Tunisia was and is a crossroads of the world. It has seen the Phonecians, the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Vandals, the Arabs, the Turks, and European colonialists. Each have left their mark on this North African land.
A History of Tunisia
Ancient Tunisia
Tunisia's
strategic position has ensured it an eventful history. The Phoenicians, Romans,
Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs, Ottomans and French have all ruled the region at
one point. The earliest humans to set foot here were probably a group of Homo
erectus who stumbled onto the place a few hundred thousand years ago as
they journeyed northwest across the Sahara from East
Africa. It's believed that in those days what is now arid desert
was covered in forest, scrub and savanna grasses, much like the plains of Kenya
and Tanzania
today. The earliest hard evidence of human inhabitation was unearthed near the
southern oasis town of Kebili and
dates back about 200,000 years.
The Phoenicians arrived in Tunisia
at Utica in 1100 BC, using it as a
staging post along the route from their home port
of Tyre, in modern-day Lebanon,
to Spain. The
port that looms largest in history is Carthage,
arch enemy of Rome. It became the
leader of the western Phoenician world in the 7th century and the main power in
the Western Mediterranean in the early 5th century. The
city's regional dominance lasted until the Punic Wars between Rome
and Carthage, which began in 263 BC
and ended in 146 BC with Carthage
utterly razed and its people sold into slavery.
The Tunisian territory became Roman property after the war. The emperor
Augustus reconstituted Carthage as
a Roman city in 44 BC, naming it the capital of the Province
of Africa Proconsularis.
Agriculture became all-important, and by the 1st century AD, the wheat-growing
plains of Tunisia
were supplying over 60% of the empire's requirements. The Romans went on to
found cities and colonies across Tunisia's
plains and coastline. Today, they're Tunisia's
principal tourist attractions.
Vandal Tunisia
By the beginning of the 5th century, the Vandals took Carthage
as their capital. Their exploitative policies alienated them from the native
Berber population, who in turn formed small kingdoms and began raiding the
Vandal settlements. The Byzantines of Constantinople, who took the territory
from the Vandals in 533 and kept it for the next 150 years, fared no better.