Tunisia tourist information

Tunisia is a country situated on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa. It is the easternmost and smallest of the nations situated along the Atlas mountain range, bordering Algeria, to the west, and Libya to the south east. Forty-five percent of the country is composed of the Sahara desert, with much of the remainder consisting of particularly fertile soil, with easily accessible coasts. Both played a prominent role in ancient times, first with the famous Phoenician city of Carthage, and later, as the Africa Province, which became known as the bread basket of the Roman Empire. It is thought that the name Tunis originated from Berber, meaning either a geographical promontory, or, "to spend the night."

Places to go in Tunisia ...

Aghir Ain Draham Bir El Bey Carthage Djerba Douz El Kantaoui Ezzahra Gammarth Hammamet Jarjis Kebili La Marsa Mahdia Midoun Monastir Nefta Sfax Soliman Sousse Tabarka Tataouine Tozeur Tunis Zarzis

Tunisia is in northern Africa, between the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara Desert and bordered by Algeria in the west and Libya in the south-east. Much of the land is semi-arid and desert. There are mountains in the north. The climate is temperate in the north, with mild, rainy winters and hot, dry summers. The desert is in the south.

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Cuisine ^*

Tunisian cuisine is a blend of European, Oriental and desert dweller's culinary traditions. Its distinctive spicy fieriness comes from neighbouring Mediterranean countries and the many civilizations who have ruled Tunisian land: Phoenician, Roman, Arab, Turkish, French, and the native Berber people. Many of the cooking styles and utensils began to take shape when the ancient tribes were nomads. Nomadic people were limited in their cooking by what locally made pots and pans they could carry with them. A tagine is really the name of a conical-lidded pot, although today the same word is applied to what is cooked in it.

Like all countries in the Mediterranean basin, Tunisia offers a "sun cuisine," based mainly on olive oil, spices, tomatoes, seafood (a wide range of fish) and meat from rearing (lamb).

Ingredients
Unlike other North African cuisine, Tunisian food is spicy hot. A popular condiment and ingredient which is used extensively Tunisian cooking, harissa is a hot red pepper sauce made of red chili peppers and garlic, flavoured with coriander, cumin, olive oil and often tomatoes. There is an old wife's tale that says a husband can judge his wife's affections by the amount of hot peppers she uses when preparing his food.

If the food becomes bland then a man may believe that his wife no longer loves him. However when the food is prepared for guests the hot peppers are often toned down to suit the possibly more delicate palate of the visitor. Like harissa or chili peppers, the tomato is also an ingredient which cannot be separated from the cuisine of Tunisia. Tuna, eggs, olives and various varieties of pasta, cereals, herbs and spices are also ingredients which are featured prominently in Tunisian cooking.

Tabil, prounced "table," is a word in Tunisian Arabic meaning "seasoning " and refers to a particular Tunisian spice mix, although earlier it meant ground coriander. Paula Wolfert makes the plausible claim that tabil is one of the spice mixes brought to Tunisia by Muslims expelled from Andalusia in 1492 after the fall of Granada. Today tabil, closely associated with the cooking of Tunisia, features garlic, cayenne pepper, caraway and coriander seeds pounded in a mortar and then dried in the sun and is often used in cooking beef or veal.

Thanks to its long coastline and numerous fishing ports, Tunisia can serve abundant, varied and exceptionally fresh supply of fish in its restaurants. Many diners will be content to have their fish simply grilled and served filleted or sliced with lemon juice and a little olive oil. Fish can also be baked, fried in olive oil, stuffed, seasoned with cumin (kamoun). Squid, cuttle fish, and octopus are often served in hot crispy batter with slices of lemon, as a cooked salad or stuffed and served with couscous.

