Tunisia

The northernmost point of Africa is a headland near Bizerte in Tunisia, and from there the coast bends east and south past Cap Bon and the gulf of Gabès to the flat island of Djerba. Cork oaks cover the Kroumirie hills in the north-west, and the Medjerda waters a wheat plain. South of the Dorsal range, olive groves give way to steppe, then to the salt crust of Chott el Djerid and the Saharan dunes.

Phoenicians from Tyre founded Carthage, by tradition in 814 BC, and it grew into a sea power that sent Hannibal over the Alps in 218 BC. Rome razed the city in 146 BC and made the province a granary; the amphitheatre at El Jem survives from that era. Arabs founded Kairouan in the seventh century; Aghlabid, Fatimid and Hafsid rulers followed, then Ottoman governors and the Husainid beys. France imposed a protectorate in 1881, and Tunisia won independence in March 1956 under Habib Bourguiba.

Islam is the faith of nearly all Tunisians, yet Djerba keeps an ancient Jewish community whose El Ghriba synagogue draws pilgrims each spring. Ibn Khaldun, the fourteenth-century historian, was born in Tunis. Couscous, fired up with harissa, anchors family meals, and brik, a thin pastry folded round an egg and fried, is street food. Olive oil from around Sfax, dates from the oases of Tozeur, phosphates from the Gafsa basin, beach resorts and factories making car wiring for European carmakers carry the economy.