Gafsa ( ar, قفصة qafṣah/gafṣah ') is the capital of

Gafsa Governorate Gafsa Governorate ( ') is one of the 24 governorates of Tunisia. It is situated in central Tunisia, bordering Algeria. It covers an area of 7807 km2 and has a population of 337,331 (2014 census).Tunisia. With a population of 120,739, Gafsa is the ninth-largest Tunisian city and it is 335 kilometers from the capital Tunis.

Overview

Vue de la ville de Gafsa, Tunisie juin 2013

Gafsa is the capital of the southwest of Tunisia and is both a historical oasis and home to the mining industry of Tunisia. The city had 111,170 inhabitants at the 2014 census, under the rule of the mayor, Helmi Belhani. The city lies by road southwest of Tunis. Its geographical coordinates are .

History

Ancient history

Excavations at

prehistoric Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of ...

sites in the Gafsa area have yielded artefacts and skeletal remains associated with the Capsian culture. This

Mesolithic The Mesolithic (Greek: μέσος, ''mesos'' 'middle' + λίθος, ''lithos'' 'stone') or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic is often used synonymous ...

civilisation has been radiocarbon dated to between 10,000 and 6,000 BCE. The associated ancient population, known as the ''Snail eaters'', are known for their extensive

midden A midden (also kitchen midden or shell heap) is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, potsherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and ecofact ...

s of snail shells. They are believed to be the

ancestor An ancestor, also known as a forefather, fore-elder or a forebear, is a parent or (recursively) the parent of an antecedent (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent and so forth). ''Ancestor'' is "any person from whom ...

s of the modern

Berbers , image = File:Berber_flag.svg , caption = The Berber ethnic flag , population = 36 million , region1 = Morocco , pop1 = 14 million to 18 million , region2 = Algeria , pop2 ...

. The city was originally called Capsa in Latin. Gafsa lends its Latin name of Capsa to the

Capsian culture. It belonged to

King Jugurtha Jugurtha or Jugurthen (Libyco-Berber ''Yugurten'' or '' Yugarten'', c. 160 – 104 BC) was a king of Numidia. When the Numidian king Micipsa, who had adopted Jugurtha, died in 118 BC, Jugurtha and his two adoptive brothers, Hiempsal and Adh ...

, who deposited his treasures there. It was captured by Gaius Marius in 106 BC and destroyed, later becoming reestablished under the Punic-style magistracy of ''

sufet In several ancient Semitic-speaking cultures and associated historical regions, the shopheṭ or shofeṭ (plural shophṭim or shofeṭim; he, שׁוֹפֵט ''šōfēṭ'', phn, 𐤔𐤐𐤈 ''šōfēṭ'', xpu, 𐤔𐤐𐤈 ''šūfeṭ'', ...

es'' before being granted the status of a Roman colonia.Siméon Vailhé, "Capsa"
in '' Catholic Encyclopedia'' (New York 1908) Capsa was an important city of

Roman Africa Roman Africa may refer to the following areas of Northern Africa which were part of the Imperium Romanum and/or the Western/Byzantine successor empires : ; in the unified Roman empire : * Africa (Roman province), with the great metropolis Cartha ...

near the Fossatum Africae.Trudy Ring, Robert M. Salkin, Sharon La Boda ''International Dictionary of Historic Places: Middle East and Africa'', Volume 4 (Taylor & Francis, 1994) p312. Roman cisterns are still evident in the city ruins. The Vandals conquered the Roman city and ruled it until the death of Genseric (477). The Berbers then occupied it, making it the capital of a Romano-Berber kingdom until subjected to

Byzantium Byzantium () or Byzantion ( grc, Βυζάντιον) was an ancient Greek city in classical antiquity that became known as Constantinople in late antiquity and Istanbul today. The Greek name ''Byzantion'' and its Latinization ''Byzantium'' cont ...

under Justinian I (527–565) and the era of Byzantine North Africa. He made Capsa the capital of the province of Byzacena. The Duke of Byzacena resided there. In 540, the Byzantine governor general

Solomon Solomon (; , ),, ; ar, سُلَيْمَان, ', , ; el, Σολομών, ; la, Salomon also called Jedidiah (Hebrew language, Hebrew: , Modern Hebrew, Modern: , Tiberian Hebrew, Tiberian: ''Yăḏīḏăyāh'', "beloved of Yahweh, Yah"), ...

built a new city wall, naming the city Justiniana Capsa. The Arab army of Uqba ibn Nafi conquered Gafsa in 688, in spite of resistance from the Berbers. After the Arab conquest, Capsa started to lose importance, replaced by

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

-founded Kairouan. Historians such as Camps and Laverde consider Gafsa the place in North Africa where African Romance last survived, until the 13th century, as a spoken language.

Recent history

Phosphate mines were discovered in 1886, and Gafsa today is home to one of the largest mines of phosphate in the world. The travel-book ‘Fountains in the Sand’ (1912) by British author Norman Douglas gives an in-depth account of life and work in Gafsa. In the Second World War, Gafsa suffered heavy bombardment from both the

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

and Italian side and the Allies. Part of its Kasbah was destroyed. On 27 January 1980, a group of dissidents armed and trained by Libya occupied the city to contest the

régime In politics, a regime (also "régime") is the form of government or the set of rules, cultural or social norms, etc. that regulate the operation of a government or institution and its interactions with society. According to Yale professor Juan J ...

