Chapter III

NINE CENTURIES OF POWER, A.D. 648-A.D. 1535.

The Moslem history of the Regency of Tunis may be conveniently divided into three epochs. The first is the period of Power, the second that of Piracy, and the third that of Decay. It was in A.D. 648 (the year of the Flight 26) that the Arabs, under Abd Allah Ben Saad, marched upon Gabes and Sbitela, then called Suffetula. The great Prefect Gregory raised an army of 120,000 men to oppose their advance, but on the plains of Akouba he lost both his life and his semi-independent dominions. Leaving the conquered province to the care of a chief named Djenaha, Abd Allah Ben Saad returned to Egypt. Sixteen years later Susa surrendered to the army of Abd Allah Ben Zobir, and six years afterwards Okba Ben Nafé el Fehri took Bizerta (properly called Ben Zert), and in A.D. 670 founded the city of Kairwán.[12]

After carrying the arms of Islam to Fezzan and Morocco, Okba was slain ingloriously in the neighbourhood of Biscara. The oasis which surrounds his tomb bears the name of Sidi Okba to the present day. In A.D. 694 Hassan Ben el Noman destroyed Carthage, Tunis, and the neighbouring towns. Both Okba and Hassan were obliged to struggle against hostile movements of the indigenous Berbers. The annals of Tunis at this point merge for many years in those of Kairwán. Abd el Rahman Ben Habib founded in A.D. 745 the dynasty of the Abassides in the West, but half a century later they succumbed before the Aghlabites under the auspices of the Caliph Haroun el Rachid. Eleven princes succeeded Ibrahim Ben el Agheleb, the first of the line, and it was the Aghlabite sovereign Abou Muhamed Ziadat Allah who conquered Sicily, but in A.D. 909 they were overthrown in the revolution headed by Abou Abd Allah the Fathamite, who obtained the sway from Morocco to the district of Barca in Tripoli. The Obeïdite or Fathamite princes assumed the title of Caliph, and made Kairwán and the Mehdia successively the seat of their administration. In A.D. 972 the Caliph El Moëz conquered Egypt, and left the care of his dominions in Western Africa to his lieutenant Ebn Zeïri, who became independent, and transmitted his province to his descendants—the Zeïrites. This dynasty struggled successively with the Elmorabetin or Almoravides and the Almohades, who at length obtained supreme power over nearly all the North African littoral. Several powerful Berber clans seem to have waged war against the Almohades, and so far succeeded in weakening their power that, in A.D. 1228, one of their lieutenants, Abou Zakaria Yahya, son of Abou Muhamed Abd el Wahed _Ben Abou Hafs_, declared himself independent in Tunis, and founded the line of Hafsite sovereigns, who exercised supreme power in Tunis for a little more than three centuries.

It was during the reign of the Hafsite prince Abou Abd Allah Muhamed el Mostancer, that the first French expedition to Tunis took place. In the month of July 1270 the fleet of Louis IX. arrived at Cagliari in Sardinia. At a great council held here the king announced his intention of making an attack on the “country of Tunis,” the primary object of the seventh crusade. The following are the reasons which he gave for his determination:—“Tunis,” said St. Louis, “faces Sicily, and is on the high road to the Holy Land. Tunis can always harass our communications with the East; we must leave no enemies behind us, and we must therefore conquer it first of all.” On the 17th July Louis of France and the princes in his train anchored their ships off Cape Carthage. The landing of the invaders was unopposed, and the king contented himself with entrenching his army amidst the ruins which then covered the site of the great city. “The Arabs,” says M. Pellissier, “encouraged by the inaction of the crusaders, came every day to skirmish in the vicinity of the camp. If one pursued them they fled, but when the French returned to their quarters, tired out by a bootless chase, the Arabs turned round and assailed them with arrows and javelins. This is exactly how they treat us to-day.”[13] M. Pellissier must have contemplated with the eye of prophecy the campaign of 1881. Days and weeks passed by and the sorties of the Arabs became more frequent, the soldiers entreated to be allowed to march against them, but the king insisted on waiting for his brother, Charles of Sicily. Then, as six hundred and eleven years later, came the ravages of dysentery and fever. One after another the great chieftains shared the fate of the common soldiers, and the fair hill overlooking the blue waves and purple mountains of the Gulf of Tunis became, as it had often become before, a vast hecatomb. The king himself was at last struck down with the fell disease. The Arabs sang in chorus the following song of victory:—

“O Frenchmen, Tunis is the sister of Cairo, prepare yourselves for
every kind of misfortunes.

This time the house of Lokman[14] will be a tomb,

And your keepers shall be Monker and Menákir.”[15]

St. Louis died. Charles of Sicily arrived the following day and assumed the command of the army. A series of successes on the part of the French induced the king, El Mostancer, to sue for peace. A treaty was agreed on between the three Christian princes and the “Caliph, Imám, and Commander of the Faithful,” which assured the reciprocal protection of French and Tunisian subjects. Priests and merchants were allowed to establish themselves in Tunis. All prisoners were to be surrendered. The Commander of the Faithful bound himself to pay a war indemnity of 210,000 ounces of gold, and an annual tribute of 24,000 ounces to the King of Sicily. The convention was distasteful in the highest degree both to Christian and Moslem, and the chroniclers tell us that even at that remote period Charles of Sicily was accused of what is now called _tripotages_.

A week after the signing of the treaty Prince Edward of England, afterwards Edward I., arrived. He was justly indignant at all that had been done, and at once set sail for Palestine. The kings of France, Sicily, and Navarre did not embark till October. The “Commander of the Faithful” was afraid his subjects would again come into collision with the Christians, and planned the raising of a mixed corps of soldiers to protect them.[16] Here we have apparently the prototype of General Lambert’s apocryphal legion in 1881. The misfortunes of the crusaders did not end here. A great portion of the fleet was shipwrecked off Trapani, and the avaricious Charles applied all the _flotsam_ and _jetsam_ without any scruple to his own use. Then the King and Queen of Navarre died of fever at Trapani, and three other members of the royal family of France survived their return from the pestilential camp of Carthage only a few months. The Beni Hafs were never more molested by a French invasion.