Tunisia, flag ofcountry of North Africa. Tunisia's accessible Mediterranean Sea coastline and strategic location have attracted conquerors and visitors throughout the ages, and its ready access to the Sahara has brought its people into contact with the inhabitants of the African interior.

According to Greek legend, Dido, a princess of Tyre, was the first outsider to settle among the native tribes of what is now Tunisia when she founded the city of Carthage in the 9th century BC. Although the story is certainly apocryphal, Carthage nonetheless grew into one of the great cities and preeminent powers of antiquity, and its colonies and entrepôts were scattered throughout the western Mediterranean region. Carthage fought a series of wars with its rival, Rome (Roman Republic and Empire). Rome prevailed in the mid-2nd century BC, razed Carthage, and ruled the region for the following 500 years. In the 7th century Arab conquerors converted the native Berber (Amazigh) population of North Africa to Islam.

…we shared the ground floor of a shapeless old building, a sort of two-room apartment. The kitchen, half of it roofed over and the rest an open courtyard, was a long vertical passage toward the light. But before reaching this square of pure blue sky, it received, from a multitude of windows, all the smoke, the smells, and the gossip of our neighbours. At night, each locked himself in his room, but in the morning, life was always communal….

Tunisia is bounded by Algeria to the west and southwest, by Libya to the southeast, and by the Mediterranean Sea to the east and north.

Virtually the entire population is Muslim, and Islam (Islām), in its Mālikī Sunni (Sunnite) form, is the state religion. Christian and Jewish minorities have declined substantially in number since independence; non-Muslims numbered more than 300,000 in 1956 but have since been reduced to only about 50,000. Official openness to religious diversity permits both communities to practice their faiths.

Some two-thirds of Tunisia is suitable for farming, and more than one-fifth of the working population is employed in agriculture, yet agricultural production is still insufficient to meet the needs of Tunisia's growing population and contributes only about one-eighth of gross domestic product (GDP). Cereals, in particular, must be imported, as must meat and dairy products; sheep, goats, and cattle are raised but not in numbers sufficient to supply domestic demand. The low crop yields are in part caused by the division of the property into small, inefficient plots and also by the predominance of outdated farming methods. Climatic variations—periodic droughts and sporadic rainfall—often jeopardize harvests. Much of the country's most recent agricultural investment since the late 20th century has focused on irrigation schemes, well and dam construction, and programs to prevent soil erosion and desertification. Reforms have also freed up agricultural prices by removing artificial price supports. Tunisia nonetheless exports a fair amount of agricultural produce. The principal commodities are citrus fruits, olive oil, grapes, tomatoes, melons, figs, and dates.

petroleum was discovered in the extreme south in 1964 at Al-Burmah (El-Borma) field. Although Tunisia's deposits are much smaller than those of its larger neighbours, they are significant to the economy. As production fell in the 1980s, the government began developing several of the country's smaller oil fields. Nearly a dozen deposits were being exploited by the early 1990s, the largest fields being Al-Burmah and Al-Dūlāb in southern Tunisia near the Algerian border, Sīdī al-Yatāʾim (Sidi el-Itayem) north of Sfax, the Ashtart field in the Gulf of Gabes (Gabes, Gulf of), and the Tazarka (Tāzirkah) field in the Gulf of Hammamet.

Traditional urban housing in Tunisia—found in the old city centres, or medinas—consisted of tightly arranged structures grouped within town walls and interlaced by a network of narrow walkways and passages. Building exteriors generally were whitewashed, with little decoration, while interiors were ornate and comfortable. Each neighbourhood (Arabic: ḥārah) was restricted to a particular ethnic or religious group, and it was only with the beginning of the protectorate that these city centres began to give way to European-style city plans. Following independence, the government began to encourage the restoration of the medinas, and architects have more recently sought to mitigate Western influence in favour of traditional architectural patterns.

Growth in the number of schools, students, and teachers has created a serious financial strain, as education has constituted one of the largest shares of the annual national budget. Students have had no alternative other than turning to private funding to supplement state education allowances, and they increasingly have been denied the choice of subject area or school. Given the difficulties of finding enough job opportunities for qualified people, more emphasis has been placed on technical, vocational, teacher, and agricultural training. The University of Tunis (founded 1960) is the country's major institution of higher education. Several more universities have opened since the 1980s, and there are also religious schools.

The National Archives (1874) and the National Library (1885), both located in Tunis, contain large collections of documents, including books and manuscripts, the latter in Arabic and Ottoman Turkish. There are also a number of museums located throughout the country, the most notable of which is probably the Bardo National Museum (1888). This institution, located in the former palace of the Ottoman bey in the medina, or old quarter, of Tunis, houses collections of fine works dating from the Carthaginian, Roman, and Islamic periods. Among its holdings is the largest—and possibly the finest—collection of Roman mosaics in the world. The Carthage Museum (1964), a repository of numerous antiquities from the ancient and medieval periods, is located near the site of the ancient city and in close proximity to several important excavations. Several of these culturally significant locations in Tunisia have been designated UNESCO World Heritage sites (World Heritage site), including Carthage and the medina of Tunis in 1979 and the historic city of Kairouan and the medina of Sousse in 1988.

