Tunisia

This north African nation is officially called the Tunisian Republic (الجمهورية التونسية). Like its neighbor Algeria, Tunisia was originally inhabited by Berber tribes, but was settled by Phoenicians around the 10th century BCE. Settlers from Tyre (in modern day Lebanon) founded the city of Carthage in the 9th century, which would becoming the center of the Carthaginian Empire and the dominant culture of the region from the 7th to the 2nd centuries BCE. The Punic Wars (264 to 146 BCE) were fought between Carthage and Rome, as the two empires struggled for control of the region. Carthage would ultimately be defeated by the Romans in the last war, after which it became both Latinized and Christianized. After the fall of Rome, the region was invaded by Vandals and eventually fell under Byzantine control in the 6th century CE.

From the 8th century onwards, Arab culture and Islam began to permeate the region, stemming out from the city of Kairouan and the Great Mosque founded there. Successive Muslim dynasties would rule over Tunisia for the next four centuries, during which they contended militarily with several Berber insurrections. Following a short Norman occupation in the 12th century, Arabs retook the coasts and eradicated what remained of Christian culture. Between the 13th and 16th centuries, the Berber Hafsid dynasty would control all of modern Tunisia, as well as parts of Algeria and Libya. The coasts of Tunisia were part of the infamous Barbary Coast from the 16th to 19th centuries, although technically still part of the Ottoman Empire, which ruled most of the region through the Hussein dynasty of Beys (established in 1705).

Bankruptcy and a French invasion in 1881, prompted the Bey to sign over Tunisia to the French as a protectorate. Hotly contested during the Second World War, parts of Tunisia would be occupied by Germany from 1942-1943 until regained by a combined Allied effort in May of 1943.

Tunisian Camouflage Patterns