town in northern Tunisia, located in the hills on the northern edge of the Majardah (Medjerda) valley. Béja is built on the site of ancient Vacca (or Vaga)—a Punic town and Roman colony. It became an important agricultural market beginning in the 1st century BCE and was conquered by the Vandals (Vandal) and rebuilt in part by Justinian (Justinian I) in the 6th century CE. The old section of Béja lies on the flank of a steep hill and is still partly encircled by Byzantine walls. The town was made an administrative and military centre by the Turks in the 16th century. Béja has historically been the centre of the Majardah valley wheat-growing region; an 11th-century Arab geographer thus described the town as “the granary of Tunisia.”