Abstract:
Most historians believe that the region of North Africa, as an Ottoman border area, lies in the slipstream of political events of the Ottoman-Turkish world empire. This stands as a stark contrast to the European lands bound under the Ottoman reign, especially during the 16th century. The Ottomans were particularly feared in central Europe. The Ottoman conquest of North Africa, however, began relatively late and was characterized by intermittent setbacks.
Scholarly work so far has neglected the Ottoman periods of North Africa in general and Tunisia in particular. Therefore, one of the most important aims of the current work is the use of appropriate sources. Prior articles have studied Arabic and European sources as they relate to individual aspects, but have neglected Ottoman sources despite their great significance. This work gives the first successive portrayal of historical and political events in Ottoman Tunisia using all available documents, whether Ottoman, European, or Arabic.
I hope to provide herein both a systematic analysis of the political relations between the Ottoman central authority and Tunisia during the 16th and 17th centuries, and a historical portrayal of their significant events and related causes and consequences.