Tunisians

Tunisians

Twensa; توانسة
Tunisian national flag
Total population
c. 12–13 million[a]
Regions with significant populations
Tunisia 11,304,482 (2016 estimate)
France	668,668
Italy	189,092
Germany	86,601
Libya	68,952
Belgium and Luxembourg	24,810
Canada	20,300
United Arab Emirates	19,361
Algeria	18,796
Saudi Arabia	16,774
Switzerland	16,667 ·
United States	15,308
Netherlands	8,776
Sweden	8,704
Qatar	7,827
United Kingdom and Ireland	7,797
Austria	7,083
Languages
Tunisian; Berber; French
Religion
Mainly Islam (Sunni; also Ibadi); minority Judaism, Christianity
Related ethnic groups
Maghrebis, Arab-Berber, Maltese people, Sicilians, Sardinian people, other Afroasiatic and Romance peoples

Tunisian people or Tunisians (Tunisian Arabic: توانسة), are a Maghrebis ethnic group and nation living mainly in Tunisia, speaking Tunisian, the most widely spoken language in Tunisia and sharing a common Tunisian culture and identity. In addition, a Tunisian diaspora has been established with modern migration, particularly in Western Europe.

Prior to the modern era, Tunisians were known as Afāriqah (Roman Africans), from the ancient name of Tunisia, Ifriqiya or Africa in the antiquity, which gave the present day name of the continent Africa.

History

See also: History of Tunisia

Numerous civilizations and peoples have invaded, migrated to, or have been assimilated into the population over the millennia, with influences of population from Phoenicians/Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Arabs, Italians, Spaniards, Ottoman Turks and Janissaries, and French. There was a continuing, albeit small, inflow of nomadic Arab tribes from Arabia.

Africa and Ifriqiya

Main articles: History of early Tunisia, History of Carthage, History of Roman-era Tunisia, Roman Africans, History of early Islamic Tunisia, and History of medieval Tunisia

The first people known to history in what is now Tunisia were Berber people related to the Numidians. Phoenicians settled Tunisia during the 12th to the 2nd century BC, founded ancient Carthage and progressively mixed with the local population. The migrants brought with them their culture and language that progressively spread from Tunisia's coastal areas to the rest of the coastal areas of North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula and the Mediterranean islands. From the eighth century BC, most of Tunisians were Punics, a population born from the mix of the Phoenicians with the local Numidians. When Carthage fell in 146 BC to the Romans the coastal population was mainly Punic, but that influence decreased away from the coast. From the Roman period until the Arab conquest, Latin, Greeks and Numidian people further influenced the population, which was called Afariqa: (Roman) Africans.

From the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb in 673, Arabs, Persians and other Middle-Eastern populations settled in Tunisia which was called Ifriqiya, from its ancient name the Roman province of Africa By the mid-11th century, the Banu Hilal immigrated to rural northern and central Tunisia and Banu Sulaym immigrated to southern Tunisia.

After the Reconquista and expulsion of non-Christians and Moriscos from Spain, many Spanish Muslims and Jews also arrived. According to Matthew Carr, "As many as eighty thousand Moriscos settled in Tunisia, most of them in and around the capital, Tunis, which still contains a quarter known as Zuqaq al-Andalus, or Andalusia Alley."

Tunisians

See also: Ottoman Tunisia

During the 17th to the 19th centuries, Ifriqiya came under Spanish, then Ottoman rule and hosted Morisco then Italian immigrants from 1609. Tunis was officially integrated into the Ottoman Empire as the Eyalet of Tunis (province), eventually including all of the Maghrib except Morocco.

Under the Ottoman Empire, the boundaries of the territory inhabited by Tunisians contracted; Ifriqiya lost territory to the west (Constantine) and to the east (Tripoli). In the 19th century, the rulers of Tunisia became aware of the ongoing efforts at political and social reform in the Ottoman capital. The Bey of Tunis then, by his own lights but informed by the Turkish example, attempted to effect a modernizing reform of institutions and the economy. Tunisian international debt grew unmanageable. This was the reason or pretext for French forces to establish a Protectorate in 1881.

A remnant of the centuries of Turkish rule is the presence of a population of Turkish origin, historically the male descendants were referred to as the Kouloughlis.

Population

Main article: Demographics of Tunisia

Tunisians are primarily of Berber ancestral origin (>60%). Whilst the Ottoman influence has been particularly significant in forming the Turco-Tunisian community, other peoples have also migrated to Tunisia during different periods of time, including Sub-Saharan Africans, Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians (Punics), Jews, and French settlers. Nonetheless, by 1870 the distinction between the Tunisian Arabic-speaking mass and the Turkish elite had blurred. There is also a small purely Berber (1% at most) population located in the Dahar mountains and on the island of Djerba in the south-east and in the Khroumire mountainous region in the north-west.

From the late 19th century to after World War II, Tunisia was home to large populations of French and Italians (255,000 Europeans in 1956), although nearly all of them, along with the Jewish population, left after Tunisia became independent. The history of the Jews in Tunisia goes back some 2,000 years. In 1948 the Jewish population was an estimated 105,000, but by 2013 only about 900 remained.

Genetic

Tunisians are predominantly genetically descended from Berber groups, with some Phoenician/Punic, Arab and Western European input. Tunisians are also descended, to a lesser extent, from other African, Middle Eastern and/or European peoples. In sum, a little less than 20 percent of their genetic material (Y-chromosome analysis) comes from the present day Levant, Arabia, Europe or West Africa.

"In fact, the Tunisian genetic distances to European samples are smaller than those to North African groups. (...) This could be explained by the history of the Tunisian population, reflecting the influence of the ancient Punic settlers of Carthage followed, among others, by Roman, Byzantine, Arab and French occupations, according to historical records. Notwithstanding, other explanations cannot be discarded, such as the relative heterogeneity within current Tunisian populations, and/or the limited sub-Saharan genetic influence in this region as compared with other North African areas, without excluding the possibility of the genetic drift, whose effect might be particularly amplified on the X chromosome.", This suggests a fairly significant Middle Eastern and European input to Tunisian genetics compared to other neighbouring populations.

However, later research has suggested instead that Tunisians exhibit a mostly indigenous North African genetic make up similar to other Maghreb populations; characterized by a high amount of native North African genes, but with higher Middle Eastern input than in Algeria or Morocco.

Y-Chromosome

Listed here are the human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups in Tunisia.

Haplogroup

n

B

E1a

E1b1a

E1b1b1

E1b1b1a3

E1b1b1a4

E1b1b1b

E1b1b1c

F

G

I

J1

J2

K

P,R

R1a1

R1b1a

R1b1b

T

Marker

M33

M2

M35

V22

V65

M81

M34

M89

M201

V88

M269

M70

Tunisia

601

0.17

0.5

0.67

1.66

3

3.16

62.73

1.16

2.66

0.17

0.17

16.64

2.83

0.33

0.33

0.5

1.83

0.33

1.16

References

^[1]