north-west — cork oak communities of the Kroumirie mountains whose cross-border raiding gave France its pretext for taking Tunisia in 1881, and whose damp green landscape is the opposite of everything the country is usually pictured as.
Open deep profile →Matmata and the Ksour Amazigh
The troglodyte and hilltop communities of southern Tunisia — Amazigh families who dug their houses down into the earth against heat and raiders, and who stored their grain in honeycomb ksour whose vaulted cells still stand at Chenini, Douiret and Ksar Ouled Soltane.
Open deep profile →Sahel coastal Tunisians
The olive coast — the towns of Sousse, Monastir and Mahdia, whose ribat fortresses guarded the Ifriqiyan shore, whose olive groves stretch to the horizon, and which supplied independent Tunisia with its first two presidents.
Open deep profile →Tunisian Jews
One of the oldest Jewish communities in the world — present in Tunisia for over two thousand years, sustained on Djerba through Roman, Arab, Ottoman and French rule, and reduced from a hundred thousand to around a thousand within two decades.
Open deep profile →