Habib Bourguiba Habib Bourguiba (; ar, الحبيب بورقيبة, al-Ḥabīb Būrqībah; 3 August 19036 April 2000) was a Tunisian lawyer, nationalist leader and statesman who led the country from 1956 to 1957 as the prime minister of the Kingdom of T ...

. 48 people were killed in the battles. The Gafsa region has had an active political voice throughout its history, and various events there have shaped its political developments in the various phases of modern Tunisia. In 2008, Gafsa was the center of riots directed against the government of President

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali Zine El Abidine Ben Ali ( ar, زين العابدين بن علي, translit=Zayn al-'Ābidīn bin 'Alī; 3 September 1936 – 19 September 2019), commonly known as Ben Ali ( ar, بن علي) or Ezzine ( ar, الزين), was a Tunisian politician ...

. The government was swift and brutal in its suppression of the uprising, but this movement has since been credited with sowing the first seeds of the Jasmine Revolution that removed

from power three years later, igniting the Arab Spring across much of North Africa and the Middle East. In 2014, a lake suddenly appeared around 25 kilometers from the town. The cause of the lake's formation is currently unknown.

Bishopric

Extant documents give the names of a few of the bishops of Capsa.J. Mesnage, ''L'Afrique chrétienne''
Paris 1912, pp. 69–70Pius Bonifacius Gams
''Series episcoporum Ecclesiae Catholicae''
Leipzig 1931, p. 464Stefano Antonio Morcelli
''Africa christiana''
Volume I, Brescia 1816, pp. 118–119 In the 3rd century, Donatulus took part in the council that Saint Cyprian convoked in Carthage in 256 to discuss the problem of the '' lapsi''. In the 4th century, at the

Council of Carthage (349) The Councils of Carthage were church synods held during the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries in the city of Carthage in Africa. The most important of these are described below. Synod of 251 In May 251 a synod, assembled under the presidency of Cyprian ...

, Fortunatianus of Capsa was present, mentioned as the first among the bishops of Byzacena. A Donatist bishop of Capsa called Quintasius was at the council held at Cabarsussi in 393 by a breakaway group of

Donatists Donatism was a Christian sect leading to a schism in the Church, in the region of the Church of Carthage, from the fourth to the sixth centuries. Donatists argued that Christian clergy must be faultless for their ministry to be effective and th ...

led by Maximianus. In the 5th century, at the joint Council of Carthage (411) attended by Catholics and Donatists, Gams and Morcelli say Capsa was represented by the Donatist Donatianus, and that it had no Catholic bishop. According to the more recent Mesnage, Donatianus was instead the Donatist bishop of Capsus in Numidia, and Capsa in Byzacena was represented by the Catholic Fortunatus and the Donatist Celer, whom the earlier sources attributed to Capsus. All three sources agree in attributing to Capsa the Vindemialis who was one of the Catholic bishops whom Huneric summoned to Carthage in 484 and then exiled. However, the latest editions of the Roman Martyrology, which commemorates Vindemialis on 2 May, call him bishop of Capsus in Numidia. Capsa still had resident bishops at the end of the 9th century, being mentioned in a '' Notitia Episcopatuum'' of Leo VI the Wise (886–912). but a community may have lasted until the early 12th century No longer a residential bishopric, Capsa is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.

Climate

Gafsa has a hot desert climate ( Köppen climate classification ''BWh'').

Economy

Gafsa is developing thanks to the mining of phosphates, the deposit of which discovered in 1886 is one of the largest in the world. Tunisia extracted nearly five million tonnes of phosphates in 2011. Production fell after the revolution to reach 3,500,000 tonnes in 2016. Tunisia has thus fallen from seventh in the world to tenth. The

Compagnie des phosphates de Gafsa The Compagnie des phosphates de Gafsa ( ar, شركة فسفاط قفصة, Gafsa Phosphate Company) or CPG is a Tunisian phosphate mining company based in Gafsa, formed in the late 19th century during the French colonial era, and once the largest em ...

had its own private railway line until 1966, on the basis of an agreement signed on 25 August 1896. Paradoxically, the city is quite poor and does not benefit from income from phosphate.: Phosphate Rock
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Transport

Gafsa – Ksar International Airport is located in the city.

Sport

El Kawafel Sportives de Gafsa (Arabic: القوافل الرياضية بقفصة, often referred to as EGSG) is the main football club of Gafsa.

Media

Radio stations: *Radio Gafsa (governmental) , Frequencies : 87.8 FM, 93.5 FM and 91.8 FM, *Mines FM or Sawt Elmanajem (private) , Frequencies : 90.9 FM and other government and private Tunisian radios broadcast in Gafsa as Shems FM, RTCI, Youth Radio, Culture Radio, Zitouna, and the National Radio.

International relations

Twin towns – Sister cities

Gafsa is twinned with: * Naples, Italy *

Palma de Mallorca Palma (; ; also known as ''Palma de Mallorca'', officially between 1983–88, 2006–08, and 2012–16) is the capital and largest city of the Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of the Balearic Islands in Spain. It is situate ...

, Spain

References

Notes

External links

Gafsa – The Historical Oasis

{{Authority control Communes of Tunisia Cities in Tunisia Archaeological sites in Tunisia Oases of Tunisia

Capsa Gafsa ( aeb, ڨفصة '; ar, قفصة qafṣah), originally called Capsa in Latin, is the capital of Gafsa Governorate of Tunisia. It lends its Latin name to the Mesolithic Capsian culture. With a population of 111,170, Gafsa is the ninth-la ...

Populated places in Gafsa Governorate Phoenician colonies in Tunisia