Tunisia was called Ifriqiyah, which comes from the Roman word for Africa and given by the Romans to their first African colony following the Punic Wars against the Carthaginians in 264-146 BC, in the early centuries of the Islamic period.
Around 1100BC, the Phoenicians invaded into Tunisia, establishing their capital, Carthage, as the main power in the western Mediterranean by the 6th century. The action dissatisfied the Roman Empire. The legendary of Carthage, conquered by the Romans after Punic Wars ensued. Its population were sold for slaves and then re-created it as a Roman city in 44BC. Roman Tunisia boomed and created the temple-deck city of Dougga and the extravagant El Jem colosseum. In the 5th century, the Vandals, the barbarians who gave “vandalism” to the world, flourished in what is now Tunisia. Even though history has given the Vandals a really bad name, they were not all bad. They found the decaying Roman Empire in North Africa ripe for the picking and there they conquered and ruled with the North Africa. The Vandals left their genes as light hair and blue eyes for the Tunisia. Unhappy with the nihilistic rule of the Vandals, the local Berber population formed small kingdoms and rebelled, but both groups were conquered, and the Vandals ousted by the approaching Byzantines in 533. After short periods of rule by the Vandals, the Arabs conquered the area in AD647. Arab Muslim dynasty that ruled Ifrīqīyah (Tunisia and eastern Algeria) from ad 800 to 909. The Aghlabids were nominally subject to the ʿAbbāsid caliphs of Baghdad but were in fact independent. Their capital city was Kairouan, in Tunisia. The most interesting of the 11 Aghlabid emirs were the energetic and cultured Ibrāhīm ibn al-Aghlab founder of al-Abbāsiyya; Ziyādat Allāh I, who broke the rebellion of the Arab soldiery and sent it to conquer Sicily; and Abū Ibrāhim Aḥmad, who commissioned many public works. During the 9th century the brilliant Kairouan civilization evolved under their rule. The Aghlabid emirs maintained a splendid court, though at the cost of oppressive taxes; their public works for the conservation and distribution of water, however, contributed to the prosperity of a country that was on the whole peaceful. Their fleet was supreme in the central Mediterranean. Although the Arabs initially unified North Africa, a separate Tunisian dynasty had been established by the Hafsids by 1230. Muslim Andalusians migrated to the area after having been forced out of spain in 1492. By 1574, Tunisia was incorporated into the Ottooman Empire, which lasted until 1922.
A single major city, Tunis is dominated the countryside both politically and culturally. Tunisia could be considered as the great advancement of the ancient Tunisia history. It was located near the site of the earlier Carthage. Tunisia was also more open to the influence of people and ideas from abroad. Roman Africa, for example, was the most intensively Christianized portion of North Africa, and Ifriqiyah was later more quickly and more thoroughly Islamicized. A small state with limited resources, Tunisia nonetheless managed a considerable autonomy within the framework of larger empires ruled from afar. This status was achieved, for example, under the Abbasids in the 9th century and later under the Ottomans. Tunisia’s geographic and historical legacy helped prepare it for the shocks it received in the 19th century as a land caught between an expanding Europe and a declining Ottoman Empire. Yet Tunisia proved to be as vulnerable economically as it was militarily.
When I was doing the research, I found a lot of sufficient information, like encyclopedia, Tunisia newspaper, and some other history websites.
“Tunisia History.” Tunisiadaily.com. Tunisiadaily, n.d. Web. 21 Sept. 2014.< http://www.tunisiadaily.com/tunisia-history/ >.
“Tunisia.” History of. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Sept. 2014. <http://www.lonelyplanet.com/tunisia/history>.
“Toledo Blade – Google News Archive Search.” Toledo Blade – Google News Archive Search. Toledo Blade, n.d. Web. 21 Sept. 2014. <http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=19730225&id=IM9OAAAAIBAJ&sjid=-QEEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7060,665374>.