Tunisia Culture & Language

Tunisian culture sits on an unusual number of layers, and unlike many places with a long history, a good deal of it is visible at once.

The mosaics

Roman Africa was rich, and its villa owners floored their houses with figured mosaic. The Bardo in Tunis holds the largest and finest collection anywhere — hunting scenes, sea gods, a famous portrait believed to be the poet Virgil, and whole rooms lifted from Dougga and Sousse. At Bulla Regia the floors are still in the underground rooms they were made for.

Islamic art and architecture

The Great Mosque of Kairouan, founded in 670, set the pattern for mosque design across North Africa and Spain, and the city is the fourth holiest in Islam. Kairouan is also the carpet-weaving centre, and Nabeul and Sejnane the pottery ones — Sejnane’s hand-modelled figures, made by women using techniques thousands of years old, are UNESCO-listed.

Music

Malouf, the Andalusian tradition carried west by refugees from Spain, is the classical form, and the Baron d’Erlanger’s palace at Sidi Bou Said is its centre of study.

Writing and film

Ibn Khaldun, born in Tunis in 1332, effectively invented historiography and sociology. The Carthage film festival is the oldest in Africa, and the southern desert has stood in for other planets in films seen everywhere.

The Jewish community of Djerba

One of the oldest continuous Jewish communities anywhere, present on the island for perhaps two thousand years and traditionally dated to the destruction of the First Temple. The El Ghriba synagogue is a pilgrimage site each spring, and the community — much reduced but still living, working and making the island’s silver jewellery — is a reminder of how plural North Africa was within living memory.

Food

Olive oil, harissa — UNESCO-listed — couscous, brik with a whole egg inside pastry, grilled fish, and mint tea with pine nuts.

Arabic is the official language, in a Tunisian dialect — derja — which borrows heavily from Berber, French and Italian and is not easily followed by speakers of Gulf Arabic. Modern Standard Arabic is used in writing and broadcasting.

French is the effective second language and is very widely spoken — in business, higher education, signage and with visitors. If you have any French at all, it will carry you through the entire country, and it is more useful here than English by a wide margin.

English is spoken in the resorts, by younger people and in tourism, less so elsewhere.

Berber survives in a few southern villages and on Djerba.

Useful: as-salamu alaykum as a greeting, shukran for thank you, labes for how are you and fine, and barcha for a lot — distinctively Tunisian.