Tunisia was called Ifrīqiyyah in the early centuries of the Islamic period. That name, in turn, comes from the Roman word for Africa and the name also given by the Romans to their first African colony following the Punic Wars against the Carthaginians in 264–146 BC. Following the decline of Rome, the region was ruled briefly by the Vandals (Vandal) and then the Byzantine Empire before being conquered by the Arabs in AD 647. Although the Arabs initially unified North Africa, by 1230 a separate Tunisian dynasty had been established by the Ḥafṣids (Ḥafṣid dynasty). Muslim Andalusians migrated to the area after having been forced out of Spain during the Reconquista, particularly following the defeat of the Muslim kingdom of Granada in 1492. By 1574, Tunisia was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire, whose control of the region, always tenuous, had all but dissolved by the 19th century.

Aḥmad Bey, who ruled from 1837 to 1855, was an avowed modernizer and reformer. With the help of Western advisers (mainly French), he created a modern army and navy and related industries. Conscription was also introduced, to the great dismay of the peasantry. More acceptable were Aḥmad's steps to integrate Arabic-speaking native Tunisians fully into the government, which had long been dominated by Mamlūks (military slaves) and Turks. Aḥmad abolished slavery and took other modernizing steps intended to bring Tunisia more in line with Europe, but he also exposed his country to Europe's infinitely greater economic and political power. His reforms negatively affected the already stagnant economy, which led to greater debt, higher taxes, and increased unrest in the countryside.

General texts are Harold D. Nelson (ed.), Tunisia: A Country Study, 3rd ed. (1988); Russell A. Stone and John Simmons (eds.), Change in Tunisia: Studies in the Social Sciences (1976); and Emma C. Murphy, Economic and Political Change in Tunisia: From Bourguiba to Ben Ali (1999). On geography, useful works include Wilfrid Knapp, Tunisia (1970); Ahmed Kassab and Hafedh Séthom, Géographie de la Tunisie: le pays et les hommes (1980); Mohamed Fakhfakh (ed.), Atlas de Tunisie (1979); and Horst Mensching, Tunesien: eine geographische Landeskunde, 3rd rev. ed. (1979). Other specialized volumes include James Allman, Social Mobility, Education, and Development in Tunisia (1979); Ghazi Duwaji, Economic Development in Tunisia (1967); and I. William Zartman (ed.), Tunisia: The Political Economy of Reform (1991). On the Islamist challenge in Tunisia, good articles include I. William Zartman, “The Challenge of Democratic Alternatives in the Maghrib,” in John Ruedy (ed.), Islamism and Secularism in North Africa (1994, reissued 1996). A useful article on political change and reform is L. Anderson, “Political Pacts, Liberalism, and Democracy: The Tunisian National Pact of 1988,” Government and Opposition, 26:244–260 (Spring 1991). Discussions on economic developments are provided by Abdeljabar Bsaies, “Programme d'ajustement structurel et croissance en Tunisie,” Revue tunisienne d'economie, 5:21–84 (1994); and Béchir Chourou, “The Free-Trade Agreement Between Tunisia and the European Union,” The Journal of North African Studies, 3(1):25–56 (Spring 1998).

Kenneth J. Perkins, Tunisia: Crossroads of the Islamic and European Worlds (1986), summarizes history, socioeconomics, and politics from pre-Islamic times to the mid-1980s. L. Carl Brown, The Tunisia of Ahmad Bey, 1837–1855 (1974), studies in detail the beginnings of Westernization. Mezri Bdira, Relations internationales et sous-développement: la Tunisie, 1857–1864 (1978), clarifies the policies of Tunisian leadership during this period. Arnold H. Green, The Tunisian Ulama, 1873–1915 (1978), shows well how the religious institutions fitted into society in this period of transformation. Lucette Valensi, Tunisian Peasants in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (1985; originally published in French, 1977), is a thorough study firmly based on material in Tunisian national archives. Dwight L. Ling, Tunisia: From Protectorate to Republic (1967), provides an overview. Charles A. Micaud, Tunisia: The Politics of Modernization (1964), reviews ideological change during the protectorate and the Neo-Destour Party. Clement Henry Moore, Tunisia Since Independence: The Dynamics of One-Party Government (1965, reprinted 1982), is a thorough political study of Tunisia under Habib Bourguiba. Other political studies include Lisa Anderson, The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya, 1830–1980 (1986); and Norma Salem, Habib Bourguiba, Islam, and the Creation of Tunisia (1984). A very accessible biography of Bourguiba is Derek Hopwood, Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia: The Tragedy of Longevity (1992). Works on politics include Eva Bellin, “Civil Society in Formation: Tunisia,” in Augustus Richard Norton (ed.), Civil Society in the Middle East, vol. 1, pp. 120–147 (1995); I. William Zartman (ed.), Tunisia: The Political Economy of Reform (1991); and Dirk Vandewalle, “Ben Ali's New Era: Pluralism and Economic Privatization in Tunisia,” in Henri J. Barkey (ed.), The Politics of Economic Reform in the Middle East (1992). Information on the rise and challenge of Islamists in Tunisia can be found in Franƈois Burgat and William Dowell, The Islamic Movement in North Africa, 2nd ed. (1997, originally published in French); and Susan E. Waltz, Human Rights and Reform: Changing the Face of North African Politics (1995).Emma Murphy