TUNISIA

A short introduction to my trip

I've visited this popular, apparently so accessible destination only once, in the summer 2012. My interest was first of all related to the Islamic past, including Ibn Khaldun, the mosque of Kairouan, etc. In the second place, I was interested in the Tunisian francophone literature, even if I considered it as lesser, not so important as the Moroccan or the Algerian ones. This is why my concern in Tunisia became focused on just one figure: Abdelwahab Meddeb as a writer and as an intellectual. I've published since several papers that mention him, but still a lot remains to be done.
During my trip, I visited the obvious places such as Tunis, with its colonial, modernist Ibn Khaldun Avenue, and the medinah containing the mosque of al-Zaytuna, as well as Kairouan. As I said, the Islamic monuments were at the centre of my interest. Nonetheless, at that time, a certain tension was already in the air for anything that concerned religion. In many places I didn't dare more than a glimpse, hardly daring to breath and certainly not thinking about taking pictures. Al-Zaytuna was one of them. On the other hand, I still had several very friendly encounters with the local religious-intellectual class, as well as with simple people, greatly surprised to see me reading, in bilingual edition, the epistle on Mālikī rite by Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani. Nonetheless, it was not like in Morocco, where I was often treated with veneration, and aided in any endeavour, due to sheer holiness of my condition as a scholar travelling in search of knowledge; this help and respect was usually coming precisely from very religious people. But in Tunisia it was sensibly not the same; except for an old man in Kairouan who led me to the Mosque of the Three Gates in the middle of a scorching afternoon, just for God's sake.
I was more at ease, but at the same time much more isolated from the local life, in sites related to Antiquity; those seemed to have been left entirely for the tourists; although in fact later on the serious trouble arouse in such an apparently neutral place as the Bardo museum. I visited all the obvious attractions such as Carthage, the amphitheatre of El Jam, etc. I also enjoyed the remarkable quality of life, the kind of life created, since the colonial times, for the Europeans. But that wasn't the main aim of my trip.
Shortly speaking, Tunisia is a fascinating country that remains on my agenda for a deeper approach, hopefully in quieter times. I didn't feel there at home, as I often do in Morocco; I was a stranger, a European without any excuse to be there, and I rode my camel in Douz as if we were still somewhere between the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Yes, even if it seems such a popular touristic destination, and worse, a destination of a brainless mass tourism. But that's on the shore, in the hotels near the beach. In the labyrinth of Kairouan's medinah, life remains something else, with very unclear rules across troubled and uneasy times.

Kairouan

The Aghlabid basins

Uqba, the Great Mosque of Kairouan

The mosque of the Three Gates

This inconspicuous little monument hidden in the labyrinth of the madinah is remarkable for its antiquity; it dates from 866 AD. Over its three arched doorways there are inscriptions in the Kufic script, taken from the Sura 33. The minaret decorated in blue was added during a posterior restoration.