the ancestors of the modern nomads of Barbary. All Africa was ravaged by the invaders, who, though unable to found an empire or overthrow the settled government in the towns, forced the agricultural Berbers into the mountains, and, retaining from generation to generation their lawless and predatory habits, have ever since made order and prosperity almost impossible in the open parts of the country. The Zirite dynasty was finally extinguished by Roger I. of Sicily, who took Mahdiya in 1148 and established his authority over all the Tunisian coast. Even Moslem historians speak favourably of the Norman rule in Africa; but it was brought to an early end by the Almohade caliph 'Abd al-Mu'min, who took Mahdiya in 1160. The Almohade empire soon began to decay, and in 1336 Abu Zakaríyá, prince of Tunis, was able to proclaim himself independent and found a dynasty, which subsisted till the advent of the Turks. The Hafsites (so called from Abú Hafs, the ancestor of Abu Zakaríyá, a Berber chieftain who had been one of the intimate disciples of the Almohade mahdi) assumed the title of Prince of the Faithful, a dignity which was acknowledged even at Mecca, when in the days of Mostanṣir, the second Hafsite, the fall of Baghdad left Islam without a titular head. In its best days the empire of the Hafsites extended from Tlemcen to Tripoli and they received homage from the Merinids of Fez; they held their own against repeated Frankish invasions, of which the most notable were that which cost St Louis of France his life (1270) and that of the duke of Bourbon (1390), when English troops took part in the unsuccessful siege of Mahdiya. They adorned Tunis with mosques, schools, and other institutions, favoured letters, and in general appear to have risen above the usual level of Moslem sovereigns. But their rule was troubled by continual wars and insurrections; the support of the Bedouin Arabs was imperfectly secured by pensions, which formed a heavy burden on the finances of the state;[1] and in later times the dynasty was weakened by family dissensions. Leo Africanus, writing early in the 16th century, gives a favourable picture of the "great city" of Tunis, which had a flourishing manufacture of fine cloth, a prosperous colony of Christian traders, and, including the suburbs, nine or ten thousand hearths; but he speaks also of the decay of once flourishing provincial towns, and especially of agriculture, the greater part of the open country lying waste for fear of the Arab marauders. Taxation was heavy, and the revenue very considerable: Don John of Austria in a report to Philip II. states that the land revenue alone under the last Hafsite was 375,935 ducats, but of this a great part went in pensions to the Arabs.
The conquest of Algiers by the Turks gave a dangerous neighbour to Tunis, and after the death of Mohammed the Hafsite in 1525 a disputed succession supplied Khair al-Dín Barbarossa with a pretext for occupying the city in the name of the sultan of Constantinople. Al-Ḥasan, the son of Mohammed, sought help from the emperor, and was restored in 1535 as a Spanish vassal, by a force which Charles V. commanded in person, while Andrea Doria was admiral of the fleet. But the conquest was far from complete, and was never consolidated. The Spaniards remained at Goletta and made it a strong fortress; but the interior was a prey to anarchy and civil war, until in 1570 'Alí Pasha of Algiers utterly defeated Ḥámid, the son and successor of Ḥasan, and occupied Tunis. In 1573 the Turks again retreated on the approach of Don John, who had dreams of making himself king of Tunis; but this success was not followed up, and in the next year Sultan Selim II. sent a strong expedition, which drove the Spaniards from Tunis and Goletta, and reduced the country to a Turkish province. The civil administration was now placed under a pasha; but in a few years a military revolution transferred the supreme power to a dey elected by the janissaries, who formed the army of occupation. The government of the deys lasted till 1705, but was soon narrowed or overshadowed by the authority of the beys, whose proper function was to manage the tribes and collect tribute. From 1631 to 1702 the office of bey was hereditary in the descendants of Murád, a Corsican renegade, and their rivalry with the deys and internal dissensions kept the country in constant disorder. Ibrahim, the last of the deys (1702-1705), destroyed the house of Murád and absorbed the beyship in his own office; but, when he fell in battle with the Algerians, Ḥosain b. 'Alí, the son of a Greek renegade, was proclaimed sovereign by the troops under the title of "bey," and, being a prince of energy and ability, was able to establish the hereditary sovereignty, which has lasted without change of dynasty to the present time.
