Tunis in the context of "Sephardic Jews"

The following is a list of the 100 largest cities in Africa by urban population using the most recent official estimate. This reflects only cities located geographically in Africa including related islands.

Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisia also shares maritime borders with Italy through the islands of Sicily and Sardinia to the north and Malta to the east. It features the archaeological sites of Carthage dating back to the 9th century BC, as well as the Great Mosque of Kairouan. Known for its ancient architecture, souks, and blue coasts, it covers 163,610 km (63,170 sq mi), and has a population of 12.1 million. It contains the eastern end of the Atlas Mountains and the northern reaches of the Sahara desert; much of its remaining territory is arable land. Its 1,300 km (810 mi) of coastline includes the African conjunction of the western and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Basin. Tunisia is home to Africa's northernmost point, Cape Angela. Located on the northeastern coast, Tunis is the capital and largest city of the country, which is itself named after Tunis. The official language of Tunisia is Arabic. The vast majority of Tunisia's population is Arab and Muslim. Vernacular Tunisian Arabic is the most spoken language, and French serves as an administrative and educational language in some contexts, but has no official status.

Beginning in early antiquity, Tunisia was inhabited by the indigenous Berbers. The Phoenicians, a Semitic people, began to arrive in the 12th century BC, settling on the coast and establishing several settlements, of which Carthage emerged as the most powerful by the 7th century BC. The descendants of the Phoenician settlers came to be known as the Punic people. Ancient Carthage was a major mercantile empire and a military rival to the Roman Republic until 146 BC when it was defeated by the Romans who occupied Tunisia for most of the next 800 years. The Romans introduced Christianity and left architectural legacies like the Amphitheatre of El Jem. In the 7th century AD, Arab Muslims conquered Tunisia and settled with their tribes and families, bringing Islam and Arab culture. A later large-scale Arab migration of Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym tribes in the 11th-12th centuries accelerated this process. By around the 15th century, the region of modern-day Tunisia had already been almost completely Arabized. Then, in 1546, the Ottoman Empire established control, holding sway until 1881, when the French conquered Tunisia. In 1956, Tunisia gained independence as the Tunisian Republic. Today, Tunisia's culture and identity are rooted in this centuries-long intersection of different cultures and ethnicities.

The Lake of Tunis (Arabic: بحيرة تونس Buḥayra Tūnis; French: Lac de Tunis) is a natural lagoon located between the Tunisian capital city of Tunis and the Gulf of Tunis (Mediterranean Sea). The lake covers a total of 37 square kilometres, in contrast to its size its depth is very shallow. It was once the natural harbour of Tunis.

Roman Carthage was an important city in ancient Rome, located in modern-day Tunisia. Approximately 100 years after the destruction of Punic Carthage in 146 BC, a new city of the same name (Latin Carthāgō) was built on the same land by the Romans in the period from 49 to 44 BC. By the 3rd century, Carthage had developed into one of the largest cities of the Roman Empire, with a population of several hundred thousand. It was the center of the Roman province of Africa, which was a major breadbasket of the empire. Carthage briefly became the capital of a usurper, Domitius Alexander, in 308–311. Conquered by the Vandals in 439, Carthage served as the capital of the Vandal Kingdom for a century. Re-conquered by the Eastern Roman Empire in 533–534, it continued to serve as a Roman regional center, as the seat of the praetorian prefecture of Africa (after 590 the Exarchate of Africa).

The city was sacked and destroyed by Umayyad Arab forces after the Battle of Carthage in 698 to prevent it from being reconquered by the Byzantine Empire. A fortress on the site was garrisoned by Muslim forces until the Hafsid period, when it was captured by Crusaders during the Eighth Crusade. After the withdrawal of the Crusaders, the Hafsids decided to destroy the fortress to prevent any future use by a hostile power. Roman Carthage was used as a source of building materials for Kairouan and Tunis in the 8th century.

Mother church or matrice is a term depicting the Christian Church as a mother in her functions of nourishing and protecting the believer. It may also refer to the primary church of a Christian denomination or diocese, i.e. a cathedral church, or the oldest church of a particular locality. For a particular individual, one's mother church is the church in which one received the sacrament of baptism. The term has specific meanings within different Christian traditions. Catholics refer to the Catholic Church as "Holy Mother Church".