Main dishes
Couscous is the national dish of Tunisia and can be prepared in many ways. It is cooked in a special kind of double boiler called a kiskas in Arabic or couscoussiere in French. Meat and vegetables are boiled in the lower half. The top half has holes in the bottom through which the steam rises to cook the grain which is put in this part. Cooked this way the grain acquires the flavour of whatever is below. The usual grain is semolina. To serve, the grain is piled in the middle of a dish, and the meat and vegetables put on top. A sauce can be then poured over before serving.

Like in the rest of North Africa, couscous is served on all occasions. It is traditionally eaten with lamb, the semolina must be very fine, and the vegetables (carrots, little white cabbages, turnips, chick peas) only lightly cooked. Depending on the season, the vegetables change: there may also be cardoons, cold broad beans, or pumpkin. Unlike Moroccan tajines, a tajine in Tunisia usually refers to a kind of "quiche" made from beaten eggs and grated cheese consisting of meat and/or various vegetable fillings, prepared like a large cake and cooked in the oven.

The most sought-after seafood speciality is poisson complet: the fish is prepared, fried, grilled or sauteed, accompanied by potato chips and either normal or spicy tastira, depending on the kind of peppers used in the dish. The peppers are grilled with a little tomato, a lot of onion and a little garlic, all of which is finely chopped and served with a poached egg.

Tunisian foods and recipes

Assida Zgougou - a sweet pudding of ground pine seeds topped by a vanilla cream and decorated with grated nuts.
Baklava - layers of whisper thin pastry interspersed with ground pine nuts, almonds, hazelnuts and pistachios, bathed in golden butter, baked and dipped in a honey syrup.
Balbaloni - fried sweet donut-like cake served with sugar.
Berber Lamb - Lamb cooked with potatos and carrots in a clay pot.
Bouza - rich and sticky sorghum puree.
Brik - tiny parcels of minced lamb, beef, or vegetables and an egg wrapped in thin pastry and deep fried.
Chakchouka - a vegetarian ragout similar to ratatouille with chickpeas, tomatoes, peppers, garlic and onions served with a poached egg.
Chorba - a seasoned broth, with pasta, meatballs, fish, etc.
Felfel mahchi - sweet peppers stuffed with meat, usually lamb, and served with harissa sauce.
Fricasse - small fried sandwich with tuna, harissa, olives and olive oil.
Guenaoia - lamb or beef stew with chillies, okra, sweet peppers and coriander.
Houria - cooked carrot salad.
Lablabi - rich garlicky soup made with chickpeas.
Langues d'oiseaux or "birds' tongues", a type of soup pasta shaped like rice grains.
Khobz Tabouna - traditional oven baked bread.
Koucha - shoulder of lamb cooked with turmeric and cayenne pepper.
Makroud - semolina cake stuffed with dates, cinnamon and grated orange peel.
Masfouf - sweetened couscous, the Tunisian version of the Moroccan seffa.
Marqa - Slow-cooked stews of meat with tomatoes and olives, somewhat similar in concept to the Moroccan tajine stews.
Mechouia Salad - an hors d'oeuvre of grilled sweet peppers, tomatoes and onions mixed with oil lemon, tuna fish and hard-boiled eggs.
Merguez - small spicy sausages.
Mhalbya - cake made with rice, nuts and geranium water.
Mloukhia - A beef or lamb stew with bay leaves, the name is from the green herb used, which produces a thick gravy that has a mucilaginous (somewhat "slimy") texture, similar to cooked okra.
Noicer pasta - very thin, small squares of pasta made with semolina and all-purpose flour, flavoured with Tunisian Bharat, a blend of ground cinnamon and dried rosebuds.
Ojja - scrambled egg dish made of tomatoes and mild green chilies supplemented with various meats and harissa.
Osbane - pieces of animal gut stuffed with meat and offal, a specialty from Monastir.
Tunisian Salad - diced cucumber, peppers, tomatoes, onions, olives, and apples, seasoned with olive oil and tuna. Analogous to the French Nicoise salad and Greek salad.
Samsa - layers of thin pastry alternated with layers of ground roast almonds, and sesame seeds, baked in lemon and rosewater syrup.
Zitounia - ragout of veal or other meats simmered in a tomato sauce and onions, flavoured with olives.
Torshi - turnips marinated with lime juice.
Yo-yo - donuts made with orange juice, deep fried then dipped in honey syrup.

