Arab, Tunisian

Tunisian Arabs are the Arabic-speaking Muslim majority of Tunisia, the people who call themselves simply Tounsi. Most descend from the Amazigh (Berber) population of Roman and Byzantine Africa, Arabised over centuries after the Arab conquest of 647-700 and the migrations of the Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym in the 11th century, with Andalusian Muslims who fled Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries, an Ottoman Turkish elite and its descendants (1574-1881), and Black Africans brought by the trans-Saharan trade. Arab tribes (Hamama, Jlass, Mrazig, Ouled Ayar and others) still mark rural identities in the centre and south, and the north-western Khroumir and Nafza are Arabised Berber tribes.

National identity was forged under the Husaynid beys, the French protectorate (1881-1956) and Habib Bourguiba, who built a single Arab, Muslim and modern Tunisian identity, gave women the 1956 Code of Personal Status (no polygamy, divorce by court), and sedentarised nomads. Tunisian Arabic (Derja), a Maghrebi dialect with Berber, Turkish, Italian and French loanwords, is the everyday speech of nearly all Tunisians; Modern Standard Arabic is the language of state and school, and French of business and science. About 1.85 million Tunisians are registered abroad, more than half in France.

Family is the centre of life: young people usually live at home until marriage, and weddings last several days with a henna night, music and feasts; the 1956 Code set a minimum marriage age and gave women divorce rights. Cafés are male social spaces, while women's networks run through family, hammam and neighbourhood. Food is spicy and olive-oil based: couscous (often on Fridays), brik, lablabi chickpea soup, ojja, merguez, harissa, with assida pudding for the Mouled. The medinas of Tunis, Sousse, Sfax and Kairouan keep courtyard houses and souks; Sidi Bou Said's white and blue is the national image. Music runs from malouf, the Andalusian art music of the Rachidia, to mezoued at popular weddings and today's rap. Football, Ramadan evenings, summer on the beach and the weekly souk structure the year. The coast (Sahel, Cap Bon, Tunis) is urban and outward-looking; the interior and south are poorer, more tribal and more conservative, and send migrants to the coast and to Europe.

Tunisian Arabs are Sunni Muslims of the Maliki school, taught for centuries at the Zitouna mosque-university in Tunis; families of Ottoman descent follow the Hanafi rite. The state appoints imams and sets sermon themes. Practice varies sharply: Ramadan fasting is near universal and the feasts are national events, but regular prayer and mosque attendance are lower than elsewhere in the Arab world, and Tunisia has the largest share of people calling themselves not religious in Arab Barometer surveys (27% in 2021-22; 46% of 18-29s in 2018-19). After 2011 Salafi movements grew and thousands of young Tunisians joined jihadist groups abroad, while Ennahda brought political Islam into government until 2021.

Popular Islam remains strong: Sufi orders (Qadiriyya, Shadhiliyya, Tijaniyya, Aissawiya) and the cult of saints at zawiyas such as Sidi Mahrez and Sidi Ben Arous in Tunis or Sidi Sahbi in Kairouan, where people seek baraka, healing, marriage and children; rural zarda festivals for local saints in the centre-west; the evil eye, amulets (the hand of Fatima, khomsa) and healers. Stambali, a trance and healing rite of Black Tunisian origin, has revived in Mouled processions through the Tunis medina.

The complete Bible is available in Arabic, and the New Testament in Tunisian Arabic (Derja), published by the Bible Society and Wycliffe, is on Bible.com and eBible.org, with a dramatised audio New Testament, the Jesus Film in Tunisian Arabic, Global Recordings audio and Voice of Carthage media. Christian satellite television and online ministries reach Tunisian homes. A Tunisian church of a few thousand believers, most of them converts from Islam, meets in small house fellowships in Tunis, Sousse, Sfax and elsewhere; Tunisian believers face family rejection rather than prosecution, but Protestant groups cannot register and evangelism of Muslims is treated as a public-order offence. JP and IMB rate Tunisian Arabs unreached (JP 0.22% Christian adherents).

Tunisian Arabs share one language and faith but regional identities run deep. The Beldi, old families of the Tunis medina, kept Andalusian and Ottoman manners; the Sahel towns (Sousse, Monastir, Mahdia) supplied Bourguiba's ruling elite; Sfax is known for thrift and trade; the north-west (Jendouba, Beja, Kef) is rural and forested; the centre-west (Kasserine, Sidi Bouzid, Gafsa) and the south keep tribal ('arsh) loyalties among the Hamama, Jlass, Frechich, Mrazig, Ouled Ayar and others, settled by Bourguiba's policies but still visible in local politics, weddings and saint festivals. The revolution of 2010-11 began in Sidi Bouzid, expressing the interior's sense of neglect by the coast.