Sfax

Sfax was founded in the ninth century by the Aghlabids on or beside the site of the Roman town of Taparura, at a point on the coast where the olive plain met a sheltered gulf. Its Great Mosque dates from that century, and the walls that still ring the old city were built and rebuilt by successive rulers. Unlike the ribat towns up the coast it grew as a merchant city rather than a garrison, trading olive oil, wool, cloth and grain across the Mediterranean and south into the Sahara.

That commerce brought both wealth and attack. Roger II of Sicily took the city in 1148 and the Normans held it until 1156, the Spanish occupied it in the sixteenth century, Venetian fleets bombarded it in the 1780s, and under the Ottomans its merchants and corsairs traded and fought with Malta and the Italian ports. Sfax resisted the French landing of 1881 and was bombarded and taken by force, an episode the city remembers; under the protectorate it grew fast, gaining a modern quarter outside the walls, a deep-water port, and railways carrying phosphate from the Gafsa mines for export.

The Second World War brought heavy Allied bombing in 1943, which destroyed much of the European town and damaged the port, and after independence in 1956 the city rebuilt as Tunisia's industrial second centre: olive-oil mills, chemical and phosphate processing plants, fishing and food factories, and later a university. Sfax took a prominent part in the strikes and protests of 2010–11. Industry has left its mark on the environment, and the long clearance of the phosphogypsum waste tipped beside the shore has been a civic campaign for decades.

Sfaxians are known across Tunisia as hard-working, thrifty and commercially shrewd, a reputation the city wears with pride and jokes about freely. It is a place of family firms, apprenticeships and long-established trades, where the medina's workshops pass down metalwork, carpentry and weaving, and where wealth tends to be invested rather than displayed. The city has also produced a large share of the country's doctors, engineers and business families, and its diaspora keeps close ties.

Civic identity is strong and slightly separate from the Sahel coast to the north. Sfax is more conservative and more religious in daily life than Sousse or Monastir, with less tourism to shape it, and the medina is a place of commerce and prayer rather than souvenirs. CS Sfaxien, the city's football club, is one of the leading teams in Tunisia and Africa, and match days dominate the city's weekends.

Cultural life centres on the university, cinemas and theatres in the ville nouvelle, and the city's craft and food traditions. Sfax's status as a regional capital of trade has long made it a crossroads for people from the interior and the south, and in recent years for migrants from West Africa, which has changed the sound of some of its streets and markets.

About 342,000 people live in the city itself and some 955,000 in the governorate, making the Sfax area the second-largest urban region in the country. The economy is genuinely productive rather than administrative: olive oil above all, with the surrounding plain holding millions of trees and the mills and export houses to process the crop, alongside chemical and phosphate plants, fishing, food processing, textiles, construction and a large medical sector.

Most residents live in the suburbs that sprawl north and west among the olive groves, and commute in by car, louage or bus; the medina is now mainly workshops and shops, its houses increasingly divided or let. The working day starts early, pauses in the afternoon and resumes into the evening, and Sunday, rather than Friday, is the quiet day for much of the commercial city.

The city's issues are industrial and environmental as much as economic: air and sea pollution from the chemical works, the phosphogypsum tips by the shore, and pressure on water. The coast near the city has also become a route for irregular sea crossings towards Europe, which has drawn police operations and international attention.

Sfax has the largest fishing port in Tunisia, and fish is at the heart of its cooking. The city's signature is fish couscous: semolina steamed above a pot of grouper or other white fish with vegetables, chickpeas and chilli, served in quantity on Fridays and at family gatherings. Grilled sea bream, mullet, prawns and octopus from the Kerkennah boats fill the restaurants around the port, and salted, dried and preserved fish are part of the pantry, eaten with charmoula, the dark sauce of onions slow-cooked with raisins and spices that is a Sfaxian dish at Eid.

Olive oil is the other foundation. The plain outside the city produces around 40 per cent of Tunisia's olive oil, more than any other region; oil is bought by the litre from mills and market stalls, and it goes into everything, from slatit mechouia of charred peppers and tomatoes to the bread dipped at breakfast. Harissa, brik, lablabi and ojja are eaten here as elsewhere in Tunisia, and the city has a particular fondness for spicy cooking.

Sfax is also known for its pastries and sweets, where French patisserie sits beside semolina and almond work: makroudh, baklava-style layered pastries, kaak warka, a ring of almond paste in thin pastry made for weddings, and masfouf, sweetened couscous with nuts and dried fruit. Mint tea with pine nuts and strong coffee are drunk through the day, and fresh almond milk is a summer drink.