Gafsa

Gafsa, قفصة‎, is the capital of Gafsa Governorate of Tunisia. Its name was appropriated by archaeologists for the Mesolithic Capsian culture. With a population of 84,676, it is the 9th Tunisian city.


Overview


The city had 84,676 inhabitants at the 2004 census. Contemporary Gafsa is a modern town, and the centre of the Djerid area's important phosphate industry. Of note are the Roman baths, still used today. The city lies 369 km by road southwest of Tunis. Its geographical coordinates are 34°25′N 8°47′E.
In January 2008 Gafsa was the epicentre of a popular spontaneous uprising protesting against the corruption and nepotism of the country's authoritarian regime of president Ben Ali. The uprising was swiftly suppressed and went unreported in the state-controlled Tunsian media. Youtube was blocked in Tunisia because it carried video footage from the riots and information about the subsequent treatment of its instigators by the Tunisian regime. 


The 12th century Moroccan geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi, who, describing Gafsa in southern Tunisia, notes that: 'Its inhabitants are Berberised, and most of them speak the African Latin tongue'. The Normans when conquering their Tunisian kingdom in the 12th century received help from the remaining Christian populations of Tunisia, and some historians like Vermondo Brugnatelli argue that those Christians still spoke a Romance language. No details on the characteristics of this language have been preserved.