TUNIS
The walls and roofs rise terrace-like one above the other to the Casbah, which, as usual, is built on the highest point—blank walls mostly, with few windows (often mere holes), though occasionally a balcony with a tiled roof, shading a carved window-frame inlaid with bright tiles, gives a hint of taste or wealth. All these straight lines and plain surfaces are redeemed from monotony by the curves of domes and the height and variety of form shown in the minarets. The small fluted domes of the great mosque are dazzlingly white; the minaret is square, with delicate Moorish tracery in a yellowish stone; the upper story of marble is set with coloured tiles, and with an open gallery of horseshoe arches.
The minarets of Sidi Ben Ziad and Sidi Ben Arous are slender, octagonal towers of the same warm-hued stone, surmounted by turrets with jutting balconies quaintly roofed with green tiles, from which the muezzin sings the call to prayer. Much older, but not so imposing, is the square minaret of the mosque of the Casbah, said to date from A.D. 1232. Such is Tunis, a compact mass of white buildings, with no open spaces and no streets visible.
So old, and yet with such a continuous history, that although founded before either Utica or Carthage, it is still known by its original name. This name of Tunis is in Punic characters Tanaïs, and is identical with the name of the Persian Venus. Probably the city was called after her, as other towns in Tunisia bore the names of deities. In those days Astarte, or Ashtaroth, combined the attributes and duties of Venus, Minerva, Juno, and Ceres, and was not only the goddess of beauty, the mother of love and queen of joy, but also the protectress of chastity, of war and of arms, and the patroness of corn and of husbandry. Such a divinity might well be invoked to take charge of a city, and in this case she evidently succeeded.
The city shared in the prosperity and also the evil days of Carthage and Utica, and, as a Roman province, endured all the changes in the life of Rome down to the fall of the Empire in Rome and Constantinople.
When the Vandals were cast out of Europe in A.D. 430, they devastated the north coast of Africa till they in their turn were driven by the Greeks beyond the mountains of the Atlas. Next, the Arab invaders swept over the land like a torrent, and in A.D. 644-648 took possession of Tunisia, which was thenceforward governed by Emirs appointed by the Khalifs.
The later history of Tunis, like that of Algiers, tells of a period of calm and culture, followed, after the expulsion of the Moors from Spain under the Christian kings, by a long chronicle of fighting and piracy; for thus these fugitive Moors vented their rage and avenged their wrongs on all seafaring people, merely because they were Christians. Slavery was carried on to the same terrible extent, for in 1535 no fewer than 20,000 Christian slaves escaped from the Casbah to open the city gates to Charles V.
Amongst other noted captives St. Vincent de Paul spent two years here in slavery, and in consequence devoted his after life to helping prisoners and galley slaves. An old house still exists with a fine courtyard, called even now the house of the Christian, which is said to have been built by a slave, who was killed by his owner as soon as the work was complete. The mosque of Sidi Mahrez, with its many domes, is supposed to have been the design of a French architect captured by the Corsairs.
A great part of the old walls and many of the gates still remain, and though modern buildings are closing round and gradually replacing the Moorish dwellings in the outlying quarters of Bab Djazira and Bab Souika, yet, within the magic circle, Oriental style, manners, and customs hold their own.