History ^*

At the beginning of recorded history, Tunisia was inhabited by Berber tribes. Its coast was settled by Phoenicians starting as early as the 10th century BC. In the 6th century BC, Carthage rose to power and eventually became the dominant power in the Mediterranean after a series of wars with Greece.

Carthage was founded in the 8th Century B.C. by settlers from Tyre, now in modern day Lebanon, and the settlers of Carthage brought their culture and religion from the Phoenician and Canaanite legacy. Legend says that the Queen Dido founded the city, and this is retold in the Roman Epic Aeneid.

The people of Carthage worshiped a pantheon of Middle Eastern Gods including Baal and Tanit. Tanit's symbol, a simple female figure in long dress and extended arms, is a popular icon on ancient sites. The founders of Carthage also established a Tophet which was altered in Roman times.

Though the Romans referred to the new empire growing in the city of Carthage as Punic or Phoenician the empire built around Carthage was a distinct independent political entity from the other Phoenician settlements in the Western Mediterranean.

During a series of wars with Rome, a Carthaginian invasion of Italy led by Hannibal during the Second Punic War nearly crippled the rise of the Roman Empire.

Carthage was eventually conquered by Rome in the 2nd century BC, a turning point which meant that the civilization of the ancient Mediterranean would become influenced mainly by European instead of African cultures. After the Roman conquest, the region became one of the granaries of Rome. It was conquered by the Vandals in the 5th century AD and was retaken by Byzantines in the 6th century, during the rule of Justinian by his commander Belisarius.

In the 7th century it was conquered by Arab Muslims, who founded Al Qayrawan. Successive Muslim dynasties ruled, interrupted by Berber rebellions. The reigns of the Aghlabids (9th century) and of the Zirids (from 972), Berber followers of the Fatimids, were especially prosperous. When the Zirids angered the Fatimids in Cairo (1050), the latter sent in the Banu Hilal to ravage Tunisia. The coasts were held briefly by the Normans of Sicily in the 12th century. In 1159, Tunisia was conquered by the Almohad caliphs.

They were succeeded by the Berber Hafsids (c.1230–1574), under whom Tunisia prospered. In the last years of the Hafsids, Spain seized many of the coastal cities, but these were recovered for Islam by the Ottoman Empire. Under its Turkish governors, the Beys, Tunisia attained virtual independence. The Hussein dynasty of Beys, established in 1705, lasted until 1957. In the late 16th Century the coast became a pirate stronghold.

French Imperialism
In the mid-1800's, Tunisia began to weaken as the Bey at that time made several controversial decisions that led to catastrophe. France was already planning to invade Tunisia when the Bey first borrowed large sums of money in an attempt to Westernise. This weakened state facilitated the Algerian raids that occurred thereafter. The Bey was powerless against these raids.

In 1878, a secret deal was made between Great Britain and France that decided the fate of the African country. As long as the French accepted British control of Cyprus, a small island recently given to Great Britain, the British would in turn accept French control of Tunisia. This was good enough for the French who invaded in 1880. Tunisia was made a French protectorate on May 12, 1881.

Tunisia gained independence from France in 1956. The Bey took power, but was deposed by Habib Bourguiba in 1957.

Following independence from France in 1956, President Habib BOURGUIBA established a strict one-party state. He dominated the country for 31 years, repressing Islamic fundamentalism and establishing rights for women unmatched by any other Arab nation. In recent years, Tunisia has taken a moderate, non-aligned stance in its foreign relations. Domestically, it has sought to defuse rising pressure for a more open political society.

Transportation

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Terrain Mountains in north; hot, dry central plain; semiarid south merges into the Sahara.

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Languages Arabic (official and one of the languages of commerce), French (commerce)

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