1. General Situation

The Tunisian Republic, located in North Africa between Algeria in the west and Libya in the southeast, borders the Mediterranean. Mountains in the north overlook a hot, dry central plain that merges into the Saharan desert in the south.

In the 12th century b.c., the Tunisian coast was colonized by the Phoenicians. They built the city of Carthage (near the modern capital, Tunis), from where the brilliant general Hannibal invaded Italy in 218 b.c. Carthage eventually fell to the Romans in 146 b.c., and the a…