Frequent wars with Algiers, which need not detain us, form the chief incidents in the internal history of Tunis under the beys. Under deys and beys alike Tunis was essentially a pirate state. Occasional acts of chastisement, of which the bombardment of Porto Farina by Blake in 1655 was the most notable, and repeated treaties, extorted by European powers, checked from time to time, but never put an end to, the habitual piracies, on which indeed the public revenue of Tunis was mainly dependent. The powers were generally less concerned for the captives than for the acquisition of trading privileges, and the beys took advantage of the commercial rivalry of England and France to play off the one power against the other. The release of all Christian slaves was not effected till after the bombardment of Algiers; and the definite abandonment of piracy may be dated from the presentation to the bey in 1819 of a collective note of the powers assembled at Aix-la-Chapelle. The Government had not elasticity enough to adapt itself to so profound a change in its ancient traditions; the finances became more and more hopelessly embarrassed, in spite of ruinous taxation; and attempts at European innovations in the court and army made matters only worse, so long as no attempt was made to improve the internal condition of the country. In the third quarter of the 19th century not more than a tenth part of the fertile land was under cultivation, and the yearly charge on the public debt exceeded the whole annual revenue. In these circumstances only the rivalry of the European powers that had interests in Tunis protracted from year to year the inevitable revolution. The French had long regarded the dominions of the bey as their natural inheritance, and in 1881, having got a grievance against the bey in a commercial transaction of the French African Society, with the execution of which he had interfered (the affair of the Enfida estate), a French force crossed the Algerian frontier under pretext of chastising the independent Kroumir or Khomair tribes in the north-east of the regency, and, quickly dropping the mask, advanced on the capital and compelled the bey to accept the French protectorate. The actual conquest of the country was not effected without a serious struggle with Moslem fanaticism; but all Tunis was brought completely under French jurisdiction and administration, supported by military posts at every important point. The power of the bey is null and his dignity merely nominal,—a fact acknowledged by Great Britain by the surrender in 1883 of Her Majesty's consular jurisdiction in the regency.
Literature.—Of Arabic sources accessible in translations the geographical works of Ya'kubí (Descriptio al Magribi, by De Goeje, Leyden, 1860), Al-Bakrí (Descr. de l'Afrique septentr. by De Slane, Paris, 1859; Arabic text, ibid., 1857), and Edrísí (Descr. de l'Afrique, &c., by Dozy and De Goeje, Leyden, 1866) belong to the 10th, llth, and 12th centuries respectively; the history of Ibn Khaldún (Hist. des Berbères, by De Slane, 4 vols., Algiers, 1852-56) includes the earlier Hafsites, that of Al-Kairawání (Hist. de l'Afrique, by Pellissier and Rémusat, Paris, 1845, in Expl. Scient. de l'Algérie, vol. vii.; Arabic text, Tunis, 1286 a.h.) deals especially with Tunis, and goes down to 1681. The geography of Tunis is treated by E. Pellissier (Explor. Scient. de l'Algérie, vol. xvi., Paris, 1853), C. Tissot (Géog. Comparée de la Province Romaine d'Afrique, vol. i., Paris, 1884), and Piesse (Itinéraire de l'Algérie, &c., new ed., Paris, 1887), and in Murray's Handbook, by Sir R. Playfair (1887), who has also published Travels in the Footsteps of Bruce, in Alg. and Tunis (London, 1887). A French survey is in progress, and some of the maps are published. For the modern history, see Rousseau, Annales Tunisiennes (Algiers, 1864), and Broadley, Tunis Past and Present (Edinburgh, 1882); for the archaeology, Davis, Carthage and her Remains (London, 1860), Guérin, Voyage Archéologique (1862), and D'Herisson, Mission Archéol. en Tunisie (Paris, 1881). The excellent description of Africa by Leo Africanus is in Ramusio and Purchas. Shaw's Travels (1738) may still be consulted. Of other books of travels Maltzan's Reise (Leipsic, 1870) deserves mention.
- ↑ In the 13th and 14th centuries the Hafsites also paid tribute to Sicily for the freedom of the sea and the right to import Sicilian corn,—a clear proof of the decline of Tunisian agriculture.
