Tunisians ( Tūnisiyyūn, Twensa) are the citizens and nationals of Tunisia in North Africa, who speak Tunisian Arabic and share a common Tunisian culture and identity. In addition, a Tunisian diaspora has been established with modern migration, particularly in Western Europe, namely France, Italy and Germany.
History
Africa and Ifriqiya
Phoenicians settled Tunisia during the 12th to the 2nd century BC and founded ancient Carthage. The migrants brought with them their culture and language that progressively spread from Tunisia's coastal areas to the rest of the coastal areas of Northwest Africa, the Iberian Peninsula and the Mediterranean islands. From the eighth century BC, most of Tunisians were Punics. When Carthage fell in 146 BC to the Romans the coastal population was mainly Punic, but that influence decreased away from the coast. From the Roman period until the Islamic conquest, Latins, Greeks and Numidian people further influenced the Tunisians, which prior to the modern era, Tunisians were known as Afāriqah, from the ancient name of Tunisia, Ifriqiya or Africa in the antiquity, which gave the present-day name of the continent Africa.
From the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb in 673, many Arabs settled with Arab tribes in Tunisia which was called Ifriqiya, in places like Kairouan which soon became one of the purely Arab settlements in the Umayyad Caliphate. This accelerated in the 11th century with the large migrations of the Arab tribes of Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym to Ifriqiya and the rest of the Maghreb. Some Persians and other Middle-Eastern populations also settled in Ifriqiya, which had its name from the ancient name, the Roman province of Africa. In the early-11th century, Normans from the Kingdom of Sicily took over Ifriqiya and founded the Kingdom of Africa, which lasted from 1135 to 1160. Muslim refugees from Sicily and Malta were encouraged by the Normans to settle in Tunisia during this period.
After the Reconquista and expulsion of non-Christians and Moriscos from Spain, many Spanish Muslims and Jews also arrived. According to Matthew Carr, "As many as eighty thousand Moriscos settled in Tunisia, most of them in and around the capital, Tunis, which still contains a quarter known as Zuqaq al-Andalus, or Andalusia Alley."
Tunisians
During the 17th to the 19th centuries, Ifriqiya came under Spanish, then Ottoman rule and hosted Morisco then Italian immigrants from 1609. Tunis was officially integrated into the Ottoman Empire as the Eyalet of Tunis (province), eventually including all of the Maghreb except Morocco.
Under the Ottoman Empire, the boundaries of the territory inhabited by Tunisians contracted; Ifriqiya lost territory to the west (Constantine) and to the east (Tripoli). In the 19th century, the rulers of Tunisia became aware of the ongoing efforts at political and social reform in the Ottoman capital. The Bey of Tunis then, by his own lights but informed by the Turkish example, attempted to effect a modernizing reform of institutions and the economy. Tunisian international debt grew unmanageable. This was the reason or pretext for French forces to establish a Protectorate in 1881.
A remnant of the centuries of Turkish rule is the presence of a population of Turkish origin, historically the male descendants were referred to as the Kouloughlis.
French protectorate
Republic and Revolution
Independence from France was achieved on March 20, 1956. The State was established as a constitutional monarchy with the Bey of Tunis, Muhammad VIII al-Amin Bey, as the king of Tunisia. In 1957, the Prime Minister Habib Bourguiba abolished the monarchy and firmly established his Neo Destour (New Constitution) party. In the 1970s the economy of Tunisia expanded at a very healthy rate. Oil was discovered and tourism continued. City and countryside populations drew roughly equal in number. Yet agricultural problems and urban unemployment led to increased migration to Europe.
The 84-year-old President Bourguiba was overthrown and replaced by Ben Ali his Prime Minister on November 7, 1987. However, the Ben Ali regime came to an end 23 years later on January 14, 2011, in the events of the Tunisian Revolution, following nationwide demonstrations precipitated by high unemployment, food inflation, corruption, a lack of political freedoms like freedom of speech and poor living conditions.