Sephardic Jews, also known as Sephardi Jews or Sephardim, and rarely as Iberian Peninsular Jews, are a Jewish diaspora population associated with the historic Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and their descendants. The term "Sephardic" comes from Sepharad, the Hebrew word for Iberia. These communities flourished for centuries in Iberia until they were expelled in the late 15th century. Over time, "Sephardic" has also come to refer more broadly to Jews, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, who adopted Sephardic religious customs and legal traditions, often due to the influence of exiles. In some cases, Ashkenazi Jews who settled in Sephardic communities and adopted their liturgy are also included under this term. Today, Sephardic Jews form a major component of the global Jewish population, with the largest population living in Israel.

The earliest documented Jewish presence in the Iberian Peninsula dates to the Roman period, beginning in the first centuries CE. After facing persecution under the Pagan and later Christian Visigothic Kingdom, Jewish communities flourished for centuries under Muslim rule in Al-Andalus following the Umayyad conquest (711–720s), a period often seen as a golden age. Their status declined under the radical Almoravid and Almohad dynasties and during the Christian Reconquista. In 1391, anti-Jewish riots in Castile and Aragon led to massacres and mass forced conversions. In 1492, the Alhambra Decree by the Catholic Monarchs expelled Jews from Spain, and in 1496, King Manuel I of Portugal issued a similar edict. These events led to migrations, forced conversions, and executions. Sephardic Jews dispersed widely: many found refuge in the Ottoman Empire, settling in cities such as Istanbul, Salonica, and İzmir; others relocated to North African centers like Fez, Algiers, and Tunis; Italian ports including Venice and Livorno; and parts of the Balkans, the Levant (notably Safed), and the Netherlands (notably Amsterdam). Smaller communities also emerged in France, England, and the Americas, where Sephardim often played key roles in commerce and diplomacy.

A Roman mosaic is a mosaic made during the Roman period, throughout the Roman Republic and later Empire. Mosaics were used in a variety of private and public buildings, on both floors and walls, though they competed with cheaper frescos for the latter. They were highly influenced by earlier and contemporary Hellenistic Greek mosaics, and often included famous figures from history and mythology, such as Alexander the Great in the Alexander Mosaic.

A large proportion of the surviving examples of wall mosaics come from Italian sites such as Pompeii and Herculaneum. Otherwise, floor mosaics are far more likely to have survived, with many coming from the fringes of the Roman Empire. The Bardo National Museum in Tunis has an especially large collection from large villas in modern Tunisia.

Ifriqiya (Arabic: إفريقية, romanized: Ifrīqya, lit. 'Africa') was a medieval historical region comprising today's Tunisia, eastern Algeria, and Tripolitania (roughly western Libya), particularly the region between the sea and the edges of the Sahara. It included all of what had previously been the Byzantine province of Africa Proconsularis and extended beyond it, but did not include the Mauretanias.

Ifriqiya is bordered to the west by the Central Maghreb, with which the borders are fluid depending on the chroniclers and the era. For most of its early history, the capital of Ifriqiya was Qayrawan (Kairouan), but in some periods it moved to Mahdiya (Mahdia) and later it remained at Tunis.

Avenue Habib Bourguiba (Tunisian Arabic: شارع حبيب بورڨيبة) is the central thoroughfare of Tunis, and the historical political and economic heart of Tunisia. It is named for Habib Bourguiba, the first President of Tunisia and the national leader of the Tunisian independence movement. Today, the broad Avenue aligned in an east-west direction, lined with trees and facades of shops, and fronted with street cafes on both sides, and which is compared to the Champs-Élysées in Paris, and its extension, the Avenue de France, Place de l'Indépendance marking the central roundabout with Lake of Tunis at the eastern end. Many of the important monuments are located along this avenue, including Cathedral of St. Vincent de Paul, French Embassy in Tunisia and Théâtre municipal de Tunis.

Most cities in Tunisia also have an Avenue Habib Bourguiba.