Place:Sousse, Sūsah, Tunisia

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Sousse or Soussa (; Berber:Susa) is a city in Tunisia, capital of the Sousse Governorate. Located south of the capital Tunis, the city has 271,428 inhabitants (2014). Sousse is in the central-east of the country, on the Gulf of Hammamet, which is a part of the Mediterranean Sea. Its economy is based on transport equipment, processed food, olive oil, textiles, and tourism. It is home to the Université de Sousse.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Hadrumetum

In the 11th centuryBC, Tyrians established Hadrumetum as a trading post and waypoint along their trade routes to Italy and the Strait of Gibraltar. Its establishment (at a river mouth about north of old Sousse) preceded Carthage's but, like other western Phoenician colonies, it became part of the Carthaginian Empire following 's long siege of Tyre in the 580s and 570sBC.

The city featured in the Third Sicilian War, the Second and Third Punic Wars (in the latter of which it secured additional territory and special privileges by aiding Rome against what was left of the Carthaginians), and Caesar's Civil War, when it was the scene of Caesar's famously deft recovery: upon tripping while coming ashore, he dealt with the poor omen this threatened to become by grabbing handfuls of dirt and proclaiming "I have you now, Africa!" The second city in Roman Africa after Carthage, it became the capital of the province of Byzacena during the Diocletianic Reforms. Its native sons included the jurist Salvius Julianus, the emperor Clodius Albinus, and numerous Christian saints. The Roman and Byzantine catacombs beneath the city are extensive.

The Vandals sacked Hadrumetum in 434 but it remained a place of importance within their kingdom; a bishop and proconsul were martyred there during the Vandals' periodic forced conversions of their subjects to Arianism. The Byzantine Empire reconquered the town in 534 during the Vandal War and engaged in a public works program that included new fortifications and churches. The town was sacked during the Umayyad Caliphate's 7th-century conquest of North Africa. According to a 1987 ICOMOS report, Uqba ibn Nafi's siege and capture of the city resulted in its almost complete destruction, such that no monument of Hadrumetum "subsists in situ".^[1]

Medieval Susa

Muslim Arab armies rapidly spread Arab culture across what had been a thoroughly Romanized and Christianized landscape. Under the Aghlabids, Susa was established near the ruins of Hadrumetum and served as their main port. Their 827 invasion of Sicily was mainly launched from the town's harbor. After the Byzantine city of Melite (modern Mdina on Malta) was captured by the Aghlabids in 870, marble from its churches was used to build the Ribat. A soaring structure that combined the purposes of a minaret and a watch tower, it remains in outstanding condition and draws visitors from around the world. Its mosque is sometimes accounted the oldest surviving in the region and the town's main mosque, also built during the 9th century, has a similarly fortress-like appearance.

Susa was briefly occupied by Norman Sicily in the 12th century; it fell to the Ottoman Empire in the 16th; and it was bombarded by a French and Venetian fleet in the 18th.

Medieval Susa was known for its textile industries, producing silk and flax fabrics called Sūsī. Especially renowned were its robes called , some of which were mass-produced and sold ready-to-wear throughout the Mediterranean.

After the decline of Mahdia in the 15th and 16th centuries, Susa remained as the most important town in the Sahel region, with a population of about 15,000.^[2]

Colonial Sousse

Tunisia became a French protectorate in 1881. Around the end of the 19th century, Sousse had a population of 7,000 and was the second-most-important city in Tunisia after Tunis itself.^[2] At this point, the entire population of Sousse lived in the walled medina.^[2] The medina was surrounded by agricultural settlements, two of which - Kala Kebira and Msaken - were more densely populated than the city itself.^[2] The French Protectorate reinforced Sousse's role as a commercial and administrative center by establishing public buildings, enlarging the city's port, and building railways.^[2] Between 1896 and 1911, railways were built connecting Sousse with Tunis, Kairouan, Sfax, Mahdia, Moknin, and Henshir Suwatir.^[2] Food industries were also established in the city.^[2]

Prior to the First World War, Sousse had about 25,000 inhabitants, including around 10,000 French and roughly 5,000 other Europeans, mostly Italians and Maltese. The port was the garrison of the 4th Tunisian Rifle Regiment.

The first developments outside the medina walls were begun during this period, but they were only home to a relatively small number of people until after the Second World War.^[2] Susa was devastated by the war and suffered 39 bombardments between December 1942 and May 1943.^[2] In 1946, after the war was over, the authorities decided to give a high priority to reconstruction efforts in Sousse.^[2]

Modern Sousse

When Tunisia became independent in 1956, Sousse was made a wilayah capital and it continued to expand in all directions.^[2] Over the course of the 20th century, its growth was explosive - from just 8,577 residents in 1885, it had grown to accommodate 134,835 residents in 1994.^[2] Its physical area had also increased massively, from a compact 29 hectares in 1881 to 3,100 hectares in 1992 - over 100 times greater than its original size.^[2] The secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy also grew accordingly.^[2]

Sousse has retained the solidly Arabian look and feel it had assumed in the centuries after its initial conquest. Today it is considered one of the best examples of seaward-facing fortifications built by the Arabs. These days, Sousse, with a population of about 200,000, retains a medieval heart of narrow, twisted streets, a kasbah and medina, its ribat fortress and long wall on the Mediterranean. Surrounding it is a modern city of long, straight roads and more widely spaced buildings.

Sousse was the site of the chess interzonal in 1967, made famous when American Grandmaster Bobby Fischer withdrew from the tournament even though he was in first place at the time.

On 26 June 2015, a lone gunman later identified as Seifeddine Rezgui Yacoubi opened fire on tourists sunbathing on a beach near the Riu Imperial Marhaba and Soviva hotels, killing 38 and wounding 39, before being shot dead by the police.

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