Tunis, May 2019 – Trip organised by the SHJT

A four-day stay in Tunis organised by our Society, in which 25 of our members took part, took place from Monday 27 May to Thursday 30 May 2019.

This trip had a twofold aim: to take part in a research seminar with Tunisian historians and students, and to discover or revisit certain historic places and sites with guidance that made it possible to better situate them in urban history and in their social function.

On Monday 27 May, shortly after our arrival and check-in at the hotel, we visited two emblematic memorial sites of Tunisian Judaism: the Great Synagogue on Avenue de la Liberté (formerly Avenue de Paris) and the Borgel necropolis, a once suburban site now fully integrated into the city of Tunis. These two visits were special moments of contemplation and prayer for some of us, but they also made it possible to situate the construction and development of these sites within the history of the community and to reflect on the intentions of their founders. We continued on to La Marsa, where we had the good fortune to receive historical explanations about the town from Abdelkrim Allagui, professor emeritus at the Faculty of Letters of Tunis, who showed us around the Al Abdalliya Palace, a palace built in 1500 by the Hafsid sovereign Abu Abdallah Mohamed, recently restored, and the sole surviving example of civil architecture from the Hafsid period.

The seminar took place on Tuesday 28 May. It was organised by three parties: the Institut de Recherche sur le Maghreb Contemporain (IRMC) (a French research centre in the humanities and social sciences under the CNRS and the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, headquartered in Tunis and one of the 27 French research centres located abroad), the Heritage Laboratory of the University of Manouba, and our Society. We were very warmly welcomed for our seminar on the premises of the IRMC by its director, a friend of our Society, and her team. Before a large audience of Tunisian researchers and students, the six speakers addressed various topics in the History of the Jews of Tunisia (Dean Kazdaghli, Afef Mbarek, Faten Bouchrara, Thierry Samama, Claire Rubinstein and Claude Nataf); interesting exchanges took place among the participants and research perspectives emerged.

The afternoon was devoted to Carthage where a very interesting visit, led by a specialist in ancient history from the University of Manouba, took us from Byrsa Hill and the Punic remains to the sites of the Tophet of Salammbô, the Punic Ports and the Roman Cisterns.

A “Ramadan” evening, during which we received the people who had made our trip possible as well as professors and students from Manouba, brought us together at our hotel. Mr René Trabelsi, Minister of Tourism in the Tunisian government, honoured us with his presence, and we discussed our future work and our Society’s next conference in Paris.

On Wednesday 29 May, we visited the Villa Erlanger and then Dar El Annabi in Sidi Bou Saïd, with lunch and a sightseeing walk through the village. We were then the guests of Mr Olivier Poivre d’Arvor, Ambassador of France, at the Residence in La Marsa, Dar El Kamila, where a guided tour of the gardens and reception rooms was organised for us.

In the evening, after dinner in a traditional restaurant, we visited palaces and other historic places in the Medina, illuminated for the Ramadan festivities, under the guidance of Mohamed Alouani, member of the Association for the Safeguarding of the Medina and president of the professional association for cultural tourism, who kindly organised a fascinating tour of the European city for the following morning, Thursday 30 May.

A final lunch brought us together in a restaurant housed in a former colonial house in the Belvédère district, before our departure for the airport.

In conclusion, this Trip to Tunis was a true discovery and took place in a friendly atmosphere that we all appreciated.

It also fostered high-quality studies and exchanges between Tunisian and French students and historians, thus paving the way for our next international conference, to be held in Paris on:

“The Jews of the Maghreb protectorates and France from the late eighteenth century to the present day”.