page_title: History of the Jews in Tunisia
section_title: Cultural heyday of Tunisian Jews.
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Jews in Tunisia / Middle Ages / Cultural heyday of Tunisian Jews.
caption_attribution_description: English: Letter of Chushiel, from Solomon Schechter (1899) in Jewish Quarterly Review (11:644-650) Français&#160;: Lettre de Houshiel ben Elhanan publiée en 1899 par Solomon Schechter dans la Jewish Quarterly Review (11:644-650)
context_page_description: The history of the Jews in Tunisia extends over nearly two thousand years and goes back to the Punic era. The Jewish community in Tunisia is no doubt older, grew up following successive waves of immigration and proselytism before its development was hampered by anti-Jewish measures in the Byzantine Empire. The community formerly used its own dialect of Arabic. After the Muslim conquest of Tunisia, Tunisian Judaism went through periods of relative freedom or even cultural apogee to times of more marked discrimination. The arrival of Jews expelled from the Iberian peninsula, often through Livorno, greatly altered the country. Its economic, social and cultural situation has improved markedly with the advent of the French protectorate before being compromised during the Second World War, with the occupation of the country by the Axis. The creation of Israel in 1948 provoked a widespread anti-Zionist reaction in the Arab world, to which was added nationalist agitation, nationalization of enterprises, Arabization of education and part of the administration.
context_section_description: The living conditions of the Jews were relatively favorable during the reign of the Aghlabids and then Fatimids dynasties. As evidenced by the archives of the Cairo Geniza, composed between 800 and 115041, the dhimma is practically limited to the jizya. Jews worked in the service of the dynasty, as treasurers, doctors or tax collectors but their situation remained precarious. Kairouan, now the capital of the Aghlabids, was the seat of the most important community in the territory, attracting migrants from Umayyad, Italy and the Abbasid Empire. This community would become one of the major poles of Judaism between the ninth and eleventh centuries, both economically, culturally and intellectually, ensuring, through correspondence with the Talmudic Academies in Babylonia, Lessons learned from Spain.
  Many major figures of Judaism are associated with the city.  Among them is Isaac Israeli ben Solomon, a private doctor of the Aghlabide Ziadet Allah III and then of the Fatimids Abdullah al-Mahdi Billah and Al-Qa'im bi-Amr Allah and author of various medical treatises in Arabic which would enrich the medieval medicine through their translation by Constantine the African, adapting the teachings of the Alexandrian school to the Jewish dogma. Dunash ibn Tamim, is the author (or final editor) whose discipline is a philosophical commentary on the Sefer Yetzirah, where he developed conceptions close to his master's thought. Another disciple, Ishaq ibn Imran is considered the founder of the philosophical and medical school of Ifriqiya. Jacob ben Nissim ibn Shahin, rector of the Center of Studies at the end of the tenth century, is the official representative of the Talmudic academies of Babylonia, acting as intermediaries between them and his own community. His successor Chushiel ben Elchanan, originally from Bari, developed the simultaneous study of the Talmud of Babylon and the Jerusalem Talmud.  His son and disciple Chananel ben Chushiel was one of the major commentators of the Talmud in the Middle Ages. After his death, his work was continued by another disciple of his father whom Ignác Goldziher calls Jewish {Muʿtazila|mutazilite}: Nissim ben Jacob, the only one among the sages of Kairouan to bear the title of Gaon, also wrote an important commentary on the Talmud and the Hibbour yafe mehayeshoua, which is perhaps the first tales collection in Jewish literature.
  On the political level, the community emancipated itself from the exile of Baghdad at the beginning of the eleventh century and acquired its first secular chief. Each community was placed under the authority of a council of notables headed by a chief (naggid) who, through the faithful, disposes of the resources necessary for the proper functioning of the various institutions: worship, schools, a tribunal headed by the rabbi- Judge (dayan), etc.  The maggid of Kairouan undoubtedly had the ascendancy over those of the communities of smaller size.
  The Jews participate greatly in the exchanges with Al-Andalus, Egypt and the Middle East. Grouped in separate quarters (although many Jews settled in the Muslim districts of Kairouan during the Fatimid period), they had house of prayer, schools and a court.
  The port cities of Mahdia, Sousse, Sfax and Gabès saw a steady influx of Jewish immigrants from the Levant to the end of the eleventh century, and their communities participated in these economic and intellectual exchanges. Monopolizing the goldsmiths' and jewelers' crafts, they also worked in the textile industry, as tailors, tanners and shoemakers, while the smallest rural communities practiced agriculture (saffron, henna, vine, etc.) or breeding of nomadic animals.
caption: Letter from Houshiel ben Elhanan reproduced in the ‘’’Jewish Quarterly Review’’’ (1899)
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