page_title: History of the Jews in Tunisia
section_title: European Influences
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Jews in Tunisia / Aborted reforms of the nineteenth century / European Influences
caption_attribution_description: Ahmed I Bey (Bey of Tunis, Tunisia)
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 inclusion of Jews in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen on September 27, 1791, and the Napoleonic decrees of 1808 aroused a certain sympathy for France among the Jews of Tunisia who were all subjects of the Bey. Thus, in 1809, the Spanish authorities reported that "the Jews are the most relentless partisans of Napoleon". It was even reported that some Jews, including the Granas, wore at that time a tricolor cockade, an act severely repressed by Hammuda ibn Ali, which refuses any attempt by France to take under its protection its Jewish subjects originating from the newly conquered by Napoleon Tuscany. The Article 2 of the Treaty of July 10, 1822, signed with the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, fixes the duration of the stay of the Granas in Tunisia at two years; they also passed under the sovereignty of the bey and were granted the same status as the Twansa.
  At the same time, while Tunisia was gradually opening up to European influences and also undergoing its pressure, the sovereign Ahmed Bey the First inaugurated a policy of reforms. By virtue of an act correcting the Tunisian-Tuscan Treaty of 1822, signed on November 2, 1846, the Granas established in Tunisia after the treaty or those who came to settle there, obtained the right to retain their status as Tuscans without any time limit, which is not the case with the Granas who arrived before 1822. This provision encouraged many Granas of Italian origin to emigrate to Tunisia, where they constituted a foreign minority – 90 persons in 1848, reinforced by a few French and British Jews the protection of the Consul of Tuscany and settled in the Franc district of Tunis unlike the former Granas settled in the Hara; Those who arrived after the Italian unification also benefited from the application of this provision.
caption: Portrait of Ahmad I ibn Mustafa
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