From the seventeenth through the nineteenth century the Jewish community of Leghorn (Livorno), an Italian port on the coast of Tuscany, played a major role in the Mediterranean sea trade. Many Livornese Jewish merchants sent family members to Tripoli, Tunis, and Izmir in connection with their business operations. The Jews from Leghorn who settled in Tunis were locally called Grana (Ar. from Leghorn;  Heb. Gornim). In 1741 the Grana formally dissociated themselves from the indigenous Judeo-Arabic-speaking Jews and formed a separate community with its